Heartbreak Hotel

  ‘Seen enough?’ asked Joe. He took her into the bathroom – rough limestone bath, Cowshed toiletries, a second flatscreen TV. ‘We offer the intimacy of a boutique hotel with the sort of capacity your outfit requires.’

  He was waiting for her to make a comment. Monica registered him for the first time – model-boy looks, probably gay, perspiring in his black polo neck. It was a sweltering day. He treated her with a cocky lack of interest. No doubt he considered her a dried-up old spinster, one of those middle-aged career women who lived with her cat and had a gluten-free diet. Who only drank herb tea. If he considered her at all.

  She replied something or other. He took her on a tour of the spa, the therapy rooms, the conference centre. They had lunch on the terrace and discussed the various packages and room rates. A waiter refilled Monica’s glass. She thought, for the thousandth time: Had Malcolm ever intended to leave his wife?

  The trouble was, it was always the wrong time. Over the years crisis followed crisis. Hilary, his wife, had a breast cancer scare. His daughter was sent down from university for drug-dealing. His son was diagnosed bipolar – the word had just come into fashion. Then Malcolm was briefly made redundant and she had to be supportive. Finally, just when he promised to extricate himself, his mother got Alzheimer’s and the whole family was convulsed with guilt about whether or not to put her into a home.

  Monica lived these lives at one remove. They were in the sunlight while she dwelt in the shadows, year after year of snatched copulations in hotel rooms around England and Europe; brief lunches in riverside pubs where she and Malcolm stroked each other’s fingers, sweethearts in their sealed bubble; candlelit dinners in her flat when she wore fancy underwear and pretended she didn’t notice him sneaking a glance at his watch. Their affair remained in stasis while his family moved on, his daughter getting married, how could he bail out then? She felt she was watching a TV soap – nine years passed and by that time she had collected the bloody box set. Malcolm and his Family. And her life remained the same, she stayed the same for him for all those years, trussing herself up like a turkey in her crippling corset, knowing the only power she had over him, the power of the mistress. Not for them the drudgery of domestic life, the naggings about car insurance and household repairs. The breakfasts, the crosswords.

  Domestic life with Malcolm. Christ, she had longed for it. Sometimes she longed for it so much she felt she would explode.

  The waiter refilled her glass. Monica was not the sort to cry in public. Besides, she was here on business. She put on her spectacles to inspect the dessert menu. She remembered that last weekend and her sudden realisation. He wants to have his cake and eat it. They were sitting here, on the terrace, and as he looked down at the menu he scratched his head. By now his hair was thinning. She thought, quite clearly: I’m his bit on the side.

  How painful it was to apply the words to him! Surely their relationship was different from the others, she was the love of his life, those clichés didn’t apply? But the words had been buried like shrapnel, deep beneath her skin, and it had taken them years to work their way to the surface.

  It was all so long ago. Apparently Malcolm and Hilary had retired to the Dordogne – so seventies of them, almost as dated as Melba toast. Monica imagined one of those shuttered French villages with amputated plane trees. The high spot of Malcolm and Hilary’s day would be trundling their trolley around the local Carrefour, sited in an industrial estate surrounded by fields of blackened sunflowers. They would spend their evenings getting sozzled on vin de pays, rereading paperbacks swapped with the other Brits and Facebooking old acquaintances who out of desperation they would invite to stay, anything to relieve the boredom.

  Does he ever think about me? Monica wondered. How he stole nine years of my life? That last day in Burford, the showdown outside the gift shop. The sign said All Breakages Must Be Paid For. He hadn’t, had he?

  ‘Sure you’re OK to drive?’ Joe asked.

  Monica got to her feet. ‘Of course!’ she snapped, carefully replacing her chair.

  They parted company in the lobby. She felt Joe’s eyes on her as she made her way to the car. Look! She was fine. Unlocking the door, starting the engine.

  Burford’s celebrated High Street was clogged with coaches. They disgorged hordes of the undead – elderly ladies in pastel cardies and beige footwear. Burford was full of them, their white hair freshly set, some with sticks, some on mobility scooters. They shuffled around the antiques arcades, blocking the aisles; they peered through the bow windows of Country Casuals, endlessly deliberating, never going in; they clogged up the post office, turning postcards over in their arthritic hands, photos of lambs gambolling among the daffodils; and always, always, there were lines of them at the public toilets, queuing for a wee. She and Malcolm had giggled at them.

  ‘Imagine her giving someone a blow job,’ he whispered.

  The two of them, sated with sex, chortled at the old dears – there were a few men among them, with bowed legs and fawn anoraks, but they were mostly old dears. Monica had thought: Catch me ending up like that.

  I have to get out of here. Monica hooted the van in front. She drove up the hill, round the roundabout and pulled onto the A40. Putting her foot down, she swerved around a dawdler and overtook a Sky Broadband van. The driver honked his horn but she didn’t care. She was still young, sixty-four-years-young, she wasn’t finished yet. The car ahead, a souped-up Mini, had a sticker across its back window: GET IN. SIT DOWN. SHUT UP. HOLD ON.

  That was her kind of guy! Monica accelerated. Fuck the cauliflower-heads, fuck Malcolm, fuck the lot of them.

  The Mini slowed down. This mildly surprised her. She pulled out and passed it. Then, glancing in her mirror, she realised why.

  A police car was drawing closer, its light flashing.

  It was only then that Monica admitted she was drunk. In an instant, her future flashed before her eyes. She would be pulled over and breathalysed. Public humiliation would follow. She would lose her licence; she would lose her job. She was an ageing woman whose work involved travel; she would be finished. What then awaited her but loneliness and death?

  Behind her, the siren wailed. Monica slewed onto the verge, bumping over the grass, and came to a standstill.

  The police car sped on.

  She switched off the engine. The police car disappeared, its siren fading. Traffic whizzed past. She sat there, slumped against the steering wheel, and started to shake with laughter.

  After a while she got out of the car and ducked under a barbed-wire fence. She thought: I shall have a little lie-down and sober up. She was in a meadow, the traffic a distant hum. O why do you walk through the field in gloves? She must look odd, in her business suit, but there was nobody around. A hedge screened her from the road.

  Somewhere, a bird sang. Heaven knew what it was. Birdwatching, like reading hardback biographies, was something people only did when they retired. She remembered a hot afternoon like this, she and Malcolm making love in a field. When they returned to the hotel a couple of ornithologists had chatted to them in the lobby. ‘I saw some great tits,’ said Malcolm.

  Though funny at the time, in retrospect this remark struck her as vulgar. There was a touch of the used-car salesman about Malcolm, it was one of the things she had found attractive. But would you buy an old banger from him?

  Monica lay down on the grass and closed her eyes. Fat white woman whom nobody loves. She thought: I’m not going to die alone. Tomorrow I shall log on again. Surely I can do better than a toothless quantity surveyor?

  How long she slept, she didn’t know. Her dreams came thick and fast. At one point she seemed to be on a cycling holiday with Harrison Ford. They spent the night in a B&B and now he seemed to be kissing her forehead, her eyes. ‘Blossom,’ he murmured, his tongue wet on her skin.

  Monica woke with a start. Something was licking her cheek.

  ‘Blossom!’ said a man. A face swam into view. He was gazing down at her.

  Groggi
ly, she tried to focus.

  ‘Blossom, you naughty girl!’

  A dog was licking her face. The man grabbed its collar and yanked it away. ‘So sorry,’ he said, ‘she’s just a puppy.’

  He was out of breath; he must have run across the field. Monica sat up and wiped the drool from her cheek. Her limbs ached; there was a chill in the air.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘It was just such a lovely day,’ she muttered. She stood up, brushing the grass from her skirt. Avoiding the man’s eye, she stroked the Labrador. It wagged its tail and gazed at her with its moist brown eyes. Strings of saliva hung from its jaws.

  The man clipped on its lead. He was joined by a woman, presumably his wife, and two small children.

  ‘We thought you might have had an accident,’ said the woman. She laced her fingers through her husband’s. The two children looked at Monica with their frank, direct gaze.

  One of them said: ‘Why was that woman lying in the field?’

  3

  Buffy

  BRIDIE’S WELSH TOWN was, indeed, a long way from Soho – 176 miles to be precise. But then Soho itself was a long way from Soho. Buffy’s old watering ground had changed out of all recognition; it was now filled with young people bellowing at each other and vomiting in the gutter; Buffy had no place there any more. He remembered, once, digging up potatoes – those firm, white young tubers – and among them the original seed potato, brown, wrinkled, surplus to requirements.

  For once, however, Buffy felt no self-pity. Fate had presented him with the possibility of a new life, if he cared to take it. And now he had arrived on a recce. He had booked into the Knockton Arms, in the centre of town. Though moribund – he appeared to be the only guest – the hotel welcomed dogs, and he discovered, in the bar, that the Scotch egg wasn’t entirely extinct.

  He had arrived late, only bar snacks available, and found himself chatting with the manager, Dafydd, who was polishing glasses to the far drone of a vacuum cleaner. Buffy mentioned Bridie.

  ‘She was a game old trout,’ said Dafydd. ‘Could she knock back the Baileys. I believe she had connections in the acting profession.’

  Buffy told him that he had connections himself.

  ‘I thought I recognised the voice.’ Dafydd stopped polishing. ‘You’re Uncle Buffy! My little ’uns used to listen to you on the radio.’

  Buffy nodded, modestly.

  ‘Uncle Buffy and his Talking Hamster,’ said Dafydd. ‘What was its name?’

  ‘Hammy,’ said Buffy. ‘Don’t blame me, I didn’t make it up.’

  ‘There was Voley too, with his squeaky voice.’ Dafydd’s voice rose. ‘Fancy meeting you here, my furry friend!’

  ‘I didn’t do him,’ said Buffy. ‘That was the other chap.’

  ‘Bless my whiskers, let’s have some jolly japes together!’

  ‘Voley didn’t last, they wrote him out.’

  A thin girl appeared, dragging a vacuum cleaner.

  ‘Edona my lovely, we have a famous actor in our midst!’ cried Dafydd.

  The girl switched on the Hoover.

  ‘Don’t mind her!’ Dafydd shouted over the noise. ‘She’s from Albania!’

  Buffy felt heartened. It was nice to be remembered. Despite what Dafydd said it had always been Hammy’s show; the other parts were mere walk-ons. And it had been a good little earner, bless it. His mellifluous tones had sent generations of children to sleep. Probably their parents too.

  The next day was gloriously sunny. A rarity, apparently, in these parts. After a greasy and largely uneatable breakfast – no competition there – Buffy and his dog sauntered down to the high street.

  Now it was daylight he could see that Knockton was surrounded by hills. The brochure said that its unspoilt countryside was ideal for ramblers and rich in wildlife. Knockton itself was a thriving market town with plenty of independent shops; it boasted several noteworthy buildings and a fine fifteenth-century church. Buffy, however, wasn’t simply a tourist. His interest had a keener, more personal edge: could he live there? He was like a visitor to a commercial art show rather than the National Gallery: not just here to gaze, he could actually take possession of one of the canvases.

  It was Saturday morning and people were out and about. How blameless they looked in the sunshine! They greeted each other across the street. A pimply youth – a smiling pimply youth – carried an old lady’s shopping to her car. Buffy spotted a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s and – good God – a gents’ outfitter’s. He had no idea such places still existed. A boy actually leaned his bicycle against the wall instead of leaving it, wheels spinning, sprawled in a doorway to trip people up. No attack dogs, either, with their bowed legs and bulging scrotums. Here, a Border collie courteously sniffed Fig, welcoming him to his town and its smells, and trotted on. And the postman was whistling.

  Buffy thought: Maybe people have been living like this all the time and I didn’t know. He stopped at the baker’s. Fig lapped from a bowl of water, thoughtfully left at the door. The window was stuck with notices for the Green Man Festival and amateur dramatics. Could this be the community Buffy had been yearning for, all these years? A place where he would have a place? Would one of these middle-aged hippy women, with their Keep Knockton Green shopping bags, be the next love of his life?

  No, he was finished with all that. Besides, who would have him? He was a used car with too many previous owners, each with their own special complaints about his parts and performance. No, those days were over but he was not on the scrapheap yet. Bridie had liked this town enough to move here. He wished he remembered more of what she had told him in her letters.

  Buffy had not yet seen her house. His house. Myrtle House, Church Street. He was meeting the solicitor there in an hour.

  Buffy’s heart pounded. He wished he had someone with him, for moral support. It was too early to fortify himself in the promising-looking King’s Head pub. Tonite: Jethro and the Dreamers. He pictured jovial hayseeds strumming banjos. Already he saw his own trusty mug hanging from the beams. No gastro-bollocks here. And no bankers either. The only Land Rover in sight was spattered with mud, and appeared to have a sheep on the back seat.

  4

  Buffy

  SEVERAL MONTHS HAD passed. The legalities had finally been sorted out and the house was his. The upheaval of packing up his past had left Buffy traumatised; he had presumed he would never have to do it again. Since his last divorce his living conditions had slid downhill – yes, he could admit it now – into a condition of borderline squalor. This was partly due to sloth, and partly to his reluctance to throw anything away.

  This had been a cause of friction in the past. ‘It’s so anal, darling, to hoard,’ said Penny, his last wife. ‘It’s not as if you’re an immigrant, or Jewish, or something.’

  Every cupboard and drawer in his flat was stuffed with cardboard boxes and carrier bags; the spare room had become so crammed that the door wouldn’t open.

  So many memories had been unearthed. A stool, spattered with paint from his and Popsi’s youthful attempts at home-making; a mincer that had belonged to his mother – when did anyone last eat a rissole? Board games, with the obligatory missing pieces, that his children had argued over. A pair of roller skates – Bruno hanging on judderingly to his older brother . . .

  The whole process was painful, not just because it brought back the past. Exposed to the cold light of day, the stuff had reverted to junk. It was junk. Why on earth had he bothered to keep them all, these dusty souvenirs of events he could hardly remember? He’d have trouble shifting them at a car boot sale.

  The trouble was that most of the classier stuff had gone. Jacquetta, his second wife, had nicked it. During their marriage she had had an airy disregard for possessions – she was a painter, a woman ruled by the moon, a creative spirit who lived on a higher plane than the mass of humanity who spent their Saturdays trailing around World of Leather. Buffy had suspected that Jacquetta included himself in the shuffling
hordes but it wasn’t fair, he was just as impractical when it came to worldly goods – for instance, he had never discovered how to work the microwave, which he now found shoved under the bed.

  Though he had, of course, bought it. That he had supported Jacquetta for years as she produced unsaleable painting after unsaleable painting was something she took for granted and which seemed to coexist happily with her feminist beliefs. Logic had never been her forte. She even implied that there was something squalid about the whole subject of finance. And yet, when their marriage broke up, how suddenly she had swung into action, hiring a jungle beast of a City lawyer who had proceeded to divest Buffy of his assets, including his Ivon Hitchens painting which Jacquetta implied only she was sensitive enough to appreciate.

  Moments like these brought Buffy to a standstill. No wonder it took him so long to pack. They weren’t all bitter memories, of course, but the happy ones were just as time-consuming. And then there were all those decisions. What about his children’s gifts to him, long-since collapsed objects made out of toilet rolls and coat-hangers? How could he bear to throw them away? And boxes full of dusty cassettes, recorded by his various loved ones, their spidery writing now faded to sepia, condemned to silence forever due to his new machine only playing CDs.

  ‘Wow, Dad, it’s fucking enormous,’ said Bruno, coming downstairs. ‘Six bedrooms, fucking hell.’

  ‘They’ve all got washbasins, did you see?’ said Tobias.

  ‘If this B&B thing doesn’t work, you could always turn it into a brothel,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Great idea, bro,’ said Tobias. ‘The locals would love it. Make a change from shagging the sheep.’