The Good Plain Cook (5 page)

Then the bike swerved and there was cow parsley in her face and a branch scratching her arm in a long sharp line, but she
kept pushing her feet down and looking ahead and somehow the bike straightened again and she was back on the path.

‘Brake!’ George was shouting. ‘Brake, Geenie! Pull the brakes!’

She squeezed the brakes and crashed her feet to the floor at the same time, so her shoes dragged along the stones and her
bottom came right off the seat. She kept braking and dragging until the bicycle came to a stop, and only then was she able
to unlock her fingers from the handlebars. The whole frame crashed to the side, and so did she.

There were small stones in her cheek and the back wheel was on her leg.

‘Good girl,’ she heard him shout. ‘What a journey!’

Geenie sat up. Brushing herself off, she gazed at the puffed clouds bubbling overhead, and she did not cry. When she got back
to the cottage, she’d say nothing about this to her mother, she decided; she’d keep it all to herself.

· · ·  Seven  · · ·

She gathered up her dressing gown, towel, and the copy of
Garden and Home
Lou had given her, and listened at the door. Kitty’s room was only reachable through the kitchen, and it was unlikely anyone
would be in there at this time. Occasionally she heard Mr Crane’s steady footsteps on the flags at night; in the morning there
would be crumbs on the table and butter left out by the sink.

She opened her door, walked across the kitchen floor, and then listened again to check no one was in the corridor.

In the kitchen, she could hear music coming from the sitting room: a man’s deep voice, but not Bing Crosby or even Al Bowlly.
Lou loved Bing, but Kitty found his songs too sleepy. This voice was much raspier, younger.
The things
I do are never forgiven
it sang. Then there was a bang, and Mr Crane’s laugh.

Kitty imagined that Mrs Steinberg was dancing around that huge room. Now that the wall had come down, there was certainly
plenty of space for it. Mr Crane would be sitting in his armchair, watching, perhaps with a book on his lap. The woman would
be flinging her arms about, just like her daughter when she was dressed up and acting out those solo plays of hers on the
lawn. And wearing no stockings.

It was probably safe to make a dash for it.

She opened the door. The hallway looked clear. It was impossible to see around that blasted corner, though, and she almost
shrieked when she came across Blotto, sitting on the hall floorboards, waiting for some action. The dog looked up hopefully,
then got down on his belly and shuffled along the floor like a huge hairy insect towards Kitty’s feet. Deciding it wasn’t
safe to stop and pat, Kitty stepped past the creature and pressed along the hall, her stockinged feet rasping on the bare
wood.

There was Mr Crane’s laugh again: sudden and surprisingly loud.

She didn’t run along the corridor, not exactly. But she must have taken the two steps up to the bathroom too fast, because
now she was holding out her hands and the gown and towel were wrapping themselves around her legs as she went down. Her shin
bone cracked against the step, but she didn’t yelp; she went down silently, still clutching the magazine in one hand, then
sprang up again, grabbing the gown and the towel with the other hand as she leapt inside.

Once in the bathroom, she leant against the door and tried to breathe normally. She couldn’t hear any footsteps. Perhaps no
one had heard her fall. If Mr Crane had heard, would he have come to see what was wrong? Or would he have shrugged and continued
to watch Mrs Steinberg dance without stockings?

The bath was huge, with gnarled claw feet and brass taps which squealed as she twisted them. The geyser choked. It would take
at least ten minutes to even half-fill the tub; sometimes she thought it would actually be simpler to use the public baths
in Petersfield, as she’d done before Mother died. Whilst waiting, Kitty sat on the bath’s edge and opened her magazine.

Are You the STAR in Your Husband’s Life?
she read.
Or
have you allowed yourself to slide into a minor, supporting role?
Wasn’t that what wives were supposed to do? Slide into supporting roles? Not that her own mother had done any of that. She
was always the one who went to the pub whilst her father waited in. ‘Once he looked at the clock when I came home,’ she’d
told her daughters. It was one of her many stories, meant to prove that they were all better off without him. ‘I told him,
don’t you dare look at that clock.’ She’d gripped the arms of her chair as she spoke. ‘And he never did again.’

Remember your husband is human. What he really expects
of you is that you should continue to be the leading lady in
his life, the heroine of the domestic drama, and that every
now and then you should spring on him a new act. In that
light, look at the woman you see in the mirror and ask
yourself today: ‘Is she slipping or is she still a star?’

Had Mrs Steinberg read this? Kitty had never seen the woman with a magazine. She was always carting big books by authors with
foreign names about. Not that Kitty had ever seen her actually reading. It would be easy, Kitty thought, for Mrs Steinberg
to become a leading lady, if she put a bit of effort in; that was what money was for, wasn’t it? Money could put a shine on
the ugliest of women, as Lou often pointed out, particularly when she saw a photograph of Mrs Sweeny in the
Daily Mail
.

She dipped her fingers in the bath. Still warm enough, although the water had started to run cold.

Unbuttoning her frock, she glimpsed her reflection in the full-length mirror which stood in the corner of the room, and she
turned away to unhook her stays and roll down her stockings. Then she stepped in the bath quickly, so as not to catch sight
of herself again. Kitty had yet to look at the whole of herself in that glass; it was the first full-length mirror she’d been
confronted by. She’d seen parts of her body at Lou’s house, of course, in the dressing-table glass: her shoulders, small and
yet fleshy; her belly-button, like a comma in her rounded stomach; her breasts, which seemed alarmingly blue. Once, she’d
even peered at the dark nest between her legs with a compact, but had been unable to see much with just the bedside lamp,
which had been a bit of a relief. But never the whole thing together.

She slid into the water, turned over on her stomach, and rested her cheek on the enamel. It wasn’t very comfortable this way
but if she balanced right, she could pretend she was floating in the sea. She could still hear music coming from the sitting
room, and she began to rock back and forth, the water rippling over her hands and thighs and backside as she pushed herself
along the bottom of the bath. It was like the time she’d gone to Bognor Regis on the Sunday School outing and had spent hours
letting the tide wash her up and down the sand, the whole length of her brushing the beach as the sea moved beneath. She closed
her eyes and listened to the raspy young voice coming from downstairs.
I hear
music, then I’m through!
It was full of – what? Something like movement. Sweetness, too.

There was no more laughter now, just the low gurgle of water in the pipes, and the ticking of the recovering geyser. Were
they dancing together? Kitty herself had danced with a man only once. Her sister had set the whole thing up, introducing her
to Frank, who’d worked at the bakery with Lou, at the Drill Hall dance. Kitty remembered the way he’d let his fingers wander
from her shoulder to her neck, feeling the hairs that lay there like weeds – that’s how she’d always thought of her hair,
like a clump of weeds on a riverbank, thick and straight, fanning out in broken ends, no particular colour. She rinsed it
in vinegar every week but it was still the brown-yellow shade of Oxo cubes. All night she’d felt that she was pushing against
his steps, because he kept getting them wrong; she hadn’t meant to do that, and told herself to stop, but he would keep standing
on her feet when she’d polished her shoes specially, and he wasn’t the lightest of men, so she’d had to try to take his hot
hand and correct it. Eventually he’d barked, ‘You’re leading!’ and she’d apologised over and over again but his hand was crushing
hers by then; the bones in her fingers crunched together as he said, ‘For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with you?’ She’d
thought of her father looking at the clock and what her mother would have said to him to stop him dead, but she’d carried
on dancing until the music stopped. Then she ran from the dance floor and out of the Drill Hall without her coat or hat, and
Frank hadn’t come after her.

But not all men would be like that, she thought. Dancing with Arthur, for example, would be different: Arthur left his boots
at the door before walking on her kitchen floor; he rinsed out his own cup after tea; his fingers were nimble when they loaded
his pipe with tobacco.

But dancing with Arthur would be nothing like dancing with Mr Crane.

She opened her eyes, rolled on to her back and took up the soap. After she’d scrubbed herself everywhere she could – soaping
between each toe, along each leg, swishing the water about between her thighs without touching anything for too long, then
sliding the bar up her stomach and across her breasts, round the back of her neck and down her arms – she heaved herself out
of the bath.

Now was the time to look, before she could think about it too much, before she was cold and shivering and needed to put the
dressing gown on.

She stood before the full-length mirror. At first, she looked only at her own face. She was not, she’d decided long ago, pretty:
her nose was too wide, her chin too prominent. But if she turned and looked back over her shoulder – like those photos in
Film Pictorial
– she wasn’t too bad. It was always better to look at her face when it was rosy from the heat, and viewed like this, all cheek
and naked shoulder, her hair wet and dark and even a bit wavy, she looked not quite herself. It was strange how like another
person she seemed, as she gazed at the length of her body in the mirror; strange how it all connected up, all the parts of
herself she’d often thought separate: thighs to bottom, stomach to chest to neck and arms, and her head on top. She tried
to take it all in, putting a hand on her hip and smiling. She blushed at herself in the pose, then giggled, leaning forward
and putting her hand to her mouth so the tips of her breasts shook; she felt them beneath her arm, swaying. Taking her hand
away, she watched her own fingers connect with her breast, and saw her nipple turn brown and wrinkled like a walnut. Was it
normal for flesh to move of its own accord like that?

There was a noise from the sitting room: a shrieking laugh. It wouldn’t be long, then, before the other noises began. She
turned away from the mirror, pulled her dressing gown tightly around her, and sat on the rim of the bath to watch the water
run away.

· · ·  Eight  · · ·

Geenie kept rubbing at a knot in the wood, and Ellen clamped a hand on her daughter’s arm to still her. Diana’s mother, Lillian,
was supposed to have dropped Diana in time for lunch. Now it was half past two, and there was no sign of Lillian, or of the
girl. Ellen was, she told herself, ready to face the other woman in Crane’s life. She did pride herself on her tolerance of
ex-wives. It was, she felt, a necessary part of being a bohemian. After all, Rachel had actually married James while he was
living with Ellen, and she’d never run on at him for that. Rachel had been a pathetic creature: lumpy ankles and nails bitten
down to the flesh. She’d begged James to marry her, saying all she wanted was the title –
Mrs Holt
; she’d promised never to bother him again if he granted her this one last chance of respectability. Ellen felt it was the
least she could do not to carp about it, seeing as she’d stolen James from under Rachel’s (small) nose in the first place.
And, in fact, Rachel had gone quiet after that. Whenever Ellen had thought of this other woman who was out there, legally
bound to her lover, she’d always reminded herself that she was the one who had him in the flesh.

But Lillian was different. And not ex, even, not yet. What made it worse was that Crane wouldn’t say a word about her. She’d
asked him again, last night, after the usual. Running a finger down his stomach, she’d enquired how he and Lillian had got
on in bed. He’d looked at the ceiling and considered. He always considered his replies. Then he’d said, ‘Well enough.’ She’d
tried another tack. How had they met? This time she’d propped herself up on one elbow and smiled, pulling the sheets up over
her breasts to help him concentrate. ‘Through a friend,’ was the considered reply. Why had they separated, then? At this,
he’d winced. ‘It just died,’ he’d said, very quietly, and he turned onto his side and said he’d like to go to sleep.

‘She’s late,’ said Ellen, squinting up at Laura. ‘Just like her husband. Like her
estranged
husband, I should say.’

Laura was leaning back on the French windows, smoking. In shiny black riding boots and a man’s green cotton over-shirt, dramatically
back-lit by the sun, she looked like a film star in a girl’s horse-riding adventure. Her legs, hugged tightly by tan jodhpurs,
were long and thin, like Ellen’s own, but, Ellen noted, Laura’s thighs were rounded like risen loaves, and her knees had no
hint of knobble. Her black hair, cut in a bob with a severe fringe, was as glossy as her boots. When they’d first met, Ellen
had thought Laura exactly the kind of woman she herself would love to be: sophisticated, daring, unpredictable. Glamorous.
Gradually, though, it had dawned on her that Laura could only live the life she did because her solid, intellectual and thoroughly
tedious husband, Humphrey, was always waiting in their well-appointed parlour for his wife’s return.

Laura narrowed her eyes, slid them sidelong, and drew on her cigarette.

‘I suppose ballet dancers are always late,’ Ellen continued. ‘Artistic temperament and all that. I don’t know why I don’t
start being late. It might help my bohemian credentials. What do you think, darling? Would your brother love me more if I
were late?’

‘
Is
she late?’ Laura asked, exhaling a curl of smoke.

‘Over two hours, darling.’

Laura nodded and slowly slid one hand over her rounded belly, first along the top of the little bump, then along the bottom.
‘I don’t have a watch.’

Ellen snorted. ‘How romantic!’

‘Not romantic. Practical. If you don’t have a watch, you’re never late, and you never expect anyone. Stands to reason.’

Ellen let out a hoot. ‘Laura, you are a strange creature.’

Laura brought her cigarette to her mouth in a long sweep and sucked on it.

‘Talking of expecting – when’s this damn baby due, darling?’ asked Ellen.

Unpeeling herself from the French windows, Laura walked over to the table. She walked slowly, her boots clacking on the polished
floor like a swashbuckler’s, the sun flashing behind her. She leant over Geenie so the tip of her bob pricked the girl’s ear,
and ground out her cigarette in the ashtray.

‘Autumn, I think.’

‘You’re not sure? Not even of the month?’

‘I told you, Ellen. I don’t have a watch.’ She leant her elbows on the table and blinked at Geenie. ‘Don’t go dragging on
that cig end,’ she said, fixing the girl with her bright green eyes. ‘How old are you, anyway?’

‘She’s eleven,’ said Ellen. ‘Twelve in August.’

‘Is that all?’ Laura shook her head. ‘Never mind. A couple of years and it will all be happening for you, with hair like that.’

‘Won’t it just?’ Ellen agreed. ‘She’s like something from a fairy tale, isn’t she, Laura? Men can’t resist helpless blondes.’

Laura smiled. ‘Neither can women.’

Bobbie, Laura’s help, poked her head round the door. ‘Mrs Crane and her daughter are arriving.’

‘Christ, I’m off,’ said Laura. ‘Tell Lillian I’ll see her some other time. I can’t face her prissiness just now. And I promised
to meet Humphrey in Petersfield at three. Got to keep the husband happy.’

She scooped up her riding hat and jacket from the top of the dresser. ‘Don’t go snaring any helpless men while I’m gone,’
she said to Geenie.

Ellen watched her stride through the French windows and out into the garden, and – for just a second – wished she could straddle
the back of Laura’s horse and ride off over the Downs with her.

Bobbie cleared her throat. ‘She’ll be here most
imminently
, Mrs Steinberg—’

‘All right, all right.’ Ellen touched her hair, scraped back her chair and straightened her jacket. ‘You stay put, Flossy.’

‘Why can’t I come?’

‘I think I’ll deal with this myself, darling.’

‘I want to come.’

Ellen sighed. She bent down to look her daughter in the face. ‘I’ll bring her through in a minute, then we can all go home
together. It’ll only be a minute.’

. . . .

‘This is—’ Ellen stopped and stared.

She’d opened the door to the dining room with Diana in tow, only to find her daughter standing against the French windows,
holding Laura’s cig end. Geenie was leaning her head back on the glass and trailing the fingers of one hand across her stomach.

The new girl stepped from behind Ellen. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Diana.’

‘I am a helpless blonde, darling,’ declared Geenie, and she lifted the cig to her mouth and sucked, closing her eyes.

Ellen looked from one girl to the other, then burst out laughing. Diana smiled, showing a gap between her front teeth, and
Geenie blew out a big breath.

. . . .

On the way home, Diana was quiet. She was even prettier than Ellen had expected. Her black hair shone like wet stone, and
her eyelashes were as thick as a doll’s. Ellen chattered as much as she could, occasionally looking over her shoulder for
a response, but the girl just stared out of the car window.

‘You’ll love our cottage, Diana, I’m sure of it. It was a damp heap of ugliness when we first came, wasn’t it, Geenie? Now
it’s quite the palace. Albeit a small one. And very modern, too.’

They’d been in the cottage for less than a year, and already Crane and Arthur had dug new flower beds in the garden, knocked
kitchen and scullery into one room, installed the chugging electricity generator and built the writing studio. Sometimes she
felt all Crane wanted was to demolish the entire cottage and start again. But, she reasoned, it was better to let him get
on with it. Let him knock down all the old stuff, if that’s what he wanted. Much better to forget the past. Hadn’t that been
what she’d wished for, when they’d moved to Harting after James’s death? She hadn’t let Crane loose on the library, though.
That was her place. It was where she worked every day, typing up James’s letters. She’d collected enough now for a whole book.
It was important work, and she wanted it finished by the end of the summer.

Ellen glanced over her shoulder again. Diana hooked her dark hair behind one ear and carried on staring out of the window.

Geenie was just as bad. After her little cigarette show, she was now sitting on the other side of the back seat, gazing at
her knees.

‘Your daddy’s done wonders,’ Ellen continued. ‘He’s really transformed the place. It’s our country idyll, isn’t it, Geenie?
He’s very clever with his hands.’

‘I know,’ Diana said, but still she didn’t look round. For some reason, she reminded Ellen of Josephine Baker: perhaps it
was those smooth cheeks and lively eyes. She could see Diana easily controlling a pair of cheetahs whilst dancing an exotic
number.

‘My mother says houses are his forte,’ added Diana.

‘And writing, darling, your daddy’s a very clever writer, isn’t he?’

‘But houses are his forte,’ Diana insisted.

‘What’s forte?’ asked Geenie.

‘It’s like a special talent, darling, like you and dressing up.’

‘Or drawing,’ said Geenie. ‘That’s my forte, isn’t it, Ellen?’

She looked up then, hopefully, and Ellen conceded, ‘That too.’

‘My mother’s forte is dancing,’ said Diana. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Mine?’ Ellen asked. The may blossom flashed past as she bit her lip. She couldn’t very well say sex.
My forte is
fucking your daddy
.

‘I should say it’s helping people. Making them happy and comfortable.’

Diana looked confused. ‘Isn’t that what servants are for?’

Ellen turned into a slip road rather too fast and a man on a tractor shook his fist at her. ‘Ellen’s concentrating, darling.’

Of course, Diana’s mother probably had lots of fortes. It had been a short meeting, for which Ellen was glad. Lillian had
worn a mint green hat like a miniature meringue, and a green short jacket with mother-of-pearl buttons. Her eyebrows were
heavily plucked. But, Ellen had noticed, she looked old for her twenty-eight years. Perhaps all that dancing took it out of
you. And Lillian’s legs – the part Ellen had glimpsed beneath her fish-tail calf-length skirt – looked no better than her
own. She’d greeted her brightly enough, but had looked at her watch when Ellen suggested tea at Willow Cottage, which she’d
done on a whim, really, suddenly interested to see how Crane would react to seeing the two women together.

And now here was this girl, thankfully much more like her father than her mother – big brown eyes, a straight, strong nose,
prominent cheekbones – but when she closed her mouth, her lips were Lillian’s: large and slightly bunched together, as if
she had plenty to say, but couldn’t quite bring herself to the bother of letting it out.

‘What do you like?’ Geenie asked Diana.

Ellen had almost forgotten Geenie was in the car. It was strange how her daughter did that, seemed to disappear under her
cloud of blonde hair. She’d done it since she was small, her chin receding first, her eyes dropping to the ground, then her
shoulders sagging forward, until her face was almost entirely covered by hair. It was what had made James call her ‘Flossy’.
When she decided to make her presence felt with a scream or a tantrum, it was all the more shocking. Ellen remembered the
time she and James had been fighting, and neither of them had known that Geenie was under the table until James threw a dish
of hot beans at Ellen, and they’d splashed Geenie’s toes, making her yelp. They’d stopped, then, and spent the afternoon bathing
the girl’s feet in a jug of iced water in the garden. That was in the early days, when such an event was still enough to stop
them rowing.

She turned into the drive of Willow Cottage.

‘Do you like dancing?’ Geenie asked the other girl.

Diana shifted in her seat. ‘I’m still thinking,’ she said.

‘Thinking?’

‘About what I like.’

Ellen stopped the car.

‘What do you like?’ Geenie asked again.

‘Come on, then, time to get out.’

‘What do you like?’

‘Reading,’ said Diana.

‘Oh,’ said Geenie.

Ellen got out of the car and opened the door for the girls.

‘And dressing up,’ said Diana. ‘I like dressing up and being in plays.’

. . . .

Diana forked up her luncheon-meat salad with one hand. Unlike Geenie, who scattered crumbs and left mounds of lettuce untouched,
Diana ate everything and left the plate clean. Then she went on to tackle Kitty’s apple pie, using her spoon like a knife
to cut the pudding into even chunks before slowly chewing each piece.