The Midnight Dress(26)

‘We can just talk,’ he says. Like a boy.





It’s only Monday. The week, which despite herself Rose measures from Wednesday to Wednesday, drags. The days move at an infuriating tropical speed: there is a whole week inside each day.

The air is hot and breathless, fans tilt full-speed in shops, the swimming pool is so crowded after school there’s not a patch left on the thick green grass. Not that Rose goes there. She wouldn’t dream of it. When she catches the bus home she walks down to the rocks and climbs there. She’s good at it. Sure-footed. She climbs as high as she can up the point; it’s almost as though she’s sitting on the prow of a boat, looking out to sea. It’s the only place there is a breeze.

It’s a welcome relief after the classrooms, which are so crowded and stuffy with body odour they make her feel drowsy, the teachers droning on and on with all the names and bloody moments in history: Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Gettysburg, Normandy, Waterloo. She hears the words for a while and then they drift away. She thinks of the table in Edie’s kitchen and she thinks of the mountain.

Most of her doesn’t want to go back. She doesn’t like promises or agreements. It seems stupid to promise something to someone she barely knows. In front of Edie she feels exposed, like the old lady can see right inside of her, which is stupid. Rose shakes her head, right there in modern history, at the thought of it.

‘Are you disagreeing, Rose Lovell?’

‘Pardon,’ says Rose, coming to with all the sweaty pale faces staring back at her. ‘Sorry, Mrs Bonnick.’

Yet part of her wants to go back, a tiny part, which makes her uneasy, this part of herself that is disobeying all the rules. This part feels light, flighty, like a runaway balloon.

Pearl hasn’t talked about her father since Rose told her about her mother. She hasn’t said a single word about the letters, although Rose sees her writing one in maths, and she’s gone back to writing them in English. She adds the latest to the other C. Orlovs tied together with a rubber band in her bag. Sometimes she looks at Rose and smiles kindly.

‘What?’ Rose says a little harshly.

At lunchtime Pearl takes Ashes in the Wind from her bag and holds it on her lap, her hands folded over it neatly. She doesn’t read it. Just holds it there, a charm.

‘What about this one?’ Paul Rendell said about that book. ‘A bewitching belle dressed as a lad, a doctor torn between love and duty, a thrilling tale of passion and promise. Let’s hope there’s some good bits in it, though. Really, Pearl, there was only kissing in The Alchemist’s Daughter.’

All the while Rose stared at him from her cramped aisle. He had his peasant shirt a little undone, his chest hair showing, very white. His watercolour blue eyes.

Pearl sat on the floor going through a box, her hair undone, her frangipani scent rising like a cloud. She was chewing pink bubblegum.

‘It’s the getting to the kiss that’s the good part, silly,’ she said.

She blew a bubble and let it pop. Paul Rendell laughed very loudly.

Pearl and Vanessa are back with the girls because the boys have started playing football in the lunch hour. They sit on the school oval to watch them. Jonah Pedersen takes off his shirt and easily sidesteps his opponents, scoring try after try. Pearl stifles a yawn. Murray Falconer plays as well; he’s so scrawny beside Jonah Pedersen it makes Rose want to laugh. He nearly scores a try once, before he’s put down in the wet grass. He’s trying really hard to impress someone, God knows who.

‘My dad wants to paint your portrait, Pearl,’ Rose says. ‘He thinks you look like someone from a famous painting, except he can’t remember which one.’

Pearl laughs but the news makes Vanessa swish her ponytail like a horse annoyed by a fly.

‘Is your father really a painter?’ Vanessa demands.

‘He’s been to art college but he’s not a portrait painter,’ says Rose. ‘He usually just paints weird things like washing machines with wings and fridges covered in scales.’

‘I don’t think you should get involved with it, Pearlie,’ advises Vanessa.

‘Yes, Mum,’ says Pearl.

As secretary of the Leonora State High Harvest Parade Float Committee, Pearl writes all the meeting minutes in lime-green highlighter. The building of fibreglass fruit is on track for the parade. Mr Tate, who runs the fibreglass business near town, is making the fruit frames free of charge, but the committee will have to paint nearly fifty metres of calico: purple for grapes, yellow for bananas, red for apples.

‘Maybe your dad could help with the painting,’ says Pearl.

Rose imagines it.

‘Sorry, he hasn’t had his community spirit transplant yet,’ she replies.

‘You could ask him anyway,’ says Pearl, never one to give up.

‘Since when do grapes grow here, anyway?’ says Rose.

‘It’s symbolic,’ says Pearl.

‘I wish I could dress up as a piece of fruit for the parade,’ says Rose.

‘Which piece of fruit would you be?’

‘I’d definitely be a black plum,’ says Rose. ‘All blood red inside.’

Vanessa swishes her tail some more.

‘So is it true, Rose?’ Vanessa demands. ‘Are you getting your dress made by Miss Baker?’