Angel of Brooklyn (4 page)

Lottie has landed herself a job. We had to laugh. Come April, our perfect Miss Lottie will be the microscope girl at the Minsky flea circus. How glamorous is that? We’ve worn out all the flea jokes, and the scratching.

I hope you are well and happy, being a good English lady. Jonathan’s one of the good guys, and you know I think that.

I’m writing this outside Franny’s. It’s a fine and blowy day. Smell the paper, Bea. It’s flapping on the table, and the table’s none too clean, and you know the smell of mussels never goes away.

Better go and see if Sally’s opened up (Irish girl, Marnie’s replacement). How come you’re all getting married? Poor little me, left high and dry on the shelf.

Take good care of yourself, princess.

Love and luck to you both,

Nancy x

Spring arrived slowly, then suddenly it was the first weekend in May, and in Rivington girls were dressed in white and disgruntled boys had flowers in their hats. A brass band was playing underneath the chestnut tree, as the children danced around the maypole, making complicated tapestries. Around the field, families sat on blankets and deckchairs, with full wicker hampers, or knapsacks, and glasses of fresh lemonade, a penny a glass, proceeds going to the church roof fund.

‘We’ve been lucky with the weather,’ said Jonathan, stretching out his legs and circling his ankles. ‘Real sunshine. We usually have the maypole in June, just to be on the safe side, but this year, the vicar put his foot down.’

Jeffrey had sidled over to Ada and Madge. He was wearing a daisy in his lapel. Pulling up his deckchair, he made sure he had a good clear view of Beatrice, who was fanning her face, and laughing.

‘It’s like her hands are dancing,’ said Jeffrey. ‘Don’t you think that she’s refined?’

‘Refined?’ said Ada. ‘She’s an American.’

Jeffrey turned to look at her, surprised by the sharp note in her voice. ‘So what do you know about America?’

‘They have natives,’ she told him. ‘And Mormons.’

‘They also have salons, libraries, cities to rival our own. I once met a man from Boston. A professor. He’d written a journal about nervous diseases. He was most distinguished.’

‘Nervous diseases?’ Madge shuddered. ‘What an awful thing to write about.’

‘Not at all. He’s lectured all over Europe. I met him in Glasgow when I was attending a design conference. We met in the connecting hall. I was admiring a painting; he was admiring something similar, on the other side of the room. We collided. He was most charming. He took me out for supper at his club.’

‘Charming you say?’ said Madge.

‘Utterly.’

‘It isn’t the same as refined,’ said Ada, narrowing her eyes.

Jeffrey moved his thumb across the daisy on his jacket. ‘Well, I think she’s lovely.’

The air was heavy with small talk and laughter, and voices caught in the breeze, drifting over the trees, and into the field beyond, where the farmer sat brooding over his best shire horse. The band members were wiping their foreheads and gulping lemonade, as applause came bursting from the coconut shy, where Tom had hit three in a row and won himself a ginger cake.

Lizzie, in a rush of good humour, pulled her blanket over to Beatrice and Jonathan.

‘Shall we go and join them?’ said Jeffrey. ‘Would Frank and Jim mind? Perhaps we could all sit together?’

Madge said nothing, but gave a little shrug. Frank was on the other side of the wall, drinking beer with his pals from the quarry. Resigned, she and Ada gathered up their things, as Jeffrey went striding on ahead, with a neatly folded deckchair and his picnic.

‘Last year we held it in June,’ Lizzie was saying, ‘but it drizzled all the same. Do you have a lot of rain where you come from?’

‘We have all kinds of weather,’ said Beatrice. ‘You name it, we have it.’

‘You must excuse us. In England, we talk a lot about the weather,’ said Jeffrey, opening out his chair. ‘I think it’s because it changes all the time.’

They began pulling out their lunches. The children appeared. Billy and Bert for Madge. Harry and Martha for Lizzie.

‘We’ll eat ours by the trees,’ said Harry.

‘All right,’ said Lizzie. ‘Just don’t throw it all to the birds.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it’s far too tasty for that,’ said Beatrice. ‘As you all know, I’m not much of a cook. We have the baker to thank for most things that we eat.’

‘Didn’t your mother teach you how to cook?’ asked Madge. ‘Before she passed away?’

‘I never knew her, she died the minute I was born,’ Beatrice told them as she handed Jonathan a plate of bread and ham. ‘My father never remarried. I did some cooking as a child, but of course it was nothing very special, and in New York it was easy, because I didn’t cook at all.’

‘You ate out all the time?’ said Lizzie.

‘Yes.’

‘Wasn’t that expensive?’ Madge licked her lips. ‘For a postcard seller?’

‘Not at all. Thing is, you can get a little meal very cheaply. Anything from a bag of hot nuts, to a plate of steak and salad.’

‘Like Morecambe?’ said Lizzie. ‘I expect it’s just like Morecambe. You can get shrimps in paper cones, whelks and fried potatoes, and you can eat them outside. Food tastes better outside, don’t you think?’

‘I’m not keen on outside eating,’ said Ada, polishing an apple on her sleeve.

For a few long seconds, the sun was eaten by clouds, and Beatrice felt the goosebumps springing up along her arms. Looking at the sky, she smiled at the warmth that suddenly reappeared, when a breeze sent all the clouds scuttling.

‘A lotus,’ she said. ‘That cloud is shaped like a lotus.’

Madge looked puzzled. She couldn’t see a thing.

‘So where are all its legs?’ said Billy.

‘A lotus is a flower,’ said Jeffrey. ‘You’re thinking of a locust.’

‘I’ve never heard of a lotus,’ said Tom.

‘It’s a blossom from the Orient,’ said Jeffrey. ‘Like the ones on Mrs Crane’s fan. Have you been there?’ he asked. ‘It sounds like a fascinating part of the world. I hear everyone’s very small.’

‘Gosh, no,’ said Beatrice, opening out the fan. The lotus blossoms were pretty, but a couple of them had smudged. ‘This is just a cheap trinket, from Mr Wong’s emporium in Brooklyn. He sells hundreds of these every day.’

‘I think it’s charming,’ said Jeffrey.

‘It is very pretty,’ said Tom.

‘I used to have a fan,’ said Lizzie. ‘Real silk.’

‘I don’t remember that,’ said Tom.

‘It was a twenty-first birthday present. I hardly ever used it. Then it broke.’

‘You always were clumsy,’ said Ada.

Across the field, the vicar stretched his bony legs, while women offered him cake, and hovered with the teapot.

‘I hear your brother’s a vicar?’ said Madge.

‘Not exactly. Elijah is what you’d call a preacher. He travels with his sermons. In Normal, Illinois, almost every other son wants to go into the Church. It’s either that, or the cannery.’

‘I can certainly see the attraction,’ said Jeffrey. ‘Have you ever been inside the vicarage? It’s huge and full of silver. He has a housemaid, and a secretary, not to mention the gardener, who doesn’t charge a penny, and who cuts the vicar a fresh buttonhole every morning. I could do with some of that.’

‘You’re doing all right, old chap,’ said Jonathan. ‘You’re hardly in the workhouse.’

‘But look at all that fawning. They just won’t leave him alone.’

‘You’d soon get tired of it.’

‘Try me. I could get very fond of sycophants.’

Beatrice leaned back on her hands as a ladybird tripped across her fingers. She closed her eyes. Somewhere over her head there were birds that sounded like seagulls. The afternoon wore on. Boys full of pie and warm lemonade threw down their hats, and girls tripped over their new spring dresses, scraping their knees. Madge left early, pulling Frank home, with the promise of cold beef and pickle, and a hidden bottle of stout. The vicar had long since disappeared inside the sanctuary of the vicarage, and with the shades pulled down, his trousers loosened, he dreamed of a chubby girl called Iris, skinny-dipping in the reservoir.

‘I’d like to walk home,’ said Beatrice.

‘But you have the motor car,’ said Lizzie. ‘You could be back in ten minutes.’

‘I’d really rather walk.’

‘Would you mind if I walked with you?’ Jeffrey asked.

‘I wouldn’t mind at all.’

‘You have a deckchair and a basket,’ said Lizzie. ‘However will you manage?’

‘I’ll take them in the car,’ said Jonathan. ‘And I’ll trust Jeffrey with my wife.’

They walked slowly, making their way around families rolling up their blankets, brushing grass from their clothes, pressing at their faces. The sun had made them tender.

The lane was overgrown in parts. A woman in a red skirt was letting out her chickens.

‘These hens don’t lay in the same place two days running,’ she said, rolling up her sleeves.

Smiling, they walked in silence for a while. Beatrice liked looking at the hedgerow, the cow parsley, wild garlic, and the small, almost hidden tufts of lily of the valley with their tiny scented flowers and glassy emerald leaves. Behind them, they could hear the faint shouts and screams of the children in the field, the farmer whistling for his dog.

‘This must be quite a change for you,’ said Jeffrey.

‘Well, there sure is a lot of green around here, hardly any buildings to speak of, and the people seem so …’ She bit her lip carefully, and glanced at Jeffrey, wondering if she should continue. ‘Well, they seem awful uptight,’ she added, looking at her feet.

‘Yes, yes, you’re right, of course. Are you unhappy here? Are they making you unhappy?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘It isn’t that at all. It’s just that I’m used to a different way of life altogether, and I’m used to crowds, to watching people enjoying themselves, though of course there were plenty of times when it would just grate on my nerves.’

‘What was it like?’

‘Chaotic. Crazy. A constant battle of noise.’

‘How on earth did you put up with it?’

‘There are quiet places everywhere, if you know where to find them.’ Smiling, she picked some grass from her sleeve. ‘And what about you? You don’t look or talk like a farmer’s son, or a quarryman. So?’

‘I’m an artist,’ he told her. ‘Well, I illustrate advertisements.’

‘Sounds interesting.’

He smiled. ‘It can be.’

‘What about your family?’

‘Like you, my parents are dead. Long dead. Influenza. My sister Agnes is married and living in Hampshire. Husband’s a wealthy banker.’ He pulled his face and shuddered. ‘Has two delightful children.’

Beatrice laughed. ‘And you live alone?’

‘Quite alone. In Fox Cottage.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I know it.’

They could see the water in the distance. There were cottages to their right. By an open gate, three grey kittens were curled on a hessian sack, quivering in their sleep. The sky was softening as Jeffrey tapped her arm.

‘Lionel,’ he mouthed. And through the window, they could see him, hunched over the kitchen table, blowing eggs, holding them gently; he sent the soft insides dripping into a bowl. He couldn’t see the two of them. He was concentrating, his hands trembling as he placed the hollow robin’s egg delicately onto the cotton.

‘My father didn’t bother with the eggs,’ she said, walking on. ‘He went straight for the bird.’

‘Really? My grandmother had a stuffed bird on one of her favourite bonnets. A tiny thing. It looked like it had just landed there, resting for a moment. I quite expected to see it taking off again.’

‘Oh, they never do that.’

They walked towards the reservoir, past the cottage where Mary lived in bed.

‘The water changes,’ said Beatrice. ‘Today it looks like glass.’

‘Would you like a closer look?’

They climbed over the stile, Jeffrey catching tight hold of her hand as she lifted her skirt a little. The trees were rustling, the water breaking gently over the small brown stones.

They walked up the bank of tufted grass with its sprinkling of daisies. Beatrice could just make out Jonathan unloading the empty hamper. She waved, and he raised up his arm.

‘Just think,’ said Jeffrey. ‘The people of Liverpool will soon be filling their bathtubs with these little grey waves.’

‘I like the look of Liverpool.’

‘Well, I expect that after all those days at sea, any town or city would appear more inviting than great chunks of water and the walls of your cabin.’

‘It had a feel to it,’ she said, rubbing the back of her neck. ‘Things were going on.’

‘Oh, it’s a lively place all right, and one that I shouldn’t like to visit after dark, though I am told that one of my better known designs is currently plastered all over its walls.’

‘How exciting,’ she said, sitting on the grass. ‘It must be a wonderful feeling. Like seeing your name in lights?’

‘Hardly.’ He hesitated, wondering whether to join her, worrying about the light-coloured cloth of his trousers. ‘It’s an advertisement for anti-bilious pills.’

She laughed. ‘I’m sure they will change people’s lives, or at least give some relief. Yes,’ she said determinedly, ‘your design will do a very great service to the people of Liverpool.’

‘The bilious people of Liverpool,’ he smiled. ‘Whatever that might mean.’ He sat down gingerly, though the grass felt dry enough. There was something of a breeze.

‘You must miss home,’ he said. Beatrice looked away. She could see Jonathan walking towards them.

‘I miss people more than anything.’

‘I miss people too. They go away. Move on.’

‘Have you always been friends with Jonathan?’

‘Yes. Mind you, I think we once fell out for at least a fortnight, over not being picked for the rugby team.’

‘Who wasn’t picked?’

‘Me,’ said Jeffrey. ‘And of course, it was him doing all the picking, standing at the front, like he owned all the world.’

‘You don’t look the rugby type.’

‘I’m not. I just wanted to be picked. Doesn’t everyone?’

Jonathan came leaping over the stile. ‘You’re not still talking about the rugby team? At least you avoided the mudbath. And you know how much you hate getting dirty.’

Jeffrey suddenly remembered his trousers. Jonathan threw him a blanket. ‘I came fully equipped. Blanket. Bottle of whisky. Three little glasses.’