Hotel Midnight (7 page)

All you have to do is take a step back … and see for
yourself
….

As my grandfather used to tell me, ‘James, ladies first.’

So, in case my late grandfather is peering sternly over my shoulder as I write: I’m married to Piet. She moved from Sri Lanka with her parents when she was nine. Now, twenty years later, she occupies a hundred-year-old detached house in Mill Bank Road, Thorpe Sneaton, in that Texas of England, Yorkshire. She shares this redbrick homestead with one husband (that’s me), one five-year-old son called Admar, plus a Dalmatian that
sometimes
(when in a compliant mood) answers to Woody. My name is Jim Shillito. Now, the name Shillito casts its own peculiar shadow down the family line. I’ll explain. For many people their surname is a message in a bottle from their ancestors. Generally, your surname reveals the occupation, or birthplace, or salient characteristic of your ancestor. If your family name is Smith then your forefathers for generations were probably blacksmiths, or silversmiths. Metal workers of some variety anyway. If a Cooper, then way back your family made barrels. A Clark, or Clarke?
Self-explanatory
, they wielded a quill. If your family name is Mason, Farmer, Fisher, Tanner, Carpenter, Hunter, Taylor, then there’s no need to ask. Places bred surnames, too. Look in the telephone directory for people by the name of London, Wakefield, Rotherham, York, and Scott. Some names delineated a family trait: King might indicate a line of pompous sons (‘With ideas above their station,’ my grandfather might have added with a disapproving sniff). Sparrow, a bird-like family. For names like Tart and Crapper I can only invite your own interpretation. OK, I admit it, I’m only teasing about the last two. My family name, as I’ve mentioned already, is Shillito. It’s a corruption of ‘silly toe’. The name is rooted in the feet of all of us who bear that name. We suffered some deformity; one we were born with, rather than an injury acquired later in life. After all, we’d already have a surname by the time our forefather dropped the anvil on his foot or stepped into a threshing machine.

My name is Shillito. One of the proofs of genetics lies in my big toes. Just like my ancestor of a thousand years ago I, too, have a silly toe. I was born with broad flat toes that always meant I required bigger shoe sizes than my friends at school. What’s more, I’ve never ever grown a nail on my big toe, which is more properly known by anatomists as the Hallux. My other toes have ordinary nails: small and pink and glossy. My big toes just have every-day skin where the tough, horny protein known as keratin should be staking claim to that part of my anatomy.

Birth defects, hair colour, facial characteristics, and body shape – they are the way our long dead ancestors reach out to us from the past. Not only to touch us, but also to mould the way we are. Even the way we think. My grandfather abhorred the idea of eating in the street. Seeing people walking along relentlessly chewing gum irritates me. Thanks Granddad. Not only have I inherited the silly toe, but also you’ve passed on the quirky
detestation
of ambulatory mastication. Try saying that sentence aloud after a snifter or two.

My God. Come to think of it, he had a habit of couching simple explanations in convoluted phrases. Bear with me then. I’ve my grandfather’s propensity for talking like he’s downloaded the
Oxford English Dictionary
into his skull. But the point I’m striving to hammer home is that the past
isn’t
history. The past doesn’t evaporate into nothingness, like a pan of water left to boil dry. It’s always there. It’s just back around the corner where we can’t always see it, or easily access it, but it’s there all the same.

Last week Piet sat at the kitchen table marking her students’ history homework. I broke brittle straws of dried spaghetti before feeding them into a pan of boiling water. Every so often, I gave the bolognaise sauce a quick stir. Admar threw a squeaky toy for Woody, the Dalmatian, on our back lawn. It was a beautiful
easy-going
summer’s evening. The kitchen smelt wonderfully of garlic, thyme and oregano. Those are my feel-good aromas. They remind me of Friday nights, of sharing a bottle of wine with Piet, while eating our supper in front of the television.

‘You’ve got all weekend to mark those,’ I told her, nodding at the stack of exercise books

‘Exactly – I have a full weekend ahead of me. I don’t want to be working on my two days off if I can help it.’

I smiled as I prodded the last of the spaghetti into the pan. ‘Whoever said that teachers have an easy life?’

‘Tell me any who do and I’ll string ’em up.’ She spoke with genuine feeling as she pushed swathes of heavy black hair back across her shoulder. For school, she favoured Western-style blouses and skirts, but before supper she’d change into silken trousers and a flowing top that was more in keeping with her Asian birthplace. Her eyes were a chestnut brown that sparkled as she talked. And the way she talked. She leaned forward, her head pushed toward me, as if eager to hear what I said. Now she sent her red pen darting across the page. She corrected dates, spellings of names, perhaps even deleted a fallacy or two.

As I waited for the pasta to soften I made small-talk. ‘So. What do the kids make of World War One?’

‘Hardly kids, they’re fifteen.’

‘OK, what do your students make of World War One?’

She smiled. ‘World War One was last week; this week we’re fighting World War Two.’

‘My, how time flies.’

‘We have to reach Margaret Thatcher and the impact of the Miners’ strike by the end of the month.’

‘From 1939 to 1984 in eight days? Your students will be dizzy. You’re dashing them through a whole century.’

Piet nodded as she neatly inscribed a mark in the margin. ‘Needs must. They have their year end test in June.’

‘Poor wretches.’

‘In years to come I don’t think many of them will worry too much over which British Prime Minister declared war on Germany in 1939.’

‘But the irony is that even though the Allies beat the Nazis – those lords of untruth – we don’t teach our children history: we immerse them in propaganda.’

‘James.’ She shot me a warning glance. ‘Not this again.’

‘It’s true.’

‘Maybe, but I’m a history teacher not Minister for Education.’

‘But do you present your pupils with at least
some
of those historical facts that are always overlooked?’

‘I’d love to, you know that, James. But teachers don’t have time to deviate from the syllabus.’

‘The government approved syllabus.’

‘The government approved syllabus,’ she repeated with a sigh. ‘Yes. I know it’s unsatisfactory … just what am I supposed to do?’

‘Take time to give them the facts they’d never normally hear.’

‘Then I don’t meet my curriculum deadlines; that’s when I don’t get next year’s teaching contract.’

‘And that’s when you end up unemployed like me.’

‘You’re not unemployed.’ Her expression hardened as she returned to marking the books. ‘You’re an archeologist, James. One who is between placements.’

This was a point that was sore to say the least, so I skated round it. ‘But we brainwash our children into believing a standardized version of history.’

‘I know, James. That’s the way it is.’

‘That’s what they said when they were burning witches.’

‘OK, I agree.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Today I taught them about the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day. I told them about the American and British amphibious landings, but I committed the customary sin of not mentioning that there were Commonwealth soldiers there. Nor did I tell them that there were exiled German troops fighting on our side. Or, for that matter, the Second World War didn’t start simply because Germany invaded Poland. Russia attacked Poland the same day as the Germans. We only declared war because Britain had a binding pact with Poland that we’d fight Germany if they crossed Polish borders. Britain turned a blind eye to Russia’s aggression.’

‘It’s not just the wars, it’s the whole view of history. On
television
if you see a costume drama set in Tudor times it’s full of white faces but in sixteenth-century London you’d find black men and women, too. By the time of Queen Victoria you could go to a restaurant and stuff your face with a curry. In 1897 the streets weren’t full of horse-drawn vehicles, it’s a little known fact that—’

‘There were electric cars, I know.’

‘So instead of the clip-clop of the hansom cab on a foggy night in Baker Street you could just as easily hear the purr of
battery-powered
Bersey Hummingbirds, carrying the great and the bloody good home from their dinner parties. Or that …’ I stopped, then gave an apologetic smile. ‘I’m preaching to the converted again, aren’t I?’

‘You are, James.’ She returned my smile. ‘You’re perfectly right, of course.’ She tapped a history textbook with the tip of her pen. ‘This is dogma, not history.’ With a sigh she put the last marked book onto the pile. ‘Another propaganda drone has completed her task of indoctrinating the young for the day. All done.’

‘I’m sorry for lecturing you,’ I told her. ‘Being at home not working is frustrating … bloody frustrating. I just want to get out and dig something. Get my bloody spade … start hacking through the dirt.’

‘Aren’t archeologists supposed to exercise a little more finesse?’

‘I’m itching to strip the top-soil from a Roman villa. Then get down to peeling back layers of building rubble right down into the hypocaust. Although at this rate I’ll settle for raking over a wartime cabbage patch.’

‘A first-rate archeologist like you?’ Piet stood up to kiss me on the lips. ‘You’ll soon get another job.’

‘Oh, by the blood of all the hairy-arsed gods of yore, give me something I can get my teeth into.
Anything.’
I took a bottle of wine from the rack, then I plunged the corkscrew into the cork as if stabbing the thing. ‘A pristine iron-age settlement – or one of the great henges. Only not another bloody nineteenth-century bottle factory please.’

The cork popping from the bottle seemed to release a strange sound. A scream that rose into a searing squeal. I stared at the bottle. How could removing the cork emit a sound like that?

Piet hurried to the door. ‘Oh, no what’s he done to Woody now?’

I understood. It wasn’t the bottle emitting the shriek: it had come from the dog. For some reason my wife suspected our son of accidentally hurting the animal. We left the house to find Admar kneeling with his arm round Woody’s neck.

Admar hugged the dog while shouting, ‘Stop that! Stop that! I’ll get you back!’ The boy yelled the words in the direction of the orchard at the bottom of the garden.

‘Admar, what’s the matter, honey?’ Piet asked.

‘The man hurt Woody.’

‘Which man? Where is he?’ Now I looked round the garden for an intruder.

Admar’s eyes flashed with rage. ‘He went back over the fence.’ He pointed in the direction of the apple trees.

I ran down through the trees to the bottom of the garden. The fence there is a low one; it’d be easy for an adult to vault over into the farmer’s field beyond. I expected to find a local youth who’d decided to make a nuisance of himself. Only there was nothing but meadow. It ran down to a stream lined with willow. The intruder would have had to run like the wind to reach the cover of the trees. Then maybe they had because I couldn’t see anyone now.

Piet appeared beside me. She held her hand to her eyes as she scanned the field. ‘Anything?’

‘Didn’t see anyone.’

‘Well the bastard hurt the dog. Woody’s bleeding.’

‘Bleeding! Do you think he’s been shot?’

‘I don’t think so. Admar insists the man spat through his hand at Woody.’

I frowned, not following.

‘Admar, said like this.’ She bunched her hand to a fist then pressed it against her lips where the thumb joined onto the hand.

‘Admar didn’t see a weapon?’

She shook her head. ‘Then he was so shocked at seeing Woody hurt that he wouldn’t have thought to look.’

We walked back to where the dog was turning his head back to lick his flank.

‘There’s a small wound.’ I took a closer look. ‘Looks like a puncture.’

‘It might be deep?’

‘I don’t think so. There’s not much blood.’

‘Dad, will Woody die?’ Admar’s eyes teared up. He was a
slender
boy, with a thick head of hair as dark as his mother’s. He was so slightly built that he resembled a slim adult in miniature, not the hefty Viking-boned boys of my family – or me come to that. Admar had an uncanny knack of mimicry that could make his friends breathless with laughter but right now his face was the image of anxiety for his pet.

I did my best to reassure him. ‘No, he won’t die. What’s more, Woody seems to be taking care of the wound himself.’

Woody turned to look at me when he heard the sound of his name. He licked his lips. I noticed the pink smear of blood on his tongue. The dog appeared calm enough. OK, he’d been hurt, but you could tell from his demeanour that he’d taken it in his stride. He even broke off tending the wound to retrieve the squeaky doll from the middle of the lawn.

‘He’s fine,’ I stressed, ‘but it wouldn’t hurt to take him to the vet to have him checked out.’

‘Can I come?’ Admar asked. He didn’t want to let Woody out of his sight for a while.

‘’Course you can, champ. Want to get his lead?’

‘Wood-heee! Wood-heee!’ He used his distinctive call to attract the dog’s attention. ‘Car! Walkies! Wood-heee!’

The dog dropped the toy to come bounding toward the boy. His wagging tale gave my knee a meaty whack as he ran by. The animal’s ebullient mood had to be a good sign.

Piet patted me on the back, grateful I wasn’t going to downplay the dog’s injury. ‘I’ll get his blanket for the back of the car.’ She followed the pair into the house.

I took a moment to check that there was no one lurking in the garden. These days it’s not the done thing to be tough on
intruders
, but, by God, I promised myself to twist the thug’s arm until he squealed. Admar had said Woody’s attacker had somehow ‘spat through his hand’ to hurt our pet. I guessed the weapon had to be an air pistol. The thought made me clench my fists. What if the idiot had fired wide? What if the pellet had struck Admar?