Sophie took her mother for coffee at the Ritz, in a taxi, simply because she could, and simply because she knew it would make her mother uncomfortable.
‘Will I still be able to get the 11.30 train?’ her mother asked when it became obvious to her that the Ritz wasn’t just around the corner, as Sophie had airily promised.
‘Do you have to?’
‘If I miss that one, I’d have to wait two hours for the next.’
‘I suppose it depends how much you miss it by, doesn’t it? If you get there at 1.25, you’ll only have to wait five minutes. You never know, there may be a lot to say.’
This was Gloria’s cue to stare out of the window silently until they got to the hotel. As they walked in, the doorman greeted Sophie by name, and told her to keep a careful eye on Jim, and Sophie laughed and said she would. She’d been to the Ritz before and something similar had happened; that was one of the reasons she wanted to take her mother there.
They sat down on one of the sofas in the big lounge and ordered coffee and biscuits.
‘Is this what it’s like, then?’ said Gloria. ‘The Ritz, and so on?’
‘If I want it to be.’ And then, because that sounded too haughty, ‘But most of the time I’m at work. Or at home. I work hard.’
‘Oh. This is a very comfy settee, isn’t it? But it’s hard to sit up straight in.’
Sophie waited and waited for something, some further flicker of interest in the last fifteen years of her daughter’s life, but Gloria seemed lost in the soft furnishings and the admittedly mystifying residents of the hotel.
‘Is that all you can say?’ said Sophie. ‘That the settee is comfy?’
She’d promised herself that she would try to stay calm, but it was impossible.
‘I don’t know what to say, to tell the truth,’ said Gloria.
‘So why did you come down?’
Her mother shrugged.
‘I had to.’
‘Have you been in Morecambe all this time?’
‘No, we moved around a bit. He got a job in Bolton when … when we moved. And then another one in Lancaster. And then we’d just moved to where I am now when he went.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know. I think he might be back in Blackpool.’
‘Did you marry him?’
‘No. He was happy as we were. He could have his cake and eat it.’
Nobody walking past them in the Ritz would ever have described her mother as cake. She was bread and butter, Sophie could see that now. She’d always thought of her as cake, though. She’d grown up listening to her father talk about running off and fancy men, and so she’d dressed her up, put make-up and stockings on her, given her a cream and jam filling and slathered her in icing. But she was just a woman clutching a mackintosh and a shabby old-fashioned handbag that Sophie wanted to snatch from her and dump in the nearest bin.
‘I’ve got nothing to say, Barbara. Sophie. Really. Nothing. Nothing interesting, no secrets. I’ve just got a long boring story about nothing.’
‘So what was the point of all that, then? What were you hoping for?’
‘Only something better. I didn’t get it, if that’s any consolation.’
‘It isn’t really.’
It was, though. She understood the need for something better. Sophie hadn’t hurt anyone when she’d come to London, but she would have done, if she’d had to. And she could argue that she had talent, and if she’d let it swell and fester, then it would have killed her. But she hadn’t known for sure it was real, and she hadn’t known for sure it would save her. Her mother’s escape route struck her as something that was a part of the old days. Gloria would never have dreamed of moving to London and finding out what she was capable of, how far she could go. Her way out was to latch on to a man and move with him to Bolton. It had never occurred to Sophie before, but the worst thing about being Miss Blackpool was the title. Taking your husband’s name when you became his wife was one thing. Taking your town’s name when you became its beauty queen was something else again.
‘You know I’m sorry, don’t you?’ Gloria said.
‘No. How would I know that? You’ve never told me. You never even tried to get in touch.’