The Dressmaker Read Online Free

Almanac unscrewed the lid and sniffed, then reached for the open tin of White Lily abrasive cleaner on the sink at his elbow. He scooped some onto his fingers then plunged them into the potion and stirred, screwed the lid back on and put the jar at the front of the top shelf.
    He closed the door, reached with both arms to the edge of the fridge and grabbed it. With a small grunt the stiff old man pulled his stooped torso faintly to the left, then the right, and gathering momentum rocked his rigid body until one foot rose, the other followed and Mr Almanac turned and tripped across his dispensary, halting only when he bumped against the shop counter. All the counters and shelves in Mr Almanac’s chemist shop were bare. Everything on view was either in wire-strengthened glass cases or on high-sided benches like billiard tables so that nothing could fall and break when Mr Almanac bumped to a halt against them. Advancing Parkinson’s disease had left him curved, a mumbling question mark, forever face-down, tumbling short-stepped through his shop and across the road to his low damp home. Collision was his friend and saviour when his assistant Nancy was absent from the shop, and his customers were used to greeting only the top of his balding head, standing behind his ornate and musical copper-plated cash register. As his disease advanced so had his anger over the state of Dungatar’s footpaths and he had written to Mr Evan Pettyman, the shire president.
    Mr Almanac waited, stuck and coiled against the shop counter until Nancy came. ‘Yoohoo … I’m here boss.’ She gently guided him by the elbow to the front door, pushed his hat tightly onto his bent head and wound his scarf around his neck, tying a knot at the nape to sit where his head used to belong. She curled over in front of him and looked up into his face. ‘Close game today boss, only beat ’em by eight-goals-two! There’d be a few minor injuries I’d say, but I told ’em you got gallons of liniment and crepe bandage.’
    She patted the arched cervical vertebra pushing on his white coat and shuffled with him to the curb. Mrs Almanac sat in her wheelchair in the front gate opposite. A quick glance up and down the street and Nancy gave her boss a shove, and he chugged straight over the rise in the middle of the bitumen and down to Mrs Almanac who held a cushion out at arm’s length. Mr Almanac’s hat came to a soft halt deep in the cushion and he was safely home.
    Out at Windswept Crest, Elsbeth Beaumont stood at her Aga in her homestead kitchen lovingly basting a roasting pork joint – her son loved the crackle. William Beaumont Junior was at the oval, laughing with the men in the change rooms, standing in the steamy air with naked blokes and the smell of sweat and stale socks, Palmolive soap and liniment. He felt easy, bold and confident among the soft ugly intimacy of the grass-stuck grazed knees, the songs, the profanity. Scotty Pullit was smiling next to William, sipping from a tin flask, springing on the balls of his feet. Scotty was fragile and crimson with a bulbous, blue-tipped nose and a wet, boiling cough from smoking a packet of Capstans a day. He’d failed both as a husband and a jockey, but had stumbled on success and popularity when he stilled some excellent watermelon firewater. His still was set up at a secret location on the creek bank. He drank most of it but sold some or gave it to Purl for food, rent and cigarettes.
    ‘And how about the first goal of the third quarter! Had it in the bag for certain then mate, just a question of waitin’ for the siren, all over bar the shouting …’ He laughed then coughed until he turned purple.
    Fred Bundle snapped the top off the bottle with a barman’s finesse and tilted its mouth to the glass, black fluid pouring thickly. He placed the glass on the bar in front of Hamish O’Brien and picked through the coins sitting wetly on the bar cloth. Hamish stared at his Guinness, waiting for the froth to