Wearing Paper Dresses

by Anne Brinsden

  And there was Elise.

  Bill had to come in from the barrel and help Elise onto the stage. On account of the stage fright. Stage fright is enterprising. It had managed to find its long and dusty way from the city right to that steadfast town hall. And stage fright was never to be laughed at. It would sneak up on you and ruin you in a moment whenever it pleased, wherever it struck. Elise was well familiar with stage fright. ‘You better get in here quick, Bill,’ the concert organisers rushed out to warn him. Because they could see what that stage fright was up to. It had rushed out of the curtains and nearly toppled Elise off the platform. Bill dumped his creamy glass of beer and raced to help her to the piano. He helped arrange her sheet music. He patted her hand. ‘Keep your chin up, girl,’ he whispered and left her there.

  Elise looked in terror at the seething waiting mass of audience in that little town hall. No one there knew it except Elise, but that stage fright had beaten Bill. It had already bound Elise and gagged her. An aeon passed while she stared out in her mute terror at the expectant upturned faces. Until she heard someone yell at her from the audience . . .

  ‘Open your flamin’ lungs, girl!’ the voice yelled. ‘Out of the starting gates at full gallop. That’s how you win a bloody horse race!’ It was Pa. And it was enough. The stage fright couldn’t hold the gag in against that sort of fair dinkum Mallee truth. It ran off. And Elise started to sing.

  Elise wasn’t aware of her hands moving over the piano keys. She just sang. Wouldn’t it be loverly? But it was so much more than lovely. That voice coming out of her pounded at the ears of all and sundry; and pulled at the hearts of all and sundry. That voice was magic. Elise sang until the town hall groaned with the loveliness and thought it might have to cave in under the weight of the beauty. Elise sang. And the Mallee sand and the Mallee sky listened and acknowledged this talent – strange and alien to it, but it bent its knee at talent nonetheless. Those stars, enduring in their eternal desert landscape scrutiny, spangled – just for Elise. Elise sang. And she left those people believing in magic. She left them all in no doubt about it.

  The town hall was silent and still when Elise finished. The only sounds were the sounds of Elise. Elise shuffling her sheet music together. Elise scraping her chair back from the piano. Elise’s high heels clicking across the floorboards to centre stage to bow to the silence and stillness.

  Marjorie was terror struck at the still and the silence. Too terror struck even to contemplate the terror on Ruby’s or Bill’s faces. Her eyes were stuck to the fragile face of her mother as Elise stood – all alone – surrounded by terrible, silent stillness.

  Then sweet relief like the first drops of rain on a tin roof as the town hall exploded in a firework of untoward Mallee approval. Elise stood – timid and mute and incredulous – as every man, woman and child clapped and shouted and called and whistled (if they were a man). Boots and shoes rumbled on the floor. If that Mallee town had known there was such a thing, they would have called for an encore. It went on and on.

  It was better even than the crepe paper dress night.

  The applause finally wore itself out and Elise bowed again, in disbelief, and left the stage. Because the concert organisers had to allocate the prize winners. Which, being a fundraising concert, went like this: you took as much spare change as you could afford to the concert and you put all your money on the person you wanted to win. The person with the most money won.

  Marjorie looked around at the audience and willed them to give money to Elise. She saw Jesse. He was late and was now standing all alone at the back of the hall and looking more dishevelled than usual. Marjorie didn’t dare hope he would put his money on Elise. She saw Bill handing Ruby coins and saw Pa getting out his coin wallet.

  But the truth was Marjorie’s family was not one of the richest families – it was one of the poorest. They didn’t have much to spare but even so – because of the secret family business of Elise, and more so because Elise was just plain good – they had all scraped together what they could. But it wasn’t enough. The first prize went to a honky tonk player, the second prize to a fiddle player, the third prize to a poetry recital and somewhere down the long line of coins counted, Elise was given an honourable mention.

  Elise’s prize, in accordance with the latest home decorating fashion for the discerning Mallee farmer’s wife, was a bunch of plastic flowers. It was a huge bunch. Large and lusty plastic flowers boldly decorated in numerous colours and bobbing pertly on their plastic wire stems with their sensible plastic leaves in tow. Elise nodded graciously as the organiser reminded the audience of Elise’s talents. The organiser handed Elise the bunch. And spoke of the many virtues of the modern plastic flower in a semi-desert environment – they don’t need to be watered, they won’t ever wilt, they only need to be dusted.

  There was a bit of talk on the trip home.

  ‘You were a star, Elise,’ said Bill.

  ‘I didn’t win.’

  ‘You won as far as I am concerned. We just didn’t have enough money.’

  ‘Shirlene Doherty was right,’ said Elise.

  ‘What?’ said Bill.

  Elise said nothing.

  ‘It’s not like the Princess Theatre, I know, but you were marvellous.’ He glanced across at Elise.

  Elise said nothing. Marjorie thought that maybe the job of holding both the sheet music and the huge bunch of plastic flowers was taking up all her mother’s energy.

  But it wasn’t that.

  ‘There is only one reason I didn’t win. I didn’t win because I am not good enough. Shirlene Doherty told me that,’ said Elise.

  Ruby and Marjorie looked at each other and said nothing.

  Pa didn’t say anything. And neither did Bill.

  Bill went into town early the next morning to get the mail and papers. But mostly to check out the conditions. It is what you do after a good rain. You drive around slower than you could walk, one hand on the wheel, head hanging out of the ute door, and look at the ground to see how it has turned out after all that rain. So Bill was in town to see how it had all sunk in the morning after the concert.

  The men were gathered at the post office. They were relaxed. Old felt work hats pushed off the forehead onto the back of the head. Cigarettes hanging languidly off the corner of the bottom lip. A group of men in the red dirt near the cement water trough. Squatting in a circle, elbows on one knee.

  ‘Bill,’ they said as he joined the circle. Slight nod from each one.

  ‘Gidday,’ said Bill. Nodding back.

  ‘Reckon it’ll get to a hundred?’ The farmers all turned their faces upwards. They squinted and examined the peerless blue sky. Maybe they could see a thermometer up there.

  Someone shrugged. ‘Might. Might not.’

  ‘Yeah,’ they agreed.

  ‘How’re those Merinos going?’

  ‘Yeah. Not bad.’

  Everyone nodded in encouragement.

  ‘How’s that arm of yours?’

  ‘This one?’ asked a farmer, flexing a sore shoulder.

  ‘Yeah. That one.’

  ‘Could be better. The wife says I should go to the doctor, but what’s he gunna do?’

  ‘Yeah.’ They nodded again to support the immutable right of a Mallee farmer to resist.

  And then down to business:

  ‘Elise alright after last night?’

  ‘Right as rain,’ said Bill, tensing just a bit.

  ‘Elise is something special. The wife says she has yet to see anything better on a stage. Or even the wireless.’

  ‘Yeah,’ they agreed, and confirmed their agreement by looking at Bill and nodding.

  ‘We’re lucky to have her. And that’s that.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s for sure,’ they said.

  ‘If there’s anything we can do, Bill . . . Anytime . . . Sometimes a bloke needs a few mates t
o help around the farm. Every now and again. When you might need to be closer to the home paddick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ they all agreed, and Bill stared around the circle.

  ‘Nuthin’ much. A bit of fencing. Help with the sheep. That sort of thing . . .’

  Shrugs and nods rippled around the circle. ‘Yeah,’ they said. And looked at the sky, or the dirt. Or retrieved the smoke from their bottom lip and looked at it in surprise. Like they had just noticed it had gone out.

  And so Elise got a foothold on the Mallee. And the Mallee finally had to admit that Elise was more than a bit like it. Because a Mallee tree is hidden. The trunk lives below the dirt – twisted and gnarled and living a precarious life. It is unpredictable and obscured by the sand above. It does not include anything about nerves: because tree trunks do not have nerves, do they? But the menfolk had made up their minds: nerves were never to be spoken about to anyone who was not a local. And nerves were never to be spoken about to Bill or Pa.

  But nerves were talked about. That is for sure. By those locals who were brazen and careless with decisions of the menfolk, and were without manners. ‘She’s far too nervy for my liking, that one,’ said Shirlene Doherty. ‘She’s not suitable. She can’t even play the piano by ear.’ And she would sniff. Because maybe there is a particular smell that hangs around bad nerves.

  But the menfolk were not backing down. ‘All women are nervy,’ they said. And that was that. Those farmers applied the stump-jump plough principle and decided to ignore Elise’s bad nerves. No sense aggravating them when they were safely under the sand.

  Talk got back to Marjorie and Ruby. Which was that everything about Elise’s performance was better than what you see in a variety performance on the stage in the city. Marjorie and Ruby had to take their word on that, on account of not ever having seen a city variety concert.

  Pa celebrated the concert success immediately. He was not one to wait for any bloody ignorant comment from any bloody stupid nincompoops to make up his mind. He made his own mind up during the night. And rose the next morning with a grin across his stubbled face and a shout in his lungs.

  ‘Where’s my flamin’ breakfast?’ he roared as he stomped in triumph down the hallway. ‘Where’s my flamin’ eggs and where’s a man’s bloody cup of tea?’ he roared as he charged through the kitchen door. And pulled up short. Because there it all was – eggs, toast (with dripping), and a cup of strong black tea. Pa looked suspiciously at the breakfast as he lowered himself into his chair. By the time he had finished lowering, though, he had made a decision.

  ‘Sit down, girl,’ Pa said, waving his dripping-clad knife at Elise’s chair. ‘I’ve got a few things to say. And I am gunna bloody well say ’em. And you keep your mouth shut, you hear?’ he added, jabbing the knife in Marjorie’s direction.

  Elise sat down and looked at Pa.

  ‘You are a remarkably queer girl, Elise,’ said Pa, getting straight to the point. ‘You’re not fit for the Mallee. You with your queer ways and hoity-toity habits. This Mallee’s gunna bloody kill ya. You mark my words.’ Pa proceeded to jam egg and dripping-laden toast into his bristly mouth. ‘But you did alright last night. You tore out of the starting gates, raced down that straight and won by a couple of bloody lengths. I couldn’t have done it better meself.’ Pa banged his hand on the table for emphasis.

  Marjorie’s eyes squeezed into their corners to get a look at Elise while still trying to keep a good look at Pa. Elise said nothing.

  ‘You showed ’em what we’re made of, don’t you worry about that,’ said Pa as he tipped hot black tea into his saucer. ‘You’re still a bloody useless non-Catholic. But you’re family.’ Pa drank the tea. He nodded at Elise and shoved his chair back from the table. ‘Well, can’t be like you womenfolk – lying around the house all day with nothing to do.’ And Pa, pleased with himself and the family, stomped out the back door.

  *

  Things were lovely for a while. Everyone was happy. Elise, despite not being good enough, got out her pencils and paper. And Elise and Ruby and Marjorie talked about all manner of things while Elise did wonderful things with charcoal and paint.

  But Elise didn’t know what to do with the plastic flowers. She didn’t understand them. She put them in a vase. She stared at them and questioned their place in the world and moved them all around the house. A constant movement of gleeful colourful plastic, bobbing. Elise put them in the kitchen. In the hallway. In the lounge room. She dusted them and didn’t water them and put her ear close to their plasticky petals and tried to hear what they were saying. She put them on the front verandah and they stayed there for weeks, jauntily greeting all those entering the house, before Elise brought them back into the kitchen and put her ear again to their flashy plastic. She listened. She went so far as to take off the tea cosy hat so she could press her ear closer to the plastic messages. It was a simple enough message when she finally heard it.

  You were not the winner, the petals whispered from the midst of their plasticky plume.

  ‘I know that,’ said Elise. ‘We didn’t have enough money.’

  Is that really why you didn’t win? sighed the mournful bunch of gaudiness, their natural synthetic ebullience worn weary after all these weeks by Elise’s stubborn refusal. They stared at her dolefully.

  So Elise marched the plastic flowers out to the back porch, where they sat in the dust and flies. And Elise went back to playing piano and practising arias.

  She moved them out to the washhouse, where they had to suffer the indignity of being overcome with steam whenever Elise stoked up the copper to boil the sheets.

  But Elise couldn’t ignore them forever. One morning, forever came to an end. The girls had driven off to catch the bus. Pa had left to check the fences. Bill was ploughing way over in Morrisons.

  That morning Elise’s strings started to twang. She walked out to the washhouse. She retrieved the bunch of reproachful plastic flowers and brought them back inside. Elise cleaned them off – deliberately and carefully – with the tea cosy hat and placed them on the washing-up bench. Where she could ignore them no longer. Elise sighed. She put her head in her hands and cried. Long, sad crying. Crying that cried and cried until it washed out the last stubborn remnants of refusal. Into her kind tea cosy hat. As Elise accepted the pert plastic flowers’ truth. Elise did not win because she was not good enough.

  *

  Pa was back home first. He found Elise in the kitchen peeling potatoes and chopping cabbage. A fine and sensible task for a woman. He thumped the empty thermos on the table and tramped off to the lounge room to listen to the wireless.

  Ruby and Marjorie were home next. The house heard the ute coming from way back near the Smiths paddock sandhill. It knew something was up, so it got ready.

  The girls had a routine. Talk was cheap. They knew that. They also knew talk was very cheap where high stringing was concerned. So all talk these days between Ruby and Marjorie was short.

  ‘What are we having for tea tonight?’ asked Marjorie as she threw her schoolbag in the back of the ute and climbed into the driver’s side.

  ‘It’s Tuesday. It’s chops.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I forgot.’

  ‘It amazes me how you can so conveniently forget things.’

  ‘You have to do the vegies tonight,’ said Marjorie. She backed this up with a start of the engine, a jerk into first gear and a screech of the tyres as she forced the ute to turn around and go home.

  ‘It’s your job.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve got too much homework.’

  ‘Too bad. That’s your problem,’ said Ruby, staring out her side window.

  Marjorie shrugged. It was an ambit claim. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said.

  Ruby glanced across at her sister forcing the ute up the resistant sandhill.

  Marjorie wrenched the column shift into third gear, and the ute roared down the other s
ide. ‘Who’s feeding the chooks and collecting the eggs?’ she asked.

  ‘Me,’ said Ruby.

  ‘I’m not feeding those damn mongrel dogs.’

  Ruby looked straight ahead. She knew Marjorie was scared of the dogs. ‘I’ll feed the dogs when I do the chooks,’ she said.

  Marjorie nodded her thanks at the windscreen and threw the ute into a corner slide to line it up for the run to the farm gate. Ruby watched the squall of dust and dirt and stones escaping the tyres. ‘You’re going to cop it when Dad sees those skid marks.’

  ‘Dad can bugger off,’ said Marjorie as she reined in the ute just short of the gate.

  ‘And I’m setting the table,’ she called from the driver’s-side window as Ruby dragged the wire gate with its tree branch post through its arc.

  Ruby shrugged and smiled. She didn’t care. Marjorie always liked to set the table.

  Ordinary talk always ended at the gate. By the time the gate opener and closer got back into the ute for the run to the house, the talk turned to tuning. ‘Anybody say anything at school?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Marjorie. ‘No, wait. There was something. One of the kids asked how the plastic flowers were going.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said they are as unalive as when we first got them, so clear off.’

  ‘What did they do?’

  ‘They cleared off,’ said Marjorie, grinning. ‘Anybody say anything to you?’

  ‘No,’ said Ruby, chewing her lip. ‘But you can’t help thinking they were saying something just before you got there.’ She looked across at Marjorie and Marjorie nodded. There was no need to say anything to that. They were at the house now and the house was waiting for them. Marjorie had parked the ute in the niggardly shade of a Mallee tree, ready for tomorrow’s journey.

  ‘Do you reckon the tea cosy will ever get its proper job back?’

  Ruby sighed the sigh of a person who has shouldered fully loaded wheat bags for too long and without any thanks from anyone. ‘I don’t know.’