Bedlam & Breakfast at a Devon Seaside Guesthouse

by Sharley Scott

  “It’s all go around here.” Bert shook his head. “Torringham used to be such a quiet place.”

  I giggled. “What? In the olden days.”

  He became solemn. “I don’t feel old. What with having Callum late, I made sure I did all the things younger blokes do. But…” He trailed off. “Where’s your Jason?”

  I tried not to snarl but it came out as a huff. “Out. Again.”

  For once, he wasn’t with Mike, but he’d taken a drive to Berrinton as he needed a pair of trousers, which he could have picked up when he went to Sainsburys the other day. I’d wanted to go too but one of us had to wait for a check-in and the laundry delivery. Apparently, his need for a second pair of lightweight trousers he could wear when cooking breakfasts outweighed my wish for a couple of cardigans. After he’d spread his legs to show me his white pants bulging through the split seam in his crotch, I’d agreed. No point scaring – or scarring – the guests.

  “Are you both alright, love?” When I glanced at him in surprise, he flushed and looked away. “I don’t mean to pry.”

  He put his cup on the coffee table and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. I caught the familiar scent of Lynx.

  “It’s just that…” He looked down, his attention taken by one of his fingernails and paused to pick at it. “Well, you know.”

  I fell silent, unable to respond. Yes, I did know. But how did I explain to my uncle that in just six months we’d become business associates rather than husband and wife.

  When we moved into Flotsam Guesthouse, we’d been full of hope for the future. We had a strong marriage. We loved each other. We could do this. But we hadn’t thought that our jobs gave us at most two days a week together and the occasional holiday. Being forced to live and work together 24/7 in a demanding, unrelenting job had buckled our marriage and I simply didn’t know if we could put it back on track. Did we even want to? I no longer knew how I felt about it and I certainly couldn’t answer for Jason. We’d have to speak to each other in more than monosyllables for that.

  But then I remembered Jason, legs apart, showing me his ‘bits’ escaping from his trousers and I smiled. He may have been doing it to gain the advantage, but it proved we were still more than business acquaintances.

  “Look, love.” Bert squirmed in his seat. “I came over as I have something to tell you both.”

  The front door thudded shut and footsteps clomped across the hallway but the stairs didn’t creak. Not a guest. Moments later the lounge door opened and Jason ducked in clutching an M&S carrier bag. His face brightened and, extending his arm, he headed over to Bert.

  “How are you? Long time, no see.”

  “Good, good.” Bert shook Jason’s hand. When he released it, he settled into the back of the settee and scratched his chin. “Well, okay, not so good but sort yourself out and we’ll have a chat.”

  Jason darted a questioning look in my direction but all I could do was shrug my shoulders. No point asking me. Hurriedly, he kicked his shoes off, planting the toe of one against the heel of the other, rather than untying his laces, and plumped down next to me.

  “That sounds worrying.”

  Bert gave us a watery smile. “It is a bit. I’ve just been told I’ve got kidney cancer.”

  I gasped. Poor Uncle Bert, poor Callum and not forgetting Doreen – a lovely lady and perfect for Bert – who I’d met just the once, but I talked to her each time I phoned. How would they be dealing with the shock?

  And he was my last link to Mum. My only living relative on that side of the family and the only person with her eyes. Sometimes I found myself lost in his smile, watching his eyes crinkle as he laughed, and remembering Mum. Emily had Jason’s eyes, while I had my dad’s.

  The last time he’d come I’d had a feeling he was poorly, but I’d discounted it and got on with running the B&B, bickering with Jason and missing Emily. Remembering how scared and upset I’d been when Emily had been injured in the car accident only made me feel worse for Doreen and Callum. Life was fragile. Family was precious. I ached to see Emily again. Thank goodness it was just two weeks until we closed for a few days at the start of October to see Emily and Lucy. I’d give my darling daughter a cuddle and tell her how much I loved her. I wouldn’t give her a lecture about the car accident either, although I knew Jason would. But she wouldn’t mind it coming from him.

  My thoughts turned back to Bert. His cap sat on the arm of the settee. It had been five months since I’d first met him down here. I’d hoped for years more to get to know each other but the ground had shifted and uncertainty lay ahead. I had to know more but I couldn’t think how to phrase it. How do you say, ‘Are you going to live or die?’.

  A lump filled my throat, threatening to choke me, making it impossible to talk and not cry.

  Thank goodness Jason said something.

  “Bloody hell! I’m really sorry to hear that. What did they say?”

  Bert’s lips parted but no words came out. He steepled his fingers, then pressed his hands together as if in prayer.

  Finally, he took a deep breath. “I’m having surgery to remove my kidney next week. We’ll see how it goes from there. I’m a lucky man with a wonderful wife, an amazing son and…” He paused to give me a small smile. “I’ve just found you again. Let’s hope I stay lucky.”

  He stopped a few minutes longer but deflected questions about his diagnosis. With a grunt he stood up, stooping to pick up his cap. His eyes welled as he gazed from Jason to me.

  “You’re both lovely people. I’ve always taken care to think well of Doreen, even the few times we don’t agree. Marriage isn’t just about how you act with each other. It’s up here.” He jabbed his head. “Being respectful in thoughts too. Seeing and doing the best by one another. If you put each other first, the rest follows.”

  He stammered to a halt. I’d never known Bert to give such a long speech before. Neither had he by the look of it.

  Sniffing, he dabbed his palm to his eye and shook his head. “Blooming cissy,” he muttered to himself.

  Embarrassed, he patted Jason’s shoulder, gave my arm a squeeze and shuffled out the door. I didn’t want him to go, not without saying something. I ran after him and gave him a hug and kissed his cheek. He nodded. I didn’t need to speak. He knew.

  When the door closed behind Bert, I stood for a moment in shock before heading back to the lounge, where I found Jason with his head in his hands, sitting on the settee. As I crumpled beside him and sobbed, he drew me close. I could feel the warmth of his body, hear his heartbeat. I’d forgotten its steady rhythm. How long had it been since we’d sat close together, let alone touched each other? He drew back and gazed into my eyes. As I tried to look away, he tipped my chin upwards with his finger and leaned forward, his lips brushing my forehead.

  “Your uncle’s right. We need to look after each other better. I do love you, you know.”

  ♦

  Two weeks later Jason hefted the suitcases in the car and for the first time since April we closed the door to an empty Flotsam Guesthouse. We’d had two days without guests in mid-May but since then we’d worked one hundred and thirty-three days without a single day off, waking every morning to make breakfasts, cleaning rooms, washing, ironing, emptying and refilling the dishwasher three to four times a day, working through to the evening many days, all the time smiling and making sure everyone had a lovely stay. And it had taken its toll. We needed a few days to recharge, see our beautiful daughters and to simply spend time relaxing together.

  And to reflect on how we’d follow Bert’s advice to make our future at Flotsam Guesthouse happier, not just benefitting us but also our guests.

  From the passenger seat, Jason smiled at me and patted my leg. “Let’s go!”

  He left his hand there, warming my thigh. I liked it.

  In three days, we’d be back to a full house, including two returning couples, both from earlier in the year. It would be lovely to see them again.

  Chapter 30

&
nbsp; My breath fogged the air as I stepped from the warmth of the guesthouse to push another bundle of underlay into the crammed boot of our car. I headed back inside, slapping my hands together to clear the dust and grit, where I met Jason in the hallway. He slotted the phone into the holder.

  “I’ve just agreed to a one-night booking next Wednesday. A tiddler as he’s single occupancy but we are pretty quiet.” He smiled. “It’s a direct booking at least.”

  I shrugged. “It’s your week for ironing, so I don’t mind.”

  His face fell but then he grinned. “You’re enjoying this job swap lark.”

  “Always good to see a man scrubbing a loo.”

  Laughing, we pulled the guesthouse door shut and climbed into the car, ready for our next ‘dump’ run. With the weekdays being quiet in November, we’d closed for a few days while we painted the breakfast room and had a new carpet laid in one of the guestrooms. That would leave us with one final guestroom to decorate in a couple of weeks and then all the guestrooms would have been carpeted and given a fresh coat of paint. There was still plenty to do, not least the exterior of the building which had been postponed until April, then there was the roof, most of the ensuites, the kitchen, our bedroom. If I thought about it too much I’d panic, but the list of work was diminishing as we nibbled at jobs.

  “So what room have you put this one-night stay in?”

  “He was happy with the small double.”

  “Aren’t we decorating that one next?”

  “We don’t need to start until Friday.”

  A tack from one of the gripper rods stashed behind the seat snagged my hair and I yanked it free. I couldn’t wait to finish that room. Even if we had further improvement work to do, it meant I would no longer worry about a guest’s reaction when I took them into a clean but tired-looking room.

  “Unusual surname,” Jason said. He rolled the name on his tongue. “Towoshco.”

  “I knew someone with that name. Aleksander Tolloczko. He was a salesman at the company I worked for, before I went to the residential centre.”

  Jason slapped the steering wheel. “That’s his name!”

  ♦

  After the journey to the dump, followed by a trip to the shops, I forgot about Aleksander until the following Monday when I checked the diary. His overnight booking sat short and stubby on the online calendar, in comparison to the longer stripes for the three and four-night bookings above and below him.

  I clicked on his booking. If it was the same Aleksander, he must have moved. The one I knew had lived in Hatfield, whereas this one lived in Frome. Intrigued by the idea that someone from my distant past could have chosen to stay at Flotsam Guesthouse, I typed his name into Google. Sure enough, I found my Aleksander still working in Welwyn Garden City, which made it unlikely he’d moved to Somerset. But there was another one! As I clicked through to LinkedIn, my hand shot to my mouth. I grabbed the laptop and rushed through to the kitchen, where I found Jason bending over the sink peeling potatoes for our dinner.

  “You won’t believe it!” I jabbed the screen. “Look at this.”

  Squinting, he gazed at the laptop. “Aleksander Tow… Hotel Inspector.”

  I grinned at him. “Can you believe it?” Then I gasped. “Oh no! He’s in the small room.”

  Jason rinsed his hands under the tap and wiped them dry. He pulled the laptop towards him to examine it. “I didn’t think you were signing us up for the ratings scheme until we’d finished all the rooms.”

  “I didn’t expect them to come so soon. Sod’s Law he’s booked the only room we haven’t renovated.”

  “Can’t you ring them and ask them to wait a few weeks?”

  “And say what? I’ve stalked Aleksander and discovered he’s a hotel inspector, so please can he come when our guesthouse is in perfect order.”

  Jason shrugged. “In three weeks, it would be.”

  I gave him an apologetic hug. He’d showered after we’d finished cleaning the rooms and the aroma of his favourite aftershave clung to him, masking the starchy smell of peeled potatoes. I shouldn’t have got carried away and sent off the application to join the ratings scheme, but I’d been desperate to see stars sooner rather than later. I knew how many I wanted too. Count the fingers on one hand, minus the thumb. My haste would be our downfall. We’d worked so hard to make Flotsam Guesthouse as good as possible for our guests, yet our only hope for a good rating would be residing in our one unrenovated room.

  “We’ll move him,” I said. “If he’d come in three weeks it would have been finished. And anyhow we wouldn’t get the signage for our rating until then, so it’s not cheating. We’ll tell him we had no choice as the room is down for maintenance.”

  ♦

  With three hours to go before his arrival, I had more than enough time to do the necessary work. Jason shook his head as I stomped past with the mastic gun. I’d refused his help, certain that relining the bottom of the shower with fresh mastic couldn’t be too difficult. With the old mastic scraped away, it was just a case of not squeezing the gun too hard to ensure the mastic oozed out in a perfect line like a toothpaste advert. Then I wet my finger and ran it round the bottom of the tiles, removing the excess mastic. Pleased with my efforts I stepped back as Jason came into the ensuite and peered over my shoulder.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  “Well, we can say in all truth that the ensuite in this room is unusable, so we’ve had to move him.”

  Chuckling, Jason wandered off shaking his head, leaving me to admire my work and savour the pungent smell.

  ♦

  The hotel inspector stood at the door, wearing a pristine white shirt, tie and dark trousers with a vertical crease that would make a tailor proud. His shoes had been polished into a black mirror upon which our hanging basket reflected in the toe cap. He swept his hand along his forehead to clear a channel between his fringe and his glasses. I took in his serious eyes tempered by an easy smile, his dark hair not yet greying, his unlined face. And I felt old.

  It wasn’t that long since Mrs Morris had been telling me at breakfast one morning how she’d asked a policeman for directions and could have sworn he was a schoolboy in costume. One of the other guests had leaned across their breakfast table to hiss, ‘Maybe he was a strippergram?’ and made her blush.

  The hotel inspector returned my smile and held out his hand, “Aleksander Tolloczko but please call me Alex.”

  I shook his hand and stepped back to let Jason undertake the introductions. As he carried the hotel inspector’s bag upstairs, we slowed as we came to the room originally booked. I’d purposefully left the door open.

  “You would have been in this one, but we’ve upgraded your room as we had work to do in the ensuite.”

  “I can smell it. Shower issue?”

  “Something like that.” I blushed. While I didn’t mind being devious for a good cause, I wouldn’t lie. “But I’m sure you’ll be very happy with the room we’ve allocated you instead.”

  An hour later, the bell in the hallway tinkled. Jason heaved himself from the sofa and ducked out of the lounge, leaving me to finish my email response to a booking enquiry. In his rush he didn’t close the lounge door, which meant the quiet murmurs of the hotel inspector filtered through, followed by Jason’s jovial voice. “It’s not a problem.”

  The stairs creaked and I assumed the hotel inspector had gone back to his room but then Bill’s deep voice boomed. “Ironing service, eh? I’ve got a few bits. Would you mind?”

  I sat upright, straining to work out what could be happening. Who was running an ironing service? Maybe the laundrette had posted a deal through the door. We got a lot of flyers from local businesses. I was doing a final read-through of my email when Jason came into the lounge clutching a striped shirt on a hanger. Not one of his. He spotted my raised eyebrows.

  “That hotel inspector wanted to use the iron, but we’ve got a mark on the ironing board cover.”

  “And?” I shrugged in confusion. “I
t’s a small scorch mark. He won’t downgrade us on that.”

  Jason scratched his chin. “Well, I’ve offered now.”

  When the bell rang, he hooked the hanger over a painting of Torringham harbour in Victorian times and shot out. Noting it was my turn to deal with guests, I watched in surprise as he disappeared. Why the rush? The door clicked shut, muffling but not concealing Bill’s loud voice.

  “I wish I’d known about this. I was just telling Paul.”

  Jason kept his voice low, so I couldn’t make out what he said. I pressed send on the email and opened the tab for Facebook, ready to relax for the evening, when the door snapped open and Jason came through carrying what seemed to be a dozen hangers with assorted shirts and tops. He didn’t meet my eye as he draped the items over the sofa arm, but he must have felt my gaze burning into his back as he said, “I know. You don’t need to say anything.”

  I didn't utter a word while he set up the ironing board and switched on the iron. The hotel inspector’s shirt was clearly expensive. It didn’t need much other than a whizz of the iron to press its barely crumpled appearance, while the batch of clothes on the sofa seemed to have been tossed into a suitcase and crushed by the weight of a hundred other pieces. Hadn’t Bill arrived with the world’s heaviest suitcase? And he’d just been talking to Jason too. These must be his. But what were his clothes doing in our lounge?

  I pointed to the pile and opened my mouth. “Are they…?”.

  “Yes.” Jason cut me short. “And in a minute Paul will be down with his ironing too.”

  Bill and Paul had arrived together, but I hadn’t spotted Paul and his wife sitting in the back of the car when we’d answered the door. While Jason had taken Bill round to the car boot to fetch the bags, I’d gone to fetch the registration form, returning as Bill stepped inside. I’d smiled and welcomed his wife, not noticing he’d swapped his shirt for a striped jumper. It was only when the real Bill came to the door a moment later, that I stepped back in surprise. Identical in all but clothing, Bill and Paul were our first twins. Luckily, Bill had a love of chunky jewellery, so we could tell them apart.