Dressmaker (12 page)

‘I thought you said you didn’t talk much,’ Ira said, ‘you and your folks. Seems like they never stop talking.’

‘It’s my dad,’ she said, ‘he’s gone barmy. I’ve never known him like that.’

‘What he want to talk to you about? He was out here some time.’

He lounged against the wall of the alleyway, watching her push the back gate ajar with her foot.

‘I didn’t think you noticed.’

‘I guess I better go,’ he said. ‘I got to catch the train.’

She didn’t want him sleeping on the settee, not with Auntie Margo and Valerie in the house. It was all spoilt – there seemed
nowhere they could be without her feeling miserable.

‘It’s a lovely ring, isn’t it?’ she said, seeing the little white diamonds pale above the curved red nails.

‘How old are you?’ he asked, staring at her in the gloom.

‘Seventeen. How old are you?’

‘Older.’

‘Not much.’

Someone was tapping on the window. She let the yard gate swing back and block them from view.

‘Will you telephone me at work?’

‘Sure I will.’

‘You didn’t last week. I waited. If you don’t, shall I just come to the station?’

‘I guess not. I may have no furlough. I don’t have every Saturday.’

He’d turned his back on her. He was pulling at a weed growing in the cracks of the wall.

‘But when will I see you?’ Her voice was breaking in despair.

‘I’ll call you. I’ll do that. But I guess I won’t make next Saturday.’

‘Couldn’t we go to the country again? I could take time off work. We could go to that place again.’

She was begging and she knew it. She was saying she would go to the empty house on the shore and lie down with him. She might
have a baby. It was practically sure she would, but she’d take the risk; she’d do anything as long as he would see her.

‘I guess I don’t have no furlough next week.’

‘Rita, Rita.’ It was Nellie calling from the back door. She didn’t want them like a couple of cats yowling in the back alley.

Rita had a melancholy feeling she would never see him again, never love him, never be given the chance to show how much she
cared. All her life she had been waiting for him, beyond the house in the woods with the stuffed hen in the window. He was
the people in her dream that caused her so much fear. He was the loved one who could come to harm. When she screamed in the
night it was for him; when she saw the naked statue in the flower-bed it was an image of him wrestling with an angel. He had
to love her. Give her time, she would prove to him how much she had to share, beyond the dirtiness, the
scrabbling at the elastic of her knickers. She would die for him if he would let her.

‘I’ll call,’ he said. ‘Reckon I’ll telephone tomorrow.’

He left the house before Valerie Mander, not kissing Rita, sprinting down the road to the Cabbage Hall to catch his tram to
the station.

At work Margo put her name down on the list for the Dramatics Society. They wanted extra people for the Christmas Pantomime.
Ever since she was a child, people had told her she should go on the stage. There was no end to the facilities in the factory
for recreation: football and snooker for the men and keep-fit for the ladies; lectures in the dinner break on how to make
the food more interesting, how to make old stockings into novelties for birthdays. She hadn’t participated before, but with
the winter coming and the approach of the festive season it would be nice to be with a lively bunch of people, larking about
and rehearsing songs. She wouldn’t tell Nellie right away, not until she was accepted; there had been words between them over
the way she had behaved to Rita’s young man. She protested indignantly: she said she wasn’t going to sit in silence all evening,
not with everyone else acting as if the cat had got their tongue. It would be a relief to get out of the house one evening
a week. Maybe it was that summer was ending, the thought of the winter to be endured, that made the house seem charged with
emotion and tension: Nellie carting bits of furniture up the stairs – she’d caught her red-handed with the bamboo stand –
Rita going about the house heavy-eyed and dreamy, alternately singing to herself as
she prepared for bed, and sitting on the sofa with a face like death, unable to speak, not troubling to turn the pages of
her library book. Now and then Margo caught a glimpse of such vulnerability on her sallow features, such despair, that she
was forced to look away. She would not interfere. Rita must come to her. It was almost a week since Ira had been to tea. Once
he had gone from the house Margo forgot how threatening she had found him, how unsuitable. She remembered only that he was
very young with not much to say for himself. Nellie had been over to visit Jack in the week. Jack said he was afraid Rita
was going to get hurt – she was obsessed by her Ira. Nellie seemed to have other things to occupy her mind. She refused to
explain why she was storing things in the boxroom. Since her turn in the car she had quietened considerably, the sting drawn
from her character. She did her housework with an abstracted air as if she was planning something. Between the two of them,
Margo felt the house to be depressing. Once or twice she went down the road to the Manders’. Prompt on seven o’clock the jeep
came bouncing up the road. Valerie would run to the step. It made Margo laugh the way Chuck leapt from his vehicle almost
before the engine had died, propelled into her waiting arms as if he was catapulted across the pavement – flowers in his arms,
crushed against her blouse, roses, carnations, little feathery sprays of fern; burying her face in them, her cheeks glowing
like the bouquet he had brought her; the two of them always laughing and cuddling, calling each other honey and baby, like
on the pictures. He was
always bringing them presents – he was a regular Santa Claus: packets of cigarettes, a gold lighter for Valerie, a wrist-watch
for the absent George; always whisky on the sideboard, tins of food in the pantry, packets of real butter in the new fridge.
Margo could see Jack’s point of view – it was a bit like the invasion troops looting the land and the Manders fraternising
with the enemy. No wonder the rest of the neighbours looked askance at the jeep swinging up to the door. The contrast between
life at Valerie’s and the gloom that pervaded Nellie’s house was almost too much for Margo to bear. It was as if she ran to
shelter from a great black cloud that was gathering in the sky.

On Saturday night Rita didn’t get ready to go out. She lay upstairs in her room and told Margo she had a headache.

‘But won’t Ira be waiting for you?’

‘No, he won’t. He’s training this weekend.’

‘Training?’ said Margo.

But Rita closed her eyes and wouldn’t say another word. All week she had waited for the telephone to ring, though she knew
it was useless. She was wallowing in self-pity and withdrawal. She had no friends, no hobbies, no interest beyond Ira. She
hated him for being so cruel to her. She dreamed of revenge, of someone in the office telling him, when he did at last ring,
that she had left to get married: one of those sudden romances, Alice Wentworth would tell him, a naval officer, a Dutchman.
She recalled the seaman billeted on them in the first year of the war, his homely vacant face, the civilian suit he wore,
dull and shabby, the little black suitcase he carried with his uniform inside. Auntie Margo had liked him. He bought her
some material for a dress once. He took her to look at his ship, though she said she wasn’t allowed on board. She saw Ira
in his mustard jacket, his black tie; under the jaunty angle of his cap he lowered golden eyelashes to cover eyes that were
the colour of the sky. She lay moaning on her bed, wanting to hit at him with her fists.

‘She can’t go on like this,’ said Margo to Nellie, ‘lying up there fretting. She’s not eaten a thing all day.’

‘Give her time,’ replied Nellie. ‘She’ll come round.’

‘They’ve not had a tiff,’ Margo said. ‘He’s just training. There’s no call for her to act like this.’

Nellie was cutting out the body of Valerie Mander’s engagement dress. The noise the scissors made, as they sheered through
the material and scraped the surface of the table, irritated Margo.

‘How much did that material cost you?’ she asked.

‘Four shillings a yard,’ said Nellie.

‘You were done. I saw some just like that in Wharton’s window. I swear it was a bob cheaper.’

‘What Wharton’s?’ asked Nellie, not looking up.

‘That shop near Ethel Freeman’s house. Round the córner from where Frisby Dyke’s used to be.’

‘Ethel Freeman never lived near Frisby Dyke’s,’ said Nellie. ‘You’re thinking of someone else.’

‘Get away. I went there regular.’

‘Not Ethel Freeman,’ Nellie said again.

It made Margo mad the way Nellie never gave up,
never admitted she could be wrong. She was like a bull terrier with its teeth dug in. She would die rather than let go.

‘I’ve joined the Dramatics,’ she said, daring Nellie to make a scathing remark.

But Nellie didn’t say it was foolish or wonder how long that little phase would last. ‘That’s nice,’ was all she said, bunched
up against the sofa as she snipped at the curve of the armhole, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth with the effort
of cutting straight. She wanted to make a lovely job of the dress. She was very fond of Valerie. For all the difference in
their attitude to life she could admire the girl. Never underhand, Valerie gave the impression she knew how to deal with living.
She was confident. Nellie had thought of giving her the dress as a present, but no one had ever mentioned a wedding or given
any indication of how long the engagement might be. They were going to have a party – everyone in the road invited, people
from the camp, relatives from Yorkshire, a really big do. No one knew how much longer the war might last, whether Chuck would
be sent abroad. It was all indefinite.

‘If the war ends,’ said Margo, ‘will Chuck stay on, or will Valerie rush off to America?’

‘How do I know?’ Nellie said, ‘you see more of them than I do.’

Jack came and they listened to Gilly Potter on the wireless talking about Hogs Norton. Rita stayed upstairs. Jack called
her down for a cup of tea and a cream cracker, and she wandered round the kitchen like a stray animal,
scattering crumbs from her mouth, slopping tea into her saucer.

‘Get away!’ cried Nellie, fearing damage to the green taffeta on the table. So she ran upstairs again, tears of affront in
her eyes, slamming her bedroom door in a temper.

On Tuesday Margo was told to come to the Dramatics room the following evening for an audition.

‘A what?’ she cried appalled. ‘I can’t do no audition.’

‘We only want to hear your voice, girl. We’re not asking for bleeding Shakespeare.’

On Wednesday morning when the alarm went for six o’clock she shut her eyes again, tight.

‘Get up, Marge!’ said Nellie, kicking her on the ankle. ‘Alarm’s gone.’

‘I feel terrible,’ she moaned. ‘I feel that poorly. I think I’ll go in later when I feel more myself.’

‘Get off, there was nothing wrong with you last night.’

But she couldn’t very well drag her out of bed, she couldn’t dress her and push her out of the door. Marge stayed where she
was till midday, waiting till Nellie went out shopping on Breck Road.

‘I may pop over and see Jack,’ Nellie called, listening to Marge wheezing in the bedroom. Marge didn’t reply. She was lying
upstairs, right as rain, smoking her cigar ettes in bed.

Margo wanted to be really ready for the audition. She washed all over and shook some of Nellie’s talcum powder inside her
corsets. She was bound to get sweaty,
being nervous. She tried singing the chorus of ‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’, but she broke into a fit of coughing
when the band played ‘tum, diddly um tum tum’. She put her earrings on, and a bracelet, and pinned a brooch to the front of
her dress. Then she unpinned it, because she didn’t want to seem to be trying too hard. It was her talent they were after,
not the crown jewels. When she was going downstairs, someone knocked at the front door. She saw the outline of a man’s head
outside the glass. It was Ira. She led him through into the front room. Afterwards she didn’t know why. No one ever went into
the front room unless the vicar called at Christmas, or in case of extreme illness, like when George Bickerton died. It was
typical of him, she thought, that he didn’t look at the room, didn’t notice the furniture from another age: the good carpet
on the floor, the photographs sepia-coloured with eyes black as coal, Mother grimly smiling.

‘Whatever brings you here?’ she asked. He handed her a packet of cigarettes. She was taken aback: he didn’t smoke himself.

‘I rang Rita at work,’ he told her. ‘She said you were sick.’

‘I’m not. I’ve got a—’ She stopped because she didn’t want to admit anything. He was looking at her opening the packet of
cigarettes.

‘Just a chill,’ she told him. ‘I’m off out now to me work. Did you want to see Rita?’

She knew he didn’t. He knew damn well Rita was at work. She was scandalised, and yet there was a little
bubble of excitement in her, getting bigger and bigger at the thought.

‘Now look,’ she said, ‘let’s get one or two things straight.’

But when she looked at his face, she wasn’t sure she was right. He looked so innocent, so without guile, boyish with his bony
face pale, twisting his cap in his hands. She lit a cigarette. It was no use giving him the packet back – not these days when
they were so scarce.

‘What have you come for? You know young Rita’s at work.’

‘I wanted a word with you, Mam, you being more a woman of the world.’

The audacity of the boy! What did she know of the world, cooped up in Bingley Road like a ferret down a hole?

‘I reckon I can tell you. I ain’t going to see Rita again.’

She didn’t know where to flick her ash. Nellie had taken the bamboo stand up to the boxroom.

‘I can’t see her no more.’

‘Well, you best tell her yourself. You’ve no cause to be telling me.’

‘I thought you could break it to her. I tried to tell her, but she don’t seem to listen. I don’t aim to harm no one.’

‘Why can’t you see her?’

Inside it was doing her the world of good. She hated herself for the joy she got from his words. He didn’t want Rita; Rita
wasn’t going to find the happiness that she herself had missed. She caught Mother’s eye, that stern
and selfish orb. She stared back boldly. Mother couldn’t use the strap any more, not where she was.

‘I guess she’s too young, Mam. And she’s kind of joyless. She don’t want no fun, no drinking nor dancing.’

‘But she does,’ Margo protested. ‘It’s just she’s unsure of herself. We haven’t exactly taught her to enjoy herself, her Aunt
Nellie and me. I mean I’ve tried, but it’s Nellie that’s the power behind the throne.’

She felt ridiculous, telling a complete stranger the intimate details of their life.

‘Rita sure sets a store by what you say. You could tell her. I mean, you’ve known grief, Mam.’

‘Grief?’

‘Your husband dying. You know about men. The kind of books you read.’

She looked at him, not fully understanding.

‘What books?’

‘Rita told me about the sort of books you read. She found one in your drawer. You know about men. You could square it for
me.’

She couldn’t credit Rita had got hold of that book. She’d searched the house from end to end, day after day, trying to find
it. She thought she had lost it at work. She went red with shame thinking of Rita reading that filth, Rita reading those dirty
words.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I must be off to my work.’

He stood up, never taking his eyes from hers. He was a bad one, she knew for sure: the cocky way he looked
at her, the little tinge of colour in his no-good face. She was devastated by the uselessness of her personality. The kind
of men who fancied her – George Bickerton, Mr Aveyard, the chap on the tandem, the Dutch seaman in the boxroom. They were
attracted to her at first. And it was precisely the glitter that drew them at the start that drove them away in the end. They
couldn’t stand her at the end. She wished she was Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, languidly sitting in a long dress, calling them
darling, sipping her cocktail, loyal and loving always – but cool like a snake, telling them to go before they told her. She
threw her cigarette into the hearth, on the virgin tiles that Nellie scrubbed each day though never a fire lit the grate.
She walked briskly into the hall and said it had been nice talking to him, but he better go now, she would be late.

‘I’ll call again, Mam,’ he said, very polite, not smiling; and she shut the door after him and put her hand to her heart to
catch her breath.

She was so agitated on the tram, in the audition, over Ira and his boldness, that she hardly noticed her voice singing, ‘We’ll
meet again. Don’t know where, don’t know when’. She clasped her hands together, opened her throat and sang. They accepted
her at once; they said she would be an asset. She felt very little satisfaction.