The Feel of Steel (26 page)

‘Sometimes they faint,' says Vanessa. ‘And one time a girl actually vomited. I grabbed her shoebox and got it under her mouth just in time. The tension can be terrible.'

No wonder – they are all on fierce diets. Every bride whose fitting I watch speaks about losing weight as if it were her duty.

‘I've been good all week,' says one of them, as she strips off in front of the mirror.

‘Will I be able to eat, on the night?' asks another.

‘Yes,' says Vanessa. ‘It'll stretch' – body warmth causes a gown to relax and give as much as a centimetre – ‘but if it feels too tight today, let us know.'

It's like being in an emergency ward, here among the curtains, hearing someone in the next cubicle saying, ‘Just breathe normally.'

Vanessa teases one of the girlfriends, whose wedding dress she also made: ‘Don't you remember you lost weight and I told you you had to eat cake?'

The girlfriend sighs, and bewails her fate: ‘I lost weight, then I put it all back on! See what happens, Sally, when you've been married four years?'

‘Oh,' cries the bride, ‘don't tell me that
now
!'

Indeed there is a striking difference between the brides-to-be and their married attendants. The single women have a sharp, bright edge to them (enhanced, no doubt, by adrenalin and anxiety), while the married ones look slightly blurred, even, in some cases, dull-eyed, specially the ones with small kids at home. They are suffering a different exhaustion, the bone-deep fatigue of motherhood, a permanent insufficiency of sleep.

Marina has ordered a pale blue gown. This is her first fitting. While they shape her skirt with pins, she clasps her hands in the air above her head, to give the black-clad fitters free access to her torso. She's in her twenties but she has a teenager's body: flat belly, long firm thighs, small breasts still set high. Her skin is lovely. Her thick fair hair, greasy today, grows back off her brow in a sweep. While the fitters work, she unconsciously adopts graceful postures and holds them without strain, her face blank with thought.

Her mother, in tinted spectacles, trousers and flat shoes, chews gum in the corner chair, a big brown handbag leaning against her leg. She is watching like a hawk. At one point she reaches forward and picks up the corner of a layer of lace. She says nothing, but examines it critically, then lets it fall.

‘Now,' says Marina, ‘are you going to put padding in? Because I definitely need –'

‘Yes,' says Vanessa calmly.

They bring in the bodice and fit it to her. It has shoestring straps and is cut low in front but oddly high at the back, well above her shoulder blades. I have never seen such a dress shape before. The fitters slide the padding into the bodice.

‘Why is the back so high?' asks Barbara.

‘It needs to be high,' says Vanessa in her mild voice, ‘to cover
this
.'

‘It's my star sign,' says Marina. ‘Aries.'

All I can see of the tattoo, on her left shoulder blade, is two delicate horn tips peeping over the high bodice back.

There's a pause.

The mother looks at me and says, ‘I think too
up
.'

Freed by her glance, I put in my two bob's worth. ‘Why do you want to cover it? Does your fiancé . . .'

‘Oh,' says Marina, ‘my fiancé's OK about it. But other people might be shocked. Like the priest.'

Everyone laughs.

‘I would try it with makeup,' says Barbara. ‘Or a patch.'

A patch? Yuk. Recklessly I barge in. ‘You should
go
with that tatt.'

Mother and daughter confer in rapid Greek. The mother gets up and stands behind Marina with her feet apart and her arms folded. Occasionally she glances at me and grimaces, woman to middle-aged woman. She is tough and friendly. The two fitters begin to hint, with the greatest delicacy, that they might cut the back
of the bodice down to its proper position and reveal the tattoo.

‘You have a nice back,' says Barbara cautiously.

The mother agrees: ‘I like more better other way.'

‘I'm being here very honest,' says Barbara.

‘Yes,' says Marina bravely. ‘I want the truth.'

She will have to decide right now, today. The tension level in the fitting room soars. Her face darkens and stiffens, but she goes on being patiently courteous. You could not call her beautiful or even pretty, yet there is something intensely appealing about her. When she catches my eye she grins: suddenly she is only a girl. A girl with guts.

‘Is it possible,' she says, gaining time, ‘to get a bit more padding in here?'

They hand her more. She squeezes it in. Up pop her little breasts in two pretty curves above the bodice edge. They swell and subside with her breathing. I control an urge to say, ‘The priest will be more interested in those, my dear, than in the tatt on your back.'

‘Are you going to have a flower or two?' asks Barbara, a traditionalist.

‘Here?' says Marina, vague, anxious, touching her bosom. ‘I don't know. I haven't thought about it.' She lays her fingers across her lips, to think. Her smallest gesture is inspired by an elegance of which she seems perfectly unaware.

I can't resist. ‘Are you a dancer?'

‘No,' she says, astounded. ‘Why?'

‘Because you're so graceful.'

‘You're just saying that!'

‘No I'm not! Every move you make is full of grace. You're a natural.'

‘I'm an accountant,' she says, starting to scramble out of the dress.

But her face has softened. She decides to risk lowering the bodice at the back. Everyone utters discreet sounds of applause. The mother makes a fast joke in Greek. Marina laughs: ‘My Mum says I should have the dress made so my navel ring shows.' The mother cracks up and so do we. The fitting room is flooded with relief.

Marina, back in her street clothes, turns to face Vanessa. Smiling at each other, they exchange nods so slow and formal that they seem to be bowing.

‘You've done an excellent job,' says Marina.

I have just witnessed a tiny act of heroism.

The last client for the afternoon is Graziella. She's not a bride but a matron of honour. There's a back-story here: at Graziella's own wedding, her cousin was a bridesmaid. On the day, the cousin's dress burst at the seams. The cousin in question is now about to marry, and the salon, to atone for the catastrophe, is making Graziella her matron of honour dress free. Graziella, in high good humour, is here to collect her pound of flesh.

(Vanessa tells me on the side that the salon considers this a fair cop, whereas the complaint of another woman,
who had come in raging with the bottom half of her gown torn right away from its bodice, was not.

‘We asked her, “How did it happen?” She said, “Somebody stood on the hem!” We said, “Our gowns aren't made to withstand being
stood
on.” She said, “But it had only one row of stitching!” And we said, “One row of stitching should be
enough
.” ')

Graziella comes barging through the floor-length curtains, with the bride and the bride's sister in tow. Three gorgeous girls in their twenties, funny, frank-mouthed and free, with big dark nails and thick hair and lots of ear-rings, they plonk themselves down in the fitting room, scattering smiles in all directions, prepared to wring every ounce of fun out of whatever is going to happen.

‘Dju go to the solarium?' the bride asks Graziella.

‘No,' she says, pulling a pair of pretty, very high-heeled sandals out of the box, ‘but do you think I need to? I'm so nervous? And I'm not even the one getting married?'

Electrified by the sandals, I whisper, ‘Where do
those
come from?'

The three of them burst into a paean of praise for an establishment called Santino's in Sydney Road: ‘You can get shoes made or dyed however you want!' cries Graziella, stripping, as she speaks, to her matching orange lace bra and knickers, and a pair of knee-high sheer socks. She slides into the sandals and is suddenly tall.

‘ 'Scuse me, how I look,' she says to me cheerfully. ‘I need
this
?' She pulls a girdle out of a plastic bag,
steps into it and yanks it up over her smooth brown haunches. ‘ 'Cause my stomach's bloated?'

‘Where'd you get that girdle?' asks the bride.

‘I got it ten years ago?' says Graziella, smoothing her curvaceous hips. ‘Everyone's worn it but me?'

Their energetic discussion of girdles, where you buy them, what brand is best and how much they cost, is cut short by the appearance of a dark-clad minion, carrying the dress: silk, strapless, full-length, and of a most delicious and intense shade of rose pink. Graziella eases herself into it. Vanessa zips her up behind. A pause.

‘It's too long, isn't it?' says the bride doubtfully.

Graziella turns to look at her own back in the mirror. ‘I always get this, my pimples at the back? If it's too tight, I don't want the fat coming out
heeya
?' She points to the danger spot, where upper arm brushes against glorious bosom, and the top of a strapless dress can cut an unsightly line. ‘Am I very booby? Do I look very chesty?'

‘Nooooooooooh!' chorus the others.

‘Busty,' says the bride's sister from the corner, ‘is when you're coming right out at the top. Josie, for example – there was a stage when she was like
out
.'

‘V'you seen the guys' suits?' says the bride, sitting forward in her chair. ‘The guys look
faaaaaan
-tastic. Tony calls me from the shop. He goes, “We look fuckin'
great
in 'em!” I haven't told him yet my dress is strapless.'

They all laugh with glee.

Graziella seizes the top of the dress and hoists it up higher on her torso. This alters the whole hang of it. Vanessa gets down on her knees and elbows, and begins
with slow precision to adjust and pin the hem.

While she works, the three young women chatter in low, urgent voices, reeling off strings of first names, plans to have dinner at this one's house and that one's, details of who owns what car and which man will drive whom where. From their talk I build up a picture of a vast, seething, devoted, self-absorbed family, busy keeping itself entertained and fed and wed and reproduced, caring for itself, keeping itself vividly alive. They are irresistible, these three highly coloured beings, with their sweet roughness of speech, their self-teasing take on things, their unabashed assessment of their bodily imperfections, the exuberant pleasure they take in being women.

Seeing me writing in my notebook, Graziella says, ‘Sorry to bore you!'

Bored? I wish I could lounge here unnoticed, with my back against the mirror and bask in their merry company all day long.