The Good Plain Cook (8 page)

· · ·  Twelve  · · ·

But one night Geenie heard a groaning quite different from her mother’s usual nocturnal noises, and she knew it must be coming
from Diana’s room.

The noise sounded like a ‘whoa’, as if Diana were riding an out-of-control horse. Geenie imagined the creature bucking in
Diana’s bed, trampling the mattress so the girl flew in the air, rolling the sheets to rags at her feet.

When Geenie found her, Diana’s room was lit a blue-grey by the moon, and she could see the sheet was stuck to the girl’s stomach
like a wet curtain. Diana’s nightgown was wrapped around her thighs. A strip of dark hair clung to her forehead, and she made
the noise again, a long and wavering
whoooah
.

Geenie stood in the doorway, watching the other girl’s nightmare. Her own nightgown was dry and heavy, the lace prickly at
her neck. Diana thrashed again. She was trying, Geenie realised, to speak: her mouth was working frantically, the muscles
around her eyes quivering, but no sound – other than the
whoa
noise, which happened once more – would come out.

She’d have to go in and rescue her friend from this damp hell.

She stole into Diana’s bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she put a hand on Diana’s ankle. It was very hot, but not
wet. The sweat had yet to reach all the way down there. Slowly, Geenie applied a gentle pressure to the ankle. She wasn’t
sure if this was the right thing to do, but she’d heard Jimmy say that waking sleepwalkers was dangerous, so she thought this
careful, doctorly approach was best. Doctors always sat on the edge of a bed and applied gentle pressure. That’s what they
did when Jimmy broke his ankle falling from his horse, before his operation, and that’s what they did when she herself had
caught pneumonia after he’d died.

She decided she should work her way up: a touch on the ankle, the knee, the side, the wrist. There would be no sudden moves
or noises.

Very slowly, she began to increase the pressure on Diana’s ankle, staring at her damp face all the while. The girl’s nose
twitched and her arm swung out and above her head so suddenly that Geenie ducked. But there was no
whoa
. Geenie put a hand on Diana’s other ankle and gently squeezed there, too. As she increased the pressure, the girl stopped
thrashing and her face fell still. Diana’s eyes half opened, showing flickering whites, which made Geenie start back and release
her grip. She wondered how she could explain her presence on the edge of the other girl’s bed. But then Diana turned, gave
a long sigh, and began to breathe easily.

Geenie sat on the bed, looking at the side of Diana’s calm face in the moonlight, until her toes felt frozen together and
her back was stiff.

. . . .

Every night after that, Geenie lay awake in her own double bed waiting for the
whoa
. She’d never slept in a small bed (her mother didn’t believe in them) and for as long as she could remember she’d spent hours
trying out different positions on the wide mattress before sleep. There was room for four Geenies in that bed. The headboard
was a complicated grid of iron, twisted and hammered into swirls, from which her mother had hung a few pairs of old earrings
which rattled each time Geenie moved. The hoops clanked, the drops clacked. Her eiderdown was lilac silk and stained in one
corner with a banana-shaped blob of ink. Geenie didn’t remember where that had come from.

She thought of the mattress as something like the huge map of the world which Jimmy had kept on his study wall. Each of its
corners, its dips and lumps, were countries in which she could try to sleep. The far left was rocky terrain, with good breezes:
ideal for hot nights. The mid-right was flat and firm, comfortless but solid; it offered a long night if you managed to drift
off there. And the very centre, where the mattress gave out and yielded to her every move, was deep water where dreams were
guaranteed. Lying there was like rocking in a ship at sea; waves of sleep came up to meet you, then pitched you back into
wakefulness.

When waiting for Diana’s nightmares, Geenie favoured the flat, unsurprising middle-right plane. Sleep was least likely to
grasp her there.

She waited, thinking of how Jimmy had once come into her bedroom at night and looked over her. She was six years old, and
had listened to another long row for what seemed like hours. She could never quite make out the thread of the argument, only
occasional words, such as
your money
(Jimmy) or
not fair
(her mother), or, once,
better writer than
you
(her mother again). It had been quiet for a while when the door handle shook and turned. She could smell him immediately:
whisky, tobacco, glue, sandalwood talcum powder.

As Jimmy opened the door, and the light from the landing brightened her room, Geenie lifted her eyelids a fraction of an inch
so she could spy on him. She wished she looked deeply, sweetly asleep, with her blonde waves chasing across the pillow, so
Jimmy could stand and admire her and think about how much he’d lose if he left her mother. But instead she was curled in this
tight ball, her fist clenching the sheet, her hair caught behind her neck, both feet tucked up below her bottom, and her eyelids
fluttering with the effort of remaining slightly lifted.

She didn’t move. She listened to Jimmy’s breathing, which was slightly laboured, as if he’d run up the stairs. His hand would
be on his hip, as it always was when he was watching something – her mother dancing on a tabletop, or Geenie riding her horse.
He might be smiling his bright, sudden smile that made his cheeks wrinkle, the way he had when she’d shown him the drawings
she’d done on the paving stones outside their London house. ‘Ellen will never forgive you,’ he’d said, smiling.

She waited for him to retreat. She thought perhaps he’d come to calm himself. She hoped the sight of his sleeping Flossy –
even in this strangled position – did that.

But instead he sat on the chair by her bed. She closed her eyes in case he saw her lids flickering. The smell of whisky grew
warmer. His breathing was steadier now. Perhaps he would sleep there tonight. Perhaps Ellen had locked him out of their bedroom
and he had nowhere else to go. Geenie’s bedroom was the only place he could rest. That wasn’t true of course. There were plenty
of guest rooms and a huge chaise longue downstairs in his study.

Her limbs were stiff from staying in one position for so long, curled in this tight ball. Her toes started to itch with heat.
How long would he sit there? She opened her eyes a crack. Jimmy had his face in his hands and was rubbing at his cheeks. Then
he looked at her and she clamped her eyes shut again. Perhaps she should do heavy breathing to make her sleep more convincing.

‘Geenie,’ he said, in a soft voice. ‘Are you awake?’

Her legs not moving, her arms not moving. Just the air in her lungs, out of her lungs, in her lungs, out of her lungs.

It was silent for a long moment before the sob. And even then, she couldn’t be sure it was a sob, because she couldn’t open
her eyes again. Was that thin rasp of air the sound of Jimmy crying? That sudden rush of breath, was that the sound of Jimmy’s
sadness? She couldn’t be sure. There was no way to be sure of that.

· · ·  Thirteen  · · ·

On the journey, she peered at the Downs through the dirty glass of the bus window. She’d overheard Mr Crane telling Arthur
that this landscape was inspirational, and wondered what he’d meant, exactly. Did the mere sight of grass get him going on
a poem? How did those ordinary hills, so bare and bald, inspire anyone? They made Kitty think of chapped hands and eyes streaming
in the wind. The picture in Mr Crane’s unused bedroom of rugged mountain tops and vast lakes – that was more the sort of thing,
surely. Something you could really call a view.

Perhaps she should go up on the Downs again sometime, and look at them in more detail. Close-up things revealed a lot. She
was working on an embroidery design she’d bought from Wells & Rush of Victorian girls rock-pooling on a beach, and that was
all tiny details: the shine on the pebbles, the black beads of the crabs’ eyes, the way the children’s lines caught in the
water. It was going to be lovely when it was finished. The Downs weren’t like that. They were blankly green, empty of trees,
and they seemed to hold the village captive, keeping the air from the streets.

Often she visited her parents’ grave on the way to Lou’s, pulled whatever weeds had sprung up around the base of the stone
with her hands, and knelt before it to try to say a prayer. She knew it wasn’t what Mother would have wanted: prayers weren’t
her thing. But what else were you supposed to do at gravesides?

Today, though, Kitty went straight to Lou’s. Reaching Woodbury Avenue, she opened Lou’s gate, which had
60
worked into the wood, and walked up the box-lined front path.

‘It’s you.’ Lou opened the door and peered over Kitty’s shoulder. ‘I thought it might be Bob, coming back for his extra set
of irons. He’s always on that bloody golf course lately. Come in, then.’

Lou led Kitty through the house, with its familiar scent of Nettine and new paint, to the back garden: a square of lawn framed
by forget-me-nots, delphiniums and white moon daisies. In the centre of the lawn was a deep red rose bush. Red, white and
blue: they’d planted the garden for the Jubilee last year, not long after they’d first moved in. Lou said it was Bob’s pride.
But Kitty knew it was Lou who did the work: she’d seen the dirt beneath her fingernails, the calloused forefinger of her right
hand, like Arthur’s.

They sat on Lou’s wicker garden chairs.

‘What do you think of my new skirt, then?’ Lou smoothed it over her thighs and twisted to the side, jutting out her chin and
widening her eyes. It was calf-length, bright orange with two pleats at the knees, and tight enough to show the curve of her
bottom. ‘It’s rayon. Dries like a dream but a bit scratchy. Bob says this is his favourite colour on me, but I’m not sure.
Is it a bit much, do you think?’

Today Lou was wearing her red curls straightened and rolled at the ends so they rested on her shoulders and glinted as she
moved. They reminded Kitty of the fox stole Mrs Steinberg kept hanging in her wardrobe but never wore.

‘It’s lovely.’

‘I expect your American woman has dozens.’

‘Not as many as you’d think,’ Kitty began, reaching for an egg and cress sandwich from the little camp table Lou had placed
on the lawn. ‘I’ve seen her in the same outfit lots of times. She likes quite, well, boyish things. Buttons and military whatnot.’

‘I thought that bohemian lot were all scarves and no underwear.’

Kitty giggled. ‘Lou!’

‘Well. That’s what I’ve heard. And she is on her third husband.’

‘He’s not her husband.’

‘Exactly.’

Kitty bit into her sandwich. The bread was a strange mixture of soggy and slightly crispy. Lou must have made them this morning.
She’d always been very organised.

‘It must be nice, to have anything you want,’ Lou continued. ‘If it was me, I’d have a new cashmere coat, plenty of Swiss
lace petticoats and dozens of silk stockings. And a georgette swagger suit. I’ve seen just the one in Norman Burton’s.’

‘She doesn’t wear stockings.’

Lou raised her eyebrows. ‘What does she wear then?’

‘Socks, sometimes.’

‘Like a schoolgirl?’

‘Short ones. I think it must be an American thing.’

Kitty looked at the back of her sister’s house. The sparkling kitchen window reflected the scene back to her: two sisters
sitting on a lawn, one in a rayon skirt and the other in an old frock. New garden furniture with blue cretonne cushions. The
Jubilee garden. It was fortunate that the King had died in the winter, because a red, white and blue garden would have seemed
inappropriate when the nation was supposed to be in mourning.

‘What does
he
think of that?’

Kitty reached for another sandwich, then changed her mind. ‘Is there cake, Lou?’

‘Later. Marble. What does he think of that, the no-stockings thing?’

‘Who?’

‘The poet, you ninny. Handsome Henry. Crake.’

‘Crane.’ Kitty twisted her hands in her lap. ‘I don’t know what he thinks.’

‘Are you blushing?’

Kitty took a sandwich and bit into it. ‘No.’ The yolks were powdery, too.

‘He is handsome, though, isn’t he?’

‘Is he?’

Lou tutted. ‘She’s a lucky so-and-so. Fancy having all that and not even being married to it. I suppose she can afford it.’

Now Kitty did blush.

‘And having you to cook and clean for him, too.’ Lou stretched her neck to one side and closed her eyes. ‘Sometimes I wish
I had a char. Then I could go and do something else occasionally.’

Kitty said nothing.

‘Not that Bob’s very demanding. But it’s a big house to clean all on your own.’

‘Easy, though. What with it being so square – modern, I mean.’

Lou shot her sister a sideways look. ‘I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘I’m a lucky bugger, when you think of it.’

‘Mother would have loved it.’

Lou picked up a sandwich, prised it open with one finger and studied the contents. ‘It’s you she would have been proud of,
though.’

‘Get off. What about you marrying a schoolmaster? She never stopped on about that.’

‘But I don’t actually
do
anything, though, do I? Not any more.’

When she was fourteen, Lou had begged their mother to let her stay at school so she could become a teacher, but their mother
had said there was no way she could afford to support her until she was qualified. And, anyway, Lou was sure to meet some
young man and change her mind before that, and then it would all be a waste. Kitty remembered the long nights of her sister’s
sobbing in their bed. She’d always tried to comfort Lou, if only in an attempt to get some sleep herself, and Lou had always
resisted, turning away and crying all the harder at the slightest touch.

Lou dumped the sandwich back on the plate. ‘The bakery wasn’t much but it was something. Now I don’t do anything that’s of
use to anyone. It’s not as if I’ve even got any children to look after.’

‘You will have, though, Lou.’

Lou shook her head and smiled. ‘How do you know that? It’s been two years already.’

‘You keep house for Bob, and cook—’

‘But like you said, that’s easy.’

Kitty touched the ends of her hair and looked at her sister. ‘Not for Mrs Steinberg, it isn’t. She’s asked me to show her
how to do it.’

Lou widened her eyes.

‘She said she wanted to become
domesticated
. She’s asked me to help her learn how to be a housewife. I don’t know what to do about it.’

‘
I
know what to do about it,’ said Lou. ‘I know exactly what you should do. You should show her how to scrub the floor and heave
the bloody mangle round. You should get her on her hands and knees cleaning the lav. See how she likes it.’

‘I don’t think she wants to learn that bit.’

‘I’m sure she doesn’t.’

‘I think it’s more the cooking and things. And the children…’

‘But you’re not the nanny, Kitty, you’ve always said that. You’re the cook. She should be looking after them already, shouldn’t
she?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘If a woman has children she should look after them herself. What’s the point in it, otherwise?’ Lou bit her bottom lip and
stared at the rose bed.

‘Thing is,’ said Kitty, ‘I was wondering, Lou, if you could help me.’

Lou’s gaze snapped back to her sister.

‘You’re good at that sort of thing,’ Kitty continued. ‘You were always better than me.’

Lou waved a hand in the air. ‘It’s just getting a recipe from a book. Anyone can do it.’

‘She can’t.’

‘But what does she want? I can’t do anything fancy.’

‘I don’t know. The basics, I suppose…’

‘You can do that. I’ve never heard anything like it, a lady asking the staff for recipes. What’s wrong with her?’

‘Please, Lou. All you have to do is show me a few things. And then I can show her. What about that lovely omelette you made
the other week, with the bacon in?’

‘Savoyarde.’

‘That would be the sort of thing. She likes French things.’

Lou ran a finger along her neckline. ‘I suppose I could show you a couple of things. I did make a nice kedgeree last night.
Bob was amazed that rice could be so edible.’

. . . .

On the way back to the cottage, Kitty decided to get off the bus a stop early. It was a lovely evening; the sky was streaked
all kinds of pink. She was free until the morning, so why not walk back? Lou had Bob to drive her in their Ford. She, Kitty,
would walk. She’d seen young couples on the hills by the cottage, both wearing shorts and carrying packs on their backs. Rambling,
they called it. She wondered what it would be like to walk in shorts, baring your legs to the cows. Cold, probably. And what
did they carry on their backs? Maps, compasses, treacle biscuits? Notebooks, perhaps, for moments of inspiration. That was
probably what Mr Crane did, although she’d never seen him in shorts.

Smiling at the thought, she stood on the verge of the main road to Harting and looked about. There was a cut-through across
the fields back to the cottage somewhere. Arthur had mentioned he walked home this way sometimes in the summer, ‘to make the
most of it’.

She couldn’t find a gate, so she squeezed through a gap in the hedgerow, scratching her arm on a branch. A thin line of blood
rose to the surface of her skin. She rubbed at it for a moment before making her way around the edge of the field. The wheat
was almost to her waist, bristling green. Kitty couldn’t remember ever walking in the fields like this before. When they were
younger, she and Lou sometimes cycled from their house in Petersfield to Harting; they’d shared a bicycle between them, and
would take it in turns to sit on the saddle whilst the other stood and pedalled. The picnic was always the bit Kitty liked
the best – a piece of cheese and bread, perhaps a slice of apple cake if their mother had felt like baking. They always ate
in the village churchyard, then cycled home along the road again. Kitty remembered feeling that the devil must be in that
churchyard. The pointed wooden doors and mossy arches of the church were, she thought, where the devil was likely to lurk.
If it was God’s house, wouldn’t the devil want to hang about outside? That way, he had more chance of getting in and causing
havoc.

She reached a patch of trees which she thought she recognised, but she couldn’t see the cottage from here. Leaves flicked
in the wind. Her shoes were beginning to feel damp. The only way, she decided, was to go through the wood.

Although it had been a warm week, the ground was boggy, and mud crept over the edges of her shoes. As she went deeper into
the wood, it was so quiet that she became aware of her own breath. She wished, now, that she’d accepted the piece of marble
cake Lou had offered her to take home. She could have stopped for a bite then.

Did Arthur come this way? She couldn’t see any track through the trees, which were getting denser. She’d have to go back.
What had she been thinking? Even if she had reached the back of the garden, there was the stream to cross. She’d have to go
back to the road and walk all the way round and through the village.

The sun was getting lower in the sky. If she still had a bicycle, she could get away from Willow on her free evenings without
having to pay for the bus. Perhaps she could cycle up to the church and sit in the graveyard again, to see if the devil had
made an appearance yet. When they were younger, Lou liked to stretch out on the graves and sunbathe, hitching her skirt above
her knees and closing her eyes. Kitty herself kept upright. When Lou had asked her why she didn’t lie down, Kitty told her,
you never know
who’ll come along
. ‘Exactly,’ Lou said, and smiled.

They’d waited long hours like that, some Sunday afternoons, Lou’s legs going goose-pimply as shadows dragged across the graves,
and Kitty’s bottom turning to stone. The yew trees smelled of mould, and the grave they most often chose was dedicated to
Mary Belcher, she remembered that. Mary Belcher had a headstone, which had fallen over and now lay flat in the grass, all
to herself. Was it better to have room in the grave, or to have company? Would it be good to have someone else in there, waiting
for you? Or better to be left in peace? She thought that her own mother would have preferred to have been left in peace, but
she was in with their father, even though the two of them had hardly spoken when he was alive, so Lou said. What Kitty remembered
most about him was the ripe smell of tea on his breath every evening when he kissed her goodnight. And how he used to go up
the side passage of the house to fart, putting a finger to his lips. ‘Don’t tell, Kitty-Cat,’ he’d say. Their mother said
he’d been a fool to go to war when he was already too old, and even more of a fool to die of the flu when he got back.