The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [25]
‘Hey-up, Nellie!’ he cried in alarm, as she slid downwards in her seat and fluttered her eyes. He couldn’t think what to do at first. Marge said it was sheer bad temper that made her go off in a faint. ‘Shut your gob!’ he shouted, out of his mind with fright, because he knew it was her heart.
He got out of the car and half laid her across the two front seats, taking his coat off and bundling it under her head. Something about her thick little ankles and the sensible shoes like boots he had worn as a boy caught in his throat. He tried to call Rita to come quickly, but the wind pulled his voice and she didn’t look round. He looked for a house so that he could get help, but there was only a row of half-demolished buildings on the far side of the road and he didn’t like to leave Nellie alone with Marge, who was crying now.
‘It’s your heart,’ he muttered, kneeling on the running board of the van and patting Nellie’s gloved hand so that she would know he was near.
‘Go and get Rita,’ he ordered Marge, wanting to get the sick woman home and in her bed.
After a moment Nellie opened her eyes and he told her to lie still. He looked back and he could see Marge running along the edge of the fencing, waving her arms and shouting, ‘Rita!’ A small girl came with great patches of hair missing from her head and stared into the van without expression.
‘It’s your heart,’ he told Nellie, over and over, for he wanted to reassure her that it wasn’t a road accident or a nightmare or something she couldn’t understand.
He gritted his teeth and prayed for Rita to hurry up. Marge was still swooping up and down the fence, like some gull crying in the wind. Nellie was conscious now, a little more composed. Struggling to sit up, she tried to ram her hat more securely on to her head.
‘Look at your good coat,’ she said weakly, and he flapped it straight and put it over her and the rug on top of that.
Rita and he put her to bed when they got home, taking her out of her tight dress and leaving her in her slip and her corsets. Marge went up the road to the Manders’ to use their telephone to send for Dr Bogle. To Rita, the house was exciting, full of whisperings and sudden knocks at the door.
‘She does too much,’ said Jack for the umpteenth time, striding back and forth with his hat still on his head, waiting for Dr Bogle to finish his examination.
Nellie was quiet enough when Dr Bogle had gone. She liked him: he was her generation, he never asked too many questions. He told her she should lie up for a day or two and not fret about the house.
‘After all,’ he said without malice, ‘it’ll still be here after you’re gone.’
He went downstairs to talk to Jack and left her moping in the chill little bedroom with the rain sliding down the window. She decided she would do as she was told, stay in her bed for a day or two and Marge could take time off work and keep house and make her a cup of tea when required. She needed time to think what she was going to do about the future. Marge had been right when she had cried out to Jack in the van that it was bad temper had made her turn dizzy. It had come on when Marge had accused her of stopping her from attending the keep-fit classes. It was a lie, and the anger she felt at Marge twisting the facts to suit herself had risen in her like bile, choking her. She would have to find some way of detaching herself from such irritations, until she had worked out what to do with the furniture. Rita would have to find a young man and settle down. Jack could find them a house somewhere, nothing fancy, and the sideboard and the sofa and chairs and the bone china could be moved there, into the best front room, away from Marge and her slatternly ways. For the moment she would suggest as quietly as possible that Marge keep her underwear clean until she was up and about again, and pray to God that she wouldn’t be run over by a tram before she herself was fit to do the washing.
Margo was very chastened, the fire gone out of her. She didn’t even say much when Rita said she was off out if nobody