Wearing Paper Dresses

by Anne Brinsden

  So it was Marjorie’s turn now, all these years later, to stand there in the quieting heat of a Mallee summer twilight. To stand there with Bill at the shearing shed yards. To lean her elbows beside his on the rough chopped rails. To stare with him at the gruff loveliness of a Mallee farm preparing itself for a well-earned night’s rest after defeating a day sent to oppress.

  ‘We’ve done our level best,’ said Bill to the retreating swelter in front of him.

  ‘I know,’ said Marjorie.

  They stared at the Mallee trees on the fence line in the distant gathering gloom.

  ‘I’m fretting. I have to admit it, Marjorie. Fretting from daylight to dark that your mother is forgetting to take those tablets,’ said Bill.

  ‘It won’t be forgetting, Dad,’ said Marjorie. And Marjorie couldn’t help but tally up all the other forsaken tablets lying about in the past, and the fire that swallowed them instead. Such tiny things, such giant penalties. ‘So much glitter. I get frightened when there is so much glitter around,’ she said. Her voice was soft in the dusk.

  Bill nodded.

  ‘People roundabout have pulled together, ya know. The womenfolk have been doing what they can for your mother since she came back home this time. Since Ruby. Everybody hereabouts appreciates why you’ve been needing to stay in the city with Aunty Agnes. Kathleen . . . Thelma . . . Mrs Cameron . . . even that Shirlene. But it’s a shame it had to take what happened here for them to see how it can be for someone like your mother.’

  Bill stopped. You might have thought he had finished. But this was a hard conversation and he was hoping for some help from the darkening furrows – which all ignored him. So he had to push on alone. ‘It’s not the same without you here, Marjorie. I’ll admit that,’ he said. ‘It’s not the same without your sister.’ Bill’s eyes were on the paddock in front of him. They were blinking fast and hard like Bill wanted to really make sure that paddock understood all this before it disappeared into the dark of the night. His voice dropped then to a sound as quiet as the mopoke. ‘I was thinking your mother had finally got the better of this place. But I can’t help thinking the tablets just aren’t doing their job lately,’ he said.

  Marjorie nodded.

  ‘Your mother needs this concert, Marjorie.’

  ‘I can see that. I wish she didn’t, though,’ said Marjorie.

  ‘By crikey, everybody hereabouts needs it too,’ said Bill. ‘Your mother has given everybody a bit of optimism with this concert of hers. There’s folks here that see this concert as a means of holding out for one more season. A lot of folks round here seem to be pinning their hopes on your mother, you know.’

  Marjorie’s head stared straight ahead.

  ‘And all the locals are behind you too, Marjorie. There’s no point dragging it all out again, but everybody knows what’s what. Your sister wouldn’t want you brooding over things like this. You have got to put it behind you, girl.’ Bill’s head went up and down, up and down, up and down.

  Marjorie’s head didn’t move.

  ‘I’m counting on you. You know that. It’ll only be for a few weeks, but if you can keep getting those tablets into her and help her through this concert, she will be back on an even keel and then all this will be over. You can go back to the city then. When she’s calmed down. Some of us are a bit worried this concert business is turning out to be too much of a weight for your mother. If you can just help her like you did last time at the mental hospital. You know what I mean. She’s a thoroughbred, your mother. She’s not like you. She’s not built for heavy loads like this – all that hope pinned on her. Not in this heat.’

  Marjorie’s eyes moved themselves from considering the distant scrub. They turned to study her father. How? she wanted to ask her father. I don’t really know how I helped my mother last time. So how can I help her this time? ‘What is she doing with all that paper? What is she planning on doing with all those packets of crepe paper piled up everywhere in the kitchen?’ she asked.

  *

  Bill hung about the kitchen the next morning. He came in after milking the cow and put the milk bucket on the bench. But instead of heading out the back door again, he sat down at the table. Next to Pa. And opposite Marjorie.

  Elise was in her seat next to the kitchen stove. Near the old coffee percolator. Jauntily defying the heat of the stove and the prospect of a replication of yesterday’s over one hundred and ten degrees in the shade.

  ‘Cup of tea, Dad?’ asked Marjorie.

  Pa’s fingers were moving up and down on the table. Marjorie looked at his spindly face with its patches of sorrow sewn in behind the stubble. Once his fingers would have been drumming.

  ‘Cup of coffee, Mum?’ she asked.

  Pa’s fingers reached for his pipe. He pushed tobacco into the bowl.

  Nerves jangling and clanging all around the table were adding to the already heated day. But Elise didn’t notice. She wasn’t jangling.

  ‘I’ve done my level best with your mother over these past weeks – got her cups of tea – even made sure there was plenty of milk and always one of those useless saucers of hers – too small for any bloody good – underneath,’ muttered Pa between puffs of pipe lighting. ‘But caring for the likes of your mother is no job for a man. A man’s not built to be good at this sort of thing.’ His teeth clamped down on the pipe. His eyes blinked hard.

  Elise smiled at the stove.

  Marjorie turned to her. ‘Your concert is going well then, Mother?’ asked Marjorie.

  Elise smiled.

  Pa jiggled.

  Bill stood.

  ‘Well, you had better start taking those tablets again, Mum, if you want it to stay that way,’ Marjorie said.

  It was the kind of bald, no-nonsense statement that sat well in a Mallee environment. Bill and Pa each sucked in a breath, though. Because pared-back, skun-rabbit talk was never what Elise appreciated and Marjorie should have remembered that. Marjorie’s sentence hung there waiting for Elise, but Elise did not take offence. She seemed unperturbed by it. She knew the reasons for things being as they were. ‘The tablets have gone stale from the heat. I am sure of it. They are rancid. They have weevils in them now. So I won’t be taking them anymore. Besides, I feel so happy and full of beans lately. I don’t need those tablets,’ Elise said. Her smile brightened. She stood up.

  But Marjorie was too quick for her mother this time. She lurched – just like she had done years ago – pitching herself towards that stove, and this time Marjorie got there first, and this time she didn’t stumble. ‘You don’t want to have to go back to the mental hospital though, do you, Mum?’ Marjorie said as her arms reached for the mantelpiece, as she snatched the hiding tablets.

  Elise gaped at her daughter. Dismay replaced the smile. But not for long. It was quickly shoved aside by bright glittery confidence. ‘I am well able to take care of myself and to know when, and if, I need to be taking any tablets!’ said Elise. ‘And you would do well to remember who you are, Marjorie. We do not interrogate people about their private medical matters. And we do not mention mental hospitals in polite company. For pity’s sake!’ she said. She folded her arms and her lovely grey eyes were no longer soft. Glitter swirled, cavalier.

  Marjorie shoved the tablets in the crook of her arm. She turned from her mother and surveyed the room. ‘What is all this paper doing in the kitchen?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a bloody mess is what it is,’ said Pa. ‘It got the better of me last week and I tried to clean it up. A kitchen’s no place for all this,’ he said, his arm sweeping. ‘But I caused such a ruckus with your mother that I had to bring it all back again.’

  ‘Unformed costumes,’ said Elise. She ignored Pa as she grabbed Marjorie by the arm. ‘That is what all this lying about paper is. Because they will not come forth and be made. I am struggling with them. They threaten me and will ruin the recital. All that indolent paper
lounging around in the corners like it has nothing better to do. It is overwhelming.’

  ‘You are making the costumes out of paper?’

  ‘Yes. Crepe paper. Do you remember Ruby’s dress?’

  Do I remember Ruby’s dress? How could I ever forget that dress? How could I forget one single thing about Ruby? thought Marjorie. She wanted to say, No! She nodded instead. She looked at all the piles of crinkly coloured paper waiting in the corners.

  ‘It is not actually the paper’s fault,’ said Elise, waving distractedly at it. ‘The real reason is that I just don’t have the time for so many costumes. There are so many good people singing who actually don’t know how to and I have to show them. And you know that an opera must be magnificent in every way. It must have grace and beauty in style as well as sound.’

  Pa muttered quietly to himself. Elise peered at him. ‘And Bill’s father sitting over there is no help. He can’t sew,’ said Elise.

  But paper had always been waiting in the wings, ready for the rescue of many, even if Elise’s lack of time wouldn’t permit. And it did its job once more in that farmhouse kitchen. It had already whispered to Marjorie, from its various dusty kitchen corners, of the possibilities of medication and magic to aid nerves in need, once again, of a tuning fork. And Marjorie had taken seriously the anxious whispery papery talk leaking steadily towards her out of the shadows like water escaping through the red dirt of a broken channel bank, and she had then talked about it to her father the night before. ‘I can help you, I think, Mother,’ said Marjorie carefully. ‘If you will let me. I will sew all the costumes for you – if you will take all the tablets for me.’

  Bill and Pa’s air was stuck in their chests as they waited.

  ‘It is a treadle sewing machine. You will sew backwards. You will not make costumes. You will unmake them with all your backwards treadling,’ said Elise, shaking her head, dislodging fragments of glitter. ‘I might make many wonderful papery costumes – sewing and sewing into the dark of the night. But time has deserted me. There is not enough of it left now. I could sew and sew, but I still wouldn’t get them all done in time. I will be found wanting. I will not be good enough. I could take all the medications in the world prescribed by that insane asylum that you so rudely speak of, Marjorie, but it is not magic, you know.’

  ‘I have learnt,’ said Marjorie. ‘I know how to treadle frontwards. And I also know how to treadle backwards, if needs be.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Elise.

  ‘Aunty Agnes showed me.’

  Elise stopped. She was astonished. She thought about her daughter’s declaration. And the glitter paused – unsettled, uncertain. ‘I could try taking the tablets then. If you do not inadvertently sew backwards,’ Elise said, contemplating the prospect.

  ‘That’s the way, love,’ urged Bill. ‘Go on. Marjorie’s good at it. Aunty Agnes told me. She makes all her own city clothes now.’

  ‘Good,’ said Marjorie. ‘You and I have an understanding then.’ She nodded once at her mother before raising her hand and pointing her finger. ‘But if you ever stop taking the tablets, I promise you I will destroy all the costumes I have made.’ Her pointed finger moved in warning. ‘I will screw them up – the whole lot – and burn them, every single one of them.’

  Elise’s eyes were wide as they followed Marjorie’s pointing finger. Elise considered this a more than fair bargain. Because she believed Marjorie. And she well understood about the circumstances and reasons for things being burnt. And she also understood lofty consequences where concerts were concerned.

  Pa took his pipe out of his mouth. ‘Then that settles it, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘Why are we all just sitting around flapping our gums? There’s work to be done. Take a bloody tablet, Elise, and let’s get on with this concert you’re doing.’

  Pa and Bill and Marjorie watched while Elise swallowed a tablet. ‘Elise, love,’ Bill then said, his voice gentle, ‘you make sure you keep taking that medicine. Because if you don’t, I reckon Marjorie intends doing something about it.’

  Marjorie’s arms had folded themselves again. ‘I promise you I do so intend,’ she said. ‘I will get Aunty Agnes to call the mental hospital the moment you stop taking the tablets and I’ll see about taking you back there myself if I have to.’ No more words came out of her mouth. They didn’t need to.

  ‘Too right about that, Bill,’ said Pa. ‘And I’ll give the girl a hand.’ Pa’s chin was stubbly and wobbly – keeping company with the words wobbling out of his mouth.

  ‘And you, girl,’ Bill said, turning to Marjorie, ‘I hope you really can sew.’ Bill’s face tottered a bit under the unfamiliar, uneven weight of a grin – a grin only big enough to fit one side of his mouth, but it was there: the first grin for many a day. Then Pa and Bill and more than a decent measure of hope stood up and walked together out the back door and into the sagging heat.

  *

  Elise marvelled at her daughter. Marjorie sat in that house, and Marjorie and her mother’s Singer sewing machine treadled together into the late hours of the days and the early hours of the nights. And the prowling heat and the pervading glitter could do what they liked, but they were no match for that old Singer sewing machine with its confidently treadling Marjorie. And just like Elise had done all those years ago, Marjorie took in her arms those piles of rustling crepe paper packets and created magic. It was a garden that she created. But Marjorie’s garden was not a plastic garden full of glee and gloat. It was a whimsy, a soft whispery papery garden. It was a chimera. Crepe paper costumes blossomed everywhere in that kitchen. They flourished there, clustered around the Singer Sewing Machine in their myriad colours, in their flounces and folds, their crimps and their pleats. They jostled and rustled – every colour under the sun that had been lucky enough to be put into crepe paper.

  Elise was bolstered by all that paper magic steadily spreading through her kitchen. She swallowed her tablets – day by day, costume by costume, rehearsal by rehearsal. And her courage grew. So even though she would still, at odd times of the day or night, find herself in a struggle against her enduring secret lack of grace, she was able to swallow again and again and again. And she was able then to rise up and slap and kick and clout and sweep nearly all of those noiseless murmurings of her secret failings out the back door, where they withered and frizzled in the heat of the drought.

  And Marjorie and her father and Pa watched as the glitter dwindled from the air around Elise. They watched as that glitter shifted and shuffled and settled instead on those lovely crepe paper costumes clustering and bunching in all corners of the kitchen. Until Elise was calm and sure from all those swallowed tablets, and the costumes were fine and magical with all that glitter. And it was time for all that paper splendour to be taken to the town hall for the concert.

  Jesse saw them first. Jesse was standing in the middle of the stage. He was stewing. But not from the heat. His two-toned eyes were wary. They couldn’t make up their mind whether to survey the pile of papery costumes now transported and clustered and whispering to themselves behind the stage curtains in the dusty little hall, or to glue themselves onto Marjorie. Because this was the first time his eyes had seen Marjorie since their time in the backyard at Aunty Agnes’s place. ‘What’s all this then, Marjorie?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s all this then, Jesse?’ said Marjorie. And her face was as wary as Jesse’s eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You. Back here in this place. Sneaking around and taking singing lessons from my mother and planning on singing in an opera.’

  ‘I told you I might lend a hand. I’m not bloody sneaking.’

  ‘And I told you that you couldn’t sing.’

  ‘And I asked you, if I remember rightly, how would you know?’

  Marjorie stared at those lovely undecided eyes and they stared right back. ‘When can I see you, Marjorie?’ Jesse asked.

  �
��No time for that. You have to make sure you have that singing voice all properly tuned up.’

  ‘I can spare some time; I don’t have to be practising all day.’

  ‘Well I can’t. I have no time to spare. I am very busy making things. These are all the things I’ve been busy making,’ she said, waving her arm at the costumes while her eyes stayed where they were. ‘These are the costumes for the opera.’

  Jesse looked at them. ‘They’re all women’s dresses. Where are the men’s costumes?’

  Marjorie smiled a smile of sweet and subtle reprisal. ‘Everybody in the opera will be wearing a dress. Women and men. The play requires it. There’s one there for you. I made it myself.’

  Jesse’s eyes moved from one end of the papery cluster to the other. He looked worried. ‘They’re all made out of paper. Like that one Ruby had.’

  ‘Yes, they are. Every one of them.’

  ‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Ruby will be thinking it is a very good idea, Jesse.’

  ‘What about Elise? Does she think it is a good idea?’

  ‘It was her idea.’

  ‘Alright then.’ Jesse nodded slowly to himself. ‘So. What we have here then is everybody wearing a dress. A dress made out of paper. The men too.’ His slowly nodding head was dubious. His eyes couldn’t make up their mind either.

  Chapter 19

  Everybody in that little Mallee town who was willing to give it a go had been practising for this concert for months by now. They were like a country league footy team in their fervent training with the sniff in the wind of a grand final opportunity. Except they were training for their voices to be singing an opera not their legs to be kicking a footy. They had been drawn together from farms in every direction and they were dogged now in their determination to have a collective go at this bizarre city-singing grand final. Even Jesse – that last-quarter, late-season ring-in – was training non-stop. It was Turandot. Nobody knew what inspired Elise to choose Turandot. Hardly any of the locals thereabouts had ever even heard of Turandot. They had shaken their heads. Not just at the grand and peculiar notion of an opera daring to be sung in their little old town hall, but at the much greater peculiarity that had led to them putting their hand up to actually do the concert. How had Elise managed to persuade that motley crowd of ordinary Mallee folk struggling to do their best in the middle of a drought to stand on a dusty stage and sing an entire opera in the middle of a summer that seemed like it was never going to end? A summer that had discourteously refused to provide any one of them with even a half-decent harvest.