The Seamstress Read online

  ‘You look tired, Willa.’ Fiona’s regard for Willa was constant. ‘Got a bad headache?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ Willa winked and downed a Bex powder with her tea.

  These two knew each other’s worth. Fiona, ten years younger, could spot the signs of someone else’s disaffection, the invisible weight around the neck. Ben without work again.

  The loss of Eve, this past year, had thrown us into perplexity. Willa and I knew the other was suffering but we couldn’t yet raise the subject. It wasn’t clear at the time, but the pain was assuaged, gradually, by gaining Fiona. She asked us about Eve, lighting up a smoke and leaning on her elbow, listening and learning with her eyes welling up for someone she hadn’t even known, all concentration. That taboo of silence was broken, thanks to Fiona, who dared speak the unspeakable.

  Uncanny, how we’re thrown not just a lifeline but a prize while we’re deep in distress, wondering how we’ll ever recover. With Fiona we won first prize.

  ‘What we want,’ Marian was saying, ‘is to get all our furniture into the house before March.’

  ‘A new house full of new furniture before you’re even married?’ asked Fiona, including Willa in her eye-rolling. Over-doing it a bit.

  ‘My friend down the road,’ said Molly Binks, stuffing another cake into her mouth, ‘got her wardrobes, washing machine, the lot from here, from this store. Cost them an arm and a leg but tell you what, she runs a beautiful home; you could eat your lamingtons off the floor.’

  Eyeing Marian’s, as she finished.

  ‘And who the hell wants to eat their lamingtons off the floor?’ asked Fiona, at her reasonable best.

  Only Willa and I smiled. But for the most part Willa kept her own counsel, maintained an outer composure, looking as though she had nothing to do with these people. Like a bloody countess, my father said. When she was dancing, as well, swaying and swooping, she was in a class of her own.

  All those dances. Not just Willa, either; all the aunts and uncles stepped it out in old-style Viennese waltzes, the Pride of Erin, Maxina, Gypsy Tap, Boston Two Step, not to mention the Scottish ones: the Lancers, the Alberts, reels and polkas. And Dad would waltz me around the kitchen, almost tripping on the old lino he never bothered to fix or replace. Then he and Mum would whirl around the kitchen table until he started to burlesque it and get cheeky, folding his hand around her backside with me nearby wide-eyed, and she’d push him away, laughing. She let me go to ballet classes at school for as long as she could afford it, where I worried a lot about the line of my fingers and wrists.

  With dancing and its natural ally, music, the lifeblood of the clan, how did that not sustain them later, particularly those four vital family members of mine? How is it that they crumpled, leaving me adrift?

  The difference between our family and everyone else was that Willa’s folks, and therefore mine, looked as though they were enjoying themselves. There was not a dour Scot among them. When I look now at the olds down at the local hall, doing their flirtation barn dance, they look most dogged about it. By age fifteen, I swept around the place—the lounge, the backyard—swaying like I’d seen my mother at parties. I claimed my own favourites—the slow foxtrot, the quickstep, the tango—and in time graduated to the Latin numbers, pushing my feet into the floor to the rhythms of the rumba, samba and the droom-droom-cha-cha-cha. A certain handsome, suave Jeremy won my heart, so that I even ignored his body odour. That habit of overlooking a serious defect in a smooth exterior would reap a bitter regret later. Young men like Jeremy, without an atom of self-doubt, were at odds with my own nature and I embraced them as the aliens they were. I’ve always liked foreigners. And strange food. It used to amuse Willa.

  ‘Let’s get some of that stinky cheese; it’s Danish,’ I’d say.

  ‘Oh well, it must be good if it comes from overseas,’ Willa said, raising her eyebrows.

  When we weren’t dancing or reliving Willa’s past wins in local competitions—before she was married—we were singing. Popular songs and jazz and semi-classical airs. Despite all this, order and peace were the rule in our house when Dad wasn’t around. Willa often had a headache, so I learned to take my pleasures quietly. Still do. People banging doors, tattooing their foot on the seat, even talking over others or clattering dishes—all that isn’t simply annoying, it’s unfathomable.

  Fiona upped sticks and, with her four girls—including Annie, robbed of oxygen at birth and therefore slower—caught a bus across the country to a new city. Her marriage was over. It was both his fault and hers and there was no going back, that was plain to her. Without qualifications or any job prospects she somehow knew that things would work out.

  It was not obvious why Fiona should be so hopeful. The clothes on their backs and just a few in the two suitcases, some photographs and her determination were what she would build on. It wasn’t as if they were in a depression, she said. There was plenty of work and she would take any job going. The blue eyes had depths of a faith that was by no means religious; no one could have been more secular. Profane was too strong for someone who now and then broke all the rules of propriety but who nevertheless had an inner light of goodness.

  Her oldest girl Jill was in high school, the twins would settle in all right at local primary classes, so the only snag was caring for Annie. Special education was needed for the rotund, smiling child whose natural beauty and wit had been nearly strangled out of her fourteen years ago.

  ‘I have to put her into care at the mental hospital,’ she told Willa.

  ‘Surely there’s somewhere better? Annie’s not in that category.’

  Fiona shrugged, pressing the tobacco in shape, rolling a makings, as they were cheaper. ‘She needs regular medication for the fits, someone to keep an eye on her, supervise her reading and writing. I’m bloody worn out working here Monday to Saturday.’

  It wasn’t anger; more a reasonable kind of mild swearing that working women assumed. Lifting heavy stock as the men did to load into lorries bestowed language privileges.

  ‘It’s a swine, isn’t it?’ said Willa, blowing out smoke in turn and looking at a wall for answers. It seemed everyone was looking for answers.

  ‘My eldest will be doing her Leaving year after Christmas. I thought I’d go to Technical College and try for it myself.’

  ‘Do your Leaving?’

  ‘Why not? It will take a couple of years but it could lead to a better job, in the public service. Something that doesn’t break my back.’

  They stubbed out and rose to get back to work.

  ‘Good luck to you, Fee; if anyone can do it, you will.’

  And they touched each other lightly, a little movement of the head from Willa, almost a wink, as though they’d hatched a conspiracy.

  As she drove Annie back to the hospital she stole sidelong looks at her second-born. The short seizures had been rather more frequent this weekend than usual. They’d all had a great time today. The girls were always good with Annie. If any boyfriend couldn’t handle having her in their midst then he was given the flick.

  Annie was putting on a lot of weight these days. After lunch she had settled her copious frame into a cane chair that was straining under the test of time and abuse. It slowly, sorrowfully, fell apart and Annie had come down with it—whump.

  There was a brief silence. Jill was the first to hoot at the spectacle: Annie’s generous bulk, still wedged in the seat, the chair legs buckled in defeat. The others followed—gales of laughter with Annie joining in, pink and flustered, as one of the twins helped her up.

  ‘Oh, shut up, yous!’ she grinned.

  ‘Come on, love, are you all right?’ smiled Fiona, coming from the kitchen, flour all over her hands.

  Stories recounted by Annie of rough treatment in her ward were more than likely true; the girl hadn’t the imagination, Fiona said, to make up scenes of aggression, with staff and patients taking turns at bullying whoever was the most vulnerable, the slowest.

  At least, thought the mother with
a rueful twist of her mouth, Annie could take care of herself in the verbal department. The language she brought home every Saturday was proof enough.

  They passed a large hoarding of Captain Cook.

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Annie.

  ‘He’s an Englishman called James Cook who came here a long time ago.’

  ‘What’d he come here for?’

  ‘Oh, looking for a new country. And when he found Australia he put up a flag and called us British. We’re celebrating two hundred years of his arrival.’

  They drove on for a while, then stopped at traffic lights.

  ‘Has he made any LPs?’ said Annie.

  Fiona took a deep breath. Did Captain James Cook make any long-playing records. She started out explaining it again, in simpler language.

  It had been a long day for Fiona, one of fulfilment. Work had been fiendishly heavy, with scores of boxes to be fetched, checked off and made ready for the salesmen. Then someone brought in the morning newspaper with early results of the Leaving exams. She’d scored high distinctions in all subjects. ‘You’re even brighter than your kids!’ Jo would say to her later, with a hug, while Willa would give her the victory thumb-up sign.

  The senior manager said they should have a couple of drinks, to celebrate. It was a Friday evening and staff were occasionally asked to start their weekend with a short snort, as he put it. Fiona was a stayer at any time but this was her day. She’d now go to university and study who-knows? Anthropology? Psychology? Economics? The world was open to her.

  After two hours of drinks it looked like drying up. Everyone had trickled off.

  ‘One for the road?’ said the manager.

  ‘Why not?’ said Fiona. They had been drinking whisky and were on to beer chasers. ‘I’ve missed my bus, anyhow,’ she added.

  ‘Ar, I’ll give you a lift,’ he said. ‘How do you like it?’ Pouring the lager, looking at her.

  ‘Ah, just as it comes,’ she countered.

  As they drove through the outer suburbs where she lived, he looked for a lonely place to park for a bit, somewhere they could have a good time in peace and quiet. Fiona was dewy-eyed. It had been quite a while. She liked this bloke. Liked the cut of his jib, she told herself. He’d said during the course of the evening that his wife was pretty frigid; it was hardly a marriage at all, really. That was the trouble with a lot of married women, Fiona thought. They took their men for granted.

  He found a spot off the road and they stopped. She looked up at the sky and thought she saw Venus. Off they went into the scrub, in search of a clearing. A blanket would have been nice, she suggested. But he didn’t have one. They were both ready, no doubt about that. Bugger the blanket.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, panting. She did, and there was much wetness and grunting and straining of clothes and limbs there in the darkness, in the bush.

  But it was over almost before it began, and she lay there feeling drunk, thinking that the day should have ended better than this. He made noises about needing a cigarette and they were in the car. He hoisted himself up and made his way back.

  ‘You right?’ he thought to ask as she brought up the rear.

  Soon after, he delivered her home. Gave her a little salute with two fingers as she walked up her own garden path, unsteadily.

  With hindsight she was mortified.

  ‘Barnyard tactics,’ she told Jo later on in the week.

  ‘God, what an animal.’

  ‘I’d expected more from him, I must admit. Not very gentlemanly at all.’

  ‘Oh, men!’ said Jo, as if she knew all about them.

  ‘I think it may have been something to do with his wanting to conquer my High Distinction, rather than me!’

  The following week, as if the Fates had decreed that Fiona would never get anything without a large payback, Annie became ill and went into surgery for a blood clot. She died during the night.

  A searing hot Christmas Day. Ben was away again. When he did turn up, every so often, he was an unwelcome visitor, as likely to sleep on the back verandah.

  It was no fun for him, feeling like the bloody lodger; a daughter so hostile you could touch it if you overstepped the line. A man had to watch his sodding language and his booze in the house. It was like living in a bloody convent.

  He heard about a station up north where he could earn a packet, wool-classing. One dark early morning in December he set off in his mate’s ute to make his fortune. He had lost their home one night in a card game recently, and the rented house that was now home was host to Jock more often than to Ben.

  Willa had cooked a duck the night before and Jo had prepared potatoes and salads. It was all casual as everything was at this time of year, in the sun-drenched months. Jock, now carrying a bit of weight, wore shorts and shirt. As the barometer rose he took off his shirt for comfort—he often did these days—and settled down with his bottles of beer.

  Joanna saw her mother’s eyes looking at her new lounge suite with its pastel cloth, laboriously paid off from sewing jobs. Jock’s sweaty back was pressed against it.

  ‘It’s a stinker of a day, love,’ he said to Willa.

  ‘Certainly is, Jock.’

  The rhythm of their speech was ever civil and somehow heartfelt with all its banality, as though they hadn’t had these exchanges hundreds of times. They uttered their phrases with sincerity and a certain surprise, as though it wasn’t always sweltering in summer.

  ‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with your shirt on, Uncle?’

  ‘Too hot, dear.’ The slight trill on the last letter still there, the voice as polite as ever. Not for Jock any guile or irony.

  ‘Would you like a glass of beer, Bubs?’ he asked, oblivious of her frown.

  He could see even less detail than ever.

  Aunt Eve would have told him, of course. There was such a thing as standards and half-clad men, she would have said. But Eve wasn’t here. Jo started carving the meat.

  ‘I don’t want to eat Christmas lunch with someone who is half naked and sweating,’ she muttered in the kitchen.

  ‘He’s your uncle, not Someone.’

  A loud belch was heard from the living room, followed by a remark that sounded like ‘Oops’.

  ‘Jesus. Next thing he’ll be having a fart.’

  ‘Joanna!’

  A little silence hung between them in the kitchen.

  ‘It simply doesn’t matter. How is it you’re such an irritable girl? Try to be kind.’

  Joanna arranged the plates for her mother, took up the luscious-looking salads.

  ‘I’m just not used to it. I can’t be as tolerant as you.’

  Willa dished food onto plates.

  ‘It’s only for the day, love. You can drive him home as soon as we’ve eaten; he’ll be ready for a sleep.’

  ‘He’ll go to sleep on your sofa, sitting up, probably.’

  ‘Then let him. I’ll maybe put a towel at his back. There—that will fix it. Problem solved.’

  It wasn’t jealousy. She knew that there was unspoken knowledge of past events between Willa and Jock. It went back more than three decades. Willa was a teenager then and Jock, her big sister’s fiancé, with his modest mien and quiet protection had kept an eye out for her. Perhaps they recognised each other as the innocents they were. And it pleased the girl that these two ageing people loved her and each other in a wholesome and wholehearted way. Nothing could ever spoil that. No matter what Jock ever did, what unconscious indiscretions he would commit, Willa’s loyalty would always be on hand. The girl didn’t consider then that growing old was lying in wait for her, patiently waiting.

  For years there was between Joanna and her father a crackle of malice, almost entirely on her side. Whatever he was, it wasn’t malicious, and he looked surprised when she cut him dead.

  For years he came and went; there was always some business far away that needed his attention. When he was home, as the years passed, he mainly drank and slept, seldom ate. With hindsight it became
clear to her that he was afflicted by an inertia that could only be put down to a form of depression or unhappiness that couldn’t be shaken off. He smoked quantities of cigarettes, sucking at them as he looked over the racing guide.

  Whether he was now gone altogether wasn’t known; there had been no word for more than a year. Jo was unable to hide her relief. At the same time she was bereft and wanted her old father, which is to say her young father, back. All the pop songs she knew were about men looking after you, and that, she supposed, was what lovers and fathers were there for.

  Jock was a different matter: a loss of will was fattening, it seemed. But he was ‘keeping busy’, as people are advised to do. She imagined that she could make his life happier for a time, and maybe get to the bottom of some family business, if she spent some time with him. Willa as well thought it was a good idea to give him some company. Joanna packed a bag and went to stay with him in his brick war-service home, as the RSL called it. It was no home, in its bare, functional way.

  Impossible to find out from him what he thought about the war. More than likely he thought his war was Eve’s party. Eve had worked in the munitions factory, an exuberant presence among the other working girls. She sang ‘Sally’ like Gracie Fields in her strong soprano, and got them all to sing with her, to while away the work.

  And it didn’t seem odd, certainly not to Joanna, a woman singing a love song to another woman. After-hours, Eve danced, and tried to keep it up even after Armistice Day; she stayed too long at the fair. But all of this had been gleaned from Willa, not Jock.

  If Jock felt his wife’s loss and the violent nature of it—and how could he not?—he put himself under standing orders to endure. With impressive fortitude, at that. He became even more taciturn, his head tilted to one side, giving away nothing. He went about his household tasks in retirement like a resigned widower. He didn’t ‘talk about his feelings’ because he thought he wasn’t supposed to have any.