Heartbreak Hotel

  Tobias and Bruno chortled. Though both in their thirties, when together they regressed, jabbing each other with their elbows and making infantile jokes. They had come to help Buffy move in. Surrounded by packing cases, the three of them sat down in the kitchen and unscrewed a bottle of whisky.

  ‘Are you sure about this B&B thing?’ asked Tobias. ‘You are seventy, you know.’

  ‘So was my friend Bridie,’ said Buffy.

  ‘Yeah, but your heart, your back . . .’

  ‘Your prostate,’ said Bruno.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Tobias. ‘There’s three toilets.’

  Buffy, filling their glasses, gazed fondly at his sons. They were going to spend the night together, something they hadn’t done for years. During the upheaval of the past few weeks, his children had rallied round. Celeste had even come over from France to shove his stuff into bin liners. Whatever their motives, they had been surprisingly helpful. He remembered when he had had that suspected heart attack and they had all come running. It had been worth all the pain and terror.

  ‘The point about a B&B,’ said Buffy, ‘is that you kick them out after breakfast and then you have the day to yourself.’

  ‘But who’s going to cook them breakfast?’

  ‘Me, of course.’

  His sons sniggered. Actually, Buffy was an expert at fry-ups. Like many divorced dads, it was his way of wooing his children when they came to stay the night.

  ‘What about the laundry and stuff?’ asked Tobias.

  ‘There’s a girl who did that sort of thing for Bridie,’ said Buffy. ‘I’m sure I can get her back.’

  Faced with reality, Buffy’s resolve had weakened. He was determined, however, to persevere. Running a B&B would be company, and an income. Both things were vital for his declining years. Nyange had offered to do the accounts; she had checked places online and discovered that prices in the more upmarket B&Bs were hardly less than those charged by hotels.

  ‘Upmarket?’ Tobias raised his eyebrows. The three of them sat there, gazing at the nicotine-stained ceiling, the strip light spattered with flies, and the monumental, baffling Raeburn. It was a chilly evening but they had failed to light it and had plugged in an electric blower, which barely warmed their ankles.

  ‘They won’t see the kitchen,’ said Buffy.

  ‘Yeah, but what about the rest?’

  Buffy had to admit that the place had seen better days. Though imposing from the outside – double-fronted, with a pillared porch – the interior did present a challenge.

  ‘Nothing that a lick of paint won’t cure,’ said Buffy. His cheerful tone didn’t even fool himself. Bridie’s belongings had been cleared out – a process even more melancholic than sorting out his own. Her furniture remained, some of it familiar from the Edgbaston days. But taking over a house of this size, on his own, in a strange town, struck Buffy as so impossibly daunting that, now he had sat down, he couldn’t imagine ever getting out of his chair.

  It was early spring. Buffy had been in residence now for two weeks. When he took his constitutional he noticed the catkins hanging from the trees, whatever sort of trees they were, and in the fields lambs wobbled around on pipe-cleaner legs.

  Now he was seventy he called it his constitutional. Moving to the country had jolted him a notch onwards. In Blomfield Mansions he seemed to have stayed sixty for years but this new environment had given him a coup d’age. He found this surprisingly invigorating. He could start again, beholden to nobody, the baggage of his past sloughed off. People humoured seventy-year-olds. He would buy a tweed suit and become a country gent, sexually unthreatening, jovially waving his walking stick at passers-by and chucking babies under the chin.

  Already he felt at home. His first impressions were spot on – Knockton was a friendly place. Even the somewhat bovine cashier at Costcutter’s, a stout young woman in a tabard, called him my love. People seemed to know that he had moved into Bridie’s house. She had been a popular member of the community, particularly with the publicans, and the goodwill seemed to have spread to himself. That she had bequeathed him her property raised few eyebrows. Buffy was to discover that stranger things happened hereabouts – hereabouts being another word he intended to use.

  Contrary to what he told his sons, he had decided to do nothing to the house at all. He was hopeless at DIY. If it was good enough for Bridie it was good enough for him. Her guests had liked it well enough; he had read their remarks in the Visitors’ Book. Doug and Jenny from Potters Bar had described it as our favourite refuge, a haven from the hurly-burly of the city. Heinz and Gudrun, from Salzburg, wrote that despite the inclement weather, the warm welcome and generous hospitality has made Myrtle House, as always, the high spot of our British tour.

  People spent large sums of money to create the shabby-chic look that Bridie had effortlessly achieved by doing nothing at all. Nowadays, of course, everyone was in thrall to the makeover but in Buffy’s youth one just moved into a place and saved all that trouble. Time could be spent more enjoyably than arguing over colour charts or shuffling around that Circle of Purgatory, Ikea. Besides, he had no money for renovations. If he had learned one lesson, it was that once you started prodding around, in relationships as well as houses, dry rot would be discovered and one would end up faced with a crippling bill.

  The house was charming as it was. Large, draughty, but charming. Wide, stone-flagged hallway, gracious fanlight over the front door. The dining room had fancy cornices and a bay window overlooking the street. At the back, the sitting room opened onto a veranda, decorated with coloured glass. Both rooms had massive marble fireplaces, blocked with hardboard panels. When Buffy removed them he was hit with a blast of icy wind and hastily jammed them back. However, the man who had done the house clearance, Barry, had showed him how to work the Raeburn and the radiators were now, intermittently, lukewarm. Faced with a plethora of choice, Buffy had chosen the smallest bedroom; with two blowers full blast and an electric fire he managed to work up a fug. It overlooked the tangled garden – horticulture had never been Bridie’s forte – and next door’s shed where the neighbour, Simon, repaired lutes. He too had made Buffy feel welcome and on moving day had passed a plate of vegan cupcakes over the fence.

  ‘I heard you were an actor,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid we don’t have a TV.’ His greying hair was tied back in a ponytail, not a look that Buffy usually admired, but he was willing to give the chap the benefit of the doubt.

  Simon’s partner, Jill, came out. She was huddled up in a man’s overcoat, bent against the wind. ‘We lived in London once,’ she said. ‘It did our heads in.’ It turned out that she ran the eponymous Jill’s Things in the high street, which sold vintage dresses and joss sticks. Buffy had assumed that joss sticks, like Scotch eggs, were now museum specimens but this town seemed to exist in a time warp.

  Buffy, to his regret, had pre-dated the sixties. He had been born just too early and was already married to Popsi, his first wife, with a baby on the way, when people started smoking dope and tearing off their clothes. In his teenage years he had worn a polo neck and listened to Juliette Greco but in retrospect this seemed a timid stab at rebellion in a world still drab and exhausted by war. However, time was a great leveller and the once-youthful flower children of Knockton looked nearly as decrepit as he was himself, their skin flayed by the elements.

  How did people in the country stay warm? And what did they do when darkness fell and the endless night loomed? By nine o’clock the town had gone to sleep. The only signs of life were the lit windows of the chippy and the pubs.

  Buffy already considered himself a regular at his local, the King’s Head. Barry, the house-clearance chap, had accompanied him the first time, like a kindly prefect with a new boy, and introduced him to various fellow boozers who were huddled round the fire.

  ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ asked a bearded man whose name Buffy hadn’t caught.

  ‘He’s been on the telly,’ said Barry.

&
nbsp; ‘You were in that thing with what’s-her-name . . . she was in that thing about the vet . . .’

  ‘What was it called? That bloke was in it . . .’

  ‘I know the one. He played Doctor Who.’

  ‘He never did. You’re thinking of what’s-his-face. Little slitty eyes.’

  ‘No, the one before him.’

  ‘What was her name?’ said the bearded man. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue. Big tits. She was in that thing about the cook.’

  ‘Fanny Cradock.’

  ‘No. The other one.’

  ‘Who’s that soap star who lives in Llandrindod Wells?’

  ‘Order, order!’ said Barry. ‘The point being, we have a celebrity in our midst.’

  The bearded man turned to Buffy. ‘What was the name again?’

  ‘Russell Buffery,’ said Buffy.

  They looked at him in silence.

  ‘Anyway, he’s moved into Bridie’s old house,’ said Barry.

  The conversation moved on. Though hardly the Algonquin Round Table, Buffy had enjoyed the cut and thrust of the banter. Since then he had spent several convivial evenings in the pub, and joined the team for the weekly quiz. Catch this sort of community spirit in London! The barman, an amiable alcoholic called Reg, nowadays began to pull his pint as Buffy walked through the door.

  ‘Good man,’ said Buffy, pulling out his wallet. ‘One for yourself?’

  It was a few days later. Buffy had come in to ask the whereabouts of Voda, the young woman who had cleaned for Bridie. She was apparently a stalwart of the darts team but he hadn’t yet found her in the pub.

  The trouble was, the house was slipping into squalor. Buffy hadn’t even finished unpacking and already the place was covered with dust. He had hardly stepped into some of the rooms. The cellar, for instance – he had glimpsed into the abyss, pitch black and stinking of death, and closed the door with a shudder. The prospect of sorting it all out, let alone running it as a B&B, seemed increasingly remote. What had he been thinking of? Some days, especially when it rained, he was plunged into doubt about the whole enterprise. People had been so encouraging but it was easy for them. He himself had urged adventures on friends without considering the consequences. The future always seemed sunlit and full of possibilities until one actually waded in.

  Buffy asked about Voda. ‘You’re in luck,’ said Reg. ‘She’s sitting over there with Aled. He’s her brother.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Don’t mind the squint. It’s the brucellosis; he got it off the cows.’

  Buffy went over and introduced himself. They were a stocky couple, with ruddy cheeks and dreadlocks. Despite the cross eyes, it transpired that Aled too was a champion darts player. He went outside to smoke a cheroot, leaving Buffy and Voda to talk business. She was a capable-looking young woman; apparently she lived in a remote cottage and had been lambing all week. Her sleeves were rolled up. Buffy looked at her hefty forearms resting on the table and thought: She’ll sort me out. She was drinking a pint, too – another promising sign.

  ‘I expect you need plenty of stamina for that house,’ said Buffy.

  ‘No problemo,’ she said. ‘I can do the paperwork too, if you want. I did Bridie’s. Want me to set you up a website?’

  Buffy was no longer surprised at this multitasking. Everybody seemed to be at it. Barry, the Man with a Van, also sold organic dogfood and played the drums in the local band. Buffy, still in the honeymoon stage, considered this admirable. How different from the average Londoner, lounging around in their tracksuits, emerging only to collect their benefits and slag off Muslims!

  Voda came round the next day and set up her computer in the utility room, next to the washing machine. She couldn’t work at home, she said, because her boyfriend had installed a solar panel to generate electricity.

  ‘Electricity, my arse! I told him it was a stupid idea, the daft bugger.’ She plugged in her laptop. ‘There’s no bloody sunshine, see. I’d be sitting there, working away, and suddenly the power cuts out and I’m staring at a blank bloody screen.’ She sighed. ‘That’s Conor all over. Still, I do miss him.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Shrewsbury Prison.’

  ‘Heavens,’ said Buffy. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Only went and set up a bloody skunk farm.’

  ‘But skunks aren’t illegal –' Buffy stopped. Voda looked at him. ‘Only joking,’ he said quickly.

  ‘Stonking great polytunnel,’ sighed Voda. ‘You could see it from Llanelly. I told him to put it behind the shed but would he listen?’ Her eyes grew moist. ‘His mother spoilt him, see. Thought the sun shone out of his bottom.’

  ‘Glad it shines somewhere, round here.’

  ‘Thinks he’s Prince Charming, nothing can touch him.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, that’s why I need all the work I can get, now the lambs are born, bless their cotton socks.’

  5

  Amy

  AMY MET NEVILLE when he rang her doorbell, canvassing for the Lib Dems. She was jet-lagged and still in her pyjamas.

  ‘What local elections?’ she asked.

  He looked at the pile of unopened mail, heaped on the floor. ‘There’s probably a polling card in there somewhere.’ It wasn’t a rebuke – he looked a mild man – just an observation.

  ‘I’ve been away,’ Amy said. ‘I’m all over the place.’ When she had left it had been midwinter and now the trees were heavy with blossom.

  Amy worked in the movie industry; she was a make-up artist. They had been filming in India, in various unpronounceable places. She had never even looked them up on the map. That was film crews for you. When away on location you surrendered up that sort of curiosity. Rising at dawn, lolling half asleep on the bus, closeted all day in the trailer, you could be in Outer Mongolia. Even in England, when working on a set, nobody read a newspaper. In fact, it took her a moment to remember the name of the Prime Minister.

  ‘Just vote Lib Dem then,’ he said.

  ‘OK.’

  He laughed. ‘If only they were all like you.’

  He leaned against the door frame, exhausted. The yellow rosette drained the colour from his face. Amy hadn’t seen a man in corduroy trousers for God knew how long. He said his name was Neville.

  ‘I suppose I should do the people upstairs,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t bother. The first floor’s empty and at the top they’re illegal immigrants.’

  ‘Good-oh.’ He remained slumped. Amy wished she could offer him something but she hadn’t been to the shops yet. Besides, her flat was a pit.

  Neville straightened up, tucking the clipboard under his arm. ‘Better crack on.’ He turned to go, and then stopped. ‘Would you mind if I picked some mint?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s some here.’ He pointed to a tangle of weeds beside the dustbin. ‘Just a sprig. I’m cooking some new potatoes.’

  Amy looked at him with interest. Unable to cook herself, she was charmed by the idea of a man in an apron. ‘Help yourself,’ she said.

  In India she had gone down with Delhi belly; they all had, at one point or another. Food and bowel movements had been their main topic of conversation. Two days’ filming had been lost when one of their stars had succumbed to a rare intestinal parasite. A plate of boiled potatoes was just what they longed for during their lengthy sessions on the Portoloos.

  She felt the stirrings of hunger. ‘What else are you cooking?’

  ‘Sea bass in a herb crust.’

  Neville’s voice was reverential. She wondered if he was gay. He looked sensitive, with that limp sandy hair. Most of the guys she worked with, in make-up and wardrobe, were gay. They swapped recipes with the actors, speaking with their mouths full of pins.

  He said: ‘After a day at this game I need a proper dinner.’

  ‘It must be crap, knocking on people’s doors and nobody interested.’

  Neville looked taken aback. ‘Some of them are.’ He paused. ‘But they’re usually the loonies.’

  He said he boug
ht his sea bass at the local farmers’ market. Amy didn’t know such a thing existed but that wasn’t surprising. Acton was just the place in which she came to rest, briefly, between jobs, the floor of her flat strewn with unpacked clothes, her fridge empty but for a mouldy yogurt. Planes flew overhead, rattling the windowpanes; sooner or later one of them would whisk her away again to God knew where.

  As Neville turned at the gate to wave goodbye, he said he was at the farmers’ market every Saturday, helping out his friend who had a bread stall.

  Later, lying in the bath, Amy mused about her love life, that disaster zone. In India she had had a fling with a grip called Craig. Already she could hardly remember his face. No doubt she too was a distant memory – or, to be more accurate, forgotten the moment he returned home to his family. If he had a family; she had no idea. Camera crews were a blokey bunch, they didn’t talk about relationships. Besides, filming existed in its own perma-climate. Being on location sealed a person off from their other life, the life back home. Copulations were snatched and feral; you grabbed your pleasures where you could, like an alley cat.

  Amy loved the camaraderie of life on set. It was hard work but she was part of a gang. After the wrap party, however, her temporary family vanished into thin air and now here she was, towelling herself dry in her empty flat, aged thirty-one and with nobody in her life except a few mates who never phoned because she was always somewhere else.

  Amy realised she was crying. This gave her such a shock that she found herself sobbing harder, great shudders shaking her body. She buried her face in her towel and thought: I’m all alone with nobody to love.

  The next Saturday she went to the farmers’ market to buy a loaf; and so it began.

  Neville had been living with her for three years now. He did indeed bring an apron with him, and oven gloves. It took him a while to sort out her flat but Amy just let him get on with it; domesticity didn’t interest her. For years she had lived a gypsy life. On location, of course, everything was on tap. You wanted your hair cut? Your car fixed? Your computer sorted out? No problem. There was somebody at hand for every contingency.