by Mark Watson
It is frankly fairly pissing-well unbelievable that I am still here, smiling indulgently at moronic conversation, nodding my agreement that they are a great couple and it will be a lovely day. Explaining what I do for a living, and patiently clarifying that, no, a cornet is not the same as a trumpet, and – ha-ha – yes, a cornet is a word for an ice-cream cone as well.
But the final word on this subject has not yet been spoken. The wedding date is set for some eighteen months hence. That leaves time for things to change. That is ample time. Alistair Lowden believes that, tonight, he has been confirmed as Best Man at the wedding of Lloyd and Anita. Certainly he has been offered the role. He is not quite there yet, though. The wedding day: that’s the day we will know who the Best Man is. Not before. Until the day, everything is still up for grabs. Philip Lennox – that certain somebody, yours truly – is not quite out of contention yet.
SMOKING ROOM, 1985
It’s a meeting. Smoke dirties the air. In twenty years or so it will be illegal to smoke in this room, or in most parts of the building, but if you suggested that at the moment, no one would believe you.
‘So we basically need to decide literally this minute so I can get this faxed off. Are we putting the date on or aren’t we?’
They are designing the publicity for a film, not a particularly good one, in which a guy is living with a girl who gets a pet tiger – which leads to considerable awkwardness. It’s had frosty reviews in the States: one critic described it as having ‘the kind of undercooked goofball premise that even the writers seemingly got sick of after about twenty minutes’, and a notable reviewer (admittedly something of a snob) only dignified it with four words: ‘Do not see this’. Luckily, the Internet isn’t around yet, so people here generally don’t know the critical history of a movie when it comes to London. With a spirited enough campaign you can make it look as if it’s already been a great success, and isn’t rubbish. The studio has put some money behind that job, and this poster will go on the side of London buses soon. It just needs these two people to finish the design.
‘Um, I think … I don’t know. What do you think?’
Florian can’t concentrate because of the buzzing of a fly which has been grizzling its way in and out of nooks and corners for twenty minutes, its low, repetitive noise somehow impossible to unhear because, even in the act of deciding not to acknowledge it, you are making a pact with its existence. It’s like – well, it’s a bit like that thing with the tree falling down in the forest. If they didn’t listen to the fly buzzing, it wouldn’t be buzzing. But in order to think that, you have to admit that the fly is buzzing. And then it is …
‘Did you even hear any of that?’ Florian’s colleague is asking testily, and quite rightly so.
He raises his palms at her in apology. ‘I’m sorry, I . . . it’s this bloody fly. One more time. What are our options? Sorry.’
She sighs. It’s not like she cares about this film any more than he does. But she’s more of a professional. In five years both of them will have left the industry and she will be a tour guide in Peru.
‘Basically what I think we should do is leave the date off, because then we can have the title in bigger type, which I think would be better.’
‘OK,’ he says.
‘Sure?’ she says. ‘Because it could be that we get our arses kicked for this. It might be that they desperately want the date on there. There’s just no time to check.’
He starts to say that maybe they ought to stick the date on after all. Just to be on the safe side. Just to avoid getting told off by some jerk in LA who thinks nobody goes to see a film unless the release date is spelled out to them. But there’s the fly, buzzing quietly and then loudly, never quite in the part of the room you expect. The fly, and the smoke. Above all the fly. He can no longer stand it.
‘Oh, it’s fine,’ Florian says. ‘Don’t worry about the date. It doesn’t matter.’
It actually does matter, but it’s done now. Within five minutes she’s gone off to the fax machine in reception and the design is off to the relevant people. It does matter. A man will miss out on his dream job because that date isn’t on the poster. Someone else will spend so long staring up at the poster, wondering when the film will be released, that he will be run over by a bicycle and end up meeting a nurse with whom he’ll fall in love. In a way all this is down to the designers, but you could argue it’s really down to the fly.
The fly buzzes out of the door when the designer leaves. Over the week to come, it will go on to have a hand in several more important decisions.
EUSTON ROAD, HALF A MILE FROM THE HOTEL ALPHA, 1985
Along the road he bounds in the spring sunshine, Matthew Gillett, the outstanding candidate for the vacant job at the Hotel Alpha, handsomely dressed in a suit and tie and shoes which have been buffed by a Nigerian man in the station. He checks his watch: forty-five minutes till his interview. He’s left the perfect amount of time – long enough that there’s no chance of being late, but not so long that he’ll be embarrassingly early and look as if he’s been preparing for weeks. Time management is very important. It’s a phrase he picked up from a book, The Moment. You have to have a plan for every minute. Well, Matthew has done that. He planned today, the interview day, precisely: rising with the alarm clock at seven-thirty, showering for ten minutes, eating a breakfast he pre-planned for its energy-providing qualities. Then he spent precisely an hour doing what he’s done for an hour every day: rehearsing the answers to questions the interviewer, a Mr Adam, might ask.
What are your best qualities?
‘(Modest laugh.) This question is a bit of a minefield, isn’t it! I suppose there’s my modesty, to start with! (Mental note: judge whether it’s the sort of situation where a joke would be appropriate) No, but seriously. I think I’m a good team member. I put my organization before myself. That’s what I did at Lloyds, and before that at the Planetarium and Spar, my previous employers. I would also say that I’m well-organized and efficient. I’ve been to see the hotel in action and I notice how smoothly it all runs. You need someone who can fit into that, who can be a part of that well-oiled machine – an important part, but unobtrusive. I think that’s me. Also, I particularly pride myself on my time management.’
And any weaknesses?
‘Well, we all have weaknesses, of course. I think one of mine is that I set myself unfairly high standards, and perhaps sometimes do the same to people around me. At the Planetarium I was occasionally told off – it sounds funny – for working intimidating amounts of overtime, or for keeping my own department in such good order that other areas of the museum looked a bit shabby. I’m always trying to learn from criticism, and I’ve learned from those experiences that you always have to make allowances for others in the team.’
Where do you see yourself in ten years’ time?
‘Where you are now! (Deferential laugh.) No, but seriously. I think the main thing I foresee is that I will be doing what I’m doing now – operating at a very high level – but within a position of increased responsibility. I would like to think that I’ll have proved my worth to this hotel and, God willing, will be a major part of its hierarchy. I don’t see the Hotel Alpha as some sort of stepping stone to a bigger place. I see the next decade as being a process of—’
A woman hurries past him, newspaper under her arm, an umbrella in her other hand – an umbrella she surely won’t need on a bright day like this. It catches the fold of his jacket and the two of them look briefly, crossly at each other, and that is the only time they will ever meet. Matthew looks down at the jacket in case there’s a blemish left by the encounter, but there’s nothing, and he settles back into his interview rehearsal as the sun runs like spilled juice over the brickwork of King’s Cross station up ahead.
What in particular attracts you to the Hotel Alpha?
‘Of course, I’ve been aware of the reputation of the hotel for a long time, like anyone interested in London life. (Mental note: try to say this as if
you’ve always lived in London, rather than moving down from Kettering four years ago.) I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that it’s a place, not just to stay, but to do whatever you want. And I would like to be someone who can help guests to—’
A double-decker bus rolls past, and Matthew instinctively takes a couple of steps away from the road as if the bus might lurch onto the pavement. He glances up at its red body, bathing like everything else in the generosity of the sun, and vaguely notices the banner advertising a romantic comedy which is in the cinemas now. He saw the same ad last week. The design was sketched out – by coincidence – in the smoking room of the Hotel Alpha, where he’s headed now. Because of various distractions, the two people responsible for the design omitted to include the date. If they had included it, Matthew might have taken notice of what day it was when he saw it last week, and it might have triggered the realization that his Alpha interview was actually meant to take place then. As it is, on he goes now, the perfect candidate, mentally rehearsing his finely chiselled answers to questions that will never be asked. In the hotel, now one hundred yards away, the person who got the job is already happily at work.
ALL OVER THE HOTEL
Top ten reasons for sleeplessness in the Hotel Alpha, occurring in guests between 1965 and 2005:
1. General, unfocused sense of unease.
2. Noise from another room, or from the atrium.
3. Worries connected to work, finances, etc.
4. Worries related to romantic relationships, including marriage.
5. Woken up by strange dream or by unknown circumstances and unable to relax back into sleep.
6. Thinking too hard about need to sleep, paradoxically making goal unattainable.
7. Misjudgement of food or alcohol consumption leading to disturbed physical equilibrium.
8. Miscalculation of fatigue levels leading to too-early bedtime.
9. Body’s instinctive dread of relinquishing consciousness, as sleep too close a sensation to ultimate negation of death, against which human instinct automatically rebels.
10. Dripping tap.
Ten reasons for sleeplessness that have occurred just once in the Hotel Alpha between 1965 and 2005:
1. Allergy to detergent used to wash sheets, causing succession of 46 sneezes in two minutes, causing state of wakefulness impossible to shake off.
2. Fear of dark which cannot be admitted to new girlfriend.
3. Visitation of ghost, presumably in a dream.
4. Gout.
5. Hypochondria leading to conviction about imminent illness.
6. Partner’s wetting of bed.
7. Obsessive desire to solve riddle about getting a goat and some other items from one side of a river to the other.
8. Nostalgia for homeland, Transnistria, a part of Moldova which asserts its independence.
9. Person next door laughing indecently loud, and all through night, at rerun of 1970s sitcom On The Buses.
10. Once killed a man.
ROOM 68, 1966
‘I advise you to stay in the wardrobe for a little longer,’ says the concierge in an undertone. ‘Until the moment they knock on the door.’
‘But what if . . . ’ the Rolling Stone begins.
‘Don’t worry, there is no way of opening the doors. Not even for the police. Ha, ha!’
The rock star hears the mutter of mirth and wonders how old this guy is. He seems ancient, but he doesn’t look it.
‘Now listen,’ the voice continues. ‘When they knock, I shall detain them with some questions, affecting not to believe that they are the police, or, anyhow, some sort of shilly-shallying.’ He must be in his fifties, thinks the Stone, and just be one of these geezers with that condition where you look like you never age. ‘That door at the far end,’ the concierge continues, ‘communicates with the room next door. Normally it cannot be opened, but I have taken the liberty of unlocking every such door on this floor. While I am busy with the police in this room, you should steal away quickly through the door, and then the next door, until you come to the end of the balcony.’
‘There’s cops down in the lobby as well, though,’ frets the celebrity.
‘The atrium, yes,’ the concierge agrees. What the fuck is an atrium? wonders the Stone. It reminds him of Latin at school. He can just about remember school – it’s not many years ago – but Christ, things have happened since then. More than enough has happened even in the past twenty-four hours. He can’t entirely remember how he got here, or when he last woke up in a bed. A phrase comes into his head: light years from home. A thousand, two thousand light years from home.
‘ . . . and that is Room 44,’ says the concierge. ‘You should be safe in there for as long as necessary.’ Shit: he hasn’t been concentrating. He heard 44 at least. He’ll head there. He can hear the footsteps of the cops outside, their low conversations. They sound as nervous as he is. More nervous, probably. What can they do to him, really? He only mentioned that he needed to ‘keep his head down’ for a while, but the hotel staff have taken it really seriously.
A silence follows; then the policemen guess the wrong way, heading towards the far end of the balcony. It will a few minutes before they’ve knocked on all the doors and ended up here. It’s going to work perfectly.
The concierge clears his throat.
‘My boss – Howard – is very fond of one of your songs,’ he says, ‘the one named “Satisfaction”.’
‘That’s cool. Thanks.’
The Stone doesn’t mean to sound lukewarm, but he’s always at a loss to know how to respond when people mention specific stuff they’ve liked. He always says thanks, but it tends to sound a bit half-hearted. He prefers just to sign his autograph rather than gas about the songs. The worst thing is when people sing them back at him. He doesn’t reckon this guy is going to try and do that.
‘I suppose … I suppose the song is about trying to – obtain satisfaction in one’s life, really?’ the man ventures.
‘That’s pretty fair,’ says the Stone.
He’s spared from adding to his comments by a hard trio of knocks at the door. The concierge opens the wardrobe without a sound, a finger to his lips as he points towards the communicating door. The Stone winks and begins to walk with exaggerated delicacy across the carpet. The two men’s lives will not intersect again after this, although in the years ahead Graham will occasionally glance up at a screen and see the man cavorting about, his face a little older each time.
ROOM 76, 1970
Every time someone knocks on any of the bloody doors in this place, it sounds like it’s yours. This is the third time he’s sprung to his feet, gone to jerk open the door, and not found her there. Once it was a visitor for the person the other side of the wall: a visitor who ought not, from the look on her face, to be there. Once it was a housekeeper in a uniform so white it looked brand new; she glanced wryly at him before being admitted two doors down. And this time there is nobody there at all. Whoever made the knock has been noiselessly admitted to a room, or was the product of his imagination. Or a ghost.
It’s not as if it could be her, anyhow. She isn’t coming back. He has lost her. She is with somebody else; or she’s with nobody else, but happy; she’s happy without him, that’s the point. And that’s how it has to be. He doesn’t deserve another chance, probably. It’s just that a hotel promises everything, or at least rules nothing out. Anything, in its neutrality, can be imagined. Nobody made of the ordinary human stuff can hear a knock on a door, even the wrong door, without believing for a few seconds that the impossible has happened, and the person they have longed for is here after all.
Mark Watson is the acclaimed author of four novels, most recently Eleven and The Knot, which have been published in twelve languages. He is also a stand-up comedian and has won numerous awards in Britain and Australia. He regularly appears on TV, has had his own cult Radio 4 series and been named the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s highest achiever of the decade by The Times, having pe
rformed a series of legendary 24-hour shows. He has a home in north London, but mostly lives in hotels. You can find Mark on Twitter @watsoncomedian and read more on his website: www.markwatsonthecomedian.com
Praise for Mark Watson’s novels
‘A beautifully observed, touching and funny book of considerable power’ A L KENNEDY
‘A pitch-perfect tragicomedy of ordinary – and not so ordinary – family life’ JONATHAN COE
‘Hugely recommended. Gentle, compassionate, unusual and thought-provoking’ CHRIS CLEAVE
‘Brilliantly hilarious and hilariously brilliant’ STEPHEN FRY
‘Funny, sharply observed and unexpectedly moving’ The Times
‘Unnervingly accomplished’ Observer
‘Intelligent, humane and desperately funny’ Independent
‘A witty, sharply observant writer’ Stylist
Also by Mark Watson
THE KNOT
ELEVEN
First published 2014 by Picador
First published in paperback 2014 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2015 by Picador
an imprint of PanMacmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-4472-4330-4
Copyright © Mark Watson 2014
Cover illustration and design by Stuart Wilson
The right of Mark Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
