Vivian wanted the stain to be less visible.
June wanted the leak repaired.
Frankie stood beneath it, looking up. A brown patch spread across the Ballroom ceiling beside one of the decorative leaves. It wasn't large, but the shape made it look as though the leaf had made a mistake.
“When does it happen?”
“Rain,” June said.
Vivian sighed.
“Yes, June. We did establish that.”
“Then we established it stopped when the rain stopped, and Mrs Holt called it solved.”
“It is being attended to.”
“By the weather.”
Nina laughed behind Frankie.
Monday morning had brought a pale, clear light which did the room no favours. The paint above the dado was rubbed where chairs had been pushed against it. One of the long curtains ended an inch higher than the other, as though somebody had laundered it in hope. At night she'd liked all of this more.
She could work with it.
She could work with most things if nobody asked her to call them finished.
“How many people?”
Vivian looked at her.
“For the first evening,” Frankie said.
“Small.”
“That can mean eight or thirty.”
“Eight, perhaps. Twelve.”
“Nobody feels selected if they're one of thirty,” Frankie said.
Nina had put a bag beside the piano. She opened it and took out a notebook, a roll of tape and a small lamp.
“Are we discussing the people or the picture?”
“Both.”
“Start with where they look.”
She switched on the lamp and moved it towards the little platform at the far end of the room.
It was a low dais, wide enough for the Table Vivian had in mind, though not for all the chairs she appeared to want round it. There was a short step at either side. Frankie went up one, crossed to the other and looked back.
From there the Ballroom seemed to be waiting for her to say something.
She liked it.
Nina moved the lamp.
Now Frankie could see the wide doors into the Morning Room at the side of the Ballroom. One stood fully open; the other had a doorstop beneath it which somebody had knitted a cover for.
Through them was a man at a table, eating toast with complete indifference to the possibility that history might be revived nearby.
“Who's that?”
“Mr Brant,” June said. “He's staying while his flat's being repaired.”
“How long?”
“Depends who's doing the repairing.”
Vivian looked towards him.
“Arthur is very comfortable.”
“Arthur's room doesn't leak,” June said.
The man raised his cup towards them.
Vivian waved.
Frankie went down from the dais and into the Morning Room.
It was smaller, warmer, with windows facing a strip of garden before the ground fell towards the sea. Not the view people pictured when they booked, but enough to make breakfast seem like a decision to remain. Three tables stood close to the windows. Others had been pushed towards the wall after service.
A cupboard held cups, napkins and things Frankie couldn't see without opening it. There was a door to the staff corridor behind the room, ordinary and worn round the handle. June used it, emerging a moment later through the corridor door at the back of the Ballroom.
“Food can come either way,” she said. “People don't get to stand in that doorway.”
“Even selected people?” Frankie asked.
“Especially. They wave glasses.”
Arthur Brant put his toast down.
“Are you changing everything?”
“A little,” Frankie said.
“That's what they say before they put the breakfast somewhere you have to hunt for it.”
“We're discussing evenings.”
“I eat then too.”
Vivian came into the room.
“We aren't taking your dinner away, Arthur.”
“You took the table away last week.”
“Temporarily.”
“For photographs.”
“An exhibition.”
He glanced towards Frankie.
“I ate off a small plate on a large photograph of a man who'd never have let me in.”
Nina laughed.
Vivian drew herself up, then seemed to decide it wasn't a morning to win every exchange.
“Your table will remain.”
Arthur resumed his toast.
Frankie looked at the chair opposite him. The stuffing had settled a little beneath the green fabric. A person who sat there would be lower than they expected.
It wouldn't do for a founding patron.
It would do very well for someone tired.
Back in the Ballroom, a young man was standing beside Nina with a coil of cable over one shoulder.
“Sol,” she said. “This is Frankie.”
He shifted the coil and offered a hand.
“Hello.”
Frankie shook it.
“You worked together before.”
“Regrettably,” Sol said.
Nina took the coil from him.
“He means successfully.”
“Do I?”
“Enough times to keep arriving.”
He inspected the lamp.
“What are you doing with that?”
“Showing her.”
“Then don't point it at the ceiling. The ceiling's been honest enough.”
He moved it, dimmed it and stepped back.
The room changed.
Not entirely. The stain still existed. The short curtain still offended symmetry. But the light had stopped asking Frankie to look at them. It caught the edge of the dais, the dark wood, the pale surface of a table which two members of staff were bringing in.
One end tilted.
June went over immediately.
“Put it down.”
“We've nearly—”
“Put it down.”
They did.
The nearer man shook out his hand.
Frankie looked at the table. Heavy, awkward, two legs repaired in a way she couldn't assess. The men had been carrying it as though being nearly finished made it lighter.
“There's another person available,” June said.
“I can—” Frankie began.
“In the kitchen.”
She called through the corridor. Somebody answered that he was washing pans.
“Finish that one.”
Vivian ran her fingers over the table's edge.
“This was here in the photographs.”
“Then it's had a rest,” June said. “It can wait three more minutes.”
Nina went to the dais, put her foot beside the step and looked towards Sol.
“Not up here yet.”
He studied the angle.
“Morning Room doors open?”
“For now.”
Vivian said, “I don't want those diners as part of the picture.”
“Then don't look at them,” Nina said.
“They will.”
Frankie went to the table and stood where a guest would stand before being seated.
“If we close the doors, the room gets smaller.”
“More intimate,” Vivian said.
“More likely to sound like somewhere people have been sent.”
“Chosen.”
“Chosen people enjoy knowing there's a world which hasn't been chosen.”
Nina looked at her.
“That's a horrible sentence.”
“I'm trying it out.”
“Try it somewhere I can't hear.”
Frankie smiled.
Sol moved a lamp towards the door, not blocking it, catching the warm colour of the Morning Room wall. Arthur was visible beyond, reading his paper now, the toast finished.
The two rooms began to belong to the same evening.
Frankie could see how to use that.
“A little spill of ordinary life,” she said. “And the Table's still—”
Nina raised a hand.
“Don't sell it back to me yet.”
“I wasn't.”
“You were about to.”
The third member of staff arrived, drying his hands on a cloth. June arranged them at the table, and this time it went onto the dais without anyone having to look triumphant. Frankie stepped aside before she could mistake being nearby for helping.
They put the chairs round it.
Too many.
Duncan arrived from the lobby carrying a paper bag.
“You missed the table,” Nina said.
“I can miss more furniture if you need me to.”
“What's in that?”
“Something to eat.”
“Something selected?”
“Very. By a woman who wanted me out of her shop so she could shut for lunch.”
He took out sausage rolls and put them on the edge of the piano. Sol reached for one, then stopped.
“Crumbs.”
Nina laid a sheet of paper beneath them.
“Now civilisation can continue.”
Vivian didn't want one until everybody else had taken one. Then she chose the smallest, held it as though she'd merely agreed to inspect it and ate all of it.
Frankie leaned against the wall with hers.
“How was work?”
Duncan looked at her.
“People still want to see.”
“Good market.”
“Steady.”
“I'll come tomorrow.”
“For what?”
“A conversation.”
He looked towards the dais.
“There's room for one here.”
“Not the same one.”
He considered her, then said when the shop closed.
Nina and Sol were discussing the light. Fast, familiar language which Frankie understood chiefly through the way the room kept changing while they spoke. Nina went to Vivian, asked her to stand by the table and turned her slightly.
Vivian resisted the turn.
“I'm not a model.”
“Then this'll be a very short career.”
Sol made an adjustment.
The light reached Vivian's face without making her look younger. It made her look worth looking at. The jacket, the white hair, the small bird at her throat. All her certainty had found somewhere to go.
Frankie stared.
There she was: a woman who could tell Gideon Rusk that supper had chosen him, and expect him to be grateful.
Vivian saw Frankie's expression.
“Well?”
“Lovely.”
“Don't sound surprised.”
Nina moved the lamp herself, a fraction. The shadow beneath Vivian's chin softened.
Frankie said, “I knew we'd be able to make you—”
Nina looked at her.
“Make me what?” Vivian asked.
Frankie stopped.
She had been about to take credit for the light. For Nina's hands, Sol's adjustment, Vivian's own face.
“Look as you ought to,” she said.
Vivian liked that.
Nina didn't.
When Vivian went to speak to June, Nina came nearer.
“You can say thank you.”
“I did like it.”
“That wasn't what I said.”
Frankie looked towards Sol, who was eating the second half of his sausage roll.
“Thank you,” she said.
“To him too.”
She turned.
“Thank you, Sol.”
He looked up.
“For which bit?”
“The beautiful bit.”
“Oh. That's hers.”
Nina grinned.
Frankie laughed, caught between admiration and the irritation of having been directed so neatly.
June came back with a notepad.
“The men who moved that are finished for the day at three. If you want it moved again, tell me before three.”
Vivian looked at the chairs.
“One fewer each side.”
“Now,” June said.
They took two away.
The table improved at once.
Frankie sat in one of the remaining places. The dais lifted her just enough to see the room differently. There was space for people to arrive, enough warmth beyond the open doors to make the Ballroom seem inhabited, a good face at the table and a lamp which knew where attention should go.
Duncan sat opposite.
“Comfortable?”
“Yes.”
“That's something.”
She wanted to give him a line which would make him smile. Instead she looked towards the Morning Room, where Arthur had got up to ask June something about supper.
The room didn't stop for him. June did.
Frankie watched that distinction.
Then Vivian came to the table, and Frankie stood to give her the better place.