The Dressmaker

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘What’s all this, then?’ asked Nellie, and Marge said she was just popping round to the Manders’ with Rita, to keep an eye on her.

  ‘You weren’t asked,’ said Nellie.

  ‘Get away,’ Margo said, and proceeded to put powder on her cheeks.

  He could tell Nellie was put out about something.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ he asked. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll put me feet up and listen to Saturday Night Theatre.’

  At this she made a funny little gesture of contempt with her elbows, flapping them like a hen rising from its perch in alarm.

  ‘Not me,’ she said.

  So he lay down again and placed the Saturday Echo over his eyes to be out of it. He could hear them talking in whispers out of deference to him, trying to get Rita to hurry up and change. ‘In a minute,’ she kept saying, ‘I’ll go in a minute.’ And before she went upstairs he distinctly heard her say, ‘That was my mam’s, wasn’t it?’ and he opened his eyes and she was at the fireplace staring at Marge’s neck, half reaching up her hand to touch the necklace about Marge’s throat. God knows how she knew that. He was quite startled, screwing up the side of the newspaper and damaging the Curly Wee cartoon with his clenched fist. But she didn’t touch Marge; she peered as if she were short-sighted, leaving Marge standing there with her own hand up to the cheap link of pearls and her mouth all red and bold with lipstick.

  He closed his eyes again, and soon Nellie sat down at the sewing machine and spun the wheel, pressing the treadle up and down rapidly, running material under the stabbing needle, settling into the rhythm of it, in her element. As long as he could remember, Nellie had played the machine, for that’s how he thought of it. Like the great organ at the Palladium cinema before the war, rising up out of the floor and the organist with his head bowed, riddled with coloured lights, swaying on his seat in time to the opening number. Nellie sat down with just such a flourish, almost as if she expected a storm of applause to break out behind her back. And it was her instrument, the black Singer with the handpainted yellow flowers. She had been apprenticed when she was twelve to a woman who lived next door to Emmanuel Church School: hand sewing, basting, cutting cloth, learning her trade. When she was thirteen Uncle Wilf gave her a silver thimble. She wasn’t like some, plying her needle for the sake of the money, though that was important: it was the security the dressmaking gave her – a feeling that she knew something, that she was skilled, handling her materials with knowledge; she wasn’t a flibbertigibbet like some she could mention. For all that she lifted the tailor’s dummy out from its position under the stairs coquettishly, holding it in her arms like a dancing partner, circling the arm-holes with chalk, stroking the material down over the stuffed breast, standing back to admire her work with her mouth clamped full of little pins, tape measure about her neck.

  When the knock came at the front door he was almost asleep. He opened his eyes in bewilderment and saw Marge on her chair by the grate, and Nellie, her foot arrested in mid-air trying to recognise the hand at the door. He rubbed his eyes and stood upright, smoothing his clothes to be respectable. They all listened. Rita opened the front door. A strange voice, like on the films, drawling. She brought him into the kitchen. He was well-fed, dressed in uniform and he had been drinking. A great healthy face, with two enquiring eyes, bright blue, and a mouth which when he spoke showed a long row of teeth, white and protruding. It was one of those Yanks. Jack was shocked. Till now he had never been that close. They were so privileged, so foreign; he had never dreamt to see one at close quarters in Nellie’s kitchen, taking Rita and Marge, one on each arm and bouncing them out of the house. He ran to the door to watch them go, linking arms, heads bowed, like they were doing the Palais Glide.

  ‘I didn’t know there would be Yanks,’ he said.

  ‘There’s no harm,’ said Nellie. ‘Valerie Mander knows how to conduct herself.’

  But he was bothered. He couldn’t lie down and compose himself; the sheer fleshiness of the young American disturbed him – the steak they consumed, the prime pork chops, the volume of butter and bacon. He remembered all the things he had read: the money they earned, the food they digested, the equipment they possessed. He’d seen them down by Exchange Station, pressing young girls up against the wall, mouth to mouth as if eating them, and jeeps racing up Stanley Street full of military police and great dogs on metal chains with their jaws open and their pink gums exposed.

  ‘I didn’t know there’d be Yanks,’ he said again, walking up and down the room in his green waistcoat that Nellie had made and his gun metal trousers.

  ‘Did you notice what our Rita said about that necklace?’ he asked in astonishment.

  But Nellie was placing the top half of Mrs Lyons’ grey costume under the steel clamp, her head bent and all her concentration on the lovely width of serge beneath her fingers.

  3

  In the circumstances Margo couldn’t help feeling that she was superfluous. The party was not a knees-up for the neighbours with a few of Cyril Mander’s business acquaintances on show to make a bit of a splash. She didn’t suppose there would be any political talk or views on how the war was going. Nor would there be fancy cakes and a few bottles of beer on the sideboard. The house was swarming with American soldiers and young women in their gladrags. The three-piece suite was quite submerged. On the hall table there was a pile of mustard-coloured caps, one upon the other, like a plate of sandwiches. She was struck, as usual, by the dazzling display of lights, in the hall, the front room, the kitchen. She stood blinking, helped out of her duster coat by the young man who had escorted them the few yards up the street. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and repeated it for Rita, who said nothing at all, allowing the pink cardigan to be removed from her shoulders. Valerie was wearing a black skirt with a patent-leather belt about her waist. She was bubbling over with excitement and generosity, explaining that she thought Rita would never have come if Chuck hadn’t fetched her. Chuck nodded his head lazily, and she put her arm through his and pressed close to him.

  It occurred to Margo that it was a funny name for a grown man. Surely the whites of his eyes were a shade too milky and the curve of his eyeball somewhat extreme. She remembered all the stories circulated about English girls marrying GIs and having black children. You could never be sure until it was too late. Jack said all the decent Americans had left the country before D-Day, ready for the thrust into Europe; only the riff-raff remained – canteen staff and garage mechanics. Mrs Mander couldn’t wait to tell her all about him. Valerie had met him at a dance a week ago and he’d taken her out nearly every night since, to the State Restaurant, the Bear’s Paw, to the repertory company, to some hotel over on the Wirral, very posh by all accounts.

  ‘The repertory company?’ said Marge, bewildered.

  ‘To a play,’ said Mrs Mander, ‘with actors.’

  ‘He must have money to burn.’

  ‘Well, there’s no harm in that, and he does seem keen, doesn’t he?’

  She peered at Marge, trying to gauge what she was thinking, scrutinising her mouth as if she were deaf and needed to lip-read.

  ‘They certainly seem very thick,’ Margo said, watching the young man at the fireplace with his hand dangling over the white shoulder of Valerie Mander. On his wrist, strong black hairs and a watch of solid gold.

  ‘Oh, they are,’ cried Mrs Mander gaily, putting a glass of whisky into her hand and leaving her, waddling out of the doorway in her midnight blue dress with the enormous skirt.

  Cyril Mander was playing the piano very slowly as if he weren’t sure of the tune. He was in his best blue suit, showing a lot of white cuff, his silver links catching the light. On the top of the piano was a jug full of lupins and a photograph of son George in his sailor’s uniform. Every time Cyril struck a chord, the flowers trembled and showered petals on the keys. None of the young couples heeded his playing. Valerie was looking through the gramophone cabinet for records.

  Marge wondered whether the Manders were wise
, filling the house with strangers and letting them behave any way they pleased. There was a war on, of course, and she knew attitudes were different, but there was such a thing as a responsibility. It would serve Mrs Mander right if she became the proud grandmother of a bouncing piccaninny.

  Sipping her drink and shuddering at its strength, she went out into the hall to look for Rita. The coats on the banisters had slid to the floor. She could see Rita’s cardigan lying all crumpled. As she bent to retrieve the clothing, Cyril Mander came behind her and seized her by the hips. She was quite embarrassed. He told her she must come and meet people – she mustn’t be a spoil sport. He took the coats from her, spilling them carelessly on the stairs. Clutching the cardigan, she was propelled into the living room. Jack detested him – said he was a profiteer and a swine, which was a bit unkind. Margo rather liked him, though not at such close quarters. He’d made a lot of money out of scrap metal and he did tend to be showy; but that was preferable to being moody like Jack, or martyred like Nellie.

  ‘What do you think of our Valerie’s latest acquisition?’ he whispered, crumpling her shoulder in his big hand and shaking her like a doll.

  The heat from the fire was unbearable. Such a reckless use of coal, and summer not yet ended.

  ‘I like the new grate,’ she said.

  But he wasn’t listening. There was no mantelpiece: nowhere to stand her glass. Just a thin little ledge of cream tiles, and above it a fancy mirror with scalloped edges. She could see her own face reflected – damp, as if she were rising up out of the sea, with staring eyes, and behind her head young couples dancing cheek to cheek, circling and gliding out of the mirror.

  ‘This is my girl from up the street,’ said Cyril, thrusting her forward at an angle, yet still retaining a grip on her shoulder.

  ‘How d’you do,’ Margo said to the two young men who stood on the hearthrug, shaking hands with one, who smiled at her with his beautifully rounded cheeks dimpling in welcome and went away to refill her glass, while she held Cyril upright and was ready to save him if he toppled forwards.

  She sweated under the combined heat of Cyril and the fierce flames that roared up the chimney. She took her replenished glass when it came, endeavouring to stand a little straighter, sipping the drink rapidly before Cyril should spill it for her. She had last tasted whisky four years ago at the height of the blitz when an ARP warden had given her some to steady her nerves. She remembered the occasion with bitterness, having slipped on the kerbstone in the blackout on her way home, raising a bump on her chin. Nellie said she was drunk.

  ‘This little lady,’ Cyril was saying, ‘is a soldier’s wife, through and through.’

  Seized by an abrupt melancholy, he released Marge and stared down at the carpet.

  ‘Where is your husband stationed, Mam?’ The American looked at her with his head tilted deferentially to one side.

  She was convulsed, choking on her drink. How richly oiled was the hair on his head, how smooth the skin beneath his eyes. Her chest heaved with the effort of suppressing laughter.

  ‘Up there,’ she wheezed, rolling her eyes in the direction of the ceiling.

  ‘Dear God,’ said Cyril, shaking his head and yawning.

  Deserting the three-piece suite, the couples rose to Ambrose and his Orchestra, clutching each other in the centre of the room. Standing on the leather settee with legs bent, as if to take an unlikely leap into the dark, Cyril struggled to open the window. Exhausted, he sank to his knees and leaned his forehead peacefully against the cushions, back turned on his jostling guests, the yellow curtains shifting gently in the draught.

  ‘Dear me!’ remarked Margo. ‘Mr Mander is well away and no mistake.’

  The young man with the dimples in his cheeks asked her to dance. She went with streaming eyes, fox-trotting across the carpet in his arms. Silly really, in such a tiny room – bumping into the sideboard, tripping over the rug. She was breathless before she had completed one turn of the floor.

  ‘Are you all right, Mam?’ he asked her, mistaking the marks on her cheeks for tears of distress.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she assured him, and turned her head away for fear she should laugh again. It was no use explaining how she felt about her dead husband from another war, it was so long ago. She hardy knew him to begin with, let alone remembered him now, so many years on. She had always felt he was more Nellie’s relation than hers, seeing Nellie had nursed him towards death. Whenever she had tiptoed upstairs, Nellie had told her to go away, he was resting; and even at the funeral it was Nellie that did enough crying for both of them.

  It was a relief when the record ended and the young man took his hand from her wrist. Wiping her eyes, she left him to look for her glass and refill it from the bottle on the sideboard. She didn’t feel guilty; it hadn’t been come by honestly, so why shouldn’t she have the benefit of it? Years ago Jack had given her a pad of cotton-wool soaked in whisky for the toothache. ‘Get rid of them,’ said Nellie contemptuously. ‘You don’t want any truck with those. Get yourself some nice new teeth.’ And she did, though it took her six years to pay for them. Rita went to the dentist regularly – but then times had changed. Rita? She went into the hall to search for her. The door was open on to the street. Mrs Evans at No. 9 was leaning out of her bedroom window to get a shuftie at the goings on. Margo caught a glimpse of a green velvet dress and a tall soldier with his hands in his pockets lounging against the privet hedge.

  She hesitated, and at that moment Mrs Mander called from the kitchen: ‘Marge, Marge, give us a hand with the eats!’

  She couldn’t refuse, not being an invited guest in the first place.

  ‘Our Rita’s on the step,’ she said, ‘with a soldier. There’s no harm, is there?’

  ‘Get away,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘She’s seventeen.’ The display of food on the table was quite pre-war in style: a whole ham lying in a bed of brown jelly; a bowl of real butter, like a slab of dripping, white as milk; on a dinner plate, piled high, a pyramid of oranges. Margo sat down on a chair and looked.

  ‘It’s Chuck,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘He insisted.’

  ‘I was never in the limelight, was I?’ asked Margo.

  ‘You what?’ Mrs Mander paused from slicing bread.

  ‘You could never say I was made much of?’

  ‘You’ve been drinking, Marge,’ said Mrs Mander, relieved.

  ‘I’ve never felt,’ continued Margo, picking at the ham with her fingers, ‘that people took enough notice. I have got thoughts.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Mander.

  ‘You’ve got Cyril and George and your Valerie …’

  ‘Well, you’ve Rita.’

  ‘She’s not easy, you know. We’ve got her and we haven’t.’

  At that moment Chuck came into the room and asked for an orange.

  ‘We’re going to play games,’ he said; ‘I want an orange,’ taking one from the dinner plate and beginning to tear the peel from it.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘What sort of a game?’

  ‘Napoleon’s eye,’ said Chuck. ‘Valerie knows it.’ And he went out with the fruit clamped in his sharp wolfish teeth.

  After a time there was a lot of activity in the hall. Girls sat down giggling in the kitchen alongside Margo. She held her head up and tried to concentrate. Shrieks came from the front room. A young woman in a grey costume appeared, wringing her right hand and moaning with mock terror. ‘It’s awful,’ she cried, ‘it’s really awful.’

  One by one the girls were taken into the other room. At last they came for Margo.

  ‘Get off,’ she protested. But they blindfolded her and led her away. She was aware of men’s hands holding her, spinning her round in a circle.

  ‘You are now on the flag ship,’ drawled an unfamiliar voice, and she was lifted in the air and rocked like a baby.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh,’ she screamed, little flecks of light dancing before her eyes.

  ‘It is a rough and stormy night. You are about to meet Nap
oleon, greatest of British admirals.’

  Her hand was held in a dry palm. She sat down on something soft and yielding.

  ‘How do you do ! Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘How do you do,’ repeated Marge, her hand pumping up and down.

  ‘Feel his head,’ said the voice, and she stroked at something slippery, like satin – quilted like a tea cosy.

  ‘Get away,’ she screeched, ‘it’s a cosy.’

  ‘This is his good arm – this is his bad arm.’

  She felt a bandaged wrist, a bulky object. All around, the air was filled with whispers, instructions, smothered bursts of merriment. She was like a dog, pointing her nose to scent the wind, sitting there in her best crêpe dress, helpless.

  ‘This is Napoleon’s good eye,’ said a girl’s voice, and her nails flicked skin. She could feel the quivering eyeball beneath the lid.

  ‘And this is Napoleon’s bad eye –’

  All at once her finger was seized firmly by the root and stabbed fiercely downwards. Into moist juicy flesh. She screamed thinly, over and over, shaking with revulsion while the cloth was torn from her eyes and she saw Chuck grinning at her with the obscenely fingered orange lying in his palm. Woken by the commotion, Cyril stirred by her side. He pulled her down across him and she lay with beating heart against his white shirt.

  ‘It’s not Napoleon,’ she protested, ‘it’s Nelson,’ and closed her eyes.

  When she awoke, the room was in darkness save for firelight. There was a couple in the armchair against the wall and a young man dozing on the floor. She struggled upright, disentangling herself from the still-slumbering Cyril, thinking of Rita. Mrs Mander was in the kitchen amidst a debris of food.

  ‘Feeling better, are you?’ she asked. ‘I saved you some ham.’ And she handed her a plate lined with pink meat and a slice of bread and butter.

  ‘I must find our Rita.’

  There was a sour taste in Margo’s throat and she felt as if she’d been up all night working.

  ‘She’s most like upstairs,’ said Mrs Mander. ‘They’re playing sardines.’