‘It’s not really maroon and it’s not exactly burgundy,’ Heather said. ‘Cerise, maybe…’
‘Red,’ Isobel said firmly. ‘It’s going to be the most peculiar-looking wedding—fancy walking down the aisle with four bridesmaids dressed in red! Bridesmaids always wear pink or blue or maybe at a pinch mauve, and if you ask me, Cathy’s going to look exactly like one of those pageboys they have in big posh hotels. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone asks her for a packet of cigarettes.’
‘It’s more russet coloured than anything else,’ Mum said. ‘I think it’s pretty, even if it is…well, unusual. Autumn colours picked to fit in with the season…Hilary Melling always was a sophisticated sort of girl, so it was on the cards she’d choose something a bit different when the time came. Cathy’s going to look sweet as a bridesmaid, and it’s a shame Dad will miss out seeing her—though, mind you, I think he chose this week on purpose to go up and run the Grantbys’ farm while they’re away. He doesn’t like weddings all that much. I remember when we got married, he tried to talk me into running off with him the day before so he wouldn’t have to get all dressed up and make a speech. Cathy’s the same. I just wish she’d show more enthusiasm, it was like roping a steer to get her along to the fittings even!’
She spread the bridesmaid dress carefully over the dining-room table beside the gold mesh Juliet cap, the gold basket and a new pair of red ankle-strap shoes, a gift to Cathy from the bride-to-be. Vivienne gazed yearningly at those glorious things, particularly the dress, which had been collected from the dressmaker that afternoon. It had a long skirt like a calyx, a square neckline trimmed with gold braid, and a beauty that magnetised her fingers.
‘Vivienne, don’t you dare touch anything on this table!’ Mum ordered. ‘And that goes for the whole lot of you—I’m going to shut the door and no one’s to come in here at all. Heaven knows, I’ve got more than enough to do without sponging off sticky fingerprints and ironing out creases. There’s my poem to write. I’ve never missed out yet commemorating the special events in people’s lives with a nice verse—and you can’t believe how hard it is to find a word that rhymes with Hilary. Plus there’s all those little posies to make up yet.’
‘Cathy’s got to stand at the church door with the gold basket and hand out flower sprays to all the ladies as they go in,’ Heather explained to Isobel.
‘Well, if I was a guest I’d rather get handed a glass of champagne right at the start. And that basket looks more like a gold stingray…’
‘Isobel, you can run along home now you’ve seen Cathy’s outfit,’ Mum said crisply, ticking off agitated lists in her mind. ‘The girls won’t have time to sit around gossiping, they’ve got to help me with all the last-minute things. The posies, plus all those chicken wishbones out in the kitchen waiting to be painted gold and have little ribbon bows tied on…oh, how I miss Grace at a time like this! It’s such a pity she couldn’t get time off for the wedding. Still, I mustn’t grumble about that, she’ll be home for a visit in a few weeks.’
‘Grace is well out of it,’ Heather told Isobel. ‘That’s another one of Hilary’s high-falutin ideas, those chicken wishbones. They’re for the table place-settings, and I don’t see why she couldn’t be doing it instead of us. She’s the one thought it up. I don’t think it’s fair, anyhow—Viv and me have been slaving away collecting fern down by the river and stuff like that, and we’re not even invited to her old wedding! It’s only Mum going, and Cathy because of her being one of the bridesmaids.’
‘Hilary had to draw the line somewhere. If she invited every relation in Wilgawa there wouldn’t even be standing room,’ Mum said. ‘And where is that aggravating Cathy, by the way? I want her fetched in now from wherever she is to have her hair washed and put up in rag curlers—better not mention the curlers until you’ve got her safely inside.’
Cathy wasn’t difficult to find. For the past week she’d been spending all her free time building a complicated platform in a tree at the end of the paddock. Furious at being disturbed, she scowled down at them with a fistful of nails.
‘There’s a scratch on your cheek going to need half a bottle of calamine lotion to disguise it,’ Heather said. ‘You’re supposed to be a bridesmaid tomorrow, in case you’ve forgotten. Come down out of there before you do yourself any more damage.’
Cathy fingered the scratch and dismissed it as minor surface injury, nothing which she or anyone else in their right minds need be concerned about. She banged in another nail and inspected the result. In her imagination, the finished lookout would be as splendid as a military headquarters, boasting multiple levels connected by gangways, a trapdoor and a secret safe with a combination lock where she could store her possessions. But all she had to show so far for several days’ hard work—maddeningly interrupted at intervals by stupid dress-fittings—was a rough floor of planks and a wonky roof, the seams filled with tar. Some of the planks creaked and wobbled alarmingly. Perhaps, she thought, it might be advisable to prise the whole lot off and try hammering them down at a different angle…
‘Mum wants you right now,’ Heather said bossily.
‘You’ve got to come in and have your hair washed and put up in rags for tomorrow,’ Isobel blabbed.
Cathy, enraged, hurled away the fistful of nails and yelled, ‘I’m not having my hair tied up in curling rags and end up looking like a merino! It’s bad enough I’ve got to wear that gruesome dress! I didn’t even want to be a bridesmaid, and I don’t see why they couldn’t have asked Vivienne instead—she’s so soft in the head she’d probably like it!’
‘Hilary Melling’s your godmother, that’s why you got asked,’ Heather said. ‘Come on, act your age and stop making such a fuss. You know you can’t get out of having your hair done.’
Cathy climbed miserably down the slats she’d nailed to the tree trunk for a ladder. ‘I’ve got a good mind to eat a whole packet of prunes before I go to bed,’ she said. ‘Then they’d have to use Viv instead of me. There’s only going to be one good thing about this whole rotten wedding, and that’s the party food afterwards. Asparagus rolls, they’re having, and little crumbed cutlets done up in paper frills and Napoleon cakes…’
‘Make sure you pinch some off the table and bring them home for us,’ Isobel said greedily.
‘And just where am I supposed to hide them?’
‘In your gold stingray basket, of course,’ Isobel smirked. ‘Geeze, what a hoot having to lug that thing down the aisle, just like Little Red Riding Hood…’
Cathy’s foot shot out and Isobel sat down suddenly on a thistle.
‘It’s not polite to poke fun about people’s weddings,’ Vivienne said indignantly. ‘I think a basket full of sprays for all the guests is a lovely idea. Cathy won’t even be lugging it down the aisle, anyhow. After she’s handed out the posies she’ll be carrying a bouquet of gold pom-pom chrysanthemums like the other bridesmaids.’
‘I reckon that sounds just as bad—they’ll look like a handful of ox eyes on skewers,’ Isobel said, and Cathy, plunged into deeper misery, stomped down to the house to have her hair lathered and rinsed in a basin then curled tightly around strips torn from an old pillowcase, with Mum ignoring all her squawks.
‘I’ll never be able to get to sleep tonight lying on all this!’ Cathy muttered furiously. ‘It’s medieval torture, just like the rack—why don’t you yank my fingernails out, too, while you’re about it!’
‘Fingernails—I’m glad you reminded me,’ Mum said. ‘Isobel, you can make yourself useful for a change before you scoot off home. Do something about this child’s nails, they look as though she’s been putting up dry-stone walls all her life.’
Cathy grizzled and complained while her cuticles were pushed back and the nails filed ruthlessly into neat ovals. To complete the manicure, Isobel rubbed in cold cream and made her put on a pair of cotton gloves, with instructions that they weren’t to be removed until the morning. Cathy, not in the least grateful, didn’t get up to see her out or wave goodbye. She scowled all through supper, cheering up only when she realised that she couldn’t be expected to do the dishes with her hands encased in beauty gloves, even though it was her turn. She also got out of feeding the hens and fetching the washing in for the same reason, and Vivienne had to do all those jobs alone, for Mum and Heather were busily assembling the buttonhole sprays at the kitchen table.
‘There’s not going to be nearly enough maidenhair fern,’ Mum said worriedly. ‘And I don’t want to skimp on them, either, and have half the relatives getting a posy and the rest missing out. That could lead to all sorts of feuds. We’ll just have to put them aside and make up some more first thing tomorrow. One of you can go out before breakfast and pick some extra fern, but right now we’d better get cracking with these wishbones…’
Vivienne would have loved to help with a fascinating project like that, but Heather, who also liked being artistic with gold frosting, said she’d only make a mess of it. The wishbones were placed to dry on matchstick supports while Mum cut up a roll of narrow ribbon for bow decorations, snipping the edges into V shapes so the satin wouldn’t fray. Vivienne wasn’t allowed to help with that, either, because everyone in the house knew she couldn’t even be trusted to tie her own plait ribbons properly.
‘Stop breathing down my neck, it’s like standing next to a llama! You nearly made me cut this in the wrong place,’ Mum said crossly, and sent her off to sweep the hall, a job Vivienne loathed because of the coir matting which had to be rolled up and then replaced. She cheated by lifting the mat at one side and flicking the dust underneath, then unable to resist temptation, slipped through the lounge-room door to gaze at the bridesmaid things. Oh, the dress was sublime, in spite of Isobel’s and Cathy’s comments! Aunt Ivy had a tapestry firescreen with a lion and a unicorn worked on either side, and a princess in a blossomy bower in the centre. That tapestry princess wore a dress just like this one—a beautiful maroon-burgundy-cerise-russet dress trimmed with bands of gold, and a little gold cap on her head…It would all be completely wasted on Cathy! Tomorrow at ten she’d go with Mum across town to Hilary Melling’s place to be garbed in all her finery with the other bridesmaids. What an utter and abysmal waste, such glories for someone who never showed the slightest interest in what she wore, and whose idea of a good time was sliding down clay slicks at the quarry!
Vivienne went out into the hall and listened to the preoccupied activity taking place in the kitchen. There seemed to be some crisis going on there about gold paint not drying fast enough and the wishbones having to be transferred to an oven tray…She returned to the lounge-room and wriggled out of her jersey and skirt. The beautiful dress settled luxuriously about her ankles as smoothly as water, the little gold cap sat on the back of her head like an opened flower. She climbed a chair to look, entranced, into the sideboard mirror. The dress fitted perfectly, apart from being slightly too long because Cathy was taller, and she curtsied to her reflection. She was the Princess Madeleine, getting ready for a banquet prepared in her honour. Soon her ladies-in-waiting would arrive to dress her red—no, chestnut hair, plaiting it into thick braids entwined with pearls. Her hands (petal-soft because she always rubbed exotic lotions into them at night and slept in gloves) would be adorned with magnificent jewelled rings. Those hands would carry a basket of beaten gold, filled with nosegays to toss to the humble peasants. How beautiful she would look as she entered the great hall which would be ablaze with a thousand tapering candles, her feet shod in delicate red slippers…
‘Oh, you wicked little hussy!’ Mum cried and whisked Princess Madeleine off the chair, giving her several hefty whacks at the same time. ‘Cathy told me she thought she’d heard you sneak in here! The very idea, touching the bridesmaid things when I said no one was allowed to, and so help me, if anything’s damaged, I won’t be held responsible for my actions…’
The dress wasn’t harmed in the slightest, though Cathy, hovering in the door to watch someone else get into trouble for a change, acted as though it was now creased with wrinkles, stained under the armpits with sweat and all the stitches along the hem jerked undone. Vivienne, tingling from the slaps, retrieved her jersey and skirt, but Mum said tartly that she needn’t bother getting back into them, she could just take herself off to bed in disgrace for being so disobedient.
Vivienne went, sticking her tongue out at Cathy, and telling herself that she didn’t care, she’d prefer to go to bed seeing they were all so mean about not letting her help with any of the interesting jobs. And anyway, at least she’d had the chance to try on that glorious dress, probably her only chance, for Mum had plans to remake it into a skirt and waistcoat for Heather immediately after the wedding. No one could take away the exhilaration of having been Princess Madeleine for a few brief moments, but Cathy needn’t think she’d ever speak to her again after tattling to Mum like that!
She pretended to be asleep when Cathy finally came to bed, though Cathy knew she was shamming and acted provokingly on purpose. She let the wardrobe door bang, pushed the window up noisily, then jumped into bed so that it squeaked on its castors. Vivienne lay still and kept her eyes closed. Cathy kept the light on for a long time to read, clearing her throat boomingly at intervals. Vivienne gritted her teeth and said nothing. Mum came to turn the light off, saying bridesmaids should get plenty of sleep, but Cathy claimed that no one with their head pinched up in a vice could possibly be expected to sleep—unless they had some Ovaltine. Which she couldn’t get up and make herself because of her hands being tortured in slathered cream and gloves. Mum, too busy for arguments, fetched her some hot Ovaltine, and Cathy took her time about drinking it, making loud appreciative slurping noises for Vivienne’s benefit.
Vivienne deepened her breathing into convincing snores. She hoped, when Cathy finally turned off the light, that the tight rag curlers would keep her awake all night, but Cathy fell asleep at once. Vivienne was the one who tossed and turned in jealous insomnia, praying for a miracle to stop Cathy being a bridesmaid tomorrow. That horrible Cathy didn’t deserve such an honour! She’d done nothing but moan about all the dress-fittings, and when Hilary Melling had taken her into town to buy those matching shoes she’d disgraced herself by asking if she could have a pair of riding boots instead and just wear her sandals to the wedding. It would serve her right if she woke in the morning with her face spotted with chicken-pox! Or—she might develop a sudden attack of stage fright, working herself into such a state of jitters they couldn’t possibly risk letting her spoil the wedding. Then they’d have to find someone else—someone nearly the same size as Cathy—to take her place! Dozens of things could happen, Vivienne told herself, knowing forlornly that none of them would. In the morning Cathy would put on the beautiful red and gold dress and go off to be a bridesmaid at Hilary Melling’s wedding, and that would be that.
Vivienne fell asleep only when all the Sawmill Road roosters began to greet the dawn, waking blearily to hear Mum having a prodigious dithering panic all over the house as though she were the bride herself. Vivienne was hauled out of bed and scarcely given time to eat her porridge, then sent off to gather the extra fern so the buttonhole sprays could be finished.
‘I’ll need a lot, not just a handful of mingy sprigs,’ Mum said. ‘If you can’t find any by the river, try the quarry.’
‘It isn’t fair—why can’t Cathy go and pick it? It’s her godmother being married, not mine!’ And that was another injustice, Vivienne thought angrily—Cathy having a glamorous young godmother like Hilary Melling! She and Heather were stuck with boring Aunt Ivy, who sent them only a card every birthday accompanied by hectoring advice about how they could improve their characters.
‘Cathy’s under strict orders not to set foot outside at all this morning,’ Mum said, impulsively changing her mind and ripping off the new veiling she’d just tacked to her felt hat. ‘She’s been told to sit quietly in the front room and not disturb all those lovely curls I just brushed out. Go on, child, I’ve got a million things still to do, the sprays, and this hat looking like a chamber pot, with or without veiling. Now I’ll have to resurrect my navy straw instead—that’s if I can even find the wretched thing after Aunt Ivy tidying away everything not nailed down.’
Vivienne, feeling distinctly martyred, went outside to search for more fern, having no inclination to traipse across to the river or all the way over to the quarry. She walked up the paddock to the damp little hollow instead, and even though the maidenhair fern growing there was pallid and sickly looking, she picked it all the same, hoping Mum would be too busy to notice. She didn’t intend to trudge around the countryside while that spoiled Cathy was loafing inside doing nothing at all! As it was, she was probably risking her life. The O’Keefes from up the road all said there’d once been an old well in the hollow, which had collapsed and been filled up with rubble. Nothing the O’Keefes said was ever trustworthy, but in this case they could be telling the truth. The hollow always felt damp even in midsummer, and might suddenly cave in while she was standing there collecting fern—which by rights certain other people should be doing! She could be sucked right down into an underground spring and drowned, and then there most likely wouldn’t be any wedding at all. It certainly wouldn’t look very nice being held on the same morning as a tragic family accident, although Cathy wouldn’t think it was tragic. She’d most likely just be full of glee at having an excuse to get out of being a bridesmaid…
Cathy—who wasn’t in the lounge-room at all, but had sneaked outside and was now up in her lookout! Instead of going back to the house with the fern, Vivienne charged across the paddock to point out that other people could be malicious enough to tell tales, too, unless they received a grovelling apology. Cathy, however, wasn’t alone, but was engaged in one of her fierce, long-running battles with Danny O’Keefe, who was scowling up at her from the ground. Both of them looked dangerous, and Vivienne hesitated, not wanting to be involved. This particular fight, she surmised, was because part of Cathy’s lookout stuck over the fence into the O’Keefes’ paddock, and Danny had decided to make an issue of it.
‘I don’t give a brass razoo what you think!’ Cathy was saying belligerently. ‘That land under the branch might be yours, but you certainly don’t own anything in the sky above it! You just try taking potshots at aeroplanes and see what happens—by law this tree-house isn’t any different!’
‘I know the law better than you, Melling!’ Danny said. ‘If trees poke over into someone else’s yard, then they’re allowed to cut off the branch. That’s what I’m gonna do, saw off the branch and maybe your skinny legs, too, if they happen to get in the way—unless you let me up in that lookout!’
‘You just try coming up here and I’ll rip off your ears and use them as potholders!’
Vivienne suddenly recalled a book she’d read where the heroine had united two warring families by speaking gentle words of wisdom. If she could achieve that where the O’Keefes were concerned, life would become much simpler. The walk to the bus-stop in the mornings, for instance, would be less traumatic without all those fierce tribal faces leering from behind telegraph poles. And she’d be able to get modelling clay from the quarry safely, for at the moment the O’Keefes considered it to be their own personal property. Anyone rash enough to climb down the quarry without permission ran a menacing gauntlet on the way out.
‘I don’t think you should talk to one another like that,’ she said earnestly, stepping forward. ‘It’s not friendly. I’ve got a better idea—why don’t you both sit down peacefully on the grass and take turns putting your side of the argument? Do unto others as thou wouldst have others do unto thee…’
They stopped glaring at one another and eyed her with astonishment.
‘In fact there’s no reason why you couldn’t end up being the very best of friends,’ Vivienne simpered, greatly encouraged, beaming from face to face. ‘Neighbours should always be kind to each other. For example, you could take each other peaches if there’s any illness in the house…’
‘O’Keefes just nip in any old time and raid people’s fruit trees without even asking,’ Cathy said rudely. ‘And if I was sick, Danny O’Keefe’s the last person in the world I’d want to see! Except the sight of him would be a big help if I wanted to throw up and was having difficulties.’
‘Who let her out without a straitjacket?’ Danny O’Keefe said with scorn.
‘If any of us have any problems, we should be able to go to a neighbour and know we’ll receive help and comfort,’ Vivienne persevered. ‘Imagine what a beautiful civilised place the whole world would be if everyone did that!’
Taking advantage of Cathy’s stunned reaction, Danny O’Keefe swarmed up the ladder slats. Cathy immediately recovered and began to stamp on his knuckles, but he managed to reach past and hook an arm and a leg over the platform.
‘Get off!’ Cathy roared, and wrapped herself grimly around his other leg like a boa constrictor, dangling in space.
‘Please don’t resort to violence!’ Vivienne begged, wondering why her speech, which was almost exactly the same one as the heroine in the book had used with such excellent results, appeared to be failing. ‘Oh please, Cathy, if you’d just sit down quietly and listen to what he has to say—and Danny, I’m sure she’d let you use the lookout sometimes if you’d only…’
Danny twisted his free hand into Cathy’s mass of overnight curls and tugged sharply. Cathy bit him on the calf and they both tumbled, yelling, to the ground, where Danny conceded defeat. But before retiring across the paddock to his own place, he scooped up Cathy’s tar tin from the ground and dumped the contents over her head.
‘Don’t come back, either!’ she bellowed after him, dabbing at the trickles that oozed down her neck. ‘Next time you want a punch-up, you gutless wonder, you’d better bring along reinforcements!’
‘Oh, Cathy, just look at you!’ Vivienne whispered, awe-struck.
‘Doesn’t matter, it wasn’t hot tar, only lukewarm heated up over a candle, and I can always get some more from the hospital driveway to finish plugging the roof…That Danny O’Keefe—I’m going to fill a bucket with chook poo and keep it up the tree for ammunition. If he dares show his ugly mug anywhere around here ever again…’
‘Never mind that!’ Vivienne cried. ‘The wedding, your hair…’
Cathy went suddenly quiet. She put up an anxious hand and felt amongst the curls which spiralled all over her head. ‘Is it all that bad?’ she asked soberly, examining her hand and knowing it was. ‘Couldn’t I…sort of scrape it off or something before Mum finds out?’
‘Melted tar doesn’t just scrape off,’ Vivienne said. ‘Remember that time you got it all over Heather’s sandshoes and even turps didn’t work? Oh Cathy, what a mess! It’s all matted together like…like squashed blackberries!’
‘Maybe that little cap will cover it so no one would notice.’
‘But it’s not just on top, it’s trickled down all over the place! You never saw such a sight, Mum’s going to…’
‘…murder me. All right then, there’s nothing else for it,’ Cathy said philosophically and began to climb the ladder into her lookout, prising each slat loose after her with the hammer so that when she reached the platform she was stranded up there. ‘I’m safe for the time being,’ she said. ‘And I won’t get bored, either—I’ve got plenty of work to be getting on with. It’s not the end of the world, anyhow—you’ll just have to wear that cacky dress and be a bridesmaid instead of me. You’d better go and tell Mum.’
Vivienne, after a moment’s reflection, altered her face so that her mouth turned down instead of radiantly upwards.
‘You’ve got a nerve expecting someone else to wear your repulsive dress in public!’ she said. ‘I was just thinking only last night when I tried it on how ghastly…’
‘I know it’s ghastly, and I’m really sorry, Viv, honest I am. But listen—there’ll be all those nice eats afterwards to make up…’
‘That won’t make up for anything! As well as that awful dress, there’s the gold stingray basket and handing out all those posies! Not to mention having to wear that terrible little cap and Isobel giggling outside the church—you know her, she’ll probably bring along the boarders from the Convent, too, so they can all split their sides! You can’t expect me to go through all that for nothing.’
‘Well, when the wedding’s over and Mum’ll be too tired to murder me so it’ll be safe to come down, I’ll…I’ll give you my pen with the glass handle.’
Vivienne chewed her lip, considering.
‘Plus I’ll sweep the hall every time Mum asks you to,’ Cathy promised contritely, and Vivienne went dancing all the way down the paddock to break the news to Mum that she had a hemline to take up.