Angel of Brooklyn (5 page)

They sat looking at the water, the sky streaked with clouds, a pale orange light.

‘Whoever would have thought it?’ said Jeffrey. ‘Jonathan Crane, coming home from abroad, with a wife.’

‘I didn’t go looking. Beatrice just appeared.’

‘Like a vision,’ she laughed, taking another sip of her drink and exchanging a look with her husband. The whisky felt warm and smooth on her tongue, but it burned at the back of her throat. ‘What about you?’ She turned to Jeffrey. ‘Might you fall in love? Be married?’

‘Love’s one thing,’ he said. ‘But I really don’t think that I’ll marry.’

Jonathan threw a fistful of pebbles into the water. They skimmed and broke the surface like a necklace.

‘Never say never.’

‘I think I just did, didn’t I?’

‘More?’ Jonathan held out the whisky bottle.

‘It’s May Day,’ said Jeffrey. ‘Means nothing to me, but we have to celebrate something.’

The air was getting cold, but they didn’t want to leave. Jeffrey, throwing caution to the wind, removed himself from the blanket, so they could wrap it round their shoulders, and the three of them sat with the world looking fuzzy, lights appearing at windows, the slow spitting out of the stars.

‘It’s almost perfect,’ said Beatrice, ‘but if I close my eyes, there are some things that are missing.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like music, faint and in the distance. Faraway screams. The good kind. The smell of grease, burnt sugar and spicy chop suey.’

Jonathan slumped hard into the blanket. ‘So, might I suggest that you don’t close your eyes?’ he slurred. ‘That’s the solution, wouldn’t you say? Easy. Just keep the bloody things open.’

The room was so colourless that Mary’s dark brown hair looked startling where it lay on the white cotton shoulders of her nightdress.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,’ said Beatrice. ‘It must be difficult, staying in bed all the time?’

‘Not really,’ said Mary. ‘I’m used to it. I’ve become quite the typical invalid. I daydream. I lie looking at the sky, which I can just about see through the window, and I read. I especially like the works of Charles Dickens.
The Old Curiosity Shop
is a favourite of mine. Do you know it?’

‘No, I’m not a great reader. I prefer magazines.’

‘But you don’t need to read. You have a proper life. And yes, I do get lots of visitors.’

Her mother appeared, huffing with a tea tray, putting it down on a small painted table. Beatrice could see only one cup and saucer.

‘Tea doesn’t suit Mary. She gets very overheated. I’ll leave you to pour. I’ve brought milk and sugar. I don’t know how you Americans drink it,’ she shrugged as she left the room. ‘Same as us, I suppose.’

Beatrice poured herself some tea. It was already well brewed and it made her lips curl.

‘I prefer coffee,’ she whispered conspiratorially.

Mary smiled. ‘I’ve never tasted coffee. I haven’t done a lot of things. Tell me something about yourself. About your life before Mr Crane. Take me away from the village.’

‘I’m not much of a storyteller.’

‘It isn’t telling stories, it’s remembering. Where were you born?’ she asked. ‘I have read about America. I’ve read all of Mark Twain.’

Beatrice put down her teacup. ‘I don’t know …’

‘Please?’ Mary looked pained and Beatrice knew she was going to have to say something.

‘All right,’ she began carefully. ‘I was born in Normal, in a state called Illinois. My mother died just a few moments later.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

Beatrice shook her head, looking at the rain as she began to tell Mary the story she’d heard from her father so often, it didn’t seem real. About the woman who came to help with the birth, how she’d laid her mother out, made her brother Elijah some lunch, before pouring her father a drink from the emergency bottle of brandy, and then helping herself to a large one. When he went back upstairs to say goodbye forever to his twenty-one-year-old wife, the woman broke into the cabinet, taking a gold pocket watch, several dollar bills and a copy of
American Duck Shooting
, by George Bird Grinnell. It was a well-worn copy and not at all valuable.

For the first few years of their lives, the children were passed around their grandparents and a few well-meaning citizens of Normal. Their father was a teacher, but sometimes he stayed at home, and by the time Beatrice was six he had stopped teaching at the school altogether.

From then on, he was a very different man. He hired a woman called Joanna Brown. She looked after the children, encouraging them to pick the wild flowers that grew by the roadside to take to the cemetery, where Beatrice would look at the words Grace Elizabeth Lyle, and think, ‘That name was my mother.’

Their father was angry. He took his anger out on the furniture. He would thump the tables. Break chairs. He would spend most of his time in the outhouse. His new hobby was taxidermy, making dead things seem alive.

Over time, he filled all the rooms in the house with these stuffed and mounted creatures. Eating breakfast, there were birds looking over their shoulders. Glass eyes followed them. There were feathers in the bathtub. Feathers everywhere. They would sit and watch them, floating through the air.

‘My brother became very pious when he was eight or nine years old,’ said Beatrice, ‘and he said these feathers were from the angels, that they’d fallen from their wings. He really believed it. I didn’t. I’d seen how my father would bring them inside, caught up in his clothes, or sticking to his boots.’

She stopped, her hands were clammy, she’d had enough of talking and the birds were making her queasy.

Mary opened her eyes. ‘Will you come another day?’

Beatrice nodded.

‘Normal,’ said Mary. ‘That’s a very strange name for a town.’

‘And Anglezarke isn’t?’

‘All the girls are talking about it.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘Will you think about it?’

‘Let me see … No.’

‘Please?’ Beatrice rolled over on the bed, naked. It was sunset, July, and her skin was drenched in a pale orange light.

‘I never go to Morecambe.’

‘Please?’

He traced her neck with his finger, down to her breasts, then further down, in zigzags, circling the tiny heart-shaped freckles that sat across her hips. Her hair, spread out in the light, making him shiver.

‘Your halo. Well, it used to be.’

‘Morecambe?’ she teased, opening her legs a little wider. ‘I think it sounds like a very interesting place.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Hmm.’

He watched her breathing. He kissed her lips, opening them up
with
his tongue. She tasted sweet, and flavoured with peppermint, as she guided him between her legs with her small cold hand.

‘Morecambe?’

‘You can’t buy me with that,’ he said, reaching for his cigarettes, shaking one out of the pack, Gold Flake, and she lit it for him, taking a couple of deep heady drags.

‘The trip would help,’ she said, blowing a line of perfect smoke rings, ‘with Anglo-American relations.’

‘You don’t need help.’

‘Oh, but I do,’ she pouted, handing him the cigarette.

‘Look, darling, I never go to Morecambe. They’re a nice enough bunch, and I love them all dearly, but it’s really not my thing.’

‘You’ll have me.’

‘True.’

‘And Jeffrey?’

‘He wouldn’t be seen dead on that promenade.’

‘I could persuade him, and we’d have a ball. Think about it? We don’t have to stick with the crowd. I want to see more of England. The sea. I’ve never seen your sea.’

‘Yes, you have. We came in on the Irish. Gallons of the stuff.’

‘That was Liverpool,’ she said. ‘And Liverpool doesn’t count.’

‘And Morecambe does? You’d be very disappointed, believe me.’

‘At least let me look?’

He watched her, slipping her arms into her dressing gown, standing at the foot of the bed, hair dishevelled, her body almost hidden by the rippled cream silk, and the beginning of the shadows that made the room feel cold. His heart quickened. He could taste her.

‘Morecambe,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Maybe it isn’t much to ask.’

‘I won’t want to hear about Morecambe,’ said Mary. ‘Spare me. I hear it every year. Someone will get lost. Someone will get sick. Someone, Frank probably, will drink too much light ale, and his antics will make Madge hide her face for a fortnight.’

‘OK. No Morecambe then.’

Beatrice was kneeling by the window, watching the smoke curling from the back of a cottage where the farmer stood chewing on his pipe, talking to his daughter, her hair tucked under a red chequered headscarf.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Mary. ‘What happened to Joanna Brown?’

‘Joanna Brown fell in love,’ said Beatrice, turning back into the room. Mary looked thinner and a cup of chicken soup sat untouched on the side.

‘How?’ she said. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘All right. It was in the fall. Autumn. The yard was ankle-deep in leaves. We were throwing them up into the air, laughing. Joanna was sweeping, tutting and shaking her head, and sweeping. Then a boy appeared. A man, I suppose. “You should be helping your mama,” he said. Suddenly, we stopped. “She isn’t our mama,” said Elijah, stamping his foot. “Our mama is already with the Lord.”’

Beatrice smiled, explaining how the man had suddenly looked sheepish. He said he was sorry, and could he help with the sweeping. Joanna walked over to him. She was patting up her hair, and straightening out her clothes. She said something, handing him a broom. Then the man took off his cap and rolled it into his pocket. He had sandy-coloured hair, freckles the size of beans, and the kind of face that just kept smiling. They liked him. He was nothing like their father. He swooped Elijah up onto his shoulders, then it was Beatrice’s turn, and the man started whooping and hollering, running up and down, neighing like a pony. Joanna looked nervous. She knew their father was in the outhouse. She whispered something, and the man set Beatrice down, then he swept out the yard without another word, until there were four piles of leaves and the bare grey stones beneath them. He looked serious. He didn’t want to play pony any more. He went over to Joanna. The children understood they were no longer wanted, so they went back inside, Elijah to the Story of Job, and Beatrice to her cut-out paper dolls. Joanna came in later, her face all flushed. She poured glasses of milk. Her hands were trembling. ‘His name is Cormac Fitzgerald,’ she said. ‘Please don’t tell your papa.’

‘And did you?’ said Mary.

‘No, but he found out just the same. Cormac was a nurseryman. He’d bring Joanna gifts of plants, and bags of runner beans. One day, my father caught them holding hands and dirty bunches of carrots. He paled and said nothing, but that night Joanna was packing her case. She had four red lines on her cheek and she didn’t say goodbye.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Nothing. We had to take care of ourselves. There were no more Joannas, no one came to replace her.’

‘Did she marry Cormac?’

‘No.’ Beatrice shook her head. ‘Cormac Fitzgerald was killed by a wild horse. The poor man didn’t stand a chance. We read all about it in the
Chronicle
. My father, ever the taxidermist, enquired after the horse.’

‘Did he get it?’

‘No. It was too late; they’d fed it to the dogs. He was very disappointed.’

‘What happened to Joanna?’

‘She went back to her family. Last we heard, she was scrubbing floors in the orphanage.’

‘Poor Joanna.’

‘But I hated her for going because now we had nothing, and I missed her. Elijah would pray for the soul of Cormac Fitzgerald. I didn’t. I simply cursed him for taking her away, and then for getting himself killed, so we’d lost Joanna for nothing. I’m sorry now of course. My life was much harder after that.’

‘What about your father?’

‘He was much the same. He kept himself to himself, spending his time in the outhouse, muttering to all those dead animals. He’d talk to us when he had to. He’d talk about skulls, and mounting glue. The skeletal structure of birds.’

‘My father ran off with a barmaid,’ said Mary.

Beatrice looked up. Her head felt fuzzy. She was still in Illinois.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘My father,’ said Mary. ‘He left my mother and went to live with a barmaid. The day he walked out, he brought me a present. It was a stamp album, with six Fijian stamps.’

‘Stamps?’

‘I threw them away. I haven’t seen him since.’

The charabanc was full. A thin slice of sunshine fell across their shoulders as the pot-bellied driver told them that his name was Coleman, and there was nothing he liked better than a run out to the coast.

‘I can’t believe I’m here,’ said Jonathan, settling in his seat.

Beatrice turned her head. ‘So what else would you rather be doing on this glorious day in July?’

Jeffrey looked hard at the sky, and frowned. ‘It isn’t glorious yet,’ he said, ‘though I’m sure things will warm up later on.’

As the charabanc moved away, Beatrice could see Lionel standing by his gate, slowly polishing his spectacles.

‘I should have asked Lionel,’ she frowned.

‘But it’s Lionel’s favourite day of the year,’ said Jonathan. ‘Didn’t you know? It’s the day he can have the whole empty village to himself.’

The sun brightened as they passed other charabancs, the passengers lifting their hats and hollering.

‘Things are bad in Europe,’ said Jeffrey.

‘I’ve read the paper,’ said Jonathan. ‘It’ll blow over. They’re very hot-headed over there.’

After a couple of hours they stopped at the Holly Tree Inn, buying jugs of weak frothy ale and bottles of sarsaparilla. The driver sat on the steps with a slice of pork pie and a glass of ginger beer.

‘Look at that sky,’ he said to no one in particular. ‘It’s like a jewel, that is.’

Jonathan and Jeffrey joined in a quick game of cards while Beatrice sat with Lizzie and Madge on one of the thin wooden benches set against the wall. The children ran around on the grass, glad to be free of the bus.

‘We stop here every year,’ said Lizzie. ‘Last year it was raining, and we had to go inside.’

‘It was gloomy,’ said Madge, settling back against the wall, her hands folded over her stomach, ‘and everything smelled of motor oil and tobacco. This is much nicer.’