Road Ends

by Mary Lawson

  Having made her decision, she went to a GP and asked to go on the Pill so as to be ready when the right person happened along. The GP didn’t want to give it to her (he was a man) and tried to talk her out of it, but Megan said very firmly that she was nearly twenty-three and it was her body they were talking about, not his, and in the end he gave in.

  She was picky and it was a while before the right person turned up but eventually he did, in the form of a Scot named Douglas whose employers had sent him down to London from Edinburgh for a six-week senior management training course. Megan selected him because he had nice eyes and didn’t remind her of any of her brothers and had expressed an interest in having sex with her in a polite and non-pushy way and, most importantly, because he would be going back to Edinburgh when his course came to an end, so there wouldn’t be any question of things developing further. It was only her virginity she wanted to lose, not her freedom.

  She’d wanted to know what sex was like and now she did. It was messy, but that aside she’d enjoyed it. She suspected it ruined your judgment though, because after Douglas left she rather wished he’d come back, but that wore off quite quickly.

  All this took place some months after the Montrose Hotel was up and running. Before that all of Megan’s time and energy had been focused on the great and glorious task of bringing the hotel back to life. Megan loved the Montrose with a passion and ran it like Captain Bligh.

  “This is a clean bathroom,” she’d say, gesturing at a gleaming bathtub/basin/toilet, to the various girls who replied to her advertisement for cleaners. “I expect it to be this clean all the time. I check every room every day and I look in every corner; if it’s not clean, you’ll get two warnings and then you’re out. The same if you’re late for work. Do you still want the job?”

  Sometimes they didn’t and sometimes they did.

  The renovation of the Montrose had taken six months and was the most fun Megan had ever had in her life. She and Annabelle and Peter Montrose did most of it themselves. They hired an electrician to do the wiring and a plumber to put basins with hot and cold water in every room and redo the bathrooms (one on each floor, plus a cloakroom, which was what the British called a washroom, off reception), but the three of them did all the tiling and the painting and the papering and the selecting of fabrics and the choosing of furniture and lamps and pictures to hang on the walls. It was Annabelle and Peter who did the selecting; Megan just went along for the fun of it. If it had been up to her, she’d have painted everything white and covered all the furniture in hard-wearing, stain-resistant, dark-coloured cord. But Annabelle and Peter had taste, she could see that. She hadn’t known what taste was (people in Struan didn’t think along those lines—if they wanted a lamp they bought a lamp) and she wasn’t sure she approved of the concept (how could one person’s opinion of what looked nice be “better than” another’s?), but if there was such a thing as good taste, then Annabelle and Peter undoubtedly had it. They went to antique stores and house clearances and auction houses and came home with junk Megan wouldn’t have paid two cents for, which turned out to look great when stuck in a particular corner of a particular room.

  All three of them worked twelve-hour days and seven-day weeks and to Megan it felt like one long party.

  “Megan, you must take a day off,” Annabelle would say from time to time, a frown drawing a single fine furrow across her brow. “You haven’t had a day off in weeks! You’re not making the most of your time here—you should be seeing the sights.”

  “I will when we’re finished,” Megan would say. “When it’s up and running, I’ll have Tuesdays off every week.”

  She still hadn’t seen the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral or the National Gallery, or indeed anything else. The idea of trudging around a bunch of old buildings bored her, or at least that was the explanation she had been giving herself. But the truth was more complicated, and she knew it. The truth was that none of those old buildings would mean a thing to her because she didn’t know anything about them. She didn’t know anything about anything: history, art, other countries, world religions, the Vietnam War—all the things that everyone around her was talking about. The breadth and depth of her ignorance had become apparent to her over the months she’d spent in England and it astonished and embarrassed her. How could you put it right, ignorance on that scale? Where did you start? It was like someone presenting you with a book, saying, “This is fantastic, you’ll love it,” and when you opened it you found it was written in a foreign language and you couldn’t read a word.

  Whose fault was it? She couldn’t blame her education and she couldn’t blame Struan—Tom knew things and so did her father. In fact, her father knew a lot; Megan hadn’t been aware of how much until she left home. She’d learned more about him through his letters over the past year than in the twenty-one years she’d lived at home. He hadn’t been to university like Tom—he hadn’t been anywhere apart from during the war—so he must have learned it all from books, which in Megan’s view was hard work.

  Well, it doesn’t matter, she told herself, expertly pasting a length of wallpaper for the downstairs cloakroom. Nobody cares whether or not you know things. It’s not going to make any difference to the world. It turns out you’re good at papering walls, so get on with it. She carefully turned up the bottom of the paper and passed the sheet up to Annabelle, who was standing on top of the stepladder.

  The paper was creamy with a fine pink stripe. Separately both it and the room had looked bland and uninteresting; together they were wonderful. When the papering was finished Annabelle stood in the doorway for a few minutes looking at it thoughtfully and then went off to a junk shop and came back with a hideously ornate gold-painted mirror. Now that is a mistake, Megan said to herself, but it wasn’t. When the mirror was hung above the oval wash basin so that it reflected the two candle lights on the opposite wall, the whole room took on a rich, golden glow.

  “What are we trying for here, Versailles?” Peter asked when he saw it—he’d been off talking to the bank manager.

  “Exactly,” Annabelle said. “Versailles is what cloakrooms should be. Are you converted, Megan?” (Which meant she’d noticed Megan thinking it was a mistake.)

  “Yes,” Megan admitted, running a finger around a curly bit of the frame and checking for dust, of which there was an abundance—Annabelle had been too impatient to get it up on the wall to let her clean it first—“but it’s going to be murder to keep clean.”

  In the evenings—or more likely late at night—when they had finished whatever task they had set themselves for the day, the three of them would sit on beanbags amidst the paint pots on the floor and survey their handiwork, eating exotic (and frequently disgusting) cheeses from Harrods Food Hall with chunks of French bread and wine Peter had stolen from his father’s wine cellar. Most of the time they were modestly admiring of what they’d achieved, though not always.

  “Everyone else is doing Habitat,” Annabelle said anxiously one evening. “Stripped pine. Clean lines.” Despite being absolutely confident in her own taste she was prone to last-minute doubts—later than last minute in this case: they’d completed all the bedrooms and were well advanced with the ground floor.

  “Here we go again,” Peter said.

  “You don’t think we’re out of step with the times?”

  “I know we’re out of step with the times. We’re deliberately out of step with the times! Stop thinking about it, for God’s sake.”

  “What do you think, Megan?”

  It surprised and flattered Megan when they asked her opinion but she was perfectly happy to give it. “I think foreigners will love it,” she said.

  “Do you?” Annabelle said hopefully.

  “Yes. It’s old-looking and England’s supposed to be old.”

  “Spot on,” Peter said. “Have some more wine. What do you think of this wine, Meg?”

  “Not much.”

  “No palate, this girl,” Peter said sadly, which please
d Megan. Most people would have said, “No palate, these Canadians,” as if her lack of palate were to do with her being Canadian instead of with her being her. Wine was another thing she didn’t know anything about and she was happy to leave it that way. Peter’s one fault, from what she’d seen so far, was that he drank too much of it, and when he did, he was impatient with Annabelle. Annabelle’s one fault was that she didn’t slap him down on the spot. She was too nice, that was the problem. In Megan’s view, if you’re too nice to a man he’ll take advantage of you every time.

  But mostly, they were good to each other. And always, they were good to her.

  ——

  It was only at night that she felt alone nowadays. Of course, she was alone at night—during the renovations and for the first few months after the hotel opened she slept in one of the single rooms on the top floor. Annabelle and Peter had a flat a few streets away, so when they left each evening she had the hotel to herself. Annabelle had worried about this. “Are you sure you won’t be nervous, Megan? You’re very welcome to sleep on our couch. These old houses tend to creak.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Megan replied. “Creaks don’t bother me.”

  Which they didn’t. It was the distance between herself and home that bothered her. For some reason, now that she was doing a job she loved and that looked set to evolve into one she could imagine doing for many years—she was to be responsible for the day-to-day running of the hotel—she ached more for home than she had when she was shut in a cupboard in Lansdown Terrace. There it had felt like a holiday gone wrong, which, being a holiday, would soon be over. Now she could see herself here in five years’ time. In ten. Her family going on its way without her. Thinking of her less and less, as she would probably think of them less and less. Her mother growing old without anyone to make sure she was all right. Adam, whose small warm shape in her arms she still missed, growing up a stranger. The emptiness inside her gradually filling with other things, other people. The word “home” taking on a different meaning, so that when she went back to visit she would no longer belong there. She would no longer be the person she would have been if she’d stayed.

  She’d fall asleep with a kind of grief lying in her, a kind of bereavement. But then in the morning she’d wake to the thought that today they were starting on the second-floor landing, which was to be papered in a soft, deep plum overlaid with a tracery of mellow gold, which sounded absolutely disgusting but would turn out to be exactly right.

  The Montrose was in a terrace (nothing like Lansdown Terrace, though—these houses were tall and clean and proud) near Gloucester Road, convenient for the airport buses to and from Heathrow and walking distance from the Victoria and Albert, the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. It had fifteen bedrooms spread over three floors, a large, welcoming lounge and a small but elegant lobby. The ceilings were high with elaborate cornices and ceiling roses three feet across. Annabelle had already designed the brochures. (“Fifteen beautiful bedrooms, twelve doubles, three singles, full central heating, hot and cold water in every room, sprung interior mattresses, bedside lights, shaving points, comfortable lounge with colour television.”) They would provide a turndown service (the hotel would have a higher AA rating if they did) and a bar that would operate on an honesty basis.

  Their target clientele was businessmen during the week and discerning Europeans and out-of-towners on the weekends, plus North Americans who didn’t quite fall into the “wealthy” category in the high seasons.

  “People who are prepared to pay a little extra for something nice,” Annabelle explained.

  “And we want them to come back,” Peter added. “We’re not out to milk them for every drop and then never see them again, we want them to return year after year and recommend us to all their friends. We want the Montrose to be so good that even if they could afford to stay at the Ritz and have their own private bathrooms, they’d come here instead.”

  Up until now Megan had never knowingly met anyone who fitted Annabelle and Peter’s description but she realized she had two examples right in front of her. The Montroses were exactly the sort of people who would stay in the sort of hotel they intended the Montrose to be. They weren’t exactly wealthy but they flew to Paris or Rome or Florence a couple of times a year and always stayed somewhere “nice.” They were taking on the hotel not because they desperately needed the money but because they somewhat needed the money and thought running a small hotel would be rather fun.

  Annabelle was tall and pale with luxuriant chestnut hair that she piled up on her head when she and Peter were going out for the evening and tied back with a scarf when they were tiling the bathrooms. Peter was handsome and clever and, apart from when he’d had too much to drink, clearly besotted with Annabelle even though they’d been married for five years. Megan had never seen a good marriage at close quarters before. This looked like one and she strongly approved.

  Annabelle was to be “front of house,” taking bookings, welcoming guests, advising them on what to see and where to eat while they were in London. Peter would look after the business end—keeping the books, arranging advertising, dealing with problems as they arose.

  Megan was to be the housekeeper. It would be her job to make sure the whole thing worked. There were to be two girls to do the cleaning—three if it turned out to be necessary—a handyman and a part-time, all-purpose receptionist/dogsbody to look after things in the evenings and on Megan’s day off. All of them were to be under Megan’s personal supervision. “I’d like to hire them myself if that’s all right,” she’d said to Annabelle when they were discussing all this. It was this business of Annabelle being too nice. She’d hire girls she felt sorry for and be unable to fire them when they turned out to be useless.

  “Of course,” Annabelle replied meekly. “All that side of things is up to you.”

  In the month prior to the opening, when the carpets were being laid and the chandeliers hung and doorknobs put on the doors, Megan spent a night in each of the bedrooms in turn to ensure there were no dripping taps, no faulty electrical connections, no leaky radiators. That was when the Montrose really became hers. She loved every room more than the last.

  Each morning she went through a list of problems with the handyman. He was the first person she hired. His name was Jonah and he had just one tooth, top row (though there was no row), dead centre. Megan didn’t see the point of one tooth—surely you needed at least two so that they’d have something to gnash against—but she liked the fact that Jonah automatically took off his shoes when he came in the door and the way he looked around him, head slightly forward, searching out loose hinges or missing screws like a tracker dog.

  “We need someone who can do everything,” she’d said. “Painting and carpentry and blocked drains and radiators. Can you do everything?”

  “Yup,” Jonah said. “That window sash’s loose, s’gonna rattle in the wind.”

  20th November 1966

  Dear Mum and Dad,

  I’m sorry to have been so long in writing, but we’ve been really busy getting the hotel ready for opening before Christmas. We’ve pretty much finished now—today we put up a Christmas tree in the reception and that was our last job. Everything looks really beautiful, and our first guests are arriving next week. Last night Annabelle and Peter took me out for dinner to celebrate. We went to a posh restaurant called the Gay Hussar—it serves Hungarian food, which was delicious. We had Champagne to celebrate and they gave me a really beautiful watch.

  How are you both? Have the twins gone to sea yet? Is Tom coming home for Christmas? What stage is he at in his degree? I forget. Are Peter and Corey behaving themselves? How is Adam? I’d really love a picture of him. Would you ask Tom to take one while he’s home and send it to me?

  Has anything interesting happened in Struan lately? I’d love to hear all the news when you have time to write.

  Love, Megan

  PS I am enclosing a brochure of the hotel so you can see what it looks like. />
  8th December 1966

  Dear Megan,

  —Megan could hear her father’s voice in his handwriting, but strangely it was the voice she imagined him using at the bank rather than at home: measured and rather formal, as opposed to irritated and impatient—

  Thank you for your letter. It is good to know that your hotel is up and running. Your employers sound like nice people. Regarding your celebratory dinner out, the Gay Hussar is a curious name. The Hussars were light horsemen in the Hungarian army, dating back to the 15th century. They were an elite regiment and no doubt had more to be happy about than the average foot soldier (hence “gay”).

  Thank you for sending the brochure of the hotel. It looks a stylish place. I was interested to see that it is near the V&A Museum, which is world-famous for its art and design. Its founding principle was that works of art should be available to all—quite an advanced idea in its time (the early 1850s). If it is as close to your hotel as it appears to be in your brochure, you could easily walk there in your lunch hour.

  We are all well. Your mother is writing to you also and will no doubt pass on such news as there is.

  All the best.

  Tuesday

  Dear Megan,

  —Her mother she saw, rather than heard: her smooth, pale face and large, always anxious eyes, her soft fair hair, so fine that it drifted about her, defying all efforts to pin it down—

  It was very nice to hear from you. Your hotel looks expensive. Could you afford to stay there yourself?

  Yes, the twins have gone. Their ship is the HMCS St. Laurent and they are on NATO patrol. I don’t know where and I don’t know if they’re enjoying it because they haven’t written a single letter. I expected the house to seem very quiet when they left but Peter and Corey make so much noise it hasn’t changed much.

  There isn’t much news. You remember I told you Tom’s friend, Robert Thomas, accidentally killed a child on a bike in the summer? It turned out that he was drunk at the time. After the inquest he had some sort of breakdown and didn’t go back to university. It was a terrible thing.