The Midnight Dress(13)

‘She made the dress,’ wails Vanessa. ‘She made the dress.’





The same creek that runs through the Falconer cane bends backward on itself then, up toward the mountain from where it sprang. It crosses some way behind Edie’s strange house, where the back paddock gives way to bush. Rose can hear its rushing up behind the trees. She stares up at the mountain that fills the sky from the old woman’s back steps.

‘It’s a beauty, isn’t it?’ says Edie.

‘It’s okay,’ says Rose, even though there is something about it that makes her feel dizzy. She wonders what it would be like beneath its mysterious green pelt, which grows dark with the shadows of clouds and silvery in the sunshine, which releases startling sprays of parrots, which veils and unveils itself all day long. She imagines all the mossy groves and caves and hidden things.

‘Full of secret places,’ says Edie, which makes Rose look at her and cross her arms.

‘Has it got a name?’

‘Well, that rock there, the big bluff, is of course called Weeping Rock, because it always weeps, even in the dry season. And the middle part, where the mountain dips, was always called the Saddleback. There’s a lookout there and on the other side of that, the seaboard side, you can’t see it from here but from the bay, that bluff is called the Leap. They’re all easy to get to from the town side, big tracks, but really only places for visitors. Daytrippers, we used to call them. See above those trees? I would climb all the way to there when I was a child, with just the old paths that have been here a thousand years. I didn’t know if you’d come back. You must really want a dress, which is a good thing – dresses are the best medicine for young girls.’

Rose keeps her face very still.

‘I can already see it,’ says Edie, turning up the stairs.

Rose isn’t so sure. She’s argued with herself the whole way. She doesn’t know whether she likes the old woman with the small dark eyes and skullcap of hair. The house is falling apart. There’s a tree growing though the front stairs. Everywhere there’s the detritus of the forest. The leaves drying in small piles in the corners of rooms and seed pods jammed in the floorboards. The curtains are dappled with mildew and festooned with spider webs.

‘Is Miss Baker as strange as they say?’ Pearl asked her, painting her nails in lavender highlighter.

‘Yes,’ Rose said, and she hadn’t lied.

‘Tell me?’

‘Where should I start?’

In Edie Baker’s house it’s almost six o’clock. Outside there are hours of sunshine left but inside is already filling up with shadows.

‘I open the windows along the back now,’ says Edie. ‘At night a breeze comes down off the mountain and it’s good to catch it. I close all the windows again in the morning and it stays cool all day. When I was a girl my mother called it the mountain’s breath.’

She goes about opening up all the coloured glass casements and the louvres in the long back kitchen, and the afternoon light dances on the blue birds. She wears a sleeveless sundress and her pale arms are the colour of pastry and when she raises them, to release the catches, two little wings of skin hang down.

She walks with a limp, as though one hip hurts, and she makes a small humming noise in her throat. Rose stands, watching, there’s still time to leave.

‘Now,’ says Edie, ‘what dress will we make?’

‘A lot of girls are having strapless or one-shoulder,’ says Rose.

‘Strapless is for hussies,’ says Edie, fixing her with her bright dark eyes, then she waves for Rose to follow and they go down the hallway into the gloom.

The house is as vast and creaking as a museum and each room they pass through is filled to the brim with dusty collections of things. Tallboys and faded settees and velvet chaises gone lumpy. Boxes filled with bits of paper and others crowded with leaves, large crystal vases sitting on the floor overflowing with twigs, dressmaker busts lying on beds, hat boxes stacked in towers. In corners there are sudden surprising piles of stones. And in every room there is paint peeling from the walls, emerald green or turquoise or scarlet, and immense constellations of mould spreading across the ceilings.

Edie turns lights on in each room and huge blank-faced wardrobes loom. She opens their doors and rifles through their musty interiors, holds up old clothes, opens trunks, pulls suitcases out from beneath beds. She gathers up an embroidered shawl and an armful of men’s coats.

‘Oh yes, this is good lace,’ Edie says, when she comes upon a small black dress, a deflated thing, with black rose-lace sleeves. When she lifts it, a shower of dust tumbles from the ancient petticoats.

In another room she approaches a small black lamp with a glass-beaded shade.

‘What do you think of this?’ she asks.

But before Rose can answer Edie has unplugged it from the wall and tucked it under her left arm. They go down a narrow corridor, where the house drops away beneath their feet and the floorboards plink and plonk like piano keys. Edie opens a stiff wooden door.

‘Here,’ she says.

There is natural light in the room and Rose realises they must have travelled from the back of the house to the front. A grimy sash window displays the overgrown yard and a small patch of cloudy sky.

In that room there is material, cupboards with opened doors filled with material, boxes filled with material, bolts tilting in piles. Taffetas, failles, velvets, satins. Gingham haphazardly folded, summer cottons stuffed into boxes, rolls of organdie leaning. Tartans, brocades, damasks, satin crepe, voile, crepe de Chine.