Mina took a tentative sip and found the wine to be very sharp yet simultaneously unpleasantly furry on her tongue. She plunked it down. “Very nice,” she lied.
“What it means,” Ivy said, leaning forward confidentially. “Is that there’s to be a lock-in tonight.”
“A lock-in?” Mina echoed, reaching for her bed socks.
“It’s when your regular patrons leave,” Ivy explained. “But a privileged few are permitted to remain after the doors is locked. And they’re permitted to carry on drinking till the early hours.”
“I see,” said Mina, drawing on her socks. “And what events determine its occurrence?”
“You what?” Ivy asked with a frown, knocking back the last of her wine and reaching for the bottle to pour another.
“I mean, is it a regular thing?” Mina asked, hastily rephrasing her question. She remembered Nye’s comment earlier about her being somewhat verbose. “Occurring say, once a month?”
Ivy’s expression of confusion lifted. “Oh!” she said. “I take your meaning now.” Once she’d refilled her glass, she held the bottle up with a quirk of her eyebrows.
“No thank you,” Mina said hastily, taking another miniscule sip of her own drink.
“Well,” said Ivy, resting her glass lovingly against her bosom. “It ain’t as straightforward as all that. You see, sometimes they’ll have ones with the regulars. Now, I don’t usually have no part in them ones, I just retires at the usual time and Nye serves at bar. Then other times it’ll be when the prizefighters are here overnight. I’ll usually serve at those, cos they likes a pretty face and Nye’s usually down to fight.”
“The night I arrived was one such night,” Mina said aloud. “Though I believe Edna was serving at bar.”
“I was rushed off my feet that night,” Ivy agreed easily enough. “Oftentimes you need two behind bar on such a night.”
“How often are prizefights held here?” asked Mina, reaching for her blue woolen shawl and wrapping it around her shoulders. She seemed to remember she’d had the impression Ivy had been with one of the fighters in a bedroom on the second floor, but perhaps she’d had that wrong.
“Oh, fairly regular,” said Ivy vaguely. “Usually have at least one bout a month.”
Mina wetted her lips with the red wine thoughtfully. “So… tonight’s is just a local lock-in?” she said. “Why is Nye not hosting this one?”
“We sort of takes it in turns,” Ivy replied easily. “See, sometimes he sits with Gus and Reuben and a few others and they’ll be in deep discussion all night.”
Mina considered this and could not help but think it rather odd. “Reuben is the one with the ginger beard is he not?”
“Yes, that’s him,” agreed Ivy. “He’s odd job man and stable hand around here.”
From the brief interactions Mina had seen between him and Nye, they did not seem to be on such terms. She wondered what on earth they could find to discuss so intently. Then a thought occurred to her. “So, if you’re behind the bar tonight then Nye must be intending to confer with his friends,” she said with some relief.
“Friends?” Ivy’s eyebrows shot up. “I wouldn’t call them that exactly. If he has any, it’s that prizefighter crowd. Anyway,” she said. “I wanted to hear what happened this afternoon. What’s this about you some gentleman importuning you in the private parlor?”
Mina choked on her mouthful of wine. “A misunderstanding only.”
Ivy cast her a shrewd look. “Only Gus did say as Nye nearly choked the life out of him for his impertinence.”
“I think Gus might be prone to telling tall tales,” Mina said severely. “By the by, did there used to be a monastery around these parts?”
“Don’t know about that.” Ivy shrugged. “I’m not from ‘round here though. Not originally,” she sighed. “Moved here with my husband, I did.”
“Husband? I did not realize you were married, Ivy.”
Ivy nodded. “Leastways, I thought he was my husband. Before his actual wife turned up to claim him. Bigamist,” she said when Mina’s mouth fell open.
“No!”
“Apparently he was always doing it.”
“Oh Ivy, I am sorry.”
Ivy shrugged. “You lives and learns,” she said cheerfully rising from her chair with her bottle in one hand and her glass in the other. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it,” she said. “I’m going for a little nap before I have to go down and take over at ten.”
“Goodnight,” Mina called after her. The wine had left an unpleasant taste in her mouth, so setting her still almost full glass down on her dresser, she reached for her jar of tooth powder and gave her mouth another scrub. It wasn’t, she told herself, that she was concerned that Nye might think her tongue tasted bad. Such a consideration had not even crossed her mind. Besides, she did not really expect him to come to her tonight. Not if he was expected to cozily sit with Gus and Reuben in a monthly tête-à-tête.
Retrieving her new jar of bloom of roses, she moisturized her face and neck and then heaped her pillows up behind her back so settle with one of her periodicals. So well-thumbed was it that it fell open right away at her favorite articles and she had only run her eyes over the first three paragraphs when her head began to nod and she was forced to put it to one side and extinguish her candle.
11
When next Mina woke, she found herself lying on her side, somehow cocooned and warm as toast. She lay a moment, blinking at the unfamiliar sensation.
