Angel of Brooklyn (34 page)

Her head had appeared. The boy had his arm out, he was looking down at his boots, he’d been doing this for three months, and he never knew what to say. He looked up slowly, listening to the birds. There was a rustling from the breeze that caught the back of his neck. Eventually a hand grabbed at the envelope and the door slammed shut in his face. Still, it could have been worse. A week or so ago, he’d been spat on.

Beatrice couldn’t move. ‘Is he going to turn around? Will he come here? Will he? Will he?’ Then the relief as the boy retrieved his cigarette and walked back towards his bicycle. Her nails were pressed hard into her hands. She should go and fetch Madge.

Madge said nothing, but swept past her, running towards the shop, her own front door still open. Beatrice sat on the step. She could hear Billy and Bert squabbling over something around the back. A catapult. A peashooter. Something. When Madge reappeared half an hour
later
, her face was grim and she was tutting at the world that still appeared to be turning, the bees around the lupins, the white birds in the sky.

‘How is she?’ Beatrice asked.

Madge looked her in the eye as her voice began to tremble. ‘Jim’s dead. Perhaps they all are.’

‘No, don’t say that.’ Beatrice wrapped her arms around herself; she started nervously stamping her feet.

‘They might be. How should we know? Ada’s beside herself. Trouble is, she’s still got hope where there isn’t any. “Missing Presumed Dead.” What kind of wording is that to put on a telegram? You should hear her. “Perhaps he’s just lost?” she keeps saying. “They’re only presuming that he’s dead. He always was a one for getting lost. Remember that time in Morecambe on his way back from the amusement arcade? We were waiting for an hour. Remember that? You see, that’s the thing with my Jim, he doesn’t know his left from his right.”’

‘I’m sorry. Poor, poor, Ada.’

‘Poor all of us,’ said Madge.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Brooklyn, New York
May, 1912

THE NIGHT BEFORE
the photographs, she had taken off her clothes in front of Nancy.

‘I need to prepare myself,’ she’d said. ‘Tell me if I look right.’

Nancy had walked around and nodded, and then she’d gone and spent her wages on two bottles of good French wine, and tried to dissuade Beatrice from doing any pictures.

‘It’s my fault,’ said Nancy, struggling with the cork. ‘You’re a good Methodist girl and I’ve ruined you.’

‘I don’t feel ruined. Is this what ruined feels like?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’m very disappointed.’

‘I should know, I was ruined long ago.’

‘But you liked it.’

‘Sure I did.’

‘Then why can’t I?’

‘Because you’re a good girl, and that’s why they want you. You look like an angel, even without those blessed wings, and men with dirty minds get a kick out of that.’

‘I just want to give it a try.’

‘Why? Do you need the extra money?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Then stick to selling pictures of the funfair.’

‘It’s too late. Those wings were made to measure.’

‘It’s never too late,’ said Nancy. ‘You didn’t sign anything?’

She shook her head.

‘Then you shouldn’t feel obliged.’

‘I don’t, I really want to do it.’

‘Look, Bea, I’m telling you, it won’t just stop at the pictures. There’s the podium after that. Think how you’ll feel standing in the
full
heat of the summer, or freezing in the fall wearing nothing but those goddamn heavy wings whilst men look you up and down, slavering into their filthy bulging laps.’

‘I can take it if you can.’

‘But I’m as hard as nails,’ said Nancy. ‘Look at me.’

Beatrice sighed. Her room looked smaller tonight. The window with its view of the dusty yard, like an eye that needed washing. The wine had left a dull metallic taste in her mouth.

‘So, where has it come from?’ asked Nancy. ‘You wanted to work in a jewellery store. You told me. I could ask Abe Templeman. He owes me a favour. He has an uncle in the gold trade.’

‘I changed my mind.’

‘Your brother is a priest.’

‘Preacher. Well, he was.’

‘Same thing. Are you doing this to punish him?’

‘I’ve thought long and hard,’ she said, ‘and believe me, it has nothing to do with either you or my brother.’

It had been a month since she’d sat with Mr Cooper looking down at Aurora with her pale translucent skin and thick wavy hair. She had bought herself a notebook and a hard leaded pencil that sometimes tore the paper. She’d scribbled things down. There was the life she could have led. She pictured Bethan Carter, that old ring on her finger, and a house beside a railroad track. She thought about her family. What would they think? When she looked at herself in the small cracked mirror in the bathroom down the hall, she didn’t see any of them, but was she really so different?

She dreamed about her father who would be sitting at the table, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, opening a parcel, spilling its contents, a hundred glass eyes, bouncing like hail and blinking over the floor tiles. Walking to work, she would watch all the birds that had perched across the railings, and as they cocked their heads at her, she would picture them on stands, immobile, unblinking, feet wired and glued, their feathers tinged with borax, their beaks from a place in Duluth. And then there was Elijah. He was being pummelled by a crowd. He was uncurling his shoulders until his back was ramrod straight. He was standing on a bar stool singing, ‘And Can It Be?’

‘You know something,’ she told Nancy, who by now had wine-stained lips and heavy-looking eyes. ‘The only thing that’s bothering
me
are those wings. They reek too much of home. Will I look like a fool?’ she asked. ‘Tell me.’

Nancy shook her head and yawned. ‘A fool? You won’t look like a fool. You’ll look like something that has just dropped down from the heavens.’

The room was full of people. Mr Cooper was pacing up and down, chewing an unlit cigar. Maurice Beckmann was setting up his camera in front of a blue-and-cloud cloth. Girls in snowy-white aprons sat on stools next to dressing tables that were covered with unopened sticks of greasepaint, skin creams and bowls of fine powder. There were screens. Trunks (
of what?
she had puzzled). A table stacked with combs, brushes and hair oils had been pushed against a wall. The goose-feather wings, made by Eton & Foster, Fifth Avenue, New York, were hung on a tall wooden stand, like Gabriel himself had just gone to take a shower bath. They reached past her ankles and weighed twenty pounds.

The philanthropist from the heart of Manhattan reached for her hand, and dropped his head into a bow. ‘Miss Lyle, we are more than thrilled to have your company,’ the man said. His name was Laurence Hoff. He spoke with something of an accent –
German? Hungarian? Swiss?
– and with his sweep of yellow hair and fading blue eyes, he looked like an older, fainter version of the man advertising spearmint gum on the billboard at the Dreamland entrance to Coney.

‘There are so many people, I just didn’t realise …’

‘Miss Lyle,’ he said, taking her by the elbow and leading her to a plump velvet chair in the corner, ‘take a seat whilst I explain how things are done.’

She did as she was told. Her mouth was dry and she had to stick her tongue between her teeth to stop them from chattering.

‘As a boy I worked at the opera,’ he told her, pulling up a stool. ‘Of course, I was merely a lackey, sweeping, cleaning, moving things around. I would take flowers into dressing rooms. Deliver telegrams. I’d make sure the leading man had his tin of favourite lozenges. It is not a myth. Oh no. Actors can be demons. Let me tell you, backstage in a theatre there is nothing but madness and chaos. It’s a noisy pandemonium full of heavy machinery, crashing scenery, the colourful shouts from the stagehands. Of course, sitting in the stalls with your box of violet creams, you would never, ever know it. At the
front
of the stage there is peace. The scenes drop from the fly tower with little more than a swish, the orchestra hums, and the stage has been transformed into a magical place, a box where the story can be told, and the audience are lost in it. And that’s what we have here.’

‘We do?’

Beatrice looked around. A man in a pair of grey overalls was pushing some screens that had something to do with the light. The floor was being painted. A girl was saying, ‘Did you get the magenta? I meant stick number five.
Five
. The real magenta, not the one that looks like an orange.’

‘When we have prepared the way, then we will all depart, leaving you in the capable hands of Mr Beckmann and perhaps another female, to help you with your things. After all this crazy chaos, you will have peace, calm, tranquillity. You will feel relaxed. Only then will you change into “Angel”.’

Beatrice walked over to Nancy, who was sitting on the window ledge with a glass of iced tea, looking sceptical.

‘Didn’t have none of this when I was turning into a geisha,’ Nancy said. ‘It was just you, Maurice and that cranky-sounding phonograph.’

‘It’s scary.’

‘You want to scoot?’ said Nancy.

Beatrice shook her head. ‘It’s just stage fright,’ she said. ‘It’ll pass.’

Maurice had done some sketches, showing Mr Hoff what he hoped the pictures would look like.

‘I’ve kept it very simple,’ said Maurice. ‘See? That face and those wings will say everything.’

‘And the rest,’ said Hoff.

She changed into a blue-and-green kimono and as a girl with cold hands sculpted her hair, she and Nancy talked as if they were sitting in the beauty parlour, and sure enough, another girl appeared to do her nails.

‘Can’t you do me as well?’ asked Nancy, spreading her fingers like starfish. ‘My nails are crying out for some attention. Look at them.’

‘They look better than mine,’ said the girl.

Beatrice’s head ached. It had been pulled and scraped until her eyes watered. Her scalp had been rubbed. Stray hairs plucked. Something smelled of fish oil.

‘Do I still look like me?’

Nancy shrugged. ‘Like you,’ she said, ‘with a gloss on.’

She could hear Cooper laughing with Mr Hoff, a kind of hollow guffaw that said he was nervous. Had he handed back the book? Did he still have nightmares about grease on the pages? ‘The slightest blemish and I’ll have to pay the full amount,’ he’d said, ‘and it’s an amount that will have me penniless and living back with my folks in their dreary deadbeat stretch of Idaho which would not look well on a postcard.’

‘Would you like something to eat before I do your face?’ a girl asked. ‘We have a cold plate, noodles, chicken, fruit. If there’s something else that you’d like, I can always send out for it.’

She managed to nibble at some warm black grapes, though she thought the skins might choke her.

‘You all right?’ asked Maurice. ‘Look, honey, when all these people have gone it will be like playing dressing up, hell, I’ll even take my clothes off with you if you like.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Nancy rolling her eyes. ‘Please tell him, no.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Beatrice. ‘Really I am.’

With the girls fussing around her, pulling at her, telling her what to do –
look up, down, bring your lips together, can you let your head drop forwards?
– she felt calmer, because they were moving her along, they had taken complete control.

‘Time for us to go,’ said Mr Hoff, clapping his hands. ‘Come on, folks, let’s get out of here, and give the girl some privacy. You have your friend and Dulcie. Dulcie has worked with us on our last three books. She’ll put you at your ease and have you looking beautiful. More beautiful,’ he added, tapping the side of his nose. ‘That’s what I meant to say.’

Her heart began to beat inside her ears when the doors were closed for the last time and a thick black curtain was pulled tight across them. She took a few deep breaths. She could feel her knees shaking.

‘When you’re ready I’ll help you with the wings,’ said Dulcie, ‘though we might need Maurice, those things are awful heavy.’

Maurice was winding up the gramophone. ‘We have all the time in the world,’ he said, folding his arms and studying the backcloth.

‘I’m fine, let’s do it,’ said Beatrice. ‘Let’s just get it all done.’

Stepping behind the screens she took off the kimono and Dulcie dabbed her with powder. ‘The hair will be painted over on the plates,’ she said, nodding at the space between her legs. ‘If Mr Hoff decides to sell your pictures to Europe then they’ll paint it back on.’

The room was warm and Beatrice began to feel strangely relaxed as Dulcie helped her on with the wings. Nancy was chewing gum and reading
Love Story
magazine, doing her best to look nonchalant. Maurice was fiddling with the camera.

‘And here we have you,’ he said, as she stood on the painted marker cross. ‘The angel, Beatrice Lyle.’ The music swelled, reminding her of the thick rolling waves on Brighton Beach, the white marble clouds hunched shoulder to shoulder, and as the camera flashed she opened out her hands, she held a scented arum lily, she moved her arms wide, like they were another set of wings.

‘You’ve done this before,’ he said.

She felt different. Not an angel. Nothing like an angel. She could look straight into the lens, opening her mouth a little, because now she was being someone else, someone who could stand naked in front of strangers without so much as a blush (she’d imagined herself shaking and sweating and pink). She’d seen those girls hanging around the back of the theatre, shivering, adjusting their flimsy-looking costumes, chatting, yawning, lighting each other’s cigarettes, they had looked so different in the daylight, that spark wasn’t sitting in their eyes. And then the curtain rose.

When Maurice, Nancy and Dulcie started clapping, she was startled, suddenly feeling the weight of the wings on her shoulders, the heat of the lights pressing onto her face.

‘All done,’ said Maurice. ‘Congratulations. You were nothing but magical.’

‘We’re done already?’

‘You’ve been standing there for over an hour,’ said Nancy, stretching. ‘Don’t you think an hour’s long enough?’