The Dressmaker - Beryl Bainbridge [59]
‘Have a cup of tea first,’ said Mrs Mander; and Valerie said gaily, ‘No mum. Get out the whisky. Give Auntie Nellie a real drink. It’ll put hairs on her chest.’
It was a vulgar thing to say, but Nellie took it from her. There wasn’t anything Valerie could do to offend, in her opinion. Rita came in but she wouldn’t take her coat off.
‘I don’t think I’ll stop,’ she said. She was shrunken in her white mackintosh, a reproach to the happy Valerie. God forgive you, her face said; here I am, seventeen years old, without hope. She made the little room depressing, refusing to relax or sit by the fire.
‘Have a drink,’ said Valerie. ‘Auntie Nellie won’t mind.’
Auntie Nellie, who thought she minded, nodded her head in acceptance, seeing Valerie was in charge. There was something elderly about Rita, despite her youth. As if she was tired, aged beyond her years by her emotion: her eyebrows frozen in an arch like a comedian, the cupid bow of her mouth drooping like a clown.
‘Haven’t you heard yet?’ whispered Valerie, when Nellie was in the kitchen helping Mrs Mander with the tea.
‘No,’ the girl said coldly, as if it was Valerie’s fault. She stood by the yellow sideboard accusingly, her arms held stiffly, taking her drop of whisky in little sips as if it was medicine.
‘Sit down, do,’ said Nellie, irritated by the sight of her wilting by the door.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said, and off she went up the hall.
‘Having trouble?’ asked Mrs Mander, genuinely wanting to help. She could have said a lot years ago, when Rita was a little lass; she could have guided Nellie; but she was never consulted. You had to be careful with girls. They were like blotting paper. Boys were devils – they strode away without a backward glance. Girls were different. They lingered, kicking against the pricks, stamped by the mother’s authority. When they rebelled in earnest you had to look backwards to find the cause. She herself had only to look at Marge, her loony ways, her mode of dress, that business with the manager of the dairy some years before.
‘She’s shook up,’ admitted Nellie. ‘It will blow over.’
Mrs Mander hadn’t any business to interfere. She looked at the lovely Valerie in her engagement dress and held her tongue.
Nellie went home to cut out the belt. She said she would come back when it was finished.
‘Rita,’ she called up the stairs, hoping she had gone to her bed. She didn’t like her wandering about Anfield late at night. Rita had made a show of her, acting so theatrically, not talking to Mrs Mander, never saying ‘Thank you very much’ for her drink. She thought that Valerie was right about the belt. She cut the material and sat down at her sewing machine, running the piece of cloth under the needle; snapped the thread with her false teeth; took up her scissors and snipped the loose ends free; turned the hem of the taffeta and leaned back in her upright chair to ease her back. She got such pains in her shoulders.
She took her foot off the treadle. She thought she heard something upstairs. The cat was crawling round and round on the newspapers behind the door.
‘Give over, Nigger,’ she said, turning to the machine.
There was definitely a noise upstairs. She clutched her hands in her lap and stared at the ceiling. She remembered what Marge had said about mice. Something scratched the floorboards above the door into the hall. Something rustled. It couldn’t be mice. The pigeon coops were on the ground floor, outside the scullery door. Mice couldn’t be eating Mother’s furniture. They ate paper and cloth, not wood – like the man in Germany who stowed a fortune away under the bed – banknotes – and found it shredded.
‘Nigger,’ she said, the scissors still in her hand, ‘come on!’ picking the cat up awkwardly in her arms, going up the stairs to the boxroom. The cat hung over her arm, struggling to be free.
‘Give over,’ she murmured, anchoring it by the ears, puffing as she climbed.
She opened the door with the cat half over her shoulder, ready to flee down the stairs. It wasn’t quite dark. There was a glimmer of light on the landing. Inside