Missus Whittaker always nodded her head disapprovingly when she looked Edie’s way, and Missus Blackmarsh had stood in the church kitchen doing the washing up and waved a soapy teacup in the air and said to Missus Turnbull, who was drying up, that the problem with Edie Cottingham was that she had no idea what a man needed in a wife.
‘Edie,’ she’d said, ‘is full of toos. Too stubborn, too outspoken, too liberal — you can thank her father for that — too ordinary, too modern.’ And Missus Turnbull had laughed with a strained noise that sounded like a cow mooing and Edie, who had been about to go in and offer to help, had heard it all from the hall. From then on Missus Blackmarsh had called Edie the Too Girl and then all the women started calling her the Too Girl, even though they had no idea how the nickname had started.
But Edie was going to change everything. She would make the men notice her and she would show Missus Blackmarsh what modern really was.
Edie had got the idea for her plan from The Delineator: A Journal of Fashion, Culture and the Fine Arts. The magazine had all the latest trends. It took those trends a good two years to reach her from Europe, but apart from Edie, the people of Ballarat were happily ignorant that they were at least two years behind the rest of the world. Edie ripped a piece of material away from her skirt. She’d be the very first girl in town to have a skirt like this.
Her father would die when he saw it. God only knew what he’d say.
Edie worked away, cutting and sewing. When she finished the skirt, she would have to adjust her petticoat to match. She heard Beth get up and start clanging china and pots in the kitchen as she set about breakfast and preparing lunch for after church. She heard the clock ring out six chimes.
Edie kept pulling at stitches. She kept cutting away cloth. She heard the clock chime seven and then eight.
Finally the job was done.
She stood up and held the skirt out in front of her. She shivered at her daring and smiled proudly as though she had created the entire garment herself. Then her father knocked on her door. It was as though he knew she had done something mischievous. He always knew when she was up to something.
‘Damn it,’ she said. Then she reminded herself that she wasn’t a little girl any more and her father couldn’t see everything she did. He couldn’t see through the thick wooden door.
‘Edie, are you all right?’ he asked, and she thought she could hear suspicion in his voice. ‘Are you coming to breakfast, Edith? You better get a hurry-on.’
She felt her cheeks burn as if she’d been caught out, even though his voice sounded far away, muffled by the thick closed door. She had to remind herself again that he couldn’t see her through the wood. She ran and put her weight against the door so he couldn’t come in. Blimey, he’d have a fit when he saw what she’d done.
‘Edith?’ her father said, expecting an answer.
‘I had breakfast earlier,’ she lied, and the lie sat uneasily in her chest. Her father was a man of principle, the sort of man who could gaze into your soul and know immediately if you were guilty or innocent, especially if you were his only child. It was a talent that stood him in good stead in the courtroom and had frightened Edie when she was little.
She listened to her father’s steps recede down the hallway and relaxed when she heard the murmur of his voice talking to Beth.
She waited for Beth to settle her father and serve him breakfast and then when the clock struck nine she rang her bell for Beth to come and help her dress. She’d have to rush now, to get dressed in only an hour, and she thought how good it was that she hadn’t had any breakfast — it would make her waist look smaller.
Edie sat on the edge of her bed and pulled on her stockings, clipping them to the garter, and then she laced her short boots with the buttonhook, because once she’d got her corset on she wouldn’t be able to bend over. She had the latest — a new health corset, imported from England and designed by a lady doctor to protect a woman’s vital organs. But once Edie strapped her body into the corset she’d be nearly immobilised.
Beth knocked on the door and Edie called out, ‘Come in, Beth.’ She stood up as Beth walked in. ‘Sometimes I envy you, Beth, that you’re not expected to wear a corset,’ she said.
Edie didn’t notice the jealous frown that Beth threw at her expensive clothes, but she did notice that Beth yanked harder than she needed to on the lacing, and Edie’s breasts were thrown unnaturally forward into the world, while her hips were pushed back and her spine was warped into an S shape, bowed like wood left out in the rain.
‘Not too tight,’ gasped Edie, ‘I’m getting too old to expect miracles from corsets.’
‘Do you want me to measure?’ asked Beth. The corset had its own agenda and was aiming for a sixteen-inch waist.
‘No I do not. I’m hopeful, not delusional.’ She handed Beth the bust bodice, which, with the help of clean white handkerchiefs stuffed down it, consolidated her breasts into one impressive structure that presented a united front to the world.
Beth reached for the five-gored petticoat lying across the bed.
‘I’ll be right now,’ said Edie. ‘You go and change for church or you’ll be late.’
She didn’t want Beth to see what she’d done to her skirt. Not yet.
When Beth had shut the door behind her, Edie put on her silk chiffon bodice with its leg-of-mutton sleeves and boned lining, and finally the matching pale blue silk
