The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [54]
‘He’s been picked for a course,’ said Rita stubbornly. ‘He’s going to write me a letter.’
On Friday, Rita went straight from work to Uncle Jack – surprised him in his braces, the shop shuttered, cooking his tea.
‘Does your Auntie Nellie know you’re here?’
‘I just thought I’d come.’
He was cooking kidneys in a white pouch of fat, boiling a whole cabbage in the pan. She was hungry. She sliced the dark brown meat, rare with blood, and shovelled it into her mouth. She told him Marge had said Ira had visited her. She sprinkled pepper on to the cabbage and wiped her bread across the plate. The way she ate disgusted him. He had to put down his knife and fork and turn his head away.
‘Who called on Marge?’ he said.
‘Ira. She said Ira called.’
‘He never called to see her,’ said Jack. ‘It’s Marge’s way. She’s trying to protect you.’
‘What from?’
She was looking at him with her mouth filmed with fat.
‘Just from getting upset. What’s he supposed to have called for?’
‘He said he wanted to do what’s best.’
‘There you are. What did I tell you? It’s just Marge’s way.’ He walked round the gramophone, still in the centre of the room, and went into the small kitchen, the paper peeling from the walls.
‘Don’t you mind the mess, Uncle Jack?’ Rita asked.
He didn’t like her criticising him – it wasn’t respectful.
‘I don’t really see it. It’s only temporary, this place. One day I’ll buy meself a little boat and retire to the waterways. When the war’s over.’
When the war was over, she thought, Ira would go home. Back to his big family and his father in real estate.
‘What do you do when you work in real estate?’ she asked.
‘I’ll tell you this,’ Jack said. ‘You’re Ira’s dad is never in business. He’s a farming lad – you can tell. He’s been raised near the soil – it’s in his face.’
‘He’s been sent on a course. He’s been chosen.’
Jack was relieved they weren’t going to have a scene about Marge. Whatever the truth of it was, the child didn’t seem too upset.
‘Do you think he did come round? I said Auntie Marge was off sick when he rang me in the morning.’
‘I’m blessed if I know. Don’t ask me, ask her.’ He made tea and Rita put cups on to the table. ‘It’s always the same, when you get infatuated. It’s like a virus in the blood. A perpetual state of fever. One time, I went on holiday and nearly died of love.’
‘With me mam?’
‘No, before your mother. I went on holiday to the Isle of Man and we played tennis on the back lawn. And there was this woman there that drove me out of me mind. I’ve got a photograph somewhere.’ And he rummaged through the packing cases on the floor, looking for the image he remembered, finding himself in white trousers sprawled before a net with a young woman with a bandeau round her head and a smirk on her face.
‘I loved her,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I’d survive. But I did. Went back home, caught the number twelve tram and met your mam on the top deck.’
‘But why did you leave her on the Isle of Man?’
‘She preferred someone else. Went off with him the last week of the holiday.’
He took the photograph from her and stuffed it away among the pictures of Nellie and Marge and Rita as a baby.
‘You best be off,’ he said. ‘I don’t want Nellie upset. She’s a wonderful woman.’
He was always so anxious about Nellie, afraid she might have another attack. He gave her a piece of meat to take home.
‘Passion,’ he said, as he let her out of the shop, ‘is a strange thing. Why I could have killed the fellow that young woman went off with. I’d have swung for him.’
Rita went down town on Saturday and Ira wasn’t there. She came home slowly, dragging her feet along the road, not staying up for a cup of tea, going straight to her room with the pencil and paper she had ready in her handbag. Laboriously she wrote the letter:
Auntie Margo said you came to the house last week. I don’t know if you did or not. She said you wanted to do what’s best. What’s best is that you should see me. You have not written me a letter as you promised. You have not telephoned me. Mr Betts sent me for stamps at the