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 chosenOne Hundred Years of Solitude,The Bell Jar,Robinson Crusoe, Defoe’sDiary of a Plague Yearand 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 keepFrenchman’s Creekthough, thank you very much. What’s that one in your coat pocket?’
‘Oh, that’s my Shakespeare’sSonnets. 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 ofLove’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 meanwoohim?’
‘I know perfectly well what I mean, my dear.Wowthe 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 rewardaftersuccesses, 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 domore, and it was making fireworks spark in her chest.
‘When your young man returns to you, have him find you really smiling, really accomplished.Thatis 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’tshebeen 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.’
