Chapter Twenty-Six
Honor, not due at the Teapot until ten, was drifting in an agreeable somnolence of half-dreamed dreams when her cell phone rang. She scrabbled it somehow to her ear and groaned, ‘Yeah?’ discouragingly.
Ru sounded diffident. ‘Mum and Soppy only got home about six this morning and they’re in bed, wrecked. Shall we open up? Or stay closed?’
Honor kind of wanted to snap, ‘Stay closed!’ But, sometimes, her conscience just insisted that she live up to the name her father gave her. And she hadn’t slaved and contrived for the last three days to keep the Teapot running just to have Robina come home and mock all her efforts by leaving it shut. The tearoom was meant to be open. So she would make somebody open it. She swore. ‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes.’ She was beginning to totally appreciate why waitresses wore their hair in tight knots or braids. It wasn’t hygiene. It was so no one could tell they had unwashed, unbrushed, unstyled hair because they had no time for all that.
She banged into the Teapot like a child in a snit, where Ru was already scrubbing potatoes. ‘Come on,’ she snapped. ‘Let’s get your fu — your mother up.’
Ru, who hadn’t put his hat on yet as the Teapot wasn’t open for business, grinned through his curtain of hair. ‘You won’t wake her.’
‘You just watch me.’
‘Love to.’ Ru let her in the door in the side of the building. Honor stormed up the two flights of stairs to the bedrooms. ‘Which is your mother’s? This one?’ And burst into the room.
She paused to let her eyes adjust to the gloom.
A giant yellow caterpillar lay on a double mattress and the curtains swayed lazily in the breeze from the open window. ‘Robina.’ Honor addressed the sheeted caterpillar, politely. ‘You need to get up and open the tearoom. You need to bake the cakes.’
The caterpillar lay still.
Honor cranked it up a notch. ‘Robina, you need to get up and open the tearoom. You need to bake the cakes! ’
Still, the caterpillar didn’t move.
Honor grabbed one edge of the sheet, braced her foot against the mattress and yanked. ‘ROBINAYOUNEED TOGETUPANDOPENTHETEAROOM!YOUNEEDTO BAKETHE FUCKINGCAKES!’
The sheet ripped. Robina lay, exposed and blinking through a storm of hair. ‘No,’ she moaned.
‘YES!’ roared Honor. She seized Robina’s hands and dragged her from the mattress and, with superhuman strength, to her feet. ‘Yes,’ she repeated, quietly. ‘You do. Oh, good, you’re already dressed; we needn’t waste time with fresh clothes. Yesterday’s will be fine. Put on your shoes.’
Kirsty had appeared in the doorway beside a grinning Ru. She looked like a scarecrow in pyjama bottoms and a wrap-over robe, and laughed like a growly dog. ‘I never thought I’d live to see that.’
‘And how are you?’ Honor asked her, not releasing Robina’s hands as she led the older woman to the bathroom like a geriatric. ‘Do you have everything you need?’
‘Thank you for asking.’ Kirsty smiled, thinly. ‘It’s refreshing. But I’m OK.’
Sophie was easier to rouse and Honor presided grimly over face washing, teeth cleaning and the pulling back of hair before dragging the pair downstairs to at least get the cakes baked before she allowed them back to bed to pass out. ‘And, Sophie, don’t forget to put Ru on the payroll. He has worked his butt off all weekend while you guys have been mainlining alcohol.’
‘Payroll?’ Sophie blinked.
‘Yeah, remember? Robina promised that Ru would get paid the same rate as Aletta. I’ll write down for you how many hours we’ve each done, to make sure you get it right. OK?’
‘OK.’ Sophie smiled, gently, humouringly.
* * *
Although Sophie and Robina were in the kitchen in body, their minds were quite obviously still afloat in the ether. ‘I should have left the place shut and you two in bed,’ Honor told them, disgusted, when she hadn’t been able even to take a break to shove down a scone to fill her empty stomach because she had to act like a sheepdog to keep the orders moving.
Robina’s eyes cracked a touch wider open. ‘But the Teapot has to open. Or we don’t make any money.’
Honor planted her fists on her hips. ‘So you just assumed that I’d open up for you? And Aletta would give up her day off?’
‘I thought that’s what we arranged,’ she fibbed, weakly. ‘I’ll pay you a bonus.’
‘Yeah, damn right!’
But not even Honor’s energy could keep Robina and Sophie on their feet indefinitely and she returned from clearing tables at two o’clock to discover only Ru in the kitchen, busy at a steaming sink. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve slunk off!’ Honor exploded.
‘OK.’
Honor waited. Then, ‘They’ve slunk off, right?’
‘Yeah, out the back door.’ Ru shrugged philosophically and smiled. ‘But they were crap really, weren’t they?’
Even if she had to laugh and give Ru’s skinny shoulder a mock punch, Honor was aggravated to find it was once more nearly six by the time she was free to go home, past the shops of Starboard Walk — with a longing glance up at Martyn’s front door, uncompromisingly shut — turning her face to the sea breeze, half surprised to realise that, once again, it had been a pretty day.
Here they were in the last few of days in July and she was working through the days, making her too tired to enjoy the long, light evenings. Was this really what she’d come to England for? She didn’t think so.
She awarded herself a long soak in the bathtub, scraped around the kitchen and ended up with an unsatisfactory meal of pasta with cheese sauce — she hadn’t had time to shop over the last few days — and, finally, flopped on the couch with a book on the history of Sussex, one she’d bought in Arundel with glee but had hardly snatched a glance at.
Across the room, her laptop waited like an accusation.
She tried to concentrate on the book and the chapter on the Sussex smuggling trade illustrated with atmospheric monochrome line drawings of shifty looking men with ragged shirts, cuddling casks of brandy like stolen babies.
She texted Martyn: Hey, how’s it going? But then remembered him telling her of tonight’s late evening shoot at the Louvre with its spectacular backdrop of fountains and reflections; the glass pyramid twinkling with golden light.
He suddenly seemed a long way from her. More than miles. It was a big shoot, this time, with other models — female — and a bigger crew than Honor had witnessed in action at Arundel, underlining how little a part of his world she was. While she sprawled on a rented couch with a history book, he might be standing in the fountains in his underwear with a gorgeous model in his arms, smouldering down at her whilst she returned his gaze with an adoration created by le Dur cologne. She thought of the framed advertisement in his study and the hunger he’d injected into the pulling down of one teeny shoulder strap.
She tossed the book away.
In a consumer society, those moody, sexy shots of beautiful people with fabulous bodies and convincingly lustful expressions were everywhere. Magazines, bill boards . . . buses.
She’d never wondered how the lovers and partners of those beautiful people coped with the way those shots were captured. The models had to get up close and very personal.
For distraction, she grabbed the laptop and booted it up.
There was a message waiting from Stef.
Honor, listen. You’re too good a woman to leave me. You just wouldn’t. The guys who get left while they’re in here, they’re pitiful. You couldn’t go back on your wedding vows that way. Not even I deserve that. You’ll wait until I get out so we can talk, because that’s all that’s fair.
She read messages from Jess and Zach and her father without really taking in their words about what was going on in their jobs and their relationships.
You just wouldn’t whizzed her pasta around uncomfortably in her stomach. You’ll wait until I get out so we can talk, because that’s all that’s fair.
Fair. That’s what she’d always been. Honourable Honor. Always fair.
Slowly, she tapped out a reply. Were you fair to me?