The Women in Black Page 6

  Not much, you will, she thought, except that you will have to go to the stockroom yourselves and it will do you good too, instead of sending little Lisa every single time, and for every other errand requiring a pair of legs.

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Jacobs, ‘if that’s what Miss Cartright says, I’m not going to argue with you.’

  Patty looked offended, as she usually did in Magda’s presence, and Fay looked askance.

  ‘Shall I come now?’ asked Lisa.

  ‘That will be very kind,’ said Magda. ‘I will show you the way we do things in Model Gowns, there will be much for you to learn, and then we shall see.’

  Lisa slipped out from behind the counter which belonged to the Ladies’ Cocktail section and, glancing and half-shrugging as if in apology to her colleagues, followed Magda across the carpet and under the archway which marked the entrance to the shrine, and Miss Jacobs, Mrs Williams and Miss Baines saw her no more, until the sun had crossed the meridian, and twelve Cocktail Frocks had been sold, and three trips made to the stock-room, two by Miss Baines, and one by a much-complaining Mrs Williams.

  14

  ‘Well, Lisa,’ said Magda, extending a graceful arm, ‘here are the Model Gowns. Do you by the way know what is a Model Gown?’

  ‘Well,’ said Lisa, ‘not exactly. I’m not sure—’

  ‘Very well,’ said Magda, ‘I will explain to you. These frocks are all unique. There are no others like them in all this city. Oh, if you were to go to Focher perhaps you would find one or two, I don’t know, that woman is capable of anything, but as far as we are concerned there can be no others of their kind in Sydney. A woman who buys one of these frocks knows that she will not meet another wearing the same frock, which is so terrible a thing to happen to a woman, even if she looks better in the frock than her rival. So to say. So we have the exclusive right to sell the frock in Sydney. You might find it at George’s in Melbourne, that is all. Who goes to Melbourne? So that is by the way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lisa, bemused. ‘I see.’

  ‘And the stock is all here. We do not keep different sizes of the same model,’ Magda continued, ‘for then of course the frock would cease to be unique. Do you see?’

  And Lisa nodded, and gazed at the frocks, whose chiffon and taffeta edges frothed out in their luminous ranks around her.

  ‘Now let us look perhaps at a few of these frocks,’ said Magda, ‘and you will see what such a Model Gown looks like. Let me see.

  We have our day frocks here and our costumes, as you would say I suppose our suits, here for instance this Irish linen, it is Hardy Amies, so very well cut, I would like it for myself but on the other hand I am not at my best in the English style, it is for a thin woman with no hips, I cannot understand why, English women are all made in the shape of a pear. Never mind. It is nothing to me. The French, they cut to fit a real woman with hips and a bosom, but they make her look slim nonetheless: that is artistry. There is no one to touch them, my God, it is a remarkable civilisation. I hope you have learnt some French at your school, have you?’

  ‘Yes, oh yes,’ said Lisa, ‘I took French for the Leaving Certificate.’

  ‘C’est bien,’ said Magda. ‘Nous parlerons quelquefois français, non?’

  ‘Je lis un peu,’ said Lisa, ‘je ne parle pas bien.

  ’ ‘You will come and see some French evening frocks, en tout cas,’ said Magda, ‘which will interest you I dare say more than the costumes or the day frocks. For a jeune fille, the romantic. And we have some English ones too of course, they are not bad, see what you think. Here is Hartnell, he is the dressmaker of the Queen as you know, Amies again, also he makes for the Queen, and a Charles James—magnifique. Now some French, you see—Jacques Fath, ravissante, a little Chanel, she has such wit that woman, and the great Dior. Who can touch him?’

  Lisa stared, more bemused than ever; her head began to swim. She had lately come to see that clothing might be something beyond a more or less fashionable covering; that it might have other meanings. What she now but dimly and very oddly, very suddenly, saw was a meaning she could not before have suspected: what she now but dimly, oddly, and so suddenly, saw was that clothing might be—so to speak—art. For these frocks, as each was named and held out briefly before her gaze by Magda, seemed each to exist in a magical envelope of self-sufficiency, or even a sort of pride; each of these frocks appeared to her however ignorant still lively intelligence to be like—it was astonishing— a poem.

  ‘Gosh,’ she said, ‘golly.’

  Her hand reached out, gently, tentatively, and she touched the many-layered skirt of a pale evening frock.

  ‘Are they very expensive?’ she asked, her eyes large and fearful.

  ‘Ho!’ snorted Magda. ‘Ha! they had better be expensive. My God! You will see my stock book very soon and then you will know. But with such a frock, the price as you may one day appreciate is part of the charm. Now I will tell you something else, one or two things, and then you had better go back to those Cocktail ladies, and later I will speak to Miss Cartright again and will suggest to her that you will come to me in the mornings, when it is not so busy here, to help me with something I am going to explain.’

  And she led the way to the Louis XVI table and pulled out the drawer.

  ‘Voilà!’ she said. ‘Here then is my stock book. Now then. As you know, the abominable sales will begin on the second of January and I too must put my stock on sale. So it is time to review it. Now you see, here are listed every one of my frocks, their names, their wholesale and their retail prices, and you will be most kind to make out a little ticket for each one which is not sold yet—you see we make a tick in the last column here when a frock is sold—with the price on it, and when all that is done, we will go through the stock and I will decide on the sale price depending on how long the frock has been here and its condition and so on. Then you will write the sale price beneath the old price so that the ladies know they get a great great bargain. And first of all you will arrange all the frocks of each section in the same order as that in the stock book, you see, which will be more convenient, we will know where we are. And of course you will always make sure that your hands are quite quite clean before you come in here and touch these so-expensive frocks, ma petite. Okay?’

  And she smiled brightly, thinking to herself that it was very nice to have a little assistant, even a thin pale little schoolgirl like Lisa, who knew nothing; in fact, it was very nice to have the charge of so ignorant a little girl, for she, Magda, could teach her everything, and suddenly now, she, Magda, realised how pleasant it was to give instruction, to fill an empty head with knowledge, drop by precious drop: cut, style, taste; Amies, Fath, Dior.

  15

  ‘I’m going to help Magda in the mornings, Mum.’

  ‘Magda? Who’s “Magda”?’ asked Mrs Miles.

  ‘You know, Magda. She’s in charge of Model Gowns; I told you.’

  ‘Model Gowns? Now what’s “Model Gowns” for goodness’ sake?’ asked Mrs Miles. ‘I thought they were all “Model Gowns” at Goode’s. An expensive shop like that.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Lisa. ‘They’re just un-Model Gowns, all the other things in Goode’s, they come in all sizes, anyone can buy them.’

  ‘Anyone who can pay for them,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘I’m sure I can’t.’

  ‘No, but—’ continued Lisa, ‘the Model Gowns are unique.

  There’s only one of each, and they’re from France and England, and if you have one, you know nobody else will have it too, because it’s the only one in Sydney.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Miles, ‘I know. Individual. Well, no one else has the same clothes as you do either, except for your old school blouses, because I make them, so they’re unique too, aren’t they?’

  ‘Ye-e-es,’ said Lisa, ‘yes, I suppose so—’ ‘Well, there’s no “suppose” about it,’ said her mother, ‘they are. That pink frock I made you, if you could get one like it I reckon you’d pay five or six pounds at least, but yo
u can’t.’

  ‘Yes, but the Model Gowns,’ said Lisa, ‘are mostly evening frocks.’

  ‘Oh, yes, evening frocks. I see,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘For balls, and that. That’s another story. I suppose I could try my hand at that if you wanted to go to a ball.’

  And she began to get a dizzy feeling at the thought of making an evening frock, for a ball, not that she wouldn’t do her best, not that she wouldn’t try her very best to dress her daughter for a ball. Well.

  ‘But then you haven’t reached that point yet so we needn’t worry about it yet, need we?’ she asked brightly. But while she was doing so, each naturally had the same awful thought: the secret suddenly rose in a pink cloud and hovered near the kitchen ceiling above their heads.

  If Lesley is really going to go to the university, thought Mrs Miles, she’ll very likely be going to balls, she’ll be doing goodness knows what. The clothes! All those other girls there—the daughters of professional men, business men: rich girls, with lots of clothes, clothes from Goode’s, for example—it was going to be a headache, keeping up with that. Lesley had been such a slow developer, her life had been so simple, so far—she had hardly been out with a boy; only a few young chaps she called weeds, chaps she didn’t care about making an impression on. How would it be when she got to the university, and met others, not weeds—well. She would just have to do her best. They would see.

  ‘No, but when I do go to a ball,’ said Lisa, ‘I’ll have my money I’ve saved working at Goode’s, won’t I? So I can buy something, and not bother you about it.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said her mother, ‘I’d forgotten that. You could buy a Model Gown, with that money. You’ll look just lovely.’

  They laughed together, and Lisa jumped up and took her mother’s arm and they danced around the room, singing together.

  Volare, oh, oh!

  Cantare, oh, oh, oh, oh!

  Everything will work out somehow, thought Mrs Miles; and my Lesley will go to the ball.

  16

  It was on the morning of the very next day that Lisa saw The Frock.

  She was engaged upon the task which Magda had described to her, checking the stock list against the actual frocks and ranging these in the order in which they appeared in the stock list so that Magda could later go through them speedily and decide upon their sale prices. She had managed to find and to arrange in the correct order five or six of the semi-formal evening frocks which hung together in one mahogany open cabinet on their pink satin-covered hangers and was now hunting amongst the unsorted remainder for the model named Tara, described in the book as black and white silk taffeta, Creed.

  As she carefully slid each hanger forward to inspect the Model Gown which hung behind it, finding now Laura, now Rosy, now Minuit, but never yet Tara, her gaze was suddenly—as she pushed Minuit further forward to clear a space—filled with the vision of—it was a magical coincidence—Lisette.

  Child of the imagination of a great couturière, having that precise mixture of the insouciant and the romantic, the sophisticated and the simple, that only the female mind can engender, Lisette was the quintessential evening frock for a young girl: a froth of red pin-spotted white organza with a low neck, a tight bodice, a few deep ruffles over the shoulders, artful red silk piping edging these ruffles and the three tiers of the gathered skirts whose deepest tier would have cleared the fl oor by some eight inches, to leave a good view of a slender leg, a delicate ankle. The effect was of tiny spots set off by narrow stripes, the gaiety of crimson set off by the candour of white; the silky fabric very faintly shimmered.

  Lisa stood, gazing her fill. She was experiencing for the first time that particular species of love-at-first-sight which usually comes to a woman much earlier in her life, but which sooner or later comes to all: the sudden recognition that a particular frock is not merely pretty, would not merely suit one, but answers beyond these necessary attributes to one’s deepest notions of oneself. It was her frock: it had been made, however unwittingly, for her.

  She stood for a long time, drinking it in. The encounter was faintly, vaguely, strangely similar to her first meeting with the Tyger. She gazed on, marvelling, and then at last slowly, wrenchingly, she pushed the hanger forward, and continued her search for Tara.

  17

  Miss Jacobs, Mrs Williams, Miss Baines and Miss Miles had just received their wages envelopes, with their Christmas bonuses added on, which aroused very satisfactory sensations in each one as she contemplated the disposition of the surplus funds. The shape of Miss Jacobs’s contemplations must remain forever a mystery; Lisa’s we might quite easily guess at; Fay’s perhaps less easily; Patty’s, we know.

  ‘I’m just going to change out of this black frock,’ she told Fay at lunchtime, ‘and go down and look at them swimming cossies, and one or two other things maybe, so maybe I’ll see you in the canteen later on, and maybe not, I might have to skip lunch today.’

  Oddly for her she had not mentioned the black nightdress to a soul: it was her secret. Except for Paula, of course. She would just change now very quickly and then run down to Lingerie and—no, she thought, I won’t; I’ll go to the cossies first, because I don’t want anyone to see me carrying that parcel from Lingerie (which used a different patterned wrapping paper, printed with a lace and ribbon design) because they might guess what’s in it, or they might ask. So I’ll just go to the cossies first.

  The consequence was that she spent so much time trying on swimming costumes and then suddenly felt so hungry that she thought, I haven’t time to get my nightie and eat as well so I’ll get my nightie tomorrow; and that was how she came at last to reach home on the Friday night before Christmas carrying a Goode’s Lingerie parcel containing one black nylon nightdress with pink satin ribbon trim, SSW.

  The sun had shone constantly every day now for several weeks during which the temperature had steadily, relentlessly, risen, and every wall in the vast city, every pavement, every roof, was soaked in heat. People moved slowly through the miasmic atmosphere, their eyes narrowed against the glare; their minds contracted into a state of wilting apathy, they directed their slow steps as soon as they could towards water in whatever form they could most conveniently find it: they went to the beaches, the swimming baths, their own showers, and immersed themselves until at last the stupendous sun sank below the horizon and darkness laid its balm upon their assaulted senses. Patty reached Randwick on the Friday night before Christmas just as this benison began to fall.

  I wonder how long I’ve got before Frank gets in, she thought; he’ll be having a proper booze-up as it’s Friday night so he probably won’t get home till sevenish: so I’ve got time for a good long soak. And she took off all her sticky clothes and went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. Standing under its downpour, she drifted into that primeval condition, a state of peacefulness suffused by an innocent sensuality, which immersion in water can alone induce, and it was fully fifteen minutes before she turned off the taps. She had washed her hair: her permanent wave was almost grown out and it hung in limp strands around her small face. As she re-entered the bed room her eye lit upon the secretive package which contained her new nightdress and she thought: I know, I’ll try it on now, and just see what it looks like on. And she did.

  She stood for some time gazing at herself in the full-length mirror in the wardrobe door, for she could not quite believe in the reality of the sight which met her eyes. Geez, she exclaimed to herself: geez-uz.

  I’ll be damned, thought Frank, if I’ll go to the pub with them lot tonight, and listen to any more bull about their fl aming kids. The topic was getting out of hand; some of the mates had even started producing—not half sheepishly enough, either—snapshots of their own: ‘Here’s my Cheryl—curly hair, see? She gets it from me—’ Frank was damned if he wanted to listen to any more of that, and in the pub, too. So tonight he sulked off—‘Things to do. See youse on Monday!’ And he went, without even thinking twice, to another pub on the other side of Centr
al Railway Station, a little place he’d half noticed long ago, and he went into the public bar, and he asked for some whisky. I feel like a whisky, he thought; I just feel like a whisky.

  ‘Scotch or Australian?’ asked the barmaid.

  Well, there’s no need to go completely cuckoo, thought Frank.

  ‘Australian’s good enough for me,’ he told the barmaid.

  ‘Right you are,’ she said, and she poured him a measure of Australian whisky.

  Used as he was to drinking beer, Frank tossed it off.

  ‘Same again!’ he said.

  After some time he walked out into the street and found his way to his tram stop; it was a toast-rack tram on that route, and he wobbled slightly all the way home in a haze of whisky and unarticulated anguish. I wonder what’s for dinner, he thought.

  Patty had her back to the bedroom door and had only half heard Frank’s key turning in the lock. That will be Frank, she dimly thought, I’d better make myself look decent, and she opened the wardrobe door—her still-unfamiliar transparent-black-clad reflec-tion coming up close to meet her—to find her dressing-gown. As she did so, she suddenly saw, beyond her reflection, the figure of her husband, standing in the doorway of the bedroom.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m just—I’m just getting my dressing-gown,’ said Patty.

  ‘Dressed for bed?’ asked Frank, taking in Patty’s apparel now quite precisely. ‘Isn’t it a bit early for that?’

  ‘Well, not really,’ said Patty. ‘It’s new. I was just trying it on.

  I’ll take it off now.’

  ‘I’ll take it off,’ said Frank.

  And he came over to Patty, who had turned away from the wardrobe and her refl ection, and stood in front of her for a few seconds, and then very gingerly he put his arms around her waist, and seizing in each hand a fold of the black nylon nightdress began to pull the garment up and over his wife’s damp head. Patty could smell the whisky faintly on his breath, but she said nothing. Frank fl ung the nightdress aside and touched Patty’s breast. He inclined his head ever so slightly towards the bed and Patty moved tentatively towards it.