The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [46]
‘Have you any brothers and sisters, Ira?’
‘Two brothers and four sisters.’
Up came Rita’s head as if hearing it for the first time.
‘Are you Catholics?’ asked Jack, and Nellie waited with baited breath because she knew what Jack felt about Romans, but he said no, they weren’t anything special, and Jack relaxed and sat back on his chair fumbling for his tobacco.
‘My word,’ said Margo, ‘that’s quite a family.’
She had a certain yellowish pallor that irritated Nellie, a melancholy look in her eyes that gave her the air of a tragedy queen. She was always putting herself in the limelight. The young man never took his eyes off her. He kept his hands away from Rita. He never put his arm round her. Nellie had been at the Manders’ earlier in the week and seen the way Chuck behaved with Valerie. Valerie knew how to take care of herself, of course, but it was dreadful the way he couldn’t keep his hands off her – sitting on the sofa, imprisoning her in his arms, with everyone looking, and Mrs Mander smiling and looking through the pattern books as if it was something to shout about.
Jack wavered between hatred and pride – pride in his daughter that she had got herself a young man, and hatred of the blond stranger in his tell-tale uniform, a product of a race of mongrels, the blood of every nation in the world mingling in his veins – nothing aristocratic, nothing pure. It was astonishing he hadn’t a touch of the Jew or the black in him. And that drawl of his – bastard English, with its lazy vowels and understatement. Jack didn’t care for the way he looked at Marge – familiar, as if they came from the same back yard. He was probably only pretending not to be the least bit interested in Rita, to throw them off the scent. He hated to to think what he was like when he was alone with her. He wished Rita’s mam could be here. She would know how to cope with it. He had a dim recollection of her determined sickly face, peppered with freckles, her sharp eyes that missed nothing, watching which way the wind blew.
Marge was telling one of her stories about her experiences in the factory.
‘—you wouldn’t believe what some of them get up to. In the explosives room behind the main building. It’s a regular thing—’
They all watched her, drained by her vitality, the tea finished with, all the bread used up and the jam in its bowl.
Rita wanted to be down town with him, kissing in the pictures. He was so far away from her, sitting on the sofa next to her, listening to Aunt Margo. She had been surprised how easy it had been getting him to come home for tea. He hadn’t telephoned – she lied, she said he had; she had fled to the station with her heart in her boots in case he should not be there under the clock. The trouble the family had gone to, the tins of food, the polishing of the front-door knocker, the pressing of clothes ready for his arrival. Fancy having all those brothers and sisters. She daydreamed they were married, going up soon to the little back bedroom together with everyone’s blessing – no raised eyebrows, or telling them to be back before dark. They wouldn’t go up to do anything dirty – just lie there under the eiderdown with Nigger stretched out across her feet. It wouldn’t be like it was now. They’d be more like friends. They’d like each other. She hated the way he watched Margo. As if she was something special.
They played cards after tea. He didn’t really get the hang of it; he said he’d never played rummy before.
‘You just collect one of three and two of three and one of four and so on,’ explained Rita.
But he held the cards in his hand as if he was blind. Jack thought it a point in his favour, he wasn’t the gambling type.
‘Let him keep the score,’ said Nellie, fetching pencil and paper.
But he was loath to do it. In the end Jack ruled lines and wrote their names upon the paper in his beautiful copperplate.
Valerie Mander came at nine o’clock, holding her white arm out above the table, fluttering her fingers to show off her engagement ring.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ cried the aunts, catching her hand and taking