Four Fires

by Bryce Courtenay

  Sarah had nothing to wear, I mean she was feeding her baby and her breasts were larger than normal and none of her old clothes really fitted her. Not that she had that many in the first place. So Mike started to make her clothes, him and Sophie, with Mike buying the fabrics and doing the designs. At first he simply followed the fashions of the day but after about a year things started to change. It must have been about the time he went to the McCabbe Academy when he started to be different.

  It began as a bit of fun, something for Mike and Sophie to do together. It worked real good because Morrie was working at the Age and Sarah would come home at night and look after Templeton so that Sophie could finish her piecework if the baby had kept her from it during the day. On the weekends, Morrie and Sarah would study together and Mike and Sophie would design a dress for Sarah or, if Sophie needed to catch up with her piecework, Mike would hop in and help her.

  It was a crowded little house but somehow it worked. Tommy and John Crowe came down one weekend early in the piece and turned the back porch into a sleep-out for Mike, as well as a workroom large enough so that when they eventually got two professional Singers they would be able to work in it together. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call spacious and Mike would laugh and say to Sophie, ‘What are you complaining about, they’re better working conditions than The Lane.’

  Mike would look around while he was doing messages or things in The Lane or elsewhere for offcuts, fabrics that were different. He might find a scrap here or a small length of cloth somewhere else and he’d offer to buy it. Sometimes the owners would let him have the scrap of cloth for nothing. The girls in the factory started scrounging as well. Word would get around that someone was using a light wool in brilliant scarlet for the lining of a winter coat and, mysteriously, half a yard would be handed to Mike by one of the factory girls, who said it had been given to her by a friend in another firm. Mike also discovered furnishing fabrics, beautiful brocades imported from Europe, cottons for curtains in colourful designs nobody would have thought to use in the fashion trade. Even the tiniest scraps of velvets and other precious fabrics too small to be useful to anyone would be cherished for appliqué work. The miracle of Mike’s designs was in the use of scraps, bits of material inlaid or used as a contrasting pocket or a collar or even a belt. The result was that the fabrics used were of a very high quality and the clothes beautifully made but they cost much less than the expensive labels.

  Soon Sarah was going to lectures at the university in a new dress or outfit every week. At first it was only the male med students who noticed, but being men it was more a matter of seeing how very pretty she was. However it didn’t take long for the female students on campus to take notice. One thing led to another and Sarah would be asked where she bought the fabulous new dress. The first time this happened, it was a third-year student doing Arts, whose parents must have had a quid or two because she was always dolled up to the nines.

  ‘That’s a wonderful dress, what’s the label?’ she asked Sarah.

  Sarah, without really thinking, grinned and replied,

  ‘Oh, it’s a Sarah Maloney’, gently sending her up.

  ‘It’s fabulous, where is the shop? Toorak Road? I simply must have one of her outfits.’

  Sarah couldn’t explain it’s a joke but had enough nous to say, ‘No, it’s . . . it’s a private collection, I’m glad you like it, I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Him? I thought you said the label was Sarah Maloney?’

  Sarah’s got herself into a bit of a pickle. ‘Yes, that’s the label, the designer is a male.’

  ‘Well, does he sell?’

  ‘I’ll ask him,’ Sarah replied.

  And that’s how it started on campus. Mike who knew one of the label-makers in The Lane, had him make up a roll of Sarah Maloney labels to sew into his garments. Morrie was roped in to do the measurements and each lunch hour in the little garden outside the Zoology labs Morrie would take careful measurements and Sarah would write these down along with the colouring of the student or any special feature, eyes, hands, shoulders, legs, if the student wanted an original Sarah Maloney. Otherwise it would simply be the dress of the week or of previous weeks made to a particular student’s measurements.

  Morrie, who would fuss around in his white lab coat, looked just the part of the busy little tailor as Sarah, looking beautiful in the dress of the week, wrote down his instructions and measurements on a notepad. They both loved taking the measurements, as it took them outside the Medical Faculty and where they could meet other female students. Sarah discovered she was already a bit of a hero to most of the female students, who now pestered her to stand for the student council. Sarah felt, with Templeton and her studies, it was more than she could handle, but eventually she stood as a third-year student and was elected, gaining every female student vote in the university and most of the Medical Faculty votes, although Engineering let it be known that they were voting as a block for anyone as long as it wasn’t a female or Sarah ‘trouble’ Maloney.

  Mike’s clothes aren’t cheap because he uses expensive fabrics and they are so very well made and hand-finished. However they aren’t beyond the means of some of the students from wealthier families. Some designs sell well and Mike and Sarah could make up fifteen garments in a week.

  It worries Sarah that there are students who can’t afford a Sarah Maloney even though they’d practically kill for one. So, for his Summer 1959 collection Mike designs a day dress in three styles made from tablecloth American gingham in the most outrageous fluorescent colours, pinks and lime greens, blues, purples and yellows. He got the cloth cheaply from the importer because none of the linen departments of the retail stores were willing to order the cloth, thinking it too bright for Australian dining and kitchen tables.

  He also designs his ‘watermelon’ dress with the little bolero top and cummerbund for après-beach and summer evenings. The summer dresses are priced at three pounds ten shillings and the female component of Melbourne University goes berserko kaperko! (Maloney word.)

  Over three weeks, orders for two hundred and seventeen fluorescent gingham dresses, which Mike has called ‘Broadway Lights’, are taken and also for fifty ‘watermelon’ designs, that sell for four pounds and ten shillings.

  By rag-trade standards these are not big numbers, but what it is allowing is for Mike to build up a collection to ultimately show to the big buyers. The dresses that sell eas ily are photographed by a friend of Mike’s, a young German photographer named Helmut Newton, toiles are cut so that the pattern exists, and one dress is made up for racking and showing.

  The lovely thing is that Mike is also designing clothes for Templeton, which Sophie is making. She makes up a few of the designs as samples and visits Toorak Road, pushing the stroller with Templeton in it as the model and with a whole heap of samples in a canvas bag she’s made that is attached to the stroller. The designs are an instant success and Sophie starts to get more orders than she can cope with. Mike’s infant designs are like his other clothes, lots of colour and imagination.

  Next thing, Nancy and Mrs Rika Ray are hauled in to help with the appliqué work, smocking and embroidery. The little garments get sent up on the train to Yankalillee and are collected at Wangaratta by Bozo. Anyway, Sophie’s flogging her kids’ clothes and getting ridiculous prices for her Suckfizzle label. ‘Suckfizzle’ turns out to be just about the best name possible for infants’ clothes.

  In 1960 the buyer from Georges in Collins Street asks Sophie to come in and see her, she wants an exclusive range made specially for Georges under the Georges label. It’s a big temptation, Georges is the establishment shop where the rich and famous go. But Mike, following consultation with Bozo and Sarah, advises Sophie not to lose her label, her name is everything and what’s to stop Georges from terminating her contract one day and ripping off her designs. So Sophie says no to Georges, who are pretty miffed, because they’re not accustomed to bei
ng turned down. Then Mike has this idea and Georges buy it. Sophie’s label says ‘Suckfizzle at Georges’, which is to be an exclusive line not available elsewhere.

  By the sixth year Mike, Sarah, Morrie and Sophie have been in Melbourne, which is 1961, and by the time Sally Harris and Mike are having dinner at Florentino’s, Sophie has three women doing piecework for her and she can’t keep up with the orders coming in.

  Nancy is now getting ten pounds a week from Mike, who is earning fifteen pounds a week at Style & Trend but is pocketing fifty pounds from his Sarah Maloney label and another twenty from the Suckfizzle kids’ range, all of which, except for what he sends to Nancy and a bit for Sarah’s and his lunches, goes into fabrics and building up his sample collection.

  With the good money Sophie is bringing in, Morrie could easily give up his job as a lift driver at the Age, but won’t. He says he’s getting fluent in Australian, a language he recognises as quite different to English, and also he has lots of good mates dependent on him, who bring their families in with all their medical problems. In fact, some nights, the Morrie lift-clinic is so busy, the union is considering whether they should demand an assistant lift driver from Management. Besides, he says he can’t study at home because of the din of the sewing machines, which he calls ‘The second industrial revolution already!’

  Sarah doesn’t mind the noise. With Nancy and us kids, she’s always had chaos around her. Morrie, of course, is killing it at university, in fact, most days he tries hard not to be a smart-arse, because he often knows more than the lecturer about the subject being taught, but Sarah is also thought to be a brilliant student. ‘It’s not me!’ she protests when she’s congratulated on her results, ‘It’s Morrie, he drills me day and night until I know everything.’ She laughs, ‘It’s not the university exams I find difficult, it’s the bloody Suckfizzle ones I dread.’

  All this is the background to Sally Harris asking Mike about his Sarah Maloney label.

  Well, two bottles of champagne, a bottle each, is just a tad too much for Mike, who doesn’t really drink and it’s Sally Harris who orders the taxi and next thing Mike knows he’s in this flat. At the time he doesn’t even know what suburb it’s in, but the lounge room has a picture window that looks over the Yarra and it’s pretty posh.

  I’m not sure I should tell what happens next because I can’t really put it in the right words. They should be good words because what happened Mike said was very, very nice. But I’ll just tell what he remembered and told me, well sort of, because I can’t get Mike’s words exactly any more because he now talks differently, he knows things we don’t and he uses words I don’t use or even know.

  Sally Harris talks to him about the Sarah Maloney label. She says she thinks she can get Country Stores to back him, for a percentage of the action of course. She wants to see his samples, but she thinks she knows enough and has seen enough to be pretty confident that she can sell her directors on the project. Country Stores will then launch the Sarah Maloney label as a winter range in 1962.

  Mike’s pissed but he can’t believe his ears, the money to go his own way, to do the things he wants to do. He sits there pretty stunned, with the room sort of going round and the ceiling tilting and him trying to get what Sally Harris has just said fixed in to his champagne-soaked brain.

  ‘Thank you, Sally,’ he manages to say. ‘Thank you, but why? What can I ever do for you?’

  Sally laughs. ‘We’re about to find out, Michael Maloney, come with me.’

  She takes Mike by the hand and leads him into her bed room. Even smashed, Mike remembers how it looked. Big double bed with this brilliant old-fashioned quilt, every colour in the world in the squares and all the other furniture white, with a large picture above the bed of yellow wattle blossom with rosellas frolicking among the blooms. I could have told him this was a most unlikely situation and the artist couldn’t have known the bush very well. Rosellas like fruit and a bit of nectar, they’re not going to bugger around with wattle blossom that’s got neither. But I don’t, because I want all the juicy details and I don’t want him distracted from the main subject at hand.

  Sally makes him stand at the end of the bed and she starts to undress him, kissing him as she removes his tie then his jacket and then his shirt, so he’s standing in his strides. She’s kissing him all over his chest and neck and on the mouth and Mike says she tastes of champagne and smells of rose petals, but it’s really Chanel No. 5 that’s worn out a little. Then he becomes aware that she’s put on some music, or anyway there’s music coming into the bedroom, something classical, soft and romantic. She goes down on her knees, unlaces his shoes and takes them off and his socks. He’s got a hole in one sock, which he remembers too late.

  Now he’s standing in his strides, bare feet on the carpet. He knows what’s coming next and he’s shitting himself, because he’s got this raging hard-on and he knows he should but at the same time he knows he shouldn’t. Him being what Tommy said he was and all. But she doesn’t go for his belt or unzip his fly.

  ‘Stand there,’ she commands. Then, slowly, standing in front of him and never taking her eyes off him, she undresses herself like some sort of ritual. The room is still going round and round, but sometimes it stops long enough for Mike to see how pretty she is. She’s still got her model figure and long shapely legs and pert breasts and Mike thinks she’d look wonderful in his watermelon outfit.

  Then suddenly she’s standing in the nuddy in front of him.

  ‘Your move next,’ she says.

  Old Mike can’t get his strides off fast enough and then his underpants, but they don’t come off smoothly, there’s this resistance pointing up to the ceiling and getting in the way.

  Now they’re both standing naked and Sally Harris melts down onto her knees (Mike’s words, I swear!) and she takes him in her mouth and starts to stroke his old fella with her lips. I admit, I’ve got a hard-on with Mike telling me all this. Mike then says it was like going to heaven twice over and he thinks he can’t hold on, any moment he’s going to blast off and there’ll surely be a crack in the roof. The ceiling and the walls are still going around but it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with him, it now seems part of the whole experience like she’s made that happen as well. But she seems to know exactly the right moment to stop and she takes his hand and makes him lie on the bed and she climbs on top of him and kisses him all over. Then their lips and their tongues sort of mingle and she’s rubbing herself, breasts and things, all over him and he’s moaning and crying for mercy. (Oops! I may have put that last bit in myself.) Sally Harris sits astride him and comes up to rest on her knees, leans forward and kisses him and, at the same time, she produces this rubber from nowhere and slips it onto his old fella in a flash so neat-o that Mike doesn’t even feel it going on and only discovers it afterwards. Then she takes him in her hand and pushes him inside her and there’s nothing more he can do, she’s completely in control.

  ‘Now, darling,’ she says to Mike, ‘we’re going to ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross!’ and she starts galloping and starts to moan and gallop faster and faster until he bursts open and it’s all over red rover and Mike says it was wonderful and afterwards Sally said he had the makings of a stud though had a lot to learn but luckily he’d enrolled at the right academy. How’s that for brilliant, hey?

  That’s more or less how Mike told it to me, though maybe I let my imagination get in there a bit, with things like Mike crying for mercy, but I don’t think so. Anyway, Mike’s told me, which I suppose he shouldn’t, because Sally Harris is a real beaut bird and he likes her a lot. The offer she made, though, turned out to be a disaster, which I’ll explain later. But the way Mike tells me, their lovemaking, it’s not rude or anything, Mike’s a pretty gentle sort of bloke when he’s not being sarcastic or witty. He just told how he lost his virginity which is something that has still to happen to me and probably never will, even though I dream about how it wil
l happen most nights before I go to bed and sometimes while I’m asleep as well. The way Mike told it was better than I just did, because he said it soft and nice and not like he was boasting or anything, I was forced to take myself away to the dunny out the back for a private consultation with what Nancy calls ‘Mr Trouble’.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The generous offer Sally Harris makes to Mike sits on his conscience for a few days. He’s gone out to dinner with her admittedly on Mr Stan’s orders, but Style & Trend paid for the night out and the end result was that she’s turned down Mr Stan’s summer collection with the exception of three styles, all three of which are Mike’s designs.

  Mr Stan gets Sally Harris’s phone call and he isn’t a happy man. He’s got sixteen styles in his range and she’s ordered only fifty of each of the three styles. He’s not stupid, it takes him about two seconds to realise that these are Mike’s creations.

  He calls Mike into his office, he’s sitting behind his cluttered desk in an old captain’s swivel chair. There’s only one other chair in the tiny room, a bentwood upright such as people have in their kitchens sometimes. It’s got several garments piled on it so Mike has to stand, but he would anyway until Mr Stan told him to sit, which, on this occasion he doesn’t. Also, he’s not told about the dud order from Miss Harris at Country Stores.

  ‘So Mike, you have a good time za other night, Florentino’s?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Stan.’

  ‘No, no, thank you is not necessary, you are working for Style & Trend, the summer range, how goes it?’

  ‘You were away three days last week and then the weekend. Today’s Monday, I asked first thing to come and see you, sir.’