Dressmaker (15 page)

The cat, crouching beneath the stairs, came out and sniffed at the floor. Putting out a paw it slapped a bead playfully and
ran to the door like a kitten. Nellie came down the stairs slowly, sat on the bottom step and leaned forward to examine Ira.
With her left hand she undid her fingers from the handle of the scissors, and put them away in the pocket of her apron. He
lay with his face turned to the hall carpet. She had punctured the skin of his neck. There was blood oozing gently from the
wound, staining the cream collar of his shirt. She went into the kitchen and shut him out in the hall, taking the scissors
from her pocket and laying them on the table. She felt she had done wrong, but there were mitigating circumstances. He shouldn’t
have touched the furniture: he had no right to be in the boxroom with her – her stockings round about her ankles and her
white knees exposed. He had come into their lives and caused nothing but trouble – upsetting Rita, making a liar out of her.
She
thought of Rita as a little girl, riding a donkey at Blackpool, jogging up and down as she rode across the sand, running
in and out of the waves with Jack’s handkerchief wound around her head to keep the sun off, kicking her feet in the water.
It would be better if children stayed small, never grew up, never knew how deep the sea could be.

‘What are we going to do?’ said Marge.

She stood in the doorway with her eyes wide open as if she was standing in a terrible draught. Nellie couldn’t look her in
the eye. Not yet. The shock had been too great. The sort of things Marge got up to were beyond her. She couldn’t have known
what she was about. Even though she had been a married woman, she couldn’t have understood what she was doing.

‘I can’t think,’ she said. ‘I can’t get me thoughts.’

‘We ought to tell someone,’ said Margo.

‘Wait on,’ Nellie said.

She went out into the hall and looked at Ira again. He was very long and skinny. He lay with his leg buckled up under his
buttocks. He hadn’t moved.

Marge was looking at her, her hand twisting about at the waist of her dress.

‘I’ve got to do Valerie’s belt,’ said Nellie. ‘I said I would go back.’

‘We ought to tell someone,’ said Margo again, like a gramophone record – like Jack’s records in the upstairs room above the
shop, covered with dust.

‘If we do,’ Nellie said, ‘there’ll be talk. I don’t want there to be talk.’

‘But it’s wicked,’ Margo said, unable to keep her eyes from the man on the floor, with the little pearls scattered about his
head.

‘We haven’t had much of a life,’ cried Nellie. ‘We haven’t done much in the way of proving we’re alive. I don’t see why we
should pay for him.’ She thought ‘wicked’ was a funny word coming from Marge, considering what she’d been doing. She thought
of them both being taken into custody and Mother’s furniture left with the dust accumulating.

‘Think of the scandal,’ Nellie said. ‘Whatever would Rita do? I only did what was best. He had no right to touch Mother’s
table.’

They sat on either side of the fireplace listening to the clock ticking. In the hall Nigger rolled beads across the lino.

‘Whatever was he doing with that necklace?’ asked Nellie. But Margo was moaning, rocking herself back and forwards on her
chair as if to ease some private grief.

After a time Nellie stood up and went into the hall. She pulled down the curtain from under the stairs.

‘We best wrap him up,’ she said.

‘What for?’ Margo asked.

‘We don’t want young Rita tripping over him.’

She was very capable, a dressmaker to her bones. She put the chenille curtain under the clamp of the sewing machine and made
a bag for Ira. She made Marge drag him by the feet into the kitchen. He pulled the carpet sideways and his head bumped on
the lino. At the side of his throat the wound looked as if he had been kissed
by a vampire. There was a little bubble of blood about the edges. Nellie said they had to put him inside the curtain.

‘What for?’ said Margo. She was gormless, all the sense knocked out of her.

‘We’ve got to get Jack,’ said Nellie. ‘He best come round with the van. We have to cover him up. You know how squeamish Jack
is.’

They slid him into the bag. It was like turning a mattress; Nellie made Marge hold Ira in her arms by the sewing machine so
that she could sew the bag up over his head. It had to be a proper shroud. Jack mustn’t see any part of him. There was no
cause to lay pennies on his eyes or cross his hands on his breast. He wasn’t one of the family.

‘Wait on,’ said Margo.

She went into the hall bravely and gathered up the pearls, brought them into the kitchen and slipped them into the curtain
with Ira.

‘Whatever was he doing with that necklace?’ said Nellie once more.

‘I don’t know,’ Margo said, lifting him in her arms again and letting Nellie complete her job. ‘He said Rita buried them in
the garden and he dug them up when she wasn’t looking. He thought I might want them.’

‘What garden?’ asked Nellie, snapping the thread with her hands, unable to use the scissors. Marge couldn’t tell her.

‘There wasn’t time,’ she explained.

She clasped him closer in her arms, felt the curve of
his head against her breast, the length of his legs buried in the chenille curtain.

She ran up the road to the Manders’ and said Nellie wasn’t feeling too good. She wanted to use the phone to contact Jack.

‘Shall I go up?’ asked Mrs Mander.

But Margo told her not to bother. Nellie wouldn’t want a fuss.

‘You’re to come at once,’ she said to Jack. She knew the Manders could hear every word.

‘Is Nellie bad?’ cried Jack, alarmed. He shouted down the phone as if she was deaf.

‘Just bring the van,’ said Margo. ‘Quick as you can.’

The heels of her shoes as she walked back to the house clicked like knitting needles. It was as if someone was following her.

They dragged Ira through into the wash-house in case Rita should come back. The cat thought it was a game, digging its paws
into the material of the curtain, jumping skittishly into the air. Margo got the giggles when they had difficulty getting
him through the door. She had to let go of him and lean against the sink.

‘Give over,’ said Nellie.

She was as white as a sheet, strong as steel. She never paused to gather breath. She pulled Ira down the back step into the
dark and told Margo to open the wash-house door. She was used to carrying the dummy about. The screw had gone from the stand
– you had to watch the body didn’t fall away from the pole. She handled the curtain with skill. When they lumped him on to
the
concrete they snapped the head of the lupin plant. All its petals blew away down the yard. When Nellie had manoeuvred him
into the wash-house she still thought of things to do.

‘Straighten the hall,’ she bade Marge. ‘There’s a stairrod broken. Throw it into the back.’

When Jack knocked at the door, she ran up the hall after Marge and told her not to let him in.

‘Tell him to go round the back,’ she hissed. ‘Tell him to take the van up the alleyway.’

Jack cursed Marge – he thought she was playing silly beggars. He hadn’t a collar to his shirt, just a stud. He looked like
the vicar.

‘Whatever’s going on,’ he said, coming in through the back door with his face all peaky with bewilderment.

‘Sit down,’ said Nellie. She told him very little beyond the fact that she had knocked the young American down the stairs.
She didn’t say what he was doing upstairs. Or why she had stabbed him with the scissors. Something had happened, she hinted,
and she’d only done what was best. She knew by his face that he didn’t want to ask any questions. He was too frightened. He
didn’t want to know.

‘It was that umbrella stand,’ she said, fingering the tape measure that hung about her neck. ‘You always said it was a death
trap.’

‘Oh my God,’ said Jack. He clutched the mantelpiece for support. ‘Where is he?’ he asked, after a moment.

‘In the wash-house,’ said Margo.

‘Oh my God,’ he said.

‘We’ll have to get him in the van,’ Nellie told him. ‘You’ll have to take him down to the docks.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘You’ll have to tip him in the river. That’s best.’

‘Oh my God,’ he moaned again.

He couldn’t help them. The two women had to take Ira from the wash-house and slither him down the yard to the van. They could
hear Jack retching in the scullery.

‘Take him,’ said Nellie, when they were done. ‘Take him down to Bootle, Jack.’ She held his face in her two hands, shaking
him a little to give him courage. ‘You’re a good boy,’ she said.

‘Oh my God,’ he whispered, going down the yard with his black hat jammed on his head. They waved to him from the back step.

When the gate shut behind him he felt very alone. He knew Nellie couldn’t come with him on account of her health. But he hated
being in the van with Ira in the back.

Nellie held her hand to her heart. The rain was pattering on the wash-house roof. She stood there for all the world as if
she was taking the air.

Afterwards she went through into the little front room, the tape measure still dangling about her neck, and allowed herself
a glass of port. And in the dark she wiped at the surface of the polished sideboard with the edge of her flowered pinny in
case the bottle had left a ring …

Winner of the 1996 Whitbread Novel Award

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

For the four fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, the
Titanic
sails towards New York, glittering with luxury, freighted with millionaires and hopefuls. In her labyrinthine passageways
are played out the last, secret hours of a small group of passengers, their fate sealed in prose of startling, sublime beauty,
as Beryl Bainbridge’s haunting masterpiece moves inexorably to its known and terrible end.

‘Darkly brilliant … a rare and remarkable novel’
Observer

‘Brilliant … do not miss this novel’

Victoria Glendinning,
Daily Telegraph

‘Extraordinary … both psychologically convincing

recreation and a wholly new and highly individual

work of art … beautifully
written’
Independent

‘A moving, microcosmic portrait of an era’s bitter end’

Eric Wagner,
The Times

‘Marvellous … exquisite pacing … stunning descriptions’

Independent on Sunday

Abacus

978–0–349–10870–4

‘Brilliant … marvellous comedy … a tour de force’

Observer

‘Razor sharp … Bainbridge takes special pleasure in

human unpredictability. She shows that people

are hardly ever what
they appear’

New York Times Book Review

Quiet and reliable, Douglas Ashburner has never been much

of a womaniser. So when he begins an extra-marital affair

with Nina,
a bossy, temperamental artist with a penchant

for risky sex, he finds adultery a terrible strain.

He tells his wife that he needs a rest, so she happily packs

him off for a fishing holiday in the Highlands. Only,

unknown
to her, Douglas is actually flying off to Moscow

with Nina, as a guest of the Soviet Artists’ Union. It is then

that things
begin to get very complicated indeed …

‘A very funny as well as a frightening book’
Guardian

‘Marvellously deft … comedy is secreted everywhere, like honey;

but it is a surreal little honeycomb, with sharp teeth’

Times Literary Supplement

‘Well plotted and often very funny’
Sunday Times

Abacus

978–0–349–11609–9