The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [37]
‘Oh please God,’ she whispered, lying down on the narrow bed and burying her face in the pillow.
She thought with self-disgust of how she had refused a new frock from George Henry Lees, how she had nothing frivolous, no necklaces, no lace hankies, no shiny bangle for her arm. Marge came into her room and said that with a bit of adjustment they could do something with a brown silk dress in Nellie’s wardrobe.
‘It’s old,’ she said, ‘but it’s got a low neckline, it’s very flattering.’
‘I can’t wear Auntie Nellie’s dress,’ cried Rita. ‘I’ll just have to make do with what I’ve got.’
But Margo brought the dress through on a hanger and asked her to try it on.
‘Just try it, luv. Give it a chance.’
And it was smooth to the touch: it did make her feel silky and pampered, though it didn’t fit.
‘Look at the shoulders,’ she said. ‘Look at the waist.’
‘Well, you’ll have your coat on over it. I can pin it at the back.’
Marge combed her hair into a bun at the back like Valerie Mander sometimes wore. She took the stiff brown bow from the belt of the dress and pinned it with a Kirby grip to cover the little tendrils of hair that wouldn’t stay in place. She gathered the slack of the dress into a pleat and secured it with two safety pins. They hadn’t any vaseline for her eyebrows, so Margo went downstairs and came back with a small smear of margarine on her little finger and it worked quite as well.
‘What if he doesn’t come?’ said Rita, putting two small circles of lipstick on either cheek and rubbing it in with her finger.
‘Oh, he’ll come,’ Margo reassured her, thinking it would be best in the long run if he didn’t, best for Jack and Nellie. As soon as the girl was safely out of the house she was going to tell Nellie and rid herself of the awful weight of responsibility.
‘Put some colour on your mouth, girl,’ she said; ‘you look like a corpse,’ and could have bitten her tongue at the stricken expression on Rita’s face: the child’s forehead wrinkling up, the hair dragged severely back behind her ears, which were small and bloodless. Marge fetched the gold button earrings that Jack had given her last Christmas. She wished she could find the pearl necklace, but instead she brought a link of glass beads, orange and green, to clasp about Rita’s throat.
‘You look older,’ she said. ‘Look at yourself.’
Rita wanted to be glossy like Valerie, rich and glowing and warm. She saw her face with the dabs of pink on either cheek, the glint of gold at her ears, the green glass beads above the brown dress. In profile the beak of her nose was over-shadowed by her jutting lips, painted purple.
‘I’m not pretty, am I?’ she said in despair, and Margo said: ‘Why, you look lovely, you really are a bonny girl.’
And Rita had to believe her, against her better judgement, because how otherwise could she survive, or go to meet him, or anything? She was dry and faded and slender in the brown dress, with her bold mouth pouting in distress. Being seventeen she couldn’t imagine how much to be envied was the childish droop to her shoulders, the tender curve of her throat under the cheap glass beads, the gauche walk she achieved in Marge’s best wedge-heeled shoes. It was only a quarter-past five and Jack had come in. She could hear him in the hall shouting to Nellie that someone or other had died. She was hungry, unable to eat, lethargic, unable to sit still. Above all she longed to see Ira and feel that he loved her.
‘I’ll go,’ she said to Margo, pulling on her newly washed white gloves and the mackintosh with the flared back. She wanted to have time in the waiting room at the station to smooth her hair and make sure