The Midnight Dress(61)

Rose has just kissed Murray Falconer, the kiss is still blazing on her lips.

‘I can feel it here,’ Rose says.

Pearl places her fingers on Rose’s mouth.

‘Was it good?’ she asks.

‘It was okay,’ says Rose.

It was sudden but not unexpected. The moment lubricated by Murray’s vodka. He was full of platitudes. His breath smelt of cigarillos, and his hair of blue food colouring.

‘He said I was beautiful,’ says Rose.

‘But you are,’ says Pearl. ‘Look at you.’

‘I think this dress is magical,’ says Rose, and it makes them both laugh so that they hold each other.

‘I think it is too.’





Rose is shaking, a real trembling in her hands. She holds them together to stop it.

She sits on the rock at the edge of the waterfall, leans right out and then back in, wishes she could fall. If Edie sees them going down, she’ll know. She’ll know the place has been desecrated. The place of love. Of refuge.

She touches her eyes to see if she’s crying.

Betrayal. That’s the word she’s looking for. She’s never understood it until right now, this very minute; it’s sharp, hot. It hurts her. She stands to vomit and finds she can’t. She crouches down on the earth, rubs her face over and over, puts her hands open-palmed on the forest floor.

She gets up again and paces like an animal around the small clearing.

Other words for betrayal?

Disloyalty, unfaithfulness, treachery. Pearl.

Her skin is burning. Her skin is burning long before she lights the fire.

Rose Lovell is not an arsonist. She doesn’t sit there, pace there, think of burning the place down. She thinks of Pearl’s honey-brown back and Paul Rendell’s cool white skin. She thinks about the letters, the handfuls of letters to Russia, and the way she got Pearl down the gully that first day. How she talked to her all the way across the fallen tree bridge when Pearl was stuck with fear. She thinks about the rock pool, where they swam, and Pearl’s finger twirled in her hair, how the night had held them in the open palm of its hand.

There is no pleasure in the burning.

She is surprised by it. Its brightness shocks her, all the golden embers and the wildness of the flames.

In the hut Pearl has left a box of matches. Rose realises she must have been planning to stay with him. They were going to have a camp fire. Girl Scout Pearl. She hasn’t taken the sheet with her, or the biscuits. Chips Ahoy! – chocolate chips. That was the best she could do. How romantic. She’s a joke. A child.

Rose stares. The four walls, the coloured casements, which listened to their quiet conversations, all their plans, and creaked and ticked with satisfaction. Rose takes Pearl’s sheet into the corner and sets it on fire. It takes two scratches of a match. It looks like it won’t burn but suddenly there is a small explosion, a flare.

She is surprised how the fire quickens and grows and has a soul. She has to stand back from it then. The windows explode one by one, the amber glass showering. The roof slumps to one side.

All the way down the mountain, the ruin smoulders inside her.

She feels rain on her face. Where has it come from? It had been such a perfect day; now there are storm towers and the sky is a deep storm blue.

She is angry until she reaches the open forest, and then a new feeling takes over, a startling fear. Her heart comes alive and she’s running. All the sounds roar back into her ears. She can hear everything: the side of the hut caving in, the rain touching her skin, the clouds moving out to sea.

Flying foxes spill in a fountain from the mango tree. Right there Rose vomits on the grass; when she looks up, the old woman is watching her from the bottom of the steps. Edie looks up at the mountain then back at Rose, an emotion spreading slowly across her face. Rose expects horror but sadness is all she sees.

She follows Edie up the steps and washes her face in the shadowy bathroom with the grumbling taps, rinses her mouth.

‘You’re as white as a ghost,’ says Edie.

The old woman takes the shawl from the day bed and wraps it around Rose’s shoulders. The midnight dress sways in the shadows, a deep, deep sorrowful blue.

‘I don’t know why I did it,’ says Rose, sobbing.

She’s never cried in front of anyone. It’s a shameful thing. Like standing naked.

‘I saw them up there.’

Edie doesn’t say anything, doesn’t touch the girl, just waits.

‘He’s disgusting. She’s doing this disgusting thing. He doesn’t even love her. He’s just tricking her. She’s so stupid. Really stupid. Like she thinks she’s not but she is and we went to that place, that was our place and he doesn’t even love her and she took him there. I know I shouldn’t have. You can call the police. It’s just it was ruined, that perfect place was ruined.’

Edie moves forward, drags her chair. She takes the hankie from her bra strap and wipes at Rose’s eyes and nose. Smoothes the girl’s hair back. Rose cries with her eyes closed.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Hush hush,’ says Edie, ‘there’s nothing to be sorry for.’

‘But I burnt it down, don’t you understand?’

‘Tell me,’ says Edie.

‘There was this sheet and these matches. And the flames, they turned the rocks orange. All the glass on the ground, was gold. It was your mother’s place.’