The Good Plain Cook (19 page)

· · ·  Twenty-eight  · · ·

‘Is it possible,’ asked Ellen, ‘that you could walk
beside
me, like a normal human being?’

Dog and daughter looked up with big eyes. She sighed. ‘Right. All off.’ She began unbuttoning Geenie’s blouse, but the girl
pulled away.

‘I can do it.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Ellen was wearing a knitted sleeveless top with nothing beneath, so was naked to the waist with one peeling motion. She unbuttoned
her linen slacks, stepped out of her knickers and kicked them aside. They landed under the willow tree.

‘Ready?’

Geenie had undressed, and was standing with both hands clenched around her backside.

‘What are you doing that for?’

‘In case anyone sees my bottom.’

Ellen laughed. ‘It’s the front you want to worry about,’ she said, looking her daughter up and down. Over the summer, Geenie
had filled out a little: there was now a definite curve to her hip, a fullness to her nipples; even a few pubic hairs were
beginning to show.

Ellen stretched her arms above her head, swivelling her hips around and bending at the knees before balancing on the edge
of the bank. It was what James had always done before bathing. After weeks of sunshine, the earth was powdery between her
toes. She looked over her shoulder and held out a hand. ‘Come on, Flossy. Nothing matters when you’re naked.’

Geenie stepped to her side, and together they launched themselves into the water.

It only came up to Ellen’s thighs, but it was cold enough to make them both yelp, which set Blotto off. The dog ran back and
forth along the bank, yapping hysterically, ears bobbing and throat jerking with effort.

‘Watch this!’ Geenie cried, and there was a great splash as she threw herself backwards into the water, her limbs splaying,
her newly shorn head going under. She held herself there, her face warped and silvery beneath the surface, and Ellen watched
her daughter, wondering how long she would hold her breath this time. Ellen counted thirty seconds, concentrating on the sticklebacks
pulsing around the girl’s waist. Blotto’s yaps turned into howls. Sixty seconds. Geenie’s cheeks ballooned and her eyes were
squeezed tight. A minute and a half. Longer than she’d ever done before. The dog’s howls reached a higher pitch, and, in the
shade of the willows, Ellen felt the top half of her body begin to cool and prickle.

‘Geenie,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Come up now.’

Two minutes.

‘Come up.’

Two and a half minutes.

‘Come up.’ Ellen plunged her hands into the water and grasped her daughter by the shoulders. ‘For God’s sake—’ But Geenie
twisted away, burst out of the water, sucked in a huge breath, and, using her hands as paddles, began to scoop the stream
in her mother’s direction, almost knocking her down.

It took Ellen a moment before she steadied herself and fought back. She ran the length of both arms across the surface of
the stream, pushing water over her daughter’s head. The stream was a white fury of crashing foam as the two of them shrieked
and splashed, and Blotto rushed around the base of the willow tree, barking.

. . . .

Ellen spread a towel on the lawn and they lay down to dry themselves in the sun. Next to Geenie, Blotto flopped on his side,
panting hoarsely. Overhead, the sky throbbed blue. Ellen closed her eyes and let the sun warm her from head to toe. She’d
always loved to sunbathe, and believed the sun’s energy penetrated her very core. She smiled to herself, remembering the heat
in the back room of the hairdressers’. When Robin unhooked her bra he’d made a sort of dive straight for her nipples, which
had been tiresome, but she’d soon guided him back to her face and slowed him down. Then he’d carried her to the divan, which
was something she hadn’t expected. No one had carried her anywhere since she was a child.

‘When are George and Diana coming back?’ Geenie had buttoned up her blouse and pulled on her skirt, and was kneeling on the
towel, looking down at her mother.

‘Soon.’ Crane hadn’t said anything specific about his return when he and Diana left yesterday morning. He’d just mumbled something
about being away ‘a few days’, and, at the time, Ellen hadn’t the will to tackle him about it. He’d hardly taken a thing with
him, though, so he’d have to come back, if only to pick up some clean underclothes.

‘How soon?’

Ellen shielded her eyes from the sun and peered at her daughter. ‘What would you say,’ she asked, ‘if I told you that it might
be just you and me, for a while?’

‘Aren’t they coming back?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

Geenie tucked her chin into her chest and looked towards the house.

‘But if they didn’t come back for a while, it would be all right, wouldn’t it?’ Ellen continued. ‘We’d get on all right, wouldn’t
we? The two of us.’ She sat up and put a hand on her daughter’s arm.

‘Why did we come here?’

‘You know why, darling.’

‘I don’t.’

Ellen’s head began to feel tight with heat. She drew the towel around her shoulders so she wouldn’t have to answer her daughter’s
question while fully naked. Then she looked at her hands and tried to think how she should begin.

Geenie sat very still. Blotto had begun to snore.

‘When Jimmy died,’ Ellen said, ‘when he died, I didn’t know what to do. I know it’s hard to understand, but I needed to get
away…’

‘Will we go back?’

‘To London?’

Geenie nodded.

Ellen pulled the towel tighter. ‘I don’t know, darling, maybe—’

‘Because I don’t want to go back. I want us all to stay here.’

Ellen caught Geenie’s chin and twisted her daughter’s face towards her own. ‘So I did the right thing, didn’t I?’

There was no response.

‘Geenie? Don’t you think I did the right thing?’

There was a pause, during which the dog’s snores grew louder.

Geenie closed her eyes and replied in a flat tone, ‘Yes, Mama.’

Ellen’s head was aching now; she could feel her pulse behind her eyes. She’d have to go and sit inside, in the dark. The sun’s
energy was too much for her today. A gin and it would help. She removed the towel and reached for her clothes.

‘How did he die?’ Geenie’s voice was quieter, but she still spoke in the same flat tone.

Ellen dropped her clothes on the grass. The dog woke with a piercing yap and tore down the garden towards some unknown crisis.

‘How did who die, darling?’

‘Jimmy.’

Ellen took a breath. Blotto was rushing around the willow tree again, barking with abandon.

‘You know how he died, darling. I told you. He died during the operation on his ankle.’

‘Why?’

‘Operations are very dangerous—’

‘People don’t usually die of a broken ankle.’

‘Well, Jimmy did. The operation went wrong. Sometimes it happens.’ Ellen stood up and shook the towel out. She must get inside
before the dog started howling again. ‘Jimmy was unlucky. We all were.’ She dressed quickly, being careful not to look directly
at Geenie, who was staring at the house, her blank face steady and unblinking.

Leaving her daughter on the lawn, Ellen walked to the writing studio. The door wasn’t locked, and she went straight inside
and managed to close it before the tears came. The afternoon sun had made the studio like a glass house, and she leant back
on the door and wept and sweated silently, one hand across her mouth, the other clenched tight across her belly.

When she’d managed to stop, she sat in Crane’s armchair and steadied her breathing by telling herself, over and over:
he will be back
. She could smell the muddiness of the stream on her hands. Her nails were full of it.
He will come
back
. He’d sit here again and look at her while she scolded him for not getting on with his novel. He would have to come back,
and when he did, she would make it all right. After all, hadn’t she been thinking of him, of their first time together, even
when Robin had been inside her yesterday? It was amazing how one man could seem like another during the sexual act, how you
could almost forget who the man was entirely, and become lost in the act itself. Robin had been a sure-touched and attentive
lover, but hadn’t she been thinking of Crane’s trembling hands? It was outside the bedroom that men were so very different.

Perhaps if she waited long enough, Crane would arrive and find her in the chair, and she could say she’d been sitting there,
waiting, all the time he’d been gone. Then he’d call her his Cleopatra, and they’d make love on his desk. Perhaps there was
still some hope for a pregnancy.

Wiping her wet cheeks with the heel of her hand, she stood and, telling herself that she didn’t mean to, opened his top desk
drawer. She didn’t think about what she was doing, or of what she was about to do; she just clasped the brass handle and pulled.
Inside were several photographs of Diana as an infant (one in a knitted bonnet on her mother’s slim lap); a couple of pens
with broken nibs; a letter from the publishing house saying they would always welcome him back; and a dirty handkerchief.
Ellen pulled the second drawer open. Apart from a clutch of rubber bands and a few pencil shavings, it was empty. The final
drawer was the deepest, and felt heavy as she pulled. She knew this was it: the manuscript. And sure enough, there was a pile
of paper, the top leaf of which read:

LOVE ON THE DOWNS
a novel
by G. M. Crane

What did that M stand for? He’d never used a middle name before. She stepped back from the paper and swallowed, becoming aware
of how very quiet it was in the studio. Briefly she remembered Geenie, still sitting outside, staring blankly at the house,
and thought that she should push the drawer back into place and go into the house to fetch them both some barley lemonade.
Or maybe a gin and it. But instead she reached in, dragged the pile of paper from the drawer and placed it on top of the mess
of papers on his desk. Then she stood a moment, looking at the top sheet, the rush of her blood making her feel light-headed.
She gave a small laugh – how bad could it be? It was only the story of their love affair. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what
had happened. What was happening.

She turned over the title page. The second page was blank, apart from an inscription typed halfway down the sheet:
For my dear Diana
. Ellen stared at the words for a full minute, not quite believing it wasn’t her own name there, before turning two more blank
pages and coming to the heading:
CHAPTER ONE: The Arrival
. Turning another page, she finally found a whole typed paragraph, which she held before her and read.

It was going to be an endless summer. Georgina Chance
had arrived at the Sussex cottage with her family two days
ago. As soon as she set foot in the place, she’d left the crashing
of teacups and the clatter of servants carrying goodness
knows what up and down the stairs behind, and had
climbed to the top of the green hill which rose up from the
end of their long garden. For she was a young woman with
scant respect for the oppressive gentility of her generation.
Born into the aristocracy, she longed for one thing: escape
from manners and money, and all that went with it.

So it
was
about her, albeit in a roundabout way. Realising that her fingers were sweating, making the thin paper wilt, Ellen sat in
the armchair, placed the page flat on her lap, and read on.

No one could have been more relieved than she to be out of
London. The Downs were there, wetly beckoning from every
window.

She’d have to challenge him on that. ‘Wetly beckoning’ wasn’t right at all.

What bliss it had been to walk barefoot through the grass,
with no care for convention, and no one to see her shapely
white ankles!

Yes, that was right. Although Ellen herself had yet to walk the full height of the hill.

She’d allowed her thoughts to wander to her great love:
poetry. Her father was against poetry, caring only for
money and commerce, and her mother said it was ‘all right
until you get married’. But for Georgina, poetry was the life
force itself, and out there, on the green hills, she could feel its
power in her very bones...

Ellen rose and went to the desk to find the rest. But the next page was blank. She placed the typed page on top of the ones
she’d already read and lifted another page. That was blank, too. And the one after that. And the one after that. She picked
up the whole pile of paper and flicked through its corners with her thumb. But there was nothing. Not one more word. Just
page after page of white, blank paper.