Heartbreak Hotel (35 page)

‘We don’t want that,’ she said.

‘No.’

She sat down beside him. Buffy poured the wine. He lit two cigarettes and passed her one. How meltingly sexy it was, how Bogey and Bacall! He hadn’t done such a thing for centuries.

Monica inhaled deeply and blew the smoke through her nostrils. They took a sip of the wine.

‘We should have let it breathe,’ she said.

‘Fuck it.’

They smoked for a while in silence. From upstairs came the faint sound of a TV.

‘I could make you some toast,’ Monica said. ‘Or we could rummage in the freezer. I only got back at lunchtime, I haven’t been to the shops.’

‘Don’t worry, I bought a sandwich at Warwick Services.’

‘What sort was it?’

‘Crayfish and rocket. I’ve never had one of those before.’

‘Nice?’

‘Delicious.’ He shrugged. ‘You see, there are still some things left to discover.’

‘What else did you have? A bit of cake? A shortbread biscuit?’

He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Do you really want to know?’

Monica squinted through the smoke. And then she smiled. ‘I want to know everything.’

Buffy woke the next morning without a weight on his legs. No dog. Instead, he was lying in a blue bedroom with Monica asleep beside him. Sunlight shone through a gap in the curtains. The room faced the front; he could hear the traffic down in the street.

Monica lay with her back to him. She was breathing so softly it was possible she was awake; she was just lying there, immobilised with the realisation of what they had done. Moles were scattered over her skin; in her dark, disordered hair, the grey roots were visible. He gazed at her bedside table: a blister pack of contact lenses, a pile of
Condé Nast Traveller
magazines. A bottle of water.

Buffy’s throat was parched. He tried to reach over her shoulder, to get hold of the bottle, but a spasm shot down his spine. Whimpering, he fell back onto the pillow.

‘What’s the matter?’ she murmured.

‘Back’s buggered.’ He groaned. ‘It’s all that driving.’

She shifted round to face him. ‘Can you move at all?’

‘It’s pretty stiff.’ He tried to sit up and yelped with pain. Easing himself back on the pillow, he lay there staring at the ceiling.

‘Has it happened before?’ Monica asked.

He nodded. ‘I just have to rest it for a bit.’

‘How long?’

‘I don’t know. It varies.’

‘You poor thing,’ she said without enthusiasm. ‘I must warn you, I’m a terrible nurse.’

‘Yes, I can imagine.’

She eased herself out of bed. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’

If they were onstage Monica would fling on a silk wrap in one fluid movement. As it was she had to walk across the room, naked, to pick up her dressing gown. For those of mature years, even filtered daylight is felt to be unforgiving. Buffy turned away and looked at a poster of Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
. Hand shielding her pudenda, Venus returned his gaze with a half-smile.

Suddenly Monica gasped. ‘Oh God, they’ll be here in a minute!’

‘Who, your parents?’

‘No, the traffic wardens! It’s ten to nine.’ She hurried out. He heard her pulling open a drawer and scrabbling about.

‘What day is it?’ she called.

‘Friday.’

‘What date?’ Monica hurried back in, carrying a visitor’s permit. ‘Haven’t done one of these for ages.’

‘Don’t know,’ said Buffy. ‘November the something. Have you got today’s newspaper?’

‘Of course not. 17th? 18th? I need something to scratch with.’ She stared wildly around the room. ‘It’s one of those scratchcards.’

‘I know – it’s the 18th. Last day of the cookery course.’ How distant that seemed, another world! He hoped someone had walked the dog.

‘It says
scratch with a coin
. Where’s my handbag?’ She rushed out again.

‘That’s why I left London!’ Buffy called out. ‘Bloody parking warden vultures!’

‘Where’re your car keys?’ she shouted.

‘In my jacket pocket!’

‘Where’s it parked, what does it look like?’

‘You can’t go out in your dressing gown!’

But a few moments later she was gone. Buffy slumped back, exhausted. Only nine o’clock and he already felt drained.

Now he was alone he tried to remember the events of the previous night. Again, they hadn’t exactly had sex. His feeble erection had been ignored by both of them; their hands had scarcely strayed below their waists. But yet, but yet … they had made love. For what seemed hours they had kissed each other, deeply and tenderly. She was a wonderful kisser, that wide soft mouth. Slowly their shyness had melted away. So had their drunkenness. They had tentatively explored each other, their bodies becoming familiar, with that luxuriant holding-back, that promise of better things to come, which he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager. No wonder he had expected her parents to walk in.

Now she was back, carrying two mugs of tea. She had brushed her hair.

‘Just beat him to it,’ she said.

‘A small triumph, but a triumph nevertheless.’

She nodded and sat down on the bed. ‘It’s bloody freezing out there.’

‘Nice and warm in here,’ he said. ‘Come back in.’

She shuffled off her dressing gown and eased herself under the duvet. Buffy put his mug on his empty table. Who had been the last occupant on this side of the bed? How long ago? He hadn’t spent the night with a woman since his marriage to Penny.

‘What about going to the loo?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t got a potty.’

‘I’ll try and get up in a bit.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Talking of getting it up –’

‘Shh.’ She leaned against him and rubbed her face against his beard. ‘I can’t tell you how nice that was.’

They sipped their tea in silence. Under the duvet, her foot hooked around his. He trapped it between his own feet and held it there.

‘Shouldn’t you be going to work?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘I thought there was a crisis.’

‘I lied,’ she said.

‘Fair enough.’ He gazed at her face. ‘You’ve changed, you know. When I first met you, you seemed so stiff and tense.’ He ran his finger down her cheek. ‘Now your face has become alive, somehow … it’s completely relaxed.’

‘You think that’s due to you?’

Buffy shrugged modestly.

‘To be perfectly frank,’ she said, ‘it’s the Botox wearing off.’

Four months had passed. Buffy lay awake, listening to the whispers and sighs of the house and its occupants. Monica, his present tense, slept beside him but the hotel was filled with his past. Jacquetta and Leon slept in the room above; Nyange and her mother Carmella slept in the twin room next to his. Celeste and her mother were in the Blue Room; Quentin and James in the Pink Room across the landing. India had moved into the single attic room for the night; it was the eve of her nuptials and she was quaintly following the tradition of staying away from her beloved.

No wonder Buffy couldn’t sleep. He listened to the wind rattling the windowpanes. He had half a mind to get up and check that the occupants were actually in their beds. They had lived so powerfully in his memory, for so many years, that the bodily reality of them was deeply disorientating, as if he had dreamed up the whole thing. All they had in common was himself.
House Full
. His hotel creaked with the weight of his history. Indeed, in some weird way the dead were as palpably present as the breathing human beings under his roof. They all dwelt in his memory – Popsi with her magnificent breasts and throaty laugh; Bridie with her hennaed hair and her mugs of whisky, Bridie, who had given him the key to her life. And beyond them, memories of the guests whom that key had unlocked, guests who had slept here over the last two years – the Pritchards; that timid geologist; Rosemery the stoic, abandoned wife … and before them, way before them, the ghosts of all the transitory occupants of this shabby old building, of which he was the temporary chatelain.

Downstairs the clock struck three. In a few hours he and his extended family would be gathered together in Voda’s cottage for the ceremony. Tobias and Bruno were already staying there, with their partners and the baby. Penny and Harold would join them from his flat above the gents’ outfitter’s. Buffy’s heart raced in anticipation. It was the night before some experimental production starring a motley group of actors, some of whom had known each other before in fraught and humiliating circumstances; hearts pounding like his, they lay in bed preparing themselves for a drama whose lines they hadn’t learned, a drama that could explode into a Strindbergian tragedy or an Ayckbourn farce. Still, that was weddings for you.

‘Dad, you’re burning those sausages!’ Nyange tried to grab the spatula but Buffy shook her off.

He was cooking breakfast. His guests appeared at intervals, ghosts from his past materialising through the haze of frying.

Jacquetta peered into the fridge. ‘Do you have any soya milk?’

Her hair was cut short. Buffy had seen this on his visit to London – she had recently had chemo – but the effect was still startling. In all the years he had known Jacquetta her hair had been long, though piled up in various arty arrangements. Now it was streaked with pink. She looked like an ageing punk goddess.

‘I could pop out to Costcutter’s,’ he said.

‘It’s all right.’ Jacquetta sighed. ‘I’ve brought some green tea.’

He had forgotten about Jacquetta’s various allergies, in this case to dairy products. Now she was taking blister packs of pills out of her handbag. He felt a lurch of nostalgia. During their marriage, their hypochondria had been something that had bound them together. There had also been a certain competitiveness about who was the most ill. That game was long since over, of course, and anyway Jacquetta had won. She’d had breast cancer!

Now her husband appeared through the smoke, still tall and handsome, still with that great mane of hair. In fact, there seemed to be even more of the stuff. Leon had the buffed and polished look of a TV celebrity, even though he had retired years ago to write his best-sellers. How Buffy had hated the chap! Hardly surprising, since he was fucking his wife. While she was still in transference, too.
And Buffy was paying him for it
. The hatred, of course, had long since vanished. Nowadays on the few occasions they met it was as grizzled veterans, not just of marriage to Jacquetta but as stepfathers to India, who was particularly stroppy during her adolescence.

Leon ruffled India’s hair – something Buffy knew she disliked – as she unpeeled the bacon. ‘Big day, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I’m so proud of you.’

Why? For being a lesbian? For coming out? Leon was no doubt pleased at his own tolerance. No doubt he had intuited it all along, with his shrink’s intuition. Buffy suspected, however, that he considered India’s intended, Voda, a bit of a rough diamond.

Jacquetta turned to her daughter. ‘You’re so lucky,’ she said. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in this part of Wales.’

Buffy was startled. It was news to him.

‘So wild and free,’ said Jacquetta. ‘Such a pagan vibe. In fact, I went to a happening in a field when I was pregnant with you. Perhaps that imprinted itself when you were in the womb. But Alan was far too straight to live here.’ Jacquetta smiled. ‘I wonder how he would have coped with today.’ India’s father, a shadowy figure at the best of times, had died in Australia the year before. ‘Not too well, I suspect. A gay daughter would have been a threat to his masculinity. No wonder he emigrated to the most macho country in the world.’

The smoke was clearing as Lorna arrived.

‘I’ve got a terrible hangover,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t used to all that booze last night.’

Lorna, his lost love, had become a little old woman. Buffy could hardly recognise the actress with whom he had once trod the boards; no doubt she was thinking the same thing about him. They were both seventy-two, after all. Crippled with arthritis, Lorna leaned on a stick. The night before, she’d had a long conversation with Monica. Were they comparing notes? Forty years had passed; any notes would be as out of date as old exam papers. Celeste, the daughter they had produced, was now slicing bread and putting it into the toaster.

And now Nyange and her mother appeared, complaining that the hot water had run out. Even in their dressing gowns they looked startlingly exotic. Buffy tipped the sausages onto a plate. How strange it was, that they were all gathered together! And yet no stranger than the assorted guests who had found themselves at Myrtle House. They all had their stories. Under this roof he had been privy to tears and revelations, to the confidences that had been released by the brief occupation of a place where a person had no responsibilities. That was the thrill of hotels.

Buffy remembered the vision of himself when he first saw the house – mine host, exuding bonhomie, his cheeks ruddy with claret. No rehearsals were needed. He hardly had to act the part, for by now he inhabited it.

Monica came in, followed by Quentin and James. She wore a smart green suit for the wedding. Catching Buffy’s eye, she gave him a tentative smile.

‘Now, who’s for eggs?’ he asked, beaming.

‘But it’s the bankers who’ve brought this country to its knees,’ said Bruno. ‘How can you bear to work with them?’

‘Somebody has to,’ said Monica.

‘What sort of future’s my little baby going to face?’ demanded Bruno. ‘It’s all their fault, greedy fucking bastards.’

‘For God’s sake, lay off the poor woman!’ said Buffy, coming to her rescue. ‘This is supposed to be a wedding.’

‘And none of them’ve been punished, they’ve all got big fat bonuses!’

‘Talking of banks,’ said Buffy hastily. ‘Conor’s just been arrested for holding one up in Llandrod. But he didn’t realise the bank’s been closed for six years and it’s now a reflexology spa. He tried to get the patients to give him their money but they were so comatose they didn’t know what he was talking about and then the police came. And it was only a toy gun anyway.’

Monica laughed. The atmosphere eased. Bruno turned to her. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but I feel I can be rude to you as you’re sort of family now.’