The Midnight Dress(48)

She takes the pillowcase sampler from the drawer, holds it on her lap for a long time, and then slowly, carefully begins to sew.

Each stitch for a memory. Here’s the stand of gums, here are the leaning turpentines, here’s the space where the gully begins, here’s the hut among the trees. She sews the small neat stitches, a whole line of them, until she feels her eyes begin to close. Here’s the dress, the midnight dress, the beautiful midnight dress, then she turns on her side and sleeps.

Rose leans the rusted bike against the railing and takes the pillowcase sampler from her bag. She holds it out to show Edie in the late afternoon light; she holds it up without saying anything, as though it will settle something between them.

‘You’ve improved,’ says Edie.

Inside, Edie begins the window-opening ritual, and Rose helps. The midnight dress rustles ever so slightly on the mannequin.

‘Do you think you’re ready then?’ Edie asks.

She doesn’t ask Rose where she’s been. Or why she’s stayed away. She unpins two panels from the skirt and hands them to Rose. She searches through the sewing basket for the blue thread. Chooses a needle from the needle box. She shows Rose the seam width. She sits down herself and begins beading the bodice, intricate work, tiny stitches for each little black bead.

Rose picks up her needle, threads it, begins to sew. She sews with her new hand stitch. Stitch after endless stitch. Will she ever make it to the end of the row? Edie glances at her work from time to time, and Rose lays it on her lap so the old woman can see. Nothing, just a nod, keep going. The thread makes a soft noise in the taffeta. Ah, yes, it says, again and again. Edie takes the hanky from her bra strap and wipes her forehead; the night is close. No rain yet.

‘We’re having a late wet, you know,’ says Edie. ‘It’s usually drying up by now. Have you seen any rose walnuts on the ground up there?’

‘What do they look like?’

‘Small, long shape, like this –’ Edie holds up a black bead – ‘lovely, shiny.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about the porcelain fruit? That’s bright pink or white, you can’t miss it, it’s the most beautiful thing.’

Rose takes the pink nut from her pocket. She’s carried it there for a week.

‘Is this it?’ she asks.

Edie holds it on her palm, a prize.

‘I only saw two of them,’ says Rose.

‘We’ve still got some rain to go then,’ says Edie.

‘You can have it,’ says Rose.

‘Well, thank you.’

When Rose finishes sewing the first two panels she slumps back in her chair, and Edie laughs. She shows Rose how to finish off the piece, the knot inside the knot inside the knot. An elephant beetle flies in through the open window and crashes against the lamp. The old woman heaves herself up and throws it back out the window.

‘Silly bloody thing,’ she says.

Edie unpins another panel from the mannequin and hands it to Rose. Rose doesn’t know the time, but it feels late. Her fingers ache.

‘So did you fall in love and marry that boy?’ asks Rose.

‘Boy?’ says Edie.

‘The one you kissed for the magpie food,’ says Rose. ‘That’s how it always happens in romance books. The woman doesn’t like the man at first but later they fall in love.’

Edie puts down her beading.

‘I fell in love with someone altogether different,’ she says. ‘Did I tell you the magpie stayed with me three whole years?’

‘Yes.’

‘Three years,’ says Edie. ‘Wherever I went, it went. If I walked to town it hopped along, tree to tree, and when they put in the telephone wire, it hopped along on those. When I went up the mountain it came as well, through the trees. It had a beautiful song. It sung outside my bedroom window every morning while all the other magpies were carolling down at the front of the drive. My mother said, ‘Better be careful, you know how your father hates singing birds.’ In the end she was right, he got rid of it, must have, because it disappeared when he went away. It had the blackest of black eyes. Have you ever looked into a magpie’s eyes?’

Rose shifts in her chair. Rethreads her needle.

‘Not really,’ she says.

‘Well, it’s the same as with crows, I suppose; they look right inside you. But there was something about that magpie, I can’t explain it. You understand, I suppose. I never gave it a name. It followed me to school and was the cause of much . . . discussion.’

Rose wipes her sweaty hands with a tea towel, the way Edie has taught her, so she doesn’t mark the fabric.

‘But when my father went the magpie went too, so he must have done something with it. Or it accompanied him, sometimes I like to think that too. Because he would have been so lonely on the road. He left when I was fourteen, nearly fifteen, and we were making wedding dresses. Now things had changed with the dresses, the Great Depression had come. Girls wanted their mother’s dress altered, or their sister’s, and we did that sort of work, which is not as exciting but work all the same. And sometimes in those old dresses, in the silk satin that had turned the colour of rancid cream, I saw other dresses struggling to be free. I looked at the woman and saw the dress she should wear. I looked at my mother and she shook her head ever so slightly, and I said nothing.