The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [44]
She was filled with despair; she knew he wouldn’t come. What would she tell them at home? It would make her seem despised, as if he wasn’t serious about her. He won’t come? Why ever not? Auntie Margo would give that laugh of hers, contemptuous, looking at her with pity. For all her chat about giving and the importance of not holding back, she would be the first to sneer, to lash out with her tongue: ‘Couldn’t you hold him then, Rita? Let him slip through your fingers, did you?’ He was telephoning now, the bell was going in the outer office and Alice Wentworth, the one with the big chests, was answering it, talking to Ira, bold as brass, saying no Rita wasn’t in, but would she do – making an arrangement to meet him, sitting in the pictures and not bothering to push his hand away. She started to cry, screwing up her eyes to make the tears flow. It eased her. She thought of Uncle Jack, all alone in the rooms above the butcher’s shop, wearing his funeral tie, giving his little girl away. She thought of the picnic by the cornfield, the way he bandaged her sore foot, the visit to the house in the woods. Before Ira, nothing hurt, nothing saddened to this extent. If there had been less space in her life before his coming, he would not have taken up so much room.
She powdered her nose and went back to the two men. They had been talking about her.
Walter said: ‘I believe you’re courting. An American, too.’
She blushed, though she liked what he implied. She smiled at him and he wondered what he had done to please. She shook hands with him, told him it had been nice meeting him. Jack went with her to the door. Across the street there was an old woman in a black shawl selling flowers. He wished he could buy Rita some carnations.
‘I’m sorry I was nasty,’ she said, looking away from him.
‘That’s all right, chickie.’ But his voice was unsteady.
They stood for a time in silence. Jack cleared his throat and asked: ‘Is your Aunt Marge behaving herself lately?’
‘It’s Auntie Nellie you want to watch. She’s gone on a vinegar trip.’
His mouth opened in surprise. ‘What’s up, what’s she done?’
‘Auntie Margo says she’s selling the furniture.’
‘She’s what?’
‘There’s things gone from the front room.’
‘What things?’
‘I don’t know. Auntie Margo says a table’s gone and a bit of china.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
He slapped his thigh hard and a woman turned to look. He couldn’t credit it. Nellie would never part with Mother’s bits and pieces. Why, that front room was like the British Museum to Nellie.
‘There’s an explanation,’ he said. ‘She’s having you on.’
She had to go, it was past her dinner break. He kissed the edge of her hair and she brushed her mouth against the collar of his coat and ran across the street away from him – passing the flower-seller all in black, with her shawl wound about her body, and the silver earrings dangling from the pierced lobes of her ears.
Margo knew him as soon as she saw him. It wasn’t just fancy. She couldn’t claim really to know men – she wasn’t sophisticated like Valerie Mander. But as soon as she saw the boy’s eyes, blue and incurious, she knew what sort of a man he was. For he was a man, for all his lanky limbs and the smooth cheeks that he obviously didn’t shave. The way he entered the kitchen and saw them all standing there, devouring him with their eyes. It was as if he was on a hill-top, lazily watching a distant landscape. He was empty inside, he used no charm, he wasn’t out to please; he passed his hand over the pale stubble of his hair and sat where he was placed. Nothing touched him: unlike Marge he had been washed clean of