‘Oh Bess, oh my God.’ Bob moved backwards in a daze, stumbling out of the outhouse and towards the edge of the lawn; leaning against the picket fence, he had his face in his bloodstained hands, retching.
Beatrice stepped carefully through the door and reached out to her moaning father, who was still on his hands and knees.
‘Let me help you. Let me pull you out.’
‘Get away!’ her father shouted as the sparks suddenly turned into a roaring line of flames. ‘Move back!’
‘Just get out! Father, please!’
Beatrice ran to safety as a barrel exploded, then another, and the outhouse was quickly consumed, the bird skulls on the shelf, the bones in the pot, the dog guts, the head on the pole, and Ethan.
‘Almighty God!’ Bob shouted. ‘No!’
Beatrice ran in a blind panic towards the street. ‘Help!’ she cried, her voice sounding choked. ‘Help! Help! Please! Help!’
It was not a busy street. It was getting past supper time and people were indoors. She ran towards the nearest house, her heart pounding, she drummed her fists against the door, she began to kick at it, but still no one came.
‘Anyone? Please?’ she yelled, pulling off her beret. She turned, then a man appeared, he was running towards her, his shirt tails flapping.
‘I could see it from my window,’ he said. ‘My son’s gone to the fire depot. Come on, come on, let’s go get some water on it, quick!’
She ran with him, back to the garden, where Bob and Myrna were already trying to throw pails of water over the blaze, but they couldn’t get close enough, it was too hot and too late; everything had gone.
‘I can’t believe this, I just can’t,’ Bob was saying. ‘I didn’t want him to … I didn’t want this, I should have … surely he could have …’
Beatrice was frozen. ‘Yes,’ she was saying, over and over, as the outhouse burned, and the fine misty rain turned black. ‘He could have.’
LEAVE
140a Oceanic Avenue
Coney Island
Brooklyn
New York
April 30, 1916
Dearest Beatrice,
I kept meaning to write, I always started, sometimes finished, but never quite got around to sending it off. Chances are this might not even reach England.
Ever since the war started, I’ve been thinking about you, and praying you’re both safe. Everything here is strained, it’s like people are trying too hard, if you know what I mean. I can only imagine what it must be like in England. I don’t know. It’s like the world’s closing down.
I promised myself that this would be a good letter, a letter to make you smile, but what can I say that will make it any better? Franny has her shutters down and her place is up for rent. She lost both her brothers last year in some filthy Belgium wasteland, and she wants to go back to Dublin to be with her mother, who is crippled with her sadness and has locked herself into the house. So, no more oysters, or bowls of mussels with a jug of cold beer, sitting outside, watching the light on the ocean, and you swimming like a mad thing, and your hair dripping wet. How you didn’t get pneumonia is beyond me.
I was still at Cooper’s until last fall, but I couldn’t face it anymore, though heaven knows those boys need entertaining. Now I’m waiting tables at an eatery called The Tide. It’s a new place, and the food stinks, but the owners are good people and it almost keeps me sane.
Other news. Marnie has a baby boy called Jack. Looks just like his father, who’s still around, and seems to be treating her like the Queen of Coney Island, now she’s given him an heir. (He has four daughters with his other wives.) I had something of a dalliance with a boy from Long Island, but he was only here for a couple of months, and then of course he didn’t write, though he promised me a thousand times, and so it meant nothing, and I am still on my own, and in no mood for romancing. Look at where it gets you. Celina has moved into the centre of Brooklyn with a girlfriend and they’re the happiest, craziest couple you could meet. The girl’s name is Marina and Celina’s always joking about where she’s going to park her yacht. Marina’s very pretty with dark gypsy looks, but has a boyish way about her. She writes poems and stories and some of them have been published in McCall’s.
We all miss you. On the rare times we’re together, we talk about you. It’s Beatrice this, and that, and remember the time we … well, you know how it goes.
I hope this letter reaches you. It isn’t much, but it’s something to tell you that you’re still in my heart, always have been, and maybe when this whole awful thing is over, we can meet up again, linking arms, and laughing, or just sitting around being quiet. Whatever you want to do. Wherever.
All my love and prayers to you.
From Nancy
She found herself quietly sobbing. It had all happened at once – Jonathan had arrived home yesterday, then the letter. It was early June, and the sunshine had appeared, the rain had dried, and she was sitting in the garden with the warmth on her face, Jonathan pouring drinks, and now Nancy.
‘What’s the matter, my darling? What’s happened?’ Jonathan pushed his chair a little closer. He had his sleeves rolled up. He’d just been mowing the lawn.
‘Nothing,’ she told him. ‘It’s just a voice from back home, and you’re here with me, full of grass stains, and looking so whole and so ordinary. It’s wonderful.’
‘I don’t like ordinary,’ he smiled. ‘Ordinary stinks.’
‘Now you’re sounding like an American,’ she said. ‘I like you being English.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he saluted. ‘I’ll talk just like the King.’
‘I’ve never heard the King,’ said Beatrice. ‘But he has a kind enough face, and I’m sure he has the voice to go with it.’
They sat side by side in their deckchairs, Beatrice in her coat, Jonathan in his shirtsleeves – it seemed he didn’t feel the chill – and they held hands, smoking cigarettes, watching the early butterflies looping and hovering over the small yellow roses.
‘Does it feel strange to be back?’ she asked.
‘It feels stranger knowing I have to return to the front in less than a week. I feel guilty for leaving them, for being able to sit like this, at home with you, and all the comforts.’
‘You deserve a break.’
‘It’s all part of the game,’ he said, flicking ash into the breeze. ‘After a big campaign we recuperate, then we come back with vigour, and we need all that vigour in the trenches.’
‘Jeffrey wouldn’t talk about it. He said it was hell.’
‘Did he? I hear he’s up for promotion. Hell’s been good to him. It’s given him stripes and a bed in a chateau, which is where they’re apparently sleeping in that neck of the woods.’
‘And Frank?’
‘What about him?’
‘They sent him back. Why? He wasn’t fit. He looked terrible.’
Jonathan stood up; folding his arms he walked to the edge of the lawn. He prodded a dandelion with the muddy tip of his boot.
‘I saw Frank only last week. He was laughing and joking, you know how he is. Someone had found him a bicycle. He was looking forward to cycling up to the village for supplies. He was glad to be back in the thick of it with his comrades.’
‘You’ll tell all this to Madge?’
‘I don’t fancy going out,’ he shrugged. ‘You tell her.’
Madge was on her way to the shop. She was slightly stooped with a scarf around her neck. She looked older.
‘Jonathan says Frank’s all right,’ Beatrice said, running over. ‘He has a bicycle.’
‘A bicycle? What kind of a war is it, when a soldier needs a bicycle?’
‘They use them to get supplies,’ Beatrice told her. ‘They ride up to the village and back.’
‘You know more about my husband than I do.’
‘Not really. Jonathan won’t talk about it, but he wanted me to tell you that Frank is doing fine, he’s all in one piece, and he’s happy.’
‘Happy
?’ Madge smiled uncertainly. ‘Really?’
‘That’s what he told me, and I know he wouldn’t lie,’ she said.
Jonathan was quiet. He kept pressing at his eyes, and pacing round the room.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Beatrice.
‘Nothing. It’s still in my head.’
She took his hand. ‘Let’s go and lie down,’ she said.
She undressed him. He looked thinner, she could see the shape of his ribs, and his shoulder blades had sharpened.
‘I wasn’t going to come back,’ he said. ‘Most of the men were refused leave. One of them, a young lad from Brecon, wanted leave to see his baby, because the little girl has whooping cough. They went and turned down his request.’
‘Don’t think about that.’
He shrugged her off a little. ‘I have to; I have to keep thinking, because they’re my men.’
‘You’re here now, and you’ll be all the better for it.’
He sunk his head into her neck. She smelled clean. He’d missed that wet-soap smell, and although he’d dabbed a little of her scent onto his handkerchief it had hardly lasted the outward journey. She brought his hand up to her breast.
‘Lie down,’ she said, pulling off her clothes. He did as he was told, but he seemed more intent on the window than on his naked wife, whom he’d been dreaming about constantly since he’d been at the front. In his dreams she was lying beside him. She was an acrobat flying in the circus. She was on a ship, a pale grey smudge on the horizon. She was leaving him.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I look at you, and I want you, but nothing happens.’
She tucked herself into him. She touched him, like she used to, but his penis remained soft.
‘No hope of a leave baby,’ he said, with a grim laugh.
‘We don’t need a baby,’ she said. ‘I’m happy simply lying here with you. It’s what I’ve been thinking of for months.’
‘I’m tired,’ he said with his eyes closed. ‘That’s what it is, I’m tired.’
Beatrice let him sleep. She poured herself a glass of water, then went back to see him, simply lying there. He was there, but he wasn’t; he looked like a shadow, and although she knew she shouldn’t, she couldn’t help feeling disappointed. ‘I’m selfish,’ she told herself. ‘I wanted all of him, like it used to be.’ She sat beside the bed, then moved, because it felt like she was visiting someone sick. She thought of Frank. ‘No, he’s not like Frank. He’s nothing like that. He’s all fine and well. He’s just tired.’
‘He looks like a ghost,’ said Lizzie.
‘What do you mean, a ghost? Ghost, nothing. He looks just like he always did,’ said Ada. ‘Fit and healthy and strong. Why should he have all the leave? I’ve hardly heard from my Jim. And he says nothing in his letters.’
‘Tom hasn’t written in ages,’ said Lizzie. ‘I hope he’s all right.’
‘He’s too busy doing all the dirty work for Sergeant Crane,’ said Ada. ‘Sergeants and captains and colonels and the like don’t do any fighting. They just sit at their desks and write out all the orders.’
‘Is that true?’ asked Madge.
‘Of course it’s true,’ said Ada. ‘Why do you think your Frank came home with his back all twisted, and Jonathan’s walking about like he’s been away for a few months on business?’
‘Someone did once tell me that the sergeants are nowhere near the front,’ said Madge. ‘That they’re sitting it out in comfort, and they’re miles away from the action.’
‘True. And they still have all the luxuries,’ said Ada. ‘Brandy, fancy French wine and roast dinners.’
‘And hot baths,’ said Madge. ‘What my Frank wouldn’t have given for a hot mustard bath. A bath would have done his back the world of good.’
‘They hardly know there’s a war going on at all,’ said Ada. ‘Yet they get all the glory. They get all the fancy medals, and the visits from the King.’
‘The King?’ said Lizzie, her cheeks turning pink. ‘I wonder if my Tom has seen His Majesty the King?’
‘Oh, he only bothers with the sergeants,’ said Ada, bristling.
‘But the men who are fighting fair and square, he has nothing to do with at all,’ said Madge, joining in, remembering a conversation she’d had with a woman in town. ‘He looks at them like they’re nothing but a piece of muck on his shiny royal boot. And he won’t shake their hands in case he catches something.’
‘The King?’
‘Yes, the King.’
‘But that’s awful,’ said Lizzie, thinking of the cup with his face on it, sitting on her mantelpiece.
‘That’s the truth,’ said Madge. ‘That’s the whole sorry truth of this war.’
He liked seeing her in her overalls, working on the farm. He was proud of his American, doing her bit for England. Ginny came over to him, blushing. She tried to straighten out her frizzy red hair. She quickly spat on her handkerchief, wiping the small muddy freckles from the bridge of her nose.
‘Dad says he doesn’t know what he’d have done without her,’ she said, facing him over the wall. ‘She’s been a real help. A godsend.’
‘Good.’
‘She’s busy in the shed, but you’re welcome to come in for some tea.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, opening the gate. ‘I’d like that.’
They sat by the range. A tabby cat came over and curled itself into a ball by his feet. There was the smell of baking bread; it made him feel hungry.
‘How very strange to be sitting here, and my wife out there working hard, it doesn’t seem right at all.’
‘You’ve worked hard enough,’ said Ginny. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Well …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s all a team effort. It has to be.’
The heat was making him sleepy and the glow from the range blurred his eyes. He lit a cigarette, and offered it to Ginny.
‘Thanks. Your wife certainly has some tales to tell.’
‘She has?’
‘Oh, yes. Her life in America. She keeps us all entertained.’
He could feel his face twitching. ‘She does?’
‘Of course, we hardly know what to believe half the time. It seems so far-fetched to those of us who’ve never left Lancashire, never mind England.’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, pulling a loose strand of tobacco from his lips, ‘America really is something else.’
‘Oh, it sounds very free and easy,’ she went on, shaking her head, looking at the fat glowing tip of her cigarette. ‘And men walking out with women, even if they’re married. Apparently, it doesn’t matter over there, though I had to keep reminding her that it’s different here in England.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Over here. It doesn’t look right, I told her, though of course, it’s not her fault she’s a foreigner and doesn’t know our ways yet.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Beatrice and Jeffrey Woodhouse. They spent all his leave together. She said you wouldn’t mind, and I’m sure that you don’t, but I didn’t think it looked right.’
‘No, of course not,’ he said, looking at the brasses hooked around the range, the toasting forks and irons. ‘Thank you, thank you for putting her right.’
‘Least I could do,’ she smiled.
‘Of course I smell of pigs for most of the time,’ she said, her hair wet from the bath.
‘Jeffrey didn’t mind?’
‘What?’
‘Ginny tells me that you spent all his leave together.’
‘We went out for a drink.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see.’
She rubbed her hair with the towel. ‘So, now they think I’m a harlot?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And you? What do you think?’
‘I know Jeffrey,’ he grinned. ‘He wouldn’t take advantage.’
‘And me? Would I take advantage of Jeffrey?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I trust you.’
‘So you damn
well should,’ she said, but she was smiling and flicking her towel at him.
He watched her combing out her hair. It looked dark when it was wet, and from the back she looked like someone else.
‘These tales you’ve been telling,’ he said. ‘Do they know about the wings?’
She stopped. ‘Of course they don’t, I’d never tell them that. I’ve told them nothing but a few light-hearted stories to keep them entertained.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m positive.’
‘Because Ginny had me worried.’
‘I would never tell. It’s our secret.’
‘It’s more than that,’ he said.
They sat listening to her new gramophone records. Jonathan could feel the tension slowly leaving his body, though he doubted his ability to make love to her.
‘I wish it was over,’ she said. ‘I wish I knew what it was like. Imagination is often worse than reality, don’t you think?’
‘It can be.’
‘You won’t tell me?’
He sighed, taking hold of her hand, marvelling at its smallness, the way his palm could swallow it.
‘I won’t tell you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the very reason we’re fighting is so that you’ll never really know.’
‘Tell me one thing.’
‘No.’
‘One thing.’
He smiled. ‘You won’t wear me down.’
‘Tell me one thing,’ she said, looking up into his face. ‘Give me one small thing, and let me have it as a gift.’
He poured himself a brandy. The record had stopped and the room was full of the clock, ticking on the mantelpiece.
‘All right. One thing, and don’t ask me any more.’
‘I’ll never ask, I promise.’
He closed his eyes, sitting back against the cushions looking thoughtful. ‘I’ll talk about Jim and his good friend Solange Devaux,’ he said, slowly. ‘That will be my gift to you. But you must never repeat this story. Ever. You must never tell Ada, or any of the others. That has to be part of the deal.’
She nodded.
‘I mean it.’
‘Sure you do, and yes, I promise.’
‘Solemnly?’
She smiled, but then her voice dropped. ‘On your life.’
Angel of Brooklyn Page 16