The Good Plain Cook (21 page)

Finally, Diana came up for air. ‘Very good,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘I’ll tell Daddy that we have a play to show
them on Friday morning.’ She reached past Geenie, grabbed her skirt from the bed and began to dress. Geenie did the same,
her fingers slipping on the mother-of-pearl buttons on her blouse, her heart still jumping inside her vest.

· · ·  Thirty  · · ·

‘Now?’

‘It’s your birthday, isn’t it?’

Kitty hadn’t expected her sister to remember. ‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s my birthday.’

Lou shifted her bag to the other arm and stroked it. ‘It’s nearly your birthday then, isn’t it? I’ve booked a taxicab and
everything.’

‘Where’s Bob?’

Lou didn’t answer this. Instead, she looked her sister up and down and said, ‘I’d have thought you’d make more of an effort,
on your birthday.’

‘It’s not my birthday,’ Kitty replied, running a hand over the skirt of her lily-print frock. ‘Anyway, Lou, I really need
to borrow your sewing machine this afternoon. Can’t we go another day?’

Lou tutted. ‘Don’t be an idiot. Come inside. We’d better get you kitted out, quick.’

. . . .

In the back of the cab, Lou stared out of the window at the sun-stunned streets. Her face was flattened by white powder, and
her hands wouldn’t stay still. It was unlike Lou, Kitty thought, to keep fidgeting with her hat, her gloves, her handbag;
but all the way to the hotel, Lou’s fingers were busy with some clasp, seam, or pin. Kitty held on instinctively to the straw
hat attached to her hair. It was pink, to match the pink frock with the white bib front Lou had donated to Kitty for the afternoon.
The frock was too small for Lou (‘that’s what marriage does for you,’ she’d said), but wasn’t too bad a fit for Kitty. The
crispness of the organdie on her skin made up for the slight sagginess around her bosom. Lou had also persuaded her to experiment
with her Tangine lipstick, and Kitty could taste the stale-sweetness of it on her mouth.

‘Perhaps I could run up the costumes when we get back,’ Kitty thought aloud.

‘You’d better not.’ Lou patted her handbag. ‘I’ll have to get on – Bob’s dinner…’

‘I won’t get in the way.’

‘Why are you so set on these bloody costumes?’ Kitty said nothing.

‘It’s not like they do much for you.’

‘It means a lot to Miss Geenie.’ Kitty looked at her sister. ‘I don’t give a fig for the other one, but, well, you have to
feel a bit sorry for Geenie.’

Lou huffed. ‘Poor little miss millionaire. It must be awful, having all that money, and never having to lift a finger.’

‘She’s lonely, though,’ said Kitty.

‘Aren’t we all,’ Lou stated.

. . . .

It was cool and silent in the hotel reception. Yellow chintz armchairs were plumped and ready, but no one was sitting in them.
A gleaming coffee table displayed a fan of expensive magazines, untouched. Kitty stepped across the deep pile towards the
woman at the desk, whose head was bowed over a snowy white register.

‘It’s through here,’ said Lou, taking her sister’s arm and leading her through a pair of glass doors.

They came into a large, light room which smelled strongly of beeswax. Pictures of ships on stormy seas covered the walls,
and in the middle of the room was a grand piano. All the tables, each one displaying a tight white rose arrangement at its
centre, were empty. An electric fan at the back of the room puffed over a parlour palm, but apart from that, the air was absolutely
still.

Lou took the table next to the open windows, sticking her face in front of the fan for a moment and blowing out her cheeks
before sitting down. ‘This place is like the morgue. The morgue in a heatwave. Not very good for the dead, this kind of temperature.
We’ll have a cocktail, liven things up. Where’s the boy?’

‘Tea for me, please,’ said Kitty, noticing the softness of the cushioned chair, the yellow and scarlet monogrammed antimacassar:
WHH, the two Hs entwined in fish-bone stitch. ‘And cake. Victoria sponge, if they have it.’

‘No you won’t. You’ll have a White Lady with me. It’s your birthday.’

‘Not until tomorrow.’

‘Where did you get your damned uptightness from? It’s certainly not from Mother.’

A waiter crossed the carpet noiselessly and stood over them, one hand behind his back. He was young, with a spray of spots
up one side of his neck, but his cuffs were crisp, and his face did not move.

‘Two White Ladies, a pot of tea and some cakes, please,’ said Lou, the dots of rouge on her cheeks crinkling.

‘Would Madam like the afternoon selection? Or a particular cake?’

Lou hesitated. She looked down at the tablecloth, then enquired in a quieter voice, ‘How much is the afternoon selection?’

The waiter’s top lip twitched very slightly. ‘The afternoon selection is three shillings, Madam. It consists of a selection
of our best sandwiches, cakes and dainties.’

‘All right,’ said Lou, looking up at him with a wide smile. ‘That’s what we’ll have.’

‘Very good.’ The waiter moved away as silently as he’d arrived.

Kitty leant across the table and touched her sister’s fingers. ‘Can you afford it, Lou?’ she whispered.

‘Of course I can,’ snapped Lou, taking a packet of Player’s from her handbag and lighting one. ‘It’s always good to check
the price in these places beforehand, that’s all. Then they don’t swindle you when it comes to the bill.’ She drummed her
painted fingernails along the tablecloth and blew smoke towards the windows. ‘So. What’s new in Bohemia?’

Kitty had been dying to tell someone – anyone – about the row over the salmon for days. But she couldn’t think of a way to
explain it that wouldn’t make her sister angry, so instead she offered, ‘
He
left for a few days, all of a sudden. It was quite peculiar.’

Lou took a long drag on her cigarette.

Kitty couldn’t help adding, ‘I think it might have had something to do with me.’

Lou gave a short laugh. ‘What could it have had to do with you?’

‘Maybe it didn’t. But she shouted at me – and he didn’t agree with it – and then, next day, he left.’

Their cocktails arrived in long-stemmed glasses. Lou thanked the waiter, who looked over their heads and gave a quick, stiff
bow before retreating.

Kitty took a sip of her drink. The gin scalded her throat. ‘It was all over nothing, really…’

‘Don’t give me that. What happened?’

Kitty swallowed another mouthful of White Lady. Her insides were suddenly cooled by the alcohol. It was lovely, like a cold,
soft tongue flicking through you.

‘Something about the fish being overdone. She got very upset over it.’

‘What did she say?’

Having first checked over each shoulder to see if anyone else had come in, Kitty leaned across the table towards her sister
and whispered, ‘Fucking incinerated fish.’

Lou almost spat out her drink. ‘No! She said that?’

Kitty giggled. ‘They had this dinner party, and she went off her head, saying I’d overcooked the salmon – she called me in
and said that it was—’

‘Fucking incinerated?’ asked Lou, wide-eyed. Kitty nodded. Both sisters took another drink, and then exploded with laughter.

Kitty was laughing so hard that she didn’t notice the waiter had taken up position behind her chair. ‘Oh!’ she said, and giggled
again as he placed the three-tiered silver tray and a silver teapot on the table.

‘Will you require anything else, Madam?’ he asked the air.

Lou shook her head.

When he’d gone, Kitty hissed, ‘Did he hear us?’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Lou, bypassing the sandwiches and helping herself to a cream slice. ‘Happy twentieth birthday.’ She
held up her glass in a toast, and they clinked and drank. A happy flush of gin spread from Kitty’s stomach to her thighs.

‘So he didn’t like it, then, when she shouted?’

Kitty’s hand hovered over the sandwiches. Egg and cress, tomato paste, ham and mustard. Each one as flat as an envelope.

‘I don’t think he did, no,’ she said, choosing a glistening éclair instead. ‘He apologised to me.’

‘He
apologised
?’

‘Yes.’ Kitty took a bite of and licked a dollop of cream from her lip.

‘He apologised to
you
?’

‘Yes.’ Two bites and the éclair was gone. She moved on to the pineapple meringue.

Lou sighed. ‘He sounds
gallant
. I wish Bob was more like that. I don’t think he’s ever said sorry to me. Not once.’ She pushed her plate away and lit another
Player’s.

‘He is – polite,’ said Kitty, through a mouthful of sugary crumbs. ‘Very polite.’ Then she dared to add, ‘And thoughtful.
He’s the sensitive type, you know.’

Lou was staring at the tablecloth. ‘Bob’s never apologised. Not even now. After everything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing.’ Lou drained her cocktail.

Kitty swallowed the last of the meringue and eyed the thin slice of strawberry gateau still on the silver tray. Before she
could get it onto her plate, though, Lou sighed again, loudly.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Kitty, abandoning the gateau.

‘Sorry.’ Lou put a hand to her mouth and shook her head. ‘I suppose I might as well tell you.’

‘Tell me what?’

‘I didn’t mean to mention it, not now.’

‘Tell me what, Lou?’

Lou opened and closed the clasp of her handbag. ‘Bob and me have been having a spot of trouble.’

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘The marriage kind.’ She smiled weakly. ‘We might – separate. For a bit.’

Kitty stared at her sister.

‘He’s going to live – somewhere else.’ Lou looked out of the window. ‘With someone else.’ She ground out her cigarette. ‘I’ll
be glad to get shot of the old bastard, won’t I?’ Then she added, ‘Sorry to spoil your birthday.’

Picking up the silver teapot, Kitty poured tea into Lou’s cup, added milk and two knobs of sugar, and pushed it over to her
sister. ‘It’s not my birthday.’

‘Fucking incinerated fish,’ said Lou, with a dry laugh.

. . . .

They travelled back to Woodbury Avenue in silence until, passing by the cemetery, Lou put a hand on the back of the driver’s
seat. ‘You can drop us here, please.’

They hadn’t been here together since their mother’s funeral. Kitty stood on the path, watching a heatwave shimmer over the
rows of gravestones fanning out in neat lines on either side of them. It was a new cemetery, and the trees had yet to grow
large enough to offer any shade. The smell of the rubber factory, which was just behind the cemetery wall, was at its worst
in this spot, and the sickly, burning aroma rose around them.

Lou pulled the net of her hat down lower. ‘I hate cemeteries,’ she said. ‘Especially ones that stink.’

Kitty scanned the rows of crosses and slabs. She knew exactly where the grave was, but she wondered if her sister would. As
they walked, Lou’s heel caught in the crack of a paving stone. ‘Bugger it.’ She twisted round and yanked the shoe from her
foot. ‘It’s come right off,’ she said, showing the damage to Kitty.

‘You could stick it back on.’

‘It’ll just come off again.’ Clenching the heel in one hand, Lou limped on, and Kitty followed. To her surprise, Lou went
straight to the right plot, over in the left-hand corner, by the wall nearest the factory. There was a small stone which read:
Douglas Allen, 1875–1921; Mary Allen,
1881–1934; At Peace with God
. The sisters stood before it in silence. It didn’t matter how many times you read it, Kitty thought, it never became any
more familiar, or comforting. She considered uttering her usual quick prayer – something about hoping they were both in heaven,
and asking God to look over them – but she didn’t want to kneel, not in front of Lou, and not in the organdie frock.

‘It’s been two years, almost,’ said Lou.

‘I know.’

‘She would’ve been disappointed with me, wouldn’t she? Her eldest daughter – the divorcee.’

Kitty remembered the way their mother had always referred to Bob as
The School Teacher
. It was a kind of reverence, but also a kind of scorn. ‘She’d have wanted you to be happy.’

‘No she wouldn’t. She would’ve wanted what looked best on her.’ Lou turned to Kitty. ‘Not that she had to put up with Dad,
did she? He went and died before she could get really fed up with him.’

Kitty said nothing.

‘Listen,’ said Lou, suddenly grabbing Kitty’s elbow. ‘Bob’s going to let me stop on at the house, and pay me a bit. It’s all
agreed. I’ve just got to take the blame in the divorce. He gets to keep his reputation, but I get to keep the house. It’s
the least he can do, considering he’s the one who’s gone off with that old trout… do you know what he said to me? That he’d
found paradise!’ The net on Lou’s hat quivered with anger. ‘As if he’d know paradise if it came up and bit him on the arse.’
She jabbed her broken heel in the air. ‘But what I thought – just last night – what I thought was, why be on my own? Why be
on my own when Kitty could come back?’

‘Come back?’

‘To live at the house. With me.’

Kitty took a step away from her sister. ‘But – my job – the cottage—’