The Dressmaker

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘How far is’t call’d to Forres? …’

  ‘STOP, stop for a moment please. Erm, that’s very good now, Sergeant –’

  ‘Banquo …’

  ‘Banquo then. The kilt is good – but no one else has a Scottish accent and the bagpipes aren’t necessary either.’

  Hamish was in charge of props and staging. Trudy approached him, ‘Why are you building a balcony, Mr O’Brien?’

  ‘For the love scene.’

  ‘That’s Romeo and Juliet.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘We’re doing Macbeth.’

  Hamish blinked at her.

  ‘It’s the one about the ambitious soldier’s wife who convinces her weak husband to kill the King. It’s set in Scotland.’

  The high red colour drained from Hamish’s cheeks, ‘The Scottish play?’ he hissed.

  ‘You have to make forests that walk and a ghost,’ said Trudy.

  ‘I’ve been lied to,’ cried Hamish, ‘by that bloody Septimus!’ He dropped his tools and ran from the hall.

  • • •

  February passed quickly for Tilly. She rose early each day to sew costumes in the morning light and organise fittings or alterations. She hummed as she worked. In the evenings she sometimes wandered down to sit at the back of the hall and watch the township of Dungatar rehearse.

  The citizens looked increasingly stressed and tired and didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves at all. Trudy sat in the front row.

  ‘Begin again, Scene Three,’ she croaked – she had lost her voice.

  Septimus, Big Bobby, Sergeant Farrat, Reginald, Purl and Fred moved nervously to their places on the stage.

  ‘Enter Porter … I can’t hear you Porter,’ called the director.

  ‘I’m not saying anything.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I can’t remember my next line.’ Faith burst into tears. The other actors rushed to her.

  The director threw down her script. ‘Oh jolly good, let’s have another five-ruddy-minute break while someone else has a bawl – any other lousy actors here feel like a bit of a bawl? Oh you do, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well why are you holding your arm up again?’

  ‘I want to ask another question.’

  Trudy blinked at the Attendant – Bobby Pickett – standing on the stage. ‘No, you can’t ask another question,’ she said.

  ‘Why can’t he?’ Elsbeth walked out onto the stage and stood beside Bobby.

  ‘Because I said so.’

  ‘You’re not a very considerate director, Gertrude.’

  William went and sat in a corner next to Mona and put his head in his hands.

  ‘I suppose you think you could do better?’ snarled Trudy.

  ‘I know I could. Anyone could.’

  They stared at each other. ‘You’re fired.’

  ‘You can’t fire the producer, you silly girl.’

  Trudy stepped close to Elsbeth and, leaning down over her, yelled, ‘You’re always telling me what I can’t do. I can do anything I want. Now get out.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go.’ She pointed at the door.

  ‘If I go, so does the rest of the funding!’

  William looked up hopefully. His mother continued, counting on her fingers. ‘There’s the hall hire, transport, not to mention the set and we can’t have the soldiers’ costumes until we’ve paid the balance.’

  ‘Oh … f … fiddlesticks,’ said Trudy and clenched her fists at her temples.

  Faith started bawling again. The cast threw up their hands or threw down their scripts and William came to the front of the stage. ‘Mother you’re ruining it for everyone –’

  ‘Me? It’s not ME that’s ruining it!’

  Tilly, watching from a dark corner, smiled.

  Purl stepped forward. ‘Yes you are, you keep interrupting …’

  ‘How dare you, you’re just a –’

  ‘She knows what you think she is,’ bellowed Fred and stepped to Purl’s side.

  ‘Yes,’ said Purl and pointed a red fingernail at Els-beth, ‘and I know what your husband thought you were.’

  ‘And anyway, Elsbeth, I can pay for the soldiers’ costumes, I’ve still got all the house insurance money in the post office safe,’ cried Ruth, triumphantly.

  Everyone turned to stare at her.

  ‘Haven’t you sent it to the insurance company yet?’ asked Nancy.

  Ruth shook her head.

  ‘See?’ cried Trudy, ‘we don’t need you at all. You can just go and buy William his ruddy tractor.’

  ‘No one’s insured?’ cried Fred.

  Ruth began to look afraid, stepping away.

  Nancy put her hands on her hips and glared at the cast. ‘Well, there hasn’t been an earthquake lately, and I hope you don’t think just because she pays it for us every other year it stops fires and floods, do you?’

  ‘That’s true!’ said Trudy.

  The cast looked confused.

  ‘We can’t win without the soldiers’ costumes …’ said Faith, weakly.

  ‘Or a set.’ Trudy put her hands on her hips. The cast-members looked at each other, then slowly gathered behind their director.

  Elsbeth stamped her foot and yelled, ‘You’re just a bunch of fools! Hams, dullards, shopkeepers and half-wits, you’re uncouth, grotesque and common …’ She stomped off but stopped and turned at the door, ‘… loathsome all of you. I hope I never set eyes on any of you ever again.’ She marched out, slamming the door behind her. The windows shook and dust fell from the light shades.

  ‘Right,’ said Trudy, ‘let’s start again, shall we?’

  ‘I didn’t get to ask my question,’ said Bobby.

  Trudy clenched her teeth. ‘Ask away.’

  ‘Well, when you say “Out, damned spot! out I say!”, well … where is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Spot.’

  • • •

  March arrived. The temperature climbed and the hot northerlies dusted washing on clothes lines and left a fine brown coating on sideboards. William Beaumont – Duncan, King of Scotland – was due at 11:30 am for his first fitting. He stepped onto Tilly’s veranda at 11:23 am. Tilly showed him in. ‘Off with your shirt,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ he said. He had trouble with his buttons, but eventually she could approach him with a calico vest. She held it up for him to put his arms through.

  ‘Is that it?’ William was disappointed.

  ‘This is a toile. It’s customary to make a toile to get a perfect fit so you don’t need lots of fittings.’

  ‘So it will be yellow with lace, like we said?’

  ‘Just like you wanted.’

  The underarm curve had to be raised (thin arms) but she’d got the neckline right. She re-pinned the shoulder seams, lifting the fullness around the armhole to accommodate William’s rounded back, then helped him off with the toile and went to her big table.

  William was left standing in her kitchen in his singlet with his arms out. He watched her bending over the yellow cloth with pins in her mouth, doing clever things with tailor’s chalk and a needle and thread. She glanced up and he quickly looked up at the light fitting and bounced on his toes, but he was drawn to watch her again, tacking lace to a collar with her fine long fingers. She picked up his yellow coat and helped him into it, circled him, tugging and drawing lines with a bit of fine chalk and making titillating sensations on his ribs and backbone so that his scrotum curled and his hair crawled across his scalp.

  ‘Do you know your lines?’ Tilly asked politely.

  ‘Oh yes, Trudy helps me.’

  ‘She’s taking it al
l very seriously.’

  ‘Very,’ said William and blew his breath through his bottom lip so that his fringe lifted, ‘it’s a very complex play.’

  ‘Do you think you’ve got a chance to win?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘it’ll all come together.’ He looked down at the fur on the hem of his coat. ‘The costumes are splendid.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Tilly. She tacked the adjustments and he tried it on again. William, admiring himself in the long mirror, said, ‘How do you think it’s going?’

  ‘Pretty much as I expected,’ said Tilly.

  He was running his hands over the thick, ornate satin, touching the fur trim.

  ‘You can take it off now,’ said Tilly.

  William blushed.

  That night he found he couldn’t sleep so wandered out onto the veranda. He lit his pipe and stood looking out at the moonlit croquet lawn, soft and square, the straight white lines on the tennis court, the new stables and his broken-down tractor sitting in large, separate chunks under the gum tree.

  • • •

  Three weeks before opening night, at the end of the run-through of Acts One and Two, Trudy asked, ‘How long did they take tonight, Miss Dimm?’

  ‘Four hours and twelve minutes.’

  ‘Christ.’ The director closed her eyes and curled a large chunk of her hair around and around in her fingers. The cast backed away, tiptoeing sideways towards the wings or dressing room, eyeing the exits wildly.

  ‘Right. Everybody back here – we’re doing it again.’

  They had to sweat it out again on Saturday and Sunday afternoon and every week night. At last it was time for costume inspection. Tilly noted that Trudy had lost a lot of weight. She’d bitten her nails down to the quick and there were big, white patches of scalp on her head where she had tugged chunks of hair out. She also muttered lines from Macbeth and shouted obscenities in her sleep. She stood before her cast in a soiled dress and odd shoes. Tilly sat behind her, a tape measure around her neck and a serene expression on her face.

  ‘Right,’ said Trudy, ‘Lady Macduff?’

  Purl floated onto the stage in a voluminous satin skirt with a huge bustle. Her face was white-powdered and red-rouged and her hair arranged in storeys of curls, piled high, with a tall, ribboned fontange perched on top. Her pretty face was framed by a wide, wire-framed collar that swung from the top of her fontange to her armpits and was trimmed with bead-tipped ruffles. The sleeves were enormously pumpkin-shaped and the neckline of her gown was straight and low, cutting across her lovely breasts so that they burst out of her very tight, corsetted bodice. The men leered and the witches sneered.

  ‘This costume is very heavy,’ gasped Purl.

  ‘I designed it like that, you fool – that’s the type of thing they wore in the seventeenth century. Isn’t that so, costume maker?’

  ‘Yes. That’s definitely what aristocrats wore in the late seventeenth century, at court,’ said Tilly.

  ‘I can’t breathe very well,’ said Purl.

  ‘It’s perfect,’ said Trudy. The men nodded.

  ‘Next – Duncan!’

  William stepped from the wings. Burning red ringlets framed his face which was white-powdered, red-rouged and crimson-lipped, with a beauty spot on each cheek. The curls fell from a fat emerald-encrusted gold crown, like the top of the Taj Mahal. Around his neck he wore a lace bow that plummeted to his waist over a lace bodice. Over that was the fur-trimmed knee-length yellow coat. The enormous deep-folded cuffs of his coat hung all the way to his fur-trimmed hemline. He wore sheer white silk stockings and jackboots with cuffs that turned down and flopped about his ankles. He struck a gallant pose and beamed at his wife, but all she said was, ‘Won’t that crown topple off?’

  ‘It’s attached to his wig,’ said Tilly.

  ‘Let’s see what you’ve done to Macbeth then.’

  Lesley swept onto the stage wearing a tall sugarloaf hat that supported a forest of standing and sweeping feathers. Lace and ruffles bunched and danced around his earlobes from the collar of a voluminous white silk shirt which had tails that hung about his knees, swinging with the artificial flowers stitched to the trim of several skirts and petticoats. He had a red velvet waistcoat and matching red stockings, and his high-heeled shoes featured satin laces so large it was impossible to tell what colour the shoes were.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Trudy.

  The soldiers behind her mimicked her, ‘PERFECT’, and flapped their wrists.

  Trudy circled them, her seventeenth-century baroque cast of the evil sixteenth-century Shakespeare play about murder and ambition. They queued on the tiny stage like extras from a Hollywood film waiting for their lunch at the studio canteen, a line of colourful slashes and frothy frocks, farthingaled frills and aiglets pointing to the heavens, bandoliers and lobster-tailed helmets with love-locks hanging, feathers sprouting from hats and headdresses that reached the rafters, their red-lipped, pancake faces resting in white plough-disc collars and arched white-wall-collars like portraits.

  ‘Perfect,’ said Trudy again.

  Tilly nodded, smiling.

  31

  Tilly’s back and shoulders were stiff and hurt sharply. Her arms ached and her fingertips were red raw, her eyes stung and had bags that reached her perfect cheekbones, but she was happy, almost. Her fingers were slippery with sweat, so she awarded herself a concession – she used Paris stitch for the lace-trim of the soldiers’ red and white Jacquard jersey pumpkin pants when she knew she should use whip stitch. She tied-off the very last stitch and when she leaned to bite the cotton thread she heard Madame Vionnet say, ‘Do you eat with scissors?’

  Sergeant Farrat was telling her about rehearsals. ‘And Lesley! Well if he doesn’t think he’s important, keeps butting in, telling everyone their lines – which of course upsets Miss Dimm because it’s her job to prompt. The inspector over-acts but Mona’s very good, she fills in when people don’t show up. We’ve all got summer flu, sore throats and blocked sinus, no one’s seen Elsbeth, everyone hates Trudy – I’d be a better director than her, at least I’ve been to the theatre.’

  They arrived at rehearsal, their arms piled with pumpkin trousers and ostrich-edged velvet coats, the hot northerly outside wailing through power lines. Inside, the cast were still and afraid. They were bailed up by the director at the rear of the stage, surrounded by several splintered wooden chairs. Trudy had glazed eyes with large bluish circles around them and her cardigan was buttoned in the wrong holes.

  ‘Do it again,’ she whispered menacingly.

  Lady Macduff, holding a doll wrapped in a bunny rug, looked at her son. Fred Bundle breathed deeply and began:

  Son: ‘And must they all be hang’d that swear and lie?’

  Lady Macduff: ‘Every one.’

  Son: ‘Who must hang them?’

  Lady Macduff: ‘Why, the honest men.’

  Son: ‘Then the liars and swearers are fools; for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.’

  ‘NO! NONONONONONONONONONONO, YOU’RE HOPELESS …’ Trudy screamed.

  ‘That was right,’ said Miss Dimm, ‘he said it right this time.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘He did,’ chorused the cast.

  Trudy walked slowly to the front of the stage and fixed the cast with a demonic gaze. ‘You dare to contradict me?’ Her voice jumped an octave. ‘I hope you develop dysentery and I hope you all get the pox and die of dehydration because enormous scabs all over your body ooze so much, I hope all your dicks turn shiny-black and rot off and I hope all you women melt inside and smell like a hot rotted fishing boat, I hope you –’

  William moved to his wife, took a big backswing and slapped Trudy’s face so hard that she spun 360 degrees. The curtains across the st
age shifted in the whirling air. He spoke softly into Trudy’s blotchy, sweaty face. ‘I happen to know the doctor is at the Station Hotel this very minute. If you make one more sound tonight we’ll tie you to this chair with fishing line, fetch him and all swear on Bibles that you’re mad.’ He turned to the cast and in a wavery but confident voice said, ‘Won’t we?’

  The cast nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mona and stepped towards her sister-in-law. ‘You’re an unfit mother – William’ll get custody of this poor baby and you’ll go to the asylum,’ she said and handed the baby to William. The cast nodded again. Felicity-Joy lay back in her father’s arms and put the end of his lace bow in her mouth, then reached up with her hand and placed her fat little middle finger gently in his nostril.

  ‘I think,’ said Mona, ‘we should take the night off, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said William. ‘Let’s go to the pub. We’ll postpone dress rehearsal until tomorrow.’ The cast left, talking and laughing, traipsing off down the dark main street, feathers bobbing and lace kicking about their wrists and knees.

  Trudy turned to Tilly calmly sitting across the aisle and viewed her with fixed and dilated orbs. Tilly raised an eyebrow, shrugged, then followed the others.

  Later the cast ambled home and lay rigid in their beds, their eyes fixed to dim shapes in the blackness, doubtful, worried and stewing. They rummaged through the play in their minds, enacting entrances and exits, hoping the audience would not notice that they were playing three characters. No one slept a wink.

  32

  Eisteddfod day arrived unusually hot and windy. Irma Almanac’s bones ached so she ate an extra cake with her morning cup of Devil’s Claw tea. Sergeant Farrat took an especially long bath laced with oil of lavender and valerian root. Purl cooked breakfast for her guests – the doctor and Scotty – then went to do her hair and nails. Fred hosed the footpath and tidied the bar and cellar. Lois, Nancy and Bobby joined Ruth and Miss Dimm for a hearty cooked breakfast. Reginald dropped in to see Faith and shared Hamish’s lamb’s fry and bacon. Septimus went for a long walk in the hot wind and marvelled at how lovely the dust looked whipping across the flat yellow plains. Mona and Lesley did breathing and stretching exercises after a light breakfast of cereal and grapefruit. William found Trudy curled under the blankets, trembling and muttering and sucking her knuckles. ‘Trudy,’ he said, ‘you are our director and Lady Macbeth, now act like her!’ He went to Elsbeth in the nursery. Elsbeth stood by the cot holding Felicity-Joy. ‘How is she?’