The Dressmaker

by Beryl Bainbridge

  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 nev
er 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.

  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 c
henille 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.