The Dressmaker Read Free Page A

brick-rendered shop façades and warped weatherboards covered in peeling paint.
    ‘My future,’ muttered William determinedly, ‘I will make a life worth living here.’ Then self-doubt engulfed him and he looked at his lap, his chin quivering.
    The car door opened and William jumped. Mona climbed neatly into the back seat. ‘Mother says to come,’ she said.
    He drove to the back of Pratts, and, while he was loading the chaff into the boot, a big girl standing in the huge open doorway smiled at him: a grinning expectant girl standing beside her plain mother against a backdrop of fishing rods and lines, lawn mowers, rope, car and tractor tyres, garden hoses and horse bridles, enamelled buckets and pitching forks in a haze of grain dust.
    As they drove away Mona blew her nose and said, ‘Every time we come to town I get hay fever.’
    ‘It doesn’t agree with me either,’ said Elsbeth, looking out at the townfolk. The women from the street stall, the shoppers and proprietors were gathered in clumps on the footpath to look up at The Hill.
    ‘Who lives at Mad Molly’s now?’ said William.
    ‘Mad Molly,’ said Elsbeth, ‘unless she’s dead.’
    ‘Someone’s alive – they lit her fire,’ he said.
    Elsbeth swung around and glared out the rear window. ‘Stop!’ she cried.
    Sergeant Farrat paused outside the shire office to peer up at The Hill, then turned to look down the street. Nancy Pickett leaned on her worn broom outside the chemist shop, while Fred and Purl Bundle wandered down from the pub to join sisters Ruth and Prudence Dimm outside the post office building. In his office above, Councillor Evan Pettyman picked up his coffee cup and swung his leather shire president’s chair to gaze out the window. He jumped up, spilling his coffee, and swore.
    In the back streets Beula Harridene ran between the housewives standing on their nature strips in brunch coats and curlers. ‘She’s back,’ she hissed, ‘Myrtle Dunnage has come back.’
    At the Tip, Mae McSwiney watched her son Teddy standing in the backyard looking up at the slim girl in trousers on the veranda, her hair lifting in the breeze. Mae crossed her arms and frowned.
    • • •
    That afternoon, Sergeant Farrat stood at the table concentrating, his tongue earnestly searching for the tip of his nose. He ran a discerning thumb across the sharp peaks of his pinking shears, then crunched them through the gingham. As a child, little Horatio Farrat had lived with his mother in Melbourne above a milliner’s shop. When he’d grown up he joined the police force. Just after the graduation ceremony, Horatio approached his superiors with drawings and patterns. He’d designed new Police uniforms.
    Constable Farrat was immediately posted to Dung-atar, where he found extremes in the weather and peace and quiet. The locals were pleased to find their new officer was also a Justice of the Peace, and, unlike their former sergeant, didn’t join the football club or insist on free beer. The sergeant was able to design and make his own clothes and hats to match the weather. The outfits didn’t necessarily compliment his physique, but they were unique. He was able to enjoy their effect fully during his annual leave, but in Dungatar he wore them only inside the house. The sergeant liked to take his holidays in spring, spending two weeks in Melbourne shopping, enjoying the fashion shows at Myers and David Jones and attending the theatre, but it was always lovely to get home. His garden suffered without him, and he loved his town, his home, his office. He settled at his Singer, pumping the treadle with stockinged feet, and guided the skirt seams beneath the pounding needle.
    Tooting car horns and a rousing cheer floated from the football oval where young men stood in the grandstand drinking beer. Men in hats and grey overcoats gathered near the dressing sheds, barracking, and today their wives had abandoned their knitting to watch every move the teams made. In the