Angel of Brooklyn Read Online Free PDF Page A

lemonade, a penny a glass, proceeds going to the church roof fund.
    ‘We’ve been lucky with the weather,’ said Jonathan, stretching out his legs and circling his ankles. ‘Real sunshine. We usually have the maypole in June, just to be on the safe side, but this year, the vicar put his foot down.’
    Jeffrey had sidled over to Ada and Madge. He was wearing a daisy in his lapel. Pulling up his deckchair, he made sure he had a good clear view of Beatrice, who was fanning her face, and laughing.
    ‘It’s like her hands are dancing,’ said Jeffrey. ‘Don’t you think that she’s refined?’
    ‘Refined?’ said Ada. ‘She’s an American.’
    Jeffrey turned to look at her, surprised by the sharp note in her voice. ‘So what do you know about America?’
    ‘They have natives,’ she told him. ‘And Mormons.’
    ‘They also have salons, libraries, cities to rival our own. I once met a man from Boston. A professor. He’d written a journal about nervous diseases. He was most distinguished.’
    ‘Nervous diseases?’ Madge shuddered. ‘What an awful thing to write about.’
    ‘Not at all. He’s lectured all over Europe. I met him in Glasgow when I was attending a design conference. We met in the connecting hall. I was admiring a painting; he was admiring something similar, on the other side of the room. We collided. He was most charming. He took me out for supper at his club.’
    ‘Charming you say?’ said Madge.
    ‘Utterly.’
    ‘It isn’t the same as refined,’ said Ada, narrowing her eyes.
    Jeffrey moved his thumb across the daisy on his jacket. ‘Well, I think she’s lovely.’
    The air was heavy with small talk and laughter, and voices caught in the breeze, drifting over the trees, and into the field beyond, where the farmer sat brooding over his best shire horse. The band members were wiping their foreheads and gulping lemonade, as applause came bursting from the coconut shy, where Tom had hit three in a row and won himself a ginger cake.
    Lizzie, in a rush of good humour, pulled her blanket over to Beatrice and Jonathan.
    ‘Shall we go and join them?’ said Jeffrey. ‘Would Frank and Jim mind? Perhaps we could all sit together?’
    Madge said nothing, but gave a little shrug. Frank was on the other side of the wall, drinking beer with his pals from the quarry. Resigned, she and Ada gathered up their things, as Jeffrey went striding on ahead, with a neatly folded deckchair and his picnic.
    ‘Last year we held it in June,’ Lizzie was saying, ‘but it drizzled all the same. Do you have a lot of rain where you come from?’
    ‘We have all kinds of weather,’ said Beatrice. ‘You name it, we have it.’
    ‘You must excuse us. In England, we talk a lot about the weather,’ said Jeffrey, opening out his chair. ‘I think it’s because it changes all the time.’
    They began pulling out their lunches. The children appeared. Billy and Bert for Madge. Harry and Martha for Lizzie.
    ‘We’ll eat ours by the trees,’ said Harry.
    ‘All right,’ said Lizzie. ‘Just don’t throw it all to the birds.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s far too tasty for that,’ said Beatrice. ‘As you all know, I’m not much of a cook. We have the baker to thank for most things that we eat.’
    ‘Didn’t your mother teach you how to cook?’ asked Madge. ‘Before she passed away?’
    ‘I never knew her, she died the minute I was born,’ Beatrice told them as she handed Jonathan a plate of bread and ham. ‘My father never remarried. I did some cooking as a child, but of course it was nothing very special, and in New York it was easy, because I didn’t cook at all.’
    ‘You ate out all the time?’ said Lizzie.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Wasn’t that expensive?’ Madge licked her lips. ‘For a postcard seller?’
    ‘Not at all. Thing is, you can get a little meal very cheaply. Anything from a bag of hot nuts, to a plate of steak and salad.’
    ‘Like Morecambe?’ said Lizzie. ‘I expect it’s just like Morecambe.