The Midnight Dress(27)

Rose hesitates.

‘Yes.’

Vanessa doesn’t say anything. She smiles a little smile as though in pity.

‘What?’ says Rose.

‘Nothing,’ says Vanessa.

Wednesday they make the dress pattern. Edie hauls herself up from the back steps and goes inside. She opens all the louvres and casements, ready for the night.

‘It’s in here, the dress,’ Edie says, tapping her head. ‘And now we’ll get it out.’

Rose sits at the table, watching her.

‘I can see it . . . ’ Edie continues, eyes closed.

It makes Rose chew her nail.

‘. . . the way it will fall, the way the lines will flow.’

It’s a strange evening. For one, there is no rain. The ceiling of clouds has suddenly lifted, leaving a deep blue cathedral sky. Everything seems unsettled. Thousands of flying foxes swarm in a line across the cane fields. There is a gusty wind that silences the frogs. The coming night is fidgety, unsure of what to do with itself; the wind blows against the house, the mango trees drag their branches across the roof, making a noise like a hull hitting shallows. The flames in the hurricane lamps flicker and bend.

‘I’m the best there is,’ says Edie.

Boring, thinks Rose, she’s heard it all before.

‘Unusual weather,’ says Edie, gathering up a pile of old newspapers from a box in the hallway. ‘Might be a late cyclone this year.’

Along the window sills black ants parade in millions. A line of them march up the wall into the ceiling. Rose sees the lampshade has been removed from the lamp and the dark glass beads unpicked; the shade sits on the floor now, a newly plucked thing. The beads rest inside an old jar. Rose holds it up and looks inside.

Edie unfolds the newspapers on the table.

‘I had some pattern paper somewhere,’ she says, ‘and now I can’t find it.’

It’s no wonder, thinks Rose. The house is filled with that much junk it must be almost impossible to find anything. Small collections of useless things are everywhere: a small shoebox filled with spectacles (‘There’s nothing so lonely as left-behind reading glasses,’ Edie says), a pile of electricity bills tied together with creeper vine (‘I lived without electricity from 1965 till 1971, I’d encourage anyone to try it’), a pillowcase filled with blue quandongs (‘You’d be surprised how often they come in handy’). Several flattened pillbox hats in a plastic bag, damask curtains folded half a century ago in a blanket box, wedding dress pearls in a coffee cup, dried yellow flowers in a dusty basket.

‘In fact,’ says Edie, ‘I saw the pattern paper just the other day but I can’t remember where. Anyway, newspaper will work just as well. Help me spread them out.’

Edie separates the pages so they make one continuous piece that covers the table. She hands Rose the Sellotape. Even the newspapers are old. Gough Whitlam is the prime minister on the cover of one. A headline reads, VIETNAM SLAUGHTER. Another front page carries a picture of a train hanging off a bridge. Rose looks at it in horror. Leans closer. She tries to see into the windows: there are people inside, she’s sure of it, not yet rescued.

‘Granville,’ says Edie. ‘You might have been too young to remember it.’

The page below Granville is from the Courier-Mail, dated 1977, the year Rose’s mother died. Rose puts her hand out toward it but it’s too late, Edie has decided there’s enough paper and moves it away to the pile on the floor.

Edie draws the skirt first, using the measuring tape and a blunt pencil.

‘That’s only half a skirt,’ says Rose.

‘We cut it on the fold,’ says Edie. ‘Four of these will make the panels for the skirt.’

‘Four?’ Now it seems too big. Four of the half-skirts would fit two of Rose.

‘Hang on,’ says Edie, bending down to retrieve the year Rose’s mother died. ‘We’ll need this for sleeves.’

She hands the sewing scissors to Rose. They feel heavy and important in her hands.

‘Don’t look so nervous,’ says Edie.

‘What if I do it wrong?’

‘There’s no shortage of newspapers,’ says Edie.

She steps out of the way so that Rose can cut along the pencil lines.

‘Will I tell you about the house up in the trees?’ she says.

A big gust of wind comes through the back windows then. It lifts up the pattern and drops it again. The mended blue birds rattle on the wall. The mango tree drags its fingernails along the roof.

‘Yes,’ says Rose.

‘My father did not bring home a bride befitting the house or the land. This house was once grand, the parquetry was always gleaming and the coloured glass was talked about up and down the coast. Lillian Baker, freshly widowed, ruled the place until my mother arrived, screeched all day at the black girls. Florence was not the daughter-in-law that Lillian had expected, not a girl with connections, not the daughter of the honourable member for Toowong, not the daughter of another landowner; there was any number of them in Brisbane at the time, she knew it, it was a fact, she had corresponded with their mothers. No, her son had brought home the common daughter of a tailor. A little seamstress. Lillian Baker never forgave Florence for stealing my father’s heart, on Florence she blamed everything, the falling price of cane, the downfall of the house, the cyclones, the outbreak of war.