Jenny Oliver - One Summer Night At The Ritz

‘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.