Dresses of Red and Gold Read online

  Isobel busied herself with the new hairstyle, and because the Mellings knew that she was a high priestess of such rites, they humbly accepted her judgement when it was finished. ‘It’s a waste everyone in your family being strawberry blondes,’ Isobel said. ‘None of you have the faintest idea how to show it off. See how I’ve improved Heather—it makes her look really old, seventeen at the very least, no kidding.’

  ‘Three years older—really?’ Heather breathed, and gazed contortedly into the hand mirror, trying to see herself in profile.

  ‘I like it better the way it always is. That just looks as though she’s got a possum sitting on her head,’ Vivienne said abruptly, not wanting to think of Heather ever being seventeen and perhaps going off to the city as Grace had done. Then there’d be only Cathy and herself left at home—a home which might even prove to be a temporary one only, for there was some talk of the landlord wanting it back. Perhaps they’d have to rent a house even further out of town, for Dad still hadn’t found work…Nothing decided, everything blowing about like dead leaves, Vivienne thought uneasily, hating change of any description.

  ‘Drat!’ Heather said, as the ceiling light suddenly flickered and died. ‘It’s not just the bulb gone—the street light’s out in front of the hospital, too, so it’s a blackout. There’s no kero left for the lamp, either—Mum forgot to buy any.’

  ‘Are you sure? She had it down on the shopping list when she went for the groceries.’

  ‘She wrote out a recipe for a lady she got talking to on the bus, no prize for guessing what she used to write it down on. We’re just going to have to put ourselves to bed by candlelight.’

  ‘Candlelight and toast with dripping,’ Isobel said. ‘It’s like a history lesson coming up to your house to stay. Not to mention an outdoor dunny, which is where I’m heading now. Give us the candle, Viv.’

  ‘I need to go down the back, too, so we might as well go together,’ Vivienne said quickly, wanting company on the dark lantana path with the night muttering so irrationally to itself. Isobel wasn’t a very satisfactory bodyguard. She sped ahead with the candle shielded from the wind, and Vivienne stumbled after her, trying to ignore the inky night-time ocean of paddock spread all around. Isobel went into the lavatory first, taking her time. Vivienne waited outside in the drizzling rain, only partially protected by a chaff bag with one corner inverted into a makeshift hood, which she’d grabbed from the back porch. From the corner of her eye she suddenly glimpsed something, an unidentifiable blur which sent her leaping in after Isobel and slamming the door.

  ‘It’s not considered genteel to come busting in on people when they’re in the middle of…’ Isobel said distantly.

  ‘There’s…there’s something moving about over by the water trough!’

  ‘It’ll be one of the horses or the cow getting a drink, stupid.’

  ‘Dad’s taken both the horses with him, and why would Mona be getting a drink—she couldn’t possibly feel thirsty in all this rain! Anyhow, what I saw wasn’t that size, it was whitish and sort of…just floating around!’

  Isobel got up and peered out through the little star-shaped window. ‘You’re nuts, there’s nothing there at all. Making me jump and get a splinter in my derrière just for nothing—get a move on or I won’t wait for you.’

  ‘I’m finished, I’m coming…only you’ve got to go up the path ahead of me, just in case…’

  ‘Course I will. Don’t be frightened, I won’t let any goblins grab you,’ Isobel said kindly, but contrived to vanish where the path curved then leap out from nowhere croaking, ‘Water! Water!’

  Vivienne screamed and bolted inside where Heather was still examining her new hairstyle with a torch from her Girl Guide knapsack. She’d just come to the conclusion that it looked exactly as though a possum was perched on her head, and wasn’t inclined to listen to any jittery stories about white shapes floating about near the horse trough.

  ‘You’re so babyish, Vivienne,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve got a good mind to ask Captain if I can get my Child-Minding badge just on the strength of having to live in the same house! In fact, the whole three of you are crashing little bores, and I’m going to bed. You’d all better go, because this blackout’s probably going to last hours, but just don’t keep me awake giggling and chattering half the night! Vivienne, don’t forget to put the fire-guard up.’

  ‘Why me?’ Vivienne asked plaintively, but they’d already gone, taking the candle and torch and leaving her to find her way in the dark. The little back room was crowded with the extra bed set up for Isobel, who insisted on maintaining her nightly beauty program despite the lack of space. First she did some complicated bustline exercises, which Vivienne watched with amazement. She’d always supposed that bosoms just developed all by themselves without any assistance. This was followed by vigorous running on the spot, but Heather thumped angrily on the wall between the two rooms, so Isobel blew out the candle and got into bed. In the dark she slapped underneath her chin one hundred times to prevent sag, while she and Cathy conversed with each other in French. Vivienne knew it was only showing off because they were in secondary school and she wasn’t, and even though it sounded as though they were sharing sophisticated private jokes, they really didn’t seem to know very many French words between them. Probably they were just counting to fifty over and over, she decided, pulling the blankets up around her ears to blot out their affectedness.

  The blankets weren’t thick enough to muffle the weird noises sifting in from outside. Water gurgled in a nearby downpipe, normally a cosy sound, but tonight it seemed like a sinister monologue taking place out there in the darkness. That idiotic French conversation had been preferable, but Cathy and Isobel were now quiet and settling to sleep. Vivienne lay and listened with escalating alarm to other noises and their untraceable sources, a pattering, something clicking, a rustling as though all the fallen leaves under the poplar trees were being turned over, a thud…

  She reached out into the dark and grabbed the nearest foot. ‘Isobel—wake up! You’ve got to wake up, there’s someone moving about in the backyard!’

  ‘Probably only Thrice,’ Cathy murmured drowsily. ‘I expect he often prowls about out there when he’s got nothing better to do.’

  ‘Waving his stumps—did we tell you he’s only got mangled stumps instead of arms?’ Isobel said. ‘Knock it off, Vivienne, if I don’t get a full eight hours sleep I’ll wake up with my complexion looking like baked custard!’

  ‘You’re both mean! I’m closest to the door and if anyone creeps in here I’ll get grabbed first!’ Vivienne whispered, twisting clammy hands together.

  ‘No one can get in. Heather locked the back door, I saw her do it,’ Isobel said with considerate reassurance, but added, ‘although that’s not really much use…’

  ‘Why not? What do you mean?’

  ‘The key’s still in the lock. Thrice could just slide a piece of newspaper under the gap, poke the key out with a bit of wire so it lands on the paper, then pull the whole lot through to the outside…Though maybe he might find it tricky with his mangly old stumps.’

  ‘Couldn’t…couldn’t one of you go out and look through the kitchen window?’

  ‘It’s your bogeyman,’ Cathy said. ‘You do it. Poor old Thrice with his flappy robe and his holes for eyes—he certainly seems sweet on you, Viv, the way he keeps following you around. Why don’t you get up and make him some tea?’

  ‘She’d have to hold the cup for him, though,’ Isobel tittered. ‘How would he hook his stump through the handle?’

  Because they obviously weren’t going to budge, Vivienne crept out to the kitchen window and nervously scanned what she could see of the backyard. Something gleamed palely through the dark drizzle, but it was only a suppercloth which they’d forgotten to fetch from the line. She demisted the glass and looked again, tracing the outlines of wheelbarrow, fowl-yard door, mulberry tree, Cathy’s attempt at making a canoe—all reassuring stationary objects, and…a white something
that whisked suddenly from under the tank-stand and around the side of the house, moving so quickly she saw it only as a blur. In fact, it had seemed to be a collection of somethings, all wobbling horribly about, then vanishing into the darkness…

  She ran, yelling, up the hall into the front room and dived under the bed covers. Heather woke up and scrabbled groggily about on her bedside table, found the torch and switched it on with an expression that promised no good for anyone.

  ‘I saw this thing out in the yard!’ Vivienne whimpered through the crocheted holes of the Afghan rug. ‘Oh, it was so awful—and it’s still out there, whatever it is!’

  ‘What’s wrong with Viv?’ asked Cathy and Isobel from the doorway.

  ‘And just what are you both doing in my room?’ Heather demanded coldly. ‘What is this—matinée time at the Roxy?’

  ‘We only came in to see what all the yelling was about,’ Cathy said. ‘She won’t let us get any sleep. Every five minutes she’s saying something’s wandered out of the hospital morgue and come down the hill to tap on our window.’

  ‘That really did happen once, kind of,’ Isobel said. ‘There was this patient died, so they bunged him in the morgue all wrapped up in a shroud with a bandage tying up his chin. But he hadn’t really died, he was just in a coma. He woke up and opened the door and wandered about in a daze trying to find his way home…You needn’t look so superior, Heather, it happens to be true! That corpse blundered right into a meeting of the Hospital Ladies’ Auxiliary and one of them fainted into the passionfruit sponge…’

  ‘That morgue’s got a heavy padlocked shutter over the door from the outside—and I keep telling you it’s not even a morgue, it’s an electric generator,’ Heather said cuttingly. ‘Get your froggy feet out of my bed this minute, Vivienne!’

  ‘There is something outside—I saw it through the kitchen window! If you don’t go and chase it away, I’m going to tell Mum on you when she gets home! I’ll tell your Guide captain, too, and she’ll take all your badges off you! Guides are supposed to be brave and go in dark tunnels and things and rescue people…’

  ‘She won’t give anyone any peace unless you have a look,’ Cathy said. ‘You know what she’s like.’

  ‘Please, Heather!’ Vivienne whispered.

  ‘If I do go, you’ve got to be my slave all next week and clean my school shoes. Plus give me the cream off the top of the milk when it’s your turn, and do the washing-up when it’s mine. And I’ll expect my bike to be brought round to the front door every morning at eight on the dot with the tyres pumped up!’

  Vivienne nodded mutely and watched her march out to the back door and fling it open as casually as though she were just going outside to gather parsley for a white sauce. Cathy and Isobel watched, too, as Heather went all around the yard, flashing her torch at the door of the fowl-run, into the cowbail and under the tank-stand. She tramped all the way to the end of the lantana path, then came back and gazed scornfully up at Vivienne on the porch.

  ‘I just hope you’re satisfied, waking everyone up when there’s nothing out here at…’ she said, then stopped as abruptly as though a hand had been clapped over her mouth. She sprang up the steps so fast it almost seemed as though she’d achieved the incredible feat of covering all six in one bound, pushed everyone frantically inside and slammed the door.

  ‘I saw…under the house…something white!’ she gabbled. ‘A white ghostly thing, sort of…quivering! Quick, someone, help me drag the kitchen table across the door for a barricade!’

  ‘There’s the front door, too!’ Cathy squeaked, catching her panic. ‘That loose glass panel—anyone could shove it in and reach through and unsnib the latch! Quick—the hallstand…’

  They rushed at the heavy stand and tugged it, cursing each other for slowness, barked shins and stubbed toes, until it blocked the front door, then Cathy climbed on a chair and took down the heftiest sabre from Dad’s collection of military swords.

  ‘That’s not going to be much use,’ Isobel said. ‘It might have worked okay for your dad swaggering around in that old war and biffing people—but this is different.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Cathy asked nervously.

  ‘If you poke a ghost with a sword, it just goes straight through, like slicing through air.’

  ‘We’re never going to let you stay overnight ever again, Isobel Dion!’ Heather said. ‘If any situation’s bad, you always make it a whole lot worse!’

  ‘It’s all Vivienne’s fault, really,’ Isobel pointed out. ‘If she hadn’t been hearing things that go bump and making you go outside and check up, we wouldn’t even have known there was a ghost on the loose.’

  ‘That’s not fair, blaming me!’ Vivienne protested, but could feel their unanimous disapproval encircling her like barbed wire. She tried to regain favour by making an attempt to revive the fire embers, but accidentally knocked Heather’s little torch to the hearth and shattered the bulb.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Heather cried. ‘We’ll just have to sit here in the dark because of you! The electricity’s still off and there’s hardly any wood left and the candle’s in the other room. I’m certainly not going down that spooky hall to get it while…’

  Whatever was under the house stirred. It pattered to and fro beneath the floorboards, whispering to itself.

  ‘Oh, I can’t stand not having a light!’ Cathy wailed. ‘Seeing it’s Vivienne’s fault, make her go and get the candle!’

  Vivienne, bullied and nagged relentlessly until she gave in, crept along the hall to the back room. Isobel, she remembered, had left the candle on the window ledge. She groped her way forward, cracked her shins against Cathy’s bed, and in grabbing for the candle managed to spill the box of matches all over the coverlet.

  ‘Vivienne—you just get a move on!’ Heather called.

  She raked the matches back into the box, tremulously aware that the window was open a little way at the bottom. They’d been so energetic about barring the doors, but everyone had forgotten Cathy’s fetish for fresh air even on the coldest nights. That thing from under the house could be gazing in at her right now, could perhaps fold itself into the width of a greyish-white hooded cloak and slither…Slowly, feeling as though there was no medal in the world magnificent enough to honour her bravery, she reached forward to close the window, but first, compelled by a degree of fascinated horror, put her eye to the gap and peered out…

  She didn’t go directly back to the living-room, but slipped into the kitchen instead and made herself a delicious corned-beef and pickle sandwich by candlelight. Then she went and perched on the sofa, humming airily to herself in between bites. Heather, in her absence, had managed to coax the fire back to life, and Vivienne noticed with interest how closely they all huddled around it, how they kept darting scared looks over their shoulders. They also gaped in disbelief at the sandwich.

  ‘I just remembered something,’ she said. ‘Mum told us to get that suppercloth in off the line if it rained, but we all forgot. It’s the good one with the pansy embroidery and if the wind gets worse, it could blow all the way up to O’Keefe’s place, then we’ll never get it back. I think someone should go out and fetch it in now.’

  ‘Go…outside? Are you off your rocker?’ Isobel cried.

  ‘Go out there…after what Heather saw?’ Cathy asked.

  ‘I’m certainly not going out the back with goodness knows what on the prowl!’ Heather said.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect any of you to do it,’ Vivienne said nonchalantly. ‘I can hear your teeth chattering from here. You don’t have to worry—I’ll get the tablecloth in.’

  ‘You? You never go out the back by yourself after dark even when there’s no ghosts about! I’d just like to see you going out to bring something in from the clothesline when…’

  But Vivienne got up and dragged the table away from the back door, leaving enough space to wriggle through. She went down the steps into the blowy darkness, strolled across the yard to the clothesline and un
wound the tangled tablecloth, then sauntered unhurriedly back inside.

  ‘You can dry this in front of the fire,’ she said, yawning comfortably. ‘I’m off to bed now—though I suppose you’ll be sitting up in here all night waiting for Dad to come home and rescue you from the bogeyman.’

  ‘Viv, are you feeling okay?’ Heather asked with concern. ‘You shouldn’t have gone out the back alone. I don’t think you should sleep in that room all by yourself, either. Listen, what we’ll do is stay together in here by the fire and just…’

  ‘You can if you want to. If you get too nervous you can always call me and I’ll come out and hold your hands,’ Vivienne said.

  She went to bed and lay listening to the whisper of autumn rain. She listened to the sounds from the living-room, too, the agitated whispers and small squeaks from Isobel, Cathy or Heather as wind gusts rattled the loose iron on the roof, or something banged in the darkness outside. The poor things were very on edge, she thought smugly, helping herself to Cathy’s feather pillow and Isobel’s soft tartan rug. They wouldn’t be needing such things if they planned to sit up all night…

  And in the morning, she thought, perhaps she’d tell them about O’Keefe’s big white sow and three piglets which had got loose and now, after all their wandering about in various places, were cuddled up fast asleep underneath the bedroom window.

  A Gift from the Rajah

  Heather, waiting dourly at the post office for a bus connection, wished she hadn’t put her name down for the Home Visiting Scheme. She’d purposely chosen a moment when Mr Everett was standing in the church porch shaking hands with everyone—imagining him perhaps holding hers a fraction longer than usual when she volunteered. She’d thought he might even have said, ‘I knew instinctively that you’d be the first young person to come forward—you put all the other girls in this parish to shame!’ But it hadn’t happened like that at all! Mr Everett, his distinguished silver hair shining like a halo, had just glanced at her absently and said, ‘Oh yes, the Home Visiting list for the elderly…you’d better see my wife about that.’