The Midnight Dress(62)

‘And yours,’ says Edie.

‘I’ve never had a home,’ says Rose, wiping her nose. ‘You don’t understand, I’ve never had a home.’

At first, Edie says nothing to that. She wipes Rose’s eyes again, carefully, holds the girl’s face in her hands, thinking. The storm touches the house, rattles the louvres and casements.

‘This is what my mother always said to me when I was feeling blue. Sew some chain stitch and it will cheer you up. Or some daisies. That brightens everything. If my father was going from room to room, spitting and stamping and thumping the walls because his head ached, she said, quickly, “Sit beside me and finish these buttonholes.” There is nothing as calming as buttonhole stitch, everything so neatly enclosed. Did you know, once my father grabbed me in the kitchen and said, ‘Edith, my eye was eaten by a crow, what do you think of that?’ My mother said, when he had let me go, ‘Don’t think about it, Edie. Help me with these pin tucks. Look at me. Don’t think of it. He’s lying. Don’t think of it again.’

‘I can’t remember my mother,’ says Rose.

‘At all?’ says Edie.

‘Only pieces,’ says Rose.

‘You can collect up all the pieces,’ says Edie, as though it’s that simple. Like collecting blue quandongs. Or red leaves. Or passionfruit flowers.

‘How can you miss someone you don’t even remember?’ says Rose, spilling fresh tears.

‘I missed my old father,’ says Edie. ‘The one I never knew. The one before the war.’

‘My mother had freckles,’ says Rose. ‘And small hands.’

‘That’s a beginning.’

‘She had long hair, crinkled, I don’t know. I know that just from a photo, I think. She put me to bed.’

Edie waits.

‘She put me to bed.’

‘Yes,’ says Edie.

‘She shouldn’t have put me to bed. Just like that.’

Dogs barking in the street, the smell of wet grass. Dishes. The sound of dishes. The clink of glass.

‘I fell asleep. She had a sad mouth. She had a sad mouth even when she was happy. That’s how I remember it. She drew eyes. She was really good at drawing eyes. She hated doing the washing up. Someone took me down to the beach afterward, I don’t even know who it was, and put me down on the sand. People had left flowers there. The flowers were all wrong. They were like cake icing flowers. Artificial. My mother wouldn’t have liked them. I knew that. Even if I was small.’

‘What would she have liked?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing. Just the sky. Not flowers. I’d like to see her again. Even just for one minute. Even one minute would be enough. I’d take anything.’

‘Yes,’ says Edie; she finds the hankie again and gives it to Rose.

She stands up, knees creaking, goes to the kitchen dresser and takes a teacup from the top shelf. She puts it down in front of Rose.

‘While we’re putting ghosts to rest, what do you think I should do with this?’ says Edie.

Rose looks into the crazed teacup at the haunted glass eye.

‘Smash it,’ says Rose. ‘With a hammer.’

Edie laughs. The laugh makes Rose laugh.

Rose carries the teacup outside and Edie finds the hammer beneath the house. The first hit and the thing jumps away into the grass, which makes them laugh even more, Edie bending over to catch her breath when she’s finished.

‘Here, I’ll hold it.’

‘But I’ll hit your fingers,’ says Rose.

The blue eye looks up at them wildly.

‘I’ll let it go just in time.’

Rose swings the hammer, smashes the thing into a thousand pieces, a small colourful pile on the bottom step.

‘What should we do with it?’ asks Rose.

‘What do you think?’

‘Maybe just scatter it,’ says Rose. ‘Somewhere nice. He deserves that.’

They bend down on the grass then and pick up the pieces, placing them into Edie’s cupped palm.

‘It’s lighter. I feel better. Maybe one day you could take the pieces back up to the hut,’ says Edie, looking up at the mountain, and again Rose sees the sadness spread across her face. ‘I’ll keep them until then.’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Rose.

Edie shakes her head. ‘I know.’





Plain Running Stitch





Here’s the morning after the Harvest Parade and Patrick Lovell is packing up. He’s moving, moving, moving. He folds up the deckchairs and shoves them under the corner lounge. He puts the plates and cutlery away, locks the drawers for the trip. His cigarette drops clods of ash on the floor. He pulls down the kitchen venetians. Stores the kettle, the frying pan. The gas stove is folded and placed under his bed. The sketchbooks, he flips through, sobbing, the way he wept against the caravan in the first light.

He stinks of drink. It’s oozing from his pores. It’s in his tears.

There are his banana-picking clothes. His very own knife. His snake gaiters. He saw a brown, two and half metres long, just a few days ago. It was passing, unhurried, through the field, then it coiled itself tight in a space at the base of a banana palm. It filled the space like a ribbon, squeezed itself in, squeezed and squeezed until all that showed was a finger-sized glint of copper. Holding his sketchbooks and his cutting stuff, this is what he thinks about.