The Midnight Dress(25)

He jumps up and goes to his bed and pulls out his art books from beneath and starts flipping through the pages. Masters of the Twentieth Century, Renaissance Art, Handbook to the London Museum of Modern Art, The Pre-Raphaelites. He turns the pages quickly, stopping every so often, tracing his fingers over a woman’s face.

‘Look at this,’ he says. ‘Jane, Countess of Harrington.’

Rose looks at the picture. He’s really pissing her off.

‘I think you need medication,’ she says.

‘What about this one, Titian’s Judith, there, look at that.’

‘She has brown hair.’

‘Hair, hair, I’m not talking about hair.’

Rose goes inside, pulls the curtain, lies on her bed.

‘Did you offer her a lift home?’ he says at the caravan door.

‘She rang her mother from the phone box.’

‘Do you think she’d sit for me?’

‘Since when did you do portraits?’

‘Do you think she would?’

‘No,’ Rose says.

On Saturday they go to the John Parson Oval. At first it doesn’t seem purposeful. They start by walking to the small library beside the park on Main Street. They stand above the air-conditioner vents cooling their legs, Pearl whispering, ‘Want to know an interesting fact about Jonah Pedersen? He can’t spell. I mean I’ve seen his writing, like he’s a child. Even weirder, it made me feel really sad and really protective, like a mother. It’s confusing.’

Rose stares at her, thinking.

‘Maybe you could teach him how to read and write,’ she says, finally. ‘Kind of like Jane teaching Tarzan.’

‘Oh, Rose,’ says Pearl.

They drift back out the door again. They walk into Hommel’s Convenience Store, dark and dry, and press soft-drink tins to their faces, buy two, sarsaparilla for Rose, lemonade for Pearl, a packet of jelly beans, the blacks counted out into Rose’s open palm.

‘Do you think it’s bad to be born out of a one-night stand? Which is better, passion or boring love? If you had a choice of going somewhere, say to another planet, only you could never come home again, would you do it?’

‘What was the other choice?’

‘Never going anywhere.’

They walk through the park, in and out of the shadows of the great trees, lie on the rotunda bench seats, Pearl’s hair hanging down in a golden swathe. They go past the pool along Second Street.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Nowhere,’ says Pearl. ‘Just walking.’

Past the small faded fibros, overgrown lawns, agaves grown monstrous in the wet, past the fish and chip shop, across cane train tracks. Through the railway proper. Past the quiet mill, not yet crushing. They can hear the football ground before they see it.

‘I think Murray Falconer has the hots for you,’ says Pearl.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ says Rose.

‘I see him looking at you all the time in English.’

‘Marvelling at my grotesqueness,’ says Rose.

That makes Pearl laugh.

‘Ruby Heart Rose,’ she says.

The Saturday football match is between the away Crushers and the Leonora Lions. A lazy crowd, drowsy with the heat, rests on blankets and in the half-full grandstand, watching the clash. Pearl stands against the fence first and then they go inside.

‘What are we doing here?’ asks Rose.

‘Just looking,’ says Pearl.

Rose spots Paul Rendell almost immediately. He’s taller than she imagined, having only ever seen him sitting behind the table in the Blue Moon Book Exchange. He’s sweating, his blond hair stuck against his forehead, sweating the way an English schoolboy sweats, with rosy cheeks. He has very hairy legs.

Powerful legs, pale, covered in a pelt of curled white hair.

‘Oh my god, look at his legs,’ whispers Rose.

‘Shoosh,’ says Pearl.

‘Is Jonah playing?’

‘He doesn’t play Union, silly.’

It seems they have arrived for the very end of the game: the whistle sounds minutes after they take their seats. The teams walk from the field and pass right beside where they sit. Paul sees Pearl – Rose sees him see her – but he looks away quickly, wiping sweat from his face. He laughs at something a teammate says. And when Rose looks back, Pearl is only staring up at the sky.





Stepped and Threaded Running Stitch





I’ll tell you another part of the ending. I don’t want you to look if it hurts you. Close your eyes. She says, ‘What are you doing here?’ He says, ‘It’s you.’ Just as surprised. His words come out in a breath. He smiles, sways. ‘I’m waiting for someone,’ she says. Her heel catches on a stone, she wobbles. She smiles in return. ‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘Just stay.’ Even though she hasn’t moved.

She begins to calculate briefly, distance first, if she has to run, then abandons her sums. That’s silly. He can hardly stand up. She holds the dress out, looks down at it, then puts a hand on one hip, coils a finger in her hair, laughs.

The band stops playing momentarily, mid-beat, a pause of several seconds. Something has gone wrong, there’s laughter from the crowd. They start again, a new song, a march, they’ve given up on the other.