The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham Read Free Book Online Page B

you to uncross your arms!’ The white crease from the ruler was still on her fingers when she started to mix the ink. She stood at the wash trough to mix the black powder with water then moved from desk to desk very slowly, carrying the jug. It was difficult to pour the blue-black ink into the wells. She wasn’t allowed to drip any on the desk and it was hard to tell which wells were full. Ink bubbled to the top of Stewart Pettyman’s, rimming the white marble lip, so he bumped the desk. The ink spilled, running down the desk top onto his bare knees.
    ‘Miss Dimm, she stained me, she stained me with the ink.’
    Miss Dimm came, cuffed Myrtle over the head and dragged her from the room by her plait. The other kids leaned on the glass windows laughing out loud. Myrtle sat for the rest of the morning on the veranda where everyone in the whole town could see her.
    After school she ran as fast as she could but they caught up with her. They held her and gave her Chinese burns, then they held her arms out and Stewart ran at her, head down like a charging bull so his head banged her in the tummy. She bent in half, lost her breath and fell to the ground, holding her stomach. The boys pulled her pants down and poked at her, then smelled their fingers. The girls sang, ‘Dunny’s Mum’s a slut, Dunnybum’s Mum’s a slut, Myr-tle’s a bar-std, Myr-tle’s a bar-std.’
    • • •
    Marigold Pettyman sat by the light of the radiogram with an icepack balanced on her curlers waiting for her husband, Evan. The six o’clock news muttered gently beside her, ‘
And now for the weather. Light rain is expected.
’
    ‘Oh Lord,’ said Marigold and reached for the small brown bottle on the lamp-stand table. She shook three tablets into her palm and swallowed them in one, leaned back and rubbed her temples. Marigold was a shrill, whippet-like woman with a startled bearing and a nervous rash on her neck. When she heard the key in the screen door lock she sat bolt upright and called anxiously, ‘Is that you Evan?’
    ‘Yes dear.’
    ‘You’ll take off your shoes and shake your coat for dust before you come in won’t you?’ Evan’s shoes thumped onto the veranda boards and there was the clank of wooden coat hangers meeting. He unlocked the kitchen door and stepped into the kitchen which was scrubbed and disinfected to surgery standard, its floor slippery and brilliant.
    Evan Pettyman was a round man with yellow hair and complexion and small quick eyes. He was a man who touched women, leaned close to talk, licked his lips and at dances pressed his partners tightly, ramming his thigh between their legs to move them around the floor. The ladies of Dungatar were polite to Councillor Pettyman – he was the shire president and Marigold’s husband. But they turned their backs when they saw him coming, busied themselves with a shop window or suddenly remembered something they had to do across the road. Men avoided the councillor but were cordial. He’d lost his son and had a lot on his plate, with Marigold the way she was – ‘highly strung’. He was a good councillor who got things done. He also knew how every man earned his keep.
    Marigold had been just a shy, innocent little thing when Evan came to Dungatar. Her father was the shire president then, and when he died he left her a lot of money, so Evan swept her off her feet. Her nerves started to go, and slowly got worse, and she had never been the same after their son Stewart was so tragically killed.
    Evan passed directly through to the bathroom where he removed his clothes and placed them in the washing basket and closed the lid. He showered then put on the starched pyjamas left sitting on the bench with the freshly laundered dressing gown and as-new woollen slippers.
    ‘Good evening my pet,’ said Evan and pecked her cheek.
    ‘Your dinner’s in the refrigerator,’ she said.
    Evan ate at the kitchen table. Sliced cold devon, tomato – seeds removed, beetroot – the liquid