The Good Plain Cook (26 page)

· · ·  Acknowledgements  · · ·

I’d like to thank Cath Aldworth and Marge Phillips for sharing their fascinating recollections of the mid-1930s with me. Both
ladies were wonderful company and extremely generous.

Thanks to Pete Ayrton, John Williams, Rebecca Gray and the team at Serpent’s Tail, and to my agent, David Riding, for their
commitment to this book. For their advice on drafts, I am grateful to Naomi Foyle, Claire Harries, Kai Merriott and Lorna
Thorpe, and I remain deeply indebted to David Swann, who read the first half and convinced me it was going to be all right.
Special thanks to my parents for their support, and to my brother Owen for his expertise on every subject. My greatest debt,
as always, is to my husband Hugh Dunkerley, who is also my first and best reader.

Snooping in Other People’s Houses

some thoughts on writing
The Good Plain Cook

The wonderful thing about walking around the Palazzo is the illicit thrill you get from snooping in someone else’s house.
There’s the white plastic sofas in the drawing room, where she would have sat, backed by a Pollock, gazing out at her private
gondolier (I thought); there’s the Calder silver bedhead, under which she took her pleasure with her fabled string of famous
lovers… In short, I found the house, and the ghosts of those who’d lived in it, much more interesting than the art.

Fourteen years later, I was still interested enough to think that Peggy’s story might give me something to write about, and
I embarked on what writers call ‘research’, which is really more snooping about in other people’s houses, keeping an eye out
for anything that piques your interest or chimes with your own experience enough to get a story going. I knew that I wanted
to write fiction, but thought that the facts of Peggy’s life might open up some avenues in my imagination. I also thought,
after setting my first novel in the industrial landscape of small-town Oxford-shire, this was the perfect excuse for some
much-needed glamour. I saw a prolonged period of ‘research’ in Venice stretching out before me. Yes! I thought. This must
be why so many people dream of becoming novelists.

But then I read that Peggy and her daughter had spent a few years living fairly near me, in West Sussex, and I was intrigued.
I also read that she’d employed a local girl as a cook and, dissatisfied with the girl’s performance, had decided to learn
to cook herself. Everything changed. There they were: the seeds of my cast of characters, just down the road from me. Writers
often talk about characters ‘taking over’ their work, and whilst I bristle a little at such a mystical idea, once I’d found
my Good Plain Cook, the novel’s direction became clear. I realised that Kitty’s point of view – as that of the character so
often written out of the bohemian dramas of the period – was a crucial one for me. Perhaps this is because my own family’s
stories are full of Kittys, whose work enabled the moneyed classes to indulge their passions for art, literature, partying
(and politics) without having to worry about the washing up or incinerating the fish. I was fascinated by Peggy’s life, by
Peggy’s house – the art, the lovers, the money – but realised that the story had to include something from my own house.
The
Good Plain Cook
is my attempt to put the ‘below-stairs’ girl centre-stage, whilst also, of course, indulging in a little bohemian glamour.

There’s Kathryn and Howard, Rob’s parents. Kath has been
making the best of her second marriage after the love of her life
died young. Howard has been clinging onto a family life he
hardly expected to have. There’s Joanna, the teen queen of
nowheresville. She’s been looking for a way out, escape from her
parents’ broken marriage. She thought Rob might take her away
from all this, but lately she’s started to think Rob might have
other plans. And then there’s Shane, with the big hands and the
fixation on Joanna.

Bethan Roberts’ strikingly assured debut novel subtly reveals
the tensions and terrors that underpin apparently ordinary lives,
and can lead them to spiral suddenly out of control.

I had a lot of help: first from the MA – from both my tutors and fellow students – and then from the novelist Andrew Cowan,
whom I’d ‘won’ as a mentor for six months as part of a Jerwood award for young writers. When I was writing, I didn’t think
to myself: this is my first novel. I just thought about the next sentence. And the next. And the next. I didn’t have a grand
plot structure in mind at first. I just wrote and wrote, getting to know the characters as I went along. And then I cut most
of what I wrote, and rewrote. And, eventually, I thought about the plot, and somehow I managed to reach the end. I don’t know
if this is the best way to write a novel. But it seemed to work for me.

Whilst I was writing, I tried not to think about getting published. But I can’t deny that I have imagined what it would be
like for a very long time. I’ve had day-dreams about book-signings. Seen covers and blurbs in my sleep. In the day-dreams
I’m entirely happy and successful and everything is very shiny. But the reality is much more everyday. Of course, when my
agent called to tell me that we’d found a publisher I didn’t stop smiling for weeks (except to eat, which I’m very keen on
doing regularly). It’s utterly thrilling – and very surreal – to see your words in print, between covers, and on the shelf
of a bookshop… You even start to think: maybe I am actually a writer. Could that be true? Could it? But then you get back
to your desk. And there’s the blank page again. Staring at you without pity. And you take a deep breath, and dare to put down
one sentence… and then the next, and then the next.

I shake her shoulder and she ignores me. So I speak. ‘Time to get up, Kathryn. Come on now, time to get up.’

Her arm twitches, but there’s no sound. So I try again, a bit sterner. ‘Come on, now. You have to get up. This morning you
have to get up.’

Neither of us has slept, of course. For the last hour I’ve been watching the blue-grey light push through the curtains, listening
to her breathe. From her shallow, quiet breaths, I knew she was awake, too; probably her mind was stuck, like mine, on that
moment when we saw the policewoman opening the front gate, carefully closing it again, and taking off her hat as she walked
down our path. Then we knew they’d found his body.

I rise and leave her, knowing it’ll be ten minutes before she’ll move. But when I come back from the bathroom she’s standing
there in her winter nightie. Her hair is still in waves, but they’re all in the wrong place, as if she’s wearing a wig and
it’s slipped. There’s a big patch of mottled red on her chest where the cotton has made its imprint.

On our wedding night she wore a very different nightie. It was all layers of stuff, a bit see-through, short, well above her
knees. But it hung there as if it wasn’t on her body at all, as if she’d just stepped into a tepee made of nylon. ‘What’s
that you’re wearing,’ I said, smiling, wishing I could see more of her lovely curves. At the power station Christmas parties
I knew the other men were watching her, their eyes following her movements; some of them even looked slightly scared if she
spoke to them, I noticed that. They would lean towards her to catch her voice. They patted other women on the hips, shouted
things out as they passed, but with Kathryn it wasn’t like that. Even her hair seemed curvy to me, and her eyelashes, the
way they swept up off her cheeks just as women’s eyelashes are supposed to. I never saw any other girl with eyelashes like
Kathryn’s, except at the pictures. On our wedding night she touched a layer of nylon and gave me a twirl. ‘It’s a powder blue
negligee,’ she said. ‘Can’t you tell?’ And she lifted up the hem and laughed.

I reach out and hold her elbow for a moment, but she doesn’t make a sound; she just stands there, waiting for me to let go.
I release her and she walks past me, out of the door. Then I hear water running in the bathroom.

When she comes back her face looks a little pinker so I ask her, ‘What’ll you wear?’

She looks up at me with clouded eyes. I lean forward and press my forehead to hers. The tip of her nose is cold against my
cheek.

‘What’ll you wear, Kathryn?’

‘Anything. Anything.’ She lets her weight fall against me.

I sit her down on the bed. ‘Right then, let’s have a look.’ I go through her whole rail, my fingers trailing over dresses,
skirts, blouses, and there’s nothing black. I pull out every drawer and pick through the folded corners of her knitwear, and
there’s nothing black. Plenty of brown, and quite a bit of blue, but no black. I think it best not to say anything. Instead
I select a dark brown pleated skirt and a navy blue jumper.

‘This is nice,’ I say, laying it all out on the bed beside her. She stares at the skirt but doesn’t move.

‘Come on, Kathryn. Let’s get that nightie off.’

I wait a few moments, in case she stirs.

She lets me hook the hem of the nightie round my fingers and lift it up to her thighs, and when I say, ‘Lift your bottom up
for me,’ she does so. She sits there naked on the bed, her arms clutched round her waist. The skin on her forearms hangs.
In the half-light of the bedroom I can see the curves are still there; a little wilted, but still there.

‘Here’s your knickers,’ I say. ‘Are you going to stand up for me?’ I hold the knickers out so she can step into them. ‘No?
All right then.’

I lift her left foot, guiding it into the elastic hole. And as I lift her right foot I smell her there above me, all sleepy
brushed cotton and something faintly vinegary, and I find myself stopping and dropping her foot back down again, so she’s
sitting there with her knickers round one ankle, and I’m resting my cheek against her shin and mouthing
Robert
without making a sound and knowing our son is dead.

She must feel my breathing go heavy, because she puts her hand on my head and we sit like that for a few minutes, my knees
digging into our thin purple carpet, my cheek feeling the dry tissue of her shin and the knobbles of bone in there, all rounded,
like a row of marbles.

‘I should have bought a black dress,’ she says.

I lift her right foot again. ‘No, no. It’s all right. People don’t wear all black at funerals these days.’

I guide the knickers beyond her knees. ‘Lift your bottom up for me.’

I keep thinking of the time I took Robert to the Tank Museum. Kathryn refused to come in, waited in a café down the road,
wearing her red raincoat (she used to wear a lot of red), sipping a milky coffee, reading a novel. At least, that’s how I
imagined her as I walked around that place, yards of camouflage and unspeakable weapons everywhere.

In that museum there were lots of fathers and sons. All the fathers seemed to have big hands with which to guide their sons
around the
Whippet
, the
Sherman Crab
and the
Somua
tanks. They would stoop and point, ruffle hair, share interesting facts. I didn’t know anything about those grey and brown
hunks of metal. I knew about turbine halls, not armoured vehicles.

I walked behind Robert as he ran ahead. I’d never seen him so excited. I let him weave between the tanks with his anorak wrapped
around his waist in the way he liked. I smiled as he sat in the cockpit of the armoured Rolls-Royce, his hair sticking up
on the crown of his head, his straight teeth shining.

When we got back to the she embraced him as if he’d been gone for weeks, and he told her all about the tanks in one long breath,
and her eyes lit up at the very mention of the word
missile
, even though she’d refused to set foot in that place. ‘Did you enjoy it, Howard?’ she asked me. I hesitated. Robert said,
‘Dad
hated
it.’ And they laughed.

The iciness of the kitchen floor seeps through the thin soles of my slippers. I warm my hands in the steam of the kettle.
The blind with the fruit and veg print is moving slowly in the draught from the window. Sucked in, blown out. I drop the cold
tea bag from the pot into the bin. I can’t cook like Kathryn so the bin is full of empty tins. She used to feed Robert plenty
of meat; chops grilled with a little salt, boiled potatoes and tinned peas on the side. I never understood it. She doesn’t
like meat much, but for her son she let the fat ooze over the bars of the grill and fill the kitchen with a sweet stink.

For the last fortnight she’s said nothing as I’ve handed her beans on toast, spaghetti on toast, cheese on toast, night after
night. She says nothing, chews on a corner, leaves the rest. Since the night he went, we’ve eaten our tea on our laps, in
front of the television. And we do not watch the news.

I almost pour the tea into the mug he bought for her, years ago – the one with ‘World’s Best Mum’ on the side. When I say
he bought it, I mean of course that I got it, and said it was a gift from him on Mother’s Day. He must have been about six.
She looked pleased, but she never used it. Kathryn doesn’t go in for that sort of thing, slogans.

I jerk the spout away so quickly the tea burns my hand. Then she’s there, standing beside me in the kitchen, wearing the brown
skirt and the blue jumper. She’s put some earrings in.

‘You’ve got earrings in,’ I say, pushing the mug behind the teapot.

‘I’ll take them out,’ she says, quickly, before I can tell her that I like them. ‘It was a mistake. What was I thinking? Earrings.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Tea.’

Eleven o’clock. The car arrives in plenty of time for the service. We stand in the hallway. I am wearing my only black suit;
it’s a bit tight round the waist. It’s all right, though, because I’ve put a belt round and left the top button undone. I
hold out Kathryn’s wool coat. She slips her arms into it, and I heave it onto her shoulders. I button it right to the top;
the collar is so high it’s like I’m tucking her neck into it. I comb her hair, which sticks out above her right ear. The ends
of it look frazzled, as if they’ve been burnt.

‘Have you got any spray?’ I ask.

She looks at me. ‘Spray?’

‘For your hair.’

‘No,’ she says.

‘A hat then.’

‘I’ve never had a hat.’

‘Oh. Right then.’ I smooth the shoulders of her coat. ‘You’ll do,’ I say.

She reaches past me and opens the door. Outside, a blast of wind brings water to my eyes as I hurry to keep up with her, to
keep hold of her herringboned elbow.