White Gardenia (36 page)

‘Anya, you’re crying,’ said Ruselina.

Everybody became quiet and turned to look at me. Irina passed me her handkerchief and grasped my fingers. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Did something upset you, love?’ asked Betty.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head and smiling through my tears. ‘I’m happy, that’s all.’

Ruselina’s dressmaking endeavours got off to a slow start. Many women migrants who had never worked before were taking up dressmaking to supplement
their husband’s wages, and although Ruselina’s needlework was close to perfection, the younger women could work faster. The only kind of dressmaking Ruselina was offered was outwork with factories. Without telling us, she agreed to take ten cocktail dresses a week from a factory in Surry Hills. But the detail in the dresses was so labour-intensive that she had to work from six in the morning until late at night to meet the deadline, and in less than a fortnight she was pale and feeble again. Irina forbade her to take on any more work from the factory, but Ruselina could be stubborn when she wanted to be.

‘I don’t want you to support me when I can do it myself,’ she argued. ‘I want you to save money so you can get back to your singing career.’

It was Betty who took control of the situation.

‘You’ve only been in the country a few weeks, love,’ she told Ruselina. ‘It takes a while to meet people. Dressmaking work will come to you by and by. Anya and I will need new uniforms soon, so why don’t I commission you to do that? And then I think this flat could do with some nice curtains.’

Later, while I was reading the newspaper in the kitchen, I overheard Betty tell Ruselina, ‘You mustn’t get so worried about them. They are young. They will find their own way. The coffee lounge is doing better than ever and you all have a roof over your heads. I’m happy to have you here.’

The following week Betty gave me an afternoon off instead of a morning and I spent it on the verandah, reading a novel called
Seven Poor Men of Sydney
by an Australian writer, Christina Stead. The lady in the bookshop in the Cross had picked it out for me. ‘It’s vivid and powerful,’ she said. ‘A
personal favourite of mine.’ She had chosen well. Working at the coffee lounge was so exhausting that for a while I had lost the energy to read. But the story drew me back to one of my favourite pleasures. I’d intended to read for only an hour and then take a stroll in the Botanic Gardens, but after the first paragraph I was hooked. The language was lyrical but not difficult. The writing swept me along in its stream. Four hours passed and I didn’t even notice. Then for some reason I glanced up and the window of Judith’s studio caught my eye. She had a new dress on display. A sage-coloured gown made of silk and covered in a layer of tulle.

‘Why didn’t I think of that before?’ I asked myself, putting down the book and standing up.

Judith’s face broke into a smile when she opened the door and saw me on the step.

‘Hello, Anya,’ she said, ‘I was wondering when you would show up.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier,’ I said, ‘but a friend arrived to live with us and we have been trying to get her settled in.’

I followed Judith through a tiled entrance into the front room where two gold chaises longues sat on either side of a gilded mirror.

‘Yes, Adam told me. A refined elderly lady, he said.’

‘I came to see if you might have some work for her. She comes from a time when sewing was an elevated form of art.’

‘Ah, that sounds good,’ said Judith. ‘I have enough cutters and sewers at the moment, but it would be good to know that I had someone who could help out during our busy periods. Tell her to come and see me whenever she has a chance.’

I thanked Judith and looked at the crystal vases filled with roses on the mantelpiece. There was a statue of Venus on a bronze stand over by the window. ‘This room is beautiful,’ I said.

‘My fitting room is through here.’ Judith opened a set of saloon doors and showed me a room with white carpet and teardrop chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

Two Louis XV chairs were covered in rose chintz. She pulled aside a pair of gold lamé curtains and we entered a part of the studio with a different atmosphere. There were no curtains on the windows and the afternoon light fell sharply onto the workbenches covered with pincushions and scissors. A group of dressmakers’ dummies were propped at the back of the room, looking as though they were having a committee meeting. It was after five o’clock and Judith’s staff had gone home for the day. The room had the ambiance of an empty church.

‘How about some tea?’ Judith asked, moving towards a kitchenette in the corner. ‘No, let’s have some champagne.’

I watched her set down two glasses on a workbench and twist the cork on the champagne bottle. ‘I can relax better here than I can in the other room,’ she laughed. ‘The front room is all about show. This room is closer to my soul.’

She handed me a glass and the first sip went straight to my head. I hadn’t drunk champagne since the Moscow-Shanghai. In Judith’s studio, those days seemed a lifetime away.

‘Are they your latest designs?’ I asked her, pointing to a rack of dresses in organdie covers.

‘Yes.’ She put down her glass, crossed the room and wheeled the rack towards me. She unzipped one
of the covers to show me a lace dress with cap sleeves and a v-neckline that opened wide at the shoulders. The dress was lined with bronze silk which looked as expensive as the outside of the dress.

‘People are wearing stiff petticoats,’ she said, ‘but I like the material to fall close to the body, so that it drapes over the figure like a waterfall. That’s why I need models with good legs.’

‘The detailing is gorgeous.’ I ran my fingertip over the silver beads on the bodice. My eye caught the price tag. Some Australians would have considered the amount a deposit for a block of land. I remembered I had bought such dresses in Shanghai and not even considered the price. But after all I had been through, my priorities had changed. Still, I couldn’t help but be charmed by the extraordinary dress.

‘I have an Italian woman who does the beading for me and another who does the embroidery.’ Judith put the dress back in its cover and took out another to show me. It was an evening gown with a cowl neck and bust in lavender, an underbust in turquoise and a black skirt with rosettes around the hem. She turned the dress over and showed me the soft bustle at the back. ‘This one’s for a play that will be showing at the Theatre Royal,’ she said, holding the dress against her body. ‘I get a lot of work from the theatre companies and quite a bit from the racing crowd. Both are all about glamour.’

‘Sounds like exciting clientele,’ I said.

Judith nodded. ‘But I’d really like to get society women wearing my clothes because they’re photographed for the papers all the time. And also because they’re snobby about Australian designers.
They still think it’s more prestigious to buy their clothes in London or Paris. But what looks good in Europe doesn’t necessarily translate well here. The old social circle is a tight one though. It’s hard to break in.’

She held out the dress towards me. ‘Do you want to try it on?’

‘I look better in simpler designs,’ I said, putting down my glass.

‘Then I have the dress for you.’ She unzipped another bag and pulled out a dress with a black scooped bodice and a straight white skirt with black piping on the hem. ‘Try this on,’ she said, guiding me to the fitting room. ‘It has matching gloves and a beret. It’s part of my spring collection.’

Judith helped me to unhook my skirt and slipped my sweater onto a padded coathanger. It was the practice of many couturiers to help their customers change their clothes and I was glad I was wearing the new underwear I had bought from Mark Foys a few days earlier. It would have been embarrassing to be seen in the threadbare undergarments I had been wearing since Tubabao.

Judith zipped me into the dress and placed the beret at an angle on my head, then walked around me in circles. ‘You’d make a good model for the collection,’ she said. ‘You’ve got the right aristocratic look.’

The last person who had said I was aristocratic was Dmitri. But Judith made it sound more like a personal quality than a mere asset. ‘An accent in Australia is a disadvantage,’ I said.

‘That all depends on the circle in which you move and how you present yourself.’ Judith gave me a wink. ‘The owners of the top restaurants in this city
are all foreigners. One of my competitors is a Russian woman in Bondi who claims to be a niece of the Tsar. It’s a lie of course, she’s far too young. But everyone laps it up. She tells her clientele what to wear or not to wear with such authority that even some of the society matrons cower in her presence.’

Judith picked up the hem of the dress and smoothed it between her fingers, her mind ticking over. ‘If I can get you seen at the right places wearing my clothes, it might be the boost I need. Will you help me?’

I looked into Judith’s blue eyes. What she was asking me wouldn’t be too difficult. After all I had once been the hostess of Shanghai’s greatest nightclub. And after wearing faded clothes and seconds for so long, it was nice to wear a beautiful dress.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It sounds like fun.’

The sight of my reflection in Judith’s mirror took my breath away. After five fittings, two of which were probably unnecessary, the dress she had created for my ‘debut’ into Australian society was ready. I fingered the cyclamen chiffon gown and smiled at her. The dress had a gathered bodice, boned for support, and spaghetti straps. The flowing skirt stopped just above my ankles. Judith draped the matching wrap over my shoulders and blinked her moist eyes. She could have been a mother dressing her daughter for a wedding.

‘It’s an amazing dress,’ I said, glancing from Judith back to the mirror. It was true. Of all the dresses I had worn in Shanghai, none had been as
feminine or as finely cut as this one Judith had designed for me.

‘It’s been quite a production,’ she laughed, pouring out two glasses of champagne. ‘Here’s to the success of the dress.’ She emptied her glass in three gulps and, when she saw the surprise on my face, added, ‘Better drink up for Dutch courage. Girls of our station in life mustn’t be seen drinking in public.’

I laughed. Betty had told me that in Australia ‘nice girls’ never drank or smoked in public. When I asked Betty about her smoking she squinted: ‘I was a young woman in the 1920s, Anya. I’m an old duck now, I can do what I like.’

‘I thought you wanted me to be a displaced Russian aristocrat,’ I teased Judith. ‘Didn’t you say the one in Bondi drinks like a fish?’

‘You’re right. Forget I said that.’ She checked her own crepe de Chine gown in the mirror. ‘Just be yourself. You’re charming just as you are.’

We heard a motorcar engine come to a stop on the street outside. Judith peeked through the window and waved at a young man in a dinner suit. She opened the door and invited him in, introducing him as Charles Maitland, her date for the evening. Charles had brought her an orchid corsage, which she tied to her wrist. I could see from the way he stared at Judith, and paid scant attention to me or the dress she kept trying to get him to notice, that he was completely taken with her. But I already knew that the feeling wasn’t mutual. Judith had told me that she had chosen Charles because he came from a ‘good’ family and could get us a table at Chequers. Normally the popular Sydney nightclub was democratic and anyone in the appropriate attire could get in, but tonight was the premiere
performance of an American singer, Louise Tricker, and entry was by invitation only. Judith said that the who’s who of Australian society was going to be there, including the racing crowd, theatre and radio stars, and even some of the social elite. Judith hadn’t been able to find me a date sophisticated enough to match the dress, so I was tagging along as her companion.

Charles opened the door of his Oldsmobile for me while Judith held up the hem of my dress. On the way into the city Charles, whose father was a surgeon on Macquarie Street, talked about the upcoming Black and White Ball at the Trocadero. His mother was on the selection committee. Judith had told me all about the ball. It was the biggest social event for elite society and was a chance for recently married women to show off their wedding dresses a second time. There were prizes for the best white and black gowns and she said that many women would have decided on their outfits already. If Charles’s mother was on the selection committee, then Judith was sure to get an invitation; that is, if his mother approved of her. Judith had told me that her parents owned the building in which she had her studio. She lived in the apartment above it and rented out the one on the third floor. Judith’s father was a lawyer with plenty of money, but his father had been a tailor and the family was missing what Judith mysteriously referred to as ‘connections’.

I was uncomfortable knowing that Judith was using Charles. He seemed to be a nice man. But then I was uncomfortable with the idea that his mother might not ‘approve’ of such a charming girl as Judith. In Shanghai, as long as you had money and were willing to spend it freely, you were welcome
anywhere. It was only the closed British circle that worried about family histories and titles. I could see that Australian society was something quite different again, and I was beginning to wonder what I had got myself into.

Chequers nightclub was in Goulburn Street, but unlike the Moscow-Shanghai with its stairs leading upwards, it was at basement level. The minute I put my foot on the staircase, Judith turned around and smiled at me and I knew I was on show. Although several women turned to admire my dress, none of the press photographers took a picture of it. I did, however, overhear one of the reporters say, ‘Hey, that’s not that American starlet, is it?’

‘Don’t worry about the photographers,’ said Judith, linking arms with me. ‘If they don’t know you, they won’t take your picture. Did you see all those women admiring your dress? You’re the belle of the ball.’

The club was filled to capacity. Everywhere I looked I saw silk brocade, chiffon, taffeta, mink and fox fur. I hadn’t seen anything like it since the days of the Moscow-Shanghai. But there was something different about the crowd at Chequers. With their bright chatter and golden good looks, they lacked the darker, hidden layer that one sensed in Shanghailanders. They didn’t seem to be people who were living on the razor’s edge of fortune or ruin. Or so I thought.