The Midnight Dress by Karen Foxlee Read Free Book Online Page A

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    ‘Yes,’ Rose said, and she hadn’t lied.
    ‘Tell me?’
    ‘Where should I start?’
    In Edie Baker’s house it’s almost six o’clock. Outside there are hours of sunshine left but inside is already filling up with shadows.
    ‘I open the windows along the back now,’ says Edie. ‘At night a breeze comes down off the mountain and it’s good to catch it. I close all the windows again in the morning and it stays cool all day. When I was a girl my mother called it the mountain’s breath.’
    She goes about opening up all the coloured glass casements and the louvres in the long back kitchen, and the afternoon light dances on the blue birds. She wears a sleeveless sundress and her pale arms are the colour of pastry and when she raises them, to release the catches, two little wings of skin hang down.
    She walks with a limp, as though one hip hurts, and she makes a small humming noise in her throat. Rose stands, watching, there’s still time to leave.
    ‘Now,’ says Edie, ‘what dress will we make?’
    ‘A lot of girls are having strapless or one-shoulder,’ says Rose.
    ‘Strapless is for hussies,’ says Edie, fixing her with her bright dark eyes, then she waves for Rose to follow and they go down the hallway into the gloom.
    The house is as vast and creaking as a museum and each room they pass through is filled to the brim with dusty collections of things. Tallboys and faded settees and velvet chaises gone lumpy. Boxes filled with bits of paper and others crowded with leaves, large crystal vases sitting on the floor overflowing with twigs, dressmaker busts lying on beds, hat boxes stacked in towers. In corners there are sudden surprising piles of stones. And in every room there is paint peeling from the walls, emerald green or turquoise or scarlet, and immense constellations of mould spreading across the ceilings.
    Edie turns lights on in each room and huge blank-faced wardrobes loom. She opens their doors and rifles through their musty interiors, holds up old clothes, opens trunks, pulls suitcases out from beneath beds. She gathers up an embroidered shawl and an armful of men’s coats.
    ‘Oh yes, this is good lace,’ Edie says, when she comes upon a small black dress, a deflated thing, with black rose-lace sleeves. When she lifts it, a shower of dust tumbles from the ancient petticoats.
    In another room she approaches a small black lamp with a glass-beaded shade.
    ‘What do you think of this?’ she asks.
    But before Rose can answer Edie has unplugged it from the wall and tucked it under her left arm. They go down a narrow corridor, where the house drops away beneath their feet and the floorboards plink and plonk like piano keys. Edie opens a stiff wooden door.
    ‘Here,’ she says.
    There is natural light in the room and Rose realises they must have travelled from the back of the house to the front. A grimy sash window displays the overgrown yard and a small patch of cloudy sky.
    In that room there is material, cupboards with opened doors filled with material, boxes filled with material, bolts tilting in piles. Taffetas, failles, velvets, satins. Gingham haphazardly folded, summer cottons stuffed into boxes, rolls of organdie leaning. Tartans, brocades, damasks, satin crepe, voile, crepe de Chine.
    The room smells nasty. Old. Fusty. It smells like the bottom of an old lady’s handbag, perfumed, powdery, dusty. When Rose looks closer she sees that much of the material is spotted with mildew and the bolts have gone black along the edges.
    Her heart sinks.
    There are dresses there too. Some hang on dressmaker mannequins and others on coathangers. Beautiful dresses: an ivory satin dress with an organza skirt crumbling at the hem, a red gown eaten away by moths, a wedding dress turned yellow slung across the back of a chair.
    Rose chews the end of a black fingernail.
    ‘Do you see any colours that you like?’ asks the old woman.
    ‘Not really,’ says Rose. She’s looking for black and she