One Summer Night At The Ritz. Jenny Oliver
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in the bathroom!’ floated with no one to pick them up.
As she lay back in the bubbles, staring up at the glinting crystals, her phone beeped with a text from Annie.
At work, just seen Martha out the back reading the diaries. Will keep you posted. Think this is a good sign. Progress. Good luck tonight x
Jane realised then that not only was there a hole in her future but a gaping one in her past. What would it be like to have, as Martha did, a stack of diaries filled with answers? As she lay in the bath she could finally admit how furious she was with Martha - how annoyed she was that she hadn’t jumped at the chance to read them. She was jealous of Martha’s chance to have a whole history laid bare. Jane would give anything to have the answers to the questions her mother had shut her eyes against, her hands covering her face, refusing to discuss. Just imagining the chance to know who her father was made her want to dunk her head fully under the water and scream, but that would ruin her new hair so instead she stayed where she was, knowing that there were no diaries written by her mother. Jane would forever live her life as she had always done, with no past except the one she had lived to see.
The Diary of Enid Morris. 1st September 1944
James writes to me. He said he would but I didn’t believe him. I was trying so hard not to be naive that I’d written our affair off after one night. But he writes. Beautiful letters that make me struggle not to hope for the future at a time when I have refused to think about the possibility of life ever being normal again. It’s hard here, but I know it’s harder there. People talk about the trenches but no one can know unless they’ve lived it, can they? He doesn’t say anything really about what it’s like and equally I say nothing either. My last letter started with how glorious the sunshine was. Not that someone had died in front of me last night as we’d put them on a stretcher and I’m worried that I’m starting to become immune to suffering. Or more that I worry, if I keep working with the ambulance, that I might.
He says that he writes to me so he doesn’t have to write to his family. I’ve read about the Blackwells, I think, in the past. I asked my friend Fred if he knew anything about them but he asked why I was asking and I got annoyed with him and told him that it was none of his business. I think because Fred didn’t want me to be annoyed with him, he asked his dad who said that the Blackwells were in oil or something, owned a big house and weren’t our sort of people. (Fred’s dad’s words, not mine.) But in his letters James says they’re claustrophobic.
I wrote back to say that I knew exactly what he meant. The island is claustrophobic at the moment. It’s always claustrophobic. I stand sometimes on the bridge and look down the river and just think that there is so much out there to see. I hope they don’t destroy it all before it’s my time to see it.
Jane tried to play it cool. She tried to walk nonchalantly from her room but the fluttering in her stomach, the slight shake of her hands, the nervous tremor on her lips that made her want to laugh got the better of her and she could feel her legs twitch as she started to walk to the lift. She couldn’t help it. It was all the adrenaline whizzing around inside her. What was she going to talk to him about?
She glanced at her reflection in the big mirrors as she walked. The dress Emily had leant her was a loose box cut, which was the main reason it fit. Cut straight to just above the knee, it was cream silk with hundreds of flowers printed on it. Before she put it on, Jane had spent a moment studying the printwork and, considering the cost of such a designer label, had known that she would have printed it better. A thought that surprised her, considering she hadn’t glanced at a piece of fabric with any remote interest for a decade. The shoes were Annie’s – simple silver sandals – and as she’d slipped them on she’d had to laugh at her bright-pink toenail polish. She’d never painted her toenails before.
Now as she caught glimpses of herself as she headed down the corridor she felt like an imposter. The whole evening like an odd masquerade.
The door to The Rivoli Bar was opened for her by one of the black-jacketed doormen.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He just nodded his head in reply.
In comparison to the almost garish lights of the lobby, the bar was dim. Dark like a speakeasy. The music was low, and the decor varying shades of brown. It was like the bars in old film noirs where they came over and lit your cigarettes for you and everyone drank Old Fashioneds as they plotted crimes. She had to blink to let her eyes adjust. Then looked around and realised she’d have no idea who William Blackwell was. The whole thing was a disaster. She’d seen the odd photo when she Googled him but there were maybe ten men in here dressed in suits and, in the darkness, he could be any of them. She moved to take a seat at the bar instead. She perched herself as elegantly as she could in the short dress and studied the drinks menu in front of her.
A small glass of wine was fifteen pounds. Fifteen pounds. She almost gasped. She couldn’t pay fifteen pounds for a glass of wine. In the Duck and Cherry a small Pinot Grigio was three pounds ninety-five.
‘What can I get you, madam?’ The barman asked.
‘A small glass of white wine, please,’ she said immediately, nervous under his cool scrutiny, trying to seem au fait with it all, as if the price didn’t startle her one bit.
He nodded and took down a glass from the shelf.
Jane glanced around behind her, surfed the tables to see if any of the occupants might be William. It was like she was on a blind date; she should have told him she’d be wearing a rose.
‘Ms Williams?’ a voice said from behind her, making her jump. ‘William Blackwell,’ he said as she turned to face him.
There he was, hand outstretched to shake. Cool, slick, confident. Of course he’d just know exactly who she was. Jane in contrast felt completely off guard, fumbling to put the menu down at the same time as saying, ‘William, Williams,’ with a little laugh as if their matching names was a hilarious coincidence.
His mouth moved into the tiniest smile.
‘Sorry, hi,’ she said, composing herself, pushing her stupid new fringe out of her eyes and standing up off the stool. ‘Jane.’
He took hold of her hand, his grip hard against her fingers. Then sat down on the high stool next to hers and, as the waiter put the glass of white wine down, he said, ‘I’ll have an Old Fashioned,’ and Jane wanted to shut her eyes and add another little funny aside into the black hole that already held the news about the chandelier in the bathroom.
Her mum would have loved this. She would have wanted it all reported back in minute detail. On her good days they’d lie on the top of the boat and her mum would weave tales about every passer-by; every rower, every fisherman, every tourist, every walker. And Jane would egg her on, encourage her, buffeting the daydream, keeping it in the air like a balloon, all the while praying that the moment wouldn’t come when the mood would flip and her mum would roll onto her back, her eyes closed, her face long and say flatly, ‘That’s enough.’
Jane watched as William picked the exact bourbon he wanted in his Old Fashioned; looked at the clean-shaven line of his jaw, the long, straight Roman nose, the clipped black hair, the perfectly starched white shirt, the grey tie loosened a fraction enough to undo the top button, and wondered what story her mum would have spun about him. She didn’t have to wonder too much. Every man in a suit who strode past she would have down as a dashing Prince Charming hiding a stormy past, just as any loafing hippy was a passionate deep thinker with an untameable heart. Jane would watch her mum’s face as she spoke for clues as to which type her dad might have been.
‘So, these pages.’