Dressmaker (14 page)

Valerie didn’t know what to say for the best. Chuck
had made a few enquiries – discovered what section he was in – but the boy couldn’t be found. Chuck said dozens of the young
ones deserted every month – ran off to London with women. He certainly hadn’t gone on a course – never to Halifax. She wondered
if the girl was confiding in her auntie. Valerie felt responsible – after all Rita had met the young soldier at their house.
She disliked the look of despair on Rita’s face, the panic. It soured her own happiness. The girl was acting as if she was
heartbroken. She hoped she hadn’t got herself into trouble. It was just the daft sort of thing that would happen to someone
like Rita – damp behind the ears, wrapped up in tissue paper all her life, never exposed to the wind.

Nellie was tired, but satisfied. She had worked full out on the lovely Valerie’s dress. In the afternoon she pressed the skirt
and draped the frock over the model. She went down on her hands and knees, crawling round and round the floor to make sure
the hem was absolutely even. She had plenty of time. Marge wouldn’t be home for a meal – she had gone to her dramatics – and
Rita wouldn’t want much, not with the poor appetite she had lately. They could have something cold, and she could go round
to Valerie’s after tea for the final fitting. There was a button not quite in line. She resewed it there and then, a little
on tiptoe to reach, her eyes screwed up against the light. She sat down to rest and stared critically at the dress. The beauty
was in the yards of material in the skirt, the low cut of the bodice. Mrs Mander wanted sequins but Valerie said no, it had
to be plain. She saw Valerie whirling round and round like a film star, all her petticoats showing, her plump knees silky
in her nylon stockings. She should ask Valerie to get Rita a pair of those nylons. It might cheer her up. It hadn’t lasted
very long, the courting of the young American. She hadn’t needed to show her disapproval – he had simply vanished into thin
air. Jack had said something about him calling one afternoon and Marge sitting
in the front room with him, but he’d got the wrong end of the stick. Marge would be at her work and she would never dare
take him into the front room, not without Nellie’s permission. She stood and went through to see that everything was all right;
twitched the lace curtains into line, ran a finger along the mantelshelf. Funny how she didn’t miss the rosewood table, the
bamboo stand. It was as if they had never been. When Jack was in a good mood she would mention she wanted the sideboard shifting
and see what he said. Marge said there were mice in the boxroom; she wouldn’t be surprised if they ate right through Mother’s
furniture. It was on account of the pigeons they kept next door; there was always vermin. Marge only said it to upset her.
She’d told Jack she was selling the furniture. If Jack hadn’t known her better he might have believed her; he might have thought
she was getting mercenary in her old age. It could have hurt him, after all the money he poured into the house – the bath
upstairs, the decorating – and the money he gave each week for Rita. When they had been little, it had been Marge that had
been the generous one. Jack was tight, but Marge would give you the shirt off her back. Life did funny things to people,
manipulated them. But if you kept faith with God it was all right. She had prayed about Rita and He had listened. She wasn’t
thinking only of herself, she did know he was not for Rita – the way he held his knife and fork, the way he lounged all over
the furniture. Chuck wasn’t like that. He called Cyril Mander ‘Sir’. He took his hat off when he entered the house.

Valerie popped in on her way home. Her gloves were real leather. She had a little fur tippet about her neck.

‘Oh, it’s lovely, Auntie Nellie, it really is.’

She stood in wonder in front of the green taffeta dress, touching the material of the shoulder gently with her fingers.

‘The shoulder’s all right now,’ said Nellie anxiously.

‘Oh, it’s lovely! I didn’t want to crush the skirt.’

‘I’ll come over after tea for the final fitting.’

‘Come whenever you like,’ said Valerie. ‘I’m not seeing Chuck this evening. Our George is home on leave.’

She confided in Nellie that George didn’t take to Chuck. Cyril said he was being bloody-minded. Chuck was being very understanding,
giving the boy time to get adjusted. George said the Yanks had taken their time coming into the war. Cyril said it was Roosevelt’s
fault, not Chuck’s.

‘George is jealous of his money,’ said Valerie. ‘He’s jealous of his jeep – all the time off he gets. He hates Yanks.’

‘Well, it’s understandable, I suppose,’ said Nellie; and Valerie gave her an old-fashioned look. When Rita came in a few moments
later, Valerie asked her if she would like to see her new shoes.

‘They’re green,’ she said, ‘with red soles. They’re lovely.’

‘I might come along later,’ said Rita. She was listless; she had shadows under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept. She curled
up on the sofa and turned her eyes away from the engagement dress.

‘Valerie looks a picture in that dress,’ said Nellie, ‘a proper picture.’

‘I bet she does,’ Rita said. But she didn’t care if her aunt preferred Valerie to her. She had filled her mind during the
week with so many variations, ways of finding him, reconciliations, scenes of the future, that now she was empty. There were
no pictures left in her head –just a voice very small and demanding, crying for him to come back.

‘You’d suit green,’ said Nellie, laying the table for tea.

Rita saw no sense in it – green, blue, it was all one.

Outside it was raining again, the cat cried at the window to come in. All day he had sat in the meagre branches of a sycamore
tree at No. 11 waiting for the ginger female to come out into the yard.

Rita wouldn’t go to the Manders’ with Nellie; she said she would come round later.

‘You’ll be all on your own, Rita,’ protested Nellie. ‘Your auntie won’t be home for hours.’

When she had gone, Rita went upstairs into the front bedroom. She opened the drawers of the dressing table and looked inside
Margo’s old handbag. There was a nail file and an empty carton of cigarettes; a letter from a firm saying her application
had been received. She dragged the black suitcase from under the bed: a dress rolled up in mothballs, an empty envelope with
a Dutch postmark, Margo’s gas mask, a little penknife made of ivory, a flat wallet with a birthday card in it and a ten-shilling
note. She took the penknife and the money. She didn’t need it – Nellie wouldn’t take any of her wages – but she felt Margo
owed her the ten-shilling note. There was nothing personal she could pry into,
nothing exciting like the book she had once found. She went downstairs to fetch her coat.

Margo was ready for Nellie to be scathing about her coming home early – the remarks about her having no staying power. She
was going to say the rehearsal had been cancelled. It had in a way: in her mind at any rate, she had just stopped being interested
– sitting about for hour after hour waiting to sing one song. When she let herself into the house she was grateful that no
one was in. It was awful sitting with young Rita, watching her waste away for love of Ira. She saw the cat pressed against
the window, waiting to be let in. She opened the back door wide and put down a saucer of milk. Outside it was close, the rain
coming down softly, spotting the red tiles of the yard. She sat down to rest, spreading her legs to ease them. Reaching
out to pull the evening paper from the sideboard, she felt something cool to her touch. It was George Bickerton’s penknife.
She couldn’t think what it was doing under the newspaper. She held it in her hand and remembered him peeling an apple for
her, long ago on a Sunday afternoon in Newsham Park. It had made her laugh the precise way he loosened the green skin, round
and round till it dangled to his lap, exposing the white fruit, the blade of his knife glistening with juice. She went through
into the scullery to boil a kettle. She stood at the open door, watching the rain. She heard footsteps coming up the alleyway.

Mrs Mander thought the dress was a perfect fit – for
her taste, a trifle plain, but Valerie looked beautiful. Even George was enthusiastic.

‘By gum, it looks good,’ he said, ‘even if it’s wasted on a Yank.’

He was putting Brylcreem on his hair, making himself smart to go down to the pub with his father. Cyril thought the world
of him – his sailor boy in his bell-bottom trousers, the white bit at his chest showing off his pink skin, the little jaunty
hat on the hall-stand.

Valerie stood at the mirror, holding her skirts away from the generous fire, looking at the curve of her shoulders, the plump
arms rounded beneath the green straps. She had a tilted nose, brown eyes with full lids, a mouth that perpetually smiled above
a slightly weak chin.

‘I’m not sure about the waist,’ she said. ‘What d’you think?’

‘What’s wrong with the waist?’ asked Mrs Mander. She studied her from every angle.

‘A belt, you mean,’ said Nellie. Valerie was gripping her waist with her two hands, emphasising the fullness of her hips.

‘I’m off,’ said Cyril. He kissed his wife full on the lips. He was a man that never did anything without gusto.

‘What d’you think, Nellie? D’you think a belt would round it off?’

Nellie thought she might be right.

‘I could wear me brooch,’ said Valerie. ‘The one Chuck gave me.’

‘Is Rita’s young man coming to the party?’ asked Mrs Mander. ‘He’s very welcome.’

Valerie and Nellie avoided looking at one another. When her mother went to put a hot-water bottle in George’s bed, Valerie
said, ‘How is Rita, Auntie Nellie? I’m that worried about her.’

But Nellie wasn’t forthcoming, she had her pride. She wouldn’t discuss young Rita in front of the neighbours. She said she
thought Valerie was right about a belt. It would give the finishing touch. She had a piece of mat erial at home that would
do.

‘Have a cup of tea first,’ said Mrs Mander; and Valerie said gaily, ‘No mum. Get out the whisky. Give Auntie Nellie a real
drink. It’ll put hairs on her chest.’

It was a vulgar thing to say, but Nellie took it from her. There wasn’t anything Valerie could do to offend, in her opinion.
Rita came in but she wouldn’t take her coat off.

‘I don’t think I’ll stop,’ she said. She was shrunken in her white mackintosh, a reproach to the happy Valerie. God forgive
you, her face said; here I am, seventeen years old, without hope. She made the little room depressing, refusing to relax or
sit by the fire.

‘Have a drink,’ said Valerie. ‘Auntie Nellie won’t mind.’

Auntie Nellie, who thought she minded, nodded her head in acceptance, seeing Valerie was in charge. There was something elderly
about Rita, despite her youth. As if she was tired, aged beyond her years by her emotion: her eyebrows frozen in an arch like
a comedian, the cupid bow of her mouth drooping like a clown.

‘Haven’t you heard yet?’ whispered Valerie, when Nellie was in the kitchen helping Mrs Mander with the tea.

‘No,’ the girl said coldly, as if it was Valerie’s fault. She stood by the yellow sideboard accusingly, her arms held stiffly,
taking her drop of whisky in little sips as if it was medicine.

‘Sit down, do,’ said Nellie, irritated by the sight of her wilting by the door.

‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said, and off she went up the hall.

‘Having trouble?’ asked Mrs Mander, genuinely wanting to help. She could have said a lot years ago, when Rita was a little
lass; she could have guided Nellie; but she was never consulted. You had to be careful with girls. They were like blotting
paper. Boys were devils – they strode away without a backward glance. Girls were different. They lingered, kicking against
the pricks, stamped by the mother’s authority. When they rebelled in earnest you had to look backwards to find the cause.
She herself had only to look at Marge, her loony ways, her mode of dress, that business with the manager of the dairy some
years before.

‘She’s shook up,’ admitted Nellie. ‘It will blow over.’

Mrs Mander hadn’t any business to interfere. She looked at the lovely Valerie in her engagement dress and held her tongue.

Nellie went home to cut out the belt. She said she would come back when it was finished.

‘Rita,’ she called up the stairs, hoping she had gone to her bed. She didn’t like her wandering about Anfield late at night.
Rita had made a show of her, acting so
theatrically, not talking to Mrs Mander, never saying ‘Thank you very much’ for her drink. She thought that Valerie was right
about the belt. She cut the material and sat down at her sewing machine, running the piece of cloth under the needle; snapped
the thread with her false teeth; took up her scissors and snipped the loose ends free; turned the hem of the taffeta and leaned
back in her upright chair to ease her back. She got such pains in her shoulders.

She took her foot off the treadle. She thought she heard something upstairs. The cat was crawling round and round on the newspapers
behind the door.

‘Give over, Nigger,’ she said, turning to the machine.

There was definitely a noise upstairs. She clutched her hands in her lap and stared at the ceiling. She remembered what Marge
had said about mice. Something scratched the floorboards above the door into the hall. Something rustled. It couldn’t be mice.
The pigeon coops were on the ground floor, outside the scullery door. Mice couldn’t be eating Mother’s furniture. They ate
paper and cloth, not wood – like the man in Germany who stowed a fortune away under the bed – banknotes – and found it shredded.

‘Nigger,’ she said, the scissors still in her hand, ‘come on!’ picking the cat up awkwardly in her arms, going up the stairs
to the boxroom. The cat hung over her arm, struggling to be free.

‘Give over,’ she murmured, anchoring it by the ears, puffing as she climbed.

She opened the door with the cat half over her shoulder,
ready to flee down the stairs. It wasn’t quite dark. There was a glimmer of light on the landing. Inside the boxroom she
saw first the bamboo stand; behind it the edge of the truckle bed, and two legs, white in the half light, the knees bunched
together, a welter of stockings about the ankles, the feet turned inwards. He was standing up, buttoning his trousers, dressed,
apart from his jacket, which was laid across the rosewood table – she could see the metal buttons gleaming. She backed away
and stood on the landing. He caught hold of his coat and dragged it along the table. She heard the buttons scratching across
the wood – a minute sound like a mouse scampering for safety. She leaned against the wall and the cat leapt from her arms
and flowed down the stairs. He came out on to the landing with his jacket over his shoulder. Sheepish. He looked in the dim
light as if he was ashamed of himself. He passed her, going to the head of the stairs with his head sunk on his chest. How
dare he scratch Mother’s furniture? A lifetime of sacrifice, of detailed care. What right had he to drag his clothing across
the polished wood? She thought it was safe up here, away from the light of the window, untouchable. He was no good, he was
disgusting. She could feel the anger gathering in her breast, the whole house was loud with the beating of her outraged heart.
She raised her arm and stabbed him with the scissors – there below the stubble of his hair, at the side of his neck. She was
that annoyed. He turned and looked at her, clutching the side of his throat, a quick decisive slap of his hand as if an insect
had stung him. He was surprised. He opened his mouth
and his foot faltered on the step of the stairs. He flung out his arms to balance himself and he fell sideways, rolling down
the turkey carpet, crumpling into a heap, his coat flying to the foot of the front door, and something like a spray of water
cascading from his pocket, leaping and bouncing across the lino like sweeties burst from a bag. He bashed his head on the
iron curve of the umbrella stand. Flung out a leg and knocked the little wax man from his pedestal. Hurled it from its glass
dome. Sent it sliding and snapped in half among the imitation pearls. Opened his mouth in agony. Died before the air left
his lungs.