The Midnight Dress(32)

‘Are you having sequins, Rose?’ Vanessa asks, although it’s also a demand. It’ll be an unspeakable crime to say no.

‘I think I’m having antique glass beads,’ says Rose.

That shuts her up for a while. Pearl smiles at Rose with her eyes.

When Rose arrives in the afternoon, Edie is collecting the blue quandongs that have fallen to the ground. She has two full buckets beside her, and in the house she places the brilliant fruit inside two huge pickle jars. A picture of a devil riding a horse is printed on Rose’s t-shirt. She bought it at the op shop for fifty cents. She’s annoyed when Edie doesn’t even glance at it.

‘What are you going to do with those things?’ Rose asks.

‘Nothing,’ says Edie. ‘I just can’t bear to leave them out there.’

Edie puts the pickle jars on the floor and Rose guesses they’ll stay there forever. She looks at them while Edie opens up the back windows and lights the hurricane lamps and the mosquito coils.

‘Why have you got so much stuff?’

‘I like stuff, I suppose,’ Edie replies.

‘What do you like about it?’

‘I like the magic within such things, the sadness and the joy. It’s very strong,’ says Edie, very simply, then adds, ‘you’d understand what I mean.’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ says Rose.

Edie ignores that. She doesn’t say, Yes, you would. She puts part of the midnight-blue material out on the table and lays a section of the newspaper pattern on top.

‘Pinning,’ she says.

She produces the dusty echidna-shaped pincushion and hands it to Rose. She shows Rose where to pin the pattern. How far apart to space the pins. The paper feels fragile beneath her hands. While Rose is pinning, Edie sits down and begins unpicking the old black lace dress; she separates the rose lace from the yoke and from the cuffs of the sleeves and from the edge of the skirt.

‘When you’ve finished pinning, you can cut out,’ Edie says.

‘I’m not sure,’ says Rose.

‘It’s only a pair of scissors.’

‘I could make a mistake, cut somewhere I’m not supposed to.’

‘Good Lord,’ says Edie. ‘You’d think I was asking you to perform surgery. You know where the scissors are.’

The scissors feel even more dangerous this time. Rose places the blade to the fabric and begins. The silk taffeta makes a satisfying noise as she cuts out the shapes of the skirt. A sighing, releasing sound. She lays the pieces pinned to the pattern over the back of a chair. She cuts out the small delicate parts of the bodice.

‘Where’s the rest of it?’ Rose asks. ‘I mean the back of the top and the sleeves?’

Those pieces of newspaper pattern still lie unused on the edge of the table.

Edie holds up the unpicked tatters of the old black lace dress.

‘Mourning lace,’ she says.

A smile breaks out on Rose’s face.

‘Now I think we should practise our stitching,’ says Edie. She threads a needle, lightning-fast, with a damp tongue, a flick of her fingers.

She hands Rose the thread and another needle.

‘Go on,’ she says.

It takes Rose five attempts. Edie says nothing, waits patiently.

‘Which bit do I sew first?’

‘We won’t touch the dress yet,’ says Edie. ‘Not until you have a fine even stitch.’

She hands Rose an old pillowcase.

‘You can practise on this, I’ll show you. Know which side of the fabric is the back and which is the front – there is a right side and wrong side to every piece of material. Now go in like this—’

‘I have sewed before, you know,’ Rose says. ‘I mean mending things.’

‘It’s not the same as a perfect dressmaker’s stitch,’ says Edie. ‘You must learn to sew a straight line. In dressmaking that’s everything. And you’ll find that there is nothing better or more calming than a straight and proper line stitched by hand. Every stitch matters. When you’re hand-stitching you must never think ahead: worry only about the needle coming up and going down again. My mother taught me how to sew, and her father taught her, and so on and so on all the way back into the past . . . and this is how it goes.’

Blah, blah, blah, says Rose in her head, while she makes her first stitch.

‘Too big,’ says Edie. ‘Try this, this is what my mother taught me when I was a girl: give thanks with each stitch. Thank you for this old house, thank you for the roof that doesn’t leak, thank you for the creek, thank you for the possums, thank you for the fat mangos on the trees. You try that.’

‘I don’t really feel like it.’

‘Go on, just do it inside your head.’

Thank you for the rocks, thinks Rose. The big ones and the ones with places for my hands. Thanks for the footholds. That’s stupid. Thank you for . . . Pearl. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Thank you for that turtle that swam under the boat.

‘Too fast,’ says Edie. ‘Or each stitch can be a memory. Try that. Here, this is me when I’m a girl. This is my pink floral bedspread. Here’s my father’s glass eye in the teacup on the second shelf of the kitchen cupboard. Here is me walking up to the trees. Go on, you try.’

Rose sighs and picks up the pillowcase again.