The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [48]
‘When she was little, she wasn’t like your Auntie Nellie and me. It was more difficult for her. She had a hell of a time. She never took what Mother said for gospel. If Mother told her to do anything she had to know why. Nellie and I used to think she was daft. She questioned everything. She made it difficult for herself. You’re like her, pet.’
And again with the utterance, he felt it to be true.
‘I’m not, I’m not,’ she said, shouting the words like someone demented.
God knows what the people next door thought. They’d probably seen the American arrive and thought the very worst. Rita in the family way and he trying to make sense of it.
‘You haven’t done nothing with him, have you?’ he asked, but she didn’t seem to hear.
‘Why am I like her?’
‘Well, she wouldn’t accept what was right and proper. I used to think she put it on, just to be awkward. But it’s real enough. Nellie understands her, you know. You mustn’t take any notice of their upsets. Marge has got more feeling than the rest of us.’
‘What feelings?’ she asked weakly, like a lamb left out in the snow.
‘She always thinks the best is yet to come. It isn’t. She never gives up.’
‘She does.’ Her voice was spiteful, but he continued: ‘She doesn’t mean to bewitch your Ira. It’s just her way.’ He stumbled over the phrase; he felt he was echoing what she already feared. Bewitched was such a bold word: it had overtones. ‘When we were little she caught on quicker than the rest of us. I don’t want to burden you, but I could tell you things about when we were little that would curl your hair.’
‘What’s up, Jack? What’s going on?’ Nellie was at the back step.
‘Nothing, woman. We’re just chatting.’
She went away unconvinced. He knew she would be upset, leaving their guests that way.
‘What things?’ Rita was puzzled by him. The weight of his arm across her shoulders bore her down.
‘It was strict then. It was different those days. Spare the rod and spoil the child. I was beat on me bare flesh with a belt. Marge was beat regular. You don’t realise. I didn’t.’
He took in the window of the house alongside Nellie’s, the fall of a curtain as somebody hid from view. All along the street, the curtains tight drawn across the windows although it wasn’t yet dark – a row of boxes bursting with secrets.
‘But your Auntie Marge would never learn. She wouldn’t give in. She wanted to get married again, you know, when you were little.’
‘She gave him up.’
He didn’t think she had remembered. ‘She didn’t want to. We made her. It didn’t suit your Auntie Nellie and me. She didn’t want to be on her own with you. I didn’t want her living with me. Not then. I’d grown used to it.’
‘Used to what?’
‘Being on me own. When your mam died and your Auntie Nellie took you in, I got used to it. After a bit. It wasn’t my fault. I’d been chivvied by women all me life.’
‘I want Ira to love me,’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard one word he’d uttered.
‘It’s not what it seems,’ he said.
‘I don’t want him looking at Auntie Margo.’
‘Talk sense.’ It was ridiculous what he was trying to do. She wasn’t of an age. She wouldn’t understand love was mostly habit later on and escape at the beginning. He couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. ‘Just wait here, our Rita.’
He had got out of his depth. Something in her stubborn face, her sad eyes, had shaken him outside the confines of his relationship with her. He couldn’t continue. It wasn’t for him to explain; only time could make it plain for her.
‘Wait on,’ he said, ‘wait on, chickie.’ He went forcefully into the kitchen, seeing Valerie Mander’s white throat flung back in abandon, Nellie smiling like a clown, the young American with his eyes glued to Marge as if he was mesmerised. ‘Ira, Rita wants a word with you.’
They went all quiet, but he had to go. He knew that much. He felt powerful when he was alone with the three women – superior, as if he had touched the heights.
‘You don’t want to encourage him,’ started Nellie; and he said: ‘Hush up, Nellie, I know what I’m at,’ scratching the skin behind his suspenders that held up his green socks. A