Angel of Brooklyn (32 page)

‘Do I look all right?’ Beatrice asked. ‘On the picture?’

‘Stunning.’

‘What did I tell you?’ said Nancy.

‘Maurice is an artist,’ said Cooper slowly.

‘So I’ve heard,’ said Nancy. ‘But if he really is an artist, why does he have to keep reminding us all the time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cooper, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘But you must have heard? He has a friend in Manhattan, a successful publisher of books. He’s a very rich man, and his books are sent all over America, from east to west, and north to south.’

‘So?’ said Nancy, who didn’t like books, they made her feel uncomfortable, and they were always so weighty, sitting in your hands like dry musty stones.

‘So, Maurice tells me that we could be part of them.’

‘We?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I don’t write,’ said Nancy. ‘I mean, I can write, only I’m not much of an author is what I’m trying to say.’

‘Me neither,’ said Beatrice. ‘Just think of all those words …’

‘Girls,’ said Mr Cooper, who was suddenly feeling hotter. ‘I am not talking about the words. I am talking about the pictures.’

‘Ah,’ said Nancy. ‘Now I don’t feel so guilty for ordering the most expensive thing on the menu. You want to use us. You want to put us into his book.’

Cooper looked more than a little embarrassed. He drained his glass of wine and poured himself another one. Above him, a small wooden fan started twitching.

‘Your kimono pictures are selling like hot cakes,’ he said. ‘Even Marnie and her snake in a basket can’t outdo Japan, but it’s Beatrice the man wants, only Beatrice.’

‘Beatrice doesn’t do pictures,’ said Nancy, feeling like she ought to speak up for her friend. ‘You know she doesn’t. You can’t make her and you can’t buy her off with a plate of fancy fish and salad.’

‘I have no intention of doing so,’ he said, as their meals appeared from over their shoulders, the waiter setting down the plates in silence, his hair so damp and shining it looked like it had been painted onto his head. Beatrice was disappointed. Why had she ordered the
salmon?
It was sure to be full of those fine hairy bones that you were supposed to crunch your way through, only she never could. She suddenly lost her appetite.

‘What kind of pictures?’ she managed.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Nancy, tucking into her lobster. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been plotting, Jesmond,’ she said, ‘but it has to be a no.’

‘Your name is Beatrice Lyle?’ Cooper asked Nancy.

‘I feel responsible,’ she said. ‘I found her. You employed her to sell your holiday cards, nothing else. I don’t want Beatrice thinking that she’ll lose one job if she doesn’t take up the other.’

‘What kind of pictures?’ Beatrice repeated. Was no one listening to her?

‘Well …’ Cooper said, finding the whole thing very difficult. Why did Beatrice make him feel nervous? ‘Maurice showed your picture to his Manhattan friend, who got terribly excited. He has an idea.’

‘Oh, I’ll bet he has,’ said Nancy.

‘It has something to do with wings.’

‘Wings?’

Beatrice turned her head towards the ocean where the gulls were circling; tonight the waves looked brittle, like they could snap right off and cut you.

‘Angel wings,’ he said, cutting into his steak, which he saw was a little too rare for his liking. ‘The kind that sweep down to the floor.’

‘And that’s all I’d be wearing?’

‘Need you ask?’ said Nancy.

‘Of course,’ Cooper went on, ‘it will be extremely artistic and tasteful. The wings would be made by a top theatrical costumier. There will be no … how can I put this?’ He coughed into the wide chubby cuff of his hand. ‘There will be no explicit, suggestive or, dare I say, vulgar positioning. Nothing sleazy,’ he whispered, turning beetroot, wishing he’d ordered a jug of iced water.

‘She’ll look angelic?’ Nancy smiled. ‘Only she won’t be wearing any clothes?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said.

‘So, if she were to say yes, which she won’t, what’s in it for you?’

Cooper’s smiled wobbled. His steak was hard to swallow. ‘The pictures will be made into postcards. And if she were willing, then she would be my main attraction.’

‘If
she
were willing?’ said Beatrice. Why were they talking about her as if she wasn’t even there?

‘He means the podium,’ said Nancy. ‘The swish of the velvet curtain. He wants you in the flesh. He wants to put you onto the stand.’

‘Anyway,’ said Cooper, ‘let’s enjoy our food for now, my steak is magnificent, the chef is from Rome, did I tell you that? Apparently he’s won prizes for his pasta; the wall is full of medals.’

Beatrice pushed her fish around. She could feel her heart beating hard against her ribcage. She hadn’t taken her clothes off for anyone. Not since she was a child and Joanna had rubbed her shoulders with the block of carbolic, telling her stories about girls who didn’t wash behind their ears and the trouble they got into with the things that started growing there.

‘Of course,’ said Cooper, ‘I’ll happily show you one of his books. I have a copy at home. A very handsome collector’s edition.’

Beatrice nodded. She’d been right, the fish was full of bones.

‘What’s the point?’ said Nancy. ‘You’ll only make her feel worse. She’s young. Younger than I was when you first asked me to pose, and anyway, I was a bad sort, and Beatrice is almost an innocent.’

‘I am?’ she said. Of course she knew what Nancy meant, and she was right, but it didn’t make her feel any better, hearing them talk as if she wasn’t in the room. And what did ‘almost’ mean?

‘You aren’t?’ grinned Nancy.

‘It doesn’t matter what I am,’ she said, rolling a bone between her fingers. ‘I want to make my own mind up, and I’m more than capable of saying a polite yes or no.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Cooper with something of a smile. ‘Now, shall we look at the desserts?’

Mr Cooper lived above a large flower store. The doorway was strewn with flattened petals. A sign said:
Fresh Bouquets
and
Tributes
.

‘I try to keep the place as homely as I can,’ he said. ‘When Mrs Cooper left me for that book-reading, butcherous quack, I must admit, my world went a little downhill for a while, but then I pulled myself together, and now I employ a woman called Hanna to sweep the place out once in a while.’

Beatrice followed him upstairs. Nancy had gone over to Mitzi’s where she had a date with a boy from Cypress Hills.

‘You’ll be safe with Cooper,’ she’d said, fussing with her hair before she left. ‘He’s nothing but a lamb,’

The landing smelled of rotting flowers. Petals stuck to the dark cracked tiles like giant white thumbprints, the wallpaper was a trail of greying violets, and outside number 6 there was a large domed cage full of small green finches.

‘The birds belong to the Carlottis,’ he told her, opening his door. ‘They own the flower store and they’ve always been generous. When I was at my lowest ebb they brought me plates of lasagne and iced coffee cake. They give me buttonholes and leftover stems, and they’re always so cheerful, I think it’s working with the flowers that does it, they always have a smile, or they’re whistling.’ He was talking too much, and he knew it.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Flowers can have that effect.’

It was not a bachelor’s room. Mrs Cooper, it seemed, had left something of herself behind, her small china ornaments (cats mostly), the pictures that hung across the walls with thick velvet ribbons, a plump shepherdess looking for her flock.

‘Do sit down,’ he said, indicating a sofa pushed against the wall and plumped with so many cushions it looked like it was bursting. ‘Would you like something to drink? Can I get you any coffee?’

She shook her head.

‘Then I’ll bring the book right over,’ he said, scraping his hands together, and then tugging on his cufflinks. ‘That’s what I’ll do then, yes.’

She watched him on his knees, fumbling with a small gold key, unlocking a bureau cupboard. It seemed that the book was somewhere at the back.

‘Of course, I’ve only borrowed it, it has to go back to the publisher, I promised I’d take good care of it, apparently it’s awfully expensive.’

‘Really?’ She could see his hands were trembling as he began fumbling and slowly unfolding the paper it was wrapped in.

‘It’s like nothing else you’ve seen,’ he breathed. ‘It’s beautiful.’

He sat it on his knee. It was an inch thick, bound in soft red leather and embossed with gold. It was simply called
Filles
. Mr Cooper wiped his fingers on a handkerchief before turning the first page.

‘Best to be careful,’ he said. ‘Grease is a terrible thing.’

She was surprised, because at first glance it looked like one of the books that had lined the pale oak shelves in the front room in Normal,
the
room that was home to the prettiest birds in the house, canaries and small parakeets bought from the store on White Sail Avenue and then gassed in the outhouse. These books were never read; they consisted of volumes of poetry (Sappho, Baudelaire, Shakespeare) and classical mythology, and they had nothing to do with taxidermy, bird structure, or any biblical works. The only one Beatrice had ever seen her father glance at was that containing the story of Icarus. ‘How that damned fellow ever thought he could fly is beyond me,’ her father had said, slamming the book shut and sending a shower of dust motes towards the cock-headed parakeet in the corner. ‘Wax and goose feathers will get a man nowhere. Did the man have hollow bones?
Tsk
. If he’d bothered dissecting a bird, then he would have known he’d end up on the floor, sun or no burning sun,’ he’d said as a long ray of light came flashing through the window.

Mr Cooper turned a thick vellum page.
For Your Entertainment
. There were at least a dozen girls looking like black-and-white paintings, their names appearing at their feet in fine gold-printed calligraphy.
Aurora. Leilani. Delfina
.

‘Nom de plumes,’ he said. ‘It’s de rigueur. They all have them.’

Aurora was standing against a large paper sun. She was beautiful in a haughty kind of way, and with her frizzed light hair falling to her feet, she stood with her arms outstretched, one finger beckoning, her lips a little open, as if she was just about to say something, a name perhaps, or ‘I want you’.

‘What do you think of Miss Aurora? Isn’t she simply magnificent?’

Beatrice nodded; she was looking closely at her nakedness, wondering if her own body matched hers in any way, comparing the size of her breasts, hips, the way her pubic hair was shaped into a sharp black triangle, because imagine removing your clothes and revealing something that was not quite right, then the flinch of the photographer, the putting away of the camera, the opening of the door, and
You are not quite up to scratch
.

‘She looks like a queen.’

‘Yes? You like her? You have to admit, it’s all very well done, in a most artistic professional manner.’

She nodded. Mr Cooper turned the page. There were words now. Beatrice read the first few lines. ‘
Come with me, to my room at the top of the tower, where I will undrape myself for your private pleasure. Here in my boudoir I will dance. I will show you all my naughty secrets. And then I’ll
become
your plaything
…’ Beatrice paled. Aurora now had her back to the camera. She was looking over her milky shoulder, her loose hair trailing over her large dimpled buttocks.

Mr Cooper looked a little warm as he wiped his hand across a cushion before turning another page.

‘Very tasteful,’ he said, as Aurora draped herself over a couch, her finger on her nipple. ‘Like something from a gallery.’

Beatrice said nothing as he went from page to page, constantly wiping his fingers, his face becoming pinker as Leilani appeared, a riding whip in her hand, her pale plump legs astride a pommel horse.

‘Magnificent,’ he whispered. ‘What else can I say?’

‘Can I look on my own?’ said Beatrice.

‘Of course, of course, what was I thinking? Read it alone by all means, I will pour myself a nip of brandy; it helps me sleep at night.’

She wiped her hands. The book was heavy, and it left the smell of leather on her fingers. It felt rich and expensive. These girls were full of money. Delfina had dripping wet hair and a towel over her shoulder; a hairbrush sitting like a paddle in her hand. Then there was Clio, Stella, Allegra and Ianthe. Smiling Ianthe was lying in a field with the glimpse of a river behind her. A girl called Persia was standing with her hands inside a large fur muffler. She had no body hair at all. Allegra had ringlets. She reminded Beatrice of a girl she’d been at school with. A fussy little girl called Betsy. Clio was the coy one, looking caught out, and trying to hide her ample breasts with her wide stretched hands.

‘I’ve finished,’ she said, closing the book at last. ‘Thank you.’

Mr Cooper came back, his breath full of brandy as he started folding the paper around the book like a blanket.

‘I have to be most careful with my loan,’ he said. ‘Yes indeed. These books sell for over a hundred dollars a time. That’s right. Over one hundred dollars. You see, they’re all limited editions of the highest quality and only the very rich can afford to look at these tempting beauties.’

‘And us,’ said Beatrice.

‘Indeed, and in that we are nothing but privileged.’

When the book was safely locked away, Mr Cooper put his hands behind his back and gave her a serious look.

‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Would you like to be published? There’s money in it.’

‘I don’t know,’ she told him, feeling a little panicked. ‘I really don’t. I need more time to think. It isn’t something I ever imagined myself doing, or even looking at for that matter.’

‘Quite. I understand. Please take as long as you like.’

‘I might say no.’

‘Of course you might, and if no is your answer, then no it will have to be.’

‘And I can still work in the booth?’

‘Absolutely. You’re my best postcard seller.’ He smiled, wishing he had a cigar. ‘Just don’t tell the others that I said that.’

He walked her home. The moon was cut in half. A couple were walking their dog, humming their way through the shadows.