Dresses of Red and Gold

by Robin Klein

  ‘But…nothing really awful ever happened to us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that—what about your dad’s plantation failing? How about him not being able to get a job and you might even have to move again because you can’t afford the rent on this house? And Viv always getting sick with her tonsils…there’s masses of things. From what I’ve heard, though, the curse works much stronger if that fur-stole’s actually taken out and handled. So you can thank your lucky stars I was here to warn you, Cathy. You’d better put it back and forget all about it, don’t even think about making it up into a handbag or anything else! Listen…that sounds like your mum coming in the gate now, but don’t say a word to her, okay? She mightn’t even know about Lilith’s curse, a lot of people in the family don’t, and we wouldn’t want to upset her.’

  Mum, back from town with Heather and Vivienne and the weekend shopping, was concerned only with getting her shoes off and lying down before dinner. She left them with instructions to unpack the groceries and put them away, although the others basely left Cathy to do it all by herself. They vanished outside, but Cathy didn’t mind very much—unpacking the groceries meant she could help herself to an illicit handful of dried apricots. And besides, what they were doing outside looked as though it could end up in a fight, as she saw through the kitchen window. Isobel, Heather and Vivienne were posted around the paddock using Heather’s semaphore flags to send insulting messages of a personal nature to each other.

  Cathy, the groceries all shelved, decided not to join them. She stayed inside and worked on the anchor-shaped patchwork cushion she was making for her lookout, even though Isobel had claimed it looked more like a drunken sailor than an anchor. The front was finished and she’d begun on the back, stitching the squares together by hand, because no one had ever been able to teach her how the sewing-machine worked. Her supply of patches was almost used up, but the scrap-bag yielded no new colour or pattern that she hadn’t already used. Suddenly she thought of the brown silk lining of the fox-stole.

  That ridiculous story of Isobel’s about a curse—curses were only connected to exotic things like scarab medallions. Whoever heard of one being placed on a fox-stole? It was just packed away in the chest not being used, and all she needed was a very small amount of the brown silk. Perhaps it might be best not to ask Mum directly, especially now when she was having a rest…in fact it would be more thoughtful, really, not to bother her at all for such a paltry matter. If the lining was tacked carefully back into place after a little piece was removed, probably no one would even realise!

  Cathy crept out to the cedar chest in the living-room, retrieved the stole and took it back to her room. She snipped off enough of the lining material for two patchwork squares, and using her best sewing, which Heather said was equal to everyone else’s worst, repaired the damage. Then she added the squares to her cushion, thinking idly about Lilith’s unfortunate fate. Maybe one day she’d write a story about Lilith and call it ‘The Tragedy at Baroongal Flats’—except it might be better to think of a different place name. Baroongal Flats somehow didn’t have the right ring to it…She grew bored with patchwork sewing, and picked up the fox-fur, still convinced that a remarkable bag could be contrived from it somehow. The mask could be folded down to make a flap, and the tail taken off and used as an overarm strap…

  Isobel came hurtling past the window and into the house, shrieking, ‘Aunty Connie! Aunty Con—there’s been an accident! Vivienne’s gashed her foot on a rusty old tin and she’s practically bleeding to death!’

  Vivienne, helped in from outside and sat down on the kitchen table, left a trail of crimson globules all over the lino. She kept her eyelids shut as tightly as valves while Mum washed out the cut with disinfectant. The sight of blood made her feel faint, which was why she’d never joined Guides with Heather and Cathy. Girl Guides were expected to learn First Aid, but Vivienne knew that anyone involved in an accident would be in a much worse state when she’d finished attending to them. Once she’d bravely tried to remove a splinter all by herself, but had squeamishly looked the other way while doing it and stabbed herself badly with the tweezers. Cathy, on the other hand, thought blood was quite a cheerful colour and watched with interest, her patchwork cushion forgotten.

  ‘You’re a silly disobedient girl, Vivienne, taking off your shoes and running around outside! I’ve told you and told you—people can end up with lockjaw from rusty tins and nails!’ Mum said, sounding harsh because she was worried. ‘That’s a nasty-looking cut and it’s going to need stitches. We’d better get it looked at up at the hospital, though how you’re going to walk on that foot, I don’t know!’

  ‘She could sit on Heather’s bike and you and me could push her up, one on each side,’ Cathy said helpfully. ‘Only if I’m allowed to watch while they sew her up, though. I wonder if they fold the skin over like a little hem, or just crimp the two edges together and…’

  ‘Don’t be so thoughtless, Cathy—you’ve made your sister go white as a sheet! Isobel can give me a hand pushing the bike up the hill, seeing it’s about time she went home, anyway. You and Heather could give the floor a mop and get tea ready while I’m gone.’

  Cathy, thinking those two jobs sounded boring, craftily left them to Heather and went to feed the chooks. They came flapping and clucking greedily about her feet as she cast handfuls of grain on the ground. Keeping a wary eye on Napoleon the rooster, who preferred human ankles, she filled the old car tyre that had been sawn in half for a water container, and then noticed a limp bundle of feathers tucked pathetically under a nearby bush.

  ‘Heather, poor Freda’s dead!’ she called, but Heather, sucking a bruised finger, had no sympathy to spare for Freda, Vivienne up at the hospital, or anyone else at all.

  ‘I jammed my knuckle in the oven door!’ she howled over the veranda rail, dancing an anguished jig of pain. ‘It just slammed shut all of a sudden like someone was pushing it! Pestering me about dead chooks—just dig a hole down the back and bury the damn thing!’

  ‘I…can’t,’ Cathy said ashamedly. ‘Any of the other chooks, but not Freda! I remember her from a chick, when she pecked her way out of the egg and hopped up on my fist…’

  ‘Don’t be stupid—she can’t just be left lying around dead. And when Mum’s away, I’m in charge and you’ve got to do what I say!’

  ‘If you bury Freda, I’ll go over and fetch the cow in for the night even though it’s your turn,’ Cathy hedged, and before Heather could refuse, ran across the yard and into the back lane. Most of the grass in their own paddock was finished, so Mum had come to an arrangement with the brickworks manager for Mona to spend the days in the lusher grass there. Cathy opened the brickworks gate and called, but Mona didn’t come ambling obediently up the slope. This evening, apparently, she’d made other plans. Cathy checked around the fence and located a fallen rail, a large manure pat sitting on the other side as triumphantly as a trophy, and hoof marks meandering up towards the sawmill and beyond. Cathy, swearing to herself, went on a long, fruitless search, then ran back and told Mum, who had just brought an impressively bandaged Vivienne home from the hospital.

  ‘Well, we can’t go out hunting for her ladyship all over the district now it’s getting dark,’ Mum said, harassed. ‘We’ll just have to hope she doesn’t end up in the pound with a fine to pay to get her out…Goodness, Heather, is this object supposed to be shepherd’s pie or an old saddlebag?’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Heather said huffily. ‘Something went funny with the oven and it burned to a crisp in the first ten minutes.’

  ‘Rubbish, nothing’s ever gone wrong with that oven, it’s always reliable as…oh, sugar!’ Mum cried and stared in astonishment at the collage of broken pie-dish and charred mashed potato decorating the floor. ‘Now that’s very strange—that dish just slipped right through my hands as though it had a will of its own! Never mind, we’ll just have to make do with leftovers on toast instead.’

  They ate that in the lounge-room, listening
to the wireless to compensate, but half-way through ‘The Quiz Kids’ a shower of soot came slithering down the chimney. It landed with a mushrooming thump, spattering the miniature oval painting Mum was copying from Hilary Melling’s wedding photograph. Mum rushed to the roll-top desk to see if anything could be salvaged, but all her painstaking work—the bride’s delicately stranded hair, rose-tinted cheeks and detailed bouquet—was ruined.

  ‘I dare say it’s my own fault, leaving it lying about uncovered with the paint still wet,’ Mum said after a moment’s silence, but her voice was heavy with regret. Vivienne, remembering that Hilary Melling’s mother had promised a generous payment for the miniature, burst into tears of sympathy mingled with delayed trauma from having had stitches. Mum said briskly that she’d had quite enough excitement for one day, and declared that it was bedtime for everyone.

  Cathy lay awake, with a worry that had been creeping mousily about inside her head transformed suddenly into a rampaging tiger. She’d hidden the fur with its depleted silk lining under her pillow, waiting for an opportune moment to put it back in the cedar chest without being caught. Slowly, she pulled it out and looked at it. The fox’s amber eyes regarded her glassily in the moonlight, like…like eyes gazing blindly up through the depths of river water! Maybe…maybe it should have been left safely rolled up in the chest, and she shouldn’t even have touched it in the first place! All these troubles that had happened in one evening…Isobel had warned her about Lilith’s curse, but she’d chosen to take no notice.

  And now she vaguely remembered other misfortunes that had come upon various relatives—not just the East Wilgawa and the Baroongal Flats ones, either! Hadn’t there been a cousin twice-removed whose hair had mysteriously started falling out when she was still in her twenties? Perhaps she’d handled Lilith’s fox-stole at some stage! And there was Isobel’s mother’s sister, the one Dad called Diamond Lulu, who’d run off with someone else’s husband and no one talked about her any more. Also an Edward Melling struck by lightning, and Aunt Elsie where Grace was staying down in the city—Aunt Elsie had recently had a lot of trouble with varicose veins…

  Things like that could happen to her family now that the fox-fur was in their custody and she’d so rashly taken a piece of the lining for patchwork! In fact, she’d probably set that curse well and truly in action again, for the awful things had started to happen already! Cathy counted them feverishly in her mind—Vivienne’s cut foot, the dead hen (for even though Freda had most likely died from old age, it seemed an odd coincidence), Heather squashing her finger in the oven door, Mona straying off, Mum dropping the inexplicably burnt shepherd’s pie, the fall of soot ruining the little oil painting! All those calamities were the legacy of Lilith’s curse—and even worse things could happen…

  They could perhaps lose this house, even though Dad was searching valiantly for work all over the district. Maybe Lilith would force them to live in a humpy like poor old Mr Wetherell from Conifer Crossing! Or…something could happen to prevent Grace’s intended visit home. Mum was looking forward to that so much it was positively heartrending, and they all knew she was secretly hoping that Grace would decide to take a job in Wilgawa and not go back to the city at all. But Lilith would soon fix that, she might even arrange for the train Grace was travelling on to…

  A great crash set the beaded fringe of the hall lamp tinkling like a chime of bells. Cathy, appalled, leaped out of bed and rushed up the hall to Mum’s room, but Mum was on the floor with the brass bed collapsed beneath her, and in no position to offer comfort to anyone. The base of the bed had somehow worked loose from the sockets, but Cathy, trembling with scared guilt, knew it was no accident.

  ‘I’m all right, it’s only my dignity’s been hurt,’ Mum said, picking herself up. ‘You can just go and tell that tactless Heather and Vivienne to stop carrying on about earthquakes, and while you’re about it, bring me the hammer so I can dong this old bed back together again.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d better, you’ll…you’ll only miss and do yourself an injury! Lilith’s out to get us…’ Cathy said, and began gabbling incoherently about opera singers, fox-stoles and curses from watery graves.

  ‘Lilith—who on earth is Lilith?’ Mum demanded in bewilderment, peering at the fur thrust waveringly under her nose. ‘I can scarcely take in one word you’re saying, Cathy! Your dad never even had an Aunt Lilith as far as I know. And as for this fox-scarf, you’re a naughty girl helping yourself to bits of the lining without even asking! Even if it is just an old thing Mrs O’Keefe gave me a few weeks ago because she thought it was a shame to throw out…Anyhow, I’ve already promised it to Isobel.’

  ‘Isobel?’

  ‘Well, I suppose this is what she was carrying on about when she helped me take Viv up to the hospital. She kept pestering me about some old fox-fur in my box, asking if she could have it to keep next time she dropped in. I don’t for the life of me know why she’d possibly want it, but she did say something about making herself a handbag.’

  An Act of Luminous Goodness

  ‘Meet you back here at five-thirty on the dot,’ Heather said when they were through the turnstile. ‘And if you spend all your money in the first ten minutes, just don’t come tagging after me trying to cadge, because you won’t get a single penny! Don’t either of you dare tag after me, anyway—I’ve arranged to meet a…someone I know from school.’

  Vivienne had no intention of wasting her carefully hoarded money in the first ten minutes. Eight shillings and sixpence in small change jingled delightfully in her purse, each coin representing thrift and labour. Cathy had charged off, as she did every year, towards the amusement rides, but Vivienne wasn’t planning to have even one turn on the merry-go-round. Ever since the age of five, she’d secretly yearned to buy a doll-on-a-stick at the Show. Cathy always jeered about them and said they looked like torsos drowning in plates of chopped-up jelly, but she didn’t care what Cathy thought. This year she was going to spend all her money on one of those dolls! It was really just a matter of self-discipline, of walking firmly past fairy-floss stalls, hoopla booths and merry-go-rounds.

  She passed the Octopus, thinking how aptly named it was with those long tentacles that whisked people, screaming, up into the sky above the tent tops. It was hard to understand why anyone would want to pay to be terrified, but Cathy, who understood very well, had already joyously exchanged sixpence for a ticket. Vivienne left her to it and began a methodical search for dolls-on-sticks, heroically averting her eyes from such goodies as crisp waffles filled with cream, or the marvellous rainbow ice-creams that were obtainable only at the Show once a year. Heather, who’d found her way to the miniature rifle-range, was eating one of those ice-creams. She was also screeching idiotically at each rifle shot, and Vivienne glanced at her in surprise. Heather wasn’t in the least frightened of guns, having gone rabbiting quite often with Uncle Trip, but now for some reason she was pretending to be startled by the noise. That big gawky boy firing at the target of painted ducks must think she was a pest, and it was a wonder he didn’t turn around and tell her to shut up!

  Vivienne walked on, stopping to inspect booths that sold dolls-on-sticks, but also making a detour into the exhibits hall to see Aunt Ivy’s prize-winning decorated cake. Aunt Ivy would be deeply offended if none of them could describe it on her next visit. Because of the crowd inside the hall, a glimpse of that cake also meant a slow forced circuit of the other exhibits all the way around to the other door. She passed the trestle tables of bottled fruits, admiring their luscious symmetry, but made faintly uneasy by the sheer number of jars. It was as though people secretly believed that the annual bounty should be cached in case another summer never came.

  Once outside, she resumed her important search. The dolls-on-sticks varied in quality and price from stall to stall, but she meant to examine every single one, realising how difficult it was going to be to make a final choice. They were all gorgeous with their bright eyes and little dimpled hands, their net skirts
sprinkled with silver or gold. Cathy always said that as well as looking like torsos in plates of jelly, they’d make very good blowfly swatters, but her opinion didn’t count. The only doll she’d ever shown any interest in was one she’d once made from a melted candle, sticking pins in it to get revenge on Isobel. Besides, Cathy’s main purpose in coming to the Show every year was to ride on dangerous things like the Octopus and to sneak into the sideshows without paying.

  Vivienne walked up an alley between two lines of sideshows, but stumbled over a pair of legs on the ground. She kicked at them indignantly, recognising the socks, and Cathy scrambled up from where she’d been endeavouring to peer under a tent.

  ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t spent all my money already!’ Cathy mourned. ‘The Incredible Half-Man’s in this tent, but you can’t see a thing from here. They’ve got it blocked off with screens. I reckon he’s probably split down the middle with only one nostril and one eye and an arm and a leg all on the same side. He’d have to get around by hopping, though it must be pretty tiring…how about lending us sixpence to get in?’

  ‘Nothing doing,’ Vivienne said decisively.

  ‘Once you’re in there you can chat to him, it says so on the notice. They should only charge half price to get in, really. Wow, I’ve never talked to anyone with only half a mouth before, let alone seen one!’

  ‘Don’t be so horrible, Cathy—you can’t want to gawk at someone like that! The poor thing—it must be awful having to travel round with the Show and have people stare at you.’

  ‘Only half of you, and no one’s forcing him to, anyway. He’d be used to it, and he probably earns a fortune, though it must be kind of hard to chat to people with only half a tongue. I wonder what he really looks like…Oh, come on, Viv, lend us some dough!’

  ‘No I won’t, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself acting like all those other stickybeak people! Just look at them, falling over each other to get inside!’ Vivienne said, frowning righteously at the people in the queue with their nasty, morbid curiosity.