The Good Plain Cook

by Bethan Roberts

  Geenie could see the whole village, the green spire of the church pricking the air, the sweep of the main street, their own cottage standing slightly apart, surrounded by trees. She wondered which one Diana had climbed, and thought of Kitty taking off her shoes and stockings, her face serious and pink.

  ‘Daddy?’ Diana sat on the grass and hugged her knees to her chest.

  ‘Yes, darling?’ He didn’t stop studying the ground.

  The girl shot a look towards Geenie and winked. ‘You know Ellen said she was going to have a baby…’

  George straightened up.

  ‘How does that happen, exactly?’

  He blinked. ‘How does it happen?’

  Diana put her head to one side and widened her black eyes. ‘How is a baby made? We were wondering, weren’t we, Geenie?’

  Geenie knew how babies were made. Ellen had related the facts years ago, demonstrating with a pair of Red Indian dolls. She’d said she didn’t want her daughter to suffer the same ‘agonies of ignorance’ she had as a young girl, and asked Geenie to repeat all the information back to her when she’d finished. Geenie had always presumed Diana knew, too. They’d never discussed the afternoon noises, but Diana had read enough novels, even grown-up ones like Tess of the D’Urbervilles and, she’d boasted, things by D. H. Lawrence.

  George ran a hand over his mouth and looked to the sky. ‘Hasn’t your mother told you?’

  ‘How could she?’ said Diana, looking straight at him. ‘Mummy’s in London.’

  ‘Well. Ah. Yes.’ He’d begun to pace up and down.

  Diana sat on her hands and waited. Geenie stood beside her, watching.

  ‘Well. Yes. No point in being kept in the dark about these things. Much better to be in full possession of the facts.’

  There was a long silence, broken only by the busy song of the larks.

  ‘Well. If we observe nature, for example…’ he stopped pacing and looked around him. ‘It’s a question of an egg being – ah – germinated. Just like those buttercups there. Well, not exactly like them. The lady has an egg, you see, and that egg must be germinated by the man’s seed.’

  ‘What egg?’ asked Diana. ‘Where does the lady keep the egg?’

  ‘It’s in the tummy, darling. Deep inside. That’s where the baby grows.’

  Diana placed a hand on her own stomach and swallowed. ‘How does the seed get there?’

  The larks were still singing. Jimmy had told Geenie that the males went as high as they could, singing all the time, before plunging to the earth, to impress the females. ‘Like men talking clever, clever, cleverer,’ Ellen had said, ‘until they can talk no more.’

  George wasn’t talking now. He was sitting on the grass next to his daughter, looking out at the village, a deep frown on his face.

  ‘Daddy? How does the seed get there?’

  If Diana really did know, then she was very good at pretending she didn’t, thought Geenie. She wondered if her friend was practising, for when she’d have to pretend that Kitty was having a love affair with George.

  ‘Well. It’s quite complicated. And yet simple,’ his face brightened a little. ‘Wonderfully simple, really. And – yes – beautiful.’

  Diana waited.

  ‘You see, what happens is. Ah. A man and a woman are in love, and probably married—’

  ‘But you and Ellen aren’t married.’

  He looked at Geenie and sighed. ‘No. No, we’re not. It’s not necessary to be married, you see, but most people are, because that’s what society demands, marriage, and family. It’s a way of sort of keeping people in order. The Soviet peoples have a different view of it, of course; there it’s community that counts, not family, not some archaic, superstitious idea of religion—’

  ‘But you have to be in love?’ Diana asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it helps to be in love. Personally speaking, I’d say that helps. Is necessary, in fact. Although not everyone agrees.’

  The girls looked at one another. Diana arched her eyebrows. ‘So how does the seed get there? Is it through kissing?’ She giggled.

  ‘Well, yes, that’s a part of it. There will be kissing, yes, and touching, touching each other, holding one another. And then – and then—’

  ‘The man puts his thing up you,’ interrupted Geenie. ‘The man puts his penis in the lady’s vagina and he produces semen which makes her pregnant. If she’s started menstruating, that is.’

  George stared at her. His bad eye twitched. ‘Yes. That’s it,’ he said, finally. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Urgh,’ said Diana. She jumped to her feet and gave a shudder.

  ‘We ought to get back,’ said George. ‘It must be almost lunchtime.’ He walked ahead. The patch of sweat now covered his back.

  ‘What about the bee orchid?’ called Geenie.

  But he didn’t reply. He just waved a hand in the air and carried on down the hill.

  When he was so far in front that they kept losing sight of him, Geenie turned to Diana and said, ‘Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ Diana trailed one hand through the long grass. ‘Aunt Laura told me, ages ago.’

  ‘Why did you ask, then?’

  ‘Because I wanted to see what he’d say.’ As she squinted against the sun, her dark eyes looked small but bright. ‘Now I know we’re going back to London, I don’t have to be nice to him all the time, do I?’

  Geenie tightened her grip on her friend’s hand and tried to keep in step.

  · · · Twenty-four · · ·

  Dearest Bird, Ellen typed.

  If I were another man, I would write of what a tonic the country air affords, of how I am getting better, whatever that means, out here on the bleak hills, being blown into goodness by the unforgiving wind; but all I can think of is how long it will be before I am home again in London with you and Flossy.

  Mother, of course, occasionally tries to bring up the subject of Rachel (whom she now knows is, in name at least, my wife – it seems Rachel has written to tell her), but those tweed skirts and double strings of pearls seem to keep her from speaking too plainly, and she won’t allow herself to become emotional with her only son, who, she can see, needs rest and quiet, to recover from his nerves.

  She stopped. James had sent this one whilst visiting his parents’ home in Northumberland. It was one in a series of letters she kept separate from the others, in a folder marked ‘personal’. She’d never thought of publishing these. But, today, something had compelled her to begin work on them. They were, she realised, the key to the collection. Without them, the book would be incomplete.

  I will stop drinking, darling; I know I’ve promised before, but now I am away from London, all that madness, all that pressure to perform, I do feel I can do it.

  The library window was open but the air refused to move. She was sitting in her nightgown at three o’clock in the afternoon, and she could smell her own skin in the heat. Burying her nose into the fleshiness of her upper arm, she reflected that Crane hadn’t really touched her since their al fresco encounter. Last night, after the picnic, he’d come to bed late after spending all evening in his studio, and she’d pretended to be asleep. This morning, she’d heard him rise early, but she’d stayed in bed as long as she could, counting the boatmen on her curtains. How could he have abandoned her in that damned dramatic fashion on the beach? She’d had to sit there with Arthur’s silence and Kitty’s infernal fiddling with needle and thread. In the end she’d plunged into the sea again and swum until her eyes were stinging. She didn’t notice the ache in her arms and legs until she was sitting beside him on the silent drive home, watching his long fingers grasp and wrench the gear knob into place.

  Pushing her hair back, she began typing again.

  It’s partly for the physical pain (I won’t go into the mental pain; it’s too tiresome even to consider), you know that, don’t you, darling?Whisky seems to be the only thing that stops my blasted ankle hurting, but when I return, and have had the operation and it
’s all re-set, I know I will feel one hundred per cent better.

  There was something about hitting the keys that soothed her. It wasn’t about re-living the past. It was about typing it up and putting it away. Getting it all onto clean white sheets. Seeing it as it was, in black ink, for one last time.

  She ripped the page from the typewriter and placed it on the pile with the rest. Then she riffled through the folder. It was a while before she found what she was looking for: the letter she’d received from Crane after James’s death.

  She knew this one couldn’t possibly go into the book, but, scrolling paper into the machine, she began again.

  My adored Ellen,

  I do not know how to begin this letter. It is so sad and strange. I am so sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine what you are feeling now. I can hardly imagine what I myself am feeling. It’s a terrible shock for all of us. You most of all.

  Everything has happened so suddenly – all of it – that it’s hard to know how to act, what to do.

  I did not mean to write this letter.

  Please forgive me for still wanting you. This is hardly the time to write about such things, but our afternoon in Laura’s flat was quite the best thing to have happened to me.

  If you choose not to come again, I will respect your wishes. You will not hear from me any more.

  But if, when the time is right, you decide to live again, to love again, please live with me.

  I can be patient.

  He hadn’t had to be, of course. Two weeks later, she’d been here, in this library, holding his arm and telling him she was going to buy the place, despite its cramped, dim little rooms. He’d kept calling her his Cleopatra. On the train back to London to pick up Geenie, her thighs aching from three days of sex with Crane in the White Hart Hotel, she’d found she couldn’t stop weeping. A woman in a bright yellow hat with a greasy Yorkshire terrier on her lap had moved carriages in disgust. Ellen had lain on the seat, beaten her fist against the antimacassar, and wailed. She’d thought she would never be able to catch enough breath to cry even harder, but somehow she’d managed it, the snot running into her mouth, her throat clenching. When she’d reached Waterloo, the tears had stopped, and she hadn’t cried again. She’d told herself it was for her daughter’s sake. It was necessary to begin anew, wipe the slate clean, for Geenie.

  She’d long suspected that her daughter knew. Geenie must know, surely, that James’s death was Ellen’s fault. Her daughter would have heard, of course, the terrible row the night before the operation. James had been drunk again, and it was just after she’d first slept with Crane, but it was all over some silly thing – James saying they should try to persuade Dora to keep working after she was married, at least until she had children of her own, Ellen insisting she could bring up her own daughter perfectly well. It was when James had faced her and said, ‘You have no idea who that girl is,’ that she’d snapped and thrown her tumbler of whisky at him; he’d ducked, and the glass had smashed on the wall and dripped down one of his maps, soaking the countries and the seas, staining everything brown. James had brought back his hand and slapped her like a child. What she’d felt, she remembered now, was relief that finally he’d done it, just as she’d always known he would, just as Charles had hit her almost every week for the last year of their marriage. She’d sunk to her knees and started to pick up the pieces of glass from the leopard-skin rug, the short hairs bristling beneath her fingers. James stood above her, watching in silence. When she was finished she’d gone to bed, knowing he would sit in his study all night. She’d never thought, not for a moment, that there would still be enough alcohol in him to react so badly with the anaesthetic. It simply hadn’t occurred to her to mention it to the anaesthetist the next morning, when he’d arrived with his leather bag, warm hands and onion breath. James was going to stop, after all; he’d promised her he’d stop, just as soon as the operation was over and all the pain was gone. And, she remembered, her own head had felt as though a knife were stuck in her scalp, her tongue was coated and her stomach tight, and all she’d wanted was to close the door of the sitting room and lie down in the dark.

  Still. It was, she felt even now, sitting at her desk in this strange little house in the wilderness, looking out onto a garden blighted by fierce heat, entirely her fault.

  She left the sheet of paper in the typewriter and went upstairs to bed. The only thing to do on an afternoon like this was to close her eyes and hope sleep would take her somewhere else.

  . . . .

  At half past seven, she managed to comb her hair into some sort of shape (there was nothing left, now, of that sculpture of waves and light created so carefully by Robin), dust her nose with powder without looking too closely at the evil thing in the mirror, and put on her cream silk dress, all without crying. Laura was already downstairs. Ellen could hear the click of her heels on the wooden floor, the slow, confident timbre of her voice. She’d have to go down and face them all: the girls, Crane, his pregnant sister and her drip of a husband. And the dinner, of course, instructions for which she’d left scribbled on the back of an envelope last night: KITTY: Tomorrow’s dinner menu. Pea and lettuce soup. Chilled poached salmon and new potatoes. Strawberries and cream. Then she’d added: I won’t be available to help so have kept it simple. E.S.

  They were all seated when she arrived downstairs. Kitty had extended the mahogany table to its full length. Ellen had brought it with her from the London house, and even with the two rooms knocked into one, it was a squeeze to fit it in comfortably. Crane seemed very far away, sitting on the other side of the room, studying his napkin. The feeble central light hung too low over the table, giving the room a rather shadowy feel. For once, she was glad of it: her reddened eyes wouldn’t be so obvious in the gloom.

  ‘There you are,’ said Laura. She was wearing a jade shot-silk tunic with metallic blue feathers for earrings. Everything about her looked fuller: her curved lips and eyes, her black bobbed hair.

  ‘Here I am,’ agreed Ellen, trying a smile.

  Next to Laura was a girl of about twenty, wearing a man’s paisley waistcoat and no blouse. She stood up and bowed her head towards Ellen.

  ‘This is my new friend, Tab,’ said Laura, stretching a hand towards the young woman’s elbow. ‘She’s a singer. Awfully talented.’

  Ellen looked Tab up and down. Her bare arms were sleek and muscled; her small breasts seemed to be holding themselves up without any support, apart from the waistcoat, and her hair – dyed red to the point of being almost purple – was short and set in neat waves.

  ‘Where’s Humphrey?’

  ‘Where indeed?’ replied Laura.

  Ellen glanced at Crane, but he was still studying his napkin. She pulled out a chair at the opposite end of the table and sat down. ‘Welcome to Willow Cottage, Tab. Do sit.’

  The wall seemed to be very close behind Ellen’s back, hemming her into place. ‘A singer. How interesting. What sort of thing?’

  Tab cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was high and reedy. ‘Anything, really,’ she said, gazing at Laura. ‘I mean, I love the French songs…’

  ‘She does a marvellous “Mômes de la cloche”, interjected Laura. ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘I’m working on widening my repertoire.’ Tab’s accent was hard to place. It was a bit like the barmaid’s in the Wheatsheaf, but not quite that coarse.

  ‘She’s been a great success at the Café Royal, haven’t you, Tab darling?’

  Ellen smoothed her napkin over her lap. ‘I rather thought it had all blown over for the dear old Café now.’

  ‘When was the last time you were there?’ asked Crane, looking up.

  Ellen laughed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been stuck here in the wilderness with you for an age.’

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ said Tab. ‘A right breath of fresh air.’

  ‘Tab’s a Brighton girl,’ said Laura, sliding her eyes sidelong. ‘Isn’t it a blast? A fisherman’s daughter singing in the Royal.’<
br />
  The colour rose in Tab’s face.

  ‘She used to help her father haul the nets up the beach,’ said Laura.

  ‘How interesting,’ said Crane, putting down his napkin and leaning towards Tab. ‘Wasn’t it wonderful work, though, Tab, out there? There’s something so – ah – rewarding about physical work out of doors, isn’t there?’

  Tab shrugged her shoulders. ‘I prefer the Royal.’

  ‘Shall we eat?’ said Ellen, ladling herself some soup from the tureen and passing it to Tab. She could tell the stuff wasn’t nearly hot enough as soon as she lifted the lid: there was hardly any steam. Taking a breath, she decided to let it go. She would have to ignore these little things in order to get through this evening. It was strange; despite being so upset this afternoon by re-reading the letters, she found what her mind kept returning to was the image of that cow being dragged along Petersfield High Street. She saw again the huge open wound of its stomach, the way it had seemed to sink helplessly into the road.

  Picking up her spoon, she looked around the table and forced herself to focus. Geenie’s normally pale face was, she noticed, now quite tanned, which made her appear somehow more defined; her chin wasn’t pressed so far into her chest, and her hair had been bleached almost white by the sun. Instead of eating her soup, she was studying the prongs of her fork, holding the silver close to her nose. Next to Crane, whose eyes were fixed on his soup, was Diana. She, too, was tanned. Dark as an Italian, thought Ellen, and eating like one, too: nothing could stop Diana once she’d started on her food.

  ‘Tell me,’ Ellen began. ‘Did you girls have an interesting day?’

  Crane swallowed. ‘I was just telling Laura. We went up Harting Down, looking for bee orchids.’

  ‘But we didn’t find any, did we, Daddy?’ said Diana, between mouthfuls. ‘So we had a very interesting discussion instead.’

  Geenie gave a giggle.

  George ducked his head.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Laura. ‘You’re so lucky, living here in the country all year round. I long for it whenever I’m in London.’