‘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.’
17
Buffy
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 thi
ng 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.
Monica
‘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.’
Monica gazed at the crowd of people. The party was taking place in Voda’s cottage. The room was heavily beamed and strung with fairy lights; somebody played the fiddle. This was all so new to her, this being sort of family. During the years with Malcolm, of course, it was the very thing from which she had been excluded. A bit on the side. She herself had no children and no siblings; her life had been the solitary one of the professional woman. Now she felt currents pulling in all directions, too deep for her to comprehend. Penny was right; her feelings of jealousy had all but evaporated when faced with Buffy’s living, breathing exes, all of advanced years. What remained was far more complicated.
For despite Buffy’s best efforts to include her, she felt an alien species in this ramshackle cottage high up in the hills. Was she really more at ease in a roomful of bankers? She couldn’t connect the two halves of her life together – her weekends with Buffy, the mess and muddle of it, and her corporate week in hotels where the ceiling didn’t leak and there was constant hot water. She watched Voda and India dancing together, bumping into people, daffodils falling out of their hair, and she thought: Both halves have one thing in common – everyone gets roaring drunk.
Yet again, glasses were raised to the happy couple. Despite her confusion Monica was becoming fond of them all. They were Buffy’s history, the story of his life. What part was she going to play? She loved him dearly but she couldn’t see a place for herself here. Did she really have the courage to up sticks and move to Knockton like Harold, like Penny? Like Andy and Amy who were also jammed in this room somewhere?
Where were they? Monica tried to make out the faces but it all seemed to be getting darker. For a moment she thought that her eyesight was failing. The table lamps grew dimmer; the fairy lights shrank to pinpricks and then disappeared.
The room was plunged into darkness. There was a general murmur of surprise.
Voda’s voice said: ‘Fuck fuck fuck!’
‘What’s happened?’ somebody asked.
‘The electricity’s run out. It’s Conor’s fucking solar panels.’
Monica leaned against the dresser. It was rather a relief, not having to talk. Her eyes were wide open but she could see nothing. This was curiously liberating and for the first time she relaxed.
Buffy and his family had been swallowed into the blackness. In their place, a vision swam into view – a vision so precise, so exhilaratingly bright in every detail that Monica nearly laughed out loud. Everything fell into place. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? It really couldn’t be simpler. By the time the candles were lit, her plan was fully formed.
Buffy pushed his way through the crowd, the baby on his hip. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
‘I’m here.’
‘In this novel I read, the lights went out and when they came on again somebody had died.’
‘I’m not going to die yet,’ Monica said.
He gazed at her. ‘God, you’re beautiful. Please don’t ever leave me.’
He wore his blue velvet waistcoat. Even in the candlelight she could see a pale smear of sick down the front. She had never liked babies but for some reason this touched her heart.
‘I’ve got an idea for your hotel,’ she said.
‘Not the boutique thing. I know it’s going to rack and ruin but please not that.’
‘No, it’s not that. It’s something quite different.’
18
Acme Motivation is proud to announce their new corporate challenge: ‘Surprise’ Executive Activity Weekends! Venue: Myrtle House Hotel. Nestling amid the Welsh hills, famed for its locally sourced cuisine and friendly staff, Myrtle House is well off the beaten track and thus offers a high degree of seclusion and security. These weekends, for top-level power brokers in the financial sector, offer a customised series of challenges and bonding sessions. Upon arrival, each participant will be allocated a mystery task guaranteed to be a life-changing experience.
‘A life-changing experience’
(Sir Barry Jones, Goldman Sachs)
OVER THAT SUMMER the people of Knockton grew used to the fleet of cars parked outside Myrtle House. Ferraris, 7 Series BMWs, top-of-the-range Range Rovers, spattered with mud from passing tractors.
They also became used to their occupants. A banker is easily recognised in a town like Knockton. Besides, they all wore green boiler suits – ‘like a chain gang’, as Connie from Costcutter’s observed.
And like a chain gang they toiled from dawn to dusk. Panting and perspiring, they filled the potholes down the high street, they mended the swings in the recreation ground, they cleared the uncollected rubbish, they renovated the bus shelter, they painted and reopened the public toilets, they restored the flower beds in the municipal garden. As Jill, of Jill’s Things, said to her husband: ‘We bailed them out so it’s only fair, isn’t it, that they do the same for us?’
As word got round, people came from far and wide to witness the spectacle. This was more fun than morris dancers. During the weekends the Coffee Cup was crammed with customers; the local shops did a thriving business. ‘Watching the Bankers’ made Knockton, in Monica’s words, a Destination Town. What were they watching – an act of penance? a comedy routine?
For some, the toiling figures were a source of derision; for some, a focus for their anger. ‘Give us a mortgage, mister!’ young men shouted as they walked past.
Others were kinder, and engaged them in conversation. Old Mrs Bevan-Jones gave a cup of tea to an RBS Divisional Manager who was mending the paving stones outside her house. Her grandson filmed it on his mobile. Where Did My Pension Go? became a YouTube sensation.
And for
the first time Myrtle House was making a profit. Its lack of facilities was part of the deal. So you queue for the bathroom? Join the real world! As Buffy watched his guests, aching and exhausted, driving off one Sunday night he said to Monica: ‘My kids called this Heartbreak Hotel. The lovelorn and abandoned would come here and learn the skill their partners had, but it didn’t quite turn out like that.’
‘More like Backbreak Hotel now,’ she said.
He put his arms around her. ‘Do you love me?’
Monica rubbed her face against his beard. ‘Of course.’ She paused. ‘Besides, at our age one can’t be choosy.’
Author’s note
Want to actually learn something from one of these courses? Go to my website, www.deborahmoggach.com, click on the link to ‘Courses for Divorces’ and find some short but highly instructive films. You might even meet somebody from the novel.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781448139132
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Chatto & Windus 2013
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Copyright © Deborah Moggach 2013
Deborah Moggach has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Chatto & Windus
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
Heartbreak Hotel Page 28
