Angel of Brooklyn (28 page)

Love, Beatrice

October 10, 1911

Dear Elijah,

Papa’s birthday. Did you remember it? I tried to go about the day as usual. Work, then I swam for a while at the Lido. Did I ever tell you that I’m now a strapping swimmer, attempting all sorts of hair-raising dives and twists under the water? It didn’t work. I sold postcards and thought about the birds. The gulls were crying hard, and that didn’t help. In the water, the spray from my arms became the dust in the air from the bonfire. All these strange reminders. Now I intend to go straight to bed. I will not dream. I will think about jewels sitting in velvet-lined boxes. Colored polish on fingernails. Roast-beef hash. The sweet Italian children playing hopscotch on Mulberry Street. Acrobatic dancers. But best of all, and hardest of all, I will do my best to think of nothing.

Your loving sister,

Beatrice

October 20, 1911

Dear Elijah,

I had my photograph taken today with a sweet little monkey called Pom. He was wearing a red suit, like a bellboy, and reminded me of a story Papa once told us. His fingers gripped tight around my neck, and his breath smelled of garlic and bananas.

Later on this afternoon I am going with my friend Nancy to look at a room near Ocean Avenue. It is reasonably priced, close to work, and I will still be able to visit the folks at the Galilee Hotel.

I will send you my new address, if I decide to take it. Nancy has
seen
it, and she says it is clean and the furniture looks almost like new.

Best wishes,

From Beatrice

Room 18

Talbot House

Western Drive

Brooklyn

New York

October 30, 1911

Dear Elijah,

Please find enclosed my new address. I left the Galilee a couple of days ago. Miss Flood was very sweet and made a plate of vanilla muffins, and then there was lots of embracing and a few blurry tears from Mrs Mitchell, who said she felt like she was losing one of her children, all over again. (Something of an exaggeration, as I hardly spent any time with her, but I went along with it, dabbed her teary eyes, and promised her I’d return very soon for a visit.)

My room is lovely, and all my own, paid for by my wages from the booth. Now that the season here has all but ended, Mr Cooper transfers his stock to his other booth, and we sell birthday and anniversary cards, correspondence paper, books and stationary, and so on.

I hope this letter finds you well. I have something of a head cold, but I have been sipping lemon, honey, and warm water, recommended to me by the lady who lives next door, who says it is probably the change in my location, and the sudden drop in temperature.

Best wishes,

Beatrice

November 4, 1911

Dear Elijah,

Gray skies and rain. I visited the Galilee this morning. There were three new people, so it all felt very different. Miss Flood was busy making a banner, emblazoned with the words
God Is Good For You!
They all seemed pleased to see me, though Mrs Mitchell shook my hand as if I were a stranger.

I like watching the rain. From my window, I can see other windows, and people passing between them. There is a big bay horse in the yard, wearing a black coat, and stamping at the growing pools of water.

Do you have a window?

All my good wishes to you, Elijah,

From Beatrice

John Wesley House

Pickford Square East

Chicago

Illinois

December 1, 1911

Dear Miss Lyle,

I regret to inform you that I must return all correspondence sent to Mr Elijah Lyle. Mr Lyle arrived at John Wesley House on July 20. The next evening he went out with a Mr Frank Hooper. They were last seen at the Horseshoe Tavern, behaving in a very unchristian-like manner.

We have done all we can to try and locate your brother, and to assure his safety, but we have not been able to do so.

God be with you.

Yours faithfully,

(Rev.) Bernard J. Scott Esq.

BUTTERFLY

‘THE THING IS,
we don’t need you at the farm any more,’ said Ginny, awkwardly. ‘You see, we’ve agreed to take on some injured men who aren’t fit to go back to the quarry, but they can see to the pigs, muck out the stables and do all the rest of it.’

Beatrice nodded. She’d seen the men hanging around the gate. They’d looked wizened and older than their years. One of them had jaundice and a cough that rattled so hard in his chest it was like he was spitting out the bullets that hadn’t quite killed him off yet.

‘They need employment,’ said Beatrice. ‘I understand.’

‘We haven’t the money to pay you. I’m sorry. We haven’t the money to pay the men either. We’re giving them free bed and board, that’s all.’

‘I didn’t expect money,’ Beatrice told her. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘Who said I was worrying?’

Since Mary’s funeral, Beatrice had been walking on eggshells. She would give Ada her shopping list and while Ada collected the tins and bottles in grim silence, Beatrice would say such inane things as ‘Isn’t this sunshine lovely?’ or ‘You’re looking very well today.’ But there would be no replies to any of these, as Ada would bang down the box of soap powder, almost smashing a bottle of vinegar, and a jar of pink salmon paste. In church she would say good morning to all the ladies, and though they’d say ‘good morning’ back, they’d look distracted, like something was playing on their minds. At the end of the service, the Reverend Peter McNally would be gazing over her shoulder as she asked him how he was, and he would tell her he was well, all the while looking at Iris engrossed in a bag of something sticky, licking the tips of her fingers and giving him a look that was bordering on the lascivious. Iris had recently let the vicar do something that he’d only ever dreamed about. ‘It’s this war,’ she’d said, hooking up her corset. ‘It makes you look for comfort, and bugger all the consequences.’

Now it seemed that Beatrice’s longest conversations were with strangers. The lady selling cotton reels on the market, who’d talked for a good twenty minutes about her baby grandson who had yet to
meet
his father. ‘He’s the spitting image of my son-in-law,’ she’d said. ‘It’s a shame really, because he’s nothing much to look at.’ Then there was the man who’d sold her his last copy of
Woman’s Own
, who’d said his son was in hospital with a shoulder wound, and he’d never thought he’d be so grateful for a shoulder wound, but the hospital was miles away and how were they supposed to get to the other side of Manchester to take him a bag of grapes and something for his pipe now and then? On the bus home, the woman sitting next to her was crying. Beatrice offered her a handkerchief. ‘Oh, I’m not sad,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve just heard from my son for the first time in months. A tatty little postcard it was, but it was his handwriting all over the back of it, so it proves he’s still alive, and there’s me thinking that he couldn’t be.’

At home she either talked to herself or wrote letters. She wrote to Nancy, telling her about Mary. She wrote to Jonathan sounding bright and breezy, with news about the fruit she’d managed to grow in the sunny corner of the garden. ‘Small pots of very tiny strawberries, raspberries winding around precarious-looking canes, and blackcurrants – though most of those are rotten.’ For the first time in years, she wrote to her aunt in Springfield, Illinois. She told her about Jonathan, how he was fighting, how she was now living in England, and hoped her aunt and her friend Alicia Wellaby were in the best of health. The letter ran to seven pages. It didn’t fit inside the envelope, and she worried about postage. In the end, she didn’t send it; instead she used the back of the pages for shopping lists, sums and reminders.

The gramophone stayed silent, the records stacked and occasionally dusted, especially now the sunlight showed up all the dirt. She didn’t play the records because they reminded her that music should be shared, at a concert, a dance, or with the intuitive tapping of fingers on the four chair arms. But then she caught herself, one long light evening, walking about the rooms, wringing her hands, and the words ‘bad acting’ came to mind, so without a second thought, she lowered the needle and the air was full of a shrill-sounding woman singing ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’.

She began exploring the surrounding countryside, and though it occasionally felt hostile with its brambles and stings, she refused to take it personally. In the bright summer light, the waves appeared blue, matching the sky in their sharp choppy brilliance. Birds chattered in the trees, invisible in the froth of jumping leaves, filling
Beatrice
’s head not with the macabre images from her past, but with a host of chattering women, cheerfully telling each other about a dress they’d just made, or how well their sons were doing, or how their husbands didn’t know the half of what they did around the house, and as soon as they came back through the door, they were messing it all up again.

Beatrice found herself a wide smooth stone, and went there every day, with a blanket and a piece of bread and cheese. She liked the way the trees closed in around her, and then the water opened up, and the sky dipped down to meet it. The trees and the hills on the other side made her think of dabs of paint. Sometimes, she’d look at the water and forget about the war, then it would come back to her with a jolt, and she’d try to remember what life had been like, without the constant worry of death and destruction. It must have been wonderful, she thought. It must have been so easy, to get up in the morning, knowing that everyone around you would be safe, and all you had to do was bake bread, say, polish the brasses, or heat water to scrub the tide of grey sitting around your husband’s dirty collar. Who cleaned his collars in the army? Did they worry about washing in France? Did they have a bar of soap? She threw a couple of stones into the water. If they do have soap, she thought, you can bet it won’t be Woodbury’s, ‘For the Skin You Love to Touch’.

Sometimes, she fell asleep by the side of her rock, holding onto its smoothness as if it was a pillow, and waking with an ache in her neck and her hair caught up with twigs. It was Martha who found her.

‘Are you dead?’

Beatrice opened her eyes. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

‘I thought you must be,’ said Martha. ‘Because I’ve been watching you for a really long time and a butterfly was sitting on your skirt, a big blue butterfly, the size of my hand, and you didn’t move at all.’

‘I was fast asleep,’ said Beatrice, sitting up and rubbing the back of her neck. ‘I always fall asleep just here.’

‘It’s the fresh air that does it. That’s what my mam says.’

‘And your mam is right.’

Martha shrugged and walked to where the water was licking at the stones. ‘You don’t really believe that,’ she said. ‘You don’t even like my mam.’

‘Of course I like Lizzie. She’s lovely.’

‘You don’t like anybody. That’s what Auntie Ada says. You think you’re better than everyone else. Mind you …’

‘What?’

‘You do look like a princess.’

Beatrice laughed. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘So you’re not a princess?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I’m just an American, a long way from home.’

‘But this is your home, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it is,’ she said, picking leaves from her skirt. ‘Trouble is, I keep forgetting.’

‘That’s my trouble too,’ said Martha turning round. ‘I keep forgetting what my dad sounds like. I can remember his boots, his big clomping boots, but I can’t remember his voice.’

‘He’ll come back to you.’

‘He might,’ she said. ‘If the Germans don’t get him.’

They stood side by side watching the water for a while, the dragonflies, the splashing on the stones, the way the waves seemed to change colour, from brown to green, to a sludgy kind of grey.

‘Do you know any Germans?’ Martha asked.

‘No,’ said Beatrice, shaking her head. ‘Not one.’

‘What do you think they look like?’

‘Like we do.’

‘Do they want to kill us? Would they like us all to die? Not just the soldiers?’

Beatrice put her arm around the girl’s small shoulders. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t want us all to die,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure the British soldiers don’t want all the German people to die either. I know I don’t.’

‘Just the bad ones,’ said Martha.

‘Just the bad ones,’ said Beatrice.

They walked around the edge of the reservoir, the ferns dipping their fronds into the water, the birds still chattering about the price of meat, and the merits of National War Bonds.

‘Do you know something?’ said Beatrice. ‘When I come here, I like to forget all about the war. I pretend it isn’t happening.’

‘Can you do that?’ said Martha.

‘Sometimes. If I try hard enough.’

‘I’d like to do that,’ she said, picking the head off a daisy and tearing the petals apart. ‘It gives me nightmares,’ she admitted. ‘And it makes Mam cry.’

‘Then let’s talk about something else,’ said Beatrice.

‘Like what?’

‘How about … Professor Hubert, and his world-famous flea circus?’

‘Will it make me itch?’

‘Oh no,’ she said, sitting down on the bank. ‘Because all of his fleas are very well behaved, and they all work under glass. Apart from the main attractions,’ she added. ‘They work on a special baize carpet, and they’re the most talented, and the most disciplined, and they would never jump onto your arm or make you itch, because they’re extremely dignified fleas.’

‘Have you ever met them?’

‘Many, many times,’ said Beatrice, ‘though I’m particularly well acquainted with Captain Thunder who shoots out of a cannon and lands on a flying trapeze.’

‘You know Captain Thunder?’ Martha sighed, leaning backwards. ‘You know all the best people. None of the fleas that I’ve ever met can swing on a flying trapeze.’

The next day must have been the hottest day of the summer. The sky shimmered, clearing into a blue satin sheet, the sun flat and brittle, waking the village early with its sharp metallic rays.

Beatrice sat in the garden, watching the bees chasing pollen, the scent of the magnolia so strong it changed the taste of her tea. She picked a couple of raspberries. She walked around the edge of the lawn, popping them into her mouth.