The Good Plain Cook Page 23

  ‘Not in the end, she didn’t,’ said Kitty. Then she added, feeling the heat and the gin in her limbs, ‘I know I should have fetched the doctor, but you should have come sooner. We were waiting for you.’

  Lou turned her face away. It was a minute before Kitty realised her sister was quietly crying.

  There was a long pause before Kitty managed to say, ‘I’m sorry about Bob,’ and hand Lou her hankie.

  Lou sniffed and nodded. ‘Come back to the house with me?’

  ‘What about Bob’s dinner?’

  ‘He’s already gone. I just didn’t know how to tell you, earlier.’ Lou blew her nose loudly, three times. Kitty recognised the sound from their childhood: Lou’s three blows in the morning, and three before bed.

  ‘That was loud enough to wake the dead,’ Kitty said.

  Lou smiled briefly. ‘You’ll think over what I said? About coming to live at the house?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  The sun was getting lower and the yellow evening light was sneaking into their eyes. Kitty took Lou’s arm, and the two of them walked back to Woodbury Avenue together, Lou hobbling, still carrying her broken heel in her hand.

  . . . .

  It was late when Kitty got back to the cottage. With the Pierrot outfits she’d run up on Lou’s Singer bundled under one arm, she let herself in the back door. There was no light on in the kitchen, and she almost tripped over Blotto, who was snoozing on the mat. The dog groaned and stretched before tucking his head back into his chest and letting out a long, creaky sigh. Kitty turned on the kitchen light and looked up the hallway: no sign of any life there, either, so she fetched herself a glass of water and sat at the kitchen table to drink it down in large, grateful gulps. As she drank, she stared at the lantern’s trimmed tassel. No one else seemed to have noticed that it was much shorter than before. She wondered, now, if she could remove the whole thing without anyone saying anything. The kitchen would be much brighter in the evenings if she did.

  She wiped her mouth, took off her shoes, rolled down her stockings, laid her bare feet on the cool flags and closed her eyes. It had been a long evening, and she’d been glad of work to do while listening to Lou’s story of Bob’s affair with the older woman. Apparently she was a widow who lived in one of the big houses by the lake; they’d met at the local historical society and shared a passion for Queen Elizabeth. Lou said he was welcome to her, that she was glad to be rid of him, but as she spoke, she’d kept plucking at her collar and cuffs, and smoked a chain of cigarettes. Kitty had tried to listen while focusing on getting the seams of the outfits straight. They’d been quite simple – a bit like baggy pyjama-suits, with wide circular collars attached. All she had to do now was make the pompoms. She was sure she had some black wool somewhere in her work-box. She could even, she thought, get Miss Geenie on to making the pompoms herself. The girl might enjoy that.

  After rinsing her glass in the sink, she turned off the light and opened the door to her room. Although it was quite dark, she knew immediately that someone was in there.

  ‘Kitty – forgive me.’

  On hearing his voice, she dropped the Pierrot costumes to the floor.

  ‘It’s the most unforgivable intrusion – please forgive me.’

  She took a couple of deep breaths. She could see the outline of him now, sitting on her bed in his shirtsleeves. And here she was, standing before him, with no stockings on and a pile of silly costumes round her bare feet.

  She snapped on the light and he flinched. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and his hands – those beautiful long fingers – touched his hair, hiding his face.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said again.

  ‘What do you want, Mr Crane?’

  He nodded. ‘Quite. What do I want? What do I want?’ He hung his head, his hands still in his hair.

  ‘Have you been – drinking?’ She knew he hadn’t, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say. A man was in her room without her permission, and she should be outraged.

  He lifted his head. ‘Kitty,’ he said, and his voice was suddenly loud and deep, as if he were addressing an audience, ‘Kitty, when I came here the other evening, I wasn’t entirely straight with you.’

  She should scream, shouldn’t she? Scream and throw him out.

  ‘I didn’t say what I meant to say.’ He nodded his head again. ‘Yes, that’s it. I didn’t express what I wanted – needed – to express.’

  Kitty didn’t move. She was watching those fingers. They were on his knees now, each one evenly spread over the thinning fabric as he sat up very straight and nodded again. ‘What I want, what I’d like very much, is for you to sit here beside me for a minute.’

  He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes steady, his face pale and thin in the electric light, and Kitty knew she’d have to do as he asked. She was shaking as she sat on the edge of the bed, her stomach pulling inwards as if a thread were being stroked and gathered inside her.

  ‘Let me see your ears,’ he said.

  She looked at him.

  ‘I’ve never seen them – the whole of them.’ His fingers reached out and touched her ordinary hair, and he moved his face close to her neck. His breath was on her exposed skin, and she thought of how even she had never really looked there, behind her ear, in that hidden place. They were both very still, and the thread in her stomach pulled tighter. What was he seeing as he looked there, at that secret spot of white skin, which must be knobbled and strange? What shape were her ears? She tried to picture them, their folds and bumps, but could not. She felt a sudden urge to laugh as he moved closer, but then his face was in her hair, his lips on her earlobe, and the thread in her stomach snapped and everything came loose.

  ‘They’re lovely.’

  ‘Mr Crane—’

  ‘Please call me George.’

  His lips touched her again, this time just below her ear, and her hand went up, first to her own throat, then to his. She wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck, and she held his head there while he kissed her.

  · · · Thirty-one · · ·

  The letters were finished. It was Thursday morning, and Ellen sat back in her chair, flexed her aching fingers, and gazed out of the library window. On the lawn, the girls were laughing together. A minute ago Geenie had looked like she was scrubbing the grass clean: she’d been on her hands and knees, knuckles working the dusty ground, while Diana stood over her, proclaiming something with one arm stretched elegantly into the air. Some game or other, Ellen thought: it was good to see her daughter so engaged with another girl; it certainly made a change from hanging around rooms, waiting for her mother to do or say something. Not that Geenie had been hanging around much since they’d had the conversation about James’s death. Ellen wished she’d been able to say more to her daughter on that subject, but somehow there were no words for it. And there was also the sense, she reflected now, taking another swig of her gin and it – a pre-lunch drink wasn’t so out of the ordinary, was it? – that James wasn’t much to do with Geenie. He wasn’t her father, after all. He was Ellen’s lover. His death was her business.

  Pulling the final page from the typewriter, she set it on the pile. Then she finished her drink, pushed back her chair, and carried the manuscript from the room.

  She was so surprised to find Crane’s studio empty that she marched directly to where the girls were playing on the lawn. They saw her coming and Geenie pressed her lips together.

  ‘Where’s your father?’ Ellen asked Diana.

  For an answer she received a shrug and a smile. She looked from girl to girl, and Geenie slid behind Diana and began to laugh.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘She’s just excited,’ said Diana, ‘about the play.’

  ‘What play?’

  ‘The play I’ve written. We’re performing it tomorrow morning. Eleven o’clock sharp. On the lawn.’

  ‘Everyone’s invited,’ said Geenie, peeping over her friend’s shoulder.

&
nbsp; Ellen gazed at Diana, and the girl gazed back, her dark eyes amused, her face composed. Eventually Ellen turned and walked back to the studio, leaving the girls whispering behind her like lovers.

  . . . .

  Inside, she sat in Crane’s armchair with the manuscript on her lap and wished she’d thought to fetch another gin. She had a notion that she would wait here until Crane returned, and she might need another drink. Ellen hadn’t given much thought to what she would do when he did arrive; she only knew that she wanted him to see the letters, now they were finished. They’d managed to avoid each other almost completely since he’d got back from London on Monday night. By the time he’d climbed into their bed in the dark, she’d had time to think, and her urge to scream and slap him very hard had waned. Anyway, what would she have said, exactly? I was snooping in your wastepaper basket and I found this? Or, I was looking for the novel you obviously haven’t written and I came across these – words? She couldn’t admit she’d been prying, and even if she did, he would have said it was just a poem, something he’d made up. So she’d clenched her body into a tight bundle on the edge of the bed and pretended to sleep.

  Crane had hidden in his studio for most of the next day, and she’d locked herself in the library, brooding over the letters, drinking too much gin, and then falling asleep in her chair, waking to find herself covered in sweat and ravenously hungry. At dinner she’d concentrated on filling her gasping stomach with Kitty’s admittedly rather tasty chicken pie while Crane’s eye twitched like some trapped insect. But by Wednesday morning Ellen was thinking of going to Robin again. After lunch, during which Crane revealed his busy schedule of talks for the Party, telling her they were to begin next week in Rochdale (where was that? she hadn’t even bothered to ask), she’d taken the Lanchester into Petersfield and parked by the market square. Walking down the lane to the hairdressers’ shop, smelling the mixture of carbolic and blood from the butcher’s open door, she told herself that perhaps she would just book another appointment after all, then go straight back and face Crane and tell him it was over. Or perhaps she could cry a little, and relations would thaw. But when she walked through the door and saw Robin sitting at the back of the empty shop, a penny paper spread across his solid knees, she’d known exactly what would happen. If Crane’s blood was heavy with wanting for the cook, why shouldn’t she spend a little time with Robin? In the back room, he’d kept the wireless on, and his knowledgeable hands had slowly stroked her breasts to the rhythms of the Afternoon Band Hour. Just as he was sliding his fingers beneath her French knickers, she stopped him and said, ‘I want you for the whole night.’

  It had been expensive, of course. There was the room at the Royal Oak in Midhurst, where – after she’d telephoned Crane and told him she was too drunk to drive home and was spending the night at Laura’s – they’d signed in as Mr and Mrs Crane; and Robin had still charged by the hour. But it had been worth it, she decided, as she rose from the chair to place the manuscript on Crane’s desk, over his latest copy of the DailyWorker. It had been worth it, because since she’d got back to the cottage at ten o’clock this morning (and Crane hadn’t been anywhere to be seen, even then), her head had been marvellously clear. Clear enough to finish work on the manuscript, and to add a note between the title page and the first letter:

  To the memory of James Holt, my greatest love.

  With this book, I ask for forgiveness.

  – Ellen Steinberg

  James’s memory was the most important thing, after all. It was the thing she had to keep safe from now on. Crane had distracted her from it. At least, that was how it had seemed when she’d typed the dedication. She could always, she thought, change things later.

  Leaving the pile of paper on the desk, she walked out of the studio and into the sunshine. She wouldn’t wait for Crane, she decided. Let him find the letters there, just as she’d found his scrap of a poem. She wouldn’t even wait for lunch. She’d drive into Petersfield straight away, buy flowers for the cottage from Gander’s, perhaps stop at the White Hart for a drink, and then, if she still felt like it, drop by the hairdressers’ once more.

  · · · Thirty-two · · ·

  Kitty woke early on Thursday, the morning of her birthday, still wearing Lou’s pink organdie frock. The skirt was pressed against her thighs, as if something were pulling it back. She reached behind and smiled to herself as she felt Mr Crane’s knee there, pinning her frock to the bed. It wasn’t much past dawn: the birds were raucous outside her window, their songs clambering into the air. And he was still here. He was still here. She tried to stay unmoving on the edge of the bed so as not to disturb him. He was still here. She closed her eyes again. All night the feeling of his kiss was there, even when she’d turned from him and eventually reached something like sleep. They’d kissed until her lips were dry and her neck tired. Sometimes the kisses had been long and light; at other times he’d kissed her so hard she’d felt his teeth on hers. His hands were in her hair, on her throat, then his arms were crushing her to him and she thought, this is what they mean when they say breathless. He’d kept murmuring ‘lovely’, and she wasn’t sure if he meant her or the kisses. Eventually he’d lain back on the counterpane and said ‘come to bed now’, and she’d frozen, thinking that he must want her to undress and not knowing how she could possibly start. But instead he pulled her to his side and cradled her head on his chest, and then he’d slept. Kitty stayed awake for hours, listening to his breath, inhaling the scent of him and staring at his chin, at all the little ticks of stubble there, so close to her face. And here he still was. She still had him. In her small room, on her small bed.

  She opened her eyes again. It was already light and warm in the room. The Pierrot costumes were on the floor, where she’d dropped them last night. She wished the picture of her parents wasn’t so visible from the bed. Her mother’s face stared directly down at her, and she shifted her eyes away. The clock on the chest of drawers said six. She closed her eyes again and inched a little closer to him. No one would be up before nine. There were hours to go. Hours of just lying here, knowing he was next to her. If she could move slowly enough, she might even be able to turn over and watch his face while he slept.

  Then the thought hit her hard and she sprang upright: Mrs Steinberg. Fucking incinerated fish would be nothing compared to this. She stole a look over her shoulder at the sleeping man on her sheets, taking in the length of his legs, the way one hand was thrown over his head, the muscle of his upper arm filling his shirt sleeve, the shapely wrist resting on her pillow. Just one more kiss, she thought, and then I’ll tell him he has to go. She bent close and studied his face: the long nose, the black lashes, the slightly sunken cheeks. She was just about to touch his forehead with her lips when his eyes flicked open.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  Kitty drew back.

  He gave a huge yawn and stretched his arms. ‘I slept so well. I haven’t slept so well in ages.’

  Sitting on the edge of the mattress, Kitty fixed her eyes on the door and waited for him to move from her bed. It would all be over soon: he’d get up, stretch again, say something about what a night of madness it had been, he didn’t know what he’d been thinking, it was an unforgivable intrusion and could she forgive him, could she? Then he’d walk out without waiting for her answer, and she’d have to pretend nothing had happened, put his tea down without glancing at him, watch Mrs Steinberg casually touch his thigh beneath the table, listen to them laughing together in the sitting room, picture her dancing for him while that man’s sweet, rasping voice unravelled from the gramophone. She didn’t think she could do it. There was nothing else for it: she’d have to go back to Lou’s.

  ‘Kitty? Did you – ah – sleep well?’

  ‘I think you should go.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘After six. I think you should go.’ It wouldn’t be so bad at Woodbury Avenue, without Bob there to rattle the newspaper in her direction.

  Mr Cra
ne sat up.

  ‘You should go,’ she said again, keeping her voice low.

  He rubbed his eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You should go. You should go, otherwise – she’ll know.’

  He came to the edge of the bed, placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him. One collar was dented, striking him in the chin, and his shirt was badly creased. His eye gave a twitch. ‘Listen to me. It doesn’t matter. None of that matters, not really.’

  She twisted away from him. ‘Not to you, maybe—’

  He reached for her again. ‘Kitty. Ellen – Mrs Steinberg – didn’t come home last night.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She telephoned me. She stayed at my sister’s house last night. And she’ll have the most dreadful hangover this morning, so I’d be surprised if she came back before lunchtime.’

  ‘Oh.’ Kitty stared at the floor. ‘You should still go though, shouldn’t you?’

  He smiled. ‘Let’s go for a bicycle ride.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘I don’t have a bicycle.’

  ‘You can borrow Geenie’s. She’s almost as tall as you. I’ll adjust the saddle.’

  Kitty let out a laugh. ‘At six in the morning?’

  ‘Why not? You told me, didn’t you, that time I met you on the road. Don’t you remember? You said you liked riding bicycles.’

  ‘What about the girls? The breakfast…’

  ‘We’ll be back before then,’ he said, springing from the bed and and holding out his hands to her. ‘I promise.’

  . . . .

  It was exactly as she remembered: the breeze on your cheeks as you pedalled, the way the saddle made you sit upright and almost proud, the wheels throwing the road carelessly behind. Even now, the hedgerows were drying out in the early morning sun and heat was beginning to rise from the asphalt. Yellow wheat danced in the fields on either side of them, but the hills in front were a flat, grey green, yet to be touched by the sun. Mr Crane, still in his creased shirt and with his slick of dark hair splayed on the crown of his head, cycled on while Kitty kept a short way behind, in case anyone should see them. Not that she could think of any reason she should be cycling at this time in the morning at all, let alone so close behind Mr Crane, who was, to outsiders’ eyes at least, her master. What was he in her eyes, then? Was he – she dared hardly think the word – her lover? Her lover, who was also a poet, although he didn’t look like one. She smiled to herself at that.