The Good Plain Cook Read Free Page B

other in the dining room. If the hole were large enough to walk through, they could have their dinner and Blotto
     need not be shut in the other room, because there would be no other room. That would be good. But it would also be bad, because
     she wouldn’t be able to shut herself in the dining room as tightly as she liked. There was a particularly useful cupboard
     in the corner of the dining room, which smelled of sherry and dust, whose door made a lovely clunkety-click noise when opened
     or closed. The bottom shelf was big enough for Geenie to curl into, and if she hooked her finger round the knot of wood by
     the handle in the right way, she could hold the door almost closed and breathe its dark sherry air and no one would know she
     was there. Then she could listen to George and Ellen as they argued or kissed, and she could think of the times when Jimmy,
     who was gone now, had read to her whilst they sat together in the cupboard under the stairs in their London house, eating
     sherbet.
    The familiar noises from her mother’s bedroom had become more drawn out. Geenie called for Blotto. If the dog came back, they
     could howl together, and then she wouldn’t have to listen to the bedroom noises. She called him again, and waited for the
     tick-tick of his claws on the floor. But the dog did not come.
    She looked at the pile of rubble by her sitting-room foot and noticed the wooden handle of the lump hammer amongst the destroyed
     brick. She reached down, her dining-room leg catching on the teeth of the hole, and ran a finger along the hammer’s cool head.
     Bringing her finger to her face, she considered the dust there. It had lodged in all the ridges of her skin. If she were to
     pick the hammer up and then drop it on her shoe, she would probably break her toes, like the Chinese women who had their feet
     smashed and bound so they could wear small shoes. Ellen often said she wished a kindly aunt had broken and bound her own nose
     when she was younger than Geenie, so that one marvellous day she might have unravelled the bandages to reveal a tiny nose, tip-tilted like a flower , which is what it said in the Tennyson poem, and what Geenie’s nose was like.
    If she dropped the hammer, it would make a noise so loud that Ellen and George might run downstairs. They might stop kissing,
     or arguing, and rush to her aid, because they would hear a loud noise and not know what it was, and a loud noise meant trouble.
    Geenie twisted her body so that she faced the sitting room. She picked up the hammer and held it in both hands. She lifted
     her arms above her head. Breathing out, feeling the stretch in her muscles as her dining-room leg struggled to remain planted
     on the floorboards, she stayed still for at least a minute, focusing on the middle pane of the front window. This was necessary
     in order to concentrate on the banging coming from above. It was becoming more insistent, and there was now a low grunt accompanying
     every bang. Still Geenie held the hammer above her head and waited. Her arms began to ache. Then it came, familiar and awful:
     her mother’s long ‘yes’.
    As the ‘yes’ grew louder, Geenie swung her body round and slammed the hammer to the wall with all her strength.

· · ·  Three  · · ·

    M rs Steinberg had told her to make herself at home, and said they would like lunch at half past twelve, if she could manage
     it. She hadn’t said what they would like for lunch or how Kitty was to prepare it. They’d walked through the kitchen – they
     had to, to reach Kitty’s room – but the American woman hadn’t mentioned anything useful, such as where the pans were kept,
     where an apron might be, or what was in the larder. She’d just waved a hand and said, ‘Isn’t that lantern absolutely beautiful?
     My first husband brought it back from China. But everything else is brand new.’ The lantern, hanging over the central table,
     was made of red silk; a greasy yellow tassel trailed