I felt like saying, ‘OK, your choice, I’ll meet you tomorrow’ and leaving her to enjoy her couple of nights in the hotel from hell.
Before I could decide whether to pay Penelope not to stay, she rang the bell. No sooner had her hand left the rope when the hatch opened and a miserable-looking bald man stood in front of us.
‘What do you want?’ he demanded, in a very unwelcoming tone.
He was a funny-looking thing – he reminded me of the farrier, small and stumpy – and he was staring at us in a funny way which I eventually deduced was because he had a glass eye. Penelope gave our names and he checked his guest list, which didn’t take him long as ours were the only names on it.
‘I’ll show you to your room,’ he muttered.
‘Will someone help with our bags?’ Penelope enquired.
He looked at her as though she had said something in another language.
‘No, you will have to take your own,’ he barked.
Watching Penelope struggle with her numerous bags up three winding flights of stairs to a room situated right at the top of the hotel was the only time I’d smiled to myself in the last few hours. The man stopped outside our room, handed us a key and left us standing there without saying a word.
We opened the door and peered in, not knowing what to expect. The swirly carpet was more dated than the carpet back at the Shack and the walls were covered in horrible beige patterned wallpaper that made the room look completely dull. There were no tea-making facilities or telephone in the room. In the corner was a free-standing wardrobe with only one door. There was no way that would fit any of my stuff in, let alone the contents of Penelope’s multitude of bags. We decided to keep our belongings at the sides of the bed and leave them packed, just in case we needed to make a quick getaway.
Thankfully there were two beds in the room; both with grubby grey-coloured sheets and ghastly lemon floral-patterned duvet covers. On the back wall there was a small window but it was too high to look through. I had had high hopes for a room with a view but I couldn’t even reach the window, never mind see through it. I was damn certain Rupert’s room in rehab would be more comfortable than this. There was basic but I was certain that this was less opulent than the worst cell in the Bangkok Hilton. On reflection, Rupert’s bill would be in excess of a hundred and fifty quid per night – I should have checked myself into rehab for my addiction to nutters.
The room was cold and the sheets were damp but I didn’t dare ponder too much on why they were damp. There was a small hole in the door so I cracked a joke that if the bloke was spying on us, he wouldn’t get to see much with his glass eye. Penelope was not amused.
Penelope blankly refused to sleep on the bed by the door just in case. In case of what? She had a bloody cheek, especially since she was the one who had selected such a luxurious hotel. I wedged one of Penelope’s many shoes by the door and placed another one on the small table next to my bed.
‘Why’ve you put that there?’ queried Penelope.
‘You never know. I might need to bludgeon someone to death in the middle of the night – and on this occasion I don’t mean you, Penelope.’
This hotel was more risky than climbing the mountain, I would be lucky to make it home alive. I sent Fay a quick text which read, Make room for those Five Star records, they may be yours by Monday. I’ve left them to you in my will, in case I die!
Penelope took out a cigarette, lit it and took a drag that was so long you would have been forgiven for assuming it was her last ever. I don’t smoke but I did consider that maybe this was a good time to start. Almost immediately a loud siren rang through the room. The voice of the one-eyed hotelier blared out over the Tannoy.
‘Extinguish your cigarette immediately, no smoking is allowed in the deluxe rooms.’
Surely that couldn’t mean us, could it? There was nothing deluxe about this room? I scanned the room quickly looking for a hidden camera but couldn’t find one. There was only one thing for it – the whisky – but we didn’t have any glasses. If I had to sleep closest to the door with one eye open, Penelope could go and locate some glasses. I needed a drink – fast.
She wouldn’t go alone so we ventured down the winding stairs together. From the deadly silence that surrounded us we concluded we were the only residents. We didn’t dare to speak. Each stair creaked and groaned as we descended. Reluctantly, we headed back to the hatch and rang the bell. It was like déjà vu when the hatch swung open again and the one-eyed man appeared.
‘What do you want?’
‘Can we have a couple of glasses please?’ we asked politely.
He handed over two dusty beakers and demanded a fifty pence deposit for each of them. I wasn’t going to argue as I actually did value my life and for the first time ever I was glad Penelope was by my side. We quickly hurried back to our room, piled all the bags up against the door and lay down on our damp beds. We started to relax after a few drinks and eventually climbed into bed. Our alarms were set – the plan was to venture out bright and early in the morning to climb the mountain, then we could hit the town the following night.
I must have seen every hour of the night, there was no need to even set an alarm clock. I lay in bed frightened and rigid as a shadow constantly appeared to be moving back and forth under the door. I kept hearing what sounded like a shuffling of feet and my mind ran into overdrive wondering if the bloke that owned this place was a distant relative of Frisky Pensioner. I slept holding Penelope’s boot and that isn’t a euphemism – I did actually clutch her boot all night.
I could still see darkness through the tiny window as I finally dozed off around 5.30am. Penelope, on the other hand, had slept soundly – very bloody soundly – snoring her way through the night. Each time she snored, her fringe blew up in the air and created a shadow on the ceiling which freaked me out.
When I finally woke around 7.30am, I glanced over at sleeping beauty and bolted upright. Where was Penelope and who was the bloke in the bed next to me? My heart was racing as I frantically tried to establish what had happened to her, surely I hadn’t drunk that much whisky? The tremendous beard and moustache combination had definitely reached its peak as this bloke looked like a yeti. On a closer inspection I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was actually Penelope. She had facial hair. She stirred then woke up and spotted me staring intently at her face.
She grabbed and stroked her beard like it was the norm and whimpered, ‘It doesn’t matter how regularly I wax my moustache, it still grows extremely fast.’
No shit, Sherlock, I could plait that facial hair!
After a shower – and shave for Penelope – we laced up our boots, packed our rucksacks and went in search of the big hill to climb.
We escaped out of the hotel without breakfast and managed to avoid being spotted. The car was still parked outside with all four tyres so that was another bonus. My car was the only one in the car park and on the pavement next to the car we stepped over a bra and a sock. It would just be my luck if a woman with a bare foot and her boobs hanging by her knees came hopping towards me. She would fit in well with such a classy joint.
Penelope had opted for an eighties look to climb the hill. She was wearing her hair in bunches (and she had the nerve to mention I was too old to wear my hair in a side pony!) and perched on top of her bunches she wore a baseball cap switched round the wrong way, like some Toni Basil wannabe. The bargain basement tight-top had made a reappearance along with the hot pants. This time the outfit was accessorised with bright pink legwarmers. There was no way she was dressed to climb a mountain, she looked more like she was about to attend a reunion of the Fame Appreciation Society.
The lack of donkeys and Sherpas for hire in the area meant Penelope had to make the heart-wrenching decision to leave all her coats at the hotel – there was no way I was lugging any of them around with me all day. The weather was sunny and even though the temperature would be cooler at the summit there was no need to take a coat. I had one rucksack packed with lunch
, water, tissues and wet wipes. Penelope had the same, plus some Kendal Mint Cake and the flag.
That was it, we were off! We had between three and four hours of walking to the summit ahead of us, plus approximately the same time to venture back down. So all in all I could look forward to a minimum of six hours’ riveting conversation. Matt had provided me with a game he had devised himself to help relieve the boredom. This was a list of words that he was certain Penelope would bring up in conversation over the next few hours. Every time she said one of these words I had to cross it off the list. There was no winner in the game, Matt was just curious how many he would get right.
As we were at the foot of the mountain looking up at the summit, Penelope said, ‘Little Jonny would have loved to climb with us.’
Those were the first words in Matt’s game – ‘Little Jonny’ – immediately ticked off. I smiled to myself. If nothing else, Matt’s word game would be a source of amusement for me for the next few hours. We headed up a steep slope to start with. Penelope raced off but I held back and went a little slower, as I thought it was better to pace myself and not burn myself out right at the start of the journey. I was absorbing the breathtaking scenery all around me, it was absolutely stunning.
Penelope had attracted a hanger on – an old bloke with a walking stick and was chatting to him a little further on in front. I was praying he wouldn’t go into cardiac arrest at the sight of her in those hot pants because I was certainly not giving an old bloke mouth to mouth. I think he thought he had already died and gone to heaven as Penelope took him under her wings – her bingo wings to be precise.
They shouted for me to hurry up but I was certainly in no hurry. I was enjoying lagging behind, ambling along at my own steady pace in the sun. My conversation with me was a lot more entertaining than that up front, I’m sure. For once Penelope must have been listening – no doubt to a conversation which revolved around hearing aids, piles, bed-pans and Murray Mints – because if she’d started with the usual monologue, the old codger would have chucked himself over the side by now.
I noticed they were quite a way in front but they had perched down on a rock. I tried to walk slower, assuming they had decided to wait for me but I didn’t mind walking by myself, I preferred it. We were only twenty-five minutes into the ascent and Penelope was already tucking into her packed lunch. She offered a limp tuna sandwich to the old bloke – he must have thought he’d won the lottery. That would be a lovely combination for Penelope – fag breath mixed in with fish breath – I bet the old bloke couldn’t believe his luck.
‘How slow are you?’ Penelope shouted back at me as I approached them both.
I hadn’t realised it was a race. Penelope’s t-shirt was sodden with sweat. Her face was so red and flustered, she looked like a walking beetroot. She announced that she was hot and the old bloke looked her up and down – he thought she was hot too. I suggested to Penelope she should remove her legwarmers to cool her down a little. Once the legwarmers came off the old bloke made his excuses and set off on his own again. I had never seen a bloke move so fast, especially after a woman revealed part of her body. He moved so quickly you would have thought they had just announced a free bar at the British Legion – he was up off the rock and gone. The rock can’t have been doing his piles any good anyway! I suggested to Penelope that maybe she should put the legwarmers back on before she frightened any other fellow climbers away.
As a result of the old bloke’s rapid departure, I was now stuck with Penelope for the remainder of the climb. Why hadn’t I just kept my mouth shut about the legwarmers? He could have kept her company and I could have carried on alone, enjoying the scenery.
After Penelope’s initial energetic spurt she was beginning to slow down – any slower and she would be rolling backwards down the hillside and starting again from the bottom. Then she informed me that the lovely fishy sandwich – which she swilled down with too much water – had made her feel a little sick. I had already encountered Penelope’s and Rupert’s vomit first-hand and there was no way I was holding her pigtails back while she threw that lot up. I suggested a twenty-minute rest so she could get some colour back in her cheeks.
We encountered numerous people on the mountainside, all different backgrounds and walks of life brought together with the common goal of reaching the summit. Penelope was the only one dressed like a one-woman tribute to the eighties, so we stuck out like a sore thumb. Even on the side of a mountain it was always about her. Penelope’s conversation turned to Imogen. I glanced down at Matt’s list – that was another word ticked off. Matt knew Penelope too well, which was a little bit of a worry.
As it was approaching November, Penelope decided she was going to hold a bonfire party at her house. She was going to invite Little Jonny’s classmates – all except Miles that is, Imogen’s son. I wasn’t sure why you would invite the whole class and leave just one child out, it was cruel. How would that child feel when all his classmates were off to Little Jonny’s and he realised he was the only one not invited? Penelope’s logic was that she didn’t get on with the mother but I didn’t understand that logic – a child is a child – so I made a mental note that my children were not going to attend. I was not having any part in child mental cruelty. Penelope seemed to take great pleasure in annoying Imogen by leaving Miles off the guest list. She even seemed a little excited by her plan. If she carried on with this enthusiastic cruelty I would forget my bus theory and have her Fed-Ex’d off the mountainside and catapulted to another planet.
We were now at the halfway point and the climb was beginning to get steep. My legs were beginning to tire but not as much as my brain. Moan, moan, moan – that was all Penelope had done up to this point and that’s all that she did after this point. Fortunately for me I didn’t hear anything else. I couldn’t take any more so I powered my legs and took off at speed on the second part of the climb, leaving her lagging behind wiping her brow with her lurid legwarmers. I glanced back on a couple of occasions to make sure she hadn’t fallen over the mountainside. Alas no, she was still with me, more’s the pity.
I could see the summit and the air was beginning to cool down a little. Other climbers were on their way down, chattering excitedly, thrilled that they had reached the top. They looked like they were having a ball. I wanted to join their gang – I didn’t have an adrenalin rush like these climbers, I had an allergy, an allergy to Penelope.
One last step on my weary legs and I had finally done it. I stood at the summit, looking at the misty haze all around me. I felt delighted, I felt ecstatic. By some miracle I managed to get a phone signal so I phoned home to tell them my news. I could hear squeals of delight from my children as Matt relayed the news of my achievement. All the words in Matt’s game had been ticked off – all except one final phrase.
I sat down not far from the summit, where I could observe Penelope approaching.
‘Why didn’t you wait for me,’ she panted.
That was it, the list was complete. She had muttered the final words right on cue. I took Matt’s list out of my pocket and proudly put the final tick on the sheet, quietly cheering to myself.
We took photographs of each other on the summit and I scooped up a couple of stones from the mountain as souvenirs for the kids. There were no sewing kits or shampoo to pinch from the hotel – only the bra and sock from the car park and they looked more like Penelope’s size than mine – so I needed to take something back. After a short rest we started our descent.
The journey down was equally painful but somehow we managed it in half the time. I was looking forward to a nice cool beer and putting my feet up in a beer garden once we had reached the bottom. The pub was in sight and so was the old bloke that had latched on to Penelope at the start of the day. The free beer offer at the British Legion must have finished and he was now taking advantage of the Happy Hour at the pub. He was letching over some young floozy, without a legwarmer in sight. He was definitely high on life – or something stronger – especially if h
e had managed to beat us two athletes to the bottom.
My legs ached, my arms ached and muscles I didn’t even know I had ached. Even though we were still booked in at the hotel from hell I couldn’t face another night in that place, especially with Penelope. I had done what I had agreed to do and reached the summit with Penelope but her verbal attack and assassination of my character on one of our last walks had hurt me deeply. I wasn’t gaining any joy from this unhealthy relationship. It was time to move on. We rescued our stuff from the hotel and packed up the car.
Penelope turned to me and said, ‘Shall we run a marathon next?’
That mountain air must have affected my hearing, I’m sure I heard Penelope suggest we run a marathon! It appeared she was still in the middle of her mid-life crisis. Fay’s words of wisdom flashed through my mind.
‘Learn to say no. Just learn to say no!’
‘I’ll have to think about that one, Penelope,’ I replied as I started up the car engine for the long journey home.
Eleven
November
Rupert was out of rehab and had ditched his horrendous blue overalls for a more sophisticated suit. He had landed himself a training management position at the store where Penelope had previously had a scrap in the cat litter aisles with his ex-mistress. Penelope had let Rupert back into the family home to save face. She couldn’t possibly have any of the Playground Mafia finding out he had been leading a double life for the last fifteen years. Imagine the humiliation that would cause her.
Rupert reckoned he had turned over a new leaf and had seen the error of his ways. Only time would tell, I suppose. I bet Penelope had ‘Lucky Man’ on repeat play on the stereo in their house. He had more lives than a bloody cat – in fact he had more lives than every cat put together.
A Year in the Life of a Playground Mother: A laugh-out-loud funny novel about life at the School Gates (A School Gates Comedy Book 1) Page 22
