The Name beneath the Work

Fleur had already paid the printer. She did not say so when Hester came in, but laid the invoice on top of the proofs, its corner precisely aligned with the edge of the table. In the hall, Amir was pulling a trolley of folded chairs towards the storeroom. He raised a hand and asked whether the large banner was still going up on the street side.

'Leave that for a moment,' Hester said.

'Until when, exactly?'

'Half past one. I'll have an answer for you then.'

He wrote something on the piece of cardboard lying on the trolley and wheeled it away. Fleur watched him go. 'He's only here till five. No one else is going to stand around all week waiting for me.'

'Which is why I want to decide now what we can do.'

Tessa was sitting on the edge of the stage with her laptop on her knees. She had brought a work light with its own battery, because she did not trust the colours under the hall lighting. On the screen was a picture of a painted backdrop: long strips of river, with little houses like upside-down boxes. What Hester remembered best was carrying those boxes outside after the performance. On the proof beside it were the words Design and supervision: Marjan Koster.

'Who supplied that line?' she asked.

'I did,' Fleur said. 'From the old folder.'

'Not me,' Tessa said. 'I only supplied the image. And the photographer is me.'

Hester laid the copy of the letter face down on the table. 'Brecht wrote about her own designs and the wrong name underneath,' she said. 'Else and Robin want the captions to be right.'

Fleur slipped the invoice beneath a sheet. 'Then we'll put Marjan and Brecht together. Surely that's fairest if we're not certain?'

'Aren't we certain?' Tessa asked.

'You were there.'

'That doesn't make me the maker of everything I've got a photograph of.'

Tessa opened another folder. It contained scans of loose sheets: pencil drawings, paint samples, a sketch with a fold running right across it. They came from her own work folder. She had had the drawings copied at a stationer's at the time, to help her decide which parts of the set to photograph. She did not know where the originals were now.

One scan showed four small houses along a strip of water. Beside the second house someone had written that the shutter had to open properly. Underneath was Brecht, in small letters, and a telephone number no longer in use. Hester thought of the blue fingers Brecht always pointed things out with, the colour staying in the creases of her skin for another two days.

She thought of an afternoon in the spring of 2004, not the final week. She had been sitting at this same table with a proof of an announcement. Brecht had one knee on a chair to hold a cardboard house at the right height. The shutter kept falling shut. She asked Hester to put a coin on the edge, and when that failed she slipped the coin into her trouser pocket. 'An advance,' she said. 'From the treasurer.'

Hester had laughed and shown her the announcement. Brecht stepped off the chair, wiped her hand on a cloth and pointed beneath Marjan's name with a dirty fingernail. 'And who made this, then?'

'It means the supervision,' Hester had replied.

'It says design.'

She had read the proof again. It did. She remembered her own irritation better than anything else: she wanted to deliver the sheet before closing time, and now something else needed changing. Brecht took a pencil from Hester's hand and wrote her own name above it. The point snapped against the wood beneath the thin paper. 'Look. That's all the space I need.'

It had not turned into a long argument. Hester took the correction with her. Later Marjan said the printer was working from the original version and they would pay more attention next time. Hester had not gone back. She had known that all these years; she had simply never told it as a story about Brecht. Her accounts of that afternoon were about an awkward shutter and a coin she had never got back.

'This is her design,' Tessa said. 'I know that. She explained why there had to be a shutter. An actor had to pass a letter out from inside. Marjan wanted someone just to put it on the stage, because that was less work.'

'Can we write that down, then?' Hester asked.

'The first part, yes. I don't need the squabble about the shutter in there. I'm not re-enacting old conversations.'

Fleur went over to the large banner lying on two trestles. The heading was already printed: Twenty-two years of creating together. On Monday, Hester had read it as an innocent reference to time. Now she found herself counting the years when nothing at all had been made together, when everyone had simply grown older and Brecht had stayed twenty-two.

'That heading has to go,' she said.

'It's fabric, Hester. Not a sheet out of a printer.'

'Then we don't use it.'

Fleur ran her hands along the edge. 'We can't afford everything twice. The foundation's board will want to know why I approved this invoice.'

'Then they'll get an answer. The information has changed.'

'No. The information was there. We didn't ask for it.'

The admission was so unexpected that Hester left her next argument unspoken. Fleur was still looking at the banner. She pulled off a loose thread and laid it on a trestle. Only then did she pick up her phone.

The call to the printer lasted four minutes. They could supply smaller sheets if the file arrived before three. There was no time for a new banner. The costs already incurred would stand. Fleur repeated the sum quietly and asked whether she could collect the sheets herself on Thursday. After hanging up, she sat at the table.

'I don't want it to look as if I had this printed on purpose,' she said.

'No one's saying that,' Hester replied.

'Not yet.'

Tessa put her laptop on the table. 'I deliberately supplied only the pleasant photographs. I can say that much now. You asked for pictures showing what this place had meant. I chose smiling people, not flaking paint. But that turned itself into a story where everyone was happy with how things were.'

'You don't have to spare me,' Fleur said.

'I'm trying to explain what I need to change. Not get a better confession out of you.'

Hester drew a blank proof towards her and made three columns: image, maker and permission. Fleur asked whether that would mean even more work. Hester said there were five images. The rest could come out of the display. A smaller exhibition was still an exhibition.

They began with the river backdrop. Designed by Brecht Boon. Made with volunteers from De Werf. Photograph by Tessa van Loon. Where they could not establish names, they would not invent any. Tessa was uncertain about the second image, a procession with wooden birds. She knew who had cut them out, not who had designed them. She searched her paper folder and found only an order for paint.

'Then we write what we know,' Hester said. 'Scenery for the procession, made at De Werf. We credit the supervision separately if we can substantiate it.'

'Marjan won't like that.'

'She can supply a specific correction.'

Fleur looked up. 'With evidence? Are you going to ask our former chair for receipts from twenty-two years ago? She was a volunteer.'

'For an explanation. Like everyone else.'

A door slammed in the side corridor. Amir called that he was leaving the trolley where no one could trip over it. Hester went to check the access to the storeroom with him. In the kitchen, a box of cups stood in the middle of the floor. She moved it onto a table. She was glad of the weight of something she could move without a debate.

Amir pointed to the stairs. 'And that picture frame upstairs? You don't want me fetching that for you, do you?'

'No. Upstairs stays closed to visitors. If we need anything, we'll arrange it separately.'

'Good. I'm not carrying ladders through a full hall because someone decides they want another frame after all.'

Back at the table, she saw Fleur had crossed out the programme heading. Beneath it, in her handwriting, was Work from De Werf: Names and Memories, followed by a question mark.

Hester rang Robin. She did not answer straight away. A message came through: Holding a panel. Call you in a bit. Hester put the five proposed captions in one document, turned the uncertain points into questions and sent it directly to her. No public link, no request to manage her mother's history in the next ten minutes.

Tessa checked her watch. 'I have to leave at twelve. There's a clothes shop that wants to open tomorrow without fingerprints on its new window.'

'I thought you were staying here today,' Fleur said.

'Until twelve. It was in my email. It's paid work.'

Fleur began to say something, stopped and took out her diary. 'Then let's go through those five now.'

The third picture showed a group at the back of the building. Ruben stood on the left, half turned away from the camera. Tessa did not want to include it. It belonged to the contact-sheet sequence they had looked at on Tuesday. It said something about routes and who had been there, but in an exhibition every eye would go to the edge of the frame. Hester agreed.

'We can simply not put up a photograph of him,' she said.

'It'll look as if we're leaving him out,' Fleur said.

'We ask what he wants. If he doesn't want a photograph, there won't be one. This isn't a roll call.'

Fleur wrote call Ruben on her list. The small action meant more than the new heading. On Monday she would have chosen a portrait, then sent a message saying how lovely it looked.

Robin called back as they reached the last caption. In the background a tape measure rattled. She had glanced through the texts and asked whether the chest of animal masks still existed. According to Else, Brecht had made them for a school play; the children had chosen the animals themselves. Hester did not know and did not promise to look for the chest.

'If the masks aren't there, we don't need new ones,' Robin said. 'I don't want replicas just because otherwise a corner will be empty.'

Tessa gave a thumbs-up. Hester asked permission to use the two design images. Robin gave it for the local display, without publication of the entire letter or sales of prints. Fleur added the restriction to the files. It looked like ordinary paperwork. Hester noticed how readily she retreated into it, but this time, at least, the paper protected the person the work belonged to.

At twenty-five past eleven, Fleur sent the final order. She chose plain black type on uncoated paper. The sheets would go on existing display panels. The large banner stayed on the trestles until Amir could roll it up. He came into the hall, saw their faces and asked only whether they had an answer yet.

'No banner on the street side,' Hester said. 'Three panels in the foyer. I'll mark the positions on your plan.'

Fleur followed them to the door. Outside, a supplier was waiting with a crate of glasses. He had tried a different contact number and reached no one. There would be a surcharge if he had to deliver again. Fleur signed the delivery note without arguing. Once the man had gone, she asked whether Hester had kept track of her own hours.

'Yes.'

'Including this morning's conversation?'

Hester looked at the empty space above the entrance. 'The part about the programme.'

'It'll all end up on one bill. Board members don't see a distinction between personal history and an overspent budget.'

'Then I'll itemise them separately.'

Fleur nodded without smiling. She went back to the table to write the email to her board. Hester drew the three panels on the floor plan and handed Amir the pencil. He pointed to the edge of the foyer, where the door had to open all the way. Together they moved the first little rectangle twenty centimetres to one side.