Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge Page A

smash it in the woman’s face – there, where
     the edge of herdusty hair caught fire in the sun and the little grapes dangled.
    ‘I’m sorry, luv, but you see how I’m placed.’
    Nellie saw her placed – painted like Carmen Miranda on a pantomime backcloth that bulged outwards and wavered as if a gust
     of wind swept the shop. Faint with anger, Nellie went out of the door and started for home. It was the third time in one month
     that she had made herself ill with ungovernable rage over a trivial incident.
    They were sitting at the edge of the cornfield. Apart. He hadn’t held her hand or tried to kiss her. He squatted on his haunches
     above the ground damp from the rain and the narrow ditch that ran beside the field. She had asked him about books, and he
     said he didn’t read much, and when she mentioned poetry he had looked at her curiously, not commenting.
    ‘My Auntie Margo is a great reader.’
    ‘Is that so?’
    ‘She reads all sorts. I found a book once. She hid it in a drawer.’
    ‘She did?’
    ‘It was awful. You know, it was rude.’
    ‘What kind of rude?’ he asked, his eyes not quite so sleepy.
    ‘You know, men and women.’ She wished she hadn’t told him.
    ‘How come you know it was that kind of a book?’
    ‘Don’t be daft. You only had to read the first page.You must have seen books like that, you being in the army.’
    ‘I don’t have no call to read them kind of books,’ he said. ‘I seen pictures in magazines, but I ain’t read none of them books.’
    She felt he was criticising her, blaming her alongside Auntie Margo.
    ‘I only read a bit of it,’ she said defensively. ‘I don’t know where she got it from.’
    ‘She didn’t look to me like a woman who would read them sort of books.’
    ‘Oh, she’s deep, is Auntie Margo. She was married once to a soldier, but he died from the gas in France.’
    He swung his hands between his knees and gazed out across the flat countryside, following the ribbon of highway that wound
     like a river into the distance.
    ‘She was courting once when I was small, but she gave him up.’
    ‘Courting?’
    ‘She didn’t care enough, she didn’t fight for him.’
    He wasn’t comfortable with her, she could tell. Every time she looked at him it hurt that she couldn’t finger his hair or
     touch his cheek. She wished he would put down the stick that he dug into the yellow earth, poking the soil, not paying her
     attention.
    ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘The sea’s over there.’
    ‘If you like.’
    He moved carefully, trying not to dirty his beautifully polished shoes, treading the marshy path alongside a black ploughed
     field. When they came to a lane she heldthe strands of barbed wire wide for him so that he wouldn’t tear his uniform. She herself would have liked to enter the wire
     on the opposite side of the road and tramp in a straight line across the grass towards the horizon and the dark row of houses
     before the sea-shore.
    ‘Jesus,’ he said with relief at standing on firm ground, and she stamped her foot at him.
    ‘There’s other words to use when you’re cross. You don’t have to say that.’
    ‘Aw, come on, Rita.’
    But she was striding off resentfully down the lane towards the corner where a red barn half stood with its tin roof sliding
     into decay amidst a clump of elms. When he caught up with her, he put his arm about her shoulders, but without warmth, digging
     his fingers into her flesh, shaking her. She became very still, waiting.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘I guess your Auntie Margo wouldn’t have no qualms about saying “Jesus”. You’re too sensitive getting all hotted up about
     a word.’
    ‘Leave off.’
    She shook herself free, pained that he had practically praised her aunt in preference to her, hearing the sound of marching
     feet beyond the barn and voices singing. She pretended she was tying her shoelace, squatting down by the nettles and the ragged
     blackberry bushes, bowing