by Miles Gibson
‘I need Veronica in the kitchen,’ Frank complained. ‘I need her to share all the extra work.’
‘Don’t be so jealous,’ growled Charlotte. ‘She needs to be with other women. You can’t keep the poor creature locked away. Look how she laughs. See how she shines since my girls arrived.’
20
Frank retreated to the kitchen. In the sour heat of the long shed he molested marrows, butchered yams and wreaked havoc on the vegetable kingdom. He made stew as hot as molten lead, brewed soup that scorched and blistered the tongue, boiled coffee into creosote and baked bread into ashes.
At the end of the week Boris took the motor wagon into town and returned with a cargo of customers.
‘I come home!’ he bellowed through the afternoon dust. ‘We got our first paying guests!’
Half a dozen men clambered down from the wagon and stood, grinning bashfully, while Boris unloaded two fat, excited, girls. The girls shrieked when Boris squeezed them. They wore bright nylon frocks and plastic shoes. The men were smartly turned out in boiled shirts, flared trousers and sandals. One of them carried a rolled umbrella and another sported a trilby.
‘We do hot business tonight!’ laughed Boris. He led the party into the dining room and set Happy to work, serving peanuts and beer. When everyone had a drink he shouted for silence and introduced Charlotte. She was sitting in a nest of pillows and cushions, whisking the air with a paper fan. She wore a grey cobweb sewn with glass beads. The thickly powdered face and swollen body made her look like a giant moth. When she had shaken everyone by the hand and welcomed them to the Hotel Plenti, she sent Happy out to search for Frank.
‘These young ladies require rooms for the night,’ she said when Frank came running from the kitchen.
Frank looked at the girls sitting at a corner table surrounded by silent staring men.
‘Do they have any luggage?’ he said.
A man hooted and clapped his hands. The man in the trilby sniggered.
Charlotte smiled coquettishly at Frank and tapped a bouquet of bank notes against her breasts. ‘No luggage,’ she said.
So Frank took the girls along the corridor and showed them the empty rooms. He opened the shutters and wardrobes, checked the towels and water jugs and drew the mosquito nets on the beds.
‘I hope you’ll be comfortable,’ he said. The first girl grinned and licked her beer bottle. The second girl shrieked and kicked off her shoes.
When he returned to the dining room he found Happy serving another tray of beer. The men were sitting around the room, shouting and drinking and laughing among themselves. Charlotte sucked on a small cigar and beckoned Frank through the smoke.
‘Do you think you can find our guests something for supper?’ she said.
Frank looked doubtful. He glanced around the room, attempting some rapid mental arithmetic. Fifteen mouths to feed. Sixteen if you counted Gilbert. He saw Veronica standing on the veranda, drinking beer with Comfort and Easy.
‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I could make small chop to stretch the stew…’
‘Whatever you think,’ she said and dismissed him.
Frank left the room and marched across the compound with Veronica running behind him.
‘What do you want?’ he shouted as they reached the kitchen.
‘I’m a waitress, noodle-brain. I’m supposed to serve the food.’
‘You look ridiculous,’ he said, glaring at her buttered curls and rouged cheeks.
‘Look, Frank, I’m trying to help.’
‘I don’t want your help,’ he said as Happy scampered past with more bottles of beer. But, despite his protests, he made Veronica carry the food and was glad to have her working with him.
Charlotte encouraged her guests to eat and drink and enjoy themselves. The stew made them sweat and the beer made them brave. They began to bray at Comfort and Easy, dancing together on the veranda. As it grew dark the paper lanterns filled the hotel with a flush of red light. Happy continued to run about with his arms full of bottles. He clutched them like babies snatched from the flames of a burning building. His cardigan squelched with beer. His eyes were hard and swollen. Boris skulked around the compound sucking a bottle of palm wine and talking to himself. The sounds of reggae thundered under the hotel roof. The shouts of the supper guests frightened the forest.
‘What’s happening out there?’ said Frank, frantically frying a basket of plantain.
‘They’re eating,’ snapped Veronica as she hurried away with a bucket of stew.
‘How long are they going to stay?’ he demanded, desperately trying to skin a yam.
‘Until they’ve finished,’ she shouted impatiently, dashing back to refill the bucket.
They worked for an hour. When all the food had been served and Veronica was safe in the kitchen sitting, exhausted, against Happy’s barrel, Frank slipped out to look at the dining room.
The air in the room was hot and stale. There was a stink of sweat and smoke and perfume. Empty bottles rolled on the floor. Through the fog he could see Easy standing in one corner of the room, smoking a cigarette and staring at the cracks in the plaster. She was bending forward, hands pushed flat against the walls and her legs planted wide. During the excitement her frock had been pulled up over her shoulders, where it hung in a curious hump of cloth. A man stood behind her and stared at the hump. He kissed it while he fingered her buttocks.
Comfort was entertaining another of the guests by dancing with a third, who was so drunk he had to follow her around the floor on his knees. She shuffled in a circle, advancing, retreating, spinning her partner by his ears. Frank watched him fall in a heap and stare in astonishment at the ceiling. Comfort shouted something above the music and the second man laughed. She squatted over the drunk’s face, hitched up her skirt and hissed through her teeth. The poor man grinned, stuck out his tongue and fainted.
One of the fat girls from town was dancing with the man in the trilby. He led her briskly around the floor, his sandals slapping in time to the music, his black face shining like treacle. His hat flew off and the fat girl kicked it under a table.
Charlotte sat splendid among her cushions with a steel cash box in her hands. The box was stuffed with bank notes. She was chewing her cigar and counting the dinner money. During the meal one of the diners had crawled forward and become entangled in the long strands of her web. He lay, exhausted now, with his head crushed white between her knees and his body stretched out on the floor at her feet. He was spreadeagled in an attitude of divine surrender. His shirt was leaking gravy.
‘How did they like the food?’ shouted Frank.
Charlotte turned her head and squinted at him through the gloom. ‘They enjoy the food. They enjoy the music. And now they enjoy themselves. Everything is perfect. The Hotel Plenti is back in business,’ she shouted. She smiled and snapped shut the cash box.
‘I’ll go and fetch Gilbert,’ shouted Frank. ‘He’ll want to be here.’
‘No,’ thundered Charlotte. She pulled the cigar from her mouth and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment, as if surprised by its discovery. ‘Leave him alone and let him sleep tonight. We’ll tell him the news tomorrow.’ She returned the cigar to her mouth and let smoke leak through her teeth.
Frank didn’t argue. He was already creeping towards the door. ‘If there’s nothing else…’ he yelled above the music.
‘Where’s Veronica?’ shouted Charlotte.
‘She’s working in the kitchen.’
Charlotte looked irritated. She shouted something at Frank but her words were lost in the uproar.
Frank turned quickly and collided with the missing town girl as she stumbled into the dining room followed by a sweating, excited admirer. His affections seemed fired by her tiny breasts which he coddled in his hands like eggs. When the girl saw Frank she wriggled free of the embrace and pushed the man away. Frank tried to reach the door but she slipped her arms around his waist and began to dance across the floor, bumping and grinding he
rself against him.
‘You go be may man tonet,’ she announced in his ear. She danced him against a wall where she kept him amused by squirming softly against his groin.
‘I’ve got to work,’ insisted Frank, grinning, glancing anxiously about the room. It was wrong. She was a child. She couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen years old. The man she had spurned was now fighting for a share of Easy’s fat, brown buttocks.
‘Fos tarn a gif you plenti everi tin fo notin,’ she promised.
Frank yelled with pain and surprise. Her fingers had sneaked their way into his pants. She began to pull roughly on his penis as if she were trying to work a cow’s teat.
‘That’s very generous of you,’ gasped Frank. ‘Did you enjoy the meal?’ Comfort pushed past them, wearing a dirty, beer stained trilby. His legs began to buckle. He slipped slightly against the wall and the girl leaned her shoulder hard against him, afraid he might escape. Her breath blew hot on his neck. Her hair stung his face like brambles.
‘A fok you so you hola,’ she grunted.
Frank, held fast by the short and curlies, tried to look enthusiastic. ‘It sounds like fun,’ he winced.
‘You lek me?’ she demanded, after trying to milk him for two or three minutes. His penis was shrinking away from her hand. She stopped its retreat with her fingernails.
‘Yes,’ he moaned. ‘Yes.’ Her fingernails brought the tears to his eyes. The fat girl, encouraged, gave a mighty pull on his parts and sank her teeth into his neck.
Frank let out a sneeze of pain that blew them apart and, while the girl paused to recover her balance, he had lurched to the door and escaped. The honking of Charlotte’s laughter followed him into the compound.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Veronica when he appeared again in the kitchen. ‘Have they finished?’ She was eating from a tin of mixed fruit salad, fishing for the cherries with a bent fork.
‘We’re living in a brothel,’ said Frank, sitting down to recover his breath.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘They’re tarts!’ he laughed. ‘Charlotte’s girls. They’re tarts.’ It was obvious. He should have guessed what was happening that first evening when Charlotte had called him to unpack her trunk. She was a brothel keeper. He wondered if Gilbert had guessed the truth. Where was the man? Why didn’t he do something to restore law and order?
‘It’s your imagination, Frank. You’ve been on heat ever since they arrived here.’
‘It’s not my imagination. Ask Happy what happened to him. They’re tarts,’ insisted Frank.
‘Daso,’ crowed Happy from behind the stove. He bent forward and flapped his cardigan at Veronica.
‘They’re doing things out there you wouldn’t believe,’ said Frank.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Veronica. She speared a pineapple chunk by mistake and flicked it on the floor in disgust. Her lipstick was leaking from the corners of her mouth.
Frank shrugged. He was defeated. Why should she believe it? He had just had his penis pulled by a squelching, belching, fat fourteen-year-old with death in her eyes and beer on her breath and he didn’t believe it. He felt numb with horror and excitement. ‘Go and have a look for yourself,’ he said wearily. ‘I don’t care.’
‘I can’t!’ shouted Veronica. ‘Boris is out there and he’s drunk again.’ She nursed the tin against her chest and threw him a faintly demented look.
‘Dear God, what’s happening here?’ he marvelled. ‘We’re hiding in the kitchen like frightened rabbits while Boris is swaggering around out there as if he owned the place!’ He jumped up and walked to the door. ‘I’m going to talk to him.’
‘No, don’t leave me. Wait until the morning,’ pleaded Veronica. She caught him by the sleeve and tried to drag him back to safety.
Frank pushed her away. ‘I’m tired of being kicked around,’ he shouted. ‘If Gilbert isn’t going to do anything we’ll have to sort it out for ourselves.’
‘Boris took the rifle,’ croaked Veronica, hugging the fruit tin.
‘What?’
Veronica nodded. Her eyes were brimming with tears. ‘He’s out there with the rifle. We couldn’t stop him.’
Frank paused. ‘I don’t care. Sleep in the kitchen with the cockroaches if that’s what you want. I’m going to bed,’ he said quietly and walked out into the compound.
There was no sign of Boris as he made his way to the house. The music had stopped and the lights had gone out. When he passed the dining room he heard a scuffle and scratching, a shriek, a sigh, a rustle of whispers.
He was creeping down the corridor when a bedroom door opened and a small, naked, man stepped out to challenge him.
‘What you want?’ he said, scowling at Frank. ‘This one taken. I paid my money.’
‘Yes,’ said Frank.
‘So what you want?’ demanded the stranger.
‘I live here,’ said Frank, pushing past him to reach his room.
At dawn Boris swept silently through the hotel and collected his cargo of customers. He led them, shivering and yawning, to the waiting wagon and carried them back to town. Their pockets were empty but their hearts were full. He left them in the market square and went off to spend his day in the bars, searching for trade. Frank spent the day with Happy, cleaning out the bedrooms. Veronica scrubbed the dining room floor. Charlotte fed Gilbert and washed him down with a wet flannel. Comfort and Easy appeared, late in the afternoon, and danced lethargically on the veranda. At dusk Boris returned with a wagon full of fresh recruits. The lights flickered. The beer and the gravy overflowed. And so it continued.
Late each night, when the dancing finally stopped and the fire was gone from the pot-bellied stove, Frank would lie awake in his room and listen to the song of the mattresses. As the girls set to work he could hear the beds groan, wheezing and gasping under the strain, flexing their springs and calling to one another through the bedroom walls. All through the night they clanked and rattled until the hotel itself seemed to come to life, grinding its jaws in the moonlight.
One night, when business was poor, he heard his door creak open and someone shuffled into the room. Through half-open eyes he watched Comfort approach his bed. She was wearing a white cotton brassiere and a pair of fancy boxer shorts. For a long time she stood and stared down at him. Frank didn’t move or make a sound. She whispered his name but he didn’t answer and finally she shuffled away.
For a long time afterwards he lay and waited for sleep. Egg, bacon, sausage. Two egg, bacon, sausage. But sleep refused to shelter him in the way that it chose to favour Gilbert. For as long as he could remember, whenever Gilbert had felt overwhelmed by the sorrows of the world, he had promptly fallen asleep. When Olive had died he had taken to his bed and allowed his grief to flood him with all the speed of an anaesthetic. When he’d heard the news of Sam’s death they had carried him to bed and watched helplessly while he buried himself in slumber. And now he was under the influence of that healing narcolepsy again, as if he were already mourning the death of his jungle hotel. Perhaps Gilbert had known, before any of them, that the dream wouldn’t work, that there would never be anything here but memories and disappointment. Ashes to ashes. Heat and dust. What did he care now if Charlotte established the biggest bordello in Bilharzia or Boris knocked the place down and sold the timber for firewood? The old man no longer took an interest in the affairs of the hotel because he was no longer living in it. God knows where his dreams had led him. He could be anywhere. Frank felt determined to talk to him, reason with him, shake him awake. He crawled painfully from the mattress and groped his way to the corridor. The hotel was quiet. Comfort had returned to her room. He crept as far as Gilbert’s room and gently opened the door.
The smell of oranges, incense and damp feathers filled his nostrils. Candles were smoking beside the bed. Deep among the greasy pillows, face as stiff as a painted mask, eyes set hard, mouth pulled open, Gilbert lay and stared at the ceiling. He was not alone. Charlotte was sitting
astride his stomach. Her fat thighs engulfed him. Her big, dimpled belly spread over his chest. She was feeding Gilbert with tiny pieces of fruit, pulling the fruit apart with her fingers, pushing it deep into Gilbert’s throat. She turned when she heard Frank open the door. She looked at him with her terrible, glittering cockroach eyes, bared her teeth and smiled.
21
Confined to his room, hidden from sunlight, the varnish peeled from Gilbert's face and his hands began flaking like scrubbed potatoes. Every morning Charlotte would take him breakfast and refill his jug of boiled water. She swept the floor, opened the window to change the air and, when everything was in order, liked to sit beside the bed and talk to him as she smoked a cigar. Sometimes she described the customers that passed in the night, the gossip they brought, the beer they drank. At other times she listened while Gilbert gave instructions to be carried to the kitchen. Spare the sugar. Pepper the stew. But something was wrong and, as the days passed, she saw him grow weaker and more confused. He began to dream of the Hercules Cafe and shouted for Olive in his sleep. Then Charlotte sat helpless, watching him moan and choke on his tears.
Frank knew nothing of Gilbert’s decline since, whenever he asked, Charlotte insisted her patient was making a slow convalescence and shouldn’t be disturbed.
‘We could make a bed up on the veranda,’ he argued. ‘We could carry him out there and keep him cool with screens.’
But Charlotte shook her head. ‘He’s too weak to be disturbed. It’s best for him to stay in his room.’
‘Did he ask about me?’ Frank asked anxiously.
Then Charlotte clucked and smiled. ‘He wants you to work hard and not worry about him,’ she said.
Frank only discovered the truth when he found Gilbert one afternoon, escaped from his room and squatting in the shade of the compound wall. He was crouched in the dust, poking at a cockroach with a broken stick. His pyjamas steamed in the heat. His skull shone with sweat. When he saw Frank he tried to hide the cockroach under his foot. An expression of terrible bewilderment spread across his piebald face.
