The Good Plain Cook

by Bethan Roberts

  The girls laughed together and Kitty gave a start. But a quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that Geenie’s door was still closed.

  She was about to move away and get on, ready to pretend she hadn’t been peeking; ready to pretend she hadn’t seen Mr Crane’s naked back and shoulders, hadn’t felt any tingle along her neck and down her spine; ready to pretend she didn’t now know that he chose not to wear a vest beneath his shirt. It was just a matter of getting her legs going and her heartbeat back to normal. But then he began the business of buttoning, and she knew she couldn’t move. She would have to stay and watch.

  He started at the bottom and worked his way up towards his throat, teasing each button into its hole with a little twist of his fingers whilst staring at his own hands in the mirror.

  ‘I have to tell you what to do!’ shrieked Diana. ‘I’m Clark Gable!’

  Kitty realised she was holding her breath.

  Tugging his cuffs into place, he turned to the side, frowned at himself, then cupped his hands and wiped them over his hair, pressing it into shape. When he was satisfied, he pulled his braces up.

  His eyes shifted then, and Kitty was sure he’d noticed her reflection in the mirror – the shadow of a girl in an apron, her hair unwashed since Friday, spying on him. She found, though, that she could not avert her gaze, and for a second it seemed as though they were staring directly at each other in the mirror. Blood was loud in her ears and a heat forced its way from her stomach to her chest to her head as his eyes remained, fixed and unblinking, seemingly on hers.

  That’s that then, she thought. It’s back to Lou’s.

  But he looked towards the window, and a broad smile crept across his face as he reached across for something out of Kitty’s view.

  At last she managed to move. She walked downstairs as quickly and quietly as she could, clutching the soft broom to her chest, a pulse still pumping in her ears and belly.

  . . . .

  ‘What’s this, then?’

  ‘It’s a French bun.’

  ‘Is it now?’ Arthur turned his plate around, watching the cake as if it might make a sudden move. ‘Fancy.’

  She’d made them yesterday, for Mr Crane’s tea, using a recipe from Lou. Arthur had the one that was left over; the icing was a little cracked around the edges, but it didn’t matter. Arthur ate everything quickly and neatly and always said, afterwards, ‘That was good.’

  Kitty sat and picked up her tea.

  Arthur took a bite, then went back to reading his Western, glancing towards her just once to nod his approval.

  ‘Did – did Geenie say anything to you, yesterday?’

  He seemed to finish reading his sentence before answering. ‘What about?’

  Kitty swilled her tea round her cup. The back door was open and a warm breeze blew at her ankles. It was going to be another hot day. ‘About the willow tree.’

  He swallowed the last of the bun, licked his fingers and shook his head. ‘What would she say about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Kitty stood and began to clear the crockery.

  ‘That was good,’ said Arthur, still gripping the plate as she lifted it from the table. Their eyes met and she held his gaze until he looked down at his own fingers on the china. When he’d let go, he wiped his moustache with his hand. ‘What about the willow, then?’

  ‘Diana got stuck there yesterday morning.’

  ‘Stuck in the tree?’

  ‘She was up quite high.’

  ‘I never heard nothing.’

  That’s because you’d disappeared, thought Kitty, crashing the crocks into the sink. You’d probably dozed off over one of your silly books.

  ‘What happened?’

  She wasn’t sure, now, why she’d begun to tell Arthur this story. She kept thinking of Mr Crane’s fingers on his shirt buttons, how he’d taken such care over each one, how he’d watched himself whilst he dressed. The flick of his muscle as the cotton sailed behind him.

  She turned the hot tap. There was a belch and a spurt of water flew out.

  ‘What happened, Kitty?’

  ‘Diana was climbing the tree and she couldn’t get down.’ She looked out of the window towards the studio. The door was closed, but the windows were flung wide open and the curtains were shuddering back and forth.

  ‘I had to go and get her.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask me?’

  Submerging her hands in the warm water, she began to scrub at the teacups. ‘Because you weren’t here.’

  There was a pause. ‘Can’t think where I was.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter now.’ She’d never understand why Mrs Steinberg didn’t buy a new, matching set of good white crockery. All her cups were different shapes and colours.

  ‘Just a minute, though. You went up that tree?’

  She turned to face him, her fingers dripping. ‘Yes. I climbed the tree and I got the girl down.’

  That hadn’t been quite what had happened, but how could she explain to Arthur how Diana had slipped before her, springing to the ground like a damn monkey?

  His moustache was twitching, as if he were holding in a laugh. ‘You climbed the willow tree?’

  ‘Yes. I said, didn’t I?’ With a damp hand, she wiped the hair away from her forehead.

  His eyes were narrowed but bright. She noticed they had specks of yellow in them. As he continued to look at her, his moustache twisted in an odd shape, the yellow in his eyes sparking, she found herself shifting on the spot.

  ‘Well!’ he said. ‘Well I never!’ He let out a sudden laugh, so loud that Kitty jumped. It was more of a shout – or a kind of bark – than a laugh: gruff and low, as if it escaped him without his knowledge.

  She tried not to smile.

  ‘However did you manage it?’

  ‘I don’t know, I…’

  ‘I don’t think I could do it,’ said Arthur, slapping the table. ‘Get up that tree. There’s not much to hold on to, is there? Spindly as hell.’

  Kitty shook her head and laughed. ‘It wasn’t easy.’

  ‘I bet it wasn’t!’

  ‘I didn’t want to look down.’

  ‘I’m certain of it!’

  ‘I had to take my shoes and stockings off,’ she said. ‘I felt five years old again.’

  At this, Arthur ducked his head and was silent. Kitty covered her mouth with a hand.

  ‘Well,’ he said, quietly. ‘To think of it. Kitty up a tree. I wish to heaven I’d seen it.’ When he pushed back his chair, she saw his cheeks had coloured. He didn’t look at her as he walked to the door and began putting on his boots.

  She turned to the sink, rinsed out the last cup and placed it on the drainer. When she looked towards the door again, he was still standing there, and he was staring straight at her. Her eyes remained steady, and a moment of silence passed before he said, ‘What I mentioned the other night—’ ‘Yes?’

  ‘About dancing—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well. I just want you to know. If you think you’d like to, the offer still stands.’ His forehead was shining with perspiration.

  She found herself smiling. ‘All right, then.’

  He let out a breath. ‘Friday?’

  She nodded, once, quickly.

  Beaming, Arthur walked through the door and out into the sunshine. Kitty could hear him whistling all the way back to his shed.

  · · · Eighteen · · ·

  It was going to be a perfect evening. She’d asked Kitty for coq au vin, and the results hadn’t been bad – the bird was a little stringy, and why did British mushrooms taste of nothing? – overall though, it was much more satisfactory than the usual boiled beef or rabbit pie, and had complemented the Beaujolais well. She’d changed, too, into her long cream silk with the drape sleeves; she didn’t usually bother dressing for dinner, unless they had guests (and who came now they lived in the wilderness? Even Laura’s visits were becoming rare), but after she’d blurted out the thing about the baby, she felt she should m
ake an effort for Crane.

  As if to avoid any mention of the subject over dinner, he’d lectured them on the three million unemployed, telling the girls how lucky they were to be living here, rather than in one of the ‘distressed areas’ of the country, where the miners couldn’t feed their families. Diana had pointed out that it wouldn’t matter if she lived in a distressed area; she’d still have a gentleman poet and a ballerina for parents, which Ellen had thought a fair assessment, but Crane had put down his knife and fork very definitely and said, ‘Never, ever take your wealth for granted,’ which had put Diana into a sulk.

  Now the girls were in bed, and Ellen and Crane had retired to the sofa with a new bottle, she hoped to get him off politics. It wasn’t that she found it boring, precisely; she was always willing to learn. It was just that she’d heard it all before: the misery of the unemployed, the suppression of the masses, how only revolution could bring true equality and an end to the class system that was tearing the country apart. And she agreed that it would be better if things were a bit more evenly spread, but wouldn’t it be more pleasant – and perhaps, in the end, of greater importance – to discuss art and literature, as she had with James? Of course, when she’d made this point, Crane had insisted that art and literature should be the spouse, that’s how he’d put it, the spouse of politics: the two could not be separated. Though she’d said nothing at the time, Ellen didn’t quite see it. Wasn’t the joy of great art the offer of escape, the opportunity to submerge oneself in personal, particular passions? Politics seemed slightly grubby, not much to do with her, and not nearly as much fun. And Crane always became so deadly serious whenever he started on about Marx and how the world’s future lay in the hands of the workers.

  ‘You really should join the party, Ellen, if you’re – ah – serious about things, you know.’

  He rolled his empty wine glass between his palms and looked at her squarely. Not a good opening. It wasn’t the first time he’d said this, and she’d never liked being told what she should do. She thought perhaps this stemmed from her father, who’d done nothing he should, apart from make money. He’d spent most of his time travelling around Europe with his mistress, a woman named Valentina. Ellen had caught sight of her once over the glove display in McCreary’s. Her nanny had nodded, and she’d known that the woman with the dark eyebrows and the chiselled nose was her father’s lover.

  ‘But I’m not a worker or an intellectual, darling. They wouldn’t have me.’ She held out the bottle to him, but he shook his head and placed his glass on the floor.

  ‘I thought you were going to be a housewife.’

  After topping up her own glass, she sat on the sofa beside him and swung one leg over the other, flashing her bare feet. Her toenail polish needed re-applying, she noted, but her ankle was as slim as ever.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘That’s work, isn’t it?’ He clasped one of her gold-beaded cushions before him, as if holding on to a lectern. ‘You could tell them you have full-time employment, looking after two children and the cottage.’

  ‘Oh, Crane,’ she sighed. ‘You really are a unique man.’

  He smiled. ‘So you’ll do it, then?’

  Laughing, she snatched the cushion from his hands and swiped him over the head, splashing his trousers with Beaujolais. ‘If I do, what will you do for me?’

  He wiped himself down, gave a theatrical sigh, and looked towards the ceiling. ‘Well. Let me see. We could see what I could – ah – come up with…’

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the door.

  . . . .

  She had a moment to prepare before he came upstairs: Crane always insisted on going outside to ‘feel the air’ before coming to bed. He was absolutely mad on fresh air. All the men she’d ever slept with were, even though they declared themselves intellectuals. She suddenly wondered what it would be like to sleep with a man who hated the outdoors. Or a man for whom the outdoors was a place of work, rather than worship.

  Selecting a red silk negligee, she reflected that the sex had always been pretty good, just as she’d known it would be from the day they’d first met. James had invited Crane to the house in Paris. Dora was sick, she remembered, and Ellen had been standing in the kitchen, flicking the broom about, when Crane had taken over. Holding her elbow, he’d unpeeled her fingers from the broom handle and begun. It was like he was dancing with the broom, his long legs carrying him swiftly to each corner of the kitchen, his arms twirling the bristles round to reach the furthest, most dust-filled, locations. Bringing the dirt together in a hairy mound in the centre of the tiled floor, he’d negotiated the pile of wine bottles stacked by the stove without knocking a single one over. As he’d pushed the broom past her lace-up shoes, she wished she’d gone barefoot, so a bristle might have touched her toes.

  When he’d finished, he turned to her, his cheeks slightly pink from the effort, his dark eyes shining. She’d noticed the squint, of course. Not an athlete, she’d thought, not like James; but there was something angular about him that she liked. He was straight-backed and long-limbed, but he did not look too strong for her.

  Then he’d shown her how to sweep the dust onto opened sheets of newsprint, gathering each corner together and depositing the whole package in the waste basket without spilling anything. It was like a magician’s trick, this disappearance of dirt in newspaper; she’d watched him as if he were producing a dove from his sleeve or a flower from behind her ear. She hadn’t dared ask where he’d learned such a thing.

  Back in London only a couple of weeks later (was it actually on the day James had told her he’d need the operation? – she shuddered to think), she’d met Crane in that pub in Fitzrovia. Was it the Wheatsheaf? Or the Bricklayer’s Arms? He’d taken her to both, eventually, but before Crane she’d never been in a pub. Plenty of cafés and French bars, of course, but never an English pub like this, with men in caps, for God’s sake, and stained raincoats, and a woman serving who had at least three teeth missing and hair the colour of Ellen’s brightest Moroccan rug. The stools were incredibly small, the floor covered in cigarette stubs and spilled beer, but it was warm in there; everyone was very close together; it seemed there was hardly light or air: just smoke, and beer, and men. Someone was playing ‘Hands Across the Sea’ on the concertina. She’d loved it immediately.

  He hadn’t said much at all that time. He’d just kept kissing her, his lips tasting bitter-rich, like the beer he’d bought for them both. It was lunchtime and she’d been hungry – she would have suggested Taglioni’s, if there’d been time – but she’d forgotten about that, because his hand touched her side, sliding in between her coat and her blouse and finding her waist, and they’d gone to Laura’s place in town, a flat with dust an inch thick everywhere. And, she remembered, he’d been so fluent. He’d warmed his hands by the gas fire before he touched her, then undid the clasp of her coat, slipping it from her shoulders; he’d known how to free stockings from suspenders and roll them down without fuss. As he unbuttoned her blouse his fingers trembled and there was a very serious look in his eyes, and even when he was inside her he’d looked at her the whole time; he didn’t close his eyes until his moment, when his neck arched and seemed impossibly long, and his throat contracted, just as it did when he was formulating a thought.

  On her way home to Woburn Square, watching the glow in her cheeks fading in the glass of the cab window, Ellen had allowed herself to imagine – just for half a minute – how convenient it would be for James to die, suddenly and painlessly, so she would be free again, and blameless.

  Now she surveyed the results of the scarlet negligee in the glass, and decided it was far too obvious; she’d do away with clothes altogether and go naked. She’d never had the knack for clothes, anyway, particularly anything frilly or chiffon. James had never minded, saying he preferred her straightforward approach, but she wondered if Crane, for all his Bolshevism, wouldn’t rather see her in feathers and furs, like Lillian.

  ‘It’s a be
autiful night.’ Crane came into the room, smiling. ‘The moon’s beaming.’

  Then she knew what she should do. Right now. Jumping out of bed, she cried, ‘Outside!’

  Crane looked her up and down.

  ‘Let’s. Please, let’s go outside. Under the moon. We’ve never – have we?’ She pulled her dressing gown around her. ‘Come on!’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Back to nature, darling, close to the earth, isn’t that how the proletariat procreate?’

  He smiled. ‘Ellen—’

  But she was already on the landing, sprinting towards the stairs.

  Strange, how they’d never performed outside before. James had been very keen on it, especially in the summers, by the lake at Heathstead Hall. In fact, she’d grown a little tired of grazing her shoulder blades on stony ground and inspecting her elbows for bruises in the morning. But Crane, despite his worship of the outdoors, had never suggested it, and for a while she’d been glad of a mattress beneath her back and a cover on top.

  It was past midnight and there was, of course, no one about. Crane was right about the moon: it left a silver stain on the garden and, she was delighted to see, lit up the beautiful sculpture of female buttocks that she’d always loved. That had to be a good omen.

  The gravel path crackled beneath her feet as she trotted along, giggling to herself. Kitty’s window looked onto the garden, but she was no doubt fast asleep after grappling with that bird. The girl had looked quite worn out when she’d brought the plates through; Crane had advised her to get an early night, at which she’d blushed furiously, as if he’d suggested tucking her in bed himself.

  Ellen looked over her shoulder. He was following her, albeit slowly and still in his trousers. ‘Come on!’ she hissed.

  By the stream, beneath one of the willows, would be the best spot. Even though it was a warm night, the soil on the bank was sticky beneath her toes. It was all right for Crane – he still had his shoes and socks on. Unlike James, he wasn’t a sandals man, and she was glad of it. She could never stand the sight of men’s toes. They always seemed to be gripping something, usually the soles of their damned sandals; there was something simian about it.