Bedlam & Breakfast at a Devon Seaside Guesthouse

by Sharley Scott

  The guests sat in their car, tight-lipped and arms folded, with all the windows wound down. As I bent down to say a cheery hello, a blob of sweat fell onto the grey plastic door interior and dribbled inside. The man looked from the door to my face.

  “I ran.” My chest heaved as I fought to talk and breathe. “Even though check-in doesn’t start until three thirty, I saw you were here and rushed back.”

  “Good to see you get time off running a B&B. On TV they reckon it’s a full-time job.”

  What on earth did the TV have to do with running a B&B? If anyone thought taking a few hours off in the middle of a twelve-hour day made it anything less than a full-time job, they needed their head testing. I hid my irritation beneath a smile – after all, they had been waiting in a sweltering car – and stepped back to let him open his car door.

  “Mark Potter. That’s my wife, Belinda.” He held out his hand.

  Surreptitiously, I wiped my hand across the back of my knee-length trousers before I shook his. His smile couldn’t mask his grimace. As I slid my sunglasses back into place and headed round to Belinda, who stood by the boot of their car, I spotted him pulling a tissue from his pocket to dab his hand. I took her case and took them to their room where I gave them the usual rundown of where to find the guestbook, fan and spare sheets, the latter if they got too hot at night.

  “Come down when you’re ready and I’ll check you in.”

  I rushed off to my bedroom to have a quick wash and change into more formal clothing. We had two more couples to check-in later. At least they’d be greeted by someone who could talk rather than pant and didn’t look as if they’d staggered from the finish line of a marathon. I gazed at myself in the mirror, horrified to see my t-shirt mottled with dampness, the area above my cleavage the only dry patch. It could have been worse as, beneath the t-shirt, my skin all but swam in a river of sweat.

  When the stairs creaked half an hour later, I grabbed the registration form and met Mark and Belinda in the hallway where I ushered them through to the day room.

  “Is everything okay with your room?”

  They glanced at each other. Mark cleared his throat. “There’s a stain on the bed.”

  I’d made that bed and the sheets and duvet had looked pristine. I’d ironed the duvet and pillowcases too, so I should have noticed any marks. But these were the customers and if they’d spotted something, I had to deal with it.

  “I’m sorry about that. Where is the stain?”

  “On the mattress topper.”

  Of their own volition, my eyebrows shot into my hair. My surprise laid bare for them to see. The mattress topper? What on earth had they been doing to see that?

  “Let’s have a look.”

  I led the way back to the room to be met by an explosion of furnishings. The new tub chairs had been turned around while the coffee table sat in the centre of the room, buried but for one peeking table leg beneath a mound of bedding. The sheet had been ripped off the bed, strewn on the floor beneath the new cotton mattress protector I’d bought the previous week.

  His stubby finger hovered over the white topper. “There!”

  Squinting, I could just make out the tiniest hair. Not a pube, thank goodness, as this couldn’t have been more than three millimetres in length and fair in colouring. He must have bionic vision. Like threading a needle, it took me three attempts to pluck it from the bed.

  He moved to point at a faint mark no larger than his thumb. “And we found this too.”

  I wondered if I should explain that a guest had spilled some red wine on the sheets and a small amount had seeped through the mattress protector onto the topper. I’d been unable to remove it, even with two washes at high temperatures, so I’d given up worrying about this tiny blemish. But I couldn’t be bothered.

  “If it wasn’t for this you would have passed the Four in a Bed test.”

  “The what?”

  “You know, on TV. We checked your wardrobe, the top of your doors, skirting boards, under the bed. You would have passed until we found this.” Belinda beamed at me.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  I gazed at the woodchip wallpaper and the faded carpet, which had been scrubbed to within an inch of its long life and was destined for the skip at the end of the season, along with the melamine drawer unit and the chipped coffee table currently blanketed by bedding.

  “Do you think you’d be better off somewhere else?”

  They looked at me as if I was daft. “We’re here now. We just don’t want to sleep on a stained topper.”

  “I’ll take the topper away. If you go to the room I showed you and make a start on the registration form, I’ll be down soon.”

  Ripping off the mattress protector and topper, I stomped down to the utility room. I didn’t have a spare topper and the cotton protector alone wouldn’t stop spills ruining the new mattress. They may be fastidious about blemishes but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t create their own. Too short to reach without Jason’s help, I climbed onto one of the shelves in the laundry cupboard and balanced between it and the wall to drag one of the old rubber-backed protectors from the top shelf. Stuff them. They could squeak all night.

  Back in their room, I held the mattress protector up to the light to inspect it before putting it on the mattress. Perfect. I bent down to retrieve the crumpled sheet from the floor but changed my mind. They’d probably rip it apart again. Instead, I left the room and, fixing a rictus smile, I headed to the day room to find them sitting in silence, the form completed.

  “All sorted! I haven’t made the bed again as, no doubt, you’ll want to check it before you put everything back where it should be.” I smiled sweetly. “Right, that’s one hundred and sixty pounds, please.”

  ♦

  The doorbell rang and I hurried out, praying that these arrivals wouldn’t be as odd as our earlier Four in a Bed fanatics. Since those awful lads had gone, we’d been blessed with two weeks of wonderful guests. Strange how it worked out. The vast majority of our guests were lovely and often I found myself wishing they didn’t have to leave, but it seemed that every two to three weeks we landed a difficult pair.

  Something about the woman and man on the doorstep felt familiar, unlike the trio of children who huddled around them clutching ice lollies as they gazed, wide-eyed, at me. They couldn’t be guests; we didn’t take children, especially not ones coated in sticky gloop.

  In the heat, strands of the woman’s grey curly hair clung to her forehead, while the fleshy mound of the man’s belly bulged from beneath his vest. He wore green nylon shorts, the same awful colour as the guesthouse door frame and window ledges. Then it hit me. Jim and Maureen! Not today of all days. Then again, not any day.

  “The grandchildren wanted to see the old place.” He caressed a little girl’s head. She gave a gappy grin and stuck her lolly into her mouth. Pink drool ran down her chin and over her fingers, dripping onto the paving.

  Most people would smile, say goodbye and close the door. But not me. Instead of being honest – after everything you’ve told people about us, I don’t want you near me, my family or the guesthouse – I stuttered nonsense.

  “I’m busy. With guests.” Half an hour earlier it would have been true. Where were the Four in a Bed couple when you needed them? Right now, I’d kiss them if they came down to moan about something else.

  The children gazed into the empty hallway.

  “Look Nan! They’ve still got the carpets. They haven’t changed them like Mrs Keep said.”

  Mrs Keep? That must be Ellie Keep from the White Hart. When she’d asked about the work we’d been doing, I’d mentioned we were replacing the carpets at the end of the year. I hadn’t realised her interest lay in collecting a stash of gossip. I wouldn’t be going back there.

  Maureen and Jim didn’t move. I checked my watch. If the next guests arrived on time, they’d be pulling onto the driveway any moment.

  Jim propelled the little girl forward. “It wouldn’t harm to
let Lily pop in for a minute. She’s been asking about it all week.”

  “I hope you’re having a good holiday, but I must be getting on.”

  Behind them, a red-faced Jason turned the corner and headed across the drive. I heaved a sigh of relief. Finally, he’d made it back from macerator duty, no doubt after a swift pint or two.

  Maureen hadn’t spotted him. In a Brummie accent – stronger than I recalled, although I felt sure they’d moved to Norwich – Maureen said, “Too posh for the likes of us, are you?” She crossed her arms. “We let you have this place for nothing and look at you. La-de-da.”

  Jason towered behind her. When our eyes met, he shook his head. Tracking my gaze, Maureen spun round, clutching her chest as she leapt back in shock.

  “I think you should go, before I do something you regret.” Jason said. Turning to Jim, he added, “And I would be very careful what you say about us in future. We have a lot of stories to tell. And the proof too.”

  As Jim backed away, shepherding the children, the little girl tugged at his vest. “Why can’t we go in Grandad?”

  “Cos they’re…” Maureen met Jason’s eyes and she clamped her mouth shut.

  “Too busy working on the place?” Jason suggested. He folded his arms, mimicking her earlier stance.

  He waited until they reached the pavement, before closing the front door. “Why didn’t you tell them to go away?”

  “I did!”

  He met me with a look of disbelief. “Just once, it would be good to come back to find nothing has gone wrong.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, then changed my mind. He had a point. As he disappeared upstairs to shower, I decided not to tell him about Belinda and Mark and their fascination with Four in a Bed. He’d meet them soon enough.

  Chapter 18

  The next morning, Belinda and Mark came into the breakfast room as I chatted with another couple, Paul and Helen, who’d spent the previous day visiting the zoo. They hesitated by the door, so I invited them to sit down and help themselves to the buffet, pleased to see they did, although Belinda took the lid off the orange juice to sniff it while Mark shook the jar of muesli and held it up to the light, most likely to see how much fruit it contained.

  Or maybe he was searching for hairs. Either way, he poured the muesli into his bowl, so it must have passed his test.

  Paul watched them, faltering for a moment in the middle of his story. He shook his head and continued, “So as I was saying, these meerkats…”

  When he’d finished telling me about their day, I headed over to Belinda and Mark.

  “Your seagulls are loud,” Mark said.

  Yawning, Belinda rubbed her eyes. “They kept us up all night.”

  From the other table came a loud ‘ha hah’ and Paul leaned across from his table. “You need my gun.” He held his fingers out in the shape of a gun and closed one eye as if looking through the sight. “Bang, bang. Problem solved.”

  Shocked, Belinda turned to him. “You kill them?”

  “Nah! Course not.” He shrugged. “It’s the seaside, they’re wild birds. What do you expect Jason and Katie to do about it? Shoot them?”

  It took all my willpower to keep my face straight as I asked, “Tea or coffee?”

  When I went back with their pot of tea, they’d finished their fruit and yoghurts and sat in silence. On the neighbouring table, Helen and Paul were wading through their bowls of cereal. Paul had taken so long to eat his Weetabix, it had congealed into stodge.

  “Are you ready to order?” I asked Belinda and Mark.

  They nodded. “A full English with a scrambled and a poached egg.”

  I scribbled on my pad. “One full English with scrambled and one with poached egg.”

  “No, a full English with scrambled egg and one poached egg and Belinda will have a cheese, tomato and mushroom omelette with bacon and a sausage. Oh, and beans on the side.”

  Pen in the air, I gazed at him. Was he joking? Occasionally, we had guests asking for extra mushrooms or tomatoes or even a rasher of bacon with their omelette, but it was always an ‘or’ and never as much as this. It wasn’t buy one, get one free in restaurants, so what made our B&B any different?

  From the neighbouring table came laughter. “That’s three breakfasts,” Paul said.

  “You can’t have that!” Helen said. “That’s plain rude.”

  My heart swelled in gratitude. I could have hugged my helpful guests.

  As Belinda and Mark fired angry looks at their neighbours, I said, “How about you have scrambled egg today and poached egg tomorrow with your full English and either a slice of bacon or a sausage with your cheese, tomato and mushroom omelette. We use three eggs, so it’s a dish in itself.”

  “On Four in a Bed people get what they ask for,” Belinda said.

  “You do know that’s a game, made up for TV?” Helen said. “Do you really think these small places can give people everything they want, regardless of cost? They’d be out of business in months.”

  I headed back into the kitchen with the downgraded order. Jason leaned against the kitchen worktop, head in hand, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

  “The first order’s in,” I said.

  He chuckled. “I heard. We could do with staying at this Four in a Bed place, especially if you are given everything you ask for, no matter what.”

  Later, I went over to thank Paul and Helen, who grinned at me. “We’ve got a confession to make. We didn’t like to tell you as it can be a bit off-putting but, until a few months ago, we were guesthouse owners too. Thank goodness we’ve retired though.”

  ♦

  Later that afternoon, Jason put down the phone. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just been asked and wandered over to where I sat surrounded by paperwork. I’d promised to sort the receipts before the carrier bag overflowed. That was a fortnight ago. Now the receipts and other bits of paper balanced precariously on the mountainous peak. Another one or two more and the pile would topple.

  “Mike,” he said. Like I hadn’t guessed.

  “You did tell him you had to sort the bed in room four?”

  I knew the answer. I’d heard the whole call. And not once had he mentioned the stack of jobs here.

  “He’s in terrible trouble.”

  “And so are we if we don’t mend that bed before the guests get back.”

  He picked at his latest injury: a scab on his arm from days earlier when we’d been clearing out the shed and he’d been attacked by a four-inch rusty nail poking through an old piece of wood.

  “How about I help Mike with his leak and then come back to sort the bed?”

  “How about you sort the bed first?”

  He clenched his jaw as he stared at me, expecting me to buckle and say ‘Okay, go’. But I couldn’t risk him leaving without mending the bed first, especially if Mike bought him a couple of ‘thank you’ pints. Where would that leave our guest? On the floor, that’s where, while he and Mike cosied up at the pub. I pursed my lips and mirrored his gaze.

  Finally, he broke. “His roof is leaking and it’s pouring with rain. It’s a two-person job and Josie isn’t strong enough to do it.”

  As I leapt to my feet, paperwork cascaded to the floor. Where had Mike been when, legs wobbling and back breaking, I’d helped Jason carry several old storage heaters from the shed? The bricks inside had weighed a tonne. I snatched a handful of receipts from the pile on the sofa and thrust them to his face.

  “This is our business. The bed is broken. Our guests pay us to sleep here not at Mike’s.”

  I hurled the receipts into the air, where they floated like confetti to the carpet. I’d regret that later but – for now – stuff it! Keeping up the melodrama, I flounced out of the lounge and into the hallway where I met Belinda and Mark, thankfully heading into the guesthouse – so they couldn’t have heard much – but if I didn’t want to follow them up the stairs, there was only one place to go: the kitchen.

  A red ze
ro on the dishwasher told me it was ready to be emptied. I turned my back on it, unable to face my least-liked chore. Sodding Mike. Even if Jason did reappear before the guest arrived, it wouldn’t be with Mike in tow. No way would Mike volunteer to mend the broken bed.

  Sighing, I tapped my nails on the worktop. I had no idea what to do or say to make Jason put the guesthouse first. But was I being unreasonable? After all, if we had a roof leak in the middle of a downpour, I would hope someone would help. The one we’d had in the lounge had been a nightmare. Poor Mike and Josie. They must be frantic. Especially if the rain was coming into a guest room.

  My mind made up, I headed back to the lounge to apologise to Jason, but he wasn’t there. From upstairs came the sound of banging. Following the noise, I found Jason hammering a length of wood onto the inside of the upended bed. Three nails poked from his pursed lips.

  He spoke with a strange muffled tone through the side of his mouth. “This will hold it for now, but we’ll need a new bed.” He drew another a nail from between his teeth and hammered it into the wood. “This one’s had it.”

  When he finished, he pushed down on the frame to test it and got to his feet. “Give us a hand.”

  After we hefted the bed into place, I told Jason to leave the bedmaking to me, but he shook his head. “And have you moaning about doing everything while I swan about with Mike?”

  We made the bed in silence. As I went off to empty the dishwasher, I heard the bang of the front door. He’d gone to Mike’s. What time he’d be back was anyone’s guess.

  ♦

  Jason arrived home two hours later but instead of coming through to the lounge to say hello, he headed upstairs. The water running through the pipes told me he’d gone for a shower. Around me, piles of receipts littered the coffee table and carpet, weighed down by an assortment of mugs and glasses masquerading as paperweights. No way would I be throwing these in a fit of temper again.