The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [13]
‘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.’
‘Sardines?’
‘Somebody hides and whoever finds them like, hides with them. You know – girls and boys.’ She winked a mascaraed eye. ‘Didn’t you ever play it?’
‘They got the last game wrong,’ said Margo crossly. ‘It was never Napoleon.’
She resolutely put down her plate of ham and went into the hall. The trouble with the Manders’ house was that it pretended to be different from hers and Nellie’s. No landmarks anywhere. Everything old had been ripped out and replaced by something modern, unfamiliar. A recess lit by a lamp where the cupboard under the stairs would have been; a whole window of glass put in the hall at the side of the front door. To give more light, Mrs Mander said. Light was meant to be outside – that was the point of living inside. And anyway it was sheer foolishness, considering the bombing could start up again. There might even be doodlebugs, and they’d be sorry they hadn’t kept the bricks.
On the bottom stair there was a couple courting.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I want to get up there.’
They made themselves small, squeezing against the rail. The war had made everyone lax, openly immodest. It wasn’t only the Yanks. There were all the jokes she heard at work about the girls in the Land Army getting in the hay with the Italian prisoners of war, and ‘Up with the Lark’ and ‘To Bed with a Wren’.
Upstairs the place was in darkness. She tried putting the light on in the front bedroom, but there were bodies everywhere – on the bed, on the floor – so she turned it off quick. But not before she had caught a glimpse of Valerie lying on her mother’s bed, dazed in Chuck’s military arms.
‘Valerie,’ she said loudly, ‘where’s our Rita?’ And Valerie replied in a funny strangled voice: ‘She’s hiding, Auntie Marge.’
‘Rita!’ called Margo, thoroughly alarmed.
The back bedroom was empty. No breathing, no sounds. She put the light on. There was a small bed and a big wardrobe. She stood, not knowing what to do; it was not in her nature to make a scene in someone else’s house. Nellie would look under the bed and into the wardrobe, but this was Valerie’s room, private, full of her belongings and her secret jars of face cream. It was a shock to find the room so plainly furnished – oil cloth on the floor and a cheap little square of carpet bought at Birkenhead market. It was not as she expected. Where was the flam-boyancy, the style that showed in the clothes she wore? She opened the wardrobe and looked inside. There was Rita among the dresses and the pin-striped suits, staring out, not touching the young man with the long bony face.
After a moment of surprise Rita said: ‘This is Ira. He’s an American.’
‘How do you do?’ said Margo, and Rita stepped out of the wardrobe and he followed.
They walked ahead of her down the stairs, casually, not hurrying. In the kitchen she saw his face plainly: pale eyes, pale mouth, colourless hair. They were like brother and sister. Not at all threatening, no bulk to him, thin as a whippet, with big hands dangling and feet like an elephant. Rita was perfectly composed, sitting down at the table and sipping thoughtfully at a glass of dandelion and burdock. He said nothing, leaning against the wall as if he was sleepy, looking at the girl.
‘Do you