The Good Plain Cook

by Bethan Roberts

  Kitty looked at her lap.

  ‘Go on, Kitty. Show him you’ve got personality.’

  Mr Crane had removed his socks and turned up the ends of his trouser legs. He stood up. ‘Look. I’ll go for a stroll. Disappear for a bit. All right?’

  When he’d gone behind the dune, Kitty hitched up her dress. Her mistress was still watching, a little smile on her face, whilst Kitty unrolled her stockings. The breeze whipped about her legs.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Mrs Steinberg. ‘Much better. Maybe we’ll even get to see you in that bathing costume one day.’

  Kitty watched the woman run into the sea. Then she took up her embroidery and began to work.

  . . . .

  Ten minutes later, Arthur arrived with the windbreak and remaining chairs and began hammering in the posts. Kitty unpacked the hamper. That morning, she’d ironed and folded the checked tablecloth, washed out the flasks with bicarbonate of soda, and polished the silver cake forks. She’d boiled six eggs, wrapped the poppy-seed cake she’d baked yesterday, assembled the shrimp paste sandwiches and cut off the crusts, packed a whole gala pie, and rinsed and hulled the first strawberries from the garden, wrapping them in a clean tea cloth.

  Now she spread the tablecloth across the rug whilst Arthur assembled the windbreak. They said nothing as they worked, Arthur bending over the canvas, his brow knitted as he slammed the posts into place. Then he began on the deckchairs. Whilst he worked, she laid out the plates, the napkins and the glasses, and unwrapped the food. She glanced over to him. She’d never seen anyone handle a deckchair so confidently. The legs slotted into the right grooves first time round.

  When she’d finished, she sat back on her heels.

  ‘Let’s have one of them strawberries.’ Arthur reached across and plucked a fruit from the cloth. ‘Proper scarlet,’ he said, popping it into his mouth. ‘Have one.’ He held one in his palm for her. She looked around. Mrs Steinberg and the girls were still in the sea, and there was no sign of Mr Crane. She took the strawberry and held it to her nose: that sugary perfume was almost better than the thing itself. Taking a bite, her mouth was filled with acid sweetness. Arthur watched her, his lips open.

  ‘Ah. Lunch.’ Mr Crane sat on a deckchair. Kitty scrambled to her feet.

  ‘Take a chair, there’s enough for everyone. The girls can sit on the rug, I’m sure they’d prefer it anyway.’ He looked out to sea and began waving both arms above his head. ‘They’ll be as wrinkled as prunes, staying in so long.’ He waved and waved, but no one saw his signal.

  ‘I’ll call them, shall I, Mr Crane?’

  ‘No, no, Arthur. No need. We’ll wait.’

  There was a silence. Kitty picked up her embroidery again. She meant to start work on the crab in the foreground of the scene. Looking at it now, she thought how the embroidered beach was much more pleasing than the real thing. There was no sand to get in your shoes, the little girls paddled elegantly, still wearing their white dresses, and the sun shone softly in the sky. Whereas here, on the actual beach, the light was so bright she could barely see to get the orange thread through the eye of her needle.

  ‘Have you thought any more, Arthur, about what I mentioned to you the other day?’ Mr Crane’s face had become still, his voice hushed. ‘I think it would be a really wonderful thing, you know, if you’d join us.’

  Arthur tapped his pipe on the wooden frame of the deckchair and looked across the dunes. ‘I’ve certainly thought about it, Mr Crane.’

  ‘And what did you conclude?’

  ‘I still haven’t made my mind up, to be truthful, Mr Crane.’

  ‘The party needs honest workers like you, Arthur. You’d be a valuable addition. Most valuable.’

  Arthur produced a pouch of tobacco from his shorts pocket and tucked a tiny amount into his pipe. ‘It’s not that I don’t think your lot have a point…’ he struck a match, lit the pipe and sucked deeply on it. ‘It’s just I’m not sure if it’s my thing, exactly.’

  Mr Crane and Arthur regularly had discussions on the step of the writing studio in the late afternoon. Kitty had watched them standing together, Arthur on the lower step, nodding and tugging at his moustache whilst Mr Crane looked up to the sky and seemed to search for the right word. She’d presumed they were discussing the garden, or plans for the renovation of the cottage. But this seemed to be an entirely different matter. This seemed like politics, something that Bob always said women should never meddle in. Lou often pointed out that was a bit rich, coming from someone whose heroine was Queen Elizabeth.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well.’ Arthur took his pipe from his mouth and looked at it. ‘I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, Mr Crane, but I think it’s more a thing for your intellectual type.’

  ‘Intellectual?’

  ‘Educated men, such as yourself.’

  The crab was an odd shape. One pincer was definitely larger than the other. Kitty wondered if she could correct it.

  ‘Come the Revolution, Arthur, we’ll all be educated men. And women. That’s the point.’

  Kitty felt the men’s eyes shift towards her and she focused hard on the crab’s pincer. Her fingers were sweating in the heat, and her needle kept slipping. She’d have to be careful she didn’t prick herself and let blood on the cloth. Then it would be ruined.

  ‘Why,’ Mr Crane continued, ‘even Kitty here could join the Communist Party if she wished. She’s a worker, a comrade, like you – like me – isn’t she?’

  Arthur sucked on his pipe and said nothing.

  ‘It’s my firm belief,’ continued Mr Crane, ‘that Kitty, and all her sex, have some very valuable views which should be heard.’

  Mrs Steinberg and the girls were coming out of the sea. If the men would just keep talking for a minute more, the women would be back and Kitty would not be asked, for the second time today, for an opinion, when all she wanted was to finish embroidering her crab, eat some shrimp paste sandwiches (which would be turning crisp in this heat), and then cool her feet in the sea.

  ‘I’m sure of that, Mr Crane,’ said Arthur.

  Bugger. She’d pricked her finger. Luckily there was no blood, yet. She sucked her reddening skin. If she didn’t look up from her work, they might not ask her anything. They’d just keep talking as if she weren’t quite there.

  ‘Thank God! Lunch. I’m absolutely ravenous.’

  Mrs Steinberg, still dripping from the sea, fell gratefully on the food. ‘No Scotch eggs, Kitty?’ There was a glint in her eye, but Kitty ignored this. If the woman had given her more than a day’s notice, she would have been able to make both the Scotch eggs and the poppy-seed cake.

  ‘I didn’t have time, in the end, Mrs Steinberg.’

  ‘What a shame. Well, tuck in, everyone. Don’t stand on ceremony.’ Mrs Steinberg took three sandwiches and a piece of pie, sat in a deckchair and began to eat with wet hands.

  The girls helped themselves to the food, water dripping from their hair over the tablecloth. Diana sat near her father’s feet and got to work on the crust of a piece of gala pie. Geenie helped herself to a strawberry and sat beside her, examining the fruit. Both girls’ make-up had run down their faces, making them look like soggy chimney sweeps.

  Mr Crane offered a sandwich first to Kitty, then to Arthur, and finally took one for himself.

  When she’d finished her pie, Mrs Steinberg wrapped herself in a towel and stood to uncork a bottle of wine. Collecting four glasses together, she filled each one with red liquid, spilling some of it on the sand. ‘Kitty, Arthur, have a drink with us.’ She thrust a glass at Kitty, then took two cups and half-filled them. ‘You too, girls. I have an announcement to make, and I want you all to have a drink in your hand.’

  Mr Crane gripped his knees.

  Mrs Steinberg was swilling her wine around, poking her large nose so far into her glass that Kitty imagined her mistress might begin to suck the drink up through her nostrils.

  ‘An important announcement.’
r />   Geenie stood and helped herself to a piece of poppy-seed cake.

  ‘It’s not time for cake yet, darling.’

  ‘I hate shrimp paste.’

  ‘Put the cake back. Only barbarians eat sweet before savoury.’

  Geenie threw the cake down, but Mrs Steinberg was still wearing a clenched smile. Glass in hand, she knelt by Mr Crane’s deckchair, shrugged the towel from her bronzed shoulders and gave her wet hair a shake. ‘In fact, it’s our announcement. Isn’t it, George?’

  Diana moved closer to her father, dropping her slice of pie as she did so. Only the meat was left. The girl had eaten all the pastry, the jelly and the egg. There was just a blob of pink pork with a hole in it, looking up at Mrs Steinberg. But the woman kept smiling. ‘Never mind, Diana. Sit down, Geenie.’

  Geenie gave a heavy sigh before looking around and choosing to sit at Kitty’s feet.

  ‘Girls. I have some very exciting news for you.’

  Mr Crane was staring down at the nibbled pork.

  ‘Very exciting news.’ Mrs Steinberg tossed her head back. Her wet cheeks were glowing.

  ‘There’ll soon be another person joining our family.’

  Mr Crane passed a hand across his mouth.

  Kitty would have liked to have taken up her embroidery again, to have something else to look at, but with the glass of wine in her hand, she didn’t dare.

  ‘Blotto! Blotto!’ Geenie was suddenly on her knees, calling for the dog. Gathering her fists to her chest, as if in an effort to summon all her strength, she screeched again, this time at the top of her voice. ‘Blotto!’

  Everyone watched as the dog came running, its ears blowing behind. Geenie stretched out her arms to greet the animal, but Blotto ran straight past and through the picnic, his wet paws landing in the strawberries and knocking over the flask of tea. Then he doubled back, sat by Mrs Steinberg and plunged his head down to gobble the remains of Diana’s gala pie.

  There was a silence, but Mrs Steinberg was still smiling. She held her glass high. ‘A toast, please. Raise your glasses. Kitty, Arthur. Join us.’

  Kitty lifted her glass.

  ‘To our new baby.’ Mrs Steinberg tipped the wine to her mouth and swallowed, her throat contracting.

  No one else drank. The girls were staring at each other, their streaked faces dark. Mr Crane stood his glass in the sand and got up. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I think I need some – ah...' he hung his head for a moment, and when he raised it again, his eyes were squeezed shut. ‘I think I’ll get my toes wet.’ He walked towards the sea. Diana scrambled to her feet and followed him.

  Biting her lip, Mrs Steinberg reached for the bottle and refilled her glass. ‘Isn’t it wonderful news, Geenie darling?’

  The girl ignored her mother and raised her face to Kitty. ‘Will you still make me a Pierrot outfit?’ she whispered.

  Kitty nodded. ‘I promised, didn’t I?’

  The girl gave Kitty a weak smile. Mrs Steinberg drained her glass and filled it again.

  · · · Twenty-three · · ·

  Holding hands, the girls walked behind George. It was the morning after the picnic, and he’d announced over breakfast that he was taking them to see the bee orchids on Harting Down. ‘You never forget your first bee orchid,’ he’d said, gulping down his tea and pushing back his chair. ‘We’ll go at once, before it gets too warm.’

  But it was already too warm. Geenie and Diana trailed along in the sun, their fingers sticking together, their sandals slapping on the dry chalk bridleway. George was striding ahead, his shoulders high, a dark patch of perspiration forming on the back of his shirt.

  Geenie’s eyes felt as if they’d been scratched. She hadn’t slept much last night, in Diana’s bed. The two girls had stayed up for hours, whispering. It had been another sweaty, still night and the air under the covers was damp and heavy, but they’d huddled together beneath the canopy of the eiderdown, hair sticking to their foreheads, discussing the day’s events, and what to do about them.

  ‘We could say I’m very, very ill,’ Diana had suggested. ‘Gravely ill. That might stop them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I could pretend to have an awful disease. TB or something. Then Daddy would have to take me home, and they could never get married, and your mother would have to—’ she put her lips close to Geenie’s ear, ‘get rid of it.’

  In the darkness, Geenie couldn’t see her friend’s face properly, but she felt her breath become quicker.

  ‘I can make myself go awfully white when I want to. And if you go under the bedclothes and breathe really quickly for five minutes, you raise your temperature and your pulse. And I’m very good at coughing. Listen.’ She flung her head back and hacked out something that sounded like Arthur’s hoe scraping the garden path.

  ‘It wouldn’t work. You’d have to pretend for ages, and in the end they’d get a doctor and find out,’ Geenie said, feeling pleased with herself for being so sensible.

  ‘Couldn’t you tell your mother you hate my father and you’ll just have to kill yourself if they get married and have this baby?’

  Diana, Geenie decided, had read far too many novels. ‘She wouldn’t believe me. And I don’t hate your father. He’s nice.’

  Geenie listened to Diana chewing on a length of her own hair.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Geenie after a while, ‘I suppose they might not get married.’

  Diana shook her head. ‘If there’s a baby, my father will marry your mother, and I’ll never get home to London. We’ll both be stuck here in the middle of bloody nowhere forever.’

  Geenie didn’t really mind being stuck in the middle of nowhere. She’d become used to the cottage, the garden and the stream. She liked the way the willow trees whispered in the night. She liked the way the house was small enough for her to know the whereabouts of her mother, when Ellen was at home, at any time of the day. She liked riding her bicycle down the lane. She was even beginning to like Kitty, especially since the cook had agreed to make the Pierrot outfits. But the thought of her mother having a new baby was too much to bear. She would definitely be sent away to school then, and she’d probably never get to sit on her mother’s knee and hear her read from The Last Days of Pompeii again.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ Diana clutched Geenie’s arm with clammy fingers and gave a little squeal. ‘Kitty!’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘We’ll say Kitty’s having an affair with my father. Then your mother will throw him out, I’ll go back to London, and your mother will have to, you know, not have the baby.’

  ‘But – Kitty isn’t having an affair with your father, is she?’

  ‘I know that! Really, Geenie, you’re most awfully literal sometimes. We’ll have to pretend. Like in a play.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’ll be easy. It’s a perfect, perfect plan. It’s like I said. Cooks and housemaids are flighty. Everyone knows that. Your mother will believe us, not her.’

  ‘Can we wait until she’s made the Pierrot outfits?’

  Diana let out a huff. ‘I suppose so.’

  . . . .

  ‘Keep in step!’ Diana said, and Geenie put her right foot forward in time with her friend’s. Left, right, left, right. They bobbed along the bridleway, shoulders occasionally bumping together. Geenie had never seen Diana look so happy. She smiled as she walked, swinging Geenie’s hand in hers. No more details of the plan had been discussed, but just the knowledge of a plot was enough to make them giggle whenever they looked at each other.

  ‘You two are very gleeful today,’ said George, holding a gate open for them. Beyond him, the wheat swayed in the sunshine.

  ‘We’re happy, Daddy, about the new baby.’

  George frowned.

  ‘Won’t it be wonderful, Geenie, to have a little brother or sister?’ Diana reached for her father’s hand and gave him a brilliant smile.

  ‘Well.’ George looked into his daughter’s face. ‘It’s lovely to see you looking more cheerful,
darling, but don’t get too – ah – excited, will you?’ Dropping her hand, he closed the gate and walked ahead.

  The hill was very steep, and Geenie’s fingers kept slipping from Diana’s as the other girl marched on, breathing heavily. They were walking through long grass now, and all around the grasshoppers were scratching, scratching, scratching. Geenie could feel the weight of the sun’s heat on her hair. As she walked, the grass whirled round her bare legs. ‘Can we stop?’ she asked.

  Diana didn’t seem to hear. She’d let go of Geenie’s hand and was following her father to the top, her black hair swinging.

  If Jimmy were here, he would stop. Jimmy had been keen on walking, and had taken Geenie with him sometimes. One night, at Heathstead Hall, they’d climbed the hill at the back of the house to look for badgers. Jimmy always wore walking britches and long woolly socks, whatever the weather, and carried a special stick which he said had seen him across the desert in the war. Ellen told Geenie never to ask Jimmy about the war because he’d killed a German and he hated himself for it. He’d held Geenie’s hand and pulled her along after him, so she hardly had to move her own legs through the damp grass. Occasionally she thought her arm would come loose in its socket, but she’d said nothing. When they reached the top, they stood and looked back at the house, its lights winking in the darkness. Geenie could imagine her mother down there, her face at the window, waiting for them to return.

  ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’ Jimmy had said.

  Geenie shook her head. ‘Only if I look this way.’ She turned towards the black mass of trees on top of the hill. ‘As long as I can see the lights, it’s all right.’

  Jimmy had held her hand, tightly, all the way back down to the house.

  . . . .

  ‘Right.’ George stopped and wiped his brow. They’d reached the top, and were standing on the edge of a clump of gorse. A warm wind blew around them, and they all stood for a moment, watching patches of cloud shadow inching across the fields below. ‘They’re up here, somewhere. Careful where you stand, girls.’ Bending towards the grass, George began to study the area. ‘They’re delicate specimens.’