The Good Plain Cook

by Bethan Roberts

  · · · Thirty-seven · · ·

  Geenie did not go to Diana’s room that night. Instead she slept in the soft centre of her own bed, and dreamed of the maps on Jimmy’s wall. In her dream, she drew all the countries and the seas on the floor of Jimmy’s study, and when he came into the room, he was carrying his walking stick, and he was ready to take her anywhere.

  In the morning, she rose early. Sitting at the dining table, rubbing sleep from her eyes, she watched Diana bring in a plate of toast, a pot of tea and two cups.

  ‘Where’s Kitty?’ Geenie yawned.

  Diana spread the toast with butter, being careful to get it in all the corners. ‘There’s no baby, you know,’ she said, taking a bite.

  Geenie had almost forgotten about her mother’s announcement. The day on the beach seemed long ago, now. ‘Isn’t there?’

  ‘Daddy told me yesterday.’

  Geenie nodded. Then she asked again, ‘Where’s Kitty?’

  ‘Haven’t seen her. Daddy made me toast, and I made the tea.’ Diana sipped her drink.

  ‘You can make tea?’

  ‘It’s far better, actually. Not so strong. Want a cup?’

  Geenie shook her head and watched in silence as Diana ate two more slices of toast, thickly smeared with raspberry jam.

  The door opened. ‘Five minutes, darling. We’ve got to catch the eight-forty.’ Spotting Geenie, George stepped into the room. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said, giving her a pat on the head. ‘You two will see each other again. You’ll have to visit Diana at her mother’s. Won’t she, Diana?’

  Pushing past George, Geenie ran from the room and took the stairs two at a time. Dragging all her dressing-up things from the bottom of the wardrobe, she plunged her arms into the pile and threw stockings, hats, shoes, dresses and waistcoats over her shoulder until her fingers touched the cool sleekness of fur.

  Diana was standing in the hallway with her suitcase by her feet when Geenie made it back downstairs. Geenie thrust the coat towards her friend. ‘If you’re going,’ she panted, ‘you’d better have this.’ It weighed down her arms and draped on the floor about the two of them, like a king’s cloak.

  Diana hooked her hair behind one ear. ‘But it’s yours.’

  ‘Take it.’

  From the driveway, George was calling his daughter.

  ‘It’s Jimmy’s,’ said Diana. ‘You have to keep it.’ She stroked the fur collar. ‘It suits you best, anyway.’

  When the front door had closed, Geenie wrapped herself tightly in the coat and went in search of her mother.

  . . . .

  As far as Ellen was concerned, they’d already said their goodbyes on Harting Down, and there was little point in getting up this early in the morning. She burrowed beneath the bedclothes and closed her eyes. What she really couldn’t stand was the thought of another drama. She’d spent all yesterday avoiding it. After the play, Crane had gone to Laura’s to meet with Lillian and make the necessary arrangements for Diana, who was going to stay with her mother while he went on his lecture tour, and Ellen had gone to the hairdressers’. She’d actually had an appointment this time, and Robin had spent hours dyeing her hair jet black and then styling it in the same Hollywood wave as before. While she was sitting in the chair, watching his steady fingers move around her face, she’d thought again of Crane’s scrap of poetry. His blood is heavy with wanting. Ridiculous. It had to be make-believe, Ellen decided, just like that amusing little play the girls had put on. Geenie had shown a lot of nerve, barking back at Diana like that, and almost pushing her over. It was actually very promising.

  Once she was polished and set, Ellen couldn’t quite face going back to the cottage in case he’d returned, so she went for tea at the White Hart before meeting Robin again, this time in the back room. It had been, as always, vigorous and refreshing, but she meant to make it her last visit. Since she’d decided her daughter should go to the local school in September, she should make the most of the few remaining weeks of summer with Geenie. Perhaps she could teach her to dance. Besides, Robin was getting to be an awfully expensive habit.

  Ellen shifted in the bed. Crane had come up late last night, but she hadn’t pretended to sleep. Instead, she’d opened her eyes and said, ‘In the morning, will you just go? I don’t think I can stand it, otherwise.’ He’d brushed her hand with his, and she’d caught it and held fast. But now, as she lay between the sheets, looking at the little boatmen on her curtains, she did think about going downstairs and blocking the doorway. Forbidding him to leave. Begging him to stay. She covered her head with the pillow, but still she could hear the muffled sound of his careful tread on the hallway boards, the click and shudder as he pulled open the front door. She put her hands to her ears and closed her eyes, as she’d done as a girl when her father was leaving the house to visit his mistress. It was surprisingly comforting, especially with the pillow draped over your head and shoulders and your body curled in on itself. Almost like someone was holding you.

  When she unfurled her arms and legs, the cottage was quiet. She lifted the pillow from her head. The sun was warming the sheets, and her daughter was opening the door and throwing herself on the bed beside her, wearing a beautiful fur that Ellen hadn’t seen or touched for a long time. With a laugh, she recognised it: Jimmy’s sable coat. Accepting it from the girl’s hands, Ellen draped it across the bed, and she and Geenie lay down together and slept on top of the coat until lunchtime.

  . . . .

  Kitty was too exhausted to cry any more, but she wasn’t refusing to get out of bed. It was just that she didn’t see why she should. George (she thought of him as George for the first time, and it was less painful: George was not the man who’d kissed her goodbye last night) had said Mrs Steinberg knew nothing of their love affair (was that what it had been?), but Kitty couldn’t believe him. The woman was sure to throw her out. She may as well try to sleep for another hour, and then, when she was stronger, she could face it.

  But it was no good. Although her body was heavy, her mind was still alert. She peeped over the sheets. The green silk frock was sprawled on the floor, where she’d kicked it off last night. The best thing to do would be to give it back to Lou and tell her it could be altered after all. With enough determination, you could make anything fit.

  Rolling over, Kitty covered her eyes against the sun, which was glaring through a gap in the curtains, and gave a little groan. Sounds were coming from the kitchen, quiet ones at first: shoes on the flags, the larder door creaking. Then louder: drawers opening, cutlery chiming. Pots being clashed together. Kitty turned over again, trying to ignore the row. Let the woman get on with it, she thought. She wouldn’t know butter from margarine, or a skillet from a saucepan. Let her pull the kitchen apart, if that’s what she wants. See how she fares.

  Then she noticed something poking between the wall and the mattress. She reached for the corner of the material and tugged. Her embroidery. Sitting up, she spread it across her lap, flattening out the creases with her hands and remembering the day at the beach, how she’d felt the embroidered scene was so much better than the real one. Running a finger along its surface, she felt the thickness of the rocks, the pinched knobbles of the crab’s eyes, the fine filigree of the girls’ fishing nets. She’d had a thought that she might give it to George – Mr Crane – as a gift. But now she was glad she hadn’t. Perhaps it was good enough to put on the wall. She could use it to replace the awful painting of the woman at the waterfall.

  Then she remembered that by the end of the day she’d be back at Lou’s, among her sister’s things, where anything homemade was not tolerated.

  There was a knock at the door. Kitty gathered the embroidery to her chest and turned her face to the wall.

  ‘Kitty.’ It was Geenie’s voice. ‘Kitty?’

  She waited for the girl to go away.

  ‘Ellen says, will you have lunch with us?’

  So that was it. Even now, they couldn’t make themselves a meal. Kitty threw off
the bedclothes and, still in her nightgown, pulled open the door. ‘Can’t you get your own lunch, just for once?’ She was almost shouting. Geenie stepped backwards, and Kitty looked beyond her into the kitchen. Mrs Steinberg was standing at the stove, stirring something. Her hair had changed colour: it was glossy and black, like oil, and it made her nose stand out even further. There was a smell of burnt toast, and a pot of tea was steaming on the table.

  ‘It’s only scrambled egg,’ the woman said, frowning at the stove, ploughing her wooden spoon into the pan. ‘Well, you can make up for it tomorrow, Kitty, I’m sure. But for now, we’ll have to put up with my effort.’

  ‘I helped,’ added Geenie, hopping on one foot. ‘I cracked the eggs.’

  Kitty folded her arms across her chest. ‘I’m not – dressed.’

  ‘What does that matter?’ Mrs Steinberg was dolloping mounds of egg onto plates. ‘Sit down and eat.’

  Kitty could tell by the way the egg fell with a heavy splat that it would be rubbery. The toast in the rack looked limp and cold. But her mouth filled with water.

  Taking a chair, she sat at the table.

  ‘Just a minute.’ Mrs Steinberg disappeared from the room. Kitty looked at Geenie. ‘The costumes were lovely,’ the girl said. Then the cottage was filled with the thump and soar of music, and a man’s sweet, rasping voice began to sing.

  Mrs Steinberg returned. ‘Much better,’ she said. Pushing a plate of egg over to Kitty, she sat with Geenie at her side. Kitty took up her knife and fork. Together, the three of them began to eat.

  · · · Acknowledgements · · ·

  This novel is based loosely on events in the lives of Peggy Guggenheim, her lover Douglas Garman, and their respective daughters Pegeen Vail and Deborah Garman, who lived together in Sussex from 1934 to 1937. The characters and setting have been fictionalised, but essential to me in researching this book was Peggy’s own outrageous, tantalising, inconsistent account of her life, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict. Among many other useful books were Anton Gill’s Peggy Guggenheim: The Life of an Art Addict and, for its wonderfully gutsy evocation of life in service, Below Stairs, by Margaret Powell.

  I’d like to thank Cath Aldworth and Marge Phillips for sharing their fascinating recollections of the mid-1930s with me. Both ladies were wonderful company and extremely generous.

  Thanks to Pete Ayrton, John Williams, Rebecca Gray and the team at Serpent’s Tail, and to my agent, David Riding, for their commitment to this book. For their advice on drafts, I am grateful to Naomi Foyle, Claire Harries, Kai Merriott and Lorna Thorpe, and I remain deeply indebted to David Swann, who read the first half and convinced me it was going to be all right. Special thanks to my parents for their support, and to my brother Owen for his expertise on every subject. My greatest debt, as always, is to my husband Hugh Dunkerley, who is also my first and best reader.

  Snooping in Other People’s Houses

  some thoughts on writing The Good Plain Cook

  I was just eighteen when I first visited the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, housed in the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, Venice. Eighteen, tired from inter-railing and longing for home, a good bath and a plate of my mum’s chips. I bypassed most of the big boys of twentieth-century art and found myself in a small side room, filled with puzzlingly child-like paintings by Peggy Guggenheim’s daughter, Pegeen Vail, who died aged forty-two. The room displayed a photograph of her, all huge eyes and no chin, beside which was a short elegy, written for her by her mother. For the Peggy Guggenheim Collection isn’t only a museum; it’s also where Peggy lived.

  The wonderful thing about walking around the Palazzo is the illicit thrill you get from snooping in someone else’s house. There’s the white plastic sofas in the drawing room, where she would have sat, backed by a Pollock, gazing out at her private gondolier (I thought); there’s the Calder silver bedhead, under which she took her pleasure with her fabled string of famous lovers… In short, I found the house, and the ghosts of those who’d lived in it, much more interesting than the art.

  Fourteen years later, I was still interested enough to think that Peggy’s story might give me something to write about, and I embarked on what writers call ‘research’, which is really more snooping about in other people’s houses, keeping an eye out for anything that piques your interest or chimes with your own experience enough to get a story going. I knew that I wanted to write fiction, but thought that the facts of Peggy’s life might open up some avenues in my imagination. I also thought, after setting my first novel in the industrial landscape of small-town Oxford-shire, this was the perfect excuse for some much-needed glamour. I saw a prolonged period of ‘research’ in Venice stretching out before me. Yes! I thought. This must be why so many people dream of becoming novelists.

  But then I read that Peggy and her daughter had spent a few years living fairly near me, in West Sussex, and I was intrigued. I also read that she’d employed a local girl as a cook and, dissatisfied with the girl’s performance, had decided to learn to cook herself. Everything changed. There they were: the seeds of my cast of characters, just down the road from me. Writers often talk about characters ‘taking over’ their work, and whilst I bristle a little at such a mystical idea, once I’d found my Good Plain Cook, the novel’s direction became clear. I realised that Kitty’s point of view – as that of the character so often written out of the bohemian dramas of the period – was a crucial one for me. Perhaps this is because my own family’s stories are full of Kittys, whose work enabled the moneyed classes to indulge their passions for art, literature, partying (and politics) without having to worry about the washing up or incinerating the fish. I was fascinated by Peggy’s life, by Peggy’s house – the art, the lovers, the money – but realised that the story had to include something from my own house. The Good Plain Cook is my attempt to put the ‘below-stairs’ girl centre-stage, whilst also, of course, indulging in a little bohemian glamour.

  the pools

  Middle England, mid-1980s. The kind of place where nothing ever happens. Except something has happened. A fifteen year old boy called Robert has died, down by the pools. And half a dozen lives will come unravelled.

  There’s Kathryn and Howard, Rob’s parents. Kath has been making the best of her second marriage after the love of her life died young. Howard has been clinging onto a family life he hardly expected to have. There’s Joanna, the teen queen of nowheresville. She’s been looking for a way out, escape from her parents’ broken marriage. She thought Rob might take her away from all this, but lately she’s started to think Rob might have other plans. And then there’s Shane, with the big hands and the fixation on Joanna.

  Bethan Roberts’ strikingly assured debut novel subtly reveals the tensions and terrors that underpin apparently ordinary lives, and can lead them to spiral suddenly out of control.

  writing the pools

  The process of writing The Pools began while I was studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. When I started writing it, I didn’t know it was going to be a novel. I thought these characters, this situation, might be best explored in a poem, or – what was I thinking? – a radio play in verse. (A dark secret of mine: sometimes I attempt to write poetry, and I’ve always had a weakness for Under Milk Wood). I suspect this is because I could hear the voices of the book – especially Howard’s – quite clearly in my head from the start. In fact, I did write The Pools as a rather hysterical radio play, but it didn’t quite work, and it didn’t feel like the end of my relationship with the material. I wanted the thing to be quieter, gentler, more expansive. I wanted to go deeper into the characters’ minds. I wasn’t quite ready to let them go. So, slowly – very, very slowly – it became a novel.

  I had a lot of help: first from the MA – from both my tutors and fellow students – and then from the novelist Andrew Cowan, whom I’d ‘won’ as a mentor for six months as part of a Jerwood award for young writers. When I was writing, I didn’t think to myself: this is my
first novel. I just thought about the next sentence. And the next. And the next. I didn’t have a grand plot structure in mind at first. I just wrote and wrote, getting to know the characters as I went along. And then I cut most of what I wrote, and rewrote. And, eventually, I thought about the plot, and somehow I managed to reach the end. I don’t know if this is the best way to write a novel. But it seemed to work for me.

  Whilst I was writing, I tried not to think about getting published. But I can’t deny that I have imagined what it would be like for a very long time. I’ve had day-dreams about book-signings. Seen covers and blurbs in my sleep. In the day-dreams I’m entirely happy and successful and everything is very shiny. But the reality is much more everyday. Of course, when my agent called to tell me that we’d found a publisher I didn’t stop smiling for weeks (except to eat, which I’m very keen on doing regularly). It’s utterly thrilling – and very surreal – to see your words in print, between covers, and on the shelf of a bookshop… You even start to think: maybe I am actually a writer. Could that be true? Could it? But then you get back to your desk. And there’s the blank page again. Staring at you without pity. And you take a deep breath, and dare to put down one sentence… and then the next, and then the next.