Angel of Brooklyn

by Jenkins, Janette

  ‘I’d love to come,’ Beatrice smiled.

  At the bent lilac bush, snowdrops were tucked around the headstone. Thomas Crane. Four Months. In God’s Great Hands. Elizabeth Ann Crane. Twenty-Eight Years. Martin Francis Crane. Sixty Years. Reunited. The grass was thinning. There was a mossy-looking urn and a few cracked pebbles.

  Beatrice walked home slowly. A rabbit ran out in front of her, stopping to wipe its thin grey face, before diving into the hedge. She remembered the rabbit’s foot she kept inside her handbag. Her toes were rubbing inside her boots. She thought about the emerald on her finger, bought for a Mrs Crane before her. She looked at the sky. The sun was a flat brittle coin. The breeze like ice. Had the snow started melting in the trenches?

  ‘You’ll have to show them who’s the boss,’ said Ginny, handing Beatrice a bucket of slops. ‘They’ll trample all over you, if you let them.’

  The pigs were huge, pushing against her legs, knocking her hard into the wall.

  ‘I’ll get used to it,’ she said, catching her breath and rubbing the back of her head.

  ‘Best time to clean them out is whilst they’re eating,’ said Ginny, handing her a shovel. ‘They don’t notice anything when they’ve got their snouts stuck into their grub.’

  The smell turned her stomach, until she really didn’t smell it any more. After the pigs, she went into the carrot shed. There were hundreds of them.

  ‘Hose them down,’ said Ginny. ‘There’s a pile of sacks in the corner. They all want filling up.’

  By lunchtime she was almost in tears. Her hands were numb. It was like the muddy carrots were laughing at her. She’d spent an hour and a half washing and bagging them up, and the mound didn’t look any smaller.

  ‘It’s your first day,’ said Ginny, handing her a plate of buttered toast. ‘I’ve been doing this all my life. It takes some getting used to.’

  ‘I’ll never eat another carrot.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘Do I stink?’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Probably,’ shrugged Ginny, ‘but what would I know?’

  A framed studio photograph of Tom in uniform stood on the mantelpiece next to Martha’s cards, and the pencil drawing he’d sent, a fluffy-looking dog, saying, A Very Yappy Birthday!

  ‘I wish my mam was here,’ Lizzie sighed to herself, wiping down the table. ‘She could have easily caught the bus from town, but no, she couldn’t spare the fare. Today of all days.’

  The room was crushed with children, and most of them were behaving, trying to keep their best clothes nice, though Bert’s shirt was covered in drips of raspberry cordial.

  ‘It’s blood,’ whispered Billy. ‘Let’s pretend you’ve just been shot.’ And so they ran outside, where Bert held his heart, staggering, before collapsing onto the ground.

  ‘Well, there’s another killed in action,’ said Billy. ‘Now get up quick, it’s my turn.’

  Inside, a broken-looking tail was being pinned onto a donkey. A girl called Dot won and Martha started crying. Lizzie looked exhausted.

  ‘Why don’t you all share this bag of barley sugar and play a nice game of happy families?’ she said.

  ‘If I win again,’ said Dot, ‘will I get a proper prize?’

  The children tired quickly of playing cards and took their games into the lane. Billy and the bloodstained Captain Bert commandeered their army, and soon had everyone marching up and down. A boy called Sam was sick behind a laurel bush. Harry had scraped his leg, and was exaggerating a limp. Martha said that she wanted to be a spy, and as it was her birthday, they’d better let her be one. She set out with a stick.

  ‘I’ll report back,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Remember, lads, we have to stamp out the Kaiser!’

  She walked to the top of the lane, dragging her stick through the newly dried mud. Her eyes settled on windows. Spies could be anywhere. They could be crouching behind sofas and pot plants, or whispering in German just behind the coal shed.

  By now, the others were playing something else, but she was a spy, and she wasn’t going to stop, because England needed spies. She wished she’d been better equipped. She should have brought a notepad and a pencil, and the binoculars that were hanging in the cellar. But spies had to look ordinary. She whistled. Whistling made you look ordinary. She sniffed. Germans smelled of greasy sausage, or like bacon gone bad. Bert once told her that the Germans melted down corpses to make more ammunition, but she didn’t believe him because they wouldn’t have the time. She bent to pick some bluebells, her eyes looking right and left. A bird rustled. Then she heard footsteps and froze. Boots. Thick heavy boots. The Kaiser wore boots. She quickly looked behind her. The boots suddenly stopped.

  Throwing down the flowers, Martha ran all the way home without stopping, until she stood inside the kitchen, her hands on her hips, panting hard.

  ‘Mrs Crane,’ she breathed. ‘Mrs Crane’s on her way, and you’ll never believe me, but she’s all dressed up like a German.’

  Beatrice and Ginny sat at the side of Mary’s bed. They’d washed and changed their clothes, but the sweet manure smell that was clinging to their skin had refused to give in to the block of yellow carbolic.

  ‘They told me you were working on the farm,’ Mary said. ‘I tried to imagine you with the pigs, but it was hard.’

  ‘She’s doing all right,’ said Ginny. ‘She’s been a real help to Dad.’

  ‘And what does Jonathan think?’ Mary pulled the eiderdown a little closer to her chin. ‘Him with his stripes and medals, and you up to your knees in the filth?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. And I’ve heard nothing about any stripes or medals, by the way.’

  ‘Ada says he’s already a sergeant?’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Beatrice. ‘He might be.’

  ‘Don’t sergeants get stripes anyway?’ said Ginny. ‘They put them on their sleeves.’

  ‘Al Riley was killed,’ said Mary. ‘First day he was out there. A bullet, straight through his heart. His mother got a letter from his sergeant. Said he was brave, and that he felt nothing.’

  ‘That’s terrible. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You didn’t know him,’ said Mary. ‘He was a private, a nobody, but a lovely bright lad all the same. He used to lodge with Lionel now and then. He was always running away from home, for no real reason at all, like boys always seem to do for the fun of it.’

  ‘He used to scrump our apples,’ said Ginny.

  ‘He was nineteen,’ said Mary. ‘He’d just had his birthday.’

  ‘I was sweet on him once,’ said Ginny. ‘He had lovely green eyes.’

  Beatrice sat looking at her dry, calloused hands. She could hear Ginny sniffing.

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ said Mary.

  ‘You know, I’ve often wondered what Jonathan’s father was like,’ said Beatrice. ‘I never got to meet him. I’d love to know something about his family.’

  ‘We didn’t see much of him,’ Mary said. ‘He was a gentleman. Kind-looking, I suppose. Very slim. He worked in insurance, but I suppose you know that?’

  ‘He was always coughing,’ said Ginny. ‘Cough, cough, cough, like his wife before him. Or that’s what I heard.’

  ‘I was told that his wife died young, and he never remarried,’ said Mary with a shrug. ‘I don’t remember her. She was supposed to have been a beauty, but they always say that when someone’s dead.’

  ‘Didn’t she like opera?’ said Ginny. ‘My mother’s always saying that she sang like a linnet bird, and that Italian was like a second language to her.’

  ‘It was?’ said Beatrice. ‘Jonathan never talks about his mother.’

  Mary yawned loudly. ‘More dead people,’ she shuddered. ‘Don’t you know any funny stories?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘I’ve heard some funny stories,’ said Ginny, ‘but I can never tell them right.’

  A week later, Frank came home on leave.

  Beatrice was in the shop with Lizzie and Ada was bri
stling with some important news.

  ‘I have a message for you all,’ she said, straightening her apron. ‘You’ve not to go and bother them. Madge has given strict orders. Frank’s home because he’s hurt.’

  ‘He’s been injured?’ said Beatrice. She’d seen him arriving in the trap, and her heart had jumped when she’d seen the khaki.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘Bad enough,’ said Ada.

  ‘I’m sorry he’s hurt,’ said Lizzie, ‘but it’s good that he’s back home.’

  ‘Give them my regards,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Mine too,’ said Lizzie. ‘Don’t forget.’

  ‘I won’t. That’s if I see them,’ said Ada. ‘I’ve had orders too.’

  She’d been thinking about Jonathan’s parents, how they’d lived in this house. Had they left any clues about their lives? Were there sheets of opera music yellowing at the bottom of a drawer? Books written in Italian? Hair combs? Clips? Mr Crane had only died a couple of years ago. There must be something left of him.

  She started at the top of the house, a house she’d grown to love, even in Jonathan’s absence. She liked the feel of the carved marble fireplaces with their threads of grey and blue, the curling brass door handles, and the worn green cushions on the chairs. Sometimes, she’d stand and look at the stained-glass flowers that were set around the door. If the light was right, they would be pressed onto the walls in shimmering pinks and blues.

  In the box room there was a chest carved with grapes and figs and vine leaves, but as far as she could see it was full of cedar blocks and bedding. Another chest had drawers lined with newspaper, but these drawers were empty, apart from a couple of cherubic-looking ornaments wrapped in thick paper.

  For years, Jonathan’s father had slept in the room at the back of the house. The clumpy double bed with its polished brass frame was stripped, the wardrobe bare, its mothballs hanging from the dusty shoulder rail in sachets. Curled in the corner, like a snake, was a grey silk tie which she unravelled, smoothing it out, reading the stitching on the label that said the tie was a good one and made by Perks of Manchester. How many times had he tied it around his neck? Had he done it the same as Jonathan, chin in the air, not looking?

  There were no photographs or daguerreotypes. She had no idea what these people, her new family, had looked like. Nobody had told her. She’d asked Jonathan, ‘Do you remember your mother?’ and he’d replied, ‘Sometimes.’

  Recurling the tie, she put it into her own drawer, with her soap-smelling camisoles and underwear. She felt disappointed. The biggest clues had been in the bathroom cabinet, and she’d thrown them out months ago. Camphor rub, bottles of liquorice syrup that had left faint sticky circles on the shelf, a strong menthol liniment, and tucked behind a rolled yellow bandage there had been a cracked invalid’s cup.

  It seemed that his mother, like her own, had vanished altogether.

  Beatrice felt empty. Lying in bed listening to the creaks and moans of the house, she wished that Jonathan was home, that they were listening to the music she’d bought, or talking, just sitting in the same house. A small injury, that’s all he would need, a broken arm, a sprained ankle, perhaps a little deafness in one ear, and it would heal, slowly. They would have time together, and the war would end without him. They could hide.

  That night she dreamed about the Island. Nancy was a soldier. She was standing on a soda crate signing up new recruits. Marnie was in a uniform, her black hair cut and oiled like a man’s. The sunshine had vanished. It was snowing, but the air felt warm and thick. It was only when Beatrice looked up, that she saw that the snow wasn’t snow after all. The sky was dropping feathers.

  CAPTURING THE NIGHTJAR

  IN 1905, IT was said that a large flock of nightjars, usually found in Mexico and Guadeloupe, had strayed into the state of Illinois. On Friday 12 May, the Chronicle reported that a Professor Henry Ratchett of Pontiac had used his young son’s butterfly net to capture one of these strange nocturnal creatures. The bird (a male) was now confined to a large brass cage in his study, from where Professor Ratchett was able to observe this off-course nightjar at close quarters. He was intending to write a major paper on his findings.

  In Normal, Illinois, the Lyles’ kitchen table was covered in nightjar material. Sketches of nightjars and nighthawks were weighted down with boxes. Books were open at relevant pages, and full color plates. Mr Lyle looked more agitated than ever. He didn’t wash, rarely ate, and had very little sleep. He had a constant headache, from staring at the thin pale wash of a sky, waiting for night to fall, when these night-flying aerial insectivores would be hunting for their prey.

  ‘Are these birds rare?’ asked Beatrice. The birds in the hand-tinted pictures looked plain and insignificant.

  Her father glanced at her, shrugged his aching shoulders and twitched. His throat felt dry. He took a slug of dusty water from a tumbler on the table.

  ‘We certainly have common or garden nightjars in Illinois,’ he said impatiently, ‘but these have strayed off-course. They should be in Mexico by now.’

  ‘And that makes them rare?’

  ‘In Illinois they are rare,’ he said. ‘I thought that much would be obvious.’

  Beatrice sat watching her father with his stacks of papers, rubbing his hands through his matted greying hair, picking at some aspirin. Every few minutes he’d scribble something into a jotter. At dinner time she tentatively pushed a plate of bread and cheese across his bird-filled horizon. He grunted.

  Elijah was lucky, Beatrice thought. Nightjars had probably never even crossed his mind. He was spending a month in Jacksonville with the Church. The common nighthawk spent winters in Argentina.

  ‘Are you going to put one in a cage?’ she asked. They weren’t at all pretty, like finches or canaries, and she couldn’t imagine having a living breathing bird inside the house, singing on its perch, in its own kind of mortuary.

  ‘I just want one,’ he snapped, clicking his heels together. ‘If this Ratchett found one in Pontiac, then Normal’s just an evening’s flight away, and they could be sleeping in the garden right now, only they weren’t there last night, or the night before.’

  ‘It says here that they prefer wooded areas,’ said Beatrice, pointing to Nocturnal Birds of America, by J. Pfeiffer Scott (second edition). ‘They might be sleeping in Hackett’s Wood?’

  ‘Ratchett’s bird wasn’t in any wood. His was sitting in his garden like a stone, waiting to be picked.’

  By nightfall, her father was pacing slowly around all the rooms. He perched on windowsills. He hummed. The stuffed and mounted birds seemed to be watching him. Every so often, he would pause to look up at the sky. The moon, when it eventually appeared, lit up the blue-edged clouds like a lantern.

  ‘The perfect backdrop,’ he mumbled.

  Beatrice had a stomach ache. Why couldn’t her father stay inside the outhouse with his pelts and solutions? His agitation had gripped her. Suddenly, he turned.

  ‘What do you know about the nightjar?’ he asked.

  ‘Ratchett’s nightjar, or the usual one?’

  ‘Ratchett’s nightjar? What do you mean, Ratchett’s nightjar? It isn’t called Ratchett’s nightjar, and it never will be. He hasn’t named the species,’ he growled. ‘It’s the buff-collared nightjar, plain and simple. This damn Ratchett isn’t an explorer or a naturalist. The man’s discovered nothing. Well?’

  Beatrice licked her pale lips. She’d been reading about these birds all day. Her head was full of them. ‘They do like wooded areas,’ she stuttered. ‘And they’re often called goatsuckers, because they suck the milk from goats.’

  ‘Nonsense, that’s nothing more than an ignorant myth. They eat moths and other flying insects.’

  ‘They forage close to the ground?’

  ‘Yes, yes?’

  ‘Their brown mottled feathers make for an excellent camouflage?’

  ‘That’s right. Now go upstairs and put on something
white.’

  ‘White?’

  ‘White makes a nocturnal bird very curious,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘We’re going to walk to Hackett’s Wood and get ourselves a nightjar.’

  It was past ten o’clock when Beatrice and her father left the house. Beatrice was wearing a white blouse and a shawl. Her father had tied a bed sheet around his shoulders. Between them, they carried fishing nets, a large basket and a smaller basket containing the five live moths they’d managed to catch from the back of the closet, where they’d been feasting on her father’s old collars and neckties. They also had a small jotter pad and pencil, and four ginger cookies to sustain them through the night (Beatrice’s idea).

  The walk took them past the church, and Bethan Carter’s house, where the windows were in darkness, and where the swing, now even more dilapidated, was creaking on its tilted broken chains. Beatrice shivered, tugging at her shawl. Her father kept his eyes on the sky, which he had to admit, was nicely illuminated. Between their hollow footsteps, he listened for the cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk-cukachea cry of the buff-collared nightjar, who might be above their heads right now, looking for beetles, flying insects and Mexico.

  Hackett’s Wood skirted the edge of downtown, past Beaufort Street and the Orphan’s Home that looked so sinister with all its tall windows flashing in the moonlight. Beatrice kept her eyes on her feet.

  The wood was sparse with small dense patches. Most of it had been cut down to make way for the cannery. Beatrice squeezed her net tight as her father walked on ahead, their feet crunching on leaves and snapping deadwood branches. She could smell something sour. Stumps were covered in fungi the size and shape of dinner plates. Her heart was pounding. Her father’s sheet billowed in a sudden gust of wind. She couldn’t see his bent head, just the sheet hanging ghostlike, until he paused at a large shingle oak, and crouched down beside it.

  ‘Over here,’ he whispered. ‘This is as good a place as any.’

  She crouched down beside him, suddenly feeling the cold, her back resting against the thick bony trunk. Then the sounds came. The crunching, rustling, snapping, crying. The wood was coming to life. It was hiding things.