Read Online Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge - Free Book Online Page B

bowling green. When they put a net up it was a tennis court. You remember.’
    ‘Herbert Arms Hotel,’ said Margo. ‘Where are you going, Rita?’
    ‘Just out.’
    ‘That’s right, Marge, the Herbert Arms. Everybody round a big table for meals and there was a yard with a stable.’ He hardly
     saw the familiar streets for the picture in his mind of a grey church and an old car parked near a bridge. They had jam for
     tea in little bowls, all different kinds –strawberry and plum and blackcurrant jelly.
    ‘It was a cow shed,’ said Marge, ‘with cows, and a great big hill of muck outside the back door.’
    ‘Trust you to remember that,’ said Nellie.
    ‘Get off!’ Jack said. ‘It was a proper midden, scientific. There was no smell. They put it on the fields.’
    They were driving up Princes Road towards the park, overtaking a solitary tram. The tall trees in the centre of the boulevard
     were heavy with rain. They swayed and dripped, turning the interior of the van into a green box full of shadows.
    Marge was laughing in the back of the car. Jack looked in the mirror and saw her wiping her eyes with her handkerchief.
    ‘What’s up with you, Marge?’
    ‘I just thought of that chappie from the Wirral with the short pants.’
    ‘The what?’
    ‘With the bike.’
    ‘It was a tandem,’ said Nellie, and her lips curved upwards at the corner and she let out a little abrupt snigger.
    ‘By heck,’ said Jack delightedly, ‘I’d forgotten him. With red hair—’
    ‘And his mam rubbed his legs with goose fat to keep them ready for his bike—’
    They were all laughing now, thinking of Marge going off on the tandem with him in little short white socks and a pair of tennis
     pumps. It was funny, Jack thought, how Marge always attracted the men, even if they weresilly beggars. She always had, even when she was getting past her prime. And he darted a quick look into the mirror and saw
     her there, with tears running down her face and her two cheeks flushed with rouge and her body the same thickness from shoulder
     to thigh.
    They went downhill towards the river. Passing the old black houses built by the shipping owners, four-storeys high with pillars
     at the front door and steps of granite – occupied now by riff-raff: washing hung sodden on the wrought-iron balconies, a pram
     with three wheels in the gutter, a running herd of children without shoes. Some of the railings had been taken away to be
     melted down for the war-effort and there was wire meshing to stop people breaking their necks in the blackout. There was the
     new Cathedral rising like an ocean liner out of the sunken graveyard, tethered to its dry dock by giant cranes, coloured all
     over a soft and rusty pink. Rita wouldn’t let him take her round to the front entrance. They parked on Hope Street and watched
     her push her way through a portion of broken fencing into the cemetery.
    ‘Why can’t she use the proper gate?’ asked Margo.
    ‘I wouldn’t mind going for a walk down there myself,’ Jack said, and he looked sideways at Nellie. ‘Do you feel like a blow?’
    ‘It’s drizzling. Let the child be on her own. It’s natural. She doesn’t want you lumbering about after her.’
    ‘Would you like a holiday?’ he asked after a while. He opened the window to let out the smoke from Marge’s cigarette. She
     looked at him astonished. ‘You’ve been looking peaky lately,’ he said.
    ‘How can I go on a holiday with young Rita to look after?’
    ‘Well, there’s Marge—’
    She withered him with a glance. ‘I wouldn’t leave the cat with our Marge,’ she said.
    ‘By heck, I’d take a damn sight more care of her than you do.’
    There was a silence while the storm gathered.
    Jack looked out of the window and saw the small figure moving along the path that wound round the walls, descending lower
     into the well of the cemetery. She stopped to pull leaves from a bush. On the sky-line floated one small barrage balloon,
     idiotic,