The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [36]
‘Chuck’s a nice lad,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t take offence at him.’
‘It’s as they say,’ he said dourly. ‘There’s only three things wrong with them Yanks. They’re overpaid, over-sexed and over here.’
He got up saying he had to go downstairs to keep an eye on the shop, and left her to finish her tea. She looked at the mahogany cabinet and imagined what Marge would have to say about Jack’s gesture and his choice of records: ‘Just a Song at Twilight’, ‘Little Man You’ve Had a Busy Day’. She could just see the look in her eyes, the way her hands would fly up in a gesture of contempt. She put her cup down on the mantelpiece and peered at the photograph of Jack’s wife with baby Rita in her arms – holding the infant wrapped in a shawl, as if she was scared she was going to drop it any moment.
Just then she heard the boy calling ‘Eh, Missus, come down quick!’ And she trotted smartly enough down the uncarpeted stairs, holding her hand to her heart, seeing Jack as pale as death behind the chopping block.
‘There’s been a mishap,’ he said, ‘with the cleaver.’
‘Where, you daft beggar?’ she cried, fierce with shock. ‘Where’ve you cut yourself, Jack?’
‘Not me,’ he said. ‘Him,’ looking at young Tommy who was standing at the foot of the stairs with his hands behind his back.
‘It’s nothing, Missus,’ said Tommy. ‘It were him that were took bad,’ and he went to the back of the shop and put his hand under the tap.
Nellie made him run water over his finger till the cold almost froze him and the bleeding partially stopped. She struggled upstairs and found some sheeting to tear into a bandage. When she had wrapped his wound she told him to get off home and let his mam have a look at it. Already as he went out of the door the rag was darkening with blood. She felt irritated with Jack, slumped there behind the counter, perspiration beading his forehead – like a big soft girl, his face the colour of putty beneath his old black hat.
‘Go and wet your face,’ she said. ‘It will bring you round.’
She couldn’t think how he managed his business, feeling the way he did; slaughtering pigs, chopping up lambs, pulling the liver and the lungs out of animals.
The brown rabbit lay on its side, head partially severed, legs stretched out as if it still ran.
7
All Saturday morning Nellie stayed at her machine, driving herself to finish one dress or another.
‘I just want me black dress,’ said Rita, looking in dismay at the grey cloth with the stripe and the pink velvet alternately running under the needle. Margo did the shopping again because she knew how much Rita counted on a new dress for the evening.
In the afternoon Nellie said she had a headache, and with consternation Rita cried: ‘Won’t you finish me frock then, Auntie Nellie?’
And Nellie said: ‘Steady on, Murgatroyd, I’m only human. What’s the stampede?’
‘I wanted me new frock for tonight. I’m meeting Cissie and I want me new black frock.’
‘Well, you can’t get blood out of a stone,’ said Nellie crossly. ‘It’s not ready.’
‘But you said last night it was nearly finished.’
Nellie couldn’t make out what was wrong with the girl, standing there with her face all twisted up with desperation, when only two weeks ago she wouldn’t let them buy her a new dress for love nor money.
‘You wouldn’t let me try it on you,’ she said. ‘You said you had to wash your hair.’
Rita couldn’t bear to be fitted. The touch of the dry tips of her aunt’s fingers, as they brushed the circle of her arm or smoothed the material of the shoulder, filled her with revulsion. She had to grit her teeth to stop from crying out her distaste. She had lived in constant intimacy with the elderly woman,