The Women in Black (7 page)

15

‘I’m going to help Magda in the mornings, Mum.’

‘Magda? Who’s “Magda”?’ asked Mrs Miles.

‘You know, Magda. She’s in charge of Model Gowns; I told you.’

‘Model Gowns? Now what’s “Model Gowns” for goodness’ sake?’ asked Mrs Miles. ‘I thought they were all “Model Gowns” at Goode’s. An expensive shop like that.’

‘No, no,’ said Lisa. ‘They’re just un-Model Gowns, all the other things in Goode’s, they come in all sizes, anyone can buy them.’

‘Anyone who can pay for them,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘I’m sure I can’t.’

‘No, but—’ continued Lisa, ‘the Model Gowns are unique.

There’s only one of each, and they’re from France and England, and if you have one, you know nobody else will have it too, because it’s the only one in Sydney.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Miles, ‘I know. Individual. Well, no one else has the same clothes as you do either, except for your old school blouses, because I make them, so they’re unique too, aren’t they?’

‘Ye-e-es,’ said Lisa, ‘yes, I suppose so—’ ‘Well, there’s no “suppose” about it,’ said her mother, ‘they
are.
That pink frock I made you, if you could get one like it I reckon you’d pay five or six pounds at least, but you can’t.’

‘Yes, but the Model Gowns,’ said Lisa, ‘are mostly evening frocks.’

‘Oh, yes, evening frocks. I see,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘For balls, and that. That’s another story. I suppose I could try my hand at that if you wanted to go to a ball.’

And she began to get a dizzy feeling at the thought of making an evening frock, for a ball, not that she wouldn’t do her best, not that she wouldn’t try her very best to dress her daughter for a ball. Well.

‘But then you haven’t reached that point yet so we needn’t worry about it yet, need we?’ she asked brightly. But while she was doing so, each naturally had the same awful thought: the secret suddenly rose in a pink cloud and hovered near the kitchen ceiling above their heads.

If Lesley is really going to go to the university, thought Mrs Miles, she’ll very likely be going to balls, she’ll be doing goodness knows what. The clothes! All those other girls there—the daughters of professional men, business men: rich girls, with lots of clothes, clothes from Goode’s, for example—it was going to be a headache, keeping up with that. Lesley had been such a slow developer, her life had been so simple, so far—she had hardly been out with a boy; only a few young chaps she called weeds, chaps she didn’t care about making an impression on. How would it be when she got to the university, and met others, not weeds—well. She would just have to do her best. They would see.

‘No, but when I do go to a ball,’ said Lisa, ‘I’ll have my money I’ve saved working at Goode’s, won’t I? So I can buy something, and not bother you about it.’

‘That’s true,’ said her mother, ‘I’d forgotten that. You could buy a Model Gown, with that money. You’ll look just lovely.’

They laughed together, and Lisa jumped up and took her mother’s arm and they danced around the room, singing together.

Volare
,
oh
,
oh!

Cantare
,
oh
,
oh
,
oh
,
oh!

Everything will work out somehow, thought Mrs Miles; and my Lesley will go to the ball.

16

It was on the morning of the very next day that Lisa saw The Frock.

She was engaged upon the task which Magda had described to her, checking the stock list against the actual frocks and ranging these in the order in which they appeared in the stock list so that Magda could later go through them speedily and decide upon their sale prices. She had managed to find and to arrange in the correct order five or six of the semi-formal evening frocks which hung together in one mahogany open cabinet on their pink satin-covered hangers and was now hunting amongst the unsorted remainder for the model named Tara, described in the book as black and white silk taffeta, Creed.

As she carefully slid each hanger forward to inspect the Model Gown which hung behind it, finding now Laura, now Rosy, now Minuit, but never yet Tara, her gaze was suddenly—as she pushed Minuit further forward to clear a space—filled with the vision of—it was a magical coincidence—Lisette.

Child of the imagination of a great
couturière
, having that precise mixture of the insouciant and the romantic, the sophisticated and the simple, that only the female mind can engender, Lisette was the quintessential evening frock for a young girl: a froth of red pin-spotted white organza with a low neck, a tight bodice, a few deep ruffles over the shoulders, artful red silk piping edging these ruffles and the three tiers of the gathered skirts whose deepest tier would have cleared the fl oor by some eight inches, to leave a good view of a slender leg, a delicate ankle. The effect was of tiny spots set off by narrow stripes, the gaiety of crimson set off by the candour of white; the silky fabric very faintly shimmered.

Lisa stood, gazing her fill. She was experiencing for the first time that particular species of love-at-first-sight which usually comes to a woman much earlier in her life, but which sooner or later comes to all: the sudden recognition that a particular frock is not merely pretty, would not merely suit one, but answers beyond these necessary attributes to one’s deepest notions of oneself. It was her frock: it had been made, however unwittingly, for her.

She stood for a long time, drinking it in. The encounter was faintly, vaguely, strangely similar to her first meeting with the Tyger. She gazed on, marvelling, and then at last slowly, wrenchingly, she pushed the hanger forward, and continued her search for Tara.

17

Miss Jacobs, Mrs Williams, Miss Baines and Miss Miles had just received their wages envelopes, with their Christmas bonuses added on, which aroused very satisfactory sensations in each one as she contemplated the disposition of the surplus funds. The shape of Miss Jacobs’s contemplations must remain forever a mystery; Lisa’s we might quite easily guess at; Fay’s perhaps less easily; Patty’s, we know.

‘I’m just going to change out of this black frock,’ she told Fay at lunchtime, ‘and go down and look at them swimming cossies, and one or two other things maybe, so maybe I’ll see you in the canteen later on, and maybe not, I might have to skip lunch today.’

Oddly for her she had not mentioned the black nightdress to a soul: it was her secret. Except for Paula, of course. She would just change now very quickly and then run down to Lingerie and—no, she thought, I won’t; I’ll go to the cossies first, because I don’t want anyone to see me carrying that parcel from Lingerie (which used a different patterned wrapping paper, printed with a lace and ribbon design) because they might guess what’s in it, or they might ask. So I’ll just go to the cossies first.

The consequence was that she spent so much time trying on swimming costumes and then suddenly felt so hungry that she thought, I haven’t time to get my nightie and eat as well so I’ll get my nightie tomorrow; and that was how she came at last to reach home on the Friday night before Christmas carrying a Goode’s Lingerie parcel containing one black nylon nightdress with pink satin ribbon trim, SSW.

The sun had shone constantly every day now for several weeks during which the temperature had steadily, relentlessly, risen, and every wall in the vast city, every pavement, every roof, was soaked in heat. People moved slowly through the miasmic atmosphere, their eyes narrowed against the glare; their minds contracted into a state of wilting apathy, they directed their slow steps as soon as they could towards water in whatever form they could most conveniently find it: they went to the beaches, the swimming baths, their own showers, and immersed themselves until at last the stupendous sun sank below the horizon and darkness laid its balm upon their assaulted senses. Patty reached Randwick on the Friday night before Christmas just as this benison began to fall.

I wonder how long I’ve got before Frank gets in, she thought; he’ll be having a proper booze-up as it’s Friday night so he probably won’t get home till sevenish: so I’ve got time for a good long soak. And she took off all her sticky clothes and went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. Standing under its downpour, she drifted into that primeval condition, a state of peacefulness suffused by an innocent sensuality, which immersion in water can alone induce, and it was fully fifteen minutes before she turned off the taps. She had washed her hair: her permanent wave was almost grown out and it hung in limp strands around her small face. As she re-entered the bed room her eye lit upon the secretive package which contained her new nightdress and she thought: I know, I’ll try it on now, and just see what it looks like on. And she did.

She stood for some time gazing at herself in the full-length mirror in the wardrobe door, for she could not quite believe in the reality of the sight which met her eyes. Geez, she exclaimed to herself: geez-uz.

I’ll be damned, thought Frank, if I’ll go to the pub with them lot tonight, and listen to any more bull about their fl aming kids. The topic was getting out of hand; some of the mates had even started producing—not half sheepishly enough, either—snapshots of their own: ‘Here’s my Cheryl—curly hair, see? She gets it from me—’ Frank was damned if he wanted to listen to any more of that, and in the pub, too. So tonight he sulked off—‘Things to do. See youse on Monday!’ And he went, without even thinking twice, to another pub on the other side of Central Railway Station, a little place he’d half noticed long ago, and he went into the public bar, and he asked for some whisky. I feel like a whisky, he thought; I just feel like a whisky.

‘Scotch or Australian?’ asked the barmaid.

Well, there’s no need to go completely cuckoo, thought Frank.

‘Australian’s good enough for me,’ he told the barmaid.

‘Right you are,’ she said, and she poured him a measure of Australian whisky.

Used as he was to drinking beer, Frank tossed it off.

‘Same again!’ he said.

After some time he walked out into the street and found his way to his tram stop; it was a toast-rack tram on that route, and he wobbled slightly all the way home in a haze of whisky and unarticulated anguish. I wonder what’s for dinner, he thought.

Patty had her back to the bedroom door and had only half heard Frank’s key turning in the lock. That will be Frank, she dimly thought, I’d better make myself look decent, and she opened the wardrobe door—her still-unfamiliar transparent-black-clad reflec-tion coming up close to meet her—to find her dressing-gown. As she did so, she suddenly saw, beyond her reflection, the figure of her husband, standing in the doorway of the bedroom.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked.

‘I’m just—I’m just getting my dressing-gown,’ said Patty.

‘Dressed for bed?’ asked Frank, taking in Patty’s apparel now quite precisely. ‘Isn’t it a bit early for that?’

‘Well, not really,’ said Patty. ‘It’s new. I was just trying it on.

I’ll take it off now.’

‘
I’ll
take it off,’ said Frank.

And he came over to Patty, who had turned away from the wardrobe and her refl ection, and stood in front of her for a few seconds, and then very gingerly he put his arms around her waist, and seizing in each hand a fold of the black nylon nightdress began to pull the garment up and over his wife’s damp head. Patty could smell the whisky faintly on his breath, but she said nothing. Frank fl ung the nightdress aside and touched Patty’s breast. He inclined his head ever so slightly towards the bed and Patty moved tentatively towards it.

‘I reckon I’ll take my clothes off too,’ he said.

18

‘I think I will ask little Lisa to come to luncheon here tomorrow after we finish at the shop,’ said Magda to Stefan. ‘What do you think? Would you enjoy meeting a little Australian schoolgirl? A bluestocking who has neither style nor beauty but who is charming, so well brought up, and so to say adorable in her naiveté.’

‘What are you up to, my Magda?’ asked her husband. ‘What are you plotting in your Balkan brain? When have you developed this taste for little schoolgirls? Especially when you tell me she is not pretty, eh?’

‘I did not say she is not pretty—though as a matter of fact she is not—I said she is not beautiful. You know perfectly well the difference. I would not like her more if she were pretty, but in fact she
will
be pretty: for I shall make her so. Anyone young can be pretty, with a little contrivance if needs be, and anyone young
should
be. It is otherwise a disaster, to be young, or at least a waste of time.’

‘Ah, so you are going to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, are you?’

And Stefan laughed heartily.

‘You may laugh—go on, laugh like a drain—’ Stefan laughed the more ‘—but I cannot see what is so funny. I do a good deed for once in my life, I cannot see the humour.’

‘No, if you could, it would cease to be,’ said Stefan, chuckling. ‘Well, Magda my beauty, have your little schoolgirl here if they who have so well brought her up will permit such a thing—which I doubt—and, I assure you, you will have my full support. You know I am in favour of any enterprise which has beauty as its end.’

‘I did not say I would make her beautiful,’ said Magda, ‘I said pretty. Please do not make me to be more of a fool than I am.’

‘You are not at all a fool,’ said Stefan. ‘I will remember that you said pretty. Perhaps I would rather meet her
after
you have made her pretty, however.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Magda. ‘And supposing she can come, will you go up to the good delicatessen at Cremorne Junction tomorrow morning and buy some nice things for us to eat? Get some rye bread, also some black, some cream cheese if it is very fresh, some good ham—’ Stefan cut her off. ‘I can do the shopping,’ he said, ‘without a list, my angel. Oh but!’ and he suddenly struck his head with one large hand. ‘We are forgetting! Rudi comes tomorrow!’

‘Ah yes,’ said Magda. ‘But we do not know when. He will quite possibly come much later—who can ever say, with Rudi? It does not matter in any case. What is one Hungarian the more or less?

We will eat, we will talk. If Rudi is abominable Lisa and I will go out for a walk. Everything will manage itself.’

Rudi was a comparatively recent—a post-revolution—emigrant, the cousin of the wife of one of Stefan’s former clients: Stefan being an accountant with a small but thriving practice among the migrant colony of Sydney. The former client—Rudi’s cousin-in-law—having moved to Melbourne a few years before, Rudi had tried life in that capital in the first instance, but having soon concluded that Sydney must be more to his taste was now about to launch himself on its brilliant blue expanses.

‘I have had Melbourne,’ he had announced at the end of three months in that place, ‘up to here,’ indicating as he did so a point roughly twelve inches above his head.

Magda and Stefan had met him several times during his reconnaissance trip to Sydney: now that he had come lock, stock and barrel to live there they had undertaken to introduce him to the crowd, help him find a fl at, and generally give any necessary moral support. It did not appear that this latter would be much required.

The matter of his employment had already been settled, at least for the time being: he was to work for the cousin-in-law’s former partner in the latter’s import-export business.

‘The work will be dull,’ said the former partner, ‘and poorly paid, but there is a wonderful view of Darling Harbour from the window of my office, and I give you leave to come and look at it as often as you please, up to a maximum of five minutes
per diem
.’

‘Could anyone, I least of all, resist so handsome an offer?’ said Rudi. ‘Expect me on the first day of the New Year.’

‘Better make that the second,’ said his employer-to-be, ‘the first is here a public holiday, and I would be breaking the law if I had you to work that day.’

‘Unless you paid me time and a half,’ said Rudi.

‘Just so,’ said his cicerone. ‘So I will see you on the second, at nine a.m. sharp.’