One Winter's Night (Kelsey Anderson)

by Kiley Dunbar

  For a millisecond she thought Adrian might swing a fist at the old man who was apologising profusely in a jolly manner, mopping at the spilled drink with the barman’s towel and making even more beer run down onto Adrian’s trousers.

  ‘My good man, I must apologise,’ he was booming, his cheeks rosy like Santa Claus. ‘Do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend.’ He dabbed at Adrian’s legs with the beer-sodden cloth.

  Mirren guessed the old buffer was reciting lines from some play or other and she wanted to smile but Adrian was grimacing and making a grab at the cloth, tossing it onto the bar with a damp slap. Surely an overreaction, even if his clothes were expensive designer stuff, as Mirren suspected. He was still overdoing it.

  ‘It’s not me you need to apologise to,’ Adrian hissed.

  The old man raised his hands innocently, placed his hat upon his head with a flourish and made a quick bow. ‘Apologies, apologies, dear friends all.’ And with that, he left, like an epilogue before the curtain falls.

  Adrian turned back to his drink, cradling it, his eyes still a little wild.

  ‘No harm done. It was just a bit of beer,’ Mirren offered mildly, craning to peer at his face. Why’s he so angry? The poor old guy said sorry, didn’t he?

  Adrian didn’t reply. She watched him breathe deeply once or twice, obviously trying to control his frustration.

  ‘I’d better get going,’ she added, and Adrian looked up. She could read the regret on his face.

  ‘Don’t go, enjoy your drink, I’m sorry, I…’

  ‘I’ll take that number, if you don’t mind,’ she said sharply.

  His eyes rounded until he noticed she was pointing past his ear to the job vacancy poster on the wall with the fringed scissor snips separating phone numbers. Realising what was happening, he tore free one of the strips and gave it to her, sullen now.

  She looked at the paper in her hands. She wasn’t thinking about Adrian, but was enjoying the warmth of a curious little glow in her chest. She’d made up her mind. She’d taken a first step towards accepting her fate. A bar job could be OK as a stop gap, if they’d have her.

  She wouldn’t mention it now to the barman but would ring in the morning when she’d composed herself and noted down a few things to say. She had tried to find writing work, hadn’t she? Really tried. Her stars weren’t aligned in that regard, yet. These thoughts brought a gentle kind of comfort and her lips curled into an unconscious smile.

  ‘It was nice to meet you anyway, Mirren,’ Adrian said, snapping her out of her thoughts.

  He’d remembered her name, and an unfamiliar Scottish name at that, she registered with surprise. Looking at him, he seemed to have shrunk a little more. He’d overreacted and was suddenly sorry, no doubt, but he’d confirmed that Mirren’s instincts had been right all along. The last thing she needed was closer acquaintance with a new guy, and least of all a guy with an obviously short fuse, even as a drinking buddy, even for an hour. Even if he was amusing, and sharp-witted, and sexy too, and her name had sounded so soft in his English accent.

  In the silence between them she heard the words that had been insinuating themselves into her thoughts increasingly often lately. It was Mr Angus’s voice telling her again how her ‘overactive love life’ and lack of professionalism impinged on her decision-making abilities, made her confused and over sensitive. Her ex-boss’s braying judgement mixed with all her insecurities and every unkind thing anyone had ever said to her and she felt again the little pang of shame and embarrassment that seemed to be growing rather than diminishing the longer she spent out of the newsroom.

  She packed away any feelings of attraction to Adrian. He wasn’t just a handsome man, he was a reporter too, and one with a temper at that, and she’d learned her lesson on all those counts. This had been a timely warning and she took it for what it was; a reminder of her resolve.

  As she walked out into the chilly darkness of All Hallow’s Eve, Adrian Armadale briefly watched after her, shaking beer from his sodden notebook, his eyes full of annoyance and self-recrimination.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘To business that we love we rise betimes, and go to it with delight’

  (Antony and Cleopatra)

  The November afternoon rain was hitting the barge windows in a loud, sleety patter. Kelsey curled her feet beneath her, as she perched on the little padded bench by the hatch where not so many weeks ago she and her colleagues had sold tickets for their guided tours. Bringing her coffee cup to her lips, she mused. It was warm in here and with the bulbs blazing in their brass sconces the place glowed orange and cosy, and the rocking really wasn’t so bad once you got used to it, and that wooden creaking sound like a galleon under stress in a storm coming from somewhere in the stern had proven to be the perfectly innocent sound of the tiller bar.

  She’d enquired about the creak at the neighbouring moorings – one a holiday-maker travelling with their kids from Napton to Stratford and back again over the course of a leisurely fortnight; the other a retired couple who moored by the bank permanently and supplemented their pensions by selling bags of food for the birds on the river.

  This couple, the surprisingly named Mr and Mrs Flowers, had helped her fix the tiller bar to stop it moving and the sound stopped too, and so she’d relaxed and spent her evenings working busily on board, sometimes with Mirren, but less often now that Mirren was being trained in the art of pint-pulling at the Yorick.

  Kelsey had cleaned the boat’s little windows inside and out, and recycled the last boxes of Norma’s leaflets and custom printed tickets.

  She hadn’t disturbed the mallards who had set up home on the roof of the boat, reasoning that they’d been there first and had made a comfy home for themselves in what by the looks of things was once upon a time a rooftop flowerbed in a wide wooden tray but was now a mess of earth, feathers, weeds and straw.

  Then the barge’s bed had needed new covers and she’d splashed out on a pretty Scandi print floral set in blue and yellow. Not being much of a seamstress, she hadn’t attempted to find material to match up little curtains, so she took the old red ones to the launderette then rehung them, comic in their dimensions, like those in a Wendy house.

  Then she’d sprung it on Mirren. She could move in here, to the lodgings at the back of the boat, if she wanted, for as long as she needed, just to give them both some breathing space. Instead of upset or awkwardness, the friends had hugged it out like they always did and Mirren had refused to cry but she’d definitely been misty-eyed as Kelsey gave her the freshly cut key to her new waterside home.

  That was five days ago on the fifth of November and the friends had snapped the pull tabs on their cans of gin and tonic sitting on the barge roof toasting to their good fortune as they watched the firework display taking place over at the rugby club for free – another perk of having a riverside bolthole.

  Tonight though, Kelsey was alone. She had walked through the rain to the barge after a painfully quiet day at the studio where, now the pumpkin patch shoots were long since over, she’d done little more than snap full-length portraits of a woman applying for a job as cabin crew. Kelsey had tried not to tut at the very idea of the woman’s figure being important in the application process and put it out of her mind by reminding herself she was making another few pounds to help pay the bills – and the woman didn’t seem to mind one bit about having to supply the photo anyway. After that, Kelsey had emailed all the company bosses who had their staff booked in for Christmas party nights at the Osprey, letting them know she’d be there with her costumes and camera. It hadn’t been her busiest day, by any means.

  Now, she cast her eyes around the empty room at the front of the barge. A few large cardboard boxes lay at her feet. Apart from the sconces and the window hatch, the walls were bare. There were steps beneath the slanted access hatch, and two low, cushioned benches along the sides. It was a decent-sized room and Kelsey could stand up straight in it, just about. It was easily big enough for a dining table
and a big telly if she’d wanted to extend the living quarters – and she might have done if Jonathan hadn’t surprised her with his revelations about his seasickness. Instead, she had put her mind to how to use this space to enhance her photography business. Fortunately, yesterday the answer had come to her, with the help of Blythe Goode.

  Kelsey had only called in to take her some library books. Blythe had asked for a biography of Vivien Leigh and something ‘diverting’. She’d scoured the fiction shelves at the town’s lovely little library and chosen One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Bell Jar, Robinson Crusoe, Defoe’s Diary of a Plague Year and a dog-eared Daphne du Maurier with a gaudy cover featuring a long-haired pirate with his chest bared. Blythe had accepted the biography but raised a bare brow at the others, except the du Maurier.

  ‘Funny, some people’s idea of diverting. I’ll keep Frenchman’s Creek though, thank you very much. What’s that one in your coat pocket?’

  ‘Oh, that’s my Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I carry them most places, read them when I’m feeling down.’

  Blythe was already reaching for it with a knowing look. ‘Your beloved’s an actor, isn’t he? Away on tour?’

  ‘He is. He’s playing Hamlet in Ontario right now. He’ll be back in town in the spring for a run of Love’s Labour’s Lost.’

  Blythe kept her eyes on the little book as she turned the well-thumbed pages. ‘You’re missing him.’ It wasn’t a question and she wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘My advice to you, my dear, would be to wow him.’

  ‘Do you mean woo him?’

  ‘I know perfectly well what I mean, my dear. Wow the man. There’s a lot of drivel spoken about men wanting a woman to be domesticated and docile, but they tire of that so easily, you see, and they’re soon hitching a lift on the next passing pair of frilly knickers. You need to outshine the man wherever you can, that’s my advice. Surprise him constantly with your ingenuity, and don’t be doing it for him either, do it for yourself. Be capable, not a wet blanket, dear. Oh, now don’t look at me like that. I know you’ve got your business and your talents, and that’s a wonderful starting point, but have you really, truly pushed yourself?’

  Kelsey didn’t know whether to feel offended or motivated. She settled for chastened and looked back blankly at the actress.

  ‘You’ve more strings to your bow than you know of. How will you learn what you’re capable of until you’ve struck each one? Read your sonnets as your reward after successes, eh? Don’t go seeking solace in them and idling away the hours, hmm?’ She was peering up at Kelsey’s wide eyes and there was a challenge in the puckered set of her lips.

  Anyone else might have told Blythe to mind her own business, to pack it in, but Blythe had Kelsey pinned with arrow-like precision, and hadn’t the actress lived a thousand lives in her time? She ought to know a thing or two about women’s ways and means.

  ‘Make life happen? That’s what you’re telling me?’ Kelsey said, mulling over the words.

  ‘Get out there and find your spotlight, Kelsey. Don’t wait in the wings for cues you might miss.’

  All of this was like lighting a fire beneath her. Nothing spurred Kelsey on more than the weight of expectation, except perhaps the goading feeling of someone underestimating her, like Fran, her ex, had. Mari Anderson had never pushed her daughter, trusting she would eventually find her own path, and after her dad died, Kelsey spent years helping care for her baby brother and her mum when Mari was drowning in grief. It had meant that Kelsey had watched years of her youth and her potential slipping by and she’d fallen behind her peers. She was only just getting the hang of adulting at the age of twenty-nine. Certainly, she’d been lucky with all the coincidences and compulsions that had sent her down south and into Norma Arden’s employ, but here was Blythe telling her to grab life and get on with it, to do more, and it was making fireworks spark in her chest.

  ‘When your young man returns to you, have him find you really smiling, really accomplished. That is how you wow them. Have him wide-eyed in wonder.’

  Kelsey didn’t have any words ready in response because her mind was too occupied. Blythe was right. She was wasting time. She had two business premises and wasn’t properly using either of them, and she only had three and a half months left of her peppercorn lease on the studio before she had to pay Norma the rent in full – no more mates’ rates. And, now she came to think about it, hadn’t she been in awe of Jonathan? He was the amazing one, the star. She could shine too. ‘All right, then. I will,’ she muttered, clutching the rejected library books to her chest.

  ‘Come back and read your sonnets to me, won’t you? When you’ve a great success to celebrate?’ Blythe handed her treasured poems back. ‘And send this Mirren you mentioned down here for a gin.’

  ‘Course I will.’ Her eyes were unfocused as she thought.

  ‘And take those frames to the charity shop, if you don’t mind. I’d ask my youngest grandson, but he’s so busy at the moment. He does what he can. He’s such a good boy, and I don’t like to bother him.’

  Against the wall leaned a bundle of picture frames, so many that Kelsey knew she’d struggle to carry them along with the books.

  Kelsey didn’t want to enquire about this invisible grandson who didn’t seem to do much for her at all. He must be the ‘young man’ she had mentioned on previous visits, surely? The one that brought the roses? Blythe seemed so fond of the idea that she had him as a helper and friend but Kelsey had never laid eyes on him. ‘Been having a clear out?’ she asked instead.

  ‘I have, as it happens. Talking with you about the old days and seeing the article in the paper got me thinking about how stagnant I’ve been lately. Some memories you can afford to let go of, and it was getting a little cluttered in here.’

  As Kelsey had struggled out the door, her arms full, Blythe had called out in a commanding voice, ‘Wow us all, Kelsey dear!’

  The idea had come to her that evening as she was washing the dust from Blythe’s empty frames at the little sink in her bedsit before taking them to the charity shop. Show everyone what you can do, make use of the spaces you have, push yourself. Wow the crowds.

  The crowds?

  The glass in one of the frames glinted as she held it to the light to check for fingerprints and she caught her reflection in it, gilt-edged like a portrait. Her eyes were wild and shining.

  ‘An exhibition… on the barge! I’ll create my own photography exhibition!’

  * * *

  The rain was beating even harder at the barge windows and Kelsey was no longer sitting nursing her coffee cup. She was setting out rows of frames in every size on dust sheets, all ready to paint with the studio’s leftover white emulsion. Some were Blythe’s, some were finds of her own; she’d raided every charity shop in town.

  She had already set the date for the grand opening: Valentine’s Day, when Jonathan would be briefly back in town to see it. That would give her a little over three months to select and print all the photos she needed, frame and hang them, and advertise the launch of the Kelsey Anderson Photography Barge Gallery and retrospective exhibition of her best work. Her paintbrush worked as the November rain fell and she was smiling all the while.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘My pride fell with my fortunes’

  (As you Like It)

  The lagers were easier than the cask ales, Mirren was learning.

  ‘The glass must be spotlessly clean,’ Kenneth the landlord of the Yorick had insisted multiple times. They’d worked on getting the exact angle on the tilt of the glass right, combined with the right speed on the pour and knowing when to leave off to let the head settle mid-way.

  Mirren had likened pouring the perfect pint to finding the biting point between the clutch and the accelerator but Kenneth wasn’t the type to appreciate analogies and had looked blankly at her. Any badly pulled pints refused by customers would be deducted from her wages, he’d told her, giving her an hour to perfect her technique.

  Fortunately, the w
hite-bearded old barfly was there to polish off any failed attempts and he had a long line of froth-filled glasses in front of him as he supped away happily.

  ‘Practice makes perfect,’ he said, eyes aglow and cheeks pink, as Mirren slid yet another disaster towards him. ‘Must be my lucky day. The lass who worked here before you got the knack instantly, didn’t get so much as a snifter on her first shift.’ His voice was jolly even though it was boomingly loud and Mirren wished he wasn’t so meticulous about broadcasting each failure to the entire bar which was surprisingly busy for a wintry Wednesday afternoon.

  She smiled back when he threw her a compassionate wink and she quickly looked back at her grip on the glass and the beer tap, exhaling through pursed lips, her brow furrowed with concentration as though she were about to pilot an Apollo rocket instead of pulling a dribbling pint of Bottom’s Bobbin.

  ‘After that you can try the Fair Youth,’ Kenneth was instructing. ‘Needs a slower pull than the Dark Lady.’

  So it had come to this. Her degree at journalism school and all those years of training, covering charity bazaars and stories about the village fair’s prize-winning fruit pies, and her long apprenticeship under Jamesey on the court stories at the Broadsheet, all that grafting and climbing. Just when she’d been on the cusp of a breakthrough it had all fallen apart. She refused to believe all her hard work had been for nothing.

  She’d picked up resilience beyond measure for a start, and she’d held on to some of her professional pride even if she couldn’t practise her literary art at the moment. Her command of words, her investigative talents, her coolness under pressure in a bustling environment, all of these she could store up for when her big break came, and that wouldn’t be long, surely? She was on the edge of the next stage in her journalism career, she could almost feel it.