The Seamstress Read online

  The Seamstress

  University of Western Australia Press New Writing Series

  In 2005, its seventieth year of publishing outstanding academic and general titles, UWA Press launched a New Writing series, with a focus on creative writing. We are sourcing novels and shorter prose works from postgraduate creative writing programs in universities across Australia, which for the last three decades have produced exciting new works from emerging and established writers. By introducing this series, we are recognising the role of Australian universities in nurturing and supporting writers, and contributing to the continuing production of Australian writing.

  Series editor Terri-ann White is actively involved in the literary culture of Australia: as a writer, bookseller, editor and award judge. Her novel Finding Theodore and Brina (2001) is studied in university courses in Spain, the United States and Australia. She published a collection of stories, Night and Day, in 1994, has edited anthologies and been published widely. She is currently director of both UWA Press and a cross-disciplinary research centre at The University of Western Australia.

  Titles in series

  A New Map of the Universe, Annabel Smith

  Cusp, Josephine Wilson

  The Concerto Inn, Jo Gardiner

  The Seamstress, Geraldine Wooller

  The Seamstress

  Geraldine Wooller

  University of Western Australia Press

  University of Western Australia Press

  Crawley, Western Australia 6009

  www.uwapress.uwa.edu.au

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing

  for the purpose of private study, research, criticism

  or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act

  1968, no part may be reproduced by any process

  without written permission. Enquiries should be

  made to the publisher.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Copyright © Geraldine Wooller 2007

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Wooller, Geraldine.

  The seamstress.

  ISBN 978 1 920694 93 7 (pbk.).

  ISBN 1 920694 93 5 (pbk.).

  I. Title

  A823.4

  Cover photographs: hands holding tape measure

  © Martin Tothill/Photonica;

  shears on embroidered fabric

  © Shelly Strazis/UpperCut Images

  Photograph of the author by

  Lynette Whitfield-King

  Consultant editor Amanda Curtin

  Designed by Robyn Mundy

  Typeset in 10 pt Janson by Lasertype

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  ISBN: 9781742580364 (ePub format)

  For my mother

  Prologue

  The men have taken the fridge away. Among other things. The phone is disconnected? Yes, good. No one will ring now. Half empty, the shabby look of the interior is strikingly evident. Cracks in the wall the landlord wouldn’t admit. Peeling paint. Carpet pretty bad. A loose tile to be fixed—superglue needed there. Oh Willa.

  But who would have thought to find such squalor? Not I, my dear. Talking to my other self, the one who asks awkward questions, and being droll, to get through it.

  Where is Fiona, anyway? Busy drumming up trade. Can’t blame her for that. You have to have bread on the table even in retirement. Especially in. Besides, Fiona had looked at me and said, ‘Get industrial cleaners in, hire the professionals!’

  As though heavy-duty vacuum cleaners was what it was all about. As if I was being a martyr in doing it myself.

  ‘It’s not the cleaning,’ I’d said, ‘it’s the sorting. Only I can do it.’

  She’d understood then. There are a number of things Fee simply won’t comprehend these days. Mention old age if you must, but she won’t have a bar of it. It’s all right to be a thief or a rapist or a murderer, an alcoholic, a drug addict, a moral imbecile, a transvestite, a Hottentot, a hunchback, a wall-eyed lesbian or a hooker. But serious ageing is to be avoided at all costs.

  ‘You’ve got to keep up your skills,’ she said the other day, with a sanctimonious little jerk of the head that would brook no reasonable discussion.

  These broad, sweeping thoughts on Fiona are unfair, of course, and reek of hyperbole. But it has been an arduous day and I am off-balance. Weary. Bone weary. How many times up and down these two flights of stairs today—twenty-seven? Something like that. Six loads in my little car. The ladies at the St Vincent de Paul blessed me many times over. I’ve never had any objection to being blessed or told someone would pray for me. You just never know. In fact, I could have ended as one of these embittered ex-Catholics but for the steadfast tolerance I saw in Fiona. She respects everyone. Unless, that is, they cross or vilify her. Then she and I verbally tear them to shreds. Cut them to ribbons. Cast doubt on their work, their life, their integrity, their worth. Having got it off our dual chests, we mentally wipe our hands of them, brew some coffee and settle down to talk about the Middle East or the parlous state of the Catholic Church.

  ‘If ever I feel like praying,’ she said once, in a serious moment, ‘it’s at the beginning of a meal. We must surely be aware,’ she went on, ‘of the privileged lives we lead in the community, people like you and me, in this country, and of the certainty of never going without our daily bread.’

  And where is Willa? Willa is in hospital, getting her blood analysed and her head examined for recurring headaches. There is a determined conspiracy afoot concerning Willa, led by me. She has an inkling of what I’m doing and she doesn’t like it. But there’s no one else she can trust.

  Do you still say your prayers? I asked her the other day, an exceptionally personal question she has not felt the need to ask me for some decades. But she gravely answered yes, she did. And did she pray for me? Of course, she said.

  The worst, no, second most alarming thing that faces me is the grubby state of her bed linen. What had I been thinking? I am ready to take the blame; I usually took away her towels and sheets for washing. Therefore, why hadn’t I seen to it? Because she told fibs about the need and I thankfully let it go at that. It’s true I had a suspicion that standards were going downhill. From the cardigans and slacks I’d gently wrest from her for drycleaning. But I knew, and she did too, that it was impossible for me to bossily make my way to her wardrobe and check her clothes. Her manner and her look held me in check. I was raised on looks; a few words, or no words at all, conveyed the message. My rapport with Willa hasn’t altered its nature over time.

  Even more astonishing are the cigarettes. I thought she had given it up. Ah-hah! Cleverly concealed caches in odd nooks throughout the flat. As if I’d care that she’d started again. Did she think I would? Ashtrays under the lounge chairs, under the sofa and the telephone table. Not overflowing, just three or four temperate butts. She might have been ashamed of a rekindled weakness. She might have thought I’d be disappointed in her. Hard to tell. I’ll keep them for her, I decide, for a rainy day. Just the thing when you’re functioning on one lung.

  One more room to go, her second bedroom—the sewing room. This feels more like private territory, going through her sewing machine with its bobbins and thimbles and worn, soft tape measure that has taken my measure on countless occasions.

  ‘Turn around slowly, love. Don’t be so bored.’

  ‘This way?’

  ‘Mmphh.’ Her mouth half full of pins. ‘You’re going to be as tall as Dad, at this rate.’

  ‘I hope not.’

  Childish vests, school blazers, sports tunics and, later, sequined dance frocks, all created by Willa from the floor up, sitting cross-legged, wearing patience l
ike a piece of gossamer across her shoulders.

  There they are, the tools of her painstaking trade. And as well, the tiny instruments to mend her machine whenever it ‘played up’. I examine all of these implements with regret, then trudge out to the other room and get another cardboard box. I knock over a box of photographs and look down at my young father and mother sitting on a back step, their bodies close together. He has his arm heavily over her shoulders in an attitude of ownership. She doesn’t mind. He looks strong, sensual; she is dimpled, slim, wearing a short skirt that comes above the knees, showing movie-star legs. They are clearly in love. Stuck to the back of this photograph, as if she won’t let go of them, is one of Marlene, plump and comely, the barmaid-cum-bookkeeper who did all the accounts for Dad’s business later on, when Willa was sent away to hospital. But Marlene was devoted to my mother and me, not to my father. Even he said it. I never saw her with a boyfriend. Years later I pieced together scraps of talk, and remembering Marlene’s quiet devotion towards us I said, ‘Do you think Marlene was a little in love with you, Willa?’

  By the way she nodded her head with barely a hesitation, I saw that she had considered it.

  ‘Were you bothered by it?’

  ‘Of course not. There are worse things in the world than being loved by someone.’

  After a while she went on: ‘Marlene was a great girl, very generous to you and me. And your father was always late with her wages.’

  The other fallen snapshot shows a line of a dozen or so young women, in their thirties, some in their twenties, one behind the other, their hands on the waist of the one in front. They are in dressing-gowns. It is a picture of my mother’s stay in a sanatorium. Dressed otherwise—say, in bathing costumes—they couldn’t have looked prettier or more glamorous, I think, surrounded by a ward festooned with palms. They had never looked sick to me, the girls in this photo. But some of them died there.

  With my father, on the bus, or in the car of one of his friends, I would visit my mother at this place in the country every few weeks. Once, I went with Dad’s mate to the restaurant for lunch while Dad remained in the ward Mum shared with seven others. I never knew what she’d asked him, but when we returned he was shouting at her, waving his arms about.

  ‘It’ll be paid!’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! If you’d leave off this bloody spine-bashing and get yourself home to give me a hand.’

  My eight-year-old heart knew that other visitors didn’t shout at the patients, and I saw my strong mother finally fall back on her pillows, eyes wet and trying to stay wide open. The ward had gone silent. My father. Dressed in his beautiful suit with his lack of restraint, his temper making unattractive a face that had been made for laughter and the telling of funny stories.

  Too many memories. I stow the photos back in the box. But I gaze once more at the one of the women in their dressing-gowns. The pop song that gave its name to the theme for the decorations was ‘Down Among the Sheltering Palms’, sung by Guy Lombardo and his Canadian band. I start to sing it now in a low voice, as I pack and heave the last boxes out of the sewing room.

  Today is petering out like the end of a story. I’m not yet to see the solitary scene for what it is, the beginning of another.

  It’s all nuns and prostitutes. The girls are at it again, skirts up to their knickers, painted faces, smelling of quite good perfume, tiny square shoulder bags that perhaps hold a lipstick, a comb and tissues. Condoms? They’re all long-legged, for this generation is tall and the girls are getting younger, it seems. But perhaps they were always sixteen?

  The road has been quiet for a while after the last public outcry, but the heat is off for the moment and it’s business again as usual, at competitive prices.

  Ellen strolls past, the modern pro with her mobile phone in use, like any businesswoman, and I, watering the flowers in my front garden, nod to the girl.

  ‘Warm day,’ I offer.

  ‘I’ll say,’ Ellen replies, pausing in her step, dropping all pretence of talking on her phone.

  ‘They keeping you busy?’ I ask.

  ‘Flat out,’ says Ellen. She’s not joking.

  We had got friendly one day when I was walking the dog. Ellen was attending to the burying of a dead dove in the park. With a couple of broad sticks she was digging a shallow hole for the broken creature. I stopped to help her while Ellen’s colleague sat on the low wall, smoking a cigarette, giving advice.

  I saw Ellen was a soft-hearted girl. Once I saw her standing stock-still with her back to the road, ignoring any likely customers, facing one of the flash new houses (new homes, gush the real estate pages), holding a posy of flowers in her hands with her nose buried in them: a frozen still of innocence.

  But last week she was in a bad way. At five in the afternoon I spied her from the opposite side of the street, walking slowly, eyes staring straight ahead. I crossed the road to approach. Ellen, unseeing, stopped and her knees began to buckle. Her fine backside lowered itself to the ground as if she was going to sit on an invisible low seat, or on the pavement if necessary.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. The girl turned quickly, eyes flashing and sharp. Seeing me, the contours of her body loosened.

  ‘Oh yeah, just feel very thirsty. Had a late night last night,’ she added for propriety’s sake. As if to say: Girls will be girls, had a bit to drink.

  ‘Do you want a glass of water?’

  ‘I’ll get some from the fountain in the park, thanks. My throat’s dry.’

  I was reluctant to leave her like that. But who knows what’s happening? Her pimp could have been lurking nearby and it wasn’t for me to intrude too much. One settles for the platitude in such times.

  ‘You take care of yourself,’ I said, like a mother.

  The girl nodded. ‘Thanks for your concern,’ she said smiling, with the grace of someone who had been to the best school in town. She had a good voice.

  I sighed and walked home. ‘What a life,’ I said to my dog.

  I myself walk the streets, though not for money but vanity and, more than anything else, to thwart the ageing process. Some people accept it with equanimity, as if they are not surprised by the body’s treachery. Well, some lessons you have to learn for yourself and they are the hardest ones; they take longer to absorb. No one ever advises: Look, you’re going to lose precious people, one by one, and you’ll wish you’d loved them better; you’ll be chastened in middle age, mortified by your past shabby conduct. Also, you’ll be best to develop your mental faculties because good looks will fall away in front of your very eyes each morning. The lithe figure will capriciously abandon you. Joints will lose their suppleness. But listen: there is the other side of despair; you’ll catch another woman’s eyes on a late winter’s morning and there will be a complete understanding between you. Or you’ll hear a snatch of song that makes your heart tilt…

  Each day at six I set out in my sandshoes, swiftly marching along to the main street where I check my flat stomach in the shop windows, head up, hup hup one two, one two, before I turn the corner to the broad avenue of Ficus hilli beauties along one side. They have been enthusiastically ‘pruned’ right through their middle upper branches to make way for overhead electric wires, giving them a bad-haircut look.

  Meanwhile the old convent stands its pious ground, not too far from some thrown-away syringes of down-and-out youth. A quick look through the wrought-iron gate towards the statue of Our Lady and a swift smothering of the nostalgia that grips. At the corner, coming towards the church to catch six o’clock Mass are two women in their fifties, wearing jeans, as middle-aged people now do. In fact, this pair are more like sixty and there’s something in their gait that tells you they have never been used to swinging along the street in trousers. Their walk is careful and patient and at odds with their clothes. They are walking in Christ. That’s it, they are nuns, posing as Us! I think with delight, as I head towards the large park with the lakes and the pelicans.

 
There was a time when I was going to join them—Enter, as Catholics used to say.

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is thirty years since my last confession. I am guilty of not believing in you and your ilk. Though I don’t include the nuns in that. I have sinned on and off all these years in a more or less venial capacity; however, I have had murderous thoughts about a number of friends and enemies. People tell me I’ve always been precise and punctual; indeed, I’ve been ragged about it all my adult life. Now I am not only aware of this but proud of it. Is this absurd pride a sin—middle age made manifest? There’s the old mania I’m stuck with, of examining conscience and considering the afflicted (at this moment, thinking of those needles in the gutter). I once scoffed at others’ addictions but fear I’m addicted to being perpetually worried about something or other. And certainly addicted to love. For this year past I have only been able to overcome my love for and separation from A. by inventing somebody else; someone entirely wrong. I’m foolish and have been so all through my life; taken silly risks, taken wrong turnings, ill judged situations. I wouldn’t change my foolishness.

  This propensity towards Entering, as it turned out, was not a matter of faith in my case: I was simply hooked on the Sisterhood. But hankering after the religious life is something I’ll have to guard against. Also I must beware of bearing grievances, hauling around bad grace.

  My daily ritual of early walking when the streets are pure is both a consolation and a reprieve, staving off the years. The walkers in the park are of a singular ilk: youngsters like Olympians, striding along purposefully—in pairs, some of them—taking up all the space on the path, not slackening their pace for anyone. I know, though they don’t yet, that you can’t continue to claim the right of way through others’ space as if you’re the only visible being on earth, trampling through the leaves under the big trees, oblivious of the ducks and their chicks. Time won’t let you get away with it, oh, no. Relentlessly it ticks on, until you’re made to slow down, look around a little, see the rest of humankind. And try to believe that everyone is only doing their best.