The Dressmaker

by Beryl Bainbridge

  She gave little high-pitched gasps for breath, on her side of the ditch, treading the blackberries underfoot, her hair sliding down out of the brassy Kirby grips, and he said: ‘You gone crazy or something?’

  ‘I’m thinking of me Auntie Nellie and what she’ll make of the state I’m in.’

  ‘You look fine to me.’

  He had said it, he had noticed her. The journey on the bus, when he had so cruelly closed his eyes to shut her out, no longer mattered. The trees ended: ahead, splayed out under the weak sunshine, three acres of corn, uncut because of the bad weather, pale brown under a sky filled with frayed white clouds.

  Marge had asked Nellie to call at the corner shop on Breck Road for her ciggies. She was going to have a bite of tea with a girl from work and the shop would be closed by the time she came home. Nellie thought it a foolish thing to do, going off like that to someone’s house after a hard day’s work, but she couldn’t interfere. There were times when Marge was adamant. It was a nuisance, of course, having to keep her dinner warm in the oven. She hated sewing with the smell of food in the air. It lingered, penetrated the fabric of the material; but what was one meal kept on the gas in a lifetime? She didn’t seek to be restricting, but she’d always been a leader, even if it was in a purely domestic sense – arranging, decorating, budgeting – and Marge was a follower. She’d do what anyone wanted, provided it was silly enough. Her intentions were good, but she lacked tenacity. She was the big blaze that died down through lack of fuel. All that fuss about fire-watching in spite of her bronchitis, down into town every night to her post, prowling about the roof of the Cunard Building with her bucket of sand and her tin hat, keen as mustard at first, then sloping off home earlier and earlier, making excuses, absent without leave. She couldn’t sustain it. When she came home one night with a bruise on her chin and her breath reeking of whisky, she realised herself that that was the end of her little jaunt into battle. The truth was, Nellie thought, stabbing her hat-pin into the back of her brown hat, it wasn’t only Marge that found it hard to preserve interest. She too was beginning to retreat from the front line. She was forever peering out into the world, listening for the sound of the bugle, willing reinforcements to arrive. She had confided her worries to Mr Barnes, the minister at St Emmanuel’s Church; but though he was a good enough man, he was naturally limited by his own maleness from understanding her problems. She was concerned that when she woke each morning to the alarm clock on the bedside table, her first thoughts were not thankfulness that she had been spared breath, but worry over Mother’s furniture. Did the damp warp it in winter, the sun expand it in summer? Had it deteriorated in the small hours of the night? There was dry rot, wet rot, woodworm. She lived in dread that she would be taken ill and begin to die. Marge wouldn’t bother to wipe with vinegar the sideboard, or draw the blinds against the warmth of a summer afternoon to ensure the carpet wouldn’t fade. She was indolent. She had sewn Rita into her vest when the child was small and the winter particularly bitter. She could confide to Mr Barnes her weariness of spirit over the endless making-do with the rations, the queueing at the shops; but to admit her slavery to mahogany and rosewood was difficult, when he continually admonished her from the pulpit to consider the lilies of the field. Had they been her very own lilies she would have spent a lifetime ensuring that they too retained their glory. Brooding, she walked the length of the road, smiling briefly at one or two neighbours who nodded in her direction, clutching her shopping bag to the breast of her black tailored coat. The thought of Mother’s things in a sale-room, or worse in the junk shop on Breck Road, caused her pain in the region of her heart. She hoped she wasn’t about to suffer a decline. She would wake at night with Marge lying beside her and remember quite vividly episodes of the past, unconnected: an outing as a child to the birthplace of Emily Bronte; Father in his broadcloth suit; Mother faded, sepia-coloured against the sky, sitting in the sparse grass on the moors, squinting into sunshine. Or she was at a desk at school with her mouth open watching a fly caught in a spiral of light, beating its wings against the panes of glass. She lay moistening her dry lips with her tongue, staring out into the dark little bedroom.

  She had walked the length of Priory Road and turned at the Cabbage Hall into Breck Road and not known it, not recorded one tree or shop or item of traffic. Of course it had changed. There were bomb craters and rubble and old landmarks cleared away, but still it bewildered her that she had come so far in her mind and not been conscious of the route. Inside the corner shop she asked for Marge’s ciggies.

  ‘Good afternoon. Lovely day, isn’t it?’

  The woman said it was a grand day but she only kept cigarettes for her regular customers. She wore a pink turban with some wax grapes pinned to left of centre, and drop earrings with purple clusters. Nellie’s eyes rounded in wonder. She put her fingers on the counter and explained that Marge was regular, always bought her ciggies here, but she was going to be late home and she’d come instead, ‘to fetch them for her’.

  ‘I’m sorry love, I don’t know you from Laurel and Hardy.’

  ‘She comes every night. She’s thin and she’s got a green coat and …’

  But Nellie couldn’t really say what Marge looked like, couldn’t for the life of her describe her features. After all those years. Her eyes travelled the rows of glass jars half filled with sweets, such pretty colours, on shelves rising clear to the ceiling, among advertisements for tobacco, for chocolates, a naval man with sea spray on his cheeks, a dandy in an opera cloak smiling down at her with eyes like Rudolf Valentino. She stood in a circle of light, dazed by the flecks of white at the centre of his eyes and the dust-filled rays of the sun that shone through the topmost window of the shop.

  ‘She always has ten Abdullah. Every night.’

  ‘Sorry, luv. I told you.’

  Nellie was deafened by her own heartbeats. She clutched the counter for support, unable to move. There was a jar of liquorice laces on the counter, coiled like snakes. Nellie wanted to pick up the jar and smash it in the woman’s face – there, where the edge of her dusty hair caught fire in the sun and the little grapes dangled.

  ‘I’m sorry, luv, but you see how I’m placed.’

  Nellie saw her placed – painted like Carmen Miranda on a pantomime backcloth that bulged outwards and wavered as if a gust of wind swept the shop. Faint with anger, Nellie went out of the door and started for home. It was the third time in one month that she had made herself ill with ungovernable rage over a trivial incident.

  They were sitting at the edge of the cornfield. Apart. He hadn’t held her hand or tried to kiss her. He squatted on his haunches above the ground damp from the rain and the narrow ditch that ran beside the field. She had asked him about books, and he said he didn’t read much, and when she mentioned poetry he had looked at her curiously, not commenting.

  ‘My Auntie Margo is a great reader.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘She reads all sorts. I found a book once. She hid it in a drawer.’

  ‘She did?’

  ‘It was awful. You know, it was rude.’

  ‘What kind of rude?’ he asked, his eyes not quite so sleepy.

  ‘You know, men and women.’ She wished she hadn’t told him.

  ‘How come you know it was that kind of a book?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. You only had to read the first page. You must have seen books like that, you being in the army.’

  ‘I don’t have no call to read them kind of books,’ he said. ‘I seen pictures in magazines, but I ain’t read none of them books.’

  She felt he was criticising her, blaming her alongside Auntie Margo.

  ‘I only read a bit of it,’ she said defensively. ‘I don’t know where she got it from.’

  ‘She didn’t look to me like a woman who would read them sort of books.’

  ‘Oh, she’s deep, is Auntie Margo. She was married once to a soldier, but he died from the gas in France.’

  He swung his hands between
his knees and gazed out across the flat countryside, following the ribbon of highway that wound like a river into the distance.

  ‘She was courting once when I was small, but she gave him up.’

  ‘Courting?’

  ‘She didn’t care enough, she didn’t fight for him.’

  He wasn’t comfortable with her, she could tell. Every time she looked at him it hurt that she couldn’t finger his hair or touch his cheek. She wished he would put down the stick that he dug into the yellow earth, poking the soil, not paying her attention.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘The sea’s over there.’

  ‘If you like.’

  He moved carefully, trying not to dirty his beautifully polished shoes, treading the marshy path alongside a black ploughed field. When they came to a lane she held the strands of barbed wire wide for him so that he wouldn’t tear his uniform. She herself would have liked to enter the wire on the opposite side of the road and tramp in a straight line across the grass towards the horizon and the dark row of houses before the sea-shore.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said with relief at standing on firm ground, and she stamped her foot at him.

  ‘There’s other words to use when you’re cross. You don’t have to say that.’

  ‘Aw, come on, Rita.’

  But she was striding off resentfully down the lane towards the corner where a red barn half stood with its tin roof sliding into decay amidst a clump of elms. When he caught up with her, he put his arm about her shoulders, but without warmth, digging his fingers into her flesh, shaking her. She became very still, waiting.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I guess your Auntie Margo wouldn’t have no qualms about saying “Jesus”. You’re too sensitive getting all hotted up about a word.’

  ‘Leave off.’

  She shook herself free, pained that he had practically praised her aunt in preference to her, hearing the sound of marching feet beyond the barn and voices singing. She pretended she was tying her shoelace, squatting down by the nettles and the ragged blackberry bushes, bowing her head. It was like being caught fraternising with the enemy, alone on a country road with an Ameri can. He lounged against the tangled hedge, sucking a blade of grass, watching the squad of soldiers stamping round the bend of the road, feet splayed out like Charlie Chaplin, stub-toed boots black as soot.

  My eyes are dim, I cannot see,

  I have not brought my specs with me …

  And a wail, drawn out, sorrowful, as if they howled in protest at walking through the warm afternoon:

  I have not brought

  My specs with me.

  Ira whistled shrilly as they strutted past him, but he was ignored.

  ‘Don’t,’ she hissed, crouching in the wet grass, fiddling with her shoe.

  Eyes front, shoulders raised, they swung their arms and went mincing up the lane. The rooks left the elm trees and swooped down to the rusted roof of the empty barn.

  ‘Don’t,’ she cried again, jumping upright and dragging on his arm as he stood blowing between his fingers in the middle of the lane. She wrenched his hands from his mouth, her face flushed with anger. ‘Don’t make a show of yourself.’

  ‘What’s got into you?’ he wanted to know, digging his hands into his pockets and looking at her sullenly. Now that the soldiers had gone, she was sorry she had flared up at him.

  ‘It’s just that they don’t like you, do they?’

  ‘Who don’t like me?’ His eyes, grey not blue, reflecting the surface of the road, stared at her coldly.

  ‘Our Tommies. They don’t like the Yanks. It’s the money you get.’

  ‘We don’t have no trouble with Tommies. We’re allies.’

  ‘Well,’ she finished lamely, ‘they have fights in Liverpool, down by Exchange Station. Everybody knows.’

  ‘Is that so?’ he muttered, turning from her and kicking at the hedgerow.

  She didn’t know how to remedy the situation. Rather like her Aunt Nellie who could never say she was sorry. She twisted her hands together and gazed helplessly at his hostile back.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.’

  To her relief he stepped away from the hedge and shrugged his shoulders. But his face was hard. She looked at him furtively, trying to read his eyes, but they were guarded, revealing nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ira.’

  Tears came to her eyes. He gave her a small lenient smile, and she was instantly restored, untroubled. The road led them towards the coast. They went along a cinder path over the railway and across another field.

  ‘We could go home on the train,’ she said, ‘if we wanted.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he complained, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

  The land was level, the sky heaped with white cloud. She raced ahead of him between hedges inclined inwards against the constant wind blowing from the sea. They came to the long waste of foreshore and the row of empty houses heaped about with sand. He looked curiously at the deserted road and the front gardens run wild.

  ‘Was this the blitz?’ he asked.

  She didn’t know. ‘It’s near the docks and maybe people got scared and left. They don’t look bombed.’

  ‘They sure do,’ he argued, looking at the windows empty of glass and the debris spilling on to the road.

  ‘I think people are daft. I’d rather live here than Anfield.’ And she ran into the nearest house, through the open doorway into a long hall that led into a back room overlooking the beach. ‘Come on,’ she shouted. ‘It’s nice in here.’

  He followed her without enthusiasm, seeing the dog dirt on the floor and the human excrement and the soiled pieces of newspaper. Outside the window was a short garden with currant bushes and a broken wall tumbling down on to the sand.

  Nellie had made her two sandwiches for her lunch and wrapped some biscuits. She took them out of her handbag and showed them to Ira. He held his hand out eagerly, but she put them away again, closing the clasp of her bag with a decisive little click.

  ‘Later,’ she said. ‘I never have my dinner till one o’clock.’

  It was a way she had with her, sticking to routine. They found strawberries in the garden, huddled under grey-green leaves weighted by sand. These at least she didn’t own. She watched him as he strolled about the neglected garden, sitting on the faded square of lawn, and wished he would come near her. He leaned against the crumbling wall looking at the barbed-wire entanglements, rolling torn and rusted along the shore. In rows, the concrete bollards stood, planted to repel the landing craft.

  ‘You don’t talk much, do you?’ she said, stung by his indifference.

  ‘I guess I’m not much of a talker. Anyrate, I’m too hungry to think of words.’

  She opened her handbag and took out the sandwiches and gave them to him. He lay down on his back full length upon the wall, tossing the paper wrapping on to the beach and holding the bread in both hands, his cap slipping sideways on to the grass. There was his ear, neat to his head and an inch of shaved scalp before his bleached hair began.

  ‘Your Auntie Margo make you these?’ he munched.

  ‘Never,’ she scoffed. ‘She wouldn’t give you the time of day.’

  She felt uncomfortable being mean about Auntie Margo, and she could hardly credit that what she felt was jealousy.

  ‘Auntie Margo isn’t much good at shopping and stuff. Nellie does all that.’

  ‘Did you tell your auntie that you were meeting me?’

  ‘I didn’t like.’

  ‘Don’t they let you date?’

  ‘I don’t talk to them very much.’

  He didn’t comment. He folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes.

  After a while she opened her bag and took out her mother’s pearl beads and laid them on the grass. She looked round for something to dig in the soil, something sharp. In time, she found the jagged half of a slate fallen from the roof, and she knelt and scooped a hole in the sandy e
arth. When she was ready, she put the beads in the shallow depression and spooned the sand back into place. Finally, she threw the slate over the wall into the next garden and stamped the ground level with her shoes. She snapped a piece from the flowering currant bush growing by the wall and planted it on the spot where she had buried the necklace. Wiping her hand on her coat, she went and looked down at his face. His eyelids quivered.

  ‘You’re shamming,’ she said. ‘You’re never sleeping.’

  There was a line of sweat beading his upper lip and the dull gleam of a tooth where his mouth lay slack. She shook him gently and felt his body tense so that he wouldn’t fall off the wall.

  ‘What were you putting in the earth?’

  ‘Secret. Mind your own business.’

  He sat up then and shook her quite roughly by the shoulders, thrusting his narrow face at her. Suddenly he kissed her. So flat and hard her gums ached. She pulled away from his mouth and buried her face in his jacket to hide her wide smile of delight that it had happened at last. He swung her round and stood holding her by the hips, pushing himself against her. All her bones hurt and the top of her legs where the broken wall caught her. But it didn’t matter. Possession blazed up in her, consuming: someone belonged to her. After the war he would take her to the States, and they’d have a long black car and a grand piano with a bowl of flowers on the lid. There’d be a house with a verandah and wooden steps, and she would run down them in a dress with lots of folds in the skirt and peep-toed shoes. Auntie Nellie would tell Mrs Mander how well-off they were, how Ira cared for her, the promotion he kept getting at work.