The Dressmaker (7 page)

‘Myrtle Dunnage,’ said Purl.

‘That’d be Tilly,’ said Teddy and winked at Purl.

‘She inherit any of her mother’s loose ways?’ said the drover.

Teddy pulled his clenched fists from his pockets and thrust out his chest.

‘Steady on steady on,’ said Fred.

‘Boys!’ said Purl.

‘I hear she’s a good looking sheila,’ said the shearer. Purl put a beer in front of him and took his money. ‘I suppose you could say that,’ she said and sniffed.

‘She is,’ said Teddy and grinned.

‘More like our Purl, is she?’ said the drover and looked at her with a lewd expression.

Fred looked the drover in the eye, ‘MY Purl,’ he said and screwed a bar cloth over the sink until it squeaked.

‘She’s yours
now
,’ said the shearer, and finished his beer. The drinkers turned their backs to him and his glass sat empty in front of him. Teddy moved to stand behind the shearer, his fists low but ready.

‘I remember her!’ said Reginald and snapped his fingers, ‘That’s Mad Molly’s bastard girl. At school we used to –’

‘Shut it Reg!’ Teddy leapt back and raised his fists, dancing. The men turned.

The shearer sprang, ‘Hello, bit of a dark past here as well, better drop in for a chat with Beula on my way home …’

Teddy was on the shearer fast as a bullet, his singlet gathered at his Adam’s apple and his shoulders pinned to the tiles with Teddy’s knees, a fist poised.

‘STOP,’ shrilled Purl. ‘Teddy, you’re our full forward.’

Teddy paused.

‘Might be worth your while to keep your mouth shut from here on in I’d say,’ said Fred and pointed to the shearer, then to the old drover.

The shearer spoke. ‘Might be worth Teddy’s while to get an early night. All I have to do is sneeze and I’d send him through the glass door there.’ Reg and the other men stepped forward, circling the shearer.

‘Please Teddy,’ said Purl, tearfully.

Teddy stood and dusted himself off. The shearer stood and looked down on him. ‘Not much chance I’ll get another beer here tonight – may as well go home to bed.’ They watched him saunter to the door, put on his hat and disappear into the dark. All eyes turned to Teddy.

‘I’ll just finish me beer,’ he said showing his palms in surrrender. He walked home through the rolling fog. Sergeant Farrat, cruising past in his police car, slowed, but Teddy waved him on. Later he lay in his bed staring through the caravan window, pondering the square yellow glow from Tilly’s window up on The Hill.

• • •

The Dungatar supporters suffered four long quarters of a close and dirty battle with Winyerp, urging their warriors on with bloodcurdling oaths and well-founded threats. Towards the end of the fourth quarter the players were exhausted, wet and heaving for breath, blood seeping from their mud-caked limbs. Only Bobby Pickett remained clean – the crease still in his shorts and his guernsey dry – but somehow he’d lost a front tooth.

With thirteen seconds left of time-on, Winyerp kicked a goal to even the score. Teddy McSwiney, miles out of his position, went under the pack at the ball-up, scooped up the ball as it fell between the leaping legs and ran with it. He shrugged off reaching hands as though he was covered in hot Vaseline, bounced his way towards the four tall poles and kicked a wobbly left footer that slipped off the side of his boot to bounce low and dribble towards the goalposts. It toppled through for a point as the final siren sounded, the red, green and mud-coloured pack lunging through the posts over it.

Dungatar 11-11-77

Winyerp 11-10-76

The sound of blaring car horns lifted the sky and the crowd screamed with lust, revenge, joy, hate and elation. The earth shook to the sound of clapping and stamping while the tight bleeding wave of sportsmen raged back across the oval like a boiling clump of centipedes into the arms of the waiting fans. No team was ever happier, no town ever noisier. As the sun set the club song amplified over the plains of Dungatar and the entire town bounced down to the Station Hotel.

Penny bangers shuddered the doorjambs and skyrockets flew, setting crops alight two miles away. Purl was dancing behind her bar in white shorts and a striped football guernsey, fishnet stockings and football boots laced all the way up to her knees. Fred Bundle wore a mud-stained goal umpire’s coat, and two white flags adorned with tinsel and flower-shaped cellophane shot roofwards from a red and blue beanie. He looked like a small elk at Christmas. The rabble were in various stages of undress and inebriation – embracing indiscriminately, singing, dancing onto the footpath or swinging down from the balcony on the unfurled fire hydrant hose. Some chose a quiet corner to knit, chat, breast-feed. Reginald – a meat cleaver wedged in his hat – played the fiddle, while Faithful O’Brien stood by her microphone bantering with three young women in the corner – the McSwiney girls wearing rouge, their stocking tops and pettycoat lace draped over their crossed thighs. They had flowers in their hair – blue roses – and were smoking cigarettes and giggling. The sergeant danced on the bar wearing top hat, tails and tap shoes. Skinny Scotty Pullit thrust his watermelon firewater at everyone, saying, ‘Suck this, special drop.’ Teddy took a sip. His lips turned into a big O and the fire burned all the way down into his gullet. He reached for more. Septimus Crescant was handing out leaflets about his Flat Earth Society. He encountered William looking fearful with his arms crossed against Gertrude, who was beaming closely down on him. Elsbeth sat at his side, displeased, with Mona beside her bursting to dance but afraid. William took a leaflet then eased away from Gertrude, moving with Septimus to the bar. When they arrived Septimus took his hard hat off and threw it on the green-marbled linoleum. The top of his head was flat, his dome straight enough to set a bowl of jelly on. ‘Very sturdy,’ he said, stepping onto the hat.

‘Why do you wear it?’

‘There was an accident when I was a babe in arms – a fall. I’m no good at heights at all. I moved here because of the terrain and because it’s a long way from the edge. It’s a fraction above sea level as well, so we won’t be flooded when the end comes – the water will run away from us down to the edge. And of course there’s The Hill.’

‘The end?’

A dart whistled past the men. It landed between Robert Menzies’ eyes. ‘A toast!’ called Sergeant Farrat. ‘To today’s second place getters in the art of balling by foot. To Winyerp.’

There was silence while everyone swallowed.

‘And now a proud toast for our noble, brave and victorious sportsmen, the Dungatar First Football Team.’ Then there was a deafening noise, whistling and applause. The team were lifted onto shoulders and marched around the bar, with the club song sung again, and again, and again.

When Beula Harridene passed the hotel just before dawn the party was still in progress. Bleary people were strewn about the footpath in pockets and piles, bushes shimmered to the sound of frottage, men were being led home by the hand and Scotty Pullit sat upright at the bar, asleep. Purl stretched alongside him, also asleep. Fred sat next to them sipping a hot cup of Horlicks.

R
uth Dimm leaned against the wheel guard of her post office van in the morning sun and squinted along the railway tracks. Hamish O’Brien walked down the platform carrying a dripping watering can, drenching the petunias, which were bunched like frilly socks on the veranda posts. In the distance, a long tooooooot sounded. He stopped, checked his fob watch then stared off towards the soft sounds, chuff chuff chuff chuff. The ten past nine Thomson and Company SAR raced towards Dungatar at a top speed of 32 mph, all steam and clatter and thumping.

It drew towards the station, the long connecting rods slowing beside the platform, the pumping pistons easing, steam ballooning white and grey, then the giant black engine screeched, halted, rumbled and sighed. The flag-man waved, Hamish blew his whistle and the guard threw the great canvas bags of mail to land at Ruth’s feet. Next he dragged a cowering liver-coloured kelpie pup on a lead over to Ruth. It had a tag stuck to its collar that said, ‘Please give me a drink.’

‘This fer Bobby Pickett?’ asked Hamish.

‘Yes,’ Ruth was rubbing the puppy’s velvet ears, ‘from Nancy.’

‘Hope it’s not as scared of sheep as it is of trains,’ said the guard and slid a tea-chest from his hand cart onto the gravel next to the van. Hamish and Ruth looked down at it. It was addressed to Miss Tilly Dunnage, Dungatar, Australia, in big, red letters.

The train pulled away and they watched it until it was a puff of grey smoke on the horizon. Hamish turned his beefy face to Ruth. Tears sat sideways in the cream coloured folds beneath his blue eyes. He shoved his pipe between his teeth and said, ‘It’s the diesel taking over you see …’

‘I know Hamish, I know …’ said Ruth, ‘… progress.’ She patted his shoulder.

‘Damn progress, there’s naught that’s poetic about diesel or electric. Who needs speed?’

‘Farmers? passengers?’

‘To hell with the blooming passengers. It’s got naught to do with them either.’

• • •

Because of the forthcoming footballers’ dance and the Spring Race meeting the mailbags were filled with parcels – Myers catalogues, new frocks, materials and hats – but Ruth concentrated on the tea-chest with the red address. Its contents were scattered about her feet. Small parcels, calico-wrapped, tied and glued, wax-sealed tins and wads of folded material, that Ruth had never seen before. There were recipes and pictures of foreign food, photographs of thin, elegant ladies and angular men, mannequins smiling in front of famous landmarks of Europe. There were postcards from Paris written in French, opened letters postmarked Tangiers and Brazil, addressed to someone else in Paris, but now sent on for Tilly to read. Ruth found some unusual buttons and matching clasps in a jar, some odd-shaped buckles and yards and yards of fine lace in a wrapped bundle post-marked Brussels, and some books from America –
The Town and The City
, and one by someone called Hemingway. Ruth read a page or two of the Hemingway but found no romance so tossed it aside and removed the tape securing the lid on a small tin before prising it open. She pressed the tip of her long nose into the dried grey-green herb inside. It was sticky, sweet-smelling. She replaced the lid. Next she unscrewed the top from a jar that held a lump of moist brown-black glue-like matter. She scratched at its surface and tasted it. It smelled as it tasted, like molten grass. There was a small jar of fine greyish powder, bitter-smelly, and an old Milo tin containing what looked like dried mud. Someone had scrawled, ‘Mix with warm water’ on the green label.

She held the button jar against her grey post office shirt and dropped it into her jacket pocket, then carried the Milo tin to her cupboard to hide it.

• • •

They arrived at the base of The Hill, tired and laden. Molly carried on her lap a pile of groceries, a curtain rod and some material from Pratts. Tilly stood fanning herself with her straw hat. A large, piebald half-draft loped from around the corner dragging a four-wheeled flat-bed cart and Teddy McSwiney perched on the corner, the reins looped loosely over his fists. ‘Whoa-boy,’ he said. The horse stopped beside Tilly and Molly. It sniffed at Tilly’s hat, then sighed.

‘Want a lift?’ said Teddy.

‘No thank you,’ said Tilly.

Teddy hopped down from the cart and swept Molly Dunnage from her chariot, bundles and all. He placed her neatly on the trailer in prime position.

‘This cart’s got the shit of Dungatar spilt all over it,’ said Molly. Teddy pushed back his hat and heaved the wheelchair up onto the cart. He grinned at Tilly and slapped the boards behind Molly. She looked at his flat man’s hand, resting in a dusty brown smear.

‘Leg up?’ he said.

Tilly turned to walk up The Hill.

‘Safer for Molly if you ride with her.’

‘It’d suit her if I fell off,’ said Molly.

Teddy leaned in close to Molly and said, ‘I’m not surprised.’ Tilly placed two hands behind her on the cart and heaved her neat bottom onto the boards beside her mother. Teddy clicked and lightly flipped the reins over the horse’s back. They lurched forward, Molly’s eyes fixed on the warm round equine rump folding and bobbing two feet from her sensible lace-ups. The horse lifted and swished its tail, whipping at hovering flies, the fine sharp strands of tail hair prickling her shins. He smelled delicious, like hot grass and greasy sweat.

Teddy flicked the reins again. ‘We won the grand final, did you hear?’

‘Yes,’ said Tilly.

‘What’s the horse’s name?’ said Molly.

‘Graham.’

‘Ridiculous.’

They rolled resolutely up, sunshine on their faces and the smell of horse and night cart pungent. Graham stopped at the gatepost in front of the tilted brown house. Tilly headed for the clothes line and Teddy scooped up Molly again and bore her to the front veranda. She put her arms around his neck and fluttered her sparse, grey eyelashes at him. ‘I’ve got a packet of Iced Vo Vos – care for a cuppa?’

‘How could I resist?’

They sat in silence in the kitchen, the Vo Vos pink and neat on Molly’s best plate.

Molly poured the spilt tea from her saucer into her cup. ‘I like normal tea. Don’t you?’

Teddy looked into his cup. ‘Normal tea?’

‘She made normal tea for you – she makes me drink tea made from grass and roots. Have another bicky.’

‘No thanks Molly, better leave some for Tilly.’

‘Oh she won’t eat them. She eats birdseed and fruit and other things she has sent from the city. She gets things from overseas too, from places I’ve never heard of. She mixes things up – potions – says they’re herbs, “remedial”, and she pretends to be an arty type, so why would she want to stay here?’

‘Arty types need space to create.’ He drained his tea, wiped his mouth on his sleeve and leaned back.

‘You’re just trying to sound as if you understand her.’

‘Girls like her need a bloke like me about.’

Molly shook her head, ‘I don’t want her. She used to think I was her mother but I said to her, “Any mother of yours could only live in a coven,”’ then she took her teeth out and put them on her saucer. Tilly came inside and dumped a pile of stiff linen on the table between the conspirators. It smelled of dry sunshine. Molly lifted her teeth to Tilly, ‘Rinse those for me,’ she said and looked apologetically at Teddy, ‘It’s the coconut see.’ Tilly ran her mother’s teeth under the tap.