Free Dressmaker by Beryl Bainbridge Page B

Marge and her slatternly ways. For the moment she would suggest as quietly
     as possible that Marge keep her underwear clean until she was up and about again, and pray to God that she wouldn’t be run
     over by a tram before she herself was fit to do the washing.
    Margo was very chastened, the fire gone out of her. She didn’t even say much when Rita said she was off out if nobody needed
     her. Jack gave her a ten-shilling note and told her to be a good girl.
    ‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t argued with Nellie,’ said Margo, when they were alone.
    ‘You’ve got a vicious tongue in your head, Marge. Mind you, she’s not the easiest of women to get on with. She’s a good woman,
     and they’re the worst.’
    He sat dangling his small hands between his knees, sitting on Nellie’s chair beside the grate. Bogle had said there wasn’t
     much to worry about, it was only a little warning that she should take it easy. It would be best in future not to upset her,
     not to cause scenes likely to bring on an attack.
    ‘How long has she been moody?’ he asked Marge; and she replied more or less since the beginning of the week when she’d gone
     to a friend after work and not come straight home. Nellie said she’d get her ciggies for her, only she forgot; and when Marge
     spoke out of turn Nellie flew up in a paddy and had hardly uttered a civil word since.
    ‘Ah well,’ he said and turned on the wireless to relieve the gloom.
    He made Nellie a cup of cocoa, but she didn’t want it, and he brought it downstairs and drank it himself. Though there was
     still daylight outside the window, inside the kitchen it had grown dark. The dimensions of the room were mean, depressing
     without the glow of a fire. All the good furniture had been removed into the front room – dining-room table, sideboard, the
     oak chair that father had sat in. Nellie had replaced them with cheap utility stuff bought at Lewis’s.
    ‘By heck,’ he said, ‘I’ll get the electric put in before another winter passes.’
    ‘She won’t like that,’ said Margo. ‘You know whatshe’s like about the house being shook up.’
    Jack went and lit the oven in the scullery for warmth. Margo sat in her coat feeling sorry for herself; the sausage curls
     above her ears hung bedraggled from all her running about in the rain. Jack put the tea on the table but neither of them felt
     up to eating.
    ‘I’m that cold,’ he complained, standing up at the table, hugging himself with his arms.
    About his brow was a red mark where the band of his hat had bitten too tight. If the calendar said it was summer, even if
     there was snow on the wash-house roof, Nellie wouldn’t light a fire. She said they needed the coal for the winter. In vain
     he told her that things were going to get better, now the Allies had landed in Europe. She’d read of people being extravagant
     and having to burn the furniture to stop themselves from freezing to death.
    Some lady on the wireless was singing a song about ‘Tomorrow, When the World was Free’:
There’ll be blue birds over
    The white cliffs of Dover,
    Tomorrow, just you wait and see …
    He joined in the chorus, but his voice broke with emotion and he cleared his throat several times to get over it. Margo was
     watching him with contemptuous eyes.
    ‘It’s something to do with the word,’ he said. ‘It always chokes me up.’
    ‘What word, you soft beggar?’
    ‘Blue.’ He emptied his nose vigorously into his handkerchief. ‘I remember a bit of poetry at St Emmanuel’s, something about
     the old blue faded flower of day.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ she said, mocking him.
    ‘And there’s bluebird, bluebell—’
    ‘Blue-bottle,’ said Marge, and he had to laugh.
    There was a great storm of applause on the wireless to greet the end of the song. They both glanced up at the ceiling, hoping
     Nellie wouldn’t think they were making a holy show of themselves.
    When it was quite dark in the kitchen he went again up the stairs and