The Good Plain Cook (22 page)

‘You don’t have to live in, do you? Anyway, you could get another, now you’ve the experience. The Macklows’—’ ‘I hated it
at the Macklows’.’

‘At least it was work. It got you out of the house, didn’t it?’

Kitty gave a laugh. ‘I still had to go home every day and get Mother’s tea, while you were—’ She stopped. The sisters faced
each other. Lou’s cheeks were puffy with heat and her lipstick had a tiny crumb of cake stuck to it.

‘While I was what?’

Kitty concentrated on the crumb and kept her voice even. ‘Married. In your own house. With your own things. Away from us.’

They were silent for a while. Then Lou said, ‘She had an all right life, when you look at it.’ She gestured towards their
mother’s name on the gravestone with her handbag. ‘Did what she liked, didn’t she?’

‘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  · · ·

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.

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.