The Midnight Dress(70)

‘Right,’ says Glass.

He wants to be angry. It’s his first instinct, but the anger blooms and evaporates when he hears her footsteps.

She’s thin. Rose Lovell. Porcelain white.

She holds one hand across her body, resting on her other arm.

Her face has been polished bright by tears.

‘Are you Rose Lovell?’ he says.

‘Yes, yes I am.’





They swap dresses beside the toilet block in the park, the satiny night against their skin. They laugh in the dark. Pearl holds Rose and Rose holds Pearl in return, hands on forearms, heads together.

‘But why do you want to wear my dress?’ says Rose.

‘Because it’s magical, you know it is, he won’t be able to resist me. Everyone was just awe-struck when you walked onto the stage.’

‘I thought they were laughing at me.’

‘They were speechless,’ says Pearl.

‘You have to help me undo it at the back,’ says Rose.

Fingers and shadows: Rose stands undressed until Pearl releases her own and steps out of it.

‘Redheads should never wear tangerine,’ Rose deadpans.

‘It’s only for a little while, half an hour. Go and kiss Murray some more and I’ll be back.’

‘What’s Jonah’s surprise?’

‘I think he has a new car, only he hasn’t got a license. He told me to meet him in the mill yards.’

It seems so ordinary to Rose that the whole magical night almost dissolves into a puff of smoke.

‘Gee, don’t die of astonishment and excitement.’

‘Ruby Heart Rose,’ says Pearl, ‘maybe we could all go to the bay. You and Murray could come too. Wait in the park and I’ll be back soon.’

She can’t imagine Murray in Jonah’s car. Murray with his newly blue hair, his avant-garde moustache, his bad jokes.

‘Okay,’ Rose says.

‘How do I look?’ asks Pearl.

The midnight dress is perfect on her, as though it were made for her all along. She touches the bodice, looks down at her arms in amazement, and smiles at Rose.

‘See you soon,’ she says, not waiting for the answer, running through the park into the night.

Patrick Lovell is standing by a door in the Cane Cutter’s Hotel, leaning there, feeling sorry for himself, when he sees Rose across the road in the park. His girl, Rose. Rose, who he’s brought up all by himself, without any help, so many bloody days and nights. His Rose, who he has showed the world to, or the country at least. His Rose. The town has changed her, he thinks. His thankless Rose, who wouldn’t even stop in the street to talk to him.

He wants to tell her something. It begins like this: You can’t just walk away from me, I love you, Rose, you’re my girl, Rose, but you can’t just act this way, like you think you can sew up a dress and turn into someone else, it doesn’t work like this.

Rose, what if your mother could see you now?

He’s not sure, but he has to say something. She has to understand something. She just has to understand it.

He pushes off from the doorframe, staggers in a diagonal to a veranda post. Regains his legs quickly. There are so many people in the street. He didn’t know this many people lived in the crappy backwater. Someone slaps him on the back; it’s a man from the banana farm. Colin? Frank? Archie? His face is the same as any other man he’s ever worked with: broad, gleaming with sweat, smoke streaming from his nostrils.

‘We’re going to the Imperial,’ Archie says.

‘Yeah, yeah, mate, got something to do, back in a while,’ he says, waving him off like a horsefly.

When he gets to the ornate gates of the park he can’t see her, then catches just a glimpse of her moving way ahead through the trees. He squints, it’s her all right, that dress with the huge skirt, the colour of midnight. She’ll be meeting a bloke. The bloke she’s been lying about. She’ll be meeting him in there at the back of the mill yards. Some secret rendezvous. He’ll say, Hello mate, how you doing, I’m the dad, nice to meet you. He’ll think of something funny to say. He needs to say something. What is it he wants to say?

He steps quietly across the lawn.

She has stopped still in the middle of the open space. She’s standing beneath the moon. He knows the way Rose stands when she’s thinking. She holds her arms a certain way, fingers together, as though she’s about to recite a poem to a small audience. She’s so beautiful. That’s what he’s thinking when she seems to sense him there. Beautiful, is what he’s thinking, when she turns to him.





Gathering Stitch





This is the morning after again, so bright with sunlight you’ll have to cover your eyes.

‘Elaine,’ he says.

‘Don’t “Elaine” me,’ Elaine replies, but she has taken all his sketchbooks and paints anyway, because there’s still a chance.

Rose turns on her side, head pounding. The night swims in there, with her eyes closed: the wet lawn, the torn clouds, the jagged strip of sky. She tries to listen for their conversation outside, but they’ve gone quiet. Perhaps he’s leaning forward, touching the locket where Mrs Lamond keeps Mr Lamond close to her heart. Her father has always been a trespasser.