The Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge

Author:Beryl Bainbridge
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780748125739
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2010-09-02T10:00:00+00:00

Dear Ira,

I’m sorry if I annoyed you in any way but I do love you. I waited for you at the station for two hours, but you did not come. Please meet me next Saturday at 6.30 under the clock. I have got my Auntie Nellie to make me some pretty clothes so that you will be proud of me.

Your loving Rita.

She wanted to put kisses and even draw a heart, but it seemed common. After work she knocked at the Manders’ front door and asked to see Valerie. Mrs Mander was curious to see her and eager to know about her young man.

‘Lives in Washington, I believe,’ she said, and Rita nodded, because she couldn’t admit she didn’t know where he lived, or how old he was, whether he had a mother and a father. ‘He’s got a dog and a goat and a horse,’ she said, ‘and a hen that sits by the fire.’

‘In the city?’ said Mrs Mander, taken aback.

Rita went into the front room with Valerie, bent her head shyly, twisted her hands about in their grubby white gloves, standing by the piano with the photograph of George, debonair in his sailor uniform.

‘I want you to give a letter to Chuck,’ she said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Valerie.

‘Me and Ira had a quarrel.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘Could you ask your Chuck to give him this letter?’

She took out the letter from her handbag.

‘My Chuck doesn’t know him very well, you know. I doubt if he sees him much in the camp. They’re not buddies.’

It sounded like a tree about to bloom: Chuck and Ira on the same bough.

‘I’d be ever so grateful,’ Rita said.

She felt close to the older girl, dressed in such good taste, her plump left arm encircled in a bangle of shiny metal, her eyes sympathetic, not quite assured.

‘Do you and Chuck have upsets?’ she asked, trying to identify herself with them. ‘Have you ever fallen out?’

‘Everyone does,’ Valerie said. ‘Don’t worry, luv.’

She was curious how Rita had ever gone out with the American in the first place. Rita was so put down, so without passion, living all her life with the old women down the road. As a child she had never played out in the street, never put her dolls to sleep on the step, never hung around the chip shop on Priory Road. In the air-raid shelter she wore a hat belonging to Auntie Nellie as if she was in church.

She stowed the letter away in the pocket of her jacket – not carelessly, with feeling.

Rita was brighter than she had been for days. Setting the table for tea, humming as Aunt Nellie cooked the Spam fritters on the stove. When Margo came in she couldn’t wait to tell her what she had done, running into the hall when she heard the key turn in the lock, whispering in her ear that she had written a letter and given it to Valerie.

‘That’s good,’ said Margo, tired from her day and wanting to sit down.

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