Siddon Rock (7 page)

Alistair turned on the main light and opened the small wooden box. In it were items that he had seen in the
Women's Weekly
. He explained in his letters to the manufacturers that he had a business with a small and exclusive clientele for which he required samples of quality make-up, and they always sent back what he requested.

Alistair started with the toenails, and applied
Fire-Engine Red
nail polish, holding the toes apart with small bundles of cottonwool torn from a roll. As the polish dried he applied to his soft and steam-shined face: Max Factor Pancake foundation, colour
Naturelle
, stroked on with a dampened sponge until no natural skin could be seen on face or throat; Lournay Face Powder, colour
Peche
, dusted over the foundation with a large and fluffy powder-puff. Next, he dabbed his fingertip into a small pot of rouge and smudged this below his cheekbone, smoothing it up and out so that the colour blended with no visible demarcation. Then came the final touch – Helena Rubinstein
Deep Velvet
lipstick, best described as a delicious cyclamen with a red background. Alistair usually had trouble with keeping the line of the lip, but this night perfect lips shaped immediately.

Back in the bedroom, by the light of the candles reflecting in the long mirror next to the dressing table, Alistair opened a gold cardboard box that had a handwritten card tucked in the ribbon tying it.
For Allison
it read, and when Alistair felt the sinuous flow of silk on his fingers he
was pleased that she had decided to buy the elegant black panties, matching petticoat and suspender belt that he had made for her during the war. This box had been put aside for her at Meakins' Haberdashery and Ladies & Men's Apparel until she was ready to collect it. Unlike the garments of the
La'Mour
label he had created at that time from cheaper celanese material, these bespoke garments were handmade from quality silk woven from single threads: the feather-light float of the petticoat showed that there was no doubling or crossing of threads together.

Alistair touched the garment to his cheek to feel its exquisite texture, and as he did so he saw a black thread detach from the hem and float towards the covered window. Alistair cautiously opened the blind a little, and knelt down to watch its flight. The thread drifted into the bright night, a fine, black cursive trail against the whiteness of a full moon as it wafted this way and that, before turning towards the coast. He continued to hold the half-slip, expecting it to unravel as the thread grew longer behind the errant strand, but it stayed full and soft in his hands.

Alistair stood at the window watching the thread fly across the Southern Ocean, and then turn north, up the west coast of Africa to Europe – was it to France or Italy? Maybe Spain? He rather hoped the first as he'd like to see Paris, particularly Montmartre, but the thread hovered, coursing this way and that. Suddenly it reared up, as if sniffing the air, and dashed away towards the east.
Of course.
Alistair laughed out loud.
The Silk Road! It's found the Silk Road. It's going home.

Across the deserts and mountains of Asia flew the silken thread – Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal: the images flashed by so fast that Alistair did not have time to identify each one separately – and into China, where it went directly to a city somewhere in the interior. It found a small cottage where a young woman pushed a bobbin through gossamer-fine cross-threads, her hands so fast they became a blur as she wove the silk into fabric. It circled the woman, who did not notice it, then drifted out of the cottage, across the city to a stone building at its edge, and into a room lined with many shelves on which lay bamboo baskets. The thread floated down into one of these with a soft swaying motion, and Alistair lost sight of it. An old woman tended these baskets, checking their contents one by one as she crooned softly in a Chinese dialect, and Alistair heard her lullaby:

As Alistair stood at the window holding the petticoat in his hands sadness touched him and he envied the garment's completeness.

So here it is
, Alistair said to himself,
Allison's undies are made by a grub in China.

Alistair rolled black nylons up his legs and fastened them into the suspender belt. He looked up and caught sight of himself in the mirror.
Allison really likes quality things, doesn't she?
he said to the image.
Such a very special person. It's so good that I'm able to find the very best for her, through the shop.
A small smile quirked at the corners of his lips, and he sang as he tucked his genitals, and eased into the panties, half-slip and camisole:

From the very back of the wardrobe Alistair took two frocks: a black
crêpe de chine
with bugle beads edging the neckline, and a deep red rayon printed with pale blue flowers. Alistair shook them out and looked at them critically, comparing them with the elegant silver-grey Dior creation depicted on the wall of the fitting room of Meakins' Haberdashery and Ladies & Men's Apparel.
I think we should make Allison a new dress
, he said with a little sigh.
This red thing is only fit for the rag-bag, and this –
he patted the other disparagingly –
is really outdated. But it'll have to do for tonight.

Alistair unfastened a row of buttons and stepped into the frock. He smoothed the skirt over his plump hips,
slipped his feet into high-heeled pumps and screwed gold and pearl earrings onto reddening earlobes. Lastly, he snuffed all but one candle, leaving the room in a flickering twilight with dark shadows hanging at the corners. Then he took the hatbox from the wardrobe shelf and opened it.

Alistair knew the hat well. He had, after all, commissioned its making by the French milliners, Etablissements Werlé, Créateur de chapeaux féminins. Only the best for the best, Alistair had thought at the time, and had a vision of a small, head-hugging suit hat of crushed velvet with full netting over the face; black, to go with either the black frock or the red. He was surprised then, as he sketched the hat, that the drawing on the paper in front of him was nothing at all like his original idea. The drawing had a mind of its own and no matter where he placed the marks on the paper, the same design appeared: a flat-crowned hat with a wide, drooping brim. He threw the sheet of paper in the bin and started again, annoyed that his drawing skill had left him; but the same hat was drawn. Eventually he shrugged.
Must be the one she wants
, he thought, and mailed it off to Paris together with a covering letter detailing instructions as to delivery.

Some months later a plain brown box with French stamps arrived at the Siddon Rock post office. Alistair's fingers itched to open the parcel, but he contained his excitement until he got home that evening, tearing away the wrapping the minute he shut the door behind him. Inside the brown packaging was the trademark silver and maroon striped hatbox of Ets. Werlé he lifted the lid and reverently opened the tissue paper packing.

Taking the hat from its box he was amazed, for this was not the design he had sent.
How strange
, he said out loud.
How most peculiar that a firm with such a reputation would send the wrong hat.

It was indeed not the pattern Alistair had sent: this hat had a high sloping crown, with a deep brim turned up at one side and held in place by a large stick-pin. The pin itself had a simple decorative shape at its top that suggested the stylised wings of a butterfly, which were encrusted with gold stones. When the pin was thrust through to hold the brim against the crown, the wings lay flat along the turn-up. But it was the material of the hat that was a puzzlement to Alistair, for it was nothing he had ever seen before. Neither felt nor velvet, the material was firm but luxuriously soft, and as he held it up to the rather dull light in his kitchen, the colour alternated from a rich maroon-red to black, and he was quite unable to determine which was the main colour. It was a glorious concoction, no doubt, but it was not what Alistair had asked for; it was not what he had told Allison he had ordered, and he wondered what she would think of it. He put it back in its box, ready to take to the shop for her to make a decision.

Now, Alistair carried the hat and a small handbag with a chain handle to the chair on the verandah. There he sat with them on his lap.

Around him the sounds of Siddon Rock were magnified by the stillness of the night, and confused as to direction. The dull thump of the power station – not noticed in the everyday course of things – was a rhythmic
background to the clinking of dishes being washed and the snuffles and occasional bark of dogs in the street. Now and then the faint cry of a plover drifted in from the paddocks, or sudden music from a radio blasted out as a station was changed. A motorbike roared into town and Alistair wondered if Fatman Aberline was going to the pub, and why wasn't he with his cousin Macha on this, her first night home. He, Alistair, would have been caring for her, making sure she was welcomed home with warmth and love.

Slowly, slowly the sounds of the town diminished. The dinner dishes were dried and put away, the radio turned off as the owner went to bed, the motorbike noisily left town, and the thump of the power station decreased to a soft hum and then silence as Abe Simmons shut it down for the night. Now all that was heard was a single mourning plover and an occasional dying fall of the yelp-howl of a dingo.

Slowly, slowly Alistair Meakins stood up, walked easily to the mirror at the side of the kitchen door, and put on the hat. He spun so that the skirt of the frock swirled in dark waves at his knees, then he smiled at the mirror.
Hello Allison
, he said,
that is a glorious hat. And look where the pin sits, those wings are just perfect at the side front. Are you ready, darling? Tonight we become brave.

Allison stepped off the verandah onto hard earth that held the day's heat, walking lightly, nearly on tiptoe, to stop the clink of high heels on the gravelly ground. At the gate in the back fence she slid the bolt, looked both ways and then walked up the back lane. She turned into the side street, stopped at the post office corner, and drew in a shaky
breath.
Come on, girl
, she said.
If Macha Connor can do it, so can you.
She adjusted her hat slightly downwards and stepped around the corner into Wickton Street.

Allison expected only the beam of the bright moon in the street. The wavering light that met her made her press back against the wall of the post office, waiting for some clue to tell her what had happened. There was no sound and no-one in the street and, when the pounding panic that caught her breathing quietened, Allison realised that Abe Simmons had forgotten to turn off the street lights when he closed down the generator. Now they were pulsating from dim to bright as they pulled the power from the storage batteries.

She hesitated, wondering if she should go back, but gathered herself.
Don't rush
, she said to herself.
Just one step after another. There's no-one around, so just take your time.

Allison crept past the darkened post office and the closed window of the telephone exchange, dark now and silent of ringing bells. Through the thick brick walls she felt the restless sleep of Tommy Hinks dreaming of fame and fortune. She knew that Tommy saved the extra money he got for working the night shift, waiting to move to the excitement of the capital.

At Barber's Butchery & Bakery, a cursory glance showed a display cabinet empty of meat. At the back of the shop she could see the ghostly shape of a cloth-covered tray that she knew was the next day's bread: already the cloth was rising as the yeast worked its magic.

More confident now, Allison paused to look in the window of Meakins' Haberdashery and Ladies & Men's Apparel. There she saw floral cotton frocks on two plaster models standing in one corner, and a thigh-length coat with a swinging back over a long, straight skirt on another that stood alone. Allison adjusted her hat slightly in the reflection and swung her skirt.
Don't worry, m'dears
, she said,
you're perfect for the town.

She smiled and walked on down the empty street with the pulsing light. Her tentative walk became a slight sway, and then a swing as she went past the Farmers' Co-op, past the pub and the State and Farmers' Bank until she reached the Shire Hall and Council Offices at the end of the main street. Any further and she would be on the path that led past the silo and up the rock. Here she paused, and the flickering light behind her glowed more brightly, reflecting in the tall frosted glass doors of the hall. Allison swung neatly on one foot – a perfect turn – and paused for a moment.

Now the street was longer and wider with shifting shadows at either side changing the shapes of Wickton Street's shops and buildings. From Meakins' Haberdashery and Ladies' & Men's Apparel a strong, steady glow brightened the central area of the street from the shops to the war memorial, which trembled, appearing shorter for a moment then returning to its normal shape. Allison could swear there was water cascading from the top, and the pepper trees at the edge of the railway station-yard looked like willows drooping over a tranquil river.