‘She’ll look angelic?’ Nancy smiled. ‘Only she won’t be wearing any clothes?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he said.
‘So, if she were to say yes, which she won’t, what’s in it for you?’
Cooper’s smiled wobbled. His steak was hard to swallow. ‘The pictures will be made into postcards. And if she were willing, then she would be my main attraction.’
‘If she were willing?’ said Beatrice. Why were they talking about her as if she wasn’t even there?
‘He means the podium,’ said Nancy. ‘The swish of the velvet curtain. He wants you in the flesh. He wants to put you onto the stand.’
‘Anyway,’ said Cooper, ‘let’s enjoy our food for now, my steak is magnificent, the chef is from Rome, did I tell you that? Apparently he’s won prizes for his pasta; the wall is full of medals.’
Beatrice pushed her fish around. She could feel her heart beating hard against her ribcage. She hadn’t taken her clothes off for anyone. Not since she was a child and Joanna had rubbed her shoulders with the block of carbolic, telling her stories about girls who didn’t wash behind their ears and the trouble they got into with the things that started growing there.
‘Of course,’ said Cooper, ‘I’ll happily show you one of his books. I have a copy at home. A very handsome collector’s edition.’
Beatrice nodded. She’d been right, the fish was full of bones.
‘What’s the point?’ said Nancy. ‘You’ll only make her feel worse. She’s young. Younger than I was when you first asked me to pose, and anyway, I was a bad sort, and Beatrice is almost an innocent.’
‘I am?’ she said. Of course she knew what Nancy meant, and she was right, but it didn’t make her feel any better, hearing them talk as if she wasn’t in the room. And what did ‘almost’ mean?
‘You aren’t?’ grinned Nancy.
‘It doesn’t matter what I am,’ she said, rolling a bone between her fingers. ‘I want to make my own mind up, and I’m more than capable of saying a polite yes or no.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Cooper with something of a smile. ‘Now, shall we look at the desserts?’
Mr Cooper lived above a large flower store. The doorway was strewn with flattened petals. A sign said: Fresh Bouquets and Tributes.
‘I try to keep the place as homely as I can,’ he said. ‘When Mrs Cooper left me for that book-reading, butcherous quack, I must admit, my world went a little downhill for a while, but then I pulled myself together, and now I employ a woman called Hanna to sweep the place out once in a while.’
Beatrice followed him upstairs. Nancy had gone over to Mitzi’s where she had a date with a boy from Cypress Hills.
‘You’ll be safe with Cooper,’ she’d said, fussing with her hair before she left. ‘He’s nothing but a lamb,’
The landing smelled of rotting flowers. Petals stuck to the dark cracked tiles like giant white thumbprints, the wallpaper was a trail of greying violets, and outside number 6 there was a large domed cage full of small green finches.
‘The birds belong to the Carlottis,’ he told her, opening his door. ‘They own the flower store and they’ve always been generous. When I was at my lowest ebb they brought me plates of lasagne and iced coffee cake. They give me buttonholes and leftover stems, and they’re always so cheerful, I think it’s working with the flowers that does it, they always have a smile, or they’re whistling.’ He was talking too much, and he knew it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Flowers can have that effect.’
It was not a bachelor’s room. Mrs Cooper, it seemed, had left something of herself behind, her small china ornaments (cats mostly), the pictures that hung across the walls with thick velvet ribbons, a plump shepherdess looking for her flock.
‘Do sit down,’ he said, indicating a sofa pushed against the wall and plumped with so many cushions it looked like it was bursting. ‘Would you like something to drink? Can I get you any coffee?’
She shook her head.
‘Then I’ll bring the book right over,’ he said, scraping his hands together, and then tugging on his cufflinks. ‘That’s what I’ll do then, yes.’
She watched him on his knees, fumbling with a small gold key, unlocking a bureau cupboard. It seemed that the book was somewhere at the back.
‘Of course, I’ve only borrowed it, it has to go back to the publisher, I promised I’d take good care of it, apparently it’s awfully expensive.’
‘Really?’ She could see his hands were trembling as he began fumbling and slowly unfolding the paper it was wrapped in.
‘It’s like nothing else you’ve seen,’ he breathed. ‘It’s beautiful.’
He sat it on his knee. It was an inch thick, bound in soft red leather and embossed with gold. It was simply called Filles. Mr Cooper wiped his fingers on a handkerchief before turning the first page.
‘Best to be careful,’ he said. ‘Grease is a terrible thing.’
She was surprised, because at first glance it looked like one of the books that had lined the pale oak shelves in the front room in Normal, the room that was home to the prettiest birds in the house, canaries and small parakeets bought from the store on White Sail Avenue and then gassed in the outhouse. These books were never read; they consisted of volumes of poetry (Sappho, Baudelaire, Shakespeare) and classical mythology, and they had nothing to do with taxidermy, bird structure, or any biblical works. The only one Beatrice had ever seen her father glance at was that containing the story of Icarus. ‘How that damned fellow ever thought he could fly is beyond me,’ her father had said, slamming the book shut and sending a shower of dust motes towards the cock-headed parakeet in the corner. ‘Wax and goose feathers will get a man nowhere. Did the man have hollow bones? Tsk. If he’d bothered dissecting a bird, then he would have known he’d end up on the floor, sun or no burning sun,’ he’d said as a long ray of light came flashing through the window.
Mr Cooper turned a thick vellum page. For Your Entertainment. There were at least a dozen girls looking like black-and-white paintings, their names appearing at their feet in fine gold-printed calligraphy. Aurora. Leilani. Delfina.
‘Nom de plumes,’ he said. ‘It’s de rigueur. They all have them.’
Aurora was standing against a large paper sun. She was beautiful in a haughty kind of way, and with her frizzed light hair falling to her feet, she stood with her arms outstretched, one finger beckoning, her lips a little open, as if she was just about to say something, a name perhaps, or ‘I want you’.
‘What do you think of Miss Aurora? Isn’t she simply magnificent?’
Beatrice nodded; she was looking closely at her nakedness, wondering if her own body matched hers in any way, comparing the size of her breasts, hips, the way her pubic hair was shaped into a sharp black triangle, because imagine removing your clothes and revealing something that was not quite right, then the flinch of the photographer, the putting away of the camera, the opening of the door, and You are not quite up to scratch.
‘She looks like a queen.’
‘Yes? You like her? You have to admit, it’s all very well done, in a most artistic professional manner.’
She nodded. Mr Cooper turned the page. There were words now. Beatrice read the first few lines. ‘Come with me, to my room at the top of the tower, where I will undrape myself for your private pleasure. Here in my boudoir I will dance. I will show you all my naughty secrets. And then I’ll become your plaything …’ Beatrice paled. Aurora now had her back to the camera. She was looking over her milky shoulder, her loose hair trailing over her large dimpled buttocks.
Mr Cooper looked a little warm as he wiped his hand across a cushion before turning another page.
‘Very tasteful,’ he said, as Aurora draped herself over a couch, her finger on her nipple. ‘Like something from a gallery.’
Beatrice said nothing as he went from page to page, constantly wiping his fingers, his face becoming pinker as Leilani appeared, a riding whip in her hand, her pale plump legs astride a p
ommel horse.
‘Magnificent,’ he whispered. ‘What else can I say?’
‘Can I look on my own?’ said Beatrice.
‘Of course, of course, what was I thinking? Read it alone by all means, I will pour myself a nip of brandy; it helps me sleep at night.’
She wiped her hands. The book was heavy, and it left the smell of leather on her fingers. It felt rich and expensive. These girls were full of money. Delfina had dripping wet hair and a towel over her shoulder; a hairbrush sitting like a paddle in her hand. Then there was Clio, Stella, Allegra and Ianthe. Smiling Ianthe was lying in a field with the glimpse of a river behind her. A girl called Persia was standing with her hands inside a large fur muffler. She had no body hair at all. Allegra had ringlets. She reminded Beatrice of a girl she’d been at school with. A fussy little girl called Betsy. Clio was the coy one, looking caught out, and trying to hide her ample breasts with her wide stretched hands.
‘I’ve finished,’ she said, closing the book at last. ‘Thank you.’
Mr Cooper came back, his breath full of brandy as he started folding the paper around the book like a blanket.
‘I have to be most careful with my loan,’ he said. ‘Yes indeed. These books sell for over a hundred dollars a time. That’s right. Over one hundred dollars. You see, they’re all limited editions of the highest quality and only the very rich can afford to look at these tempting beauties.’
‘And us,’ said Beatrice.
‘Indeed, and in that we are nothing but privileged.’
When the book was safely locked away, Mr Cooper put his hands behind his back and gave her a serious look.
‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Would you like to be published? There’s money in it.’
‘I don’t know,’ she told him, feeling a little panicked. ‘I really don’t. I need more time to think. It isn’t something I ever imagined myself doing, or even looking at for that matter.’
‘Quite. I understand. Please take as long as you like.’
‘I might say no.’
‘Of course you might, and if no is your answer, then no it will have to be.’
‘And I can still work in the booth?’
‘Absolutely. You’re my best postcard seller.’ He smiled, wishing he had a cigar. ‘Just don’t tell the others that I said that.’
He walked her home. The moon was cut in half. A couple were walking their dog, humming their way through the shadows.
‘Can I ask you something?’ said Beatrice.
‘Of course, fire away.’
‘What did Mrs Cooper think about your business with the girls? Was that why she left you?’
He stopped for a moment. The couple with the dog were laughing in the distance. He could see the feather bobbing on the woman’s little hat.
‘Mrs Cooper left because she fell in love with someone else and there was not a damned thing I could do about it,’ he said. ‘My wife admired the postcards. She saw the art in them, and she got on well with the girls, sticking them all into a cuttings book, which she appears to have taken with her, and which I am sure that filthy surgeon is enjoying as we speak.’
‘She didn’t mind?’
‘Not a bit.’
‘She was a respectable woman?’
‘Miss Lyle,’ said Mr Cooper, ‘my wife said prayers before every meal we ate, including milk and cookies. She had me kneel down at the bedside. She was a warden at the children’s home.’
‘She was?’ said Beatrice. ‘Then I’m sorry that I asked.’
‘Don’t be. It’s true that my wife was a Christian woman, but what kind of a wife leaves a note for her husband propped against a jar of strawberry and apple jelly saying, I’ve taken everything I want. I’m in love. I’ll post the key through the letter box. Sincerely, Charlotte Cooper? And you know something? It’s the sincerely that gets me every time.’
Mr Cooper left her at the door. The cat was washing its small pointed face on the mat. Upstairs, she didn’t light the lamp; she poured a glass of water, undid her collar, and slept in her clothes, in the moonlight.
ALL THOSE THINGS THAT YOU MISS WHEN THEY’VE GONE
1. The Chance to Use Your Voice
THEY’D HAD SO little time, and in the long quiet evenings Beatrice often felt cheated as she looked back on their old conversations.
‘Rome looks interesting,’ Jonathan had said, studying his travel guide. ‘What do you think?’
‘Rome?’ she had said, with a frown. ‘Rome is full of broken buildings and men who wear cologne but who think that they’re gladiators.’
Jonathan had given her a look. She could picture it. Raised eyebrows and a kind of sideways glance. They had teased each other and laughed. Now, the room was quiet, because the walls didn’t roll their eyes, and the furniture was only required to stand where it was put, unable to chat about Mr Jackson’s lack of insurance, the ridiculous price of petrol, or how lovely Beatrice looked with her hair down. These days, if she wanted to hear voices after supper, she’d have to talk to herself.
2. A Husband’s Paraphernalia
Open jars of hair wax.
Coins thrown across the top of the tallboy, windowsill, bureau, kitchen table; any flat surface that was within close reach of his hand.
Suspenders.
Gold Flake cigarettes.
Oil-stained rags.
Automobile parts.
Empty whisky/wine bottles lined outside the garden shed and catching rain (because they might come in useful, but he didn’t have the shed key to hand).
Cufflinks, collar studs, collars.
The small gold ring on his right little finger.
Spent matches thrown across the top of the tallboy, windowsill, bureau, kitchen table; any flat surface that was within close reach of his hand.
Tobacco tins.
Chewed toothpicks.
Safety razors.
Boot black.
Whiskers clinging like dust to the bowl.
Black socks and long johns.
Hands, fingers.
His tongue.
A hundred other things.
His penis.
3. Sharing a Meal
It seemed like the neighbours were talking to her again, or at least they’d forgotten that they weren’t.
‘Of course I have Billy and Bert to feed,’ said Madge, leaning against the counter, fanning her face with her hand and wondering if the potatoes in the sack were really as green as they looked. ‘But it isn’t the same. I miss that time just before five o’clock, when everything would be done and I could set the table, pour Frank a glass of beer, and have myself a sit-down for five minutes before serving up. He likes a good meat pie,’ she said. ‘Cow heel, tripe, kidney, all the usual things. And when it gets to summer, on a day like today, he likes nothing better than a slab of pork pie with a piece of cheese and pickle. Though he can’t abide salad, says it’s all water, and there’s no taste in it.’
‘Now with my Jim,’ said Ada, ‘everything has to be hot. He says it’s not a real meal unless it’s been heated right through. I’d be sweltering at the stove slicing spuds and carrots, sweat dripping into the broth. Lord,’ she laughed. ‘I’m sometimes that sweaty I don’t need to add any salt or seasoning at all.’
‘I like sitting down to supper and chatting about the day,’ said Beatrice. ‘I do miss that.’
‘Oh, I don’t sit down with him.’ Ada looked surprised. ‘He likes to eat on his own, in peace, with the paper, he likes reading about the crimes of the day and working things out. Says he could have been a detective. He knows all the ins and outs of police work. Though we do sit down at Christmas,’ she added. ‘If we’re not going visiting.’
‘I always eat with our Billy and Bert,’ said Madge. ‘Frank or no Frank. It makes life easier. Either that or standing up in the kitchen.’
‘So you always eat together?’ Ada asked Beatrice. ‘How on earth do you manage it?’
‘Yes,’ said Madge. ‘Have you nothing bet
ter to do?’
‘No,’ said Beatrice, trying to think. ‘Not really.’
Later, when Beatrice had eaten a piece of broiled chicken and tomato, staring at the empty chair opposite, she remembered planning menus on the ship. In the middle of the night she’d crept from the side of the bed and, with what little light there was, she’d looked again at the Good Housewife’s Manual with its new-paper smell and printed sample menus. Monday: Breakfast: Omelette, beef sausage, toast with preserves. Dinner: Roast loin of mutton, mashed potatoes, buttered cabbage. Victoria sponge cake. Cheese. Supper: Cold cuts, crackers, beef paste. And she’d tried to picture herself in a kitchen, chopping and boiling and roasting. Back in Normal, she’d only cooked simple meals. A fried piece of meat or a sandwich. Most of the time her father didn’t notice what was on his fork. Why make an effort? Then there was Coney, where the food was ready to eat. Nuts were roasted and scooped into bags. Potatoes were fried in the deep oil that Sammy Foyle had bought from the warehouse and heated that morning. She’d admired the noodles hanging behind Mr Song’s head as she’d ordered her tub of chow mein.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ Jonathan had said, rubbing his eyes, his feet stretching into the cold rumpled space in the bed. ‘Come back here, I’m missing you.’
She’d closed the book. ‘I’m preparing myself. I need to be able to cook you a proper meal from scratch.’
‘Oh, I’ll survive,’ he’d yawned, pulling back the sheet. ‘I managed before I met you, and look, I grew into this big strong man, and I never went hungry, not once.’
She’d smiled, feeling something of a lurch from the ship. ‘Well, you know as well as I do, Mr Crane, there’s a first time for everything.’
4. Skin
He looked better with his clothes on, or with his clothes coming off; the jacket then the collar, his suspenders hanging down below his waist. It would make her skin prickle and her throat tighten. She would remind herself, sitting on her stone looking at the water, or propped on two pillows with the curtains closed, or sitting in the bath, on a deckchair in the garden, walking down the lane, staring at the sky. She had liked his clothes before she had liked anything else about him. They had looked so immediately English and well made, and with his jacket slung over his shoulder she could see the hand-stitched lining, the hidden pocket, a striped satin blue. His oval-shaped cufflinks had winked at her. He wore new summer brogues that made a shushing sound on the boardwalk. But now his civilian clothes were hanging in the wardrobe. She could touch them. Read the labels. Bolam & Son. Made in London. Farnam Gentlemen’s Outfitters. Oxford. She could put her nose against the sleeves. She could wear them. And she had.
Angel of Brooklyn Page 26
