The Dressmaker

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘The gowns were wonderful.’ She told herself she couldn’t expect anything from this town. ‘It was a wedding.’

  ‘Shame.’

  • • •

  Gertrude stepped out of her wedding gown and hung it on a coathanger. She caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror – an unremarkable brunette with quiver-thighs and unbeautiful breasts. She let the tea-coloured silk negligee slide over her chilly nipples and looked in the mirror again.

  ‘I am Mrs William Beaumont of Windswept Crest,’ she said.

  William was nonchalantly reading a book in bed, his striped flannel pyjamas unbuttoned down his chest. She slid in next to her husband and he said, ‘Well,’ then rolled over to switch off the light. She took a piece of towelling from her feminine sponge bag and manoeuvred it beneath her buttocks.

  William found her in the dark. They embraced, kissed. His body felt hard yet flannel-soft. She felt spongy and slippery.

  William lay on top of Gertrude and she opened her legs. Something warm and hard poked out from his pyjamas and nudged about her inner thighs. He started humping and puffing in her ear, so she shifted around under him until his penis found a damp patch in her pubic hair and he pushed.

  He lay beside her. ‘Did I hurt you, dear?’

  ‘A little,’ she said. It wasn’t like it was described in Married Life at all. The discomfort was only momentary and localised, a rude and uncomfortable sensation. Once, when she was young, she’d shoved her hand down a hollow log for a dare. Her fingers got covered in something warm, runny-wet, sticky, prickly and gooey; broken eggs. A bird’s nest in the log. That sensation had made her feel strangely affronted too.

  ‘Well,’ said William and kissed her cheek. He felt it had been quite satisfying and all had gone well. He’d approached his prone bride as he’d approached the one small chocolate egg he received after eleven o’clock church each Easter Sunday. He’d peel the tin foil back gently exposing a small area of chocolate. Then he’d break off one section to suck, savouring it. But William was always overcome and would shove the entire egg into his mouth quickly, gorging himself, and be left both satisfied, and strangely not.

  ‘Are you happy?’ asked William.

  His wife replied, ‘I’m happy now.’ William found her hand and held it.

  Gertrude kept the small towel in place beneath her bottom for the rest of the night. In the morning she inspected the red and flaky smears closely, sniffed them then wrapped the towelling in brown paper and put it aside to drop in the bin at a discreet moment. When she stepped under the shower she was humming. The new Mrs Beaumont refused the offer of a breakfast tray in bed and arrived at the table immaculately groomed and beaming. Elsbeth and Mona found something serious to look at in their eggs and William splashed a newspaper about in front of him, but Gertrude was not blushing.

  ‘Good morning all,’ she said.

  ‘Good morning,’ they chorused.

  There followed an awkward silence.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Mona, ‘one person at each side of the table now.’

  ‘When will harvest be over?’ asked Gertrude.

  ‘As I said, dear, it depends on the weather.’ He looked to his mother for support. Elsbeth was staring out the window.

  ‘Can’t you get a man to oversee it?’

  ‘Well, dear, there’s Edward McSwiney but I –’

  ‘Oh William, that wretched man again!’ Elsbeth banged her teacup in its saucer and crossed her arms.

  Gertrude smiled sweetly. ‘I really don’t mind so much about our honeymoon William, really I don’t, it’s just … an urgent trip to Melbourne is necessary. I need to purchase some new materials for curtains in our room –’

  ‘They were perfectly adequate for me,’ said Elsbeth.

  ‘Anyone for more tea?’ said Mona turning the pot.

  ‘Stop turning the pot – you’ll wear a ring in the table,’ snapped Elsbeth.

  ‘New linen is needed and I need a few things to complete my trousseau, to start my new life properly.’ Gertrude bit into her toast and poured salt onto the plate beside her egg. Elsbeth sent William a filthy squint-eye look and William sunk behind his newspaper again.

  Mrs William Beaumont continued, ‘There’s Dad’s account at Myers and he gave me a blank cheque.’

  William turned crimson. The colour completely drained from Elsbeth’s face and Mona cried, ‘Oh, lets go! It’s been years since we’ve been shopping!’

  Gertrude frowned at the tarnished teaspoon, then whipped the top off her soft-boiled egg.

  14

  Tilly sat in the shade of the thickening wisteria watching a long freight train move slowly away from the silo and crawl around to the south, disappearing behind The Hill. It rumbled away to the west, into a watery horizon. It was summer again, hot, that time of the year when Christmas and shearing season have come and gone, and the sun has ripened the crops. The sound of rolling steel, bumping, metal on metal, carries over Dungatar from the railway lines, as giant engines arrive to shunt grain trucks together beside the square, corrugated silo.

  When the engines arrive children come to watch and play at the silo. Trains roll up pulling empty trucks to be filled with wheat, while others come from Winyerp and are already filled with sorghum. Winyerp sits smugly to the north of Dungatar in the middle of an undulating brown blanket of acres and acres of sorghum. The farms around Dungatar are golden seas of wheat, which are stripped, the header spewing the grain into semitrailers. The semis transport the grain and pour it into the silo. When the mountains of wheat are dry, a huge auger is plunged into their hearts and grain is spiralled up, then spilled onto a conveyor belt which takes it to the loading dock where it’s poured into an empty rail truck, filling it to the top with the yellow grain. In the heat of the day, suffocating wheat dust clouds the silo. The grain trucks are left standing close by, waiting, until the engines roll into place and they are coupled and herded and attached to the end of the line of sorghum-filled trucks. Eventually the engines tow them away, brimming with dusty gold and brown seed, away from the vast grain belt where the sun shines most of the year and rain is too often scarce. The engines will stop again and again at silos and sidings to take on fuel or more grain trucks, dragging them to a distant port. Passengers in cars stopped at railway crossings count up to fifty trucks rumbling past.

  The wheat will become flour or perhaps it will sail to overseas lands. The famous Winyerp sorghum will become stock fodder.

  The town will be quiet again and the children will go back to the creek to play. The adults will wait for football season. The cycle was familiar to Tilly, a map.

  Molly inched out from the kitchen and poked Tilly with her walking stick. ‘What are you staring at?’

  ‘Life,’ said Tilly and picked up her cane basket. ‘I’ll be back soon.’ She headed down The Hill.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ called Molly. ‘I’d rather my possum came back.’

  Marigold Pettyman and Beula Harridene stopped talking to watch her approach. ‘Think you can sew, do you?’ sneered Beula.

  ‘You copied those dresses from a Women’s Weekly I’m told,’ said Marigold, as though it were a clever thing. ‘You can do mending then?’

  Tilly looked at the inglorious women. ‘I can,’ she said flatly. She marched back up The Hill with her groceries, clenched fists and gritted teeth. She found Lois Pickett sitting on the step clutching a plump, crumpled paper bag. ‘You’ve got a good view from up here,’ she said, ‘and a nice garden coming along.’

  Tilly moved past her onto the veranda. Lois stood up, ‘I heard you could sew, you made your dress you wore to the races and Muriel says you didn’t even use a pattern for Gert’s weddin’ dress, just a dummy.’

  ‘Come in,’ said Tilly pleasantly.

  Lois upended the paper bag
and spread an ancient musty frock, stiff and greasy, across the kitchen table and pointed at the decayed armpits. ‘Gone under here, see.’ Tilly looked pained, shook her head and opened her mouth to speak but just then Purl Bundle called YOOHOO from the veranda and clicked straight through the door in her high-heeled scuffs and red pedal-pushers, all bright and blonde and barmaidy. She thrust several yards of satin and lace at Tilly and said, ‘I’ll have a line of night attire and lingerie that’ll put some spring back into the old mattress, thanks.’

  Tilly nodded. ‘Good,’ she said.

  Lois asked, ‘P’raps you could just cut the top off and make it a skirt?’

  That afternoon Molly sat scratching beneath the layers of her knee rugs and Barney lounged on the step at her feet, staring, his bottom lip fat and hanging, a look of pure wonder on his face. Tilly was driving golf balls between the Tip and the McSwineys’ with her number three wood. One of the balls whizzed past Miss Dimm who’d rolled up over the hill-top, her face to the clouds and an arm reaching for the unseen obstacles. She held under one arm a bolt of blue-and-white checked cotton and a paper bag full of buttons, zippers and school uniform patterns, sizes 6–20. Miss Dimm was extremely short-sighted and also very vain, so wore her glasses only in the classroom. She’d always kept her hair in a short page-boy bob and worn a white blouse tucked firmly into a voluminous gathered skirt. She was enormously fat-bottomed but very pleased with her tiny feet, so tiptoed everywhere in dainty slippers tied with ribbons, and when she sat she settled her crossed ankles prom-inently. She tripped up to the golf bag and felt the clubs sticking out.

  ‘Golf clubs,’ said Tilly and held one up.

  ‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimm, ‘lucky you, you’ve got lots of of them! I’m looking for little Myrtle Dunnage.’ She headed off towards the house. On the veranda she stared directly at the pink and blue tea cosy on Molly’s head and said, ‘I’m here on behalf of the Dungatar Public School Parents and Teachers Committee and I’d like to see little Myrtle Dunnage please.’

  ‘I bet you would,’ said Molly, ‘In fact I reckon you should be able to see, then you’d know what we have to endure every time we see you.’

  ‘Come in, Miss Dimm,’ said Tilly.

  ‘Oh, there you are.’ Miss Dimm turned to the sun-speckled wisteria vine behind Molly and held out her hand.

  They negotiated a fair price and all necessary fittings for nine school uniforms and as she was leaving, Miss Dimm thanked Molly’s hat again, fell down the small step, regained her momentum and skipped away. Barney had collected the golf balls in Tilly’s wicker basket and was driving them off the crest with Tilly’s one iron when the homely teacher passed him, stumbled and somersaulted out of sight, her lace petticoat flailing, slipper ribbons spinning.

  Teddy was on his way up when he was felled by Miss Dimm. ‘Oh God,’ he said and scrambled towards her as she lay flat on her back with her skirt up over her face and her dimpled thighs, like purple brocade on lard, exposed to the world. Barney leaned over the crest.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, numbskull?’ Teddy stood and brushed the grass from his new plaid trousers.

  ‘Playing golf,’ said Barney and held up a one iron.

  ‘The balls are landing on my roof.’

  ‘Good shot,’ said Tilly and shook his hand. ‘You deserve a cup of tea.’ She led him away.

  Teddy blinked at his brother, thin and pimply and crooked, limping off with the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He helped Miss Dimm up, ‘Come on, I’ll lead you to the path.’

  ‘Why, thank you … who are you?’

  Next morning Faith browsed through a Women’s Illustrated while Tilly knelt in front of her, pinning her hem. The cover headline read, ‘Dior’s Extravagance sets women back ten years – Balenciaga rebels, Page 10’. Faith mouthed ‘Bal – en – see – aga’ and perused the fashion articles – tunic, soft, standaway collar, chemise, seer-sucker, denim, America, Anna Klein, Galanos, Chanel, Schiaparelli, Molyneux, other names she couldn’t pronounce. ‘Ruth said you get lots of parcels from the city,’ she said and looked down at Tilly, ‘and postcards from Paris written in French from someone called Madelaine?’

  Tilly stood and eased the bodice so that it sat higher over Faith’s decolletage. Faith wrenched it down again.

  Molly cleared her throat and in her best Elsbeth Beaumont voice said, ‘She claims she used to care for Madame Madelaine Vionnet, the famous Paris fashion designer,’ she looked accusingly at Tilly. ‘She probably died.’

  ‘She was very old,’ said Tilly through the pins in her mouth.

  ‘Did she teach you to sew?’ said Faith.

  Molly aimed her nose at the picture rails. ‘Apparently Madame Vionnet recommended our genius here to Balenciaga because of her unusual talent for bias cutting.’ Molly made a sloppy fart sound with her tongue and vibrating lips.

  ‘I’ve never heard of either of them,’ said Molly.

  ‘Elsbeth’s cousin Una said Gertrude’s wedding dress was very Parisian,’ said Faith, ‘I’m going to Paris, one day.’ She looked dreamy.

  ‘Who with?’ Molly cackled mischievously.

  ‘I can hem this while you wait if you like.’

  Faith glanced over at Molly.

  Tilly persisted, ‘Molly can sit on the veranda; would you like a cup of tea?’ Faith nodded and removed her frock. She sat in her slip and stockings reading Tilly’s catalogues, poring over the pictures. When Tilly handed her the skirt with the hemline finely stitched and perfect, Faith put aside the magazines. ‘I shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble really, it’s just a silly old box cluster pleat that deserves to be chucked out. It’ll probably end up on one of the McSwiney girls.’

  Muriel came next. ‘Make me something else that suits me, this time something I can wear to work but that looks real good, like my outfit for Gert’s wedding.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ said Tilly.

  When Ruth returned from the railway station with the mailbags the next morning, she and Nancy spilled the contents onto the post office floor and found Nancy’s fat brown envelope. She opened it and flicked through her new magazine until she found the feature – colour photographs of a New York fashion parade highlighting the latest designs of Emilio Pucci and Roberto Capucci. They looked at the fashions and the angular girls with prominent cheekbones and dark lines on their eyelids and said, ‘Aren’t they something,’ then Nancy headed for The Hill.

  The rapping on the back door woke Tilly. Her bladder was full, she still had sleep in her eyes and her hair was wild about her shoulders when she opened it, folding a silk sarong about her. Nancy was distracted by her bare shoulders, so held the January edition of Vogue up in front of her and pointed to a model in an elegant tapered trouser suit in bright swirling colours. ‘See her? That’s what I want.’

  Tilly was puzzled so Nancy continued, ‘You can get the fabric from your friends in Melbourne, and don’t show anyone, I don’t want copycats.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tilly, ‘the pant suit.’

  ‘You’ve got a parcel and a postcard from Florence.’ Nancy handed them to Tilly and left.

  That evening Teddy sat on the veranda sipping a bottle of beer, smoking, watching Barney pull weeds from Tilly’s vegetable patch and throw them into a wheelbarrow. When the barrow was full Teddy pushed it to the cart and pitched the grass aboard. Graham turned his head to see and when Teddy headed away again with the barrow, the horse sighed, shifted his weight and dropped his head again. Molly inched out from the kitchen and pulled an empty glass from under her knee rug, so Teddy drained the last of the beer into her glass and moved to the screen door. Tilly was standing at the window, hand-stitching something fine. ‘Thought I might go for a walk, throw a line in at the creek, it’s nice down there at dusk, we could –’

  ‘I have a business to run,’ she said and smiled at
him, a big, broad smile that went all the way to her eyes.

  ‘Lovely,’ he said.

  15

  Nancy was attaching a new brush to her old broom handle and Muriel was wiping Pratts’ front window with a wad of turpentine-soaked newspaper. Beula Harridene rushed around the corner, stopping between the two women. ‘New outfits?’

  The women grinned and nodded. ‘You should get something made, that Tilly can do magic,’ said Muriel.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Beula, ‘if she made you think you look good in that.’

  Just then the Triumph Gloria rolled back into town. The women stopped to look. William was driving with a stranger in the seat beside him while Gertrude, Elsbeth and Mona sat in the back, each wearing a new hat. Three large shiny-new suitcases were strapped to the bumper rack of the car and several large tea-chests were secured in a new trailer trundling along behind. As the big old car rounded the curve of the main street, Evan Pettyman put down his mid-morning cup of coffee and moved closer to his window to follow the Beaumonts’ triumphant return. At the school Miss Dimm put her glasses on to see what the large thing sailing by was and Purl ceased shaking mats on the pub balcony to watch.

  The people of Dungatar suddenly had something more to expect and it swelled the air. The smart wedding party, their suitcases stuffed with Collins Street fashions, would soon discover that the women in town had striking new outfits, and every hemline was now in keeping with current European fashion.