The Dressmaker (27 page)

Electrical wire looped through studs and beams, along which sat cotton bobs and reels. In the kitchen area the disused oven stored used teacups, plates and bowls.

She leaned close to the mirror and peered at herself. She saw a thin, tired country-ruddy face with red-rimmed eyes. She picked up the can of kerosene at her feet. ‘The night is long that never finds the day,’ she said, and started splashing.

• • •

Inside the police station, Banquo pondered his big scene, his tongue searching for the end of his nose. He too was haloed by a sun shaft which caught the sheen of the ornamental rose on his patent leather baroque shoes. He clasped his sword handle as though to draw and bellowed,

‘And when we have our naked frailties hid,

That suffer in exposure, let us meet,

And question this most bloody piece of work …’

The hot and bothered baroques pushed the bus backwards into the middle of the road, then adjusted their frothy hats, picked up their skirts and minced to the rear of the bus to push again. It banged, shuddered, and chugged away, oily black smoke wafting.

When Sergeant Farrat heard the explosion he breathed deeply and grabbed his ostrich-trimmed felt hat. He called out, ‘Time to go.’

The inspector emerged from his cell in his muddied hessian rags holding a large wooden spoon. ‘Think I should use this Horry? For effect?’

‘Please yourself,’ said the sergeant.

The bus spluttered to a halt in front of Banquo and witch number three, outside the police station. ‘Good morrow,’ cried Banquo, sweeping and bowing largely then shoving his hat down hard on his platinum ringlets. No one smiled back.

‘Carburettor?’ asked the inspector and climbed aboard. He sat with the other witches.

‘Bit of muck got into the fuel I think, but we’ll get there,’ said Bobby.

‘Well, you go on then,’ said Banquo, ‘I’d better follow in the police car, it runs perfectly.’

‘I’m Lady Macbeth now,’ said Mona, ‘Gertrude is, um …’

‘Yes,’ said Banquo and placed his hat over his heart. ‘Terrible news.’ William looked out the window.

The bus rumbled away from Banquo, who stood waving his plume. Behind him, up on The Hill, a lonely curl of blue smoke wafted from Tilly’s chimney.

Tilly untied the cow and slapped her big bony hip, sending her hurrying down The Hill with her bell clanging and her teats swinging. Tilly passed through the empty town for the last time. As she walked she untied tethered dogs, opened chook yard gates and liberated all Bobby Pickett’s pets. She removed collars from sheep tied to old railway sleepers on vacant blocks and sent little girls’ ponies trotting off to the plains.

Sergeant Farrat gathered his script and admired his reflection one more time then walked to his car. The keys were usually on the floor under the steering wheel, but they’d gone. He patted his thigh then realised he wasn’t wearing his uniform. Behind him, blue-grey sheets of smoke streamed from beneath Tilly’s rusty corrugated roof, oozing through the budding blue vines covering her house.

Tilly Dunnage sat on her portable Singer sewing machine on the platform at the railway station, watching grey steam clouds chuffing towards her from the golden horizon. For her travelling outfit, she had chosen close-fitting paper-bag pants made of brilliant blue Matelasse and tied at the waist with a red silk rope. Her blouse was delicate and simple, expertly cut from a yard and a half of white nun’s veiling sent from Spain. She checked her watch. Right on time. She winked at the galah in the cage beside her suitcase. Behind them, a blue fog drifted to cover Dungatar.

Sergeant Farrat heard the train in the distance. It arrived and stopped, then blew its whistle and pulled away. He waved his plumed hat across his face to dismiss the smoke. He frowned, sniffed, swung around and looked up. His translucent skin purpled.

‘My frocks!’ he cried. ‘Oh my Lord, oh Tilly …’ He dropped his hat and slapped his cheeks. The members of the fire brigade were heading for the stage at the Winyerp town hall.

He decided to run. For the first time in forty years he bolted, heading for Tilly’s burning house, screaming, heat scorching his throat.

At the top of The Hill he staggered to a heaving, wet-red standstill to watch through dripping sweat and running pancake foundation the flames fan past his patent leather high heels, across the dry weeds and stems to the brown grass, then down The Hill towards town. Fire billowed from the doors and windows of the leaning cottage and tiny strands of smoke squirted from holes in the corrugated iron roof. A nice effect, chiffon tulle, something Margot Fonteyn might have worn … then he collapsed, prone, where the myrtle patch once bloomed between the oleander stand and the rhubarb patch. Perhaps if he’d changed his shoes he might have made it to the water tap, but it would have been of no use, for Tilly had shut the water off.

• • •

Outside the Winyerp hall the cast of
Macbeth
spilled from the bus and stood on the footpath listening to the loud applause. Inside, the curtain had finally fallen on the last encore for the cast of
A Streetcar Named Desire.
The applause went on and on.

When they piled into the foyer the audience paid little attention to the
Macbeth
cast, posing along the back wall near the toilets. They shrieked and laughed about Blanche and Stanley. The canny inspector sensed the taut nerves and low morale and said, ‘We’re the best, we’ll win.’

‘You wouldn’t bloody know,’ snarled Fred.

H.M.S. Pinafore
went for a sweltering hour while the Dungatar cast waited, surrounded by glasses, cups and vases stuffed with flowers with cards attached that said, ‘Congratulations Itheca’, or ‘Break a leg Winyerp’. They listened to the singing sailors and the audience clapping along. Lesley tapped his foot. Mona stood on it. Their pancake began to run, the glue which held eyelashes melted and their costumes became stained with sweat.

‘Very effective,’ said Lesley, ‘they were like that you know. They didn’t have washing machines and they never bathed.’

‘Some people still don’t think they need to wash,’ said Faith and waved her fan at Lois.

‘Some people don’t think they have to honour their marriage vows either,’ said Nancy.

‘At least I have a preference for men, some sick people in this town –’

‘That’s enough!’ cried Mona.

‘Getting a bit uppity aren’t you, Mona?’ said Purl.

‘Now now,’ said William.

They counted eleven foot-stomping encores for
H.M.S. Pinafore
. When the din subsided Lady Macbeth led her cast onto the stage. The set-dismantler sang, ‘I-yam the ve-ry mo-del of a mo-dern ma-jor gen-er-ral …’

‘Ahem,’ she said, glaring, then handed him the stage plan.

‘We’re going to do a quick run through, then our limbering and stretching exercises but first we’ll do our vocal warm-ups.’ They stood in a circle and sang ‘Three Blind Mice’ in rounds. Lesley insisted they end their warm-up with a group hug then they retreated to ‘focus’.

The curtain was due to go up and Banquo had not yet arrived. Lesley clapped his hands together and said, ‘Attention please.’ Then Mona said, ‘We have no Banquo so Lesley will be Banquo.’

‘He doesn’t know the lines –’ said William.

‘I’ve taped them to the column next to the doorway,’ said Mona, ‘he’ll read them.’

‘But –’

‘He can do it,’ said Mona, ‘he’s an actor.’

The audience – cast members’ husbands and wives, mothers and children from Winyerp, Itheca and Dun-gatar – sat in the seats to the rear of the hall near the exit sign. The judges sat in the first row behind a trestle table. The curtain went up.

An hour or so later, in Act 1, Scene V, Mona writhed on the canopied bed;

‘… that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements. Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here …’

She masturbated through her petticoats, she gasped and sobbed and thrashed. The audience wriggled, chairs creaked, the Act ended and the lights dimmed.

When they came up thirteen seconds later for Act 2, Banquo and Fleance swept onto the stage to find their audience had vanished. Only the four judges remained, leaning together, whispering. A broad matronly woman in a straw hat stood and said, ‘That will be all,’ then they clattered out together without a backwards glance. The cast emerged from the wings to watch them disappear into the refreshment room for supper and presentations.

T
hey said very little on the journey home. They drank watermelon firewater from the cup awarded to them for Best Costume, and lolled moistly in the rattling bus.

‘Sergeant Farrat will be pleased,’ said Mona.

‘We should have done a musical,’ said Nancy looking back at Mona. ‘Who picked Shakespeare?’

‘It was the only play in the library,’ said Muriel.

‘Anyway, no one can sing,’ said Ruth.

‘No one can act!’ snapped Faith.

Late in the afternoon the bus and all the cars of the townspeople stopped outside the hall, or at least where the hall once stood. The cast climbed slowly down from the bus and stood looking about them. Everything was black and smoking – the entire town had been razed. A few smouldering trees remained, and a telephone pole here, a brick chimney there. Anxious pet dogs sat where front gates once swung and chooks scratched between the twisted water tanks and iron roofs littering the black landscape. The cast stood in the wafting smoke, hankies to their eyes and noses, trying to block out the smell of burned rubber, scorched timber, paint, cars and curtains. They had been burned out of existence. Nothing remained, except Tilly Dunnage’s chimney. Mona pointed to a figure sitting beside it, moving his arm up and down, waving.

They walked in a pack to the main road where they paused to check for cars before crossing, then along the charcoal footpath, past the creaking shell of Pratts store where tin cans had exploded and cloth bolts still glowed. Reginald went to check his butcher’s saw but found only a molten abstract sculpture. When they got to the top of The Hill they stood ankle deep in the hot charred clumps looking down to where their homes had once stood, and saw only mounds of smoking, grey-black coal and rubble. The goalposts at the footy ground were spent matchsticks lying on the black oval, and the willows that once crowded the creek bend were big, bare scaffolds, dead and curled.

Sergeant Farrat, singed and soot-smudged, sat on the chimney hearth, slapping a blackened, withered branch up and down between his blistered patent leather shoes.

‘What happened?’ asked the inspector.

‘There’s been a fire.’ Sergeant Farrat slapped his twig up and down, up and down.

‘My school,’ sobbed Miss Dimm. They all started to cry, first slowly and quietly then increasing in volume. They groaned and rocked, bawled and howled, their faces red and screwed and their mouths agape, like terrified children lost in a crowd. They were homeless and heartbroken, gazing at the smouldering trail splayed like fingers on a black glove. It had burned north as far as the cemetery, then stopped at the town’s firebreak.

‘Well,’ said Lois, ‘we’ve all been down to Rufe and gave over our money for our insurance, haven’t we?’

They began to calm, nodding, ‘Yes,’ wiping away their tears and rubbing their noses on their sleeves.

Ruth looked horrified. ‘I gave it to Tilly for the soldiers’ costumes, remember?’

The people of Dungatar gazed at Ruth. They stood numbly on the black hill, the air around them still and hot, wisps of smoke crawling up their stockings and filtering through their ribboned skirts, the charred wood planks of Tilly’s house behind them softly clicking and spatting. The sergeant started to giggle hysterically.

‘What will we do now?’ asked Fred.

‘Have a drink,’ said Scotty, and drank. The inspector reached for the bottle.

‘I can see Mum’s house from up here,’ said Mona and smiled slyly at her brother. He grinned and bounced on the balls of his feet. The people of Dungatar looked out over the ruined town to the homestead, standing whole and perfect, untouched on the slight rise in the distance, its corrugated roof shimmering red in the setting sun.

‘Good old fart hill,’ said William.

‘Let’s go and see mother,’ said Mona.

They moved silently as one towards Windswept Crest, a motley bunch in very effective Baroque costumes.