Billy glanced over his shoulder. Beatrice felt sick as she looked straight ahead at the nickel. She could hear the woman breathing, and sighing now and then. Beatrice took a long glance at her. The woman was red-eyed. She looked hungry, she looked like she hadn’t slept for weeks.
Beatrice wanted to say a lot of things. She wanted to say, he doesn’t know me and I don’t know him. Really. I’m nothing to him, whoever he is, I never have been, and if something is killing you, then how can it be me? I’ve never touched him, cared for him, showed him any kindness, I haven’t been there for him, shared a meal, a walk, anything. He doesn’t know my name. Not really. I don’t know his. I never will know his. But she couldn’t.
7. More
According to Mr Hoff, Mr Cooper and Maurice, Angel was so popular – especially in Germany – that extra copies had been printed, and they were clamouring for more. The book had been out for a year. It had sold in gentlemen’s clubs, through word of mouth, at society meetings (photographic and otherwise), it was known in gentrified circles, and was the talk of New York, Boston, and those newly developing parts of Los Angeles, where the artistic, theatrical, film set were living. The book had been exported to Europe, and Mr Hoff’s Paris office had been inundated with requests. They would like to see their ‘Angel’ in the flesh. They would like another volume.
‘They would like to see more of you,’ said Mr Hoff, pacing up and down his office, opening a window, lighting a cigar, abandoning it, pulling down a blind.
‘More pictures?’ said Beatrice.
‘More of you,’ said Hoff.
The room was wood-panelled, and everything looked expensive, from the green leather seats, to the gold-framed scenes of huntsmen at chase, and the ivory inlaid humidor that Mr Hoff kept stroking with his fingers.
‘What I am trying to say,’ he coughed, ‘is that some of our European friends think the photographs are a little too chaste.’ He rummaged in his desk drawer. ‘What they would like is a little more of this.’ He slid across an envelope. ‘Open it up,’ he said. ‘Take a look.’
The girls on the pictures and postcards were naked, but they were also doing other things. The pictures were graphic, they were kissing men, other girls, they had their legs wide open, they were touching themselves, bending over; all in all, they were pornographic. They made her stomach turn.
‘I just couldn’t,’ said Beatrice.
Mr Hoff smiled. ‘You have a big following,’ he told her. ‘Everywhere I go, people are talking about the Angel of Brooklyn. Heck, they’re even singing about her, and on the other side of the river, I hear there are cheap imitations.’
‘There are other angels now, yes.’
‘So …’ he breathed, turning his back on her for a moment. ‘We need to rethink our game. We need to find you another venue. A real venue.’ He turned round and grinned. ‘I was thinking of the Ritz Hotel.’
‘Manhattan?’
‘Of course, where else? Think about it. Everything about you says Manhattan Island. And wouldn’t you be so much more comfortable in a suite than standing on a box like you’re part of a travelling freak show? In a first-rate hotel you would be able to entertain your guests who would be willing to pay much more for the comfort and the privilege.’
‘Entertain them, how?’
‘Like any hostess,’ he said, flicking up his hand. ‘You could set them up with drinks, cigars and so on.’
‘You mean I’d be a prostitute?’
‘I never said that. The term I would use is “exhibitionist”. Think about it. Think about the money you would make, why, you’d be able to set yourself up nicely in a very good apartment in the best part of town, and if the book is anything to go by, this time next year you could be riding in an automobile, you’d be dripping in so many jewels you would need an armed escort.’
‘What about Mr Cooper?’ she asked.
He sighed expansively. ‘What about him? Jesmond Cooper is nothing but a small rat on the sidewalk. He owns a little sideshow. Sideshow, nothing. His business was rumbling along before you appeared, and I’m sure it will rumble on again.’
‘I like Coney Island.’
‘Of course you do, my dear, it’s all you’ve ever known.’
‘I feel comfortable there.’
‘Standing on your little box?’
‘Yes.’
Mr Hoff sighed. ‘If only you could see it.’
‘See what?’
‘You are living and working in the gutter,’ he told her. ‘You are a lily in the filth of the fairground and the people who come to stand and gawp are the lowlife of this world, with their grubby pockets of change, they are the unwashed and unpleasant of America.’
‘I don’t have to touch them.’
‘You wouldn’t want to. Truly. The gentlemen I am talking about are rich, clean and well living. They’re from the oldest, finest families, they own land, companies, and what’s more, they are all in love with you.’
‘In love? No, they are not.’
‘All right, all right, so they’re in love with an illusion, but think about it, think of your new status in this world, and the power you’d have over some of the greatest men in America. We’ll meet again, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll have cocktails. Have you ever tasted a real cocktail? The bar at the Ritz is sublime. I can show you the suite. Have you ever been inside a hotel suite? The Ritz? It’s like walking into paradise.’
‘I don’t think so.’ She hesitated, she pictured the rooms, those jewels she’d seen in Tiffany’s, the strings of giant pearls.
‘You don’t think so?’
She shook her head. Why kid herself? She knew she would not be able to do it. Those photographs had shocked her. Some of them were so graphic they looked like illustrations from a doctor’s manual.
‘Whose paradise is it?’ she asked. ‘Mine, or yours? My answer is no.’
‘Couldn’t we reach a compromise? The photographs say? They’d take half a day. You’d outsell the Bible.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’ve really made up your mind?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re a pretty little fool,’ he said, grinding his teeth and showing her to the door. ‘That’s all there is to it, you’re a fool.’
8. The Englishmen
Nancy and Celina were ill – they’d been to a party somewhere along Ocean Avenue, a girl who was moving out to France was celebrating, and they’d eaten some clams that had turned them inside out.
‘I know you’re our star attraction and all that,’ said Mr Cooper, looking at his hands and plucking at his fingernails, ‘and you’re lovely, but I have no one else to do their afternoon shift. You’d be selling the usual trinkets. Would you? Could you? Please?’
‘Hmm,’ she said, patting him gently on the shoulder. ‘I think I can remember how to do that. I keep my clothes on, don’t I?’
He smiled. ‘You know, you really are an angel,’ he said, grimacing at the cliché.
It was early September, and the crowds were changing into huddles. The sky was still blue, but the air had a fresher feel to it and when the sun went in you could see the beachfront shivering.
‘I come here every year,’ one of her customers told her. ‘I met my husband at Coney. First time I saw him, he was riding on an elephant. He died three years last May. I still come. I rent the same room, I go on the Dragon’s Gorge, I take a walk through the Hall of Mirrors, the Cakewalk, all the old favourites. I eat Franny’s chowder, and I feel him sitting right there beside me, I have to keep telling myself not to order the chowder for him, though I sometimes feel I’d like to.’
The woman bought a postcard of Lake Dreamland and a cowrie shell necklace. Business was slow. Beatrice tidied the stock drawers. She dusted down the ornaments, the little pot cats that had Coney painted on their backs, the Negro dolls, the smiling elephants that opened out into tiny manicure sets and mirrors. Later, she stood outside the booth with the cards in her hand, walking up a
nd down, talking to the woman selling lucky charms and heather, the man on the frankfurter stall who was waiting to hear who’d won the three o’clock race, and then there was the man playing sad songs on the corner, for no reason in particular, ‘only it’s a sad song kind of day’. She watched the dancers from the Show Hall, smoking pink cigarettes; a girl called Kathlyn waved at her, she was the girl who wore the birdcage on her head and danced in the peacock ballet. ‘You have customers,’ she mouthed, pointing back towards the stall. Then she winked.
Beatrice held out the cards as the two men stood looking at the window, with its shelves of bottled sand, Coney Island teaspoons and racks of picture postcards. One of them had his hands in his pockets and she could see the edge of his jacket shivering in the breeze, the well-stitched lining, blue and cream, then he slipped it off, hooking it over his shoulder, and his oval-shaped cufflinks were winking at her.
‘Can I help you?’ she said.
The other one turned to her and grinned. ‘Oh, I hope so,’ he said. English, she thought, or a very good New England. ‘We’re looking for some cards.’
She moved a little closer. She pulled out the stand and brought the boxes towards them. ‘We have hundreds,’ she said. ‘Help yourself.’
She watched them turning the stand, pulling out cards and whispering. Their clothes looked well made. Rich even. The one with the jacket over his shoulder handed her half a dozen cards and she slipped them into a printed brown bag and helped him with the change.
‘Nickels, dimes, cents, dollars,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m still not used to it. I’ve been weighed down in change for a week.’
‘Then I’ll know it’s you,’ she said. ‘If I’m walking down the boardwalk and I hear somebody clanging.’
‘Oh he clangs all right,’ said his friend. ‘By the way, do you know a chap called Butch?’
The clanging man looked embarrassed, and he stepped away, looking through the window again, examining all the small painted bottles and the seashells.
‘Butch? Does Butch spend his days cutting hair?’
‘So you do know him?’ he said. Then his voice turned into a theatrical kind of whisper. ‘Thing is, whilst we were getting ourselves shaved yesterday, this chap Butch mentioned another type of postcard.’
‘Oh? You want something a little further afield? New Jersey, for example? We do have a couple, though they’re never very popular. We have Manhattan too. Let’s see, we have the Tribune Building, and Madison Square Garden …’
‘I like Madison Square Garden,’ said the friend at the window.
‘These cards don’t have buildings on them,’ he said, pulling in his eyebrows.
‘They don’t?’ said Beatrice.
‘At least, I don’t think they do.’
‘Ah, you mean the boardwalk? The clear blue ocean? Our world-famous roller coasters?’
‘I mean people,’ he said, looking more than a little hot under the collar. ‘I mean ladies, mostly.’
She smiled gently, because enough, she supposed, was enough. ‘Well, sir, if you’re thinking of the type of postcard I think you’re thinking of, then you’ll have to go to our other outlet after seven o’clock. Here’s where it is,’ she said, handing him a sheet. ‘Ask for Mr Cooper.’
‘I will,’ he swallowed. ‘And thank you.’
She watched them walking down the boardwalk, the way the blue-white jacket was swinging, the way their summer brogues went shushing over the dusty wooden planks. The friend looked over his shoulder. She looked away. A new piece of sun was burning into her face. A girl was turning the postcard stand. ‘I want five,’ she was saying, ‘and they have to be the same, or I just won’t hear the last of it.’
It was a long afternoon, but somehow she didn’t mind the few customers, overdressed now the sun was out again, panting at the counter with tales of lodging houses and the family back home. She bought a lemonade and held the cheap paper cup into the sunlight, wondering what it would have been like, sipping champagne cocktails at the Ritz with Mr Hoff and all his rich New Yorkers. She watched the one-armed bartender laughing with his sweetheart. She waved at the tattooist, shivering at the birds still dancing beak to beak in circles round his neck. ‘How ya doin’, Bea?’ he called. ‘Oh, I’m just fine,’ she shouted back and he saluted her. It would be nothing like this, she thought, as Marta and Magda called out to her, sharing a bottle of soda, a straw at either side. It would be nothing.
She hadn’t told Mr Cooper or the other girls about Hoff’s proposition. She’d said no, so why should she mention it? It made her feel uncomfortable and it would make them feel worse.
Nancy appeared, walking slowly. ‘Thanks,’ she said, limping behind the counter. ‘I’ll just sit with you for the last half-hour. I needed to get out of my room, it was like the walls were throbbing, I felt terrible just lying there waiting for it all to subside.’
‘I won’t mention clams,’ said Beatrice. ‘Or seafood in general.’
Nancy put her head in her hands. ‘And they looked so good,’ she groaned. ‘Mind you, it could have been the wine, we drank an awful lot of wine, and I danced with a boy with hair the colour of carrots, and he reminded me of home.’
‘But you hated it at home.’
‘The nostalgic, fictional home,’ she said. ‘The home where Papa’s a good man, Mamma makes biscuits, and there’s a piece of fancy lace sitting at the window.’
That night, hooking herself into her wings, she thought about her own lost home. She pictured another family living in the rooms, holding hands, saying grace, eating at the big kitchen table that had been sold with the house, her own and Elijah’s initials carved underneath with a whittle knife – had they discovered them yet? She wondered who might be sleeping in her room, with the window looking out onto the scorched piece of garden where the grass had never regrown. What were they dreaming in there? What would they be thinking, looking up at the cracked plaster ceiling? And when the house was quiet, could they hear the gentle fluttering of wings, could they feel a small draught moving over their faces, a twitching whirr of feathers, softer than a bat?
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked Nancy, who was helping her with her wings.
‘Shaky.’
‘Are you seeing the carrot boy again?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really can’t remember. I’d better ask someone. I’ll ask Celina, she’s out there looking unacceptably healthy, selling pictures to two Englishmen. We managed to get them in tonight, and by the looks on their faces you would have thought it was just turning Christmas.’
Beatrice blushed. ‘I know those men,’ she said.
‘And they’re not half bad-looking,’ said Nancy. ‘But you know what the English are like.’
‘Like what?’
‘Cold fish. They’re all soft soaking lips and cold sweaty palms and no real substance, so be warned.’
‘I’m warned,’ said Beatrice. ‘Who’s first on the list tonight?’
‘An old guy,’ said Nancy. ‘Says his name is Mr Finnegan, but I know better. I remember him from the old days, his name is Mr Ronald Penn and he’s a headmaster, a naughty headmaster who was struck off for something seedy and unspoken, so there.’
‘Oh, there’s no fooling you,’ said Beatrice.
She stood looking at the nickel, feeling her ankles tremble; she could hear the headmaster sniffing and licking his lips, then she could hear voices outside the booth, all the chattering and laughter, and she tried to make them out. Who was it talking to Nancy? She wished she was out there, instead of up on her podium, voiceless, like a statue, because tonight, it seemed, she really felt like talking.
‘What are they saying?’
‘They’ll be talking about nothing,’ said Billy.
‘But can you hear them?’
‘Sure I can hear them, I hear them every night, they’re standing around just passing the time of day, flirting a little and pouting, keeping the men smiling, reminding them of the no-talking, no-touchin
g rule, which has to be a good thing, and then they sell them all the cards, which is an even better thing. What’s gotten into you tonight?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’
Towards the end of the night, the first Englishman appeared. It was the one with the straw-coloured hair who’d asked about the pictures.
‘Oh my,’ he’d said, then, ‘Sorry.’
She didn’t look at him. She could feel her heart beating, and she wondered if he could see it, pumping at her breast. When Billy lifted the drape at the end of four long minutes, he said, ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’
There was a small break. Half a cigarette for Billy and a sip of water for her. Then the other man appeared. She glanced at him. He’d changed into a pale linen suit, the Englishman abroad. He put his fingers to his lips, he looked embarrassed, but then he was smiling, and somehow she couldn’t help but smile with him. He had something over his knees, and when half his time had gone he held it up. She looked. On a crumpled piece of paper he’d written, Will You Go Out With Me?
She shrugged.
He turned the paper round. On the other side he’d written, Please?
She smiled. Shook her head. Then she nodded.
He blinked his wet eyes.
He was smiling like a cat.
What else could she do?
9. Walking Out
‘You’re not clanging. I’m very disappointed.’
‘I left all my change in a bowl. I don’t think clanging’s dignified.’
‘I suppose not. Unless you’re a bell?’
‘A good bell has to clang at least every hour, that’s true.’
They had arranged to meet the next afternoon. They were strolling along the boardwalk, the sun warm; all the clouds had vanished.
‘So where’s your friend today? The one who doesn’t clang at all.’
‘Freddy is out with a girl he met last night. He seems particularly smitten, for Freddy.’
‘He’s not the impressible type?’
‘He’s very hard to please. At least he used to be.’
‘And you?’
‘Oh, I’m easy, always have been, though I do have a penchant for girls who wear wings.’
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