The Good Plain Cook

by Bethan Roberts

  ‘Can we play now?’ asked Geenie.

  Ellen threw up her hands. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Games are so much more interesting than food.’

  The girls scraped back their chairs and Ellen watched the two of them disappear.

  · · · Nine · · ·

  Lou looked like an oversized mermaid in the new dress. The shiny green fabric was clamped to her thighs. Her breasts were squashed into a loaf shape, and her waist had become a series of rolls. It was Macclesfield silk, crème de menthe green, she said, with three-quarter-length sleeves and a cowl neckline. The hem didn’t quite touch the floor.

  ‘It’s bloody well shrunk.’

  Lou had inherited their grandmother’s ginger curls, which meant green was her colour.

  ‘I’ll murder that laundry woman.’

  It was Saturday night, and Mrs Steinberg, Geenie, Mr Crane and the new girl had gone to his sister’s for dinner, telling Kitty she may as well take the evening off. So here she was, in Lou and Bob’s bedroom, kneeling on the Axminster, her fingertips beginning to sweat as she held the hem of the dress and looked up at her sister.

  ‘Can you do anything at all?’ asked Lou.

  Kitty pulled the hem taut and examined it.

  ‘You must be able to do something, Kit.’

  She stood and took her sister by the shoulders, turning her round so she could see the back of the dress. ‘Hmm.’ She whipped the inch tape from around her neck and drew it across Lou’s back. She wasn’t sure why she did it, but it was what her sister would expect. Some sort of measuring and working out in order to reshape the garment to her size. Kitty knew she could do nothing to this dress to make it any better. But when she had a tape around her neck and pins in her mouth, her sister seemed to move easily in her hands.

  She pinched a piece of fabric at Lou’s waist.

  ‘Ouch! That’s me you’re squeezing!’

  ‘I might be able to let it out here...' She spoke from the corner of her mouth so as not to drop the pins. Turning her sister around again, she ran a hand over the neckline, trying to smooth it down over Lou’s chest.

  ‘How are things at the cottage? You haven’t said much about it.’

  ‘I could let it out at the back, maybe...'

  ‘Could you?’

  Kitty stabbed a pin into the shoulder of the dress.

  ‘What’s she like then, the American?’

  ‘She’s – unusual.’

  ‘I knew that much. What does she do all day?’

  ‘She types.’

  ‘Types what?’

  ‘I don’t know. She wants me to call her Mrs Steinberg.’

  Lou raised an eyebrow.

  ‘The girl calls her Ellen.’

  ‘She doesn’t call her Mother?’

  ‘Not as far as I’ve heard.’

  ‘How peculiar.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s an American thing.’

  ‘Don’t be idiotic.’

  ‘They’ve lived all over, Lou, in France and everything.’

  ‘She is her mother, isn’t she?’

  Kitty hesitated. In a way, Mrs Steinberg didn’t seem much like Geenie’s mother. She let the child play outside as she pleased, even when it was wet and cold. She didn’t bother about her dirty knees. She’d paid no attention when Geenie had painted her eyes with kohl on Kitty’s first day. She hadn’t even insisted that the girl go to school, saying she wanted to find the right one in the autumn and let Geenie be a ‘free spirit’ all summer.

  But they did have exactly the same chin, and, whenever the two of them were together, the girl was always looking at her.

  ‘Of course she is.’ Kitty pinned the dress from the shoulders so the whole thing shifted up and away from Lou’s thighs. The waist was now under the bust, and the hem hung in the middle of Lou’s shins.

  ‘We might be able to add a waistband…’

  ‘A waistband?’

  ‘Give you some more room around the middle.’

  ‘But that would completely ruin the look, Kit. It’s supposed to be high-waisted, and fitted on the hips. It’s long-line, see?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What about him, the poet?’

  Kitty unpinned the shoulders and stood back from the dress. ‘He doesn’t seem like a poet.’

  ‘What does he seem like, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. A teacher, or something.’

  ‘Like Bob?’

  Lou had met Bob when she’d worked in the bakery. Bob loved macaroons and, after his first wife died, always went to Warbington’s for them. Lou told Kitty that he’d held her fingers, once, when she’d handed him his change; she’d known then that she would be his wife. On Lou’s request, Bob had got Kitty the cleaning job at the school. He was a senior master there; he’d joined after Lou had left, but he’d taught Kitty. A huge picture of Queen Elizabeth was tacked on the wall of his classroom, and when he told the pupils about her parsimony he’d thumped the desk and his shirt had come free of his trousers.

  Their mother had said it was a miracle, her daughter having the good fortune to marry a school teacher, even though Bob was forty-five and Lou only nineteen when they’d wed.

  Kitty had trouble thinking of Bob as anything but Mr Purser. Living in his house, she’d been careful to keep her voice low and look just below his eye-line when he spoke to her.

  ‘Not like Bob. Turn around.’

  Lou did as she was asked.

  ‘You’re settling in, though?’

  Kitty glanced at her sister’s reflection. Lou was wearing a small smile, but her eyes were watching her sister’s face.

  Kitty held her gaze. ‘Yes, I suppose.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it? You’re making yourself at home.’

  ‘Hmm. Can you put your arms above your head?’

  Rolling her eyes, Lou flung one arm in the air. There was a sharp crack as a seam snapped. She glared at Kitty in the dressing-table mirror. ‘I told you. The bloody thing’s shrunk.’

  Kitty gathered up a handful of fabric from the back of the dress and examined it.

  ‘I’m going to have to buy new, aren’t I?’ said Lou.

  ‘I might be able to unpick it and make a skirt – a different shape, perhaps, but…’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot. I can’t wear a skirt to the schoolmasters’ summer dance.’

  ‘But we should try to make something, Lou. It’s such pretty stuff.’

  Lou shrugged off Kitty’s hands. She reached behind and tried to unzip herself. There was the sound of another seam breaking.

  ‘Help me, then!’

  Kitty pulled the puckering zip slowly, being careful not to catch her sister’s skin in its teeth. Lou stepped from the pile of silk. Beneath her white French knickers, her thighs were flecked pink, like coconut ice.

  ‘You might as well have it.’

  ‘Lou, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Just take it, will you?’

  Kitty gazed at her sister’s face in the mirror. Lou set her mouth in a line. ‘I’ll get Bob to buy me another. God knows he owes me.’

  . . . .

  Lou had folded the dress in brown paper for Kitty to take home. In the car with Bob, Kitty kept the package flat on her lap, resting both hands on it, partly to steady the parcel as Bob took the winding lane back to Harting, and partly so she could move her fingers over it and hear the rustle of paper on silk. She could already picture the dress next to her own skin. The colour, perhaps, wasn’t as suited to her, with her dull brown hair, as it was to Lou, but that didn’t matter. That dress reflected all the light in a room. Even if she never wore it (and where would she?), even if no one ever saw her in it, it would still be hers; she could look at it hanging in her wardrobe that smelled of cinnamon, and she could touch it whenever she liked.

  There was no car in the drive when Bob dropped her at the cottage. That was good. She might have time to put the dress on and creep to the bathroom to look at herself in the full-length mirror before they came back.

>   She was just about to let herself in the back door when the tiny window of Arthur’s shed caught her eye. It was glowing in the darkness. She returned her key to her bag and, still holding the dress, squinted into the night. There was no breeze, and hardly any moon. Surely he couldn’t still be in there, at this time on a Saturday evening?

  If he’d left the paraffin lamp on by mistake, she’d have to go and put it out. It wouldn’t be meddling, it would be what Mr Purser, Bob, used to say at school: safety first, children. Safety first. He’d said it at home once, when Lou had handed him a pair of scissors with the blades pointing in his direction, and Lou had told him not to speak to her like one of his pupils. He’d looked at the floor and received the scissors in silence. Kitty held that picture of Bob’s downcast eyes in her mind whenever he rustled his newspaper in her direction.

  As she walked to the shed, she became aware of the smell of the grass. It had been a warm day, and the earth seemed to have loosened in the sun. She’d left her coat unbuttoned all the way home. The brown paper crackled beneath her hands. The only other sound was the generator in the garage, which had slowed to a low chug.

  She knew she should call his name, in case he was in there, to warn him, but something stopped her from speaking aloud as she reached out to pull the shed door open.

  There were the rows of nails, numbered, each with the correct tool hanging from it. There was the shelf full of labelled tins, and the stack of terracotta pots in one corner. And there was Arthur, sitting in his deckchair, asleep.

  In the low light of the lamp, Arthur’s face seemed to flicker. His head had dropped forward and his mouth was slightly open. He was still holding his pipe and a book was open on his lap. An empty tin mug and a flask stood on top of an upturned flowerpot beside him.

  He opened his eyes and looked directly at her. ‘You’re back,’ he said.

  Her mouth jumped into a smile. ‘I saw the light – from your lamp – I was worried, in case you weren’t here and you’d forgotten…’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be here?’

  She clasped the package to her chest.

  He fixed his gaze somewhere above her right shoulder and stretched out his arms. ‘Got a parcel?’

  She smoothed the paper. ‘A dress.’

  He nodded.

  On the wall next to him was a calendar with the days crossed off, each ‘x’ the same size and shape.

  ‘A dress for dancing,’ she said, and felt herself blush.

  Then something beneath Arthur’s deckchair caught her eye. On its side, with mud on the heel, was a round-toed shoe of brilliant green.

  She almost pointed at the shoe, wanting to tell him that she had the other in her wardrobe. But when she looked at him, he kept his eyes on his book, and began to flick through its pages.

  Kitty turned to go, wishing she’d ignored the glow from the window and got on with trying the dress. Mr Crane and Mrs Steinberg would be back soon, and then it would be too late for the bathroom mirror.

  ‘I suppose you dance quite a bit, then?’

  She stopped.

  ‘Young girl like you. Should be dancing. Like Ginger Rogers, eh? I expect you’ve been dancing all night.’

  She looked into the blackness of the garden and said, ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

  ‘Drill Hall?’

  ‘Yes. I danced all night. It was lovely.’

  There was a silence. Then she heard him rise from the deckchair and walk towards her. The lamp’s glow died, and she waited there, holding the dress to her chest and with her coat unbuttoned, until he’d closed the shed door and was standing next to her in the darkness. There was the smell of his pipe, and the flash of his large hands as he lit it. He sucked in, blew out, gave a series of small coughs, then said, ‘Perhaps we’ll go together one day. Dancing.’

  All Kitty’s nerves seemed to up-end themselves. ‘Dancing?’ Her voice came out shrill.

  ‘I can dance, you know.’ He gave a little laugh. ‘You might not think it to look at me.’

  Kitty put a hand to her hair. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I daresay you’re tired. I’m dead on my feet myself.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It was good of you to look in.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ll say goodnight, then.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Arthur stayed where he was, feet evenly planted in front of his shed, smoking his pipe.

  As she moved quickly towards the house, Kitty had a sudden thought: did he sometimes stand there all night and keep watch over the cottage? She was sure she could still hear him chewing on his pipe when she opened the back door and stepped inside. And it wasn’t until she was in her room and had hung the emerald dress in the wardrobe that she heard the crunch of Arthur’s bicycle wheels on the gravel.

  · · · Ten · · ·

  When they reached the landing, Geenie said, ‘This is my room. And that’s Ellen’s. Your father sleeps in there, but he has his own room, too. And that one will be yours.’

  ‘Aren’t there any other rooms?’ asked Diana.

  ‘Only downstairs.’

  ‘Hasn’t your mother got an awful lot of money?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Then why hasn’t she got a bigger house?’

  The question had never occurred to Geenie, who’d lived in all sorts of houses, big and small, all over Europe. She’d presumed that most houses in the English countryside were cottages, which meant they were small.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Does she like it here?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  Geenie didn’t know the answer until the word came out of her mouth. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I like it.’

  . . . .

  George had chosen the glazed chintz curtains with the peacock pattern and the eiderdown in matching greens and blues for her bedroom. Ellen had brought her old French furniture from their house in Paris. But Geenie herself had chosen the picture on the wall above her bed. It was an illustration from one of Jimmy’s favourite books: Jack the Giant Killer. It showed the moment when Jack came upon the three princesses imprisoned by the giant, each one hanging from the ceiling by her own hair. Jimmy had always taken great pleasure in reading this scene aloud to Geenie, particularly the part about the ladies being kept for many days without food in order to encourage them to feed upon the flesh of their murdered husbands.

  The two girls looked at the picture. The princesses looked quite happy to be hung up by their hair. Great swirls of it twirled and curled around metal hooks, as though the princesses’ bondage were merely a matter of hair-styling. Their dainty shoes pointed downwards, like ballerinas’ feet. George had some postcards on the wall of his writer’s studio of the Soviet People Enjoying a Healthy Lifestyle, which he’d brought back from Russia. They all wore gym knickers and little cotton vests with belts and pointed their feet downwards in a manner similar to these princesses.

  ‘That one looks like you,’ said Diana, pointing to the fair-haired princess at the front of the picture. ‘A helpless blonde.’

  Geenie didn’t say anything, but she’d always thought the blonde princess was a bit like her. Her face was round and her lips made a little red cross. Her nose was a mere line down the centre of her face – quite unlike Ellen’s dog-nose, as Jimmy had once called it. She swung from her hook with grace and charm, unruffled by her fate. She was the only princess who looked the least bit impressed by Jack’s appearance. A handbag dangled from her fingertips. Geenie made a silent vow to get one like it, with a jewelled clasp and the thinnest of straps.

  ‘Do you think Jack marries one of them?’ asked Diana.

  ‘No,’ said Geenie. ‘It says in the story that he gives them their liberty then continues on his journey into Wales.’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t want to marry him.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Geenie. ‘He rescued them, didn’t he?’

  ‘They could have got off those hooks easily enough by themselv
es. All they had to do was untangle their hair. Or cut it off.’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t want to cut their hair. When my mother cut her hair off Jimmy cried.’

  Diana shrugged. ‘Let’s dress up,’ she said.

  Geenie pulled the dressing-up things from the bottom of her wardrobe, where she kept them in a tangled heap. Plunging her wrists into the twists of fabric on the floor, she wrenched each item from the muddle. There was a long sable coat with gathered cuffs (once Jimmy’s); a brocade waistcoat with tortoiseshell buttons; a blue French sailor’s jacket; a slightly squashed hat made entirely of kittiwake feathers; and a long white nightie trimmed with pink lace. There was a short silk dress with a dropped waist, turquoise blue in the bodice, green in the skirt; a huge corset, camomile-lotion pink, which had once belonged to Geenie’s grandmother; a pair of silk stockings, laddered; a fez; and an ivory fan showing scenes from Venice. There was a white Egyptian robe with gold trim and boxy neck, in the Tutankhamen style, which Ellen had bought on her honeymoon. There was a red and white checked Arab headdress; an electric blue feather boa; and a huge hooped petti-coat, which had been Ellen’s when she was a little girl in New York. And there was a pair of jade Turkish slippers, studded with glass and turned up at the end like gondolas (which Geenie was forbidden to wear, in case she tripped over them on the stairs), and a matching long jade necklace.

  Diana picked the necklace from the top of the pile. ‘I’ll have this,’ she said. She ran the beads across her face, rubbing each one on her cheek.

  ‘Then you’ll have to wear the slippers.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they match.’

  Diana frowned. ‘I want to wear the white thing, though.’

  ‘But that’s Egyptian. It’s what I wear when I’m being Cleopatra. And the beads aren’t Egyptian.’ Geenie twisted the feather boa around her neck. It was hot and scratchy against her skin.

  ‘Show me, then,’ said Diana. ‘Show me your favourite outfit.’