The Midnight Dress (28 page)

‘Is she all right?’

Pearl takes a step closer to Rose, examines her pale freckled face, looks at her mouth, her lips slightly parted.

‘I should think so,’ says Edie. ‘Just tired. She’s had a hard time.’

Pearl looks anxious then, and can’t turn back to face the old woman.

‘I came to say sorry to her, that’s all,’ she says.

‘Well, you can,’ says Edie. ‘Why don’t you try to wake her? I’ll give you some peace.’

Before Pearl can protest, Edie puts down her work and starts out of the room and down the creaking hallway, leaving her there with the blue birds on the wall, the king brown floating in its jar, and the shadows of the mango leaves rocking against the louvres. The midnight dress touches the floor with its sighing skirt.

‘Rose,’ she whispers.

She takes another step forward.

Rose sleeps.

‘Rose?’

Pearl hears a door open and shut a long way away, deep in the house.

‘Come on, sleeping beauty,’ Pearl says, and she laughs self-consciously.

She kneels down beside the bed.

Rose sleeps on.

‘I just wanted to say sorry. I really want to say sorry. I should never have done what I did, I mean take him to our place, I mean what was I thinking? I can’t believe I did. You know me, Rose, you know me. Hey, sometimes I don’t think. He’s so vile, anyway. I told him. I gave the last book back. I didn’t write a poem. I told him exactly in my words. No more. It was a mistake. It’s over. My mum always says you need an exit strategy. I said, “You’re way too old for me.” I’m sorry, Rose. Then he saw me in the park and he came right up to me and said, “What do you think, you’re just finished with your little game? Just like that, game over.” He freaked me out. But then he just laughed and went away. I mean of all the places to take him. I can’t believe how much I must have hurt you. Do you understand, are you listening?

‘You have to accept my apology.

‘I’ve never had a friend like you. Geez, Rose, now I’ll have to say all this when you wake up as well. Anyway. Jonah Pedersen asked me to be with him on parade night. He’s got a little surprise for me. He said he’s willing to forgive me dumping him, he said he likes me that much. I mean he didn’t say it, of course, he sent one of the others to say it. I don’t know what the surprise will be. I think he’s getting a car or something, that’s what the rumour is, that’s probably all it is. What do you think? I think it’s good. I think it’s meant to be. You know how in all those books you always end up loving the one you didn’t like in the beginning?

‘Rose? I hope you wake up soon. You’re freaking me out. Please say you’ll forgive me when you wake up. Maybe you’re dreaming this, maybe I’m reaching you in there. I’m sorry.’

Pearl laughs again, wipes away her tears. She leans forward and brushes the flaming curls back from Rose’s forehead, kisses her there. Edie returns as Pearl stands up. She suspects that Edie has been eavesdropping, but the old lady only smiles.

‘No good?’

‘She’s out to it,’ says Pearl, ‘but I said sorry to her anyway. Can you tell her again when she wakes up? That I’m sorry and that I love her?’

‘Yes,’ says Edie. ‘Yes, I will.’

When Rose finally wakes her hair spills over her shoulders. Ringlets, perfectly coiled, have formed while she has slept. She runs her fingers through them, feels their caress on her cheeks. She gingerly puts her feet on the floorboards, smiles.

‘I feel like I’ve been asleep for a year,’ she says.

‘I was beginning to worry,’ says Edie. ‘I thought I’d have to call the doctor.’

Rose stretches, yawns, shakes out her ringlet hair, stands before the midnight dress.

‘You finished it?’ she gasps.

‘I needed something to do,’ says Edie. ‘While I waited.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ says Rose.

She touches it, the glass beads, the black rose lace, the silk taffeta skirt.

‘Tonight is the night,’ says Edie.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Tonight is the Harvest Parade.’

‘What?’ says Rose. ‘How long have I slept?’

Edie smiles her small wry smile; her eyes glitter.

‘Pearl came,’ she says. ‘Begging your forgiveness.’

‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

‘She tried. She watched over you a while. I don’t think you should be angry with her. She left a kiss, right here, on your forehead.’

‘But that’s three whole days?’

‘Yes,’ says Edie. ‘That’d be about right. Enough time for me to finish the hems and sleeves and check all the seams.’

Rose looks out the back door; night is coming already. It takes her a moment to realise the sensation, the whirring butterflies.

Rose Lovell is beautiful, thinks Edie.

‘There’s no doubt about it,’ she says. ‘Go and wash your hair beneath the tank stand. There’s nothing like rainwater.’

She gives Rose shampoo, a bottle in the shape of a doll.

Rose washes her hair and sits on the steps to let it dry. She looks up at the mountain, which is turning to a solid dark mass with the night. It’s growing indistinct, cloaking itself, holding in all its streams and secret places. Years later, when she is older, she will still dream of the places she discovered there: the gully, the secret rose gums, the hut beside the waterfall. These places will appear clearly in her dreams; the perfume of rotting leaves, of moss, will fill her nose. She will wake swallowing air as though they are her first breaths.

There is an uproar of frog song as the night descends.

Edie disappears down the hallway and returns with an ancient powder puff in her hand. Rose dabs at her freckles, and with an old lipstick she paints her lips the colour of rubies.

‘Do you think I should leave my hair out?’

‘Of course you should.’

A halo of curls. Murray Falconer will not fall in love with her tonight, he will plunge; she knows it, when she looks into the strange cloudy mirror in the bathroom, half-overgrown with vine.

The dress. The dress. The glass beads twinkle by the light of the hurricane lamps. All the windows have been flung open to the night. It breathes against Rose’s bare skin as she steps into the dress.

The dress speaks softly against her, in whispers and sighs.

‘Yes, you look a great beauty,’ says Edie. ‘There’s no doubt about it.’

‘Don’t,’ Rose says.

‘I’m only speaking the truth.’

Rose doesn’t know if she can sit in the dress or even if she can stand. She’s dizzy with the feel of it against her. The black mourning lace holds her arms, her throat; Edie lifts her curls at the nape, fastens the hook and eyes, the three pearl buttons.

‘Now, I don’t want you to complain, but I found these in a drawer and I knew I saved them years ago for a reason,’ says Edie; she holds out a pair of blue diamanté shoes. ‘Have you ever worn heels?’

‘No,’ says Rose.

When the shoes are on they peek out, just the toe, from beneath the dress: a perfect fit.

‘Lovely,’ says Edie. ‘And this.’

It’s a small black satin handbag with a love-heart lock.

Rose wobbles her first few steps down the hallway to a room with a dusty full-length mirror.

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t seem like me,’ says Rose. ‘I am someone else.’

Simple Thorn Stitch

When Glass gets there and climbs the back steps, she’s sitting at her table with a teacup in her hand, like she’s waiting. The whole time he’s there she doesn’t raise the cup once to her lips, and it’s only later, when he’s leaving, that he sees it’s filled up with tiny pieces of coloured glass.

‘I think you know more than what you’re letting on, Mrs Baker,’ he says by way of greeting. Softly. He feels far too big in that kitchen. He doesn’t want to scare her.

‘Miss Baker,’ says Edie. ‘I never married, but I was asked. Not in a traditional way. He didn’t get down on one knee.’

‘Do you know where Pearl Kelly is?’

‘No.’

‘What about Rose Lovell? We haven’t had any luck tracking her down. She was seen around though, those first few days.’

He looks at the dark hallway.

‘Rose?’ says Edie. She looks at her cup.

She seems smaller, frailer, much more faded since he was here a week ago.

‘Yes, I know where Rose is.’

Red and yellow ribbons and crepe-paper flowers decorate the light posts, and all the girls in their dresses are lining up in front of the town hall. From where the taxi sets her down, Rose can see their dresses are every colour of the rainbow and they wear flowers in their hair. She touches her own hair, realises she has none of these.

She is midnight blue and flowerless.

She feels the scratch of the black mourning lace against her throat and fingers the glass beads on her bodice. She tries to remember to breathe.

The back street is filled with the shrill whistling of recorder players, a dishevelled marching band struggling to find a melody, several loitering clowns and a confusion of floats: the Leonora State High bowl-of-fruit float, a sorry collection of sagging pastel apples, pears and grapes, the Leonora Karate Club giant banana-split float, truly a sight to behold, the belly-dancing float, the mill float, which features Mickey and Minnie Mouse, both their costumes a little threadbare. Mickey has his head off and is smoking a cigarette, which he grinds out when the drivers shout that it’s time to go.

The lead truck driver blows his horn and a clamorous cloud of flying foxes rises from the great figs in the park. The streets are filled with people, and in the sky the clouds have torn open to let the stars shine through.

Rose hears a voice close beside her and turns to see her father.

‘Home is the sailor home from the sea,’ he says, which makes no sense, but oh, how the rum fills him out.

He’s tall, there on the street, a full sail, eyes lit up, obsidian glass.

Straight away she can see it has happened. He’s swaying slightly, like a man on a rocking boat trying to keep himself still.

‘I’ve been sleeping,’ she says. It’s the truth.

‘Sleeping?’ he says, he’s angry. He puts his hand out, as though noticing the dress for the first time but says, ‘Sleeping. That’s plain stupid.’

‘I’ve got to go, Dad,’ she says, already turning.

‘Rose,’ he says. ‘We’ll be packing up in the morning. We’ll be leaving this shithole.’

She stops, a fraction of a second, then keeps walking.

‘Rose,’ he shouts.

Shannon sees Rose first and turns and whispers into Vanessa’s ear.

‘Well, well,’ says Vanessa, ‘look what the cat dragged in.’

Vanessa is beautiful in her golden gown, with its Barbie puffed sleeves and love-heart neckline trimmed with silvery sequins. Her perfect blond hair is laced with perfect white flowers, and huge curls bounce against her perfect tanned shoulders. She smiles with her little white razor-sharp teeth.

‘Please tell me,’ she continues, ‘that you’re not going to get up on stage in that.’

Rose looks at her own dress again.

Of course, beside the others it’s old-fashioned. She holds the skirt out with her hands and something about the action makes Vanessa laugh. It looks handmade, suddenly; it looks like something she has sewn herself.

‘See what happens when you get a witch to make your dress?’ says Vanessa.

When Rose left the house she felt beautiful, transfixed by herself and the dress with its waterfall of twinkling glass beads, the solemn loveliness of its mourning lace sleeves. Is the dress she’s wearing a monstrous thing? She stands like that, holding the skirt, looking down.

‘Fuck off, Vanessa,’ says Pearl, moving from behind the others. ‘Rose’s dress is gorgeous.’

Pearl is wearing tangerine, an explosion of tangerine flowers across her bodice. She looks beautiful in a way that suggests she hasn’t even bothered: she’s just stepped out of the sea and straight into that dress.

‘It is,’ says Mallory, moving out of Vanessa’s golden corona. She’s in flowing fuchsia, beaming.

Vanessa narrows her eyes.

‘You look stunning, Rose,’ says Shannon.

Vanessa goes to flick her hair and remembers the basket weave of baby’s breath and stops. She turns away from the group and moves toward the back of the float.

‘All aboard,’ says Mr Harvey, and the girls have to climb up to assume their positions among the fruit.

‘Stay near me,’ whispers Pearl. ‘Please.’

They sit together on an apple.

‘I’m sorry,’ whispers Pearl, as the truck lurches forward. ‘I came to the house – did you know I came there when you were asleep, did Miss Baker tell you?’

Rose nods slightly.

‘I’m sorry I took him there. It was the worst thing I ever did in my life.’

‘It was ours,’ says Rose.