One Summer Night At the Ritz (12 page)

‘Which one’s yours?’ he asked.

‘Right down the end.’ Jane pointed to the very last building. It was the same size as the huts, but was more sturdy; made of concrete with a corrugated roof.

‘Nice,’ he said as they drew level.

Standing in front of the door, Jane was suddenly unsure if she could go in. ‘OK,’ she said after a second. ‘That’s that, where now?’

‘We’re going in, aren’t we?’

She looked from Will back to the lock and then down at the key. Panic started to rise inside her at the idea of stepping inside.

‘Or we could, er… Just sit down? If you’d prefer?’ Will said, pointing towards the concrete steps.

‘OK.’ Jane nodded, her fingers still playing with the tines of the key as she sat.

‘OK.’ Will smiled as he took a seat next to her. They were close on the small step. The sun was hot. He shielded his face with his hand. ‘I had lunch with my brother yesterday.’

Jane looked up. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ Will nodded. ‘I realised we’d never actually had lunch before. A meal just the two of us.’

‘How was it?’

Will nodded. ‘Nice. Surprisingly nice. He said that he liked you.’

Jane scoffed. ‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘It’s true. Hand on heart. Said you surprised him. Anyway, it was good. I sort of wish I’d done it sooner. You were right.’

‘Sorry, say that again?’ Jane smiled as she looked across at him.

‘You were right.’ He laughed. ‘I think I’ve always just been really annoyed with him. I’ve watched him seem to get what he’s wanted all his life and not had to work for it. He didn’t have to go to boarding school – well, he did but he dropped out. He went to university for maybe a year or two but said it wasn’t for him. He didn’t have to go into the business…’

‘Jesus, Will, listen to yourself. You didn’t
have
to do any of those things either.’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Why?’

‘Because who would have done them otherwise?’

‘No one.’ Jane shook her head.

‘Oh right and what would have happened to the business?’

‘Who knows?’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a business. Who cares? It’s just people sleeping in rooms at the end of the day.’

‘You don’t get it.’

‘Oh really, you think? I’ve given up my entire life because of my mother. I don’t blame her for it. I would do it again in an instant but I
had
to do it. I had to do it because otherwise she would have either killed herself or been put in some hideous home miles away from the river and the island that she loved because we had no money for anything better. And half the time I hated her for it. I loved her but I hated her. That’s something you
have
to do, Will. Keeping a hotel business alive just to make your dad happy, who isn’t even here to see it any more. That’s not something you
have
to do. Christ, just look at what it’s made you feel about your brother. This pressure, this expectation. It’s your life, Will.’

He looked at her, slightly surprised.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry, that maybe got a bit too impassioned.’

‘No it was good. Very good.’ He looked away, nodding.

Jane bit her lip. ‘So what did you say to your brother at this lunch?’

‘I asked him what he wanted to do, like you suggested. He said he didn’t know but it wasn’t something in an office. I felt myself get annoyed with him. But I could see the look on your face if I ever recounted this story to you, even though actually at the time I didn’t think you’d be talking to me, but maybe on the off-chance that you would I didn’t say what I was going to say. I asked him why not instead and he said…’ He paused and breathed in. ‘He said that he didn’t want to end up like me.’

Jane winced.

‘Yeah, right.’ Will nodded. ‘He said he didn’t mean it like that, the way it had come out, but he did. He just said that he didn’t want to be miserable and stressed stuck behind a desk.’ He rolled his shoulders back then added, ‘He said he wants to do something outdoors. Something with his hands. God knows what that’s gonna be. I have a friend who works in marquees, that’s the best I can offer him.’

‘And are you still going to give him money?’ Jane asked.

‘Less,’eWill said.

She smiled. ‘Good. Well done.’

‘Thank you very much,’ he said with a tilt of his head like a salute. ‘Look, it’s boiling out here. Let’s go inside. I can’t be that bad,’ he said. He reached over and took the keys from her hand, then stood up and unlocked the studio.

Chapter Twenty-One

If Jane had thought that the smell of Enid’s boat had rocketed her back, it was nothing compared to this. The scent of the dye, the fabric, the wood of the big table, the layer of dust all heated by the sun. The warmth and the smells spilling out as the door opened, coating her in her ten-year-old self. Her fifteen-year-old self, her twenty-year-old self. She stood for a moment where she was.

‘This is amazing. This is absolutely incredible. You made this stuff?’ Will asked, walking forward to look closer at the stacks of printed fabric.

She nodded.

‘You still able to speak?’ he asked as she hovered on the doorstep and she laughed.

Will walked round the room in awe, touching cloth and leaning forward to inspect sketches and drawings pinned to the wall. Jane watched him as she stepped into the dust-swirling air that shimmered like glitter in the sunshine streaming through the windows. She felt a sense of pride begin to swell inside her as she tried to look at the room through his fresh eyes. Fabric was still pinned up on string along the walls, some of it finished, some of it not. Bright reds, pinks and golds hung next to swatches of stencilled linen and experiments she was doing with screen-printed silk. The wooden block prints were all stacked up on the shelves at the far end. Jane’s stencils were fanned out messily on the big table next to a stack of screens for the press. One of the doors to the old cupboard in the corner was half open and she could see a glimpse of the piles of fabric. Off-cuts from commissioned designs, merino wool, organic cottons, velvets folded and neatly waiting. The scissors and pinking shears, pencils and tape-measures were all stacked in ceramic pots and trays on the table. On the wall were measurements scrawled in soft fat pencil in her mum’s handwriting.

Jane pulled out a seat and sat down. ‘This is really weird.’

Will found another stool and sat down opposite her.

‘I think I thought I would come in here at some point and just close it all up.’

Will rested his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands. ‘And now you don’t think that?’ he asked.

She stroked a swatch of maroon velvet printed with a fluorescent-orange paisley pattern that was lying on the table. ‘I have no idea.’ Jane looked around the room. The soap by the sink, the towel, her chipped mug, her mum’s mug. ‘This is so surreal.’

She looked back and Will was watching her.

‘It’s like I could just stand up and carry on. Which I never thought it would be. I think I thought it was over. I’ve had no creative desire to come back here but now I
am
here, I could just get on with it.’

‘You can’t not do this.’ Will glanced around the studio space. ‘You’re clearly incredible at it.’

‘Thanks.’ Jane smiled.

Will tipped his head. ‘You’re welcome.’

She pulled over a swatch of silver silk and held it up, remembering the stag and peacock feather pattern she’d printed on it years ago. ‘It also feels sort of comforting,’ she said. ‘Like it will always be here. Like I don’t have to stand up and do it now. You know?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘Well it’s like… Maybe. Rather than, this is what I do. Not that I’ve done it for a while. Like I could go off and explore and if I wanted to come back and do this, then I could. It’s basically not as scary as I thought it was going to be. I haven’t come in here because it had become a chore. Now I’m in here and it’s all light and the smell is exactly what I know, now it seems more like freedom. Like a place I will probably, in the future, come back to. Stop looking at me like that. This is me having some inner transformation.’ She laughed then swallowed, the intensity in the room doubling and trebling. ‘Seriously, stop looking at me, stop smiling at me.’ She took a breath in. Her eyes met his without blinking, and she found herself saying, ‘Why didn’t you kiss me?’

‘Because I was stupid,’ Will said with a laugh, then he looked down at the table, his fingers toying with a couple of frayed off-cuts. Then he glanced up at her and added seriously, ‘Because it felt like you deserved much better than me.’

She watched him across the table; it looked like he was about to push his chair back and stand up when a voice cut into the silence.

‘Hello? Jane? Are you in there?’ Jane turned to see Martha standing at the entrance to the studio, dressed in her denim dungarees and big wide-brimmed sun hat.

Jane shut her eyes for a second, then said, ‘Yeah, Martha, we’re here.’

Martha walked over to join them, taking her hat off and neatening her frizzy, grey ponytail as she approached. ‘Sorry to interrupt but the lot back at the cafe said you were here and that you were with Mr Blackwell. Hello!’ Martha turned to look at Will who pushed himself up from his seat and went over, his arm outstretched for a handshake.

‘Will Blackwell.’

Martha nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Nice to meet you.’

‘Yes it is. I suppose you’re my…’ She paused. ‘Step-nephew? Half-nephew? Is that a name?’

Will smiled. ‘Maybe? Or just go with nephew, probably easier.’

Stoic, brusque Martha suddenly looked quite emotional. ‘I read it all, in the end. And I was glad that I did. I, er… I learnt about my mother, which was quite nice actually. I thought it wouldn’t be. I thought it would perhaps be too upsetting but actually I found it very useful. I can see that for you, William, it would be more detached. More like history. But for me, yes, I found it very useful. Anyway…’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘I don’t want to interrupt, I just wanted to say hello and, actually, I just wanted to have a quick word with Jane in private. If you don’t mind?’

Will shook his head, a bit taken aback, but said, ‘Not at all, I’ll, er…wait outside.’

Jane gave him a quick confused look, to show that she didn’t know what this was about, but he shrugged to say it was fine.

Martha sat down on Will’s vacant stool. ‘I am sorry to interrupt, Jane.’

‘It’s fine, honestly. Is everything OK?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘He seems like a nice chap,’ she said, glancing to the open doorway and then back at Jane. ‘I have something for you.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. I found it when I was clearing out Mum’s boat. When we were looking for the old diaries, remember? I found a stack that were not quite so old?’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’ Jane frowned.

‘No. No I didn’t. They were at the back of a drawer in the kitchen. I wanted to check them first.’ She patted her fingers against her lips as if she was nervous. ‘I wasn’t going to show you because I was so sure that things should be left as they are found. That if people wanted to tell us things then they should. But now I’m not so sure. I feel now that I know my mother so much better. And…Well… I now know my father. And I thought, however the story had turned out, I would have wanted to know the truth. So, well, I’m going to give you this,’ she said, reaching into her big leather bag and pulling out a diary, the picture on the cover faded, the pages dirty and thumbed at the edges. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t give it to you sooner,’ she said as she slid it across the table.

Then she stood up and walked out of the room.

Jane stared at the book. At the gold embossed letters that spelt Diary on the front, the picture on the front a Van Gogh, the emblem of the Tate on the bottom. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Martha talking to Will. She heard her ask him if he’d like to have a quick coffee. She saw him glance in and look at Jane but then saw Martha beckon him away.

Then suddenly she was alone. The sun was still streaming in through the windows, the noise of the birds and the boatyard coming in through the open door.

She reached forward and picked up the diary. It was the date of the year before she was born. She didn’t read it the way she’d read Enid’s diaries – slowly, chronologically, letting the story play out before her eyes – instead she hurtled through it, flicking the pages as fast as she could, skimming paragraphs to see anything that might be important, back-peddling over a whole chunk about Enid taking her boat to France to travel the canals; there were maps and names of people she could moor with, the whole outline of the journey was there, along with a note to remind herself to give notice to the council to cancel her Cherry Pie mooring. She was wondering why the trip never happened when she stumbled across what she was searching for.

Angie’s back. She’s back and she’s a wreck. Kate won’t see her – stubborn as ever. Thinks she’s brought shame on the bloody family. Shame. I want to shake her. She arrived last night. As always crap at landing, she smashed the boat into mine – I thought it was an earthquake. I tell you, I looked out and I didn’t think I’d see that boat again. When she left with him I had actually started to believe that maybe I was wrong. Maybe she would be happy. Maybe he would make her happy. But I know his type. He wasn’t going to settle down with anyone and as much as I want to blame him, I can’t. He told her, he told her not to follow. I told her not to follow. Kate told her not to follow. But that was probably what actually did make her follow.

And now she’s back and, by the looks of it, she’s about three months’ pregnant. And she’s a wreck. I could wring his bloody neck. Wreck, neck. In my anger I’m a poet.

Jane flicked through some more, skimming forward, looking for words, names, anything.

Angie keeps saying he’s coming back for her. That this is just a temporary thing. He’d said that she is to wait. She’s been bloody waiting every night, sits out on her deck, waiting. I keep taking her dinner round because I don’t think she’s eating. I’m sure he’s not coming back. I don’t see why he would have told her to wait.

I’ve asked one of the guys down at the boatyard, they say they’ve had no word of him planning to come back. He was here on temporary work, they don’t have any more. I know he’s not coming back - I can feel it. She’s fooling herself. I asked where he was and they reckon he'’s moored for a bit in Windsor but won'’t stay long.