The Midnight Dress(6)

They search until the sun goes down and then stand talking on the main street, bereft, their voices drowned by the wild gossipping of flying foxes settling for the night. There is nothing to say that something terrible has happened, but they know it all the same. Nothing is found. Not a trace of the girl in the midnight dress.





‘Oh my God,’ says Pearl.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Rose.

The rain pummelling on the shop roof is deafening, cascading off the awning in a fountain. There are crystals everywhere, shelves and shelves of them, lumps of amethyst, agate, amber amulets hanging in neat lines. Tiger’s eye and chalcedony, rose quartz, carnelian, citrine, jasper. Every inch of the ceiling has something hanging from it, glass beads and glittering mobiles and wind chimes and tinkling bells. There are candles burning in coloured glass candlestick holders in the windows, the flames reflected in a thousand other shiny things. It figures, Rose thinks, that Pearl would live in such a place.

Rose has been invited there to complete the French assignment. She has a drawing of a guillotine in the pocket of her black jeans, a soggy mess.

‘Come in,’ says Pearl.

‘I’ll wet your floor.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ says Pattie Kelly, Pearl’s mother. ‘You look half-drowned. Quickly, Pearlie, get a towel.’

‘Did you walk all the way?’ asks Pearl, not moving.

‘It’s not that far,’ says Rose.

‘She walked from the bay,’ says Pearl.

‘The bay,’ shouts her mother.

‘I found a short cut through the cane,’ says Rose.

‘The cane,’ cries Pattie. ‘You can’t walk through the cane, it’s full up with taipans and browns.’

‘It was kind of a road,’ says Rose, then looks down at her feet. ‘It was a bit muddy.’

Pearl’s mother is nothing like Pearl. She is short and curvy and dark-haired. She has a huge patchouli-scented bosom. She grabs Rose and presses her there and when released Rose is horrified to see the wet imprint of herself.

‘Aren’t you just gorgeous?’ says Pattie. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous, Pearlie?’

Rose’s fringe is stuck to her head and her eyeliner has run down her cheeks. Why has she come? She should have said no. Why didn’t she say no? She just keeps making these same stupid mistakes.

‘Go into the bathroom, darling, and get changed,’ says Pattie. ‘Pearlie, get Rose a kurta off the rack . . . No not the white one, that red one, yes, and we’ll put this stuff in the dryer.’

‘I didn’t know you didn’t have a lift,’ says Pearl through the bathroom door. ‘You should have said.’

Rose takes off her clothes and looks at herself in the full-length mirror. They don’t have a mirror in the caravan, so she’s shocked to see herself, so thin, really thin with tiny little breasts. She puts her freckly hands up to the outline of her rib cage. She has freckles covering her arms and face and legs but none on her stomach, which is the colour of cream. The beach has turned her arms a little pink.

‘It isn’t that bad,’ says Rose. ‘I didn’t know it was going to rain so hard.’

‘Welcome to the Big Wet,’ says Pearl, ripping off the price tag and passing the kurta through the door.

The kurta is like a kaftan that reaches her knees. It’s ruby red cotton, half-see-through and covered in sequins. Rose has never worn anything like it in her life. She has always worn black jeans and flannos, and, now that she’s in the tropics, an old black t-shirt flung over a pair of cut-off shorts. She stares at herself in the mirror for a long time.

‘Aren’t you coming out?’ asks Pearl at last. ‘We need to blow-dry your hair.’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ says Rose.

Pattie Kelly gets the hair dryer and sits Rose down on a chair in the middle of shop. Pearl turns over the OPEN sign to CLOSED. They go to work removing all the bobby pins and elastic bands that Rose has used to tether down her hair, placing them one by one into her open palm. They’re both laughing as though it’s the most fun they’ve ever had. Rose can see where Pearl has got it from, all her words. Pattie Kelly never stops talking either. They interrupt each other and argue and laugh constantly.

‘Do it straight, with a round brush,’ says Pearl.

‘No, I’m scrunching it,’ says her mother. ‘I want curls.’

‘Go and put some music on.’

‘No, you go and put some music on.’

Rose is not used to being touched. She cuts her own hair with the scissors that live in the drawer beside her bed. Now Pearl’s mother is massaging her head. She would like to get up and run out of the shop, only she’s wearing a small see-through dress. She tries to slow her breathing. Pearl has put a record on. It’s someone singing in sighs. Rose closes her eyes. She doesn’t know what she should do. She wishes she knew where they put her clothes. Will she have to pay for the red shirt? She doesn’t have any money. Not a cent. Plus the drawing of the guillotine is in the dryer now too.

‘You think too much, young lady,’ says Pattie, when she turns off the hair dryer.

‘Come on, Rose,’ says Pearl, and Rose follows her to Pearl’s bedroom, already tying down her hair as she goes, feeling with her fingers for curls, slicing through them, anchoring them with her pins.