Angel of Brooklyn (33 page)

‘Can I ask you something?’ said Beatrice.

‘Of course, fire away.’

‘What did Mrs Cooper think about your business with the girls? Was that why she left you?’

He stopped for a moment. The couple with the dog were laughing in the distance. He could see the feather bobbing on the woman’s little hat.

‘Mrs Cooper left because she fell in love with someone else and there was not a damned thing I could do about it,’ he said. ‘My wife admired the postcards. She saw the art in them, and she got on well with the girls, sticking them all into a cuttings book, which she appears to have taken with her, and which I am sure that filthy surgeon is enjoying as we speak.’

‘She didn’t mind?’

‘Not a bit.’

‘She was a respectable woman?’

‘Miss Lyle,’ said Mr Cooper, ‘my wife said prayers before every meal we ate, including milk and cookies. She had me kneel down at the bedside. She was a warden at the children’s home.’

‘She was?’ said Beatrice. ‘Then I’m sorry that I asked.’

‘Don’t be. It’s true that my wife was a Christian woman, but what kind of a wife leaves a note for her husband propped against a jar of strawberry and apple jelly saying, I’ve taken everything I want. I’m in love. I’ll post the key through the letter box. Sincerely, Charlotte Cooper? And you know something? It’s the sincerely that gets me every time.’

Mr Cooper left her at the door. The cat was washing its small pointed face on the mat. Upstairs, she didn’t light the lamp; she poured a glass of water, undid her collar, and slept in her clothes, in the moonlight.

ALL THOSE THINGS THAT YOU MISS WHEN THEY’VE GONE

1. The Chance to Use Your Voice

THEY’D HAD SO
little time, and in the long quiet evenings Beatrice often felt cheated as she looked back on their old conversations.

‘Rome looks interesting,’ Jonathan had said, studying his travel guide. ‘What do you think?’

‘Rome?’ she had said, with a frown. ‘Rome is full of broken buildings and men who wear cologne but who think that they’re gladiators.’

Jonathan had given her a look. She could picture it. Raised eyebrows and a kind of sideways glance. They had teased each other and laughed. Now, the room was quiet, because the walls didn’t roll their eyes, and the furniture was only required to stand where it was put, unable to chat about Mr Jackson’s lack of insurance, the ridiculous price of petrol, or how lovely Beatrice looked with her hair down. These days, if she wanted to hear voices after supper, she’d have to talk to herself.

2. A Husband’s Paraphernalia

Open jars of hair wax.

Coins thrown across the top of the tallboy, windowsill, bureau, kitchen table; any flat surface that was within close reach of his hand.

Suspenders.

Gold Flake cigarettes.

Oil-stained rags.

Automobile parts.

Empty whisky/wine bottles lined outside the garden shed and
catching
rain (because they might come in useful, but he didn’t have the shed key to hand).

Cufflinks, collar studs, collars.

The small gold ring on his right little finger.

Spent matches thrown across the top of the tallboy, windowsill, bureau, kitchen table; any flat surface that was within close reach of his hand.

Tobacco tins.

Chewed toothpicks.

Safety razors.

Boot black.

Whiskers clinging like dust to the bowl.

Black socks and long johns.

Hands, fingers.

His tongue.

A hundred other things.

His penis.

3. Sharing a Meal

It seemed like the neighbours were talking to her again, or at least they’d forgotten that they weren’t.

‘Of course I have Billy and Bert to feed,’ said Madge, leaning against the counter, fanning her face with her hand and wondering if the potatoes in the sack were really as green as they looked. ‘But it isn’t the same. I miss that time just before five o’clock, when everything would be done and I could set the table, pour Frank a glass of beer, and have myself a sit-down for five minutes before serving up. He likes a good meat pie,’ she said. ‘Cow heel, tripe, kidney, all the usual things. And when it gets to summer, on a day like today, he likes nothing better than a slab of pork pie with a piece of cheese and pickle. Though he can’t abide salad, says it’s all water, and there’s no taste in it.’

‘Now with my Jim,’ said Ada, ‘everything has to be hot. He says it’s not a real meal unless it’s been heated right through. I’d be sweltering at the stove slicing spuds and carrots, sweat dripping into the broth. Lord,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sometimes that sweaty I don’t need to add any salt or seasoning at all.’

‘I like sitting down to supper and chatting about the day,’ said Beatrice. ‘I do miss that.’

‘Oh, I don’t sit down with him.’ Ada looked surprised. ‘He likes to eat on his own, in peace, with the paper, he likes reading about the crimes of the day and working things out. Says he could have been a detective. He knows all the ins and outs of police work. Though we do sit down at Christmas,’ she added. ‘If we’re not going visiting.’

‘I always eat with our Billy and Bert,’ said Madge. ‘Frank or no Frank. It makes life easier. Either that or standing up in the kitchen.’

‘So you always eat together?’ Ada asked Beatrice. ‘How on earth do you manage it?’

‘Yes,’ said Madge. ‘Have you nothing better to do?’

‘No,’ said Beatrice, trying to think. ‘Not really.’

Later, when Beatrice had eaten a piece of broiled chicken and tomato, staring at the empty chair opposite, she remembered planning menus on the ship. In the middle of the night she’d crept from the side of the bed and, with what little light there was, she’d looked again at the
Good Housewife’s Manual
with its new-paper smell and printed sample menus. Monday:
Breakfast:
Omelette, beef sausage, toast with preserves.
Dinner:
Roast loin of mutton, mashed potatoes, buttered cabbage. Victoria sponge cake. Cheese.
Supper:
Cold cuts, crackers, beef paste. And she’d tried to picture herself in a kitchen, chopping and boiling and roasting. Back in Normal, she’d only cooked simple meals. A fried piece of meat or a sandwich. Most of the time her father didn’t notice what was on his fork. Why make an effort? Then there was Coney, where the food was ready to eat. Nuts were roasted and scooped into bags. Potatoes were fried in the deep oil that Sammy Foyle had bought from the warehouse and heated that morning. She’d admired the noodles hanging behind Mr Song’s head as she’d ordered her tub of chow mein.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Jonathan had said, rubbing his eyes, his feet stretching into the cold rumpled space in the bed. ‘Come back here, I’m missing you.’

She’d closed the book. ‘I’m preparing myself. I need to be able to cook you a proper meal from scratch.’

‘Oh, I’ll survive,’ he’d yawned, pulling back the sheet. ‘I managed before I met you, and look, I grew into this big strong man, and I never went hungry, not once.’

She’d smiled, feeling something of a lurch from the ship. ‘Well, you know as well as I do, Mr Crane, there’s a first time for everything.’

4. Skin

He looked better with his clothes on, or with his clothes coming off; the jacket then the collar, his suspenders hanging down below his waist. It would make her skin prickle and her throat tighten. She would remind herself, sitting on her stone looking at the water, or propped on two pillows with the curtains closed, or sitting in the bath, on a deckchair in the garden, walking down the lane, staring at the sky. She had liked his clothes before she had liked anything else about him. They had looked so immediately English and well made, and with his jacket slung over his shoulder she could see the hand-stitched lining, the hidden pocket, a striped satin blue. His oval-shaped cufflinks had winked at her. He wore new summer brogues that made a shushing sound on the boardwalk. But now his civilian clothes were hanging in the wardrobe. She could touch them. Read the labels.
Bolam & Son. Made in London. Farnam Gentlemen’s Outfitters. Oxford
. She could put her nose against the sleeves. She could wear them. And she had.

‘All that’s missing is the skin,’ she told a plain white collarless shirt. The skin had gone for now, but she had it in her head, like everything else it seemed, there was room for it, the solid curve of the shoulders, the dark hairs sitting at the back of the neck, almost invisible, the moles, freckles, the pale brown lake behind his left knee, the veins on his feet, the small smooth mound of his stomach. She folded the sleeves of the shirt behind its back. She ran her fingers down the spine of cracked buttons, pressed her hand against the front, soft and hard, soft and hard, and still the shirt said nothing.

5. Savings

‘Mrs Crane,’ said the man from the bank tapping his fat inky fingers, ‘you have more than enough funds to lend some to the nation. This war,’ he said, with something of a whisper, ‘is costing over one million pounds a day.’

‘War bonds, war loans, war savings certificates, I’ve really no idea
what
my husband would have asked for,’ she told him.

‘They’re all pretty much the same,’ he said, ‘and a double investment, for your family, and the nation.’

She wanted to ask him, will we get it all back if we lose? Will the Germans take it? Will it matter? And what if we win? Will we get interest? And what if I need all the money after all? Behind the man’s head hung a row of framed certificates, an etching of Britannia, and a sheet advertising war savings certificates, a picture of a father with his children. Save for their Education and Give them a Start in Life. The boy looked like Elijah. The girl had a ribbon in her hair.

‘We’ll take the savings certificates,’ she told him.

‘Excellent choice,’ he said. ‘Have you brought your chequebook?’

6. Family

Beatrice had never held a baby. Her family was so small and far apart that babies were something of a rarity. Of course, she’d seen acquaintances pushing their creaking perambulators through the streets of Normal, and she’d stopped and glanced inside, giving appreciative nods and comments to the small pink heads that looked somewhat crunched on top of the pillow. Babies were dolls.

‘Three years ago today,’ said Ada without looking round. ‘My last one, my Rose.’ She was on her knees doing something with a trowel. The gravestone looked too bright against the mildewed weather-worn slabs that surrounded it.

‘I am so very sorry,’ said Beatrice, who had come wandering into the cemetery at the end of her walk. ‘I don’t know what to say, I know nothing about babies and how it feels to have them, or to lose them, so I can only imagine your sorrow.’

Ada stopped what she was doing and rolled the trowel into a dirty piece of hessian. ‘Oh, but you will have them,’ she said, ‘and yours will grow up into little people like they usually do.’

They sat on a bench looking out across the cemetery. There was the slow steady whirr of a lawnmower in the distance.

‘It’s peaceful,’ said Beatrice, sitting on her hands.

‘But I hate this place,’ said Ada. ‘Sometimes I think I’ll never come back, because what’s the point of fussing over babies that don’t even know you’re their mother?’

They sat in silence. The sun was burning their faces. They could see Mary’s grave in the distance, the grass still broken; a vase of brown stems sitting crooked and missing most of their petals. At the top of the hill there were several new white crosses for the soldiers that had died of their injuries in the local infirmary.

‘We’ve been lucky in this war,’ said Ada, standing up.

‘Yes, we have been lucky.’

‘It won’t last. The odds are stacked against us.’

‘It might last. It has to.’

‘Look,’ said Ada, clutching the hessian wrapped trowel to her chest, ‘I’m telling you it won’t.’

7. Reassurance

‘Jim, Frank, Tom and the rest, they’ll come back in one piece. Of course they will. We all will. Heavens, they’re only part of the battalion. I’ve lost other men. Plenty of other men. Their luck will last. And mine. We’ll come marching home one day, arm in arm, and you’ll see us for yourself.’

He would say that. She could hear the confidence in his voice and a touch of anger at her lack of faith. His fist would be drumming into the chair arm. ‘You must listen and believe,’ he would say, ‘because there is no doubt about it, what I’m telling you is true.’

8. Exterminator

He would stamp on all the cockroaches. (These her very worst enemy, she would rather have a thick-tailed rat than a cockroach.) Set traps for the mice that ran into the house from the fields. Scoop spiders the size of his hand from the bathtub. Remove flypapers. Collect earwigs. Powder bluebottles. Wasps. Beetles. Woodlice. Etc.

9. Inspiration

After studying the weather reports and looking long and hard at the sky, he would then remind her of the last picnic they’d had. The
poached
trout. Sweet apples. That bottle of gooseberry wine. The blanket that was folded in the box was snagged with dried grass and thistles and he would shake it out, whistling. Eggs would be boiled. Sandwiches cut. The basket, smelling of other picnics, and with specks of stale crumbs in the latticework, would be packed.
It’s too heavy
, he would grimace.
How much do you think the two of us can eat? Honestly
. He would walk with a tilt for the first couple of minutes, then he’d forget, and looking at the sky they’d head towards the stile, to the part of the reservoir they felt was their own, and perhaps it really was possible that no one else had discovered it. The way the trees spread across the shore like curtains. Shiny brown stones, smooth as a carpet. In the distance, a single rowing boat, the arms and the oars clipping the water, like they were dredging up silver.

10. Protection

She saw the telegram boy, how he’d sacrificed what was left of his cigarette, throwing it into the lane before scratching under his cap and knocking at the door. Ada had taken her time. Didn’t people know that she was busy in the shop? All right, so there weren’t any customers, but things needed doing, the shelves needed cleaning, those tins gathered dust, a bottle of gravy browning had been leaking over the tiles. Floors didn’t wash themselves.