can,’ he said, ‘tomorrow.’
It was only a short block back to Hercus & Barling. Looking over Josephine’s head he could see a small crowd of eight or ten people outside its window. There was no such crowd for Donaldson’s.
‘Why don’t you go look at The Carpenter’s window?’ he suggested.
‘The curtain’s still down,’ she replied.
Ten people are willing to stare at his blank curtain, he thought, rather than my display. He could feel his skin flush once more.
From the first, the two department stores had not just affected the sole traders—the widow dressmaker, the dealer in golden rings and small trinkets—but had also fed upon each other, undercutting prices, paying exorbitant amounts for shipping to ensure stock was the first to arrive, offering more generous credit terms. Each store had a man dressed as Santa Claus in the week before Christmas and the town delighted in judging whose St Nick was fatter, whose white beard looked the more authentic. But the battle was most evident, and most crucial, in the window. It was not a competition between two stores but between Colton Kemp and The Carpenter, ever since the day the silent sod strolled into town. Kemp had never heard him talk, though Big Jim Raymond swore The Carpenter congratulated him upon his re-election in September. What sort of affectation was it not to speak when spoken to? To always wear the same loud suit with its large houndstooth check and to nod and wave and point before trotting up Pukehine Hill at the end of the day?
But damn the man, his mannequins were a wonder. The story went that The Carpenter walked down from his shack on the hill carrying a wooden mannequin, placed it in front of the entrance to Hercus & Barling two days before their grand opening, and Hercus offered him a job on the spot. Kemp’s curiosity got the better of him at the opening and he saw the window display first-hand: dozens of electric lights powered by the store’s own generator (Donaldson’s, like the town itself, was still to make the leap to electricity), thirteen headless mannequins of the sort imported from Europe (though he suspected they were, like Emile Hercus, second-hand from Sydney) and, at the centre, The Carpenter’s serene lady, dressed in a red moirette dress with a blue shawl draped over her left shoulder and arm, the soft hand protruding, palm up. The skin was smooth and bright as porcelain, but looked as if it would give to the touch. What manner of wood had he used? What tools to exact such detail? What paints, tints or stains to flush her with life? What beast had he shorn to create her mane of brown hair, curling as it passed the hint of her ears and tumbled down her shoulders?
The Carpenter’s first mannequin was a revelation for Kemp and a sensation for the town. Over the following months The Carpenter produced more figures. The appearance of each was an event that surpassed the excitement of a new window at Donaldson’s, no matter how intricate Kemp’s mechanics, how timely the scene or artistically it was laid out. The Marumaru Mail began speculating about the gender, age, hair and eye colour of The Carpenter’s next model weeks before it appeared. No one seemed to care about the masses of blank space in his window displays, the utter stasis of his arrangements, the lack of theme or connection to the town in which the store sat: The Carpenter’s window was another world, one on the cusp of coming to life.
Little by little this world began to spill into Marumaru. The ladies of the town, who had conformed to the modest colonial fashion for dark skirts and white blouses, began to step out in the reds and blues and greens of The Carpenter’s window. The men stuck with subdued tones for their suits and waistcoats but stuffed silk handkerchiefs of turquoise or magenta into their breast pockets and emerald felt bowlers on their heads. Visitors from the north and from the south often remarked upon the deluge of colour in the town, the women’s resemblance to parakeets, the men’s to mallard drakes. Perhaps most tellingly, when a visiting photographer set up his equipment at Hercus & Barling the townsfolk chose to be immortalised performing the poses of The Carpenter’s models.
Kemp had already thrown himself into the making of his own mannequins before The Carpenter’s arrival but he could not breathe life into them in the same way. They remained wooden forms, collections of limbs and blank spaces for covering with cloth and millinery.
An open carriage drawn by two old Clydesdales passed Kemp and Josephine. It was heading toward the wharf, or perhaps out of town. For a moment he considered jumping on the back of the carriage, stowing himself beneath the dirty green tarpaulin and leaving Marumaru forever, but Josephine was sure to give him away.
‘Kemp!’
He looked back at Donaldson’s and there was Charlie Begg, ruddy with rage, clutching a ledger book with both hands.
‘Where the blazes have you been?’
He didn’t want to cross the road. He looked down at Josephine, who seemed happy enough to sit on the church fence, dangle her legs and watch the unfolding drama.
Begg slammed the ledger book against an imaginary counter and stomped across Regent Street. ‘Where’ve you been?’ he repeated.
‘Wednesday is my workshop day,’ Kemp replied. ‘The window is all set for this evening.’
‘Sandow is here. Well, not here,’ Begg gestured back to the store, ‘but worse, there.’ He pointed toward Hercus & Barling.
‘Sandow? In Marumaru?’
‘I told you,’ Josephine added, though both men ignored the girl.
‘Well,’ Begg said, ‘just his statue at the moment, but you know how they send that ahead of the company.’
‘But Sandow isn’t supposed to perform here. The theatre’s hardly big enough for that pony show.’
‘I know. The boy must have got off at the wrong station. Nevertheless,’ Begg said slowly, spelling out the source of his ill-temper, ‘there is a plaster replica of Sandow the Magnificent in Hercus’s window right now and they’re selling Sandow Developers as if they were loaves of bread.’
Kemp looked back in the direction of Kriss’s bakery. ‘Probably outselling bread today.’
Begg hit him on the arm with the ledger book.
Josephine put her hand to her mouth but stayed perched on the fence.
Kemp looked at the ground, trying to keep his anger, lately focused on The Carpenter, from jumping the tracks and ploughing down his boss.
‘I get the impression, sir,’ he said, mirroring Begg’s deliberate pace, ‘that you think I am to blame for our misfortune, though I cannot see how.’
‘Because The Carpenter was at the train station this morning to carry Sandow off. We could have had him. Donaldson’s could have had him. The whole town was there, Kemp. The whole town but you. What, pray tell, was so important that you did not bless us with your presence?’
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t say the words that would kill Louisa once again. Even now it seemed that she would be in the kitchen, struggling to cut a pumpkin, when he returned home.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said. True enough, though he’d later learn that Flossie had seen the commotion at the station and run home to tell Louisa and him of the statue, arriving instead to find her sister limp in his arms in the workshop.
Begg narrowed his eyes. ‘One-upped again, eh?’ He patted Kemp on the shoulder, causing the flames to rise once more in the window dresser’s chest.
Two young women dressed to the
