Queenie Malone’s Paradise Hotel

by Ruth Hogan

  ‘Come in! Come in!’ she said, ushering them into the room. ‘There’s no need for knocking here. You’re not the bleedin’ gas man.’

  She laughed heartily at her own joke, and as she did so, Tilly noticed that one of her front teeth was missing.

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you both, I’m sure. I’m Lil, the cook.’

  Tilly had a feeling that she was going to get on very nicely with Lil.

  ‘Sit down and help yourselves to tea. We don’t have no airs and graces down here.’

  They sat down at the table, and just as Tilly’s mother was pouring tea into blue-and-white striped mugs, the door banged open and a young girl of about seventeen rushed in, breathing hard and red in the face. She threw her battered brown bag on the floor and began frantically struggling to get out of her old navy mackintosh as though she was trying to strip off cold wet clothes. In the middle of her desperate wriggling and writhing, she looked up and saw Tilly and her mother and her face turned even redder.

  ‘I’m late,’ she gasped. ‘The missus’ll kill me.’

  ‘And serves you right, my girl.’ Lil marched through the swinging door that adjoined the kitchen to the back dining room, carrying a heap of toast on one plate and rashers of bacon on another. ‘You’re always bleedin’ late!’

  She turned to Tilly and her mother as she slammed the plates down on the table.

  ‘This is Cecily. She helps with the cleaning and the housekeeping. When she eventually turns up.’

  Tilly looked at the scrawny girl who had finally managed to escape from the clutches of her old school mac, and thought that she had never seen anyone who looked less like a Cecily. A proper Cecily should have blonde curls, blue eyes, rosy cheeks and a lovely pink dress. And a kitten. This one had tangled, mousy hair that looked like it hadn’t seen a brush since last Tuesday, eyes the colour of jellied eels and spotty, flushed cheeks. Tilly didn’t suppose for one moment that she had a kitten. She looked more likely to have nits.

  Cecily snatched a piece of toast from the plate and held it between her teeth whilst she grabbed a mug and sloshed tea into it.

  ‘Cecily! Sit down properly at the table and use a plate. We are not savages, my girl, so please try not to behave like one.’

  Queenie had glided silently through the other door, and on her arm was the mad hair lady who was wearing a pair of black capri pants that were rather tighter than they ought to have been, black pumps, and a cream-coloured jumper with a silk scarf tied at the neck. Some of her hair had been persuaded into a French pleat, and her eyes were heavily and haphazardly ringed with black eyeliner. Queenie helped the old lady to her seat at the table.

  ‘Good morning, ladies. I should like you to meet my mother, Audrey Hepburn.’

  Tilly stared at Queenie open-mouthed. This was definitely the same old lady that she had met yesterday. So, one of them had told a whopper. Mindful of her new status as belonging to The Paradise Hotel, Tilly got straight to the point.

  ‘But yesterday, you said you were Anita Iceberg.’

  The old lady peered at Tilly across the table and smiled in recognition.

  ‘I remember you. You’re the little girl who’s going to live in the garden.’

  ‘But you said you were Anita Iceberg,’ Tilly persisted.

  ‘I said nothing of the sort. I said I was Anita Ekberg, because yesterday was Friday. Today is Saturday.’

  As an explanation, Tilly found it completely unsatisfactory, but her mother’s hand on her arm made it quite clear that it would have to do. Queenie, meanwhile, had poured Audrey some tea in a bone china cup and saucer and placed it in front of her. Audrey poured some of the tea from the cup into the saucer and lifted it to her lips to drink, her eyes scanning the table. Her mother’s hand gripped Tilly’s arm even tighter, imploring her daughter’s silence. Tilly was certain that she would have a bruise.

  ‘And who, pray, is this one?’

  Audrey waved her index finger at Tilly’s mother as though she was trying to hook a fish.

  ‘I’m Grace. It’s nice to meet you.’ Tilly’s mother smiled and stretched her hand across the table towards the old lady, but her answer had not gone down well with Audrey, who had set down her saucer and drawn herself up in her seat, ready to pounce.

  ‘You most certainly are not!’ she retorted imperiously. ‘I’m Grace. But not until Wednesday!’

  Lil breezed back in from the kitchen with a plate of sausages and sat down at the table with them.

  There was one seat at the table still empty. As Tilly carefully cut her toast and jam into neat squares, she wondered who they were waiting for. As though she had read her mind, Queenie spoke.

  ‘Reg won’t be joining us this morning. He had to go in early.’

  Tilly had to ask.

  ‘Is Reg your husband?’

  Lil inhaled some of the tea she was drinking and then snorted it out, almost choking with laughter. Even Cecily paused momentarily from eating as much toast as she could, as quickly as she could, to stifle a high-pitched giggle. Queenie ignored them and turned to Tilly.

  ‘Reg is our permanent lodger and we couldn’t do without him. He works at the pier and looks after the ballroom. You’ll meet him tonight at dinner-time.’

  Tilly was thrilled. He sounded perfect. Watching Cecily devour slice after slice of toast and bacon, Tilly wondered where she put it all. Perhaps under that baggy dress of hers she had an enormous, round tummy. Lil drank three mugs of tea and ate three sausages between two doorsteps of bread and butter whilst smoking a roll-up cigarette. Queenie nibbled at toast and marmalade. Audrey spread a slice of toast with something called anchovy paste from a little tin and dipped it in Cecily’s mug of tea. Tilly couldn’t remember when she had last enjoyed breakfast so much.

  When everyone was finished, Lil and Cecily cleared the table and Cecily washed up while Lil began cooking food for the guests. Queenie helped Audrey up from her chair.

  ‘I’ll just take Mother back to her room, and then we’ll go upstairs and start taking the breakfast orders.’

  As Audrey tottered to the door, leaning heavily on Queenie’s arm, she turned and spoke to Tilly.

  ‘Come and see me again, little girl, and I’ll show you my music boxes.’

  When they had gone, Tilly’s mother turned to her with a hopeful look on her face.

  ‘Well, Tilly, what do you think?’

  Tilly grinned.

  ‘I think it’s heaven.’

  28

  Tilda

  The cinema is a tiny, forgotten jewel hidden amongst the bric-a-brac buildings of a tired-looking backstreet. It belongs to a film club and Daniel has brought me here to see Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

  ‘Don’t think that you’re going to have it all your own way,’ he joked. ‘Next time it’s going to be The Silence of the Lambs.’

  Inside, the cinema is a lavish confection of red velvet and gold leaf. There are just ten rows of red velvet seats and the heavy curtain that is currently hiding the screen boasts extravagant swags and fringing. Plump golden cherubs entwined with flowers and leaves frolic across the ceiling, glowing in the soft light of two ridiculously oversized but nonetheless beautiful chandeliers. It reminds me of the ballroom where I used to go for dance lessons while I was living at Queenie’s. Daniel and I are swapping family histories whilst waiting for the film to begin.

  ‘My dad was a taxidermist before he retired.’

  I immediately think of Queenie’s corgi.

  ‘Was he really?’ I’m intrigued.

  ‘No.’ Daniel laughs and shakes his head regretfully. ‘I’m just trying to make my lot sound more interesting. They’ve got a bit to live up to in comparison with yours. But my mum does have double-jointed thumbs and my eldest sister, Maggie, does a mean impersonation of the soup dragon from The Clangers.’

  ‘She sounds lovely.’ I mean it, too. ‘So, what did your dad really do?’

  ‘He ran a café in the East End of London, mainly for market traders and ca
bbies. My sisters took it over when he retired, and, in his words, “poncified it up”. Its customers now are mainly city traders and tourists, but a couple of the old regulars still go in there if they see Dad sitting in the corner drinking builder’s tea and tutting over the mocha cappuccinos, or “crappuccinos” as he calls them.’

  ‘So how come you didn’t take over from your dad?’

  Daniel shakes his head with an expression of mock horror on his face.

  ‘God, Tilda, I’ve grown up in a houseful of women. I’ve got an Irish mother, three sisters and more aunties than any man deserves. Much though I love each and every one of them, except maybe Auntie Yvonne, a man needs his own space eventually.’

  The seats are filling up now, but the lights are still up and the curtain closed.

  ‘What’s wrong with Auntie Yvonne?’

  ‘She has an awful funny smell about her. And she wears braces on her socks.’

  Fair enough.

  ‘So, you came here and got your own place?’

  ‘My sisters bought my share in Dad’s old café, and I had always loved the sea. My mum blames the smell of the fishmonger’s that used to be on the corner of our street.’

  ‘And what about Joseph Geronimo? How do you know him?’

  For the first time there’s hesitation in Daniel’s easy flow of words, and the hint of a puzzled frown flits across his open face.

  ‘He’s a bit of a man of mystery, is our Mr J. G. I remember him coming into my dad’s place a few times. Always said he was “just passing through”. But he’s the kind of man you never forget. And then, a few months after I came here, he swaggered into the café and he’s been about ever since.’

  The hesitation returns, and I’m curious.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s this thing with him. He always seems to be there when you really need someone; as if, somehow, he knows. He’s like the big brother I never had.’

  Daniel squeezes my hand.

  ‘But he’s a devil with the women, so you watch yourself. You’re spoken for now.’

  I can feel my cheeks grow hot. I feel like I should have felt when I was a teenager, but never did. Maybe he is ‘my Daniel’ now.

  ‘What about you?’ Daniel wriggles down into his seat. ‘We’ve done mine; what about yours?’

  I’m willing the lights to dim and the curtain to open, but it remains stubbornly shut. I take a deep breath.

  ‘Well, as I told you, my dad died when I was seven, and my mother and I were never close.’ The standard lines trip easily off my tongue. ‘She sent me away to boarding school and I hated it. I wanted to stay living at Queenie’s. I loved it there. It was . . .’ I search for the right word. ‘Magical. It was magical.’

  ‘So why did your mum send you away?’

  ‘I don’t know but I hated her for it. She said it was for my own good; to get a proper education. But I never believed that was the real reason. It always felt more like some sort of excuse.’

  ‘Blimey. Did you never ask her why?’

  It seems such an obvious thing, but I have to think about it. I know I did at the time. As a child. ‘Why? Why? Why?’ But I never got a satisfactory answer. But as an adult? I’m not sure I did. Maybe I stopped believing that it would make any difference; that whatever excuse she came up with could never be good enough. Maybe by then the distance between us had become too fixed. Daniel is clearly struggling to understand a family existence so different from his loving, cheek-by-jowl, bustling nest of mum and dad, sisters and aunties.

  ‘And you were never close to your mum? Even before she sent you away?’

  I’m so used to saying it to fob people off, to explain away our strange rift; but was it really true? Had it always been like that? I remember loving her until I thought I would burst when she fixed the tree lights that first Christmas after my dad died. And that first night at Queenie’s when she took me on the galloping horses. I can still see her hair blowing in the wind and her dress billowing. She was so beautiful, and I was so proud of her. So where did it all go so terribly, irrevocably wrong? Daniel’s questions are pebbles thrown into the pond and the ripples are spreading. As the lights dim and the curtain swishes open, it’s more than just an old film beginning; it’s a new version of an old life. I need to understand what happened. I need to find out the whole truth. But who can I ask now?

  29

  Tilly

  Cecily was honking and gasping and wobbling her head about on the end of her long, skinny neck. Her eyes were bulging and watering and she was holding a cigarette between her finger and thumb as far away from her face as the length of her fully stretched arm would allow. Tilly was rolling around on the grass laughing.

  ‘How can we possibly transform you into an elegant swan when you insist on behaving like a galumphing goose?’

  Marlene was reclining languorously in a deckchair with a striped canopy, smoking a cigarette from a ridiculously long ebony holder. She was wearing wide-legged grey slacks, a man’s shirt and a demeanour of exaggerated boredom. Her mad hair was tucked into an odd-looking bob and her face was virtually obscured by a wide-brimmed hat and enormous sunglasses. Marlene was always losing her cigarette lighter, so she had appointed Tilly her ‘little match girl’. It was a role Tilly was more than happy to fulfil, giving her plenty of opportunity to play with the little sticks of magic that Marlene doled out to her like sweeties. Marlene was teaching Cecily to smoke, to give her ‘an air of sophistication’ and therefore make her ‘more alluring to the opposite sex’. Cecily had taken a fancy to a young man called Sidney who sold doughnuts on the pier, but her attempts to seduce him had so far only resulted in far more doughnuts than were good for her purse, waistline or complexion. Tilly was hoping that once Cecily had learned to smoke properly she might be persuaded to teach her. Not that Tilly had any wish to get a boyfriend. She just thought it would be a good trick to know; it involved matches, making it particularly attractive, and it reminded her of her daddy. She had been practising on her own in her room with rolled-up bits of paper torn from one of her school exercise books, but it wasn’t quite the same without the setting on fire bit, which she had so far resisted. She didn’t want The Paradise Hotel to meet the same sad end as her daddy’s shed. Marlene lowered her sunglasses and peered critically at Cecily, who was still coughing and wiping her nose on her sleeve. She shook her head despairingly and retreated behind her sunglasses.

  Tilly lay back on the grass and wriggled contentedly in the hot summer sun. So much had happened in the last few months. She felt like she had been at The Paradise Hotel forever. She had finished two terms at her new school, and one day when she had got home her things had arrived in boxes from their old house. She had sent postcards to Auntie Wendy and Mrs O’Flaherty, but neither had replied yet. That old life seemed so far away now. She still missed her daddy of course. The pain would sometimes buckle her like a stubbed toe. But their new life was such a sea of colour and bustle and different people that the pain was quickly washed away by the tide. Her mother was busy all day with Queenie, and seemed so happy, and now Tilly never had to come home to just her mother, wondering if it would be Gracie or the Kraken that she would find. Reg had turned out to be a lovely man with brown eyes, a quiff of black, shiny hair and a tattoo of a lady in a swimsuit on his forearm. He called Tilly ‘sweetheart’, her mother ‘Gracelands’, Lil ‘Lily Lilo’ and Cecily ‘Silly’. But Queenie was always Queenie. It felt like they were a family, and it was the first proper family that Tilly had ever had. Now it was the school holidays and Reg had promised to take Tilly with him to the ballroom. Bert and Effie were due back next week for a big dance competition and Cecily was taking her for a doughnut on the pier later that afternoon.

  The smoking lesson wasn’t a great success and ended with Cecily being sick over a pot of purple petunias. Lil, who had been watching through the kitchen window whilst rolling pastry for that night’s steak and onion pie, came into the garden wiping the flour
from one hand on her pinny and holding a glass of water in the other which she handed to Cecily.

  ‘Very ladylike, I must say. I’m sure Sidney will be very impressed.’

  Cecily took the glass gratefully and inspected the petunias from a safe distance.

  ‘The missus’ll kill me when she sees that.’

  Marlene flicked the ash from her cigarette into a half-empty glass of lemonade that was standing on a small tray next to her deckchair.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, girl! The birds will eat it.’

  She took a final, deep draw and then dropped the cigarette, still in its holder, into the glass. Tilly was lying on her tummy, propped up on her elbows.

  ‘You should drink all that water, Cecily. Sidney won’t want to kiss you with bits of sick between your teeth.’

  ‘I don’t want him to kiss me,’ Cecily said, gulping down the rest of the water anyway. ‘I just want to be friends. I don’t know what makes you think I want him to kiss me.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the year’s supply of doughnuts you’ve eaten in the last two weeks, and the cotton wool you stuff down your bra when you go to buy them,’ said Lil, who took the empty glass from Cecily and picked up the tray next to Marlene. She looked at Cecily’s red face and her manner softened.

  ‘Now go and wash your hands and face and help Gracie set the tea things. I’ll give you a squirt of perfume before you go out.’

  Marlene stirred a little in her chair and looked at the place on her wrist where her watch should have been if only she could remember where she’d left it.

  ‘Is it time for my gin yet?’

  An hour later, Cecily and Tilly were strolling hand in hand towards the pier, closely trailed by Eli. Tilly didn’t really want to hold hands these days. She felt she was too grown up now. But today she was making an exception. Today she was holding hands with Cecily to make Cecily feel better. Cecily’s hand was cold and clammy. She had brushed her hair and scraped it back from her face and then tied it into a ponytail high on the back of her head. It was pulled so tight that Tilly thought it made her face look a bit surprised. She had dabbed her cheeks with some rouge that Marlene had provided rather grudgingly after relentless pleading on Cecily’s part, and sprayed herself liberally with some perfume Lil had found that had been left behind by one of the guests. Moonwind by Avon.