Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (36 page)

Freddie was a tall, well-padded Italian with wiry hair who tugged regularly at the sleeves of his slightly-too-small uniform jacket—a gesture that somehow suggested he was getting ready to throw a punch. Despite Freddie’s daunting size, the bellmen collectively reminded me of mice. They would disappear when there was nothing to profit them in the lobby, and would reappear before a new guest had set down his suitcase.

The bellmen knew the hotel intimately. They knew the view offered by each room, the quality of the bed, whether the bathroom had a tub or only a shower, and also the history of each room and its lingering effects. Room 728 faced east towards St. James Cathedral. In 1929, a despondent stockbroker had hanged himself in it at the stroke of midnight. Guests in that room often claimed to have been kept awake by the church-bells tolling twelve every hour. A woman had given birth in Room 430, and her pangs often infected subsequent guests, who would call down asking for sodium bromide or even the house doctor we didn’t have.

The bellmen could be quite unkind to difficult or miserly guests, for though as front desk clerk I assigned the rooms, if they contradicted me, guests inevitably opted for their seasoned choice over mine. I never asked the bellmen when, or in what room, Mr. Leslie had died, because he was still so firmly with us. In the half-light I could see little patches of grey stubble that he had missed. “A one-armed barber is more useless than a one-armed paper hanger and that’s the truth of it,” he said, as if he’d read my mind.

“Today must be a very special day for you,” I said by way of distracting him, in case he had in fact read my mind. I nearly began to tell him about the Remembrance Day assembly we’d had that morning, but that would remind him of the girl I was at school, a person I determinedly left behind when I punched the time clock inside the staff entrance off Dalhousie Lane that always smelt of garbage and onions.

“Aye, hard not to think of my mates today, but you know lass, when I think of ‘em, it’s the living, not the dying I remember—the good, not the bad.

“There been lots of talk about how cruel the officers were. My captain were kindness itself. He checked all the lads’ feet as regular as possible. Trench foot were no joke. If he found a man getting into trouble that way, he bathed his feet his self, just like our Lord. He’d dry and powder ’em and he’d give ’em a pair of his own socks, knitted by his own gran’, who were a duchess no less. Made us promise not to let on if we ever came to dinner,” and he laughed. “About as likely as finding a strawberry in Hartley’s jam! Now the food, that was terrible! I haven’t had rabbit since I left France, nor will I ever again, so help me.” He grew quiet. “That’s how I came to lose my arm, did I never tell thee?

“Now you might think I should be grateful to that rabbit, because he was how I came to finally be sent home, but that coney didn’t think to cross my path until August 1918, so I think I would have rather taken my chances. Your history books might have you believe that it were constant noise and shelling down there, but it weren’t. There were lulls where you could actually hear the birds singing. Where you could stop being scared long enough to realise you were soaked to the bone, aching cold, hadn’t had a letter in weeks and were hungrier than you’d ever imagined you could be and still draw breath. E, in some ways the lulls were worse than the fighting, but they were a chance to forage.

“Some of the boys would set to rat bodies, not for valuables, but for food, what were more valuable than anything. That I couldn’t do. A mate offered me a share of some bully beef he’d found, but the thought of eating rations meant for another man, I can’t say why, made me gag. I said to him, how do you fancy some fresh meat? There were some woods just to the south of us. I set my snares, just like I did on the farm. It took an hour or two, but I caught myself a large jack. By then it were almost dark, and would you believe it, I fell into a foxhole and broke my arm on a gun emplacement. Just an unlucky tumble. I had a green stick break. So much for lucky rabbit’s foot.”

“They amputated your arm because it was broken?”

“Nay, nay lass ’course not, but then the shelling started again and the triage officer put clumsy lads like me with only a broken arm at the back of the queue. By the time I got to front’a queue, it’d gone gangrenous, so no choice. Things like that, they happened all the time, one them quirks of fate. Leastways, it was me left.”

I wanted to know why he wasn’t angry, but the sudden appearance of Dan Gregson, meant I didn’t get to ask.

“Hello, beautiful,” Gregson said, filling the desk space with his bulk and the smell of sweat. “You wanted me to do a room check.”

I had paged him three hours before, when I came on duty. The Vice-Regal Suite had been vacated late, but there was no record of whether it had been made up, and it was reserved for an early check-in. Dan was one of those men who thought all women preferred being called various adjectives or generic endearments. At the same time, he made a point of tacitly asserting his power by never doing what you asked him to when you asked him to do it. “Yes, I wanted to know if the Vice-Regal was made up,” I told him, even though he already knew this.

“I don’t know, I’ll check it for you,” he said looming up, “but first you’ll have to hold my hands for five minutes.” I realise that you are probably as disturbed by my compliance as I was at his request. His fee for service had never risen beyond 300 damp seconds of my hands in his. Though it was not pleasant, it was no worse than waiting for a bus in the rain, and considerably less frightening than finding out what he would have done if he’d been denied. The five minutes ended. “OK cutie, if you don’t hear back from me, it’s made up.”

Mr. Leslie, who had vanished into the depths of a wing chair at Gregson’s approach, reappeared. “Doing a double back?” he asked. A double back was when you worked two shifts separated by less than twelve hours. If you were assigned a double back, it usually meant staying the night at the hotel. I said I was, and because the hotel was so quiet the night manager was letting me have one of the better rooms. “Make sure you put the chain on’t door, won’t you, lass?” he smiled encouragingly, and disappeared.

My airline crew had just arrived, each one of them thin, bronzed, weary, and by their faces, instantly disappointed by their accommodation.

I put the chain on the door that night, more because it seemed sensible than because Mr. Leslie had said to do it. “One of the better rooms” featured foil wallpaper that reflected the light that crept around the corners of the psychedelic curtains that didn’t quite cover the window. I slept fitfully. My side ached, and I wasn’t used to the cathedral bells tolling the hour. At least that was what I thought woke me at first. Then I realised it was the rattle of the door against the chain. I waited for a thick damp hand to attempt to reach in, but there was only laboured breathing and a few more impatient jangles, before a voice humid with menace said, “Bitch,” and pulled the door shut with no thought to preserving the quiet.

The next day, Mr. Leslie passed by the desk on his way to the cafeteria in the basement where staff also ate. “Sleep well lass?” Yes, I nodded, and started to speak, when he cut me off with, “Mulligatawny soup today, and rice pudding,” and winked. I never told him what happened, or thanked him. Somehow it seemed we each understood.

Over the following months, Mr. Leslie took to keeping the watches of the night with me. I can still see him with his back to me, leaning onto the desk with his surviving arm and commenting on the flow of people through the lobby, especially the ladies. “Now that’s mutton dressed as lamb and no mistake,” or, “I’ve seen better legs on a table.”

He took the complaints of other guests to heart. One couple insisted on checking out only an hour after checking in when the wife found a mousetrap under the bed. “E, but there were nowt in it, and if there were, the matter were dealt with, were it not?” He shook his head and let out a heavy sigh.

I asked him about Vimy, but he would not be drawn out on the subject, even when I said I was doing research for school, although he took great interest in my academic career. “Never look back lass, that’s my motto. Every time I’ve looked back, I’ve got in trouble.”

He also took an interest in my fledgling love life. When my boyfriend of four months gave me a necklace for my birthday, he asked to see it. I leaned forward, but he said, no, to take it off, he wanted to hold it. He clutched it for a few minutes, looking away before handing it back. “Aye, e’s a good enough lad, but not quite good enough, lass, and he’s bound for far away. You’ve no call to give him what you can’t call back.” I didn’t always take his advice, but I always regretted it when I didn’t.

Remembrance Day drew near again. “I’ll tell thee why I joined up,” he said suddenly one night, as if he was announcing he was stepping out to get a paper. He cocked his head, inviting me to speculate. To fight for King and Country was my obvious guess. “Nay. Same as a lot of lads: to impress a lass.”

“And did you?”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” and he laughed, but it sounded like an empty tin can tumbling on concrete. “She lived two farms over. Lovely she were, chestnut hair and blue eyes. A voice like when you chime a toast on a crystal glass. Katie Boldwood, she were then.

“When we lads signed up, the farmers all about there clubbed together and threw us a great supper. There were so many folk you’d have thought it were Harvest Home, except the ladies put their best tablecloths on the trestle tables, and them that had china put it out, and all the local grandees drank our health. They told us we was brave and we’d come home heroes. That’s where I got my keepsake of Katie Boldwood.”

Once again I guessed the obvious: her picture, a lock of hair?

“A spoon. When nobody were looking, I stole the spoon she’d used to eat her pie. Maybe that’s where I went wrong. Taking that spoon were wrong, and I took it with me all the way to England—terrible crossing—and then all the way to France. I ate some terrible muck with it, I can tell you. With every horrible mouthful, I told myself, this spoon has touched the lips of Katie Boldwood, and if I get through this, I just might too.

“My best pal in the unit was Charlie Fielding, cracking lad. He joined up ’cause he were that homesick; he thought if he made it through, he could go back to L’unun for keeps and maybe find his sister.

“We were having what passed for breakfast when the shelling started. It’s a wonder we could hear the whistle sounding. It were the signal we were to go forward to the assembly trench. I don’t remember being afraid. I just remember grabbing my rifle with left hand and racing ahead of Charlie, the spoon in my right. I must o’ thought I’d shove it somewhere safe before we went ov’r top. Except I dropped it. I stopped to pick it up. I bent down. The bullet that were meant for me killed Charlie.” There was a long silence. “So he never saw L’unun again,” he said by way of a conclusion. In the Leicester Square bar someone broke a glass and laughed.

“And did you ever see Katie Boldwood again?”

“Nay, lass, nay, and it’s Mrs. John Baldwin now, or so I heard last. That’d be a good match, uniting two farms side by each. I heard tell them made a pot of money selling them two parcels to developers.

“When there were enough of my regiment to gather round a table, we used to meet up once a year o’r the Royal York—the boys liked that one, closer to Union Station. Couple them went back St. Mary’s way and married local girls, like I allas intended, but there you go. I weren’t fit for farm work no more, so I ploughed a desk. It weren’t a bad life.

“Silas Campion told me the Edwardian were where Katie and John came before setting out on their honeymoon journey. After I retired, they tore down the building my flat was in, and by then the Edwardian was, well, what polite folk would call affordable. And, yes, I imagined that maybe one day Katie would take a sentimental journey and I might catch a glimpse.” He looked up and saw my face flooded with pity. He smiled adding, “And return her spoon.” His laughter echoed strangely up in the atrium and lasted far longer than the sound that bore it.

“Do you really still have it?” I asked when the terrible moment had passed.

“Indeed I do,” and he patted his left breast pocket, but didn’t take it out to show me. He’d already let me see too much.

Days and nights went by. Mr. Leslie was in a jaunty mood. He strode through the lobby on his way to dinner. He saluted me with his newspaper and whistled “I’m the Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.” Other guests in the lobby looked around, trying to see where the song came from.

My first job when coming on duty was to ensure that if any reservations had requested a particular room, that the room was ready. A Mr. J. Baldwin had booked a suite for two nights for him and his wife. The manager had given the room at the regular double rate because it was for their golden wedding anniversary.

As I filed keys in their cubby-holes I wondered if Mr. Leslie knew, had known, that the girl his young self had so desperately wanted to impress, the girl he went to war for, would soon be a guest at his hotel, and that was why she had been on his mind. A quick scan of the lobby confirmed that Mr. Herschel was not about. I went around the corner to where the switchboard operator was secreted. I wanted to talk to Rose, who had known Mr. Leslie longer than I had. But Rose wasn’t there. Instead Astrid was on duty, chattering to a friend about a party she had been to. She beckoned me to approach without pausing for an instant. I retreated back to my post.

Later that night, an older couple came striding across the lobby. Freddie was not far behind, managing their three large bags with great professionalism. Mr. Baldwin was tall in a pin-stripe suit that was vaguely out of date; handsome, but not as handsome as he clearly had once been before his frowns had become permanently etched in his forehead.