One Summer Night At the Ritz

by Jenny Oliver

  She stopped right where she was, entranced. She heard people swear at her but, this time, she didn’t care. In front of her was by far the most brilliant building she’d ever seen.

  It was like a castle. Grey brick at least eight stories, a million windows and a million arches, with chimneys like turrets and flags drooping low in the heat. Her heart did an involuntary flutter. She did a silent nod of thanks to Emily for making her ditch the Birkenstocks and for forcing her to sit for an hour with foils on her head.

  Passing the fruit and veg stand and heading under the arch of the hotel’s covered walkway, Jane could feel her pulse race. There was fine jewellery for sale in the window and tourists peering in through the etched-glass windows of The Rivoli Bar, trying to get a peek inside. There were limousines and black taxis pulling up out the front and doormen, exactly like in Enid’s diary, with black top hats and long jackets embroidered with gold.

  ‘Can I help you, madam? Offer directions?’ said the one nearest her as she got to the entrance.

  ‘No I’m here,’ Jane said.

  ‘You’re a guest with us, madam?’

  Jane nodded. ‘Yes, I have my booking.’ She started to rummage around in her handbag.

  He held up his hand to stop her. ‘Madam, come this way. Welcome to The Ritz.’

  She paused, stopped rummaging as she found that the man had picked up her case and was ushering her through the revolving door. ‘Reception is right this way.’

  ‘Thank you very much…’ She paused and looked at his name bag. ‘Trevor.’

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ he replied and she thought he paused, so she said, ‘Jane.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re very welcome, Jane.’

  And she blushed as he went back outside.

  At reception there were two couples checking in in front of her. One were American tourists, the others were just rich – she was dressed all in white with jewels as big as robins’ eggs on her fingers. Her hair was coiffed and bouffant and her heels as high as a ruler.

  Jane caught a glimpse of herself in one of the gold panels behind reception. Saw her own newly flumped-up blonde highlights, the layers of make-up that made her eyes pop out like a bushbaby and the lips that suddenly seemed to exist. She had never been pretty. She had never been terribly thin. Her mother had said she was beautiful but then didn’t everyone’s? She still didn’t think she was terribly pretty now as she looked at her reflection but she certainly looked the best she’d ever seen herself. She caught the bouffant woman’s eye in the mirror and instantly blushed scarlet. Looking at herself wasn’t something she ever did, and she certainly didn’t want to get caught doing so. But when the bouffant woman looked away again, something pulled Jane back. Maybe it was the glinting of the chandelier behind her, the lavish decorations, the man behind the desk checking her reservation, the simple fact that she was standing in the Ritz, something made her look again, and this time she angled her face slightly to the left, did a little eyebrow raise and sucked in her cheeks a bit and thought, I don’t actually look too bad.

  ‘Ms Williams,’ the man from reception’s voice interrupted her posing.

  ‘Oh sorry.’ Jane looked back, blushing again, mortified, keeping her eyes firmly away from the reflection and focused on all the stuff he was telling her.

  Another man came over and picked up her case.

  ‘Oh that’s my bag—’ Jane said, trying to reach forward and take the case back from his gold trolley.

  ‘It’s fine, madam,’ the bellboy replied.

  ‘No really, that’s my bag—’

  ‘And I’ll take it to your room, ma’am. That’s my job.’ The bellboy smiled but hardly paused, moving on in order to pick up the bouffant woman’s bags, who made no quibble about the service.

  Jane swallowed, feeling foolish. No one had ever carried anything of hers before.

  The desk clerk went on as if that conversation hadn’t happened and gave her the details of her room, directions to the bar and the times for breakfast.

  Jane nodded, not trusting herself to say anything else in case she embarrassed herself again. Instead she walked to the elevator, past huge vases of white flowers, Louis XV chairs, mirrored doors and over maroon patterned carpet. As she stepped in the lift she leant against the painted panels on the wall and watched as the doors closed in front of her.

  And then she allowed herself to slump into an exhale, blow her new too-long side-fringe out of her eyes and remind herself that this was it. She was at The Ritz.

  She thought of the passage in the diary, that she’d read over and over, where Enid thought about meeting corporal James Blackwell:

  ‘This is what his note says: If you want to join me for dinner, I’ll be staying at The Ritz.

  The Ritz! I’ve never been to The Ritz. Can you imagine if the only time I went was with a war on? What would I wear? I can’t believe I’m thinking about what I would wear rather than whether I should meet a stranger for dinner.

  Of course I’m going to meet him. If we can’t make beautiful memories at the moment, what can we do?’

  As she walked out the lift and down the corridor towards her room, Jane thought about how carefree and brave the words sounded, and reminded herself that this was why she was here, too. To make beautiful memories. There had been so many shit ones, over the last couple of years especially, that it was time for the good.

  And when she got to her room it took her breath away.

  It must have been the size of her whole boat. With its own sitting room. She was sure she hadn’t booked a room with a sitting room. She looked for the bellboy to tell him that there had been a mistake, but her bag was already there, unzipped on the suitcase stand with no sign of him. She went through the door and into the giant bedroom, huge swathes of yellow curtains hung over the window, matching yellow chairs and a tiny table with a vase of giant peach roses stood in front of it. The bed was bigger than any bed she’d ever seen, the width of the length of her sofa back home. She wanted to throw herself on it in delight but, certain she was in the wrong room, went back into the living room and phoned Reception.

  As she dialled, she saw a bottle of champagne on the table and a note which she opened as the man answered the phone. The card and champagne were from Emily and Annie. Wishing her luck, telling her to enjoy herself and a final PS:

  ‘We thought you can’t go to The Ritz without an upgrade! Enjoy xx’

  The man from Reception asked again if Jane was OK.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes I’m fine, I just thought…’ She looked around the massive room. ‘I just thought there had been a mix-up, that’s all.’

  ‘No mix-up, madam,’ the man said and she wondered if she could hear a slight twinge of humour in his voice.

  Jane put the phone down. Paused for a second to absorb the awesomeness of the suite, and then ran through to the bedroom and threw herself down on the bed.

  She never wanted to leave.

  Outside the window she could look down and see the whole of Piccadilly. The tourists bustling past, the evening light starting to dim the air, the Wolseley next door, over the road the blue flags with De Beers jewels written on them and the red ones of…she got her A to Z out…the Royal Academy. Pigeons flew past at eye level and she looked down at the people on the open-top buses. She thought about blowing out the drink with pompous William Blackwell and just starting her London adventure, but she had to meet with him. However stilted and awkward it might be, she had to put an end to Enid’s mystery. Had to pass over the baton and say: This is in your court now, you do with it what you will. Meet Martha if you want, come and see the island, or just put it in a drawer and forget about it but this is your history as well as ours.

  She glanced back into the room and saw her dress that she’d hung up for the evening and felt a slight shudder of nerves. She just had to get the drink part done and then the rest of the evening was hers.

  She wondered if there was time to have a bath. She’d only had a bath
once before in her life. There wasn’t one on the boat and her year at art college was spent living in a tiny bedsit with a bathroom so small that the shower was over the toilet. But her one-time bath had been when she was seven and her mother, a textile designer, had finished a commission – swathes of the most stunning hand-blocked fabric – late, as always, and they’d gone to the fashion designer’s house on the train to drop it off. Jane didn’t usually go with her but it was her birthday and they were going for ice cream afterwards. Her mother had told her to wait in the fancy living room, but the designer had worried about things getting broken. Her mother had rolled her eyes behind his back which had made Jane laugh and then taken her into the bathroom, filled this massive sunken pink bath and told her to stay there for an hour or so while they finished the work. The designer thought it was all very untoward but Jane thought it was brilliant. A maid came in with fresh towels and a glass of orange juice and Jane lay in the bubbles watching as her toes wrinkled up in the water. When her mum was finished she came in, towelled her dry and they went for ice cream. Jane had lemon sorbet. Her mum had mint choc chip. It was one of the amazing days.

  The bathroom in The Ritz was white marble. The bath had gold taps and Jacuzzi buttons, there were fluffy white Ritz towels and candles and flash bubble bath. When she lay in the warm water, the foam up to her chin, she glanced up and saw there was a chandelier as well.

  For a moment she thought about telling her mum.

  It wasn’t a moment that lasted long, but long enough to remind her that, while it might be a relief that her mother was finally at rest, free of the unrelenting clutches of illness, there was still a giant hole where she had been, where comments like, ‘There’s a bloody chandelier 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.

  Chapter Three

  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.

  Chapter Four

  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 if 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 n
ext 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.’ William reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out the pristinely folded diary pages that she had emailed over. ‘It’s interesting reading.’

  ‘Isn’t it just? I thought you’d want to know—’

  He cut her off. ‘I’m wondering what you want to do about it?’