Heartbreak Hotel (22 page)

India’s mobile beeped. Another text!

‘Do give her my love,’ said one of the women ridiculously. She didn’t know the creature!

Someone else said: ‘I know what she’s going through, when I had my Benji it was fourteen hours of sheer hell.’

‘My first took a day and a night,’ said somebody else. ‘I had an episiotomy and forceps.’

‘Ha, you were lucky,’ said another voice. ‘I had twenty stitches. Had to sit on a rubber ring for weeks.’

‘Can we get back to the matter in hand?’ snapped Lavinia. She pointed to her wall chart. ‘This is the stamen, with the anther and filament, and this is the pistil–’

‘Read us the text!’ hissed a voice.

India read: ‘
6 cm dilated. Contractions stronger
.’

‘Stronger!’ snorted one of the women. ‘That means bloody agonising.’

‘You feel you’re being split in half,’ said another voice.

Lavinia was losing her audience. She felt a pang of sympathy for Buffy. Was this how actors felt, when trying to hold the stage?

India sighed. ‘The poor thing,’ she said. ‘I’m never going to have a baby.’

‘You will, pet,’ said somebody else. ‘You’ll forget about it once it’s over.’

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ asked somebody else. ‘Are you in a committed relationship?’

India shook her head and passed round the milk jug.

Lavinia soldiered on with her lecture. As she did, she felt something nagging at the back of her mind. One of the women, the one sitting beneath the poster of Buffy, looked familiar. A mousy specimen wearing a frilled blouse that made her resemble a piper in an Irish band. Where had she seen her before?

When the talk was over, Lavinia took out her list of names. Searching it, she recognised one.
Mary Taylor
.

The woman in question was standing at the bar, where Buffy was serving drinks. Lavinia read the address:
18 Willow Close, Ludlow
. So she was local. Maybe she had just seen her in town. At that moment the woman turned. She glanced at Lavinia, who was gathering up her papers. Was that a flicker of recognition?

It was only half an hour later, when Lavinia was driving home, that she remembered. Mary Taylor. The woman had been brought before her in court, for shoplifting.

The next morning Buffy had a granddaughter. A photo had been emailed showing a crumple-faced baby. Like all babies, it bore a striking resemblance to Charlie Drake. He told India this but of course she was too young to know what he was talking about.

Harold did. He and Buffy were discovering that they had a lot in common. They reminisced about the dwarfish, cigar-chomping comedian who they agreed was the least funny man on earth. Norman Wisdom, they also agreed, ran a close second. It was a beautiful morning. The two of them sat drinking coffee in the lounge. Outside in the garden was a sight to gladden Buffy’s heart: the entire class, busy weeding. They were tackling the far border – a row of rumps, bent over, with Gauleiter Balcombe patrolling up and down barking orders. ‘They look like pilgrims at Mecca,’ observed Harold. He had excused himself from physical exertion; like Buffy, he suffered from a bad back.

‘In the old days, of course, a bloke just went to the pub till it was over,’ said Buffy, remembering the birth of Quentin. Well,
not
remembering. In fact, he hadn’t been present for the birth of any of his progeny. Popsi had laboured alone, while he was getting drunk. Jacquetta had had both Tobias and Bruno by Caesarean section. She had unique complications, apparently – everything about her was both unique and complicated. Buffy still suspected that it was simple cowardice. The boys were delivered in a private hospital too; those were the glory days of voice-overs. Nyange’s mother was almost a stranger, while he had had no idea Celeste had even been born.

Sometimes Buffy wondered what his third wife, Penny, would have been like as a mother. Anybody less maternal would be hard to imagine. She was a hard-boiled hack through and through; even puppies and kittens left her cold, unless she had to write a soppy piece about them for
Woman’s Own
. Once, sentimental old fool that he was, he had asked her why she never looked at him with the same devotion that he looked at her. She had replied: ‘I don’t do dote.’

Harold had a daughter from his first marriage, who lived in Australia. She had recently had a baby, who burbled at him on Skype. ‘Talk about a hands-off grandfather,’ he said, relapsing into gloom. Pia, his second wife, had shown no interest in children.

‘It’s not too late,’ said Buffy. ‘You could start all over again. Plenty of men your age are pushing pushchairs around. Anyone here take your fancy?’

Harold shook his head. ‘I’m finished with all that. From now onwards I’m going to devote myself to my writing and my garden. Both are in a total mess.’

The door opened and Voda came in. ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she said to Buffy, ‘but your BAFTA’s gone missing from the bog.’

‘What?’

‘You haven’t taken it off to polish or something?’

‘Why on earth would I do that?’

She looked at him. ‘No. Silly question.’

Buffy followed her into the downstairs lavatory. His BAFTA had indeed disappeared from the windowsill.

‘You think it’s been stolen?’ asked Voda, wedged in there with him.

‘Who on earth would steal a BAFTA?’

‘It’s gold, isn’t it?’

‘Shouldn’t think so.’

‘It felt heavy enough.’ She squeezed past him back into the corridor. ‘I always said you should put it somewhere safe.’

The question was: where? The bedroom cupboard would certainly have been safe, but then nobody would know he had won it. On the other hand, pride of place in the lounge would have seemed too ostentatious. The lavatory had seemed the solution – lightly ironic, even humorous, yet there for everyone to see. Due to the shortage of bathrooms, the downstairs cloakroom was heavily patronised. Besides, if various interviews were to be believed, the more stylish Hollywood stars kept their Oscars in the toilet.

Buffy had won it for Best Supporting Actor in
Read My Lips
, a BBC drama about a deaf Holocaust survivor. Disability always cleaned up at the BAFTAs and the Auschwitz element clinched it. He had played a kindly speech therapist, sporting, for some reason, mutton-chop whiskers.

‘I remember that,’ said Harold. ‘You had an old Land Rover and a practice in Harley Street.’

‘Never quite got to grips with my backstory. I think I’d had a sheep farm at some point but they’d sacked the original writer so I never found out. There was also a puzzling reference to twins.’

‘Still, maybe the best performances are based on ambiguity.’ Harold paused. ‘Wish I’d thought of that to tell my students.’

Buffy gazed thoughtfully out of the window. ‘Do you really think one of them nicked it?’

Harold looked at the figures toiling in the garden, weeds heaped up around them. ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it? They look so middle class.’

‘They’re the worst.’

‘Maybe one of them’s a fan and wants a little piece of you.’

‘A big piece, excuse me. BAFTAs don’t grow on trees, you know.’

‘Maybe you should say something at dinner.’

‘I don’t want to poison the atmosphere,’ said Buffy. ‘Everyone’s getting on so well.’

They did seem to be a harmonious bunch. The birth had given a zip to things and bound the group together. Smartphones had been passed round at breakfast by those who had already been blessed with grandchildren, and photos exclaimed over. One of the ladies had even produced her laptop, whose screensaver featured her son’s triplets. It seemed a shame to introduce an element of suspicion.

And there was already a marked improvement in the garden. By lunchtime the bed had been cleared and, according to Lavinia, several rare shrubs had been revealed. The group tramped in, ruddy-faced and perspiring, and attacked the buffet lunch. A morning in the fresh air, they all agreed, had done them a power of good. Buffy had still not got to grips with all the names. He had got a little squiffy the previous evening and had lost his concentration. He didn’t usually touch the stuff, of course, but it wasn’t every day one celebrated a grandchild’s arrival. Whether they had all joined the course as a result of some marital break-up was not a question he felt he could ask, and besides, who cared? They were here, they were tucking in, and though it had started raining that didn’t matter as Lavinia was setting up her seed boxes in the bar, for the afternoon’s tutorial.

He was starting to warm towards Lavinia. She was one of the plainest women he had ever met and this, he thought, explained her bossiness. After all, beautiful women didn’t have to assert themselves; doors opened, barriers melted. Underneath the head-girl exterior, however, the turtleneck jumper and pearls, he sensed a women riven with insecurity. Even her lack of humour could be excused as a form of deprivation. All that wealth, you would think they would loosen up a bit. But then he had never understood the upper classes; he preferred to pity them. All that entitlement, all that privilege, those beautiful homes with their herbaceous borders, and yet Lavinia looked no happier than Connie at Costcutter’s.

So his heart ached for her when he snuck into the bar that afternoon and found half her audience asleep. And in those plastic chairs too! The morning’s weeding had exhausted them; Lavinia’s demonstration on pricking-out was accompanied by a snuffling chorus of snores. However, she was soldiering on. ‘I would recommend John Innes Number 2. Thoroughly soak the compost before you plant the seedlings.’

Buffy tiptoed to the bar counter, notebook in hand, to check the stock. Scanning the shelves, he noticed a gap. A bottle was missing – a full bottle of Jamaican rum. It had been there for months because nobody drank rum nowadays. Though, apparently, somebody did. He opened the honesty box – just a couple of pounds. Besides, that was for drinks, not for a whole bottle.

Buffy gazed at the snoozing guests, lolling in their chairs. Could there really be a thief in their midst? It was a horrible thought. He ran the place on openness and trust – my home is your home, read my books, play my CDs. His early plan to close off the lounge for his own use had never materialised; he liked people wandering in and out for a natter, and he could always retreat to the kitchen or his bedroom if he wanted to escape. Nothing had been stolen before, as far as he knew. In fact, the opposite seemed to be the case. People were always leaving things behind – scarves, brollies, books, sunglasses, body lotion, even a waxed jacket whose owner he had been unable to trace and which he had finally appropriated for himself. One could even say he made a modest profit in this respect.

Lavinia said: ‘These little chaps will produce their first flowers in early April and provide some much needed colour in your garden. At Tite Hall we plant them among the tulips, an idea I stole from Chatsworth.’

Buffy frowned at her. Perhaps
she
was the kleptomaniac. Everyone knew that the aristocracy had the morals of polecats, that’s how they became aristocrats in the first place. Perhaps she was prey to uncontrollable urges like Lady Isobel Barnett, famous TV personality and shoplifter!

India and Voda wouldn’t know about the Barnett woman, of course; she was before their time, like Charlie Drake. He had better tell them, however, about this latest theft.

Buffy left the bar and went down the corridor to the kitchen. It was empty except for the dog, asleep on the rag rug. There was a delicious smell of baking.

Harold had wandered into the kitchen for a chat. Voda was making a cake. After she had poured the mixture into the cake tin she let him lick the spoon, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy, back in Golders Green. He also discovered that she kept hens. He told her about his own chickens, now fully feathered but repulsive in a new way.

‘They’ve developed very unattractive scaly legs,’ he said.

‘That’ll be scaly leg,’ she said.

‘It’s called that, is it?’

She nodded. ‘It’s caused by the scaly leg mite.’

‘Fancy that. So what do I do about it?’

‘You need some scaly leg mite powder. They sell it at Bob’s Poultry Supplies.’

She said that Bob’s Poultry Supplies was situated on the industrial estate beyond the bypass, and offered to take him there.

‘You’ll never find it, and I need a break.’ She slid the cake into the oven and wiped her hands. As they walked along the hallway, Lavinia’s plummy voice could be heard in the bar. Harold was playing truant again, but what the hell. He was an adult, he could do what he liked. Whatever pricking-out was, he didn’t know and he would never discover. After all, he’d managed without it up to now.

Voda, square and sturdy, wore a striped poncho thing and sequinned trainers. Her dreadlocks were tied up in what looked like a duster. He considered the nostril stud ill-advised, it resembled a bogey, but there was something satisfying about Voda’s looks – an autumnal wholesomeness, like a russet apple. Apparently her boyfriend was a tosser and currently banged up in prison. Harold already felt protective of this plucky young poncho-wearer. Buffy said she worked like a navvy, was always cheerful, and could be depended on in a crisis. And the woman ran the darts team! Was there no end to her talents? Harold learned this as they walked past the pub, where she was waylaid by a cheery old drunk who congratulated her on their latest win.

‘That’s Walter,’ she said as they walked on. ‘He used to breed shire horses. Once he was doing a ploughing contest with one of his mares, who’d just foaled, and he got so thirsty that he stopped her, bent underneath and had a drink from her teat.’

Voda was full of such stories. How Connie, who worked at Costcutter’s, had once been a man. How Robbie, who ran the deli, had a secret second family in Plymouth. How Dafydd, the barman at the Knockton Arms Hotel, had decamped to Goa with a busty Russian, where he had set up a diving school and partied the nights away on the beach. ‘Then one day his arm was paralysed by a jellyfish sting, and while he was in hospital she scarpered with his savings, so he crawled home, tail between his legs, and begged his wife to take him back. But she’d changed the locks and become an MP.’