The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [4]
Aunt Nellie had just sent the man from the Pru on his way, richer by her sixpence a week, when Rita got home. It was for her funeral, so that Jack wouldn’t have the expense. Around her neck she wore her tape measure like a scarf and a row of pins stuck in the bodice of her black dress. On Sundays she exchanged the white measure for a fox fur, holding the thin little paws in her hand as she went on her own to the church. She stood at her pastry board in the scullery, coating three pieces of fish with flour. She told Rita to set the table, adding: ‘Get a move on, chuck. I’ve Mrs Lyons coming for a fitting after tea.’
‘I met Valerie Mander on the tram,’ said Rita, collecting plates from the shelf above the cooker. ‘They’re having a party on Saturday.’
She took the plates into the kitchen and left them on the sideboard, while she removed the table runner and the yellow vase full of dressmaking pins.
‘I know,’ Nellie said. ‘Well, it’s more of a sing-song, really. What was she wearing?’
‘She asked me.’
Rita unfolded the white cloth and smoothed it flat on the table. Aunt Nellie was so surprised she came through from the scullery with the frying pan in her hand.
‘What did you say to her?’
‘I said thank you very much.’
‘Oh dear, I don’t know that it’s wise. I’m not at all sure.’
She shook her head and went to put the pan back on the stove. Rita arranged the plates, the knives and forks, the china salt cellar, a memento from Blackpool, the water jug, the pudding spoons and the three Woolworth glasses. Still Nellie kept silent. Only the fat hissing in the pan as the fish cooked. Rita sat on a chair sideways to the table, fingering the edge of the cloth embroidered with daisies, staring at the wall with her pale eyes patient. There was a picture of a landscape above the sewing machine: a blue lake and a swan sitting on the water and the green grass fading into a cloudy sky. There was also the window framed in blackout curtains showing a brick wall and a wooden door that opened on to the alleyway, through which Auntie Margo would come presently to persuade Nellie. She watched Nigger the cat crawl silently along the wall of the roof of the outhouse where her aunt kept the dolly tub and the mangle.
Nellie called: ‘What about your Uncle Jack coming?’
‘Valerie Mander said to tell him I was a big girl now.’
She looked at her aunt and saw she was smiling. She was all admiration for the lovely girl, so outspoken. She nodded her head wonderingly, jiggling the frying pan about to stop the fish from sticking. ‘That Valerie,’ she observed, ‘she’s a card.’
As soon as Margo came in, the food was put on the table. She sat at the edge of the hearth like a man, splaying her knees wide and rolling a cigarette.
‘Sit decent,’ said Auntie Nellie, scraping margarine from a dish and covering her bread sparingly.
It was one of Marge’s irritating habits to ignore what was on her plate till it had gone like ice and then she would say, ‘By heck, Nellie, this is blooming cold.’ Some nights she was quite dry about her day at the factory, telling them in accurate detail the remarks screamed by her fellow-workers above the noise of the machines. She said she couldn’t repeat everything they said because she had to be guarded as careless talk cost lives. Nellie got all exasperated and said that was foolishness, it was more like some of those women needed their mouths washing out with carbolic soap. Marge said that ten minutes before the whistle blew for the end of the day shift, the disabled left by the side