The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [22]
‘What you say?’ he asked, flushed in the face.
‘What’s your work when you’re not a soldier?’
He was clutching her hair in two bunches on either side of her head, tilting her neck. Her mouth opened like a fish.
‘You’re hurting me.’
He let go at once, taking a step backwards, and she followed him blindly, nestling up to him, content to be on a level with his chest, her arms rather awkwardly about him, her head full of dreams.
‘What job do you do when you’re not in the army?’
‘I ain’t got no job. Leastways, nothing settled.’
He was bringing his arm up against her chest as if to push her away but his fingers were feeling the fabric of her dress.
‘Leave off!’ she cried, shocked, butting him with her head so that he stumbled and almost fell.
‘You shouldn’t do things like that. It’s rude doing that.’
Already she was wishing he was different, more to her liking – more chatty, ask her things, tell her about the future, kiss her gently on the lips and not act rude.
He sat down on the wall, defeated, and scratched his head. She felt scorn for him because he didn’t know how to behave. And yet she did love him. She went clumsily and put her arms about his neck, pushing his head down against the throat of her dress, stroking the skin behind his ear as if he was the cat.
‘I like kissing,’ she said primly, ‘but I don’t want to do anything rude.’
‘I can’t make you out,’ he said. ‘I don’t see what I done that was rude.’
The tide was coming in, the sea invading the beach, trickling through the line of concrete defences. She patted his back, as if he was a child that had fallen over.
‘I don’t think it was very awful,’ she said, helplessly. But he laced his arms slackly about her waist and did not attempt to kiss her again.
They walked to the nearest railway station to catch a train to the town. There was a public house near the ticket office and he wanted to see if he could get a drink, but she said her Auntie Nellie wouldn’t like it. She hung on his arm and chattered all the time, filled with confidence, sitting on the upholstered railway seat with her torn stockings and her muddy shoes stretched out for all to see. She covered his hand with both her own, like a little dry animal she was keeping from running away.
5
Jack came to take them for a run in the car. ‘One of these days,’ warned Nellie darkly and left the room to fetch her coat.
‘Don’t you want a run out?’ he asked when she returned, but she drew in her narrow lips and kept silent.
‘I’m allowed a certain amount of petrol,’ he said mildly.
‘It’s not right, Jack, and you know it, buying black-market stuff.’
‘Good God, woman!’ he exploded. ‘Anyone would think I was the Gauleiter of Anfield, plundering the poor.’ He felt quite nettled and put out.
‘Take no notice,’ said Margo, and told Rita to get her things on.
Nellie sat on the front seat beside him and he wound a rug about her knees. It was raining and the streets were gloomy; he didn’t know where to go.
‘Do you fancy anywhere special?’ he asked Nellie, driving down Breck Road towards the cemetery and turning into Prescott Avenue. He would have suggested a cup of tea at Winifred’s Cottage on the East Lanes road, but it was a fair run and he didn’t want another scene over his petrol ration.
‘I want to go to the Cathedral,’ said Rita, tapping his shoulder.
She was wearing some kind of scent, sweet and powerful.
‘My word, someone smells nice. Doesn’t she smell nice, Auntie Nellie?’
But Nellie only nodded her head with an air of martydom, and Marge remarked grimly from the back seat: ‘You’ll not get a word out of her, She’s been like Sarah Bernhardt all week.’
He thought maybe that Nellie had been overdoing it, that she needed a holiday. When she put her hat on, he had noticed the pallor