On Wednesday morning Vivian bought curtains.
Frankie discovered this when two men appeared in the Ballroom carrying a roll of fabric between them, while Nina was attempting to explain to Cal why he could not stand on the dais to tell a story about a cupboard.
“Where are those going?”
The first man looked at the second.
“Here.”
“Where here?”
“Mrs Holt knows.”
That was true of almost everything at Calder House. Mrs Holt was still at breakfast. June had sent a waiter to fetch her.
June appeared behind the men with a tray of cups.
“They need the floor clear.”
“We need the floor,” Nina said.
“I realise.”
Cal stepped down from the dais.
“I could go.”
“You're booked,” Nina said.
“The curtains aren't.”
Frankie put her bag on a chair and took the tray from June, who let her.
“How long?”
“Ask them.”
The men had begun unrolling the fabric. It was a deep green which looked expensive on the floor and alarmingly like an enormous wound dressing in the light.
Frankie looked at Nina.
“Could we use the other end?”
Nina looked at the fabric running almost the length of the floor.
Vivian came through the wide doors from the Morning Room.
“Oh, good.”
“No,” Nina said.
Vivian stopped.
“The colour?”
“The timing.”
“It will be done before lunch.”
“What lunch?”
“Lunch.”
Behind Vivian, Arthur Brant was attempting to pass with a newspaper beneath his arm.
The fabric blocked the most direct route. He stopped, examined it and said, “I hope that's not the new carpet.”
“It isn't,” Vivian said.
“A relief.”
He went round the far end of the roll. One of the men caught it with his foot before Arthur's walking stick could fold it into a different shape.
Nina pressed her fingers against her forehead.
Frankie placed the tray on a side table and beckoned Cal towards the bar.
Nina caught him before he moved. “We have Estelle coming in fifteen minutes. I can't rehearse half a conversation while someone fits curtains over the other half.”
The men stood with fabric over their shoes, waiting to learn whether they'd entered the wrong trade.
Vivian drew herself up. “It's my room.”
Cal looked down at himself. “I've had worse parts.”
Nobody quite laughed.
Frankie went to Vivian.
“Could we speak?”
“We are speaking.”
“In the office.”
Vivian looked at the fabric.
“Please don't cut anything until I come back.”
The older of the men gave her a patient nod which must have cost him years to acquire.
In the office Vivian opened a drawer, shut it, then opened another. Frankie waited while she produced an invoice.
“The old ones were falling apart.”
“They weren't needed for Sunday.”
“They were needed for the hotel.”
“How much?”
Vivian put the paper down.
It was more than Frankie had expected.
Not a ruinous amount against ninety thousand. An entirely reasonable amount against the hotel's need to look like something people might choose. But there were chairs to hire, actors to pay, extra hands in the kitchen, food, lighting, all the unglamorous things beneath a convincing evening.
“The sixty stays.”
“I haven't touched the sixty.”
“This comes out of the thirty?”
“It comes out of the production. They are curtains in the room where you're producing something.”
“And the window?”
“Already done.”
“Vivian.”
“What?”
“You can't keep finding work for it.”
“I don't have to find it. It's there.”
Through the thin wall came the sound of a guest laughing. Vivian looked towards it with an expression Frankie didn't understand until she realised it was worry: what could there possibly be to laugh at in the corridor?
“The people who sleep here,” Vivian said, “pay for a room. The people who eat here pay for something they can eat. They don't pay to admire my restraint while I save somebody else's money.”
“Somebody else's?”
“Ours. If that makes you happier.”
It didn't.
Frankie wanted the sixty untouched because it represented an outcome she could still deliver. Once it had become paint, cloth or a repaired roof, it would have to be admired instead of divided.
Vivian wanted the hotel to stop displaying the things she had been unable to afford.
Neither of them was being particularly generous.
“Let Nina see everything you've committed,” Frankie said.
“She isn't my accountant.”
“No. She's making the show we promised.”
“You promised.”
“And you took the money.”
Vivian looked away.
There was a small photograph on the office shelf which Frankie hadn't noticed before: Vivian much younger beside a woman in a pale coat. Both stood in front of the hotel, laughing at something outside the frame. A black mark on one corner of the photograph looked like a thumb, caught by the camera.
Frankie watched Vivian see her looking.
“My mother.”
“She looks—”
“Don't.”
Frankie stopped.
“She thought the Table was ridiculous,” Vivian said. “All those men congratulating one another on having got into a room. My father talked about it for months.”
Vivian picked up the photograph.
“She said if he wanted somewhere to eat with his friends, he could have brought them home.”
“Would she have liked this?”
Vivian put it back.
“She's dead. I can make her like anything.”
The words were funny. Vivian didn't smile.
Frankie leaned against the edge of the desk, then moved when she felt the papers beneath her.
“Let Nina have the rehearsal.”
“I've paid for the curtains to be fitted.”
“Ask them to do the other side first. Let her use the end by the doors.”
“That will take longer.”
“Yes.”
“And cost more.”
“Probably.”
Vivian looked at the invoice.
Frankie could have made the delay sound like a favour to somebody important. A privilege for the fitters, a gracious sacrifice by Vivian, an improvement discovered by Frankie.
She said, “I should have been here when the room was booked.”
“You should.”
“I'll stay until they're finished.”
Vivian folded the paper.
“All right.”
They returned to find Estelle standing just inside the Ballroom, looking at the fabric.
“Am I a widow?”
“Not yet,” Cal said.
Nina had moved the small rehearsal group to the far side of the dais. Sol was adjusting a lamp. June was directing the men towards the window nearest the lobby, having reached the practical arrangement Frankie had gone into the office to negotiate.
June looked at her.
“You can carry the cups now.”
She did.
By Thursday afternoon the curtains hung properly and no longer resembled medical equipment. Vivian walked backwards across the Ballroom to admire them.
“Careful,” Frankie said.
“I can walk.”
There was a chair behind her.
Frankie moved it.
Nina had returned from Brighton with the leaf place card holder, which had been left in her equipment bag. Vivian took it as though the whole of the Table had narrowly escaped being lost in transit.
They were trying the welcome again. Real menus lay on the table. The paper was thick enough to feel chosen, not so thick as to announce that somebody had spent money on paper.
Vivian wanted names placed before anyone arrived.
“People like to know where they belong.”
“Do they?” Duncan asked.
“They like to know where to sit.”
“That isn't quite the same.”
She gave him a look.
Frankie had asked him to come for half an hour. He'd come with a coat over his jacket and a little packet of screws from work which he put in his pocket as soon as he sat down. Lorne Bell would not ordinarily have carried spare spectacle parts to dinner.
Vivian put the leaf in front of the centre place.
“Gideon there.”
“Not at the centre,” Frankie said.
“He's paying.”
“That's why.”
Nina watched them.
Vivian took the leaf away and placed it at the side. Then she moved another chair.
Frankie could feel the room becoming an account of who mattered most.
She sat in the chair Vivian had given her.
“Introduce Duncan.”
“Lorne.”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“Me.”
“You already know him.”
“Not enough.”
Vivian turned towards Duncan.
“Celia, this is Lorne Bell. He's—”
She paused.
Duncan looked pleasantly available.
“He's someone I thought you should meet.”
“Why?” Frankie asked.
“Because I asked him.”
Duncan laughed.
Vivian's mouth changed.
It was the better introduction. Frankie wanted to write it down and hand it back to her as an instruction. She kept her hands on the table.
Vivian turned to Nina. “And this is Nina Adebayo. She's making the evening. Whatever the curtains do to it.”
Nina laughed and reached for the menus.
Frankie looked at the menu, then at the people round it. For a moment the false invitation almost stopped mattering. There was a real room, good food, somebody who knew how to make it beautiful, people who could choose to come back.
Then Vivian turned the leaf towards the light.
“We must make sure everyone sees these.”
“All of them?” Duncan asked.
“The important people.”
There it was again.
Nina gathered the menus.
“I'm sending June the hours. Frankie, she wants you on Saturday at three to help move the tables.”
“I thought—”
“She told me you'd stay and help.”
Frankie looked at Vivian.
Vivian smiled.
“People like to know where they belong.”
Duncan laughed before Frankie could answer.
She laughed too, though it was going to cost her Saturday afternoon.
The leaf was still chipped. Vivian had turned the damaged tip away from Gideon's place.