Dresses of Red and Gold

by Robin Klein

  ‘If you shout us in, I’ll pay you back soon—honest,’ Cathy wheedled.

  ‘Go away. I need all my money for something else.’

  ‘Right then, you selfish little hog, just wait till you want something off me!’ Cathy said and stormed off in the direction of the Ferris wheel.

  Vivienne stood fingering the clasp of her purse, reading the notice above the tent entrance. There could be some truth in what Cathy had said, she thought absently—the Half-Man might be making a fortune, and perhaps really didn’t mind being stared at. He could even feel quite flattered because so many people wanted to meet him. In fact, if you didn’t go in, his feelings might be hurt, he could even think you were insulting him! And another thing…if someone were to go in there and just take one quick look then come right out again, it wouldn’t really count as sticky-beaking…

  Sixpence to get in…that would mean less to spend on a doll, but she’d still have her untouched eight shillings. She sacrificed the sixpence for a ticket and went inside the tent. At first she could see nothing but a wall of backs, but managed to burrow through to a small space at the end of a rope barrier. Someone trod massively on her toe but didn’t apologise, and she realised suddenly that no one was talking, not even in whispers. The crowd was self-consciously silent, staring, and pretending not to, across the rope at the Half-Man. Vivienne stared, too, at an ordinary middle-aged face with greying hair slicked back with brilliantine, at a clean white shirt, a tie fastened with a horseshoe tie-pin, then…nothing. The Half-Man was balanced on the palms of his hands, using them as feet, for his truncated body ended where his hips should have begun. He walked on his hands to and fro about the raised platform, then hoisted himself into a chair—one that looked more like a bizarre cradle. A guitar lay beside it. He strummed a few popular songs, then smiled politely at everyone and said he would be happy to answer any questions.

  Nobody asked any. The silence was gluey with embarrassment.

  ‘Well then—my name’s Ralph Esmond and I’m fifty-three years old. I was born like this, it wasn’t because of an accident,’ the Half-Man said, helping them patiently along as though they were bashful children in a class-room. ‘I’ve always tried to overcome my great handicap as best I could…’

  Vivienne, making herself as unobtrusive as possible, stepped backwards, no longer wanting to look. There was something devastating about the collective embarrassment within the tent, the nervously smothered titters, the man’s resigned courtesy. Something deplorable…

  ‘I can get about, after a fashion,’ the gentle, tired voice recited mechanically, as though innumerable recitations had been delivered to countless tent audiences, year after year. ‘My health is quite good. I have normal organs…’

  Vivienne, diminished by private shame, crept along behind the row of backs and went out into the clattering brightness of the showground, hurrying away from the sideshow tents. In her resumed search for a doll-on-a-stick she passed Heather, who didn’t even notice. Heather was tossing quoits at tawdry prizes on a hoopla stand. She was still acting unaccountably silly, pretending that she couldn’t throw very well, even though she was in the high school volleyball team. And there was another thing—since flouncing off so mysteriously at the turnstile entrance, she’d somehow acquired and applied bright red lipstick! Vivienne eyed the lipstick with disapproval, also noticing that the same boy who’d been at the rifle-range was now loitering around the hoopla stall. He suddenly snatched one of Heather’s quoits and dodged away with it. Heather chased after him, giggling, and they scuffled together in a ridiculous dance amongst the tent-pegs and ropes.

  Vivienne walked on, not even bothering to look at the hoopla prizes. The only objects worth winning on that stall were the brass statuettes depicting Diana, goddess of the hunt, but she knew from past experience that they were displayed only as bait. Those statuettes were all placed at cunning, impossible angles where no quoits could land. She gripped her purse and marched staunchly by, taking a short cut through the livestock section. Eleanor Grantby’s grandfather was in there and raised his hat to her, making her feel wonderfully grown-up. He asked how Grace was faring in the city, for Eleanor and Grace had been friends at school, then boasted at some length about his pigs. Vivienne admired the pigs and finally escaped, making a detour through the refreshment shed.

  She cast a hungry eye at the sausage-rolls and scones, but managed to get herself and her unopened purse safely away. There were more dolls-on-sticks in the booths by the far fence. She hurried down a path between two rows of parked cars, but someone was blocking the exit at the far end. Phyllis Gathin…Vivienne’s pace slowed instinctively and almost stopped altogether, for no one could possibly be seen talking to Phyllis Gathin! Phyllis hadn’t gone on to high school, but had been kept down in sixth class because of poor work. She also had an embarrassing tendency to smile at Vivienne on the strength of having been in the same class-room as Cathy last year. Her diffident, fragile smile was in some strange way as compelling as a weapon, making you feel cruel if you didn’t respond, no matter how much you didn’t wish to.

  Phyllis wasn’t alone, she was minding one of her grubby little sisters. In one hand she carried a red bantam chook with its feet tied and in the other a string bag loaded with bottled cordial and bananas that had reached the soft brownish stage. Nobody, Vivienne thought with scathing pity, brought along food and drink from home to eat at the Show, it just wasn’t done! And everyone, no matter how poor, dressed up in their best outfits to come to the Easter Show—some people even bought new clothes specially for the occasion. But Phyllis Gathin and her sister were dressed as they always were, in abominable faded garments that were…background-coloured, Vivienne thought, foraging in her mind for the right word, background-coloured, just like Phyllis Gathin’s humble, camouflaged personality. She turned to duck out of sight between two parked cars, but the Gathins had already seen her.

  They stepped aside automatically, allowing her right of way, flattening themselves against the side of a van as though that was expected of them, too. Phyllis smiled at her wistfully and Vivienne made the mistake of saying, ‘Oh…hello, you look as though you’ve got your hands full…’

  Phyllis, beaming because someone had actually spoken to her, began a long, barely audible saga about bringing young Greta to the Show, how they’d found threepence on the ground, won the bantam hen in a lucky number draw, seen the mechanical cow in the exhibits hall with stuff that looked like real milk pinging out into a little bucket, watched the big draught-horses in the ring…

  ‘Tell her about…’ little Greta Gathin whispered every time Phyllis stopped for breath, and Vivienne, trapped by a nature that wouldn’t allow her to be openly mean to anyone, even Gathins, shuffled from foot to foot with concealed impatience.

  They’d seen all the lovely iced cakes in the hall, watched the men in the wood-chopping competition, Greta had found a runaway balloon, but then it blew away and someone trod on it…The little girl’s eyes fogged with that recent sorrow, and Vivienne said quickly, ‘I’ve got to rush, got to meet my sisters soon…’ She fled away into the crowd, deliberately altering course several times in case Phyllis had it in mind to follow, and paused for breath by an enormous merry-go-round, new to the Show this year. It was just as overwhelming as everyone at school had claimed, with free-flying horses that soared and swung wide, so that the riders were almost parallel to the ground.

  Cathy was there, hanging over the rail, her face tense with longing. ‘Oh quick, Viv—lend us sixpence!’ she pleaded, like a famished beggar.

  ‘I already said no! You shouldn’t have spent all your money on those other rides soon as we got here…’

  ‘I had to go on the Octopus!’ Cathy said indignantly. ‘That’s the first thing I ever do when we get to the Show. Then the Ferris wheel…guess what—it broke down while I was on it and my seat got stuck for ages right up the top!’

  Vivienne clutched her stomach, not wanting to hear. She didn’t really like watchin
g the huge new carousel with its whirling horses, either.

  ‘Lucky I had a meat pie and a waffle to eat while I was up on the Ferris wheel,’ Cathy said. ‘And I didn’t spend all my money on rides, either—I went in the House of Horrors, too. They’ve got that gorilla jumping out at you on the way in, but it’s just someone dressed up. Heather was in there—you should have heard her holler about the gorilla! Stupid dill, she even grabbed this boy’s hand and hung on to him, dunno what he must have thought! She went in the House of Horrors last year and it was the same gorilla, only she never screamed then. Pleeeease, Viv, lend us some money for a go on the merry-go-round!’

  Vivienne stubbornly shook her head.

  ‘If you don’t…I’ll steal a ride!’ Cathy threatened.

  ‘Cathy, you’re not to—it’s dangerous! I’ll tell Mum on you…’

  ‘Stewart Thurlow’s been pinching rides all afternoon, so’s Danny O’Keefe, I’ve been watching them. O’Keefe reckoned I couldn’t do it in a frothy-mouthed fit, but there’s nothing to it, really. You just wait till the man’s gone round and collected everyone’s tickets, then…’

  Vivienne grabbed at her in alarm, but Cathy was already over the rail and scampering along beside the moving carousel. She leaped high, grabbed the mane of a vacant horse, and swung herself up. The ticket-collector yelled and shook a fist, but Cathy stuck out a length of tongue and settled back to enjoy the stolen ride. Vivienne, deeply ashamed of being related to her at that moment, hurried away. She went to a stall she’d noticed earlier by the turnstiles, one that stocked a large range of dolls-on-sticks. She inspected them intently, and at last, as though it had been waiting there trustingly for her all through the afternoon, found her heart’s desire. Everything about the doll was perfect, its little feathery cap, the circular golden skirt with scarlet spangles, the elegant curve of the bamboo stick decorated with a shining bow…

  ‘Oooh—that’s lovely! Are you really gonna buy it, Viv?’ a self-effacing voice murmured in her ear.

  Vivienne, irked at being accosted by Phyllis Gathin yet again, feigned deafness and began to count out her precious coins.

  ‘This the one you want?’ the stall-holder asked. ‘But you’ve only given me eight bob—the ones with the gilt skirts cost eight and six.’

  Vivienne stared at her, uncomprehending. That doll was hers! She’d searched for it all afternoon, denying herself the other wonders of the Show, even the melting magic of fairy-floss, that fleeting whisper of sweetness obtainable only once a year! Her beautiful doll-on-a-stick, exactly the right one—she could see herself bearing it proudly home and attaching it to her bedpost where it would remain for ever and ever…

  ‘But…it was right here with all those others marked eight shillings!’ If only she hadn’t bought that ticket to see the Half-Man, she’d have enough money! It was like a judgement for snooping into other people’s misfortunes…‘Eight shillings is all I’ve got!’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, love, but it must have got in with those cheaper ones by mistake. How about that nice purple doll instead? You’ve got enough to buy that—or the little pink fluffy one down the end.’

  ‘But I wanted…I picked out…’ Vivienne stammered, her voice cracking with bereavement. Wordlessly, she made to put the gold doll back on the stand, but Phyllis Gathin, the most unlikely defender in the world, suddenly took it from her and held it out to the woman.

  ‘Maybe it’s been bunged in with those cheap ones on purpose—because of the tear in the little frock,’ Phyllis Gathin said. She inserted first one finger, then another, through a small split in the skirt, which Vivienne hadn’t even noticed, and waggled them about.

  ‘So what?’ the woman said disagreeably. ‘People come by and prod and poke at things all day long—and it’s only on the seam really, that hole. Just needs a couple of stitches…’

  ‘All split open it is,’ Phyllis said, softly and reasonably. ‘Not nearly as good as them other eight-and-six ones. They don’t have big gappy holes in the skirts.’

  Vivienne glanced at her in stupefaction, for Phyllis Gathin never argued with anyone, always flattened herself against walls to concede everyone else right-of-way…

  ‘It’s been sitting here in this eight-bob stand all day, first thing I spotted when we come in through the gate. They must of marked down that gold doll-on-a-stick because of the dirty big hole in the frock, I remember thinking…’ Phyllis Gathin murmured to no one in particular. Her eyes were fastened meekly upon the ground, but it seemed as though she could perhaps stand there all evening discussing the tiny defect in the gold fabric.

  ‘Well…I suppose she can have it for the same price as those cheaper ones,’ the woman said grudgingly at last.

  Vivienne, exulting, carried the doll away to the bench by the turnstile and sat down to wait for Heather and Cathy. The tempo of the Show was slowing a little in the lull between afternoon and evening sessions, some of the stalls closing. She fastened the buttons on her cardigan, for it was growing cold as the sun dipped down behind the big Norfolk Pines at the edge of the grounds. People were starting to leave now, going home for tea. She felt ravenously hungry, but what did it matter that she hadn’t had a bite to eat since leaving home? Or that she hadn’t tried her luck on the hoopla stall, had her fortune told or paid for her profile to be snipped expertly in black paper and framed? All those things shrivelled to complete unimportance beside the reality of owning such a beautiful doll-on-a-stick! Mellowed by possession, she didn’t mind very much that the Gathins had trailed after her to the bench and that Phyllis’s sister was crowding up close to look.

  ‘She’s that crazy about dolls, but she won’t touch, she never touches nothin,’ Phyllis said.

  The intensity of the little girl’s admiration was somehow pleasing. Vivienne twirled the stick, making the doll waltz, and Greta Gathin smiled. It was the first time she’d smiled all afternoon, Vivienne thought idly, but if you were a Gathin, you undoubtedly didn’t have much to smile about. She peered over the child’s head, looking out for Heather and Cathy, hoping they wouldn’t be much longer. Time to go home now, time to take her wonderful new treasure home…

  ‘…could be Shirley,’ Phyllis Gathin was whispering to her little sister. ‘Maggie, maybe—or Viv might pick out Greta, just the same as your name.’

  Greta—she certainly wouldn’t be choosing a common name like that for her lovely doll-on-a-stick, Vivienne thought, insulted, wishing that Phyllis Gathin’s sister would stop breathing all over it. Although, for a tiny kid not even at school yet, Greta was being remarkably restrained, keeping her hands clasped behind her back and just gazing with wide brown eyes…

  ‘I guess…I guess she could hold it for a minute,’ Vivienne said impulsively. ‘Only by the stick part, though, and just till the others come.’

  Little Greta Gathin couldn’t quite believe such fortune. Her hands had to be coaxed around the stick, but when she realised she was actually holding the doll, her face seemed to become illuminated. Vivienne felt warmly benign for having caused that glow. People were so nasty to the Gathins. Nobody ever made room for poor Phyllis in the school shelter-shed when it rained, for instance. And when lemonade was served at the last break-up picnic, she hadn’t brought a cup as you were supposed to. Nobody had lent theirs, either, because they didn’t want to drink from the same one, so she’d missed out on the lemonade. Everyone gossiped about Mrs Gathin, too, how she couldn’t even manage to look after all the children she had, let alone add to their number year by year…

  ‘Pretty…oooh, pretty!’ Greta Gathin whispered to herself. She jiggled the stick so that the doll appeared to bow in all its splendour.

  Vivienne smiled with absent-minded indulgence. For suddenly she was watching a gracious vision of herself entering the doorway of a hovel—somewhat like the Gathins’ house in Greenforest Lane. The hovel was crowded with pathetic raggedy children, and in one corner was a rough bed covered by hessian sacks instead of blankets. A pale gaunt woman lay under th
e sacks, coughing in great, wracking feverish spasms. Vivienne saw herself, quite clearly, bringing order to the miserable chaos. She bathed the woman’s forehead, chopped wood for a fire, made nourishing broth and fed it to all the starving waifs. On her hands and knees she scrubbed the floor, then arranged wildflowers in a jam jar on the window ledge. Cleanliness and comfort flowed from her generous toiling hands like sunshine. The wretched hovel was transformed, the children became brown-eyed beauties as she removed layers of grime from their poor little faces and dressed them in freshly laundered clothes. She opened a suitcase she’d brought with her and gave them each a present—gave away all her own belongings, the handkerchiefs Aunt Ivy had sent last birthday, her treasured books and the new shoes Mum had bought her for Christmas. Small innocent hands clung to hers in gratitude, the woman beckoned her to the bedside and murmured in a frail voice, ‘Six long weeks I’ve been lying here and not one soul came to help—they were all too scared they’d pick up the fever. But you came, and there’s only one word to describe you, Vivienne Melling—you’re a saint!’

  The poignant beauty of the vision made Vivienne blink with emotion. She would, of course, contract that fever, for she wasn’t strong. Delicate, Mum called her, with all those painfully infected throats and sore ears she kept getting, and Doctor Caulfield saying her tonsils would have to come out eventually. In fact, she’d probably die from that fever—but they’d have a magnificent funeral for her, the whole population of Wilgawa lining the streets as the hearse passed by. For the story would soon spread, how she’d selflessly given her life to help people less fortunate. There might even be some kind of monument erected in her honour, her name emblazoned in gold letters on a block of granite…

  ‘Vivienne, hurry up, we’re going home now,’ Heather called from the turnstile.