Read an Excerpt

The Dressmaker

A Novel

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

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. She could hear Marge at the sink in the scullery, washing her hands. That tin bowl made a deafening noise. She nearly shouted for her to stop it, but instead she sat down on mother's old sofa, re-upholstered in LMS material bought at a sale, and immediately, in spite of the desperate cold of the unused room, the Christmas drink went to her head. She had to bite on her lip to keep from smiling. The light from the hallway shone on the carpet, red and brown and good as new from all the years she had spent caring for it. Here at least everything was ordered, secure. The removal of the rosewood table had been a terrible mistake, but it was foolish to blame herself for what had happened. There was nothing Mother could take umbrage at in the whole room – not even the little mirror bordered in green velvet with the red roses painted on the glass – because the crack across one corner, as she could prove, was war damage, not neglect or carelessness. The blast from a bomb dropped in Priory Road had knocked it off the wall, killing twelve people, including Mrs Eccles's fancy man at the corner shop, and cracked Mother's mirror.

'Are you all right then, Nellie?'

Margo was in the doorway watching her. Mother had always warned her to keep an eye on Marge. Such a foolish girl. The way she had carried on about Mr Aveyard. He hadn't been a well man, nor young, and she would have lost her widow's pension into the bargain. Fancy throwing away her independence just for the honour of siding his table and darning his combs. It had taken a lot to persuade her, but in the end she'd seen the sense in it – sent Mr Aveyard packing into the bright blue yonder; but her face, the look in her eyes for all to see – there was something indecent in the explicitness of her expression.

She'd said: 'You would only have been a drudge for him, Marge.' And Marge said: 'Yes, I know, Nellie.' But her eyes, then as now, burned with the secrets of experience.

'Let me be,' said Nellie. 'I'll be through in a moment.'

Valerie had been right about a belt for the engagement dress. It would add the final touch. She let her eyes close and dozed as if she were sitting in the sun, her two stout legs thrust out across Mother's carpet, threads of green cotton clinging to her stockings.

She was awakened by voices coming from the kitchen. She listened for a moment before getting to her feet. Rita had come in and was weeping again. She was at the age for it, but it was trying for all concerned.

'Oh, Auntie, I wish I was dead.' She didn't mean it of course.

Marge was saying, 'Shh, shh,' trying to keep her quiet.

Beyond the lace curtains something glittered. Jack had pasted strips of asbestos to protect the glass, sticky to the touch, but she could just make out a square of red brick wall and the little dusty clump of privet stuck in the patch of dirt beneath the window, all pale and gleaming like a bush in flower, frozen in moonlight. She smoothed the folds of the lace curtains, rearranging the milky fragments of privet, distracted by the sounds from the next room. If that girl didn't stop her whingeing, the neighbours would be banging on the wall; God knows, there'd been enough disturbance for one night.

She went into the hall, hiding the wine glass in the pocket of her apron. She swept broken glass into a heap and wrapped the pieces in newspaper; knelt to pick out between finger and thumb fragments embedded in the dust mat at the front door. She found an imitation pearl that Marge had overlooked, lying like a peppermint on the stair. She went into the kitchen with her parcel and laid it on the table.

'Valerie Mander says her Chuck hasn't seen him in over a week,' wailed Rita.

'Shh,' Margo said again, putting her arms about the girl to calm her, looking up at Nellie with entreaty in her eyes, no colour at all in her thin cheeks.

'That's enough, Rita. It's no use crying over spilt milk,' said Nellie. 'You're better off without him.' Which was the truth, surely, though she had not meant to shout so loud.

'Turn that gas off, Marge,' she ordered and not waiting went into the scullery to turn off the ring under the kettle.

'But we always have a cup of tea before bed,' said Rita, lifting an exhausted face in protest, and Margo said for the umpteenth time, 'Shhh, shhh,' in that daft way.

The girl washed in the scullery while the two women prepared for bed. The reflection of her bony face, pale with loss, flittered across the surface of the tarnished mirror above the sink. She bent her head and moaned, quite worn out by the depths of her emotion. A shadow leapt against the pane of glass high on the wall among the frying pans. She looked up startled, a piece of frayed towel held to her mouth, and opened the back door to let the cat in.

She called: 'Come on, Nigger, come on, Nigger!'

'Shut that door!' Her aunt's voice was harsh with irritation.

'Can't the cat come in then, Auntie?'

'No, leave it out.' But Nigger was in, streaking across the lino into the kitchen, up in one bound on to the sofa, eyes gleaming.

Rita went into the hall to put away her shoes in the space under the stairs. When she came back, Auntie Marge was standing on the table, reaching up to the gasolier with its pink fluted shades, showing a portion of leg where her nightie rode up. Nellie held her firmly by the ankle, in case she should turn dizzy.

'Where's the other half of the curtain under the stairs, Auntie Nellie?' asked Rita.

Nellie had her hairnet on and her teeth out. When the gas died, her face looked bruised in the firelight. She didn't answer. She tugged at Marge's gown and told her to come down, which she did, teetering wildly for a moment on the edge of the chair before reaching the floor and going at once to the sideboard. She fiddled about among the knives and forks, bringing out a packet of American cigarettes. At the sight of them the girl's face crumpled. She flung herself on her knees and buried her head in her aunt's lap as she sat down by the fire.

'Oh, Auntie,' she cried, muffled in flannel, 'I do love him.'

Nellie could see Marge's hand with the thin band of gold encircling her finger, stroking the girl's bent head. The packet of cigarettes slithered to the rug. With a puritanical flick of her wrist, Nellie flung them clear to the back of the grate.

'You daft beggar, it was a full packet.'

Margo was outraged, looking up with hatred at her sister. But she quailed before the fury of the older woman.

'Shhh,' she said over and over to the girl at her knee, gazing sullenly at the cigarettes consumed by flame.

Nellie took the newspaper parcel into the scullery. She returned and stood at the mantelpiece holding her clenched fist out over the fire. The eyes of the cat flicked wide. The flames spat. Wax melted over the coals.

Rita said, startled: 'What's that?'

'Someone knocked over the little wax man in the hall. It's broken.'

The girl sat upright, the tear-stained oblong of her face full of accusation.

'The little wax man?'

'Don't look like that, Miss. It couldn't be helped.'

Nellie sucked the pad of her finger where a splinter of glass had penetrated, adding, so that the girl would know where to apportion blame: 'Your dad knocked it over.'

'Uncle Jack? Has Uncle Jack been, then?'

She looked from one aunt to the other, but there was no reply. Nellie bolted the back door and brought a jug of water to pour on the coals. The smoke billowed outwards. The cat sprang from its place on the sofa and went with disgust to lie on the heap of newspapers behind the door.

Auntie Margo said: 'Poor old Nigger, he doesn't like that,' beginning to laugh deep in her throat and bringing her hand up to her mouth to smother the sound. Turning her face to the grate, she stared into the dampened fire.

Rita was puzzled about Uncle Jack coming. He only came round on a Saturday with the Sunday joint.

'Did Uncle Jack come about the engagement party, then?' she wanted to know. 'Is he getting Valerie Mander a cut of meat?'

'Bed,' said Nellie, but not unkindly. By now Jack would be on the dock road, heading towards Bootle. She waited in the hallway while Rita and Marge went upstairs. She let them get settled before leaning over the stair rail to extinguish the gas light.

'Are you in?' she called after a moment.

Rita could hear the banister creaking as Nellie hauled herself up the stairs. On the dark landing her bare feet smacked against the lino.

'Are you cold, Rita?'

'Yes, Auntie.'

'You best come in with us.'

She didn't want the girl having that nightmare. She hadn't had it for several weeks, but she was obviously upset, fretting herself. It was best to have her near. They'd all catch their death of cold shenaniging about in the middle of the night.

Rita climbed on to the bed and slid down between the two women, putting her head under the starched sheets to shut out the cruel night air and the heart-beat of the alarm clock set for six, thinking it absurd that she should even attempt to close her eyes when her mind wandered so restlessly back and forth in search of the happiness she had lost, and falling asleep even while her head nuzzled more comfortably into the stiff linen cover of the bolster. From time to time she whimpered; and Margo snored, curled up against Rita, with one arm flung out across the green silk counterpane, cold as glass, joined to the girl by a strand of hair caught on her dry upper lip.

Nellie dreamed she was following Mother down a country garden, severing with sharp scissors the heads of roses.

It was late August when Valerie Mander asked Rita to the party.

'Well, it's more of a sing-song, really,' she amended. 'But you'll enjoy yourself. Tell your Uncle Jack you're a big girl now.' And off she went up the street, swinging her handbag and tilting her head slightly to catch the warmth of the sun.

Rita had first seen her on the tram coming home from work, but she hadn't let on. She had been travelling since the Pier Head, wedged hard against the window near the platform. When the tram stopped opposite the bomb site that had been Blackler's store, she hadn't noticed the people boarding, only moved her feet to avoid being trampled, gazing out at the rumpled meadow on the corner of the city street; thinking of Nellie working there at the beginning of the war, on the material counter facing millinery, shearing with her sharp steel scissors through the yards of silk and satin and velveteen, taking such pride in the great bales of cloth, smoothing them with her hands, plucking with disapproval at the minute frayed ends. To no avail. When the roof split open, the prams and bedding spilled from the top floor to the next, mingling with Auntie Nellie's rolls of dress material, snaking out wantonly into the burning night, flying outwards higgledy piggledy, with the smart hats hurled from their stands, the frail gauze veils spotted with sequins shrivelling like cobwebs, tumbling down through the air to be buried under the bricks and the iron girders – covered now by the grass and the great clumps of weed that sprouted flowers, rusty red and purple, their heads swinging like foxgloves as the tram lurched round the corner and began the steep ascent to Everton Brow. Only then did she glance up and see Valerie standing with one white-gloved hand raised to clutch the leather strap for support, her head swathed in a cream turban and a diamante button clipped to the hidden lobe of her ear.

Rita hung her head to avoid involvement, hoping that Valerie would not look in her direction, ready to spring to her feet and be off when her stop came. But outside the Cabbage Hall cinema, a horse pulling its coal cart took fright at an army lorry passing too close. Feet sliding on the cobblestones, it shied sideways into the traffic. Rita hesitated, was too afraid to run in front of its hooves and heard Valerie calling her name. She was forced to walk the length of Priory Road with her, dreadfully inadequate and cheeks pink with resentment. It wasn't that she felt herself to be inferior, it was more that the overwhelming ripeness and confidence of the older girl caused her acute embarrassment. Valerie was larger than life, prancing along the pavement with her heavy body clothed in a green and white frock made by Auntie Nellie, arching her plucked brows, fluttering her eyelashes shiny with vaseline, opening and closing her moist mouth, the colour of plums. It was the glossiness of her.

'Your Auntie Nellie said you were working in Dale Street now.'

'Yes, since April.'

'What's it like, then? All right is it, Rita?'

'Yes, it's very nice, thank you.'

'What do you do, then?' Persistent. Trying to communicate. Trotting in her wedge-heeled shoes past the redbrick houses and the small shops and the ragged plane trees, windswept on every corner.

'Not much, really. I run messages for Mr Betts sometimes.'

'Well, that's not much, is it?' A kind of criticism in her voice. 'I thought you were good at English?'

'Me Auntie Margo was getting me a job with her in the factory at Speke.'

'Oh yes.'

In sight now, the tin hoarding high on the wall at the corner of Bingley Road, advertising Gold Flake.

'Auntie Nellie said they weren't a nice class of girl.'

They walked under the lettering, bright yellow and two-foot high, set against a sea of deepest blue, one corner eaten by rust. It was Valerie that had told Aunt Nellie that she was too pale to wear bright colours ... 'Your Rita hasn't the complexion for it' ... and Nellie took notice of her. Until then she had felt like a pillar-box every winter, decked out in a scarlet coat with a hat and handbag to match.

They crossed the road and went into the shadow of the air-raid shelter in the middle of the street, its concrete roof blotched by rain and a black and white cat prowling its length.

It was then Valerie asked her what she did on a Saturday night, though she knew, she must have done. She knew what Valerie did. Mrs Mander told Nellie all about her daughter's opportunities and what young man was courting her and how she'd been to a tea-dance at Reece's Ballroom and an evening do at the Locarno and what the fellow at the Ladies' Hot Pot Supper night had said about her. Nellie discussed it often with Margo, and neither of them seemed to think it strange that what was all right for Valerie was all wrong for other girls living in the street. Just fast, they were. But then Valerie, as Auntie Nellie never tired of reiterating, was a lovely girl and she did know how to take care of herself.

Aunt Nellie had just sent the man from the Pru on his way, richer by her sixpence a week, when Rita got home. It was for her funeral, so that Jack wouldn't have the expense. Around her neck she wore her tape measure like a scarf and a row of pins stuck in the bodice of her black dress. On Sundays she exchanged the white measure for a fox fur, holding the thin little paws in her hand as she went on her own to the church. She stood at her pastry board in the scullery, coating three pieces of fish with flour. She told Rita to set the table, adding: 'Get a move on, chuck. I've Mrs Lyons coming for a fitting after tea.'

'I met Valerie Mander on the tram,' said Rita, collecting plates from the shelf above the cooker. 'They're having a party on Saturday.'

She took the plates into the kitchen and left them on the sideboard, while she removed the table runner and the yellow vase full of dressmaking pins.

'I know,' Nellie said. 'Well, it's more of a sing-song, really. What was she wearing?'

'She asked me.'

Rita unfolded the white cloth and smoothed it flat on the table. Aunt Nellie was so surprised she came through from the scullery with the frying pan in her hand.

'What did you say to her?'

'I said thank you very much.'

'Oh dear, I don't know that it's wise. I'm not at all sure.'

---

Excerpted from The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge. Copyright © 1973 Beryl Bainbridge. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---