One Summer Night At the Ritz

by Jenny Oliver

  He didn’t look back at any point but he could feel the whole place watching him.

  There was no one in the garden. Behind the wall were hundreds of cherry trees. The great red fruits were glistening in the sunshine. He put his coffee down on the wall and looked out over the fallen trunk. Through the leaves and the long grass he could just see someone in the distance leaning up against one of the trees, their back to the cafe, a mound of cherries in their hand, seemingly waiting, killing some time probably before the person they were avoiding had gone and they could safely go back.

  Will jumped the wall and, brushing the lichen and rubble off his hands, picked up the coffee and strolled through the orchard in the direction of the woman he was pretty certain was Jane.

  He studied her as he got closer. Her hair was tied up high in a ponytail, strands coming loose all over the place. It looked damp still from the shower or maybe she swam in the river every morning. She was wearing old baggy blue jeans rolled up nearly to the knee and patched in places with bright pink material patterned with gold, on her top half she had on a red shirt, slightly faded from the sun, only two buttons done up down the front and half tucked in, the open cuffs hanging low over her hands, and no shoes.

  Will felt suddenly overdressed in his trousers and brogues.

  ‘Hi,’ he said as he got nearer and she jumped back in surprise.

  ‘Oh my god,’ she put her hand on her chest. ‘You just made me swallow a cherry stone.’

  Will laughed. ‘Sorry.’

  But she didn’t laugh. Instead she moved a pace away from the tree and looked him up and down, then narrowing her eyes said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  He had actually prepared an answer. All weekend he’d found himself unable to concentrate. All through the lunch he’d invited his brother to yesterday, the dinner with friends, the drinks in the bar that he’d left early, he’d felt like there was something nagging at the back of his mind. He was reluctant to say guilt – more unfinished business.

  But now he was here he felt a touch less confident. In his head he was just going to rock up, Jane’s eyes would light up at the sight of him, he’d smooth things over, have a quick look at some of this Enid character’s stuff and get on with his life. But now, as he looked at her, the narrowed eyes, the patched jeans, the hand full of cherries and the bare feet – as he thought about the looks on her friends’ faces, the air of camaraderie in the cafe – he found himself suddenly on the back foot. A feeling he wasn’t entirely comfortable with. He found himself wanting to drop to his knees and apologise, sit with her in the long grass and ask how she’d been and what she’d been doing since The Ritz. Neither of which he would do in a million years, nor which were part of his prepared answer.

  So instead he reached up and pulled a cherry from the tree, not quite meeting her eyes, and said, ‘I just thought I should take a look around. Understand a bit more about Enid and the diaries.’

  ‘Oh right, OK,’ Jane said and padded past him back towards the cafe as if that was no trouble at all. The look of blank politeness on her face as she turned and waited for him to follow made him wonder for a moment if he’d imagined the look on her face when she’d seen him in The Ritz bar. It occurred to him, for perhaps the first time, that actually she may not have cared who he’d been with.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said, a touch impatient. ‘I’ll show you around.’

  He popped a cherry in his mouth as he considered the sudden feeling of disappointment. Biting down and expecting a burst of sugary sweetness, instead he was hit with a mouthful of the bitterest, sharpest fruit he’d ever tasted. ‘Jesus,’ he said coughing, his eyes almost watering. ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

  Jane looked at him for a second, one eyebrow raised, then just shrugged a shoulder and turned to walk back towards the crumbling wall.

  Will watched her go, a smile twitching on his lips as he chewed on the sour cherry. Yes! He thought, more pleased than he’d like to admit. She had cared.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jane would have killed not to have had to walk back through the cafe but all her stuff was still at the table. She got there before Will and picked up her keys and phone. ‘Right, so I’m going now,’ she said.

  ‘Hang on, hang on!’ Emily reached up and grabbed her arm. ‘You can’t just leave. Where’s Will? Did he say anything about the other night?’

  Will walked through just as Emily said her last sentence and she sat down with a sheepish little look of apology.

  Jane just rolled her eyes. ‘Right, I’m going. I’ll see you later.’

  She turned to see Will standing behind her like the cat that’d got the cream. ‘I found her,’ he said to the table as a whole.

  Matt nodded.

  Jane threw them all a look.

  Emily wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘There’s a barbecue later,’ Jack said to Will as they started to leave. ‘If you’re still around.’

  ‘I don’t think he will be,’ Jane replied, holding the door open and ushering Will out as he had paused to contemplate the invite.

  The sun seemed hotter out the front than the back, no cherry trees to shade the ground.

  Will slipped on his shades and said, ‘God it’s boiling. Maybe we’ll have to go for another swim?’

  Jane did a tiny polite huff of a laugh and kept walking ahead of him. ‘I’ll take you to Enid’s boat. You can have a look around. I haven’t seen Martha today and, to be honest, I think I should give her some warning that you’re coming before you see her.’

  Will nodded, put his hands in his pockets and strolled along a pace or two behind her. She could feel his eyes on her back but ignored him. He unnerved her. She didn’t want to want him here. She was annoyed that he’d come because she wanted to not like him. To tell him that he wasn’t her kind of person. That she didn’t like the way he lived his life. But to her frustration, this huge part of her had almost burst open when she’d seen him walking towards her at the orchard. It had taken every ounce of willpower that she had to keep her face set, to not walk forward, punch him on the chest and ask him why he’d ruined everything. The fear that he’d have cocked his head and looked at her as if she was crazy to think there was anything there in the first place had also kept her firmly rooted to the spot.

  As she approached Enid’s boat, Jane stopped and pointed to the dark-green barge.

  ‘This is her boat?’ Will asked and she nodded. ‘So does that make that your boat?’ he said, pointing to the white one with the broken black lattice balconies moored next door.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can we look at that, too?’ Will asked.

  ‘No.’ Jane shook her head and walked ahead down the gangplank to unlock the door of Enid’s houseboat.

  She hadn’t been in for a while and the sight of it inside still made her stomach lurch. Most of the possessions had been packed away, given to charity or taken to Martha’s house and they’d cleaned it and thrown out all the food and everything, but it still smelt the same. Of cigarettes and firewood, river water and moth balls, furniture polish and minestrone soup. To Jane it smelt of safety and warmth undercut with the slight feeling of panic. The worry of what she would do if Enid ever left. How she would take care of herself and her mum on her own when she’d just been a kid. How she could avoid the letters from school that Enid dealt with. She’d learnt everything there was to know about how their boat worked for the express purpose of being able to escape, to disappear if necessary. Luckily for Jane, Enid never had left. Never had acted on the desire to up sticks and go that her diaries made so clear. She shut her eyes for a second and tried to take a surreptitious calming deep breath as she stood to the side so Will could pass.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she almost snapped.

  He walked the length of the boat, down to the tiny kitchen and then back up to the bedroom stopping every now and then to pick up a pict
ure in a frame or a book on a shelf. ‘I’ll tell you what – it would have been a lot nicer staying here as a kid than at the Blackwell house, that’s for sure.’ He bent down to look out the window at the river and then straightened up again. ‘Is this where she lived her whole life?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll live your whole life here?’ he said, leaning against the window ledge.

  ‘What else do you want to see?’ Jane asked, ignoring his question.

  ‘Your boat.’

  ‘You’re not seeing my boat.’

  ‘How about the studio?’

  ‘No.’ Jane shook her head.

  ‘Oh come on, please?’

  She bit the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t been in the studio for years. Somehow though it seemed preferable to letting him inside her ramshackle home. Less personal. The studio was a workspace. She avoided it not because of the memories but more because she had no idea what to do with it. The creative spark to create anything seemed long buried.

  Her hesitation was really that she didn’t want his presence added to the memories. With him on the island it was like he was invading her precious space. She didn’t want to think about him now every time she looked over at Enid’s boat or sat in the cherry orchard. She wanted him safely boxed up in her London Ritz memory. Boxed up and forgotten about.

  ‘Look, I’ll just show you round the island. OK? We’ll go for a walk,’ she said, ushering him out of the houseboat and locking the door after him.

  ‘Whatever you think’s best,’ he said and they walked along the road in silence, Will pausing every now and then to reach up and grab a cherry from the trees at the side of the path.

  ‘They’re strangely addictive, aren’t they?’ he said, screwing up his eyes at the bitter taste of the third he’d tried.

  Jane shrugged.

  ‘Look—’ Will turned so he was walking backwards in front of her. ‘Please stop giving me the silent treatment. I’m sorry about what happened at The Ritz.’

  Jane didn’t say anything.

  ‘It was a mistake. I was stupid. I shouldn’t have done it – it was crude and unthinking, and I think I was probably just pissed off that you’d kicked me out and that my brother had turned up. OK?’

  ‘No.’ Jane stopped on the path. They were in front of Annie’s mum’s house and she was out pruning her rose bushes.

  Will had stopped too, waiting to hear what Jane had to say.

  Annie’s mum had looked up at the sound of Jane’s quite vehement ‘no’.

  ‘Oh god,’ Jane sighed, ‘Come over here.’ She practically dragged him up the path to the park, away from the manicured grass and into a denser section of woodland.

  ‘You’re not going to kill me, are you?’ he smirked.

  She gave him a look and he silently apologised.

  ‘You made me feel shit,’ she said. ‘And like a fool. I don’t know what happened between us. Nothing, I know it was nothing, but I didn’t expect you to within five minutes be stroking some other girl’s leg. I mean? Really?’ she asked, hands outstretched.

  ‘I know,’ Will nodded. ‘I know it was bad form.’

  ‘Bad form? This is not some cricket match.’

  He rubbed his hand across his forehead. ‘If it makes it any better, nothing happened. Nothing. I left, basically, straight away. Straight after I saw you.’

  ‘I’m sure she was thrilled with that.’ Jane sat down on the trunk of a huge felled chestnut tree and started picking at the bark.

  Will came over and sat down next to her. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Will, it’s fine. Really. It’s not like anything happened between us anyway. Like…’ She glanced up at him. ‘Nothing was ever going to happen between us. As your brother said, we’re not each other’s type. I have no idea what my type is actually, but I am so not yours.’

  ‘But something did happen.’ Will pushed his hand back through his shorn hair. ‘Or it didn’t. I don’t know. I just don’t want you thinking what you think of me. Because it’s not true.’

  She raised a brow.

  ‘OK it is true. But on that occasion it wasn’t true. Or it was kind of true but then it stopped being true. Jesus Christ, what am I saying?’ Will laughed. ‘Look I just don’t want you to think that of me. Please? Please don’t think of me like that.’

  She looked at his eyes, saw possibly for the first time, really stripped-back honest, unguarded hope.

  ‘OK,’ she said softly. ‘OK. I don’t think that.’

  His eyes narrowed as if he was checking to make sure. She didn’t know what she thought, but she was glad he’d said what he’d said. She looked down at the bark she’d been picking at and she saw his hand inch forward so the tip of his finger just nudged the tip of hers.

  ‘Come on,’ she said quickly, confused, her brain not quite wanting to trust him, ignoring the teenage bit of her heart that did. She stood up and shoved her hands in her pockets. ‘I’ll show you the studio.’

  The sun was right above them and blazed down as they crossed the island. There were beads of sweat on Will’s forehead as they neared the entrance to the boatyard and studios.

  ‘You need some better summer clothes,’ she said, pointing towards his brogues and trousers.

  ‘I know,’ he wiped the sweat away. ‘I don’t get outside enough at the moment.’

  ‘That’s depressing.’

  ‘Isn’t it just?’ Will said and then paused as they rounded the corner.

  She tried to look at the view as if for the first time to see what he saw. Ahead of them was a row of little wooden studios. Outdoor lights were strung from the boatyard across to the pointed roofs of each different hut. All painted different colours, each had its own name and character. Some were piled high with junk, others had beautiful stained-glass windows, one was barely visible for plants and creepers all around it, another had a pirate ship stuck to the roof like a fascinator. A cat was stretched out in the sunshine in the middle of the path, uncaring as jackdaws and sparrows pecked about around it. The wooden slated wall of the boatyard was a dirty white with big windows and a vine trailing up one side, the tendrils curling round the strings of coloured lights. The whole place had the feel of being outside of time. Its own world and its own rules. A grotto that you stepped into and could live in for ever.

  ‘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 want
ed 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.’