The Midnight Dress(42)

Now Edie would only have been going through a rubbish bin to rescue something. Something discarded, lost, left behind. An unusual jar or an old newspaper. A piece of something without its other part. Rose knows it, but she still feels ashamed each time she thinks it. That’s the worst. She knows Edie will know it too. Edie will sense her new shame as soon as she walks through the door.

Sitting on her caravan bed, she sews small perfectly formed stitches on her pillowcase. It’s Wednesday night, but she isn’t going to the old house. She can’t. The old bike leans against the caravan, an accusation.

‘Not sewing tonight?’ asks her father.

‘Shut up.’

He laughs, whistles under his breath.

‘I can buy you a dress, you know,’ he says. ‘Now we’ve got money. Elaine says she’ll come with us, help look for one.’

Elaine. That’s what he calls Mrs Lamond now.

‘I’d rather jump from the Leap,’ says Rose.

‘Bit dramatic.’

‘Will we be going soon?’ Rose asks.

They’ve been in Leonora for two months. It’s a record of sorts.

‘Don’t you like it here?’ he says. ‘In paradise.’

She closes her eyes. What will Edie think if she never goes back? What will she do with the dress? Will she fold up all the pieces and place them in a box? The rustling midnight-blue taffeta. All the thread. The mourning rose lace. Will she hold the black glass beads in her old hands? Will she wait each Wednesday on the back steps, looking up at the mountain?

‘I’m going to see Pearl,’ says Rose to her father.

‘Is she feeling any better?’

‘She hasn’t been back at school.’

‘Give her my warmest regards.’

Rose stares at him.

‘What?’ he says.

Rose pushes open the door of the crystal shop and Pattie Kelly looks up from where she is making a charm bracelet. Her eyes are puffy, as though she’s been crying.

‘Oh, Ruby Heart Rose, I am so glad you’re here,’ Pattie says.

She gets up and envelops Rose in a patchouli-scented hug.

‘You’re like a plank of wood,’ Pattie says, shaking Rose a little and hugging her again. ‘There. You need a hundred more of them. Now come and knock on this little bugger’s door and see what you can do to cheer her up. Honestly, she is beside herself.’

‘Okay,’ says Rose, even though she doesn’t consider Cheering Up to be in her repertoire.

Pattie does the knocking.

‘Pearlie,’ she whispers. ‘Ruby Heart Rose is here.’

She opens the door when there’s no answer, and Rose goes in. It’s dim in the room, the curtains are pulled and the fluorescent stars glimmer on the ceiling. Rose looks at the walls, at all the maps and poems and models with their pouting sultry faces. Pearl is curled up on the bed, facing the wall.

‘Hi,’ says Rose.

Pearl says nothing.

‘Sorry about Chernobyl,’ Rose says.

Pearl lets out a wail and begins to sob.

‘Shit,’ says Rose.

Pearl scrunches her legs up higher and wraps her head in her arms. She cries like a wild thing. It makes Rose’s heart stampede, her mouth dry. It isn’t right, Pearl, source of all light, weeping in a bed. Rose sits tentatively beside her and touches her arm. Pearl doesn’t pull away.

‘The thing is, Pearl,’ Rose says, looking at the map of the USSR, ‘you have to remember what Mrs Bonnick said. The sun rises on one part of Russia while it sets on another – it’s that big. There’s nothing to say he’s anywhere near Chernobyl, he could be thousands and thousands of miles away, say in Murmansk.’

She looks at the map, strains her eyes in the gloomy room.

‘Or Vladivostok.’

Pearl says nothing, shudders on the bed.

‘The acid rain or snow or whatever, it isn’t even heading that way, its going down over the Ukraine, Belarus, and heading toward Germany.’

Rose hopes Pearl’s father isn’t in Belarus.

‘It’s not about that,’ whispers Pearl.

‘What then?’ says Rose.

Pearl cries very loud then, for a good five minutes. Each time she tries to speak her voice dissolves into a high-pitched warble. She sits up, holds her face. Rose looks around for tissues, finds a t-shirt. Pearl dries her face on it.

‘Try and say it,’ says Rose.

‘It’s just . . . It’s just I knew today that I was never ever going to find him. And I only got up to the Cs.’

Pearl falls forward then, slumps into Rose’s arms. She cries onto Rose’s shoulderblade, which is pointy and uncomfortable. Rose feels Pearl’s tears pooling there. She doesn’t know what to do. What should she do? She puts her arms around Pearl and touches her hair.

‘It’s all right, Pearl,’ she says. ‘Everything will be all right.’





Knot Stitch





I don’t know whether you can guess how fast it happened. That whole night moved languidly, drifted, yet now their actions tumbled from them.

She won’t listen to him. All he wants is for her to listen to him. He wants to say it: Listen to me. But what will he say? What does he know? He staggers. She’s turning away, one hand on her hip, looking back over her shoulder. Still smiling. ‘Silly,’ she’s saying. He’s reaching out, he’s going to take her by the arm. He’s going to touch her once. Just once. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s like she’s made of sky, of stars; she’s so beautiful she’s shining.