The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [11]
‘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,