Angel of Brooklyn

by Jenkins, Janette

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘I feel more at home here than I ever did in Scotland.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just fitted right in. No question. I felt accepted. Welcomed. But if I hadn’t? I’d be working my way back over there and knocking on my ma’s front door.’

  ‘Did you fall in love?’ she asked.

  ‘I fell in love all right,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t with a woman. It was with Coney Island, New York, this fat stinking corner of America.’

  She walked slowly down the boardwalk. Sometimes, it was hard to think that New York, and Coney, were only pieces of America. What about the rest of it? Why couldn’t Jonathan bring his business over here? Didn’t people in Brooklyn need some insurance? He would have his business and she would have hers.

  Locked in her thoughts she didn’t hear the commotion at first. The sound was ahead of her, but instead of voices, she heard the hungry gulls, screeching and crowing, circling the shoreline.

  She began walking faster. The air was cold and there was a crowd up ahead. People were running in all directions, waving their arms. Mr Yip appeared.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A woman,’ he told her. ‘She just jumped from the back of the ferry when it was landing at the pier. Smashed the back of her head. Now she’s floating, dead, and they can’t fish her out.’

  ‘Who is it?’ She could feel her voice shaking, feel her hands tightening into fists.

  Mr Yip shrugged. ‘I looked quickly into the water, but I’ve never seen her before,’ he said. ‘No one from your booth. A tourist probably. Who knows? It’s a bleak time to visit, that’s for sure.’

  She felt calmer as she walked towards the milling crowd. When she reached them, she stopped. She could hear people saying, ‘Her dress is caught up in the ferry.’ ‘We need a swimmer. A good strong swimmer.’ ‘Hell no, we need a lifeguard. What are we waiting for? Someone go fetch a cop.’ She wanted to walk away. She wanted to tell the people to go home, to go back to their business, because the cops were there already, and what use were they staring down at someone’s tragedy? But like most human beings, she was drawn to it. Standing at the back she could see nothing through the shoulders. A woman was crying. A man was saying, ‘It’s the jumping season. Heck, I’ve lived here seven years and we have two jumps a year from this ferry, it’s really nothing to write home about, unless of course they live to tell the tale, and it’s a strange way to end it, because it’s not a guarantee. It’s not like jumping from a building.’

  Beatrice felt sick. She could feel the bile rising in her throat. In front of her some men had been pushed towards the side, and there was a gap, and a sharp acrid smell of burning coal.

  ‘They’re bringing her out,’ said a man.

  ‘Let’s go back,’ said his friend. ‘Christ almighty, haven’t we seen enough?’

  The police were telling the crowd to move away. To give them more space. Someone had brought a stretcher and a blanket. Suddenly there was water running over their boots, and there she was, lying flat and heavy with oily salt water, her dress ripped to her waist, her leg black, her eyes still open. People covered their mouths and looked away. She was heavy. It was hard to get her up and onto the stretcher. They weren’t fast enough with the blanket, and Beatrice saw her face. Then she started running.

  At first she made no sense. Her skirt was full of vomit. She kept rubbing her hands over her face, through her hair, pulling at it.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Nancy. ‘Is it Jonathan?’

  Beatrice bent over, she was retching again. She was pummelling her feet. Whimpering.

  ‘Has he left her?’ said Celina. ‘I’ll kill him.’

  Beatrice whimpered even louder. Eventually, she spoke.

  ‘It was me. I killed someone,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. It was all because of me. I killed her.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Nancy, handing her a glass of water. ‘You wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  She was crying, bent at the waist. The water spilled across the floor and the glass cracked.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ said Celina.

  ‘So tell me, who’s dead?’ said Nancy. ‘Who is it?’

  Beatrice looked up. Her face was white, but her red-rimmed eyes were dark and it looked like someone had punched her. She took a few deep breaths.

  ‘I don’t know. They were dragging her from the water and then I saw her face, and I knew straight away why she’d done it.’

  ‘You mean the suicide this morning?’ said Celina. ‘I heard about that.’

  ‘It was her. The woman. The one who came to look at me. Do you remember her?’

  ‘Oh, I remember,’ said Celina. ‘The wife.’

  ‘She said I was killing her.’

  Nancy stroked her face. ‘Don’t blame yourself, honey. It wasn’t you. Not really. Look, who knows what she was thinking. People kill themselves for a hundred different reasons.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Celina. ‘Maybe she couldn’t pay her meat bill, or something.’

  Nancy glared at her.

  ‘No,’ said Beatrice. ‘It really was me. I know it was, for sure. The wings. The angel. The pictures. I didn’t think I was causing all this pain. I should have known.’

  ‘Don’t let her ruin everything,’ said Nancy. ‘Come on, Celina’s right. Perhaps she was unhinged?’

  ‘I can’t do this any more,’ she said. ‘Her husband came to see me. He sat on that chair and he fell in love with the image. Or he thought he was in love. He took the image home with him. It broke his wife’s heart and now she’s dead.’

  ‘Would you like a glass of brandy?’ said Celina. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll go and find some brandy.’

  She sat with Mr Cooper. He’d been crying. He couldn’t bear to see her so upset.

  ‘You’re too good for this business,’ he said, blowing his nose and sniffing into his handkerchief. ‘Didn’t I always say that? Perhaps I pushed you into it. I don’t know. I never meant to make you feel this bad.’

  ‘I need to go,’ she told him.

  ‘Yes, go. You must go. If that’s what you want, I won’t try and stop you. I’ll be happy for you. I’ll be waving you off at the dockside, with those long paper streamers, and I’ll miss you.’

  ‘What about your business?’

  ‘It’s almost December. The season’s done and dusted. I’ll find another angel for next year. She won’t be the real thing, but she’ll just have to do.’

  ‘Do you think I killed her?’ she asked.

  He looked at her. He couldn’t lie. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ he shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to think at all.’

  Soft with brandy, she went home where the room had a chill to it, and a bleak kind of light fell in squares across the furniture. Since meeting Jonathan she’d abandoned the blindfold, but now she wanted it back. It fitted tight around her head and kept out all the light. It was the only thing that would do. After looking in drawers, cupboards and underneath the bed, she had to make do with her pillow. She slept for hours, but it felt like a week. She woke up crying. They’d been watching her. The men on the chair. They had bulging eyes. They were laughing. Pointing. They were dressed in filthy clothes and she could hear someone crying, like a cat. When Billy opened the drape, they were all there, the wives, the girlfriends, they were weeping, hungry-looking children clinging at their skirts, but then one of them turned and she had something in her hand. What was it? A slingshot? A pistol? The women were going to kill her. She could see it in their eyes. She could feel it.

  *

  The Brooklyn Daily Eagle told them what was missing. The woman’s name was Mrs Susan Ethel Wingate. She was twenty-nine years old. She jumped from the ferry at 11.05 a.m. Her husband, Mr Thornton Wingate of Queens, was distraught, but not surprised when the police informed him of the incident. He’d found a note that morning. It said, ‘I just can�
�t stand it anymore.’ When police asked him what this note might have meant, he said, ‘Life. It was all too much for her. She was a fragile thing. Always was. But she was my wife, a mother, and I don’t know how we’ll cope without her.’ Mrs Wingate left two small children, aged three and eighteen months. The children were staying with relatives.

  ‘Why did you ever want to do it?’ Jonathan asked. They were sitting on the empty beach, wrapped in blankets. A bottle of red wine had been sunk into the sand. In front of them a pile of papers were weighted down with stones.

  ‘I had nothing else, no one else, and I was good at it,’ she said. ‘It didn’t feel wrong.’

  ‘You looked beautiful,’ he told her. ‘You were breathtaking, and I can’t condemn you for it, because if it wasn’t for the angel, perhaps I never would have seen you again. And yes, it was something that we’d heard about and something we wanted to see. Red-blooded Englishmen,’ he smiled. ‘Looking for the risqué part of Coney. We were there. We saw. What else can I say?’

  ‘That the rest is history? You could always say that.’

  ‘But is it?’ he said. ‘Do you really want to hang up your wings and follow me to England?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m more than sure,’ she said.

  ‘Then we’ll say goodbye to the angel part of Brooklyn. If you want to be my wife, then you’ll have to let it go. Every single part of it. You mustn’t take anything with you. Not a postcard. A picture. A feather.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘I want a new life. I’ve brought all the cards and pictures. We’ll burn them all.’

  ‘One last look?’ he smiled, picking out a postcard from the pile. ‘Can I?’

  ‘You can,’ she said. ‘But I’ve seen enough to last me a lifetime.’

  The room smelled of flowers. It was full of them. The town hall had never seen so many winter blooms. They were a gift from Mr Cooper and his flower-store neighbours.

  ‘But it’s December,’ said Beatrice, ‘they must have cost you a fortune.’

  ‘Church or no church, you have to have flowers at a wedding.’

  They had a week to organise everything. Nancy and Marnie had taken her shopping and they’d seen a dress in a Brooklyn store window that stayed in their heads all day. It had been a perfect fit. Fifty seed-pearl buttons and a lace-covered yoke.

  ‘Do I look like a bride in it?’ she whispered.

  ‘Sure you do,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s white, and fancy, and it has a little train at the back, you look beautiful.’

  ‘But do I look …?’

  ‘New? Virginal? Yes,’ she smiled. ‘You look as new as they come.’

  Marnie made the cake, and after the ceremony they sat on the steps at the back of the town hall, and ate it with the champagne that Celina had brought in an ice bucket. The winter sun was shining.

  ‘I’m a married woman,’ said Beatrice, showing off her ring.

  ‘You look married,’ said Celina.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nancy. ‘You’ll soon be baking pies, and knitting socks, and everything.’

  ‘Is it compulsory?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Celina. ‘What did I say? You could have set up home with me, and you wouldn’t have had to do a darn thing. We’d eat out all the time. I’d knit my own socks.’

  ‘I want to knit socks,’ said Beatrice. ‘I want to do everything.’

  While Jonathan was packing, Beatrice Crane spent her last day in America taking postcards and pictures of herself from Nancy and slipping them between the thin empty pages of a notebook.

  ‘It’s vanity,’ she said.

  Nancy handed her another one. ‘Vanity, nothing,’ she said. ‘This angel was your life.’

  ‘My old life.’

  ‘Still. I’d want to take her with me.’

  Beatrice nodded. She sat on her trunk with the lid pressed down, pulling at her lip. ‘It’s just a long stretch of water,’ she said. ‘How different can it be?’

  ‘You’ll write?’

  ‘I’ll write so often, England will run out of ink.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I’ll use pencils of course. Hundreds and hundreds of pencils.’

  Leaning over the ice-cold rail it was like she was looking down on herself and it was her hand that was waving up to someone else. They were all there, Mr Cooper and Violet Murphy, Nancy, Marnie, Celina. Marta and Magda were waving yellow streamers and causing a small stir of their own. Her arm was aching, and she was grateful when the ship began to move at last, and the people she had loved were merely dots, and all that was left was an outline.

  ASHES

  Anglezarke, England

  December, 1916

  THE WORLD WAS still white when Beatrice woke up, curled on her sofa, shivering. Her head was thumping and the empty bottles of wine stood on the hearth like two glass skittles. She could feel her hands shaking. She was parched and holding onto the sink, running a glass of water, when she first heard the banging on the door. She grimaced. The banging in her head was bad enough, and the cold; she could feel it round her ankles. If only she’d banked up the fire. Sitting at the kitchen table, she was too tired to answer the knocking. They’d come back, they’d have to. But when the banging moved to the back door, she suddenly felt scared. She swallowed. Was that the telegram boy? Was he telling her that Jonathan was dead?

  She pushed herself up and groaned. The room was moving; the pans on the hooks, the jars of rice and flour, and all the willow-patterned plates were going round in circles. Still the banging continued.

  A shot of cold air brought her round. The door was wedged in snow, and it wasn’t the telegram boy, it was only Ada.

  ‘But I thought you were here,’ said Beatrice, rubbing her head. ‘I thought you were sleeping upstairs.’

  Ada was wearing black. She looked like a crow standing in the snow. Her eyes, usually so wide and pale, were like shining chips of jet.

  ‘Well, she’s not,’ said a voice behind her.

  Ada, Madge and Lizzie walked into the kitchen, stepping carefully. They had ice on their boots. Beatrice backed towards the warmth of the stove, she was rubbing her hands and smiling through her confusion.

  ‘I’ve such a bad head,’ she said. ‘I’m a mess. I’ve just this minute woken and I must look something awful.’

  The women said nothing as they stood around the table. Lizzie was rubbing her forehead. Madge had her arms folded. Suddenly, Ada was reaching deep into a pocket, pulling something out, skimming a package over the table.

  ‘So, now we know who you are,’ she said, breaking the silence. ‘Who you really are.’

  She didn’t have to open it. Beatrice, her heart pounding, knew exactly what it was, and she could feel the floor tipping, gaping, and all her life pouring through the holes.

  ‘It seems like such a long time ago,’ she said, trying to keep herself together, putting water into the kettle. ‘It was a different time. A different place altogether.’

  ‘But you have nothing on,’ said Lizzie, sitting down. ‘Nothing on at all.’

  ‘They’re just pictures,’ Beatrice swallowed, not wanting to turn round and face them. She looked through the window but the snow made her eyes ache. ‘Some might call it art.’

  Ada laughed. ‘Art? Is that your excuse?’

  ‘I don’t need an excuse,’ she said. She felt weary and her head was throbbing, but she busied herself making tea. ‘Some might say they’ve seen more flesh in a gallery.’

  ‘A gallery? I’ve been to a gallery,’ said Ada. ‘And there might be some flesh now and then, but those pictures are different, and they’re not something you’d pass around through grubby fingers for a cheap kind of thrill.’

  Beatrice spilled the tea leaves. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  ‘Worse? Worse? Just listen to yourself,’ said Ada. ‘Is this what you Americans get up to? Has your dirty captain husband been passing them around?’

  ‘Of course not. Never.’ She shook her head, shocked. ‘He doesn�
�t even know.’

  ‘Know what?’ said Ada. ‘That he went and married a whore? That you took off all your clothes and stood bold as brass in front of a camera? Shameless.’

  ‘Poor Jonathan,’ said Madge.

  ‘No, I mean he doesn’t know that I brought the pictures to England. He thinks I burned them all.’

  ‘Jonathan knows about the pictures?’ said Lizzie. She looked pale, and grateful for the cup of tea that Beatrice pushed in front of her. ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t.’

  Ada shook her head. ‘What did I tell you about captains? They’re all at it.’

  ‘At what?’ said Beatrice.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Beatrice sat down. She could see the first picture on the pile. The Angel Would Like You to Stay. It looked so familiar and she could feel the weight of those wings on her shoulders, and now she didn’t know whether to smile, or to cry. She looked away, tired of pretending. It was snowing again.

  ‘It’s how we met,’ she said at last, and suddenly she didn’t care if they knew.

  ‘You sold him those dirty pictures?’ said Lizzie. ‘Those were the postcards?’

  ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘What?’ said Ada. ‘Yes? No? Which is it?’

  Beatrice shook her aching head. She could see the bottle of aspirin standing on the cupboard, but she couldn’t move to get it.

  ‘Go on, tell us,’ said Madge.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ada. ‘I’d like to know how a respectable young man goes to America and comes back with a whore.’

  Lizzie flinched.

  ‘I’m not a whore,’ Beatrice whispered. ‘Of course I’m not.’

  ‘She’s not,’ said Lizzie, looking relieved. ‘See. I told you. I knew she couldn’t be that.’

  Ada shook her head. ‘How do we know? You’re a liar. How do we know that you’re not the same as that Frenchwoman I found in Jim’s wallet?’