Heartbreak Hotel (8 page)

‘Who’s a clever boy,’ he said. ‘You can do it all by yourself now? What did Mummy say?’

Just a few bags were appearing now, trundling into view. A black couple loaded a vast suitcase onto their trolley and wheeled it away.

‘How many puppies?’ asked the cameraman. ‘Did you get to stroke them? … Mmm, well, we’ll see about that. Maybe if you’re a
really
good boy. Ah, here’s my bag.’ With one hand he heaved it off the carousel. Still hunched over his mobile he walked away, swallowed up into his other life.

Amy stood alone; around her, voices echoed from afar. It was late and most of the carousels were stilled. She scratched the mosquito bite on her wrist. For some reason she thought about her brother, who had died at six months and was never mentioned. He would be thirty now, with children of his own. She pictured herself as their spinster auntie, spoiling them. Maybe she would have bought them a puppy. His wife, a woman he would never know, who had another family now, would baulk at this gift but would finally welcome this new addition to the family.

The tannoy boomed.
Please keep your luggage with you at all times
. Finally Amy’s suitcase nudged open the flap and hove into view. It looked so solitary. Red and brave, vastly travelled, but alone in the world.

Midnight, and Amy lugged her suitcase from the Tube. It was January, and bitterly cold. Bent against the wind, she trudged past the closed library, past the glare of the kebab shop. Back home, mail was heaped on the doormat –
While You Were Out
cards for undelivered parcels, a flyer for the Conservative Party. The kitchen remained in the same state of chaos in which she had left it, though the smell was more powerful now; she hadn’t been able to locate it and had hoped it would have disappeared by the time she got home. Why should it? She had no idea.

Amy sat down and lit a cigarette. What a relief that Neville wasn’t around! She needn’t shiver in the garden. She could do whatever she liked – stay up all night, stay in bed all day watching YouTube stuff on her computer, let the flat sink into deeper squalor with nobody to tut at her, read celebrity gossip, have her old mate Josie around whom Neville found annoying …

It was two o’clock. Amy had been sitting there for a long time. Stiffly she rose to her feet. The thought of washing seemed too laborious so she lay down on the bed fully-clothed and pulled the duvet over herself. She could fart in bed, too; just another of the many advantages of living alone.

The next morning she could bear it no longer. Her eyes were sore from crying. She splashed water on her face and tried to pull herself together. At nine o’clock she finally plucked up courage and dialled the number of Neville’s sister.

After some pleasant chit-chat she asked: ‘Er, is Neville around?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ said his sister. ‘They’re in Tenerife.’

‘What?’

‘Just for a week.’ There was a silence. ‘Oh heck, have I put my foot in it?’

‘No, no, of course not.’

‘I thought you knew.’

Her name was Alice. She and Neville had met while mucking out the pigsty at the City Farm. It turned out that they were saving up for the deposit on a flat.

‘Still pouring with rain.’ Frieda stood at the window.

‘Absolutely bucketing,’ said Iris.

Buffy was still in his apron, though breakfast was long since over. He stood beside his guests, gazing into the street. Rain lashed down. A hunched figure ran to a car and jumped in, slamming the door. In the Coffee Cup opposite, disconsolate figures could be seen through the steamed-up windows, killing time in their cagoules.

‘Looks like it’s settled in for the day,’ he said.

Frieda and Iris were schoolteachers, both retired. Buffy presumed they were lesbians, they shared a twin-bedded room, though they might have just been saving the pennies. They were both squarely built, however, with no-nonsense haircuts. Their hiking boots waited by the door.

‘We’d been planning on tackling Hergest Ridge,’ said Iris.

‘Then a pub lunch,’ said Frieda.

‘Just our luck,’ said Iris.

There was a silence.

‘You can’t go out in this,’ said Buffy.

‘But …’ The word hung in the air. It was half past ten, they should have been out of the house by now.

‘Come on,’ said Buffy. ‘I’ll make us some coffee.’

After some half-hearted protestations they moved to the back room, the sitting room which was vaguely Buffy’s, though he hadn’t quite laid down the boundaries. Where did his life end and theirs begin? He had been sharing his home for a month now with various guests but hadn’t got round to staking out his own territory. This was mainly due to sloth. Bridie had apparently been stricter about her own space but then she had been a professional.

Besides, he was a gregarious chap. It had been the rainiest May on record, and, on many occasions, guests had been trapped in the house all morning because he hadn’t the heart to kick them out. This had resulted in some surprisingly revealing chats with the random collection of strangers who found their inhibitions loosened by the knowledge that they would never meet again. It reminded Buffy of life on tour, but with a constant change of cast. And if he needed to retreat there was always the kitchen, the warmest room in the house, where he had installed his own TV and a rack full of bargain bottles from Costcutter, his wine merchant of choice.

Buffy put on the kettle. Voda was talking on the phone in the utility room. ‘Yes, sir, we do have a vacancy then but it’s filling up fast,’ she said. ‘I suggest you make a firm booking.’

It was a lie, of course, but it often did the trick. The girl was a marvel; he had become pathetically reliant on her. In fact, without Voda the whole business wouldn’t have got off the ground at all. She had cleaned the house from top to bottom and got her brother to fix the lethal electrics. She had emailed the previous guests and informed them that Myrtle House was reopening under new management, dogs welcome. She had set up a website, with a link to the tourist board and various cycling and rambling magazines. And now that the guests were arriving – in dribs and drabs, but these were early days – she laundered the sheets and cooked the breakfasts. At first Buffy had taken command in the kitchen but as black smoke poured out of the Raeburn Voda had elbowed him aside and done the job herself. ‘It’s not like cooking for your kids,’ she said. ‘Our customers are actually paying for this, you know.’

So he had taken on the less taxing role of skivvy. After all, he was used to receiving orders from a director; as long as he hit his marks the two of them worked amicably as a team. And he remained mine host, meeting and greeting, serving at table and generally running the show. He liked a house full of people, it reminded him of the old days of his marriages.

He could admit it now; the bachelor years at Blomfield Mansions had been bloody lonely. Now, when he locked up, he could almost feel his customers slumbering upstairs, warm mammals safe for the night. And though there were occasional complaints, for example the erratic hot water in the bathroom, so far these had been voiced in a mild, apologetic manner as if it were all the guests’ fault. How simple such complaints were, compared to the complex, passive-aggressive guilt trips laid on by his wives, or the strident accusations of his children!

‘I was saying to Iris, weren’t you in that thing?’

‘What thing?’ asked Buffy, pouring out the coffee.

‘That thing set in an old people’s home.’

‘No, silly,’ said Iris. ‘That was Michael Gambon.’

It turned out that they were keen theatregoers. They passed a pleasant hour listening to Buffy’s reminiscences. How his old mate Eldon James, well in his cups, had gone to see a show only to realise, when the curtain went up, that he was supposed to be in it. How he himself, in his final public appearance, had played a bedridden patriarch and during one performance had fallen asleep.

‘Not that it mattered,’ he said. ‘It was a deathbed scene anyway. That’s the problem with being old, one gets the snuffing-it roles. Johnny Gielgud must have died fifty times before he finally shuffled off this mortal coil. At least he’d had some practice.’

Outside the rain was still drumming on the veranda roof. Far off, the church clock struck twelve.

‘Time for a snort.’ Buffy got to his feet. ‘Glass of Pinot Grigio, anyone?’

‘Oh no, we couldn’t …’

‘Come on, keep me company.’

The two women looked at each other. ‘We don’t usually drink in the middle of the day.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ said Buffy. The other one being
I don’t usually have a proper breakfast
. Those were always the guests who packed it away – sausages, black pudding, the full monty.

‘But don’t you have anything else to do?’ asked Freida.

‘No,’ said Buffy.

‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Iris. ‘And, well, we are on holiday, I suppose.’

They all said that, too. Buffy returned with a bottle and glasses. Those who protested the most, he had discovered, always knocked it back the fastest. They settled down for a natter. It turned out that Iris had a brother who was going through a midlife crisis.

‘Earring, ponytail, the lot,’ she said. ‘And now he’s joined his son’s band, he plays the guitar … he wears this little waistcoat, and his
tummy
… Oh, the young are so forgiving.’

‘Not in my experience,’ said Buffy. But then he could hardly blame them. And in fact, as time passed things had improved between him and his offspring as they found themselves stumbling through the same mistakes that he himself had made. Frieda and Iris were good listeners; lesbians often were, in his experience. He found himself talking about Celeste, the daughter who had suddenly appeared in his life, popped up from nowhere, aged twenty-three.

‘You can’t mean nowhere,’ said Iris. ‘Who was her mother? Who were you with, all those years ago?’

‘Well, I was vaguely with Lorna,’ said Buffy.

‘Not that vaguely,’ said Iris, emboldened by the wine.

‘It was just an on–off thing, she never told me she was pregnant, and then she got a job in a show and I didn’t see her again.’

The two women listened, wide-eyed, as he told them the story of how Celeste tracked him down, how she had got a job in his local chemist’s shop and finally revealed that she was his long-lost daughter. Frieda’s eyes filled with tears. My God he was enjoying himself! A glass of wine, an appreciative audience – what more could an old performer want?

Voda put her head through the door. ‘Just popping out.’ It was visiting day in Shrewsbury Gaol. Glancing at the bottle, at the two women who looked settled in for the duration, she caught Buffy’s eye.
You old softie
.

Then there were the couples. Lance and Janet Pritchard hogged the only bathroom until half past ten one morning. Giggles and splashes could be heard in the corridor where the other guest, a timid geologist, reappeared at intervals clutching his towel. Though there were two showers, one was broken and the other attached to Buffy’s bedroom. Buffy had to finally scoop up his clothes from the floor and usher the chap into his sanctuary. At eleven, an hour after the official kicking-out time, the Pritchards appeared in the dining room, smug and flushed. Word seemed to have got around that the rules were somewhat relaxed at Myrtle House; perhaps people were Facebooking or something. Buffy didn’t have the heart to make a fuss; instead, he felt a pang for the past, for creaking beds and the raised eyebrows of proprietors less tolerant than himself.

Besides, it was raining again. In fact, a gale was blowing. Though Knockton was only a mile from the English border its weather was unmistakably Welsh. Buffy kicked Fig into the garden and shut the door with a shudder. There was no question of a constitutional that morning and, fond though he had become of his town, it offered little by the way of diversions even on a Saturday. Shopping and a gossip were unappealing prospects in the pouring rain, and the lure of a Yes You Can Sing session at the British Legion wasn’t powerful enough to get him out of the house.

The geologist, undaunted, had disappeared for the day. The Pritchards, however, stood side by side at the dining-room window, a stance with which Buffy was only too familiar.

‘We could go on that tour of eco homes,’ said Janet.

‘In this?’ said Lance, staring at the rain.

‘Or that model railway museum,’ she said. ‘In that place I can’t pronounce.’ She looked at him. ‘You like model railways, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, when I was six.’

She looked at the brochure. ‘There’s a Kraft Fayre in the Assembly Rooms.’

Lance didn’t reply.

‘Look!’ She pointed to the page. ‘“Shiatsu for People, Dogs and Horses”! Isn’t that funny?’

‘Very funny.’

There was a silence.

‘We could go to Aberystwyth,’ she said.

‘Why the hell would we want to go to Aberystwyth?’

‘It’s beside the sea.’

‘Or we could go home,’ said Lance.

She froze. ‘What?’

Buffy, who was squirting Pledge on the tables, paused.

‘This isn’t working, is it?’ said Lance. ‘I’m packing. You coming?’ He strode across the room, bumping into a table, and briefly glanced at Buffy. ‘Sorry, pal, I’ll pay for tonight.’ And he was gone.

Janet sat down on a chair and burst into tears.

* * *

An hour later the three of them were in the sitting room, working their way through a second bottle of Rioja.

‘He’s always up a ladder doing something or other,’ said Janet. ‘He never talks to me.’

‘You’re the one who wanted the maisonette,’ said Lance. ‘I told you it needed work.’

‘We used to have a laugh,’ she said.

‘You sounded happy enough this morning,’ said Buffy. He was going to add
in the bath
, but stopped.

‘I do crack jokes,’ said Lance. ‘You just don’t find them funny any more.’

‘This weekend, it was going to be our second honeymoon,’ she told Buffy. ‘Lance had a terrible childhood. His stepfather used to lock him in the boot of the car when he went to play golf.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Buffy.