The Midnight Dress(69)

The mayoress propels Rose forward onto the stage with one hand on her back. Rose holds up her skirt like an old-fashioned lady, because it’s too long, much longer than all the other girls’ dresses. She totters down the runway.

There are one hundred, two hundred, three hundred faces in the crowd, she can’t tell exactly, a moving, blurring rush of faces, all wearing the same strange fixed smile. They are all identically, horribly the same person until suddenly, like a lightbulb exploding, a face jumps out at her from the sea. It’s Paul Rendell. He’s throwing his head back, laughing, wiping his eyes.

When Rose makes it to the end of the catwalk there is a politer round of applause. In the quiet, a man from the top of the bar sings out, ‘Why don’t you give us a smile, love?’ Rose tries. She smiles. The smile sticks her lip to her top teeth, she looks like a grimacing bear, or that’s what she thinks. Someone, somewhere, laughs again. She tries to find Paul Rendell’s face again but can’t; it’s lost in the swell. She turns and walks back past the mayoress.

‘Good work, honey . . . Now, here is Maxine Singh in a green off-the-shoulder design with an interesting rainbow sequin border. Maxine likes scuba diving and wants to be fashion designer.’

There are tears, Rose feels them, a huge painful lump of them behind her eyes and another in her throat.

Vanessa says, ‘Don’t worry, Rosie.’

Rose says, ‘I’m not.’

Two tears spill down her cheeks.

‘You look pretty,’ says Vanessa. ‘Really, you do. I was only joking.’

Another two spill and follow the same path. Rose doesn’t hear what Vanessa says next, because Pearl has gone down the runway.

‘This is Pearl Kelly wearing a tangerine affair in chiffon,’ says the mayoress. ‘Pearl loves French and wants to live in Paris.’

Rose moves through the crowd, careful not to meet anyone’s eyes. The mayoress is announcing a short break to choose the Harvest Queen and princesses. Rose passes the food stands and the balloon stands and the church craft bazaar. She’ll just keep walking, she thinks, she’ll walk all the way back to Paradise. She’ll strip out of the dress and throw it from the rocks into the sea. She’ll swim naked out into the ocean. She’ll never look back.

Someone touches her shoulder.

‘Rose,’ Murray says. His blue hair is back again.

‘Oh,’ says Rose, setting her face into a mask.

It looks like he’s trying to think of some stupid voice to put on; he’s trying really hard but nothing comes.

‘Where are you going?’ he says.

‘Just for a walk.’

‘Can I come?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘I have refreshments,’ he says and opens his badly fitting tuxedo jacket.

In the inside pocket there is a hipflask.

‘Wodka,’ he says in a bad Russian accent.

He walks beside her through the crowd toward the park. They go to the rotunda and sit side by side on a bench. He unscrews the cap and gives her some. She swallows it and it burns.

‘I knew you were only kidding me about not drinking,’ he says.

Another mouthful.

‘You look so beautiful,’ he says.

‘Don’t say that,’ Rose says.

‘But I mean it.’

From where they lie they can hear who has been chosen as the Harvest Queen, to wear the tinfoil crown and carry the orb and sceptre. It isn’t Vanessa or Pearl but a senior girl, as it always has been. But Vanessa and Pearl are both chosen to be one of seven princesses, to wear the tinfoil coronets and walk in the procession to the church door to lay down the offering of cane.

‘Should I be watching this strange cultural event?’ asks Rose.

‘Don’t go,’ says Murray. ‘It is really very boring.’

He kisses her on the lips again. He has a thin prickle of a moustache that he’s trying to cultivate, and it makes her laugh.

‘What?’ he whispers.

‘Nothing,’ she says.

The vodka is burning inside her. Her lips are numb but she can feel it in her belly. It makes her feel taller and stronger and prettier. He moves her hair from her neck and kisses her there.

After a while she presses her hands against his chest and pushes him away. ‘Have you got any more vodka?’

‘Only a little bit,’ he says, offering it to her lips. ‘You like?’

She doesn’t know what to say. She’s in love with it. Instantaneously, miraculously, head over heels.





Hidden Stitch





‘Well?’ says Glass, when the old lady has nothing else to add.

The house is speaking around them, creaking. It’s agreeing, disagreeing, silverfish swim through paper, possums turn in their sleep. Updrafts of its strange perfume reach him: rising mould, dead flowers, rotting fabric, pages crumbling. The light in that place, in that long back kitchen – yellow walls, blue birds flying, shadows falling across their faces – he’ll take it with him when he leaves. The light and those blue-grey shadows. Each time he closes his eyes he’ll return there.

‘She’s here,’ says Edie. ‘All the time, but you didn’t ask for her.’

‘Rose,’ she says, more loudly, calling into the long dark hallway.