The Midnight Dress(74)

‘Maybe you will.’

Still she doesn’t cry.

‘Bring back some fabric,’ says Edie. ‘Some buttons. Paris is a city of buttons, I’ve heard.’

‘Who said I’m going to Paris?’ says Rose.

‘I just pictured it, that’s all.’

She won’t come back. She’ll catch the bus that night from the service station at the end of town, after opening the yellow purse and counting out the notes for her fare.

She’ll lean against the window and watch the cane fields and stars, multiplied by her tears. She’ll see the mountain go. Her mountain. It will move behind her and she will crane her neck until it is gone.





Finishing Threads





He says, ‘Pearl,’ whispers it, louder then, when he grabs for the dress.

She says, ‘Mr Lovell. Don’t.’

It’s clumsy, disorganised; he wants only to turn her, to face him, reaching out like that, his hands full of night, the dress, then night again. He’s lunging, has got her, she’s falling, he’s falling with her. A trillion stars glittering in a swathe.

‘How do I look?’ she says to Rose.

Tell me I’m here, is what she means.

They’re playing ‘Edelweiss’ again. I won’t show you more, except maybe this, the part where she’s running, see her feet, the way they are hitting the newly dried-off grass, thudding down, toward the park again, the way they are touching the earth, touching the earth, touching the earth and then lifting off. She’s running but the ground has fallen away beneath her, she’s running but her feet are only touching air. She can see all the girls, all the rainbow-coloured girls, snake lines of them, dancing in the streets, she’s calling them but it’s nothing, just a breath. She’s opening up her arms like wings, the midnight dress, it’s floating out behind her as she goes above the trees.





It’s another wet season when the man finally arrives. The gutters are filled to overflowing, the creek riding high across the Falconer land, its brown back visible through the cane. The main street is almost empty when the bus stops and he steps down, water up to the ankle of his huge sandshoe, filling his brand-new Singaporean socks. He has the letter she wrote to him in his pocket.

Pattie Kelly still has Crystal Corner. She does a roaring trade with the tourists, who step into her shop from the buses, right next door to the takeaway. It’s perfect, they say, magical. And there is something special about the place. It’s not so shiny now, not glitzy, the way it used to be. It’s dustier, crammed full; she just can’t stop ordering saris, jade elephants, wrought-iron candlestick holders. But it’s not really the merchandise, it’s something about the way it feels in there. It encloses you, it holds you, sings you a lullaby.

Pattie welcomes everyone: ‘Hello, darling,’ she says softly, as though you are entering a church. It’s the same to everyone, even the sort that don’t look like they would like that type of endearment applied to them. The sort that bristles. She works harder on them, fusses over them, reads their aura: ‘You, sir, have an aura the colour of an azure sea. Now, don’t look at me like that, I can see these things, always have, always will. Did you think you were something different, did you? Something darker, or was it something lighter perhaps?’

When the letter first arrived he was married with three daughters of his own. They lived in a small apartment, two bedrooms, off Spiridonovka. There was no picture of the Eiffel Tower. The letter was such a strange thing, infinitely mysterious, the way it dropped through the letter slot and changed his life. It was written in rainbow-coloured letters, and it was so joyous a thing that sometimes, in the years that followed, he took it out and held it and cried openly.

It said, My name is Pearl Kelly and I live in Australia. If your name is Bear Orlov I think my mother might have met you in Paris on the night of July the 23rd, 1970. She was dancing at the Crazy Horse. She would have been small, dark-haired, very pretty, you said she looked like an Arabian princess. You would have known her as Pattie or Patricia. I am enclosing my address and my phone number. If you are my father I would love more than anything to meet you one day. Love Pearlie xxx

In Crystal Corner there isn’t a shrine to Pearl, the way you might expect. There is just one photo, behind the counter, of her in the tangerine dress, the way the night began. Not a single flower adorns her hair, only the star pins. She’s not laughing, or even smiling; it’s like she’s thinking, thinking about something. She has that dreamy Pearl look. Not many people comment on the photo. It isn’t large, it doesn’t stand out, it’s just a photo of a pretty girl.

Bear Orlov wipes his feet on the mat provided, and the shop door opens to a cascade of tinkling bells. He fills the door, the sheer size of him. Pattie Kelly begins to say hello, darling . . . stops. And so it begins.