Heartbreak Hotel

  Take India. Until recently she had been a Shoreditch girl, her world boundaried by Brick Lane and Columbia Road. In Buffy’s view its inhabitants scored highly on the wanker-ometer but he was an old fart, he would think that. Now, however, his stepdaughter was a breathless convert to the delights of small-town living. Everybody knew everybody! They left their bikes unchained! They left vegetables outside their doors with a sign saying Help Yourself. Instead of being spattered with vomit, the pavements were chalked with hopscotch. Hopscotch.

  Nor, until recently, had India shown the slightest interest in cooking. Her usual meal, he seemed to remember, was hummus, scooped out of the tub with her finger. Now she had become an enthusiastic sous-chef, chopping, stirring, testing recipes and sipping sauces from Voda’s outstretched spoon.

  This volte-face pleased him hugely, of course, as did her high spirits, especially as his sons had told him how gloomy India had been recently. She was also taking more care of her appearance. Tonight she had brushed her hair and clipped it up with two plastic butterflies. She was also wearing a flowery granny-dress, bought from Jill’s Things in the high street, a change from her usual baggy layers and leggings. It was only now, however, that Buffy realised the reason for this transformation. It wasn’t the cooking that had brought a flush to her cheeks; it was Des.

  Des, the only man on the course. Des, who due to his shyness had been the object of some speculation. He was a sandy-haired chap, a rugby player; BMW Bella had attempted to chat him up on the first evening but had met with little response except for the fact that he had been given a car by a mate of his who had lost his licence for drink-driving. A broken relationship didn’t seem to have been involved, but then it hadn’t in her case either. Despite having this in common Bella had made little headway with Des, a matter of some gratification to Buffy whose loyalties lay with his stepdaughter.

  For now he was recognising the telltale signs. Tonight’s starter was artichokes. He watched India squat down beside Des, who was looking bemused at the object on his plate, and demonstrate how to eat it. India even pulled off a leaf and tore at it with her teeth. All the while she was smiling at him, balancing herself against him as she swayed on her haunches. Des said something and she burst out laughing – a shrill, flirtatious laugh that suggested it wasn’t that funny but she was giving him the benefit of the doubt because she fancied him.

  Buffy smiled to himself as he uncorked the wine. When he had thought up his plan he’d had a vision of battle-scarred veterans like himself, casualties of the war between the sexes, pitching up at his establishment and finding comfort in each other’s arms. He himself had retired from the field, a grizzled soldier weighed down with medals for service in dangerous and hostile terrain, but was on hand to give advice. India had not figured in this scenario but then, as he had noticed, nothing goes according to plan.

  He walked from table to table, pouring out the wine. How radiant India looked as she carried round the water jugs! From what he’d heard, her love life had been pretty unsatisfactory, involving a high percentage of Hoxton tossers. Buffy looked at Des, who had given up on his artichoke. This chap wouldn’t know the White Cube Gallery if it came up and hit him in the face. He was a sportsman, strong and solid. There was something reassuring about his great freckled slabs of forearms, thatched with blond fur. They would encircle India and keep her safe. Buffy’s imagination raced ahead. The two of them would marry and buy a cottage in Shropshire – no sense in hanging around, India was nearly forty, after all. Maybe just time for a tow-headed son who would bang his spoon on the kitchen table and demand porridge with his piping treble voice.

  ‘Has anyone seen Amy?’ asked Rosemary.

  Buffy was jerked out of his reverie. Amy had been spotted briefly during the afternoon but had disappeared again. She had not checked-out or taken her luggage. Here in the dining room her empty seat, next to Rosemary, had a disquieting, Banquo air to it.

  ‘I hope she hasn’t broken down somewhere,’ said Rosemary, holding out her glass. ‘She should have waited till the end of the course, then she’d know how to fix it.’

  ‘She’d phone, if she’d broken down,’ said Buffy.

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ said Rosemary. ‘She’s Orange. The signal here’s very patchy. Even on the bypass it’s touch and go.’ She gulped down some wine. ‘I got propositioned there yesterday for the first time in thirty years. Shame the chap turned out to be a mental defective.’

  Buffy was fond of Rosemary, with her Home Counties separates and hearty laugh. Besides, he always warmed to a fellow drinker; most of the ladies were disappointingly niminy-piminy in this respect, placing their hand over their glass and rolling their eyes heavenwards like a painting of the Virgin in some dim Italian church. Tonight, however, Rosemary seemed out of sorts. She had put a brave face on her misfortune but now the bitterness was breaking out. He had heard her, during cocktails, comparing notes with another female guest of mature years, also abandoned for a younger model.

  ‘Fancy going to bed with somebody who hasn’t heard of Cliff Michelmore,’ Rosemary had snorted. ‘It must be so bloody lonely.’

  ‘Cliff Richard even,’ said the other woman. ‘His little tart’s barely out of nappies.’

  ‘Douggie’s wants children,’ said Rosemary. ‘I can just see him pushing some bawling brat around Sainsbury’s, with his gammy leg playing up, missing the cricket and sodden with vomit. A high price to pay for a bit of hanky-panky, if you ask me.’

  Now Rosemary had relapsed into gloom. She sat slumped in her chair, rolling her bread into pellets. Buffy, who had sat down beside her, tried to think of something encouraging to say. He hated to see such a sport brought low. Though no stranger to adultery himself, he felt a wave of anger against the errant Douggie. How could the man be such a cliché?

  A faint crash came from the kitchen. Silence had fallen in the dining room. The artichokes had long since been dismembered or abandoned; people were waiting for the main course.

  A moment later Voda appeared, her face shiny with sweat. She hurried over to Buffy and crouched at his ear.

  ‘Bit of a disaster,’ she whispered. ‘Do something! Entertain them for twenty minutes!’

  She disappeared into the kitchen. Though momentarily taken aback, Buffy rallied. After all, he was a pro. He felt the old instincts rumble into life, like a boiler firing up in the basement. He leaned over to Nina, the widow from Whitstable, who was sitting opposite.

  ‘Would you like to hear a poem then?’

  Nina’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yes please! We’ve been dying to hear you perform. You’re really quite famous. It was a thrill to arrive here and find it was you.’

  ‘I haven’t dared say so,’ said another woman, ‘but I loved your Sergeant Whatsit in Journey’s End. I saw it in Beccles.’ She stood up and tapped her glass. ‘Shh, everybody! Our host is going to read us some poetry!’

  ‘Did you know he was Hammy the Hamster?’ said someone else.

  ‘I’d prefer The Faerie Queene,’ said Nina, gazing at Buffy with devotion.

  ‘Afraid I can’t remember a word of it,’ said Buffy. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t half go on.’

  He got to his feet. At the next table sat the younger guests, who by now had segregated themselves. The ravishing Bella had pinned up her hair and wore a strappy little top. She whispered something in Des’s ear and stifled a giggle. Buffy glared at her; didn’t she know that Des was taken? Des didn’t respond. He was gazing dreamily in the direction of the kitchen. Was he yearning for India or his main course?

  ‘I’d like to dedicate this poem to my stepdaughter India,’ boomed Buffy, ‘who is at this very moment putting the final touches to your guineafowl or, in the case of the veggies, aubergine bake.’

  He took a breath. Suddenly his mind went blank.

  A moment passed. Faces were turned towards him expectantly. Buffy broke into a sweat. His brain had literally emptied; the words had disappeared down a plughole, he could feel the hiss. Every actor?
??s nightmare and it had to happen now, with no fellow thesps to bail him out. He had dried a few times in the past, of course; it happened to everyone. But there was always the prompt, or one of the cast, to give one a nudge. Once, in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, he had skipped three pages of dialogue, startling both himself and his stage wife, but the audience didn’t seem to notice. After all, they were both playing alcoholics and the odd non sequitur was simply par for the course. He seemed to remember an inspired riff about armadillos that lurched them back onto the page. Albee would have been proud of him.

  Several minutes passed. Buffy cleared his throat. Rosemary gave him an encouraging smile. The only line of poetry he could remember was

  Celery raw develops the jaw

  Celery stewed is more quietly chewed.

  Suddenly the doorbell rang. The dog yapped and rushed into the hallway.

  Saved by the bell! It must be Amy, late for dinner. Buffy, breathing a sigh of relief, hurried out and opened the front door.

  A dishevelled, middle-aged man stood there, wild-eyed under the street light. ‘So sorry to disturb you,’ he said, ‘but is Mrs Rosemary Turnbull there?’

  Buffy led him into the dining room. The guests gazed, puzzled, at the newcomer. Was he a late addition to the course?

  Rosemary struggled to her feet. ‘Douggie!’ she cried.

  Nolan

  Nolan, hurrying down the hallway, saw flashing lights through the glass. He flung open the door. Two paramedics stood there.

  ‘Blimey!’ said one of them.

  ‘She’s in the lounge,’ said Nolan. ‘We haven’t moved her.’

  They were staring at him. ‘I think you should sit down, sir.’

  Nolan looked at himself in the mirror. He had pulled off the dangling eye but there was no denying he looked a mess. He had rubbed the gunk off his face but blood still seemed to be smeared over his cheek, and his eye socket was encrusted with wax. ‘It’s not me. I’m fine.’

  They exchanged glances over the static of their radios. They worked at the sharp end, they had dealt with nutters. With murderers too. With scenes of domestic carnage beyond Nolan’s imaginings, and both of them barely out of their teens. He tried to smile but his skin was too tight.

  ‘It’s my mum,’ he said. ‘I think she’s had a heart attack.’

  He led them into the lounge where Amy sat on the floor, holding his mother’s hand. Shirley lay where she had fallen, her head propped against the pouffe.

  The paramedics squatted down beside her and set to work. Nolan gazed at the beached body of his mother. She had dressed up for her sister, with whom she had a competitive relationship; there was something pitiful about the tiger-sequinned top, now pulled up to reveal her massive, grubby bra. He averted his eyes from the mounds of flesh.

  The paramedics were talking to Shirley, asking her name, asking about her symptoms. Shirley, her chest heaving, replied in a whisper. Nolan met Amy’s eye across the body. Amy looked stricken, her face bleached by the glare of the ceiling light. Thrust into intimacy with her, he felt they were two naughty children, caught by the authorities. There was a flash of complicity between them, and then it was gone.

  Should he be recording House Swap on the TV? It was one of his mother’s favourites. Was Amy longing to get the hell out of there? Why hadn’t he tidied up the lounge? The place was a pigsty.

  How could he think like that? His mother was lying there gasping for breath, perhaps dying, and stupid things kept coming into his head, he couldn’t catch up with himself, it was like wading through treacle.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he asked the paramedics.

  They shook their heads. One of them went out and returned, carrying a machine.

  How could he have been so thoughtless, to terrify his mother like that? He didn’t know she would come home early, of course, but it was all his fault. Nolan stood there helplessly, his hands dangling at his sides. Amy, a girl he hardly knew, was now sitting in the armchair, her arms around her knees, her face inscrutable. He had no idea what to say to her, or to his mother whose eyes were squeezed shut, or to the two brisk medics upon whom her life now depended.

  He squatted down beside her. ‘It’ll be all right, Ma,’ he said.

  She opened an eye. ‘I love you, son,’ she said.

  Son? Nolan was taken aback. She sounded like one of her afternoon soaps.

  ‘I love you too,’ he whispered. He kissed her cheek; her skin was as clammy as putty. It all felt stagy; this wasn’t happening, not for real. They were acting in some movie, Amy on hand with her make-up kit. In a moment somebody would shout ‘Cut!’ and the two medics would get to their feet. His mother would sit up and crack a joke with them. They would all go off and get something to eat, for his stomach suddenly rumbled so loudly that he blushed.

  Shirley was asked what medications she was taking. She rolled her eyes towards Nolan. ‘You tell them, love,’ she whispered, and turned to the paramedics. ‘He looks after me, see.’

  ‘Losartan . . . Buspirone . . .’ Nolan said, ticking them off with his finger. ‘Aloe Vera Colon Cleanse . . . Dormadina . . .’

  As he spoke, he saw the paramedics exchange glances. He knew what they were thinking. We’ve got one here – a right old hypochondriac. Was that a flicker of contempt? Look at him, Mummy’s little helper, has SHE got him by the short and curlies. Get a life, mate!

  Nolan felt a stab of envy for their job. They had a job. They saved lives, they were part of a team. Of a gang. They were heroes! They were needed. Who needed him? His mother, that was who. Her need was so vast, so all-devouring, that she was eating him alive. If she got well, you’d leave. And now she was leaving him, as if she had overheard Amy’s harsh and truthful words, and was offering up her own solution.

  He felt a wave of love for his mum, who had cared for him just as he was caring for her, whose life had not panned out as she had hoped. He looked at her lime-green toenails, so bravely painted. Nowadays she could no longer reach her feet; her friend Kath came round to give her a pedicure. It was one of the few occasions when he heard her laugh. Her abandoned sandals, with their diamanté straps, made his eyes sting, as if they were the relics of a road crash.

  Nolan knew he should be ringing his Aunt Julia, to tell her what had happened, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick up the phone. By putting it into words, he would make the whole situation real. Besides, they were now bringing in a wheelchair.

  ‘I’d better go,’ said Amy.

  ‘No, don’t,’ he blurted out.

  ‘But –’

  ‘Please come to the hospital.’

  Amy looked at him in surprise. He wanted to say you’re involved in this, please don’t leave me alone.

  She sat there, tearing at a fingernail with her teeth. ‘I’ve got the car outside,’ she said. ‘I could follow you to the hospital. Then I’d be able to bring you home.’

  What, when she’s dead? But maybe his mother wasn’t going to die, they just said she needed further tests.

  ‘What about your dinner?’ he asked stupidly.

  ‘Dinner?’ Amy looked at him, equally stupidly. She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s nine o’clock, I’ve missed it.’ She took out a tub of cream. ‘But first I’d better get that stuff off your face, else it’s you they’ll be rushing into A&E.’

  The paramedics chuckled. They were heaving Shirley into the wheelchair, waving away Nolan’s offer of help. He realised that, for them, this was just a normal evening’s work.

  His mother, with a sigh, was wedged into the wheelchair. It creaked under her weight. She turned to Amy. ‘You met any film stars then?’

  Nolan looked at her in surprise. Wasn’t she having a heart attack?

  Buffy

  Douggie, the runaway husband, had joined them at dinner. The main course still hadn’t arrived. He sat next to his wife, eagerly tearing at the absent Amy’s artichoke.

  ‘There’s so little flesh on them, isn’t there?’ he said, picking a thread o
f fibre from his teeth. ‘All that work, and they leave you hungrier than you started.’

  ‘Been starving you, has she?’ said Rosemary.

  Douggie flinched. His eyes flickered round the table. How much did the other people know? Judging by the bright air of artificial chit-chat, a lot.

  ‘What a charming house,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘And charming town. What I could see of it. In the dark.’

  Rosemary was silent. The constraint between them cast its own larger silence. A burst of laughter came from the next table, where the young people seemed unaware of the situation. To them, middle-aged passion would have been a repulsive thought, if they ever thought about it at all.

  Nina cleared her throat. ‘Rosemary said you were in the army,’ she said. ‘I expect the two of you have been to some fascinating places.’

  Rosemary’s shoulders twitched irritably.

  ‘Oh yes, we’ve certainly seen the world,’ Douggie said. ‘Haven’t we, darling?’

  He smiled at Rosemary. She gave him a look over her wine glass as she drained it. Douggie ran his hand over his sparse, grey hair. His shirt and sports jacket were both crumpled. It was hard to believe that he had once been a military man.

  ‘So how are you enjoying the course?’ he asked the guests.

  They nodded energetically, their eyes shifting from him to his wife.

  ‘Our tutor looks like a Caravaggio,’ said Nina.

  ‘Actually, some of us are making earrings instead,’ said another woman. She tilted her head coquettishly. ‘Don’t you think they’re pretty?’

  ‘Er, very nice,’ said Douggie.

  Buffy had joined them at the table. He knew he should be investigating what was happening in the kitchen, which was ominously quiet, but a sense of male solidarity had drawn him to the errant husband. Besides, he was curious. Why had Douggie appeared? To make it up? To tell his wife he wanted a divorce? Rosemary was inspecting the ceiling. Her face betrayed nothing. There was a sense, however, of the unspoken words – words of recrimination and fury – waiting to pounce when she and her husband were alone.