Heartbreak Hotel (7 page)

And somewhere, deep down, she suspected that Neville considered her job trivial. He was a serious man with a social conscience. He was campaigning against the closure of the local hospice and the opening of a Tesco. All day he sat at his laptop firing off emails. He said he was as busy as ever, God knew how he had ever found time to go to work.

Neville tried to make a joke of it but she knew he was humiliated – so humiliated that he had kept it a secret all those weeks. ‘I’m redundant,’ he said. ‘All men are redundant. You don’t even need our sperm any more.’ Not that there was any danger of that; his libido seemed to have died away completely. Amy blushed to think of her attempts to arouse him. Nowadays he often stayed working at his desk when she went to bed; she could feel him, through the wall, willing her to fall asleep. Or he would yawn theatrically and say how whacked he was. ‘And those lentils, don’t you feel bloated?’ he asked her as they undressed. ‘Do we have any Rennies?’

Amy stubbed out her cigarette and went back to work. Nowadays Neville even slept in his T-shirt and underpants, his personal cordon sanitaire. He had become her house husband, bitter and desexed, and it was all the fault of the recession.
Those fucking bankers
, he said.
Spawn of Satan
. He had gone on a march and even sprayed a building with graffiti, that’s how angry he was. Even insects had suffered from his fury. In their early days he had charmed Amy by helping a spider out of the bath with his flannel. Now he squirted fly spray around willy-nilly, as if he was targeting hedge-fund managers, or whoever it was who had got them into this mess.

She rubbed foundation into Eldon’s skin. It was ravaged by decades of smoking; Polyfilla would be more appropriate. ‘Remember my old mucker Russell Buffery?’ he asked her. ‘You were working on
Miss Marple
with us, you were practically in nappies. Big fat beardy bloke. He played a master of hounds. Just a small part. He called it a cameo, of course.’

Amy thought for a moment. ‘Oh yes, and it turned out he couldn’t ride.’

Eldon chuckled. ‘He kept quiet about that, the old rogue.’

‘I remember,’ she said. ‘They had to use a stunt double for the action scenes, the producer was well pissed off.’

‘Anyway, I bumped into him last week. Turns out he’s running a B&B in the wilds of Wales. Now that’s something I would pay good money to see. Chap can’t open a tin.’ He paused. ‘Gave up the acting, or should I say the acting gave up on him. Bit too fond of the old Cab Sav.’ He leaned forward, inspecting his face. ‘Still, pots and kettles. I’m bloody lucky to get this gig, we’re none of us getting any younger. And to tell the truth, I miss the old tosser.’

At the time Amy was hardly listening. She was thinking about Neville. No, she wasn’t. She was thinking about one of the extras.

They were filming in Stamford, a town somewhere near Peterborough. Amy left the unit base and arrived on set. The high street had been transformed, its tarmac spread with earth and horse droppings, its shops dressed as haberdashers and whatnot. They were filming a big, complex scene and the place was the usual mixture of order and chaos, rare-breed pigs milling around, the megaphone booming. Amy spotted the extra straight away. He looked great in breeches – tall, skinny, brown curly hair. No doubt that was the reason he was playing a toff, strolling past the Assembly Rooms.

Do you want to get married? Is that it?
She thought: Catch Jane Austen writing something like that. No wonder people flock to her movies. In Jane Austen films it was guys who looked like that dropping on bended knee.
Would you do me the honour of consenting to be my wife?

She remembered that night in the bath, when she had burst into tears. Did she really want to die childless and alone? Would Neville do?

‘Coming to the bar tonight or are you going home?’ asked one of the grips. Tomorrow was a free day and Amy was planning to drive back to London.

At that moment the guy in breeches, leaning against a wall, caught Amy’s eye. He grinned.

Amy said: ‘I’m staying here.’

NCOL. Not Counted On Location
.

The extra’s name was Keith. He ran a record shop on the high street. Its frontage had been dressed as a butcher’s emporium, the window hung with rabbits. When Amy snuck in that evening, however, she found that behind the carcasses the interior was unchanged. Keith now wore drainpipe jeans. He looked younger now, a scattering of pimples on his chin.

‘They’re always filming here,’ he said. ‘Last time I was a Yokel with Cow. Don’t know how you stand all the hanging about, it would drive me mental. Afterwards I had a drink with the focus puller.’

She recognised his small-town swagger, having grown up in Leamington Spa herself. She warmed to him simply because he wasn’t Neville and her heart didn’t sink when he walked through the door. How quickly it was all unravelling!

The laughter went first; that had disappeared a long time ago. She remembered their early days, driving past a cenotaph. Its sign said
Polish War Memorial
. ‘Should have brought my duster,’ said Neville. Last month she had driven past it again and tears had sprung to her eyes; he would never joke like that now. Nowadays in the car he was tense and abstracted, only breaking the silence to groan when a Tory Cabinet minister came on the radio.

Amy thought: Why does he listen to Radio 4 when it only irritates him? Why not bellow along to the tunes on Radio 1, like I do when I’m alone? Why not have some fun?

Keith had brought in some beers. He cracked open a couple of cans.

‘I recognised some of them,’ he said. ‘That actress, she was in that thing on the telly. Do you get to talk to them?’

Amy told him about her job, about which stars had nips and tucks, about the backstage dramas.

‘This is just between ourselves,’ she said. ‘Don’t you dare tweet.’

Keith’s interest pleased her; it had been a long time since she had explained her work. He seemed to find it glamorous; not trivial at all. She longed to touch him; to feel the voltage of a strange body.

He drained his beer. ‘What tunes do you fancy?’

‘It’s your shop, you choose.’

He jumped up and put a record on the turntable.
Wild thing, you make my heart sing
.

‘Come on, you.’ He pulled her to her feet. ‘Let’s have a dance.’

‘But I thought it was your day off.’ Neville’s voice on the phone. ‘I’ve bought a guineafowl.’

‘I’m sorry, Nev, it’s a pain in the arse. We had all these retakes and then we lost the light, so we’ve got to finish the scene tomorrow, the schedule’s shot to pieces.’ Amy could feel the blush rising.

‘Poor you,’ he said. ‘Well, get a good night’s sleep.’

Amy slept, with Keith in her arms, in her room in the Peterborough Heritage Lodge. It was yards from the ring road but no sound penetrated its perma-sealed windows. She lay in a timeless, airless capsule, clothes strewn across the floor, closed off from the outside world; closed off even from the other members of the crew who slumbered in nearby rooms.
NCOL
.

Keith whimpered in his sleep. It felt intimate, to hear these mewlings without the knowledge of their owner. More intimate than the sex. Keith had been an energetic, workmanlike lover, making her come twice and then turning her over, her face buried in the pillow, for his own shuddering climax. She was warmed with erotic gratitude as she lay there sniffing his sweat. It had been years since she had fucked a man she knew nothing about, not even his surname. She had forgotten how affectionate two bodies could be when they were cut adrift from their lives and owed each other nothing. Why couldn’t it always be this simple?

The next day Keith fetched her a helmet and loaded her onto his motorbike. It was a molten September morning; sunlight bathed the car park.

‘Ever seen one of these before?’ He stroked the flank of the machine. ‘Thought not. It’s a Triumph Speed Triple, see. They only made a few hundred of these babies – low-weight, fantastic torque and as much roadholding as any headbanger could want. Plus, of course, she’s black.’

They rode into the fens, along empty roads leading nowhere, roads straight as rulers, the distant tarmac dissolving in a mirage. Amy yelled into his helmet: ‘My boyfriend’s got a pushbike!’ But the wind snatched her words away.

Keith stopped beside a canal. She flung herself on the grass while he rolled a joint.

‘The sky’s so
big
, somehow,’ she said.

‘Yeah, everyone says that.’

‘I love this time of year.’ Suddenly she sat up. ‘Shit. I’ve just realised what day it is.’

‘What?’

‘September 11th.’

He looked puzzled. ‘What?’

‘September 11th,’ she said. ‘Twin Towers?’

‘Oh. Yeah.’ He lit the joint and passed it to her. ‘That was a bummer.’ He indicated the road. ‘I got busted along here. Hundred and twenty miles an hour, I was doing. It was on the Honda CB 900. Fast as fuck but it had no soul. Plus, the alternator kept frying.’

Amy’s heart sank. They should have said their goodbyes after breakfast. She suddenly missed Neville, alone with his guineafowl and his dashed hopes. She felt a lurch of guilt. How could she race around the countryside, quite apart from the other thing, when Neville was miserable and jobless?

Keith was talking about his shop. ‘There’s no money in vinyl any more, the internet’s killed it. And I’ve been paying an arm and a leg for the lease, £12,000 a year, would you believe that?’

And at least Neville was interested in world affairs. Most of it had gone over her head, but at least he wasn’t boring.

‘To tell the truth,’ said Keith, ‘I’m thinking of packing it in.’

Amy took a final drag and stood up. ‘Shall we go?’

They rode a few more miles. They had a burger in a cafe and some perfunctory sex in a wood, but then it clouded over and this gave them an excuse to return to the hotel. Pulling off the helmet, she shook her hair loose. She was so relieved at leaving Keith that she kissed him warmly.

‘It was fun last night,’ she said. ‘I think that every day people should have a dance. Keep them out of mischief.’

He grinned. ‘Not in your case.’

Just for a moment she fancied him again, and then he was gone. Listening to the roar of his bike fading, she thought: I bet he’s as relieved as I am.

It all unravelled that autumn. She and Neville had been tied by a slender thread – sexual attraction, loneliness. In her heart of hearts she knew they had little in common. During her long absences they reverted to their former selves; on her return it took them a while to readjust to each other. This time, however, the thread had snapped. Neville had closed himself off; he no longer made the effort to discuss anything except the need for more Hoover bags. Depression had made him elderly and irritable; now he disliked all the presenters on the
Today
programme, instead of just two.

In the old days lovemaking would have restored them to each other but that had petered out. Her guilt about Keith disappeared – would Neville even have minded? – and she stopped shaving her legs. Did this always happen, sooner or later? She had no idea; none of her previous relationships had lasted this long.

The final unravelling happened fast. She had brought home some shopping from Tesco’s, a shop he hated.

‘Well, I was in a hurry,’ she said, glancing at his laptop, open on the kitchen table. He had been playing chess.
Chess
. He had told her he was sending off a job application.

‘What’s this?’ He held up a plastic packet.

‘Rosemary. You said you were cooking a lamb thing with rosemary.’

He held it close to her face. ‘Read that.’

‘What?’

‘The price.’

She looked. ‘£1.25.’

He grabbed her hand. ‘Come here.’

Her heart jumped. Was he going to drag her to bed? But he swung round the other way, yanked open the kitchen door and bundled her into the garden. He pointed to a bush.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘How should I know?’

‘
Look
, woman!’ He broke off a branch. ‘It’s
rosemary
! Here, in your fucking garden! A huge fucking bush of it.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ she said. ‘Does it matter?’

‘You haven’t a clue, have you?’ Neville stared at her wildly. The wind whipped the hair across his face. ‘Oh, I give up. What’s the point of it all? It’s all a bloody waste of time, we’re all fucked.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When even a bright woman like you, after all I’ve told you – when even
you
go to Tesco’s,
Tesco’s
, and spend £1.25 on something that’s growing right under your nose.’

‘It’s my money,’ she said. ‘Can’t I spend it how I want?’

‘Thanks for reminding me!’

‘What I meant was –’

‘How do you think I feel, spongeing off you?’

‘You don’t sponge. Anyway, you’ve got your redundancy –’

‘I’m useless. Go on, say it!’ He stared at her, distraught, the branch trembling in his hand. ‘I’m useless, I can’t even get it up any more, no wonder you don’t want to have my baby, I’m a useless snivelling hopeless failure banging on about things nobody gives a toss about and I’m not surprised you don’t want me because nobody else does either!’

He flung the branch over the wall and slammed into the house.

It started to rain. Amy stood there, stunned. The guy was mad. Yet the whole scene had had an awful inevitability to it; she knew, at that moment, that it was over.

The next day Neville moved out to his sister’s house. He took everything with him. All that remained was a half-empty bottle of mouthwash and a DVD of
Brokeback Mountain
, free with the
Mail on Sunday
, a newspaper of which he disapproved.

That evening the boiler broke down. Amy sat huddled in the kitchen, eating a takeaway pizza. She had lit the gas rings but it was still freezing. She pushed her chair closer to the oven, which had never been clean in the past and would never be so clean again. Misery rose in her throat, like nausea. She thought: A herb brought us together and a herb drove us apart.

Two months passed. Amy stood at the carousel at Heathrow, waiting for her suitcase. She had been in Johannesburg, working on a Bacardi ad. The rest of the crew had retrieved their bags and gone. Only the cameraman remained, talking on his mobile.