Quicksand Tales

by Keggie Carew

  She says, ‘You can’t go in there.’

  That’s what she says. That. Is. What. She. Says.

  We cannot enter the dining room. She ushers us into an adjoining room.

  ‘What time was your booking?’ she asks, trying to regain her composure.

  ‘Seven-thirty,’ I say in a confrontational tone.

  She glances at her watch, she knows the time. She wants to know what happened.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say.

  ‘Did you get stuck?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘We went for a walk to the loch,’ Jonathan explains. Could have chopped his ruddy tongue out.

  Well, now she has to rearrange everything because their sequence is all awry. So we must be punished. Escorted to the antechamber and made to wait. After a good twenty minutes on the naughty step we are escorted into the mirthless dining room to the wrong-doers’ table, right by the door. Right next to where the battalion of waiters trip over each other and whisper in Afrikaans, about us.

  ‘Eight minutes!’ I squawk.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Eight minutes late! Not ten minutes. Not fifteen. Not twenty. Eight!’ I say, biting down on the ‘t’.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s my birthday!’

  ‘I know.’

  We order. And wait for the wine. A suspiciously long time. It comes, is poured, and before we realise, is whisked away again.

  ‘What if Spanish or Italian people stay here?’ I say. ‘They don’t eat at seven o’clock. Does it say on their website, No Spanish or Italians please? Does it say, No Irish? They’re always late. In some cultures it’s impolite to be on time.’

  Our glasses dry out. I ask for the bottle to be left at the table. We wait more than eight minutes before it appears again.

  ‘They’ve peed in it,’ I say.

  ‘Or filled it up with water,’ Jonathan suggests.

  I seriously take against the place. Things deteriorate. We deteriorate. We begin calling it The Birthday Debacle. Jonathan nicknames the South African napkin-correcting waitress, who kidnaps our wine and whom we see telling off the French waitress, Badass. It has sunk to this. I go to the loo. Badass folds my napkin. I swear next time I will tie it to the back of the chair. I choose the liqueur ice cream for dessert, even though I don’t like ice cream, because, as I inform Badass, it’s too early for new season strawberries in Scotland, it’s April. She gives me a professional smile that doesn’t bend. Yes, it’s sunk to this.

  ‘This is a boarding school. A boot camp,’ I rant. ‘That woman’s not a host, she’s a frustrated headmistress. One more unreasonable £300-a-night intransigence on their side and we should go. I want to go.’

  I look at the other guests, who are cowed, quiet, and doing what they are told.

  ‘If they harass us one more time, if they ring us up at two minutes to, if they order us about once more, I’m off.’

  My beneficent, bileless, hates-to-rock-the-boat husband agrees.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I’m over the moon. ‘We can go?’

  ‘Of course. This is terrible.’

  I am so relieved.

  We don’t have to wait long. As we sit down for our breakfast rations we are told dinner will be at seven-fifteen.

  ‘Seven-fifteen?’ I repeat after him, in my cut-glass voice.

  The waiter nods. We sense the strain.

  ‘We don’t have a choice?’

  He tips his head. Eyebrows up.

  ‘But that is too early. We might want to have a drink in the pub after our walk. It’s still light,’ I say.

  ‘Seven-fifteen is too early,’ Jonathan confirms, firmly.

  ‘I’m afraid the only time possible,’ the waiter says, tight-lipped, ‘is seven-fifteen.’

  We nod. Tighter-lipped. But I’m delighted. I try to butter my cold toast. We ask for two jugs of milk to be heated for our coffee. They come back, lukewarm.

  I enjoy packing my bag. Snooks to them. I pump the Molton Brown Indian Cress hair conditioner into my half-empty bottle of Pantene. Take four sachets of pink grapefruit tea. I triple-check the room. Then check again. In the card, after ‘Hope you have a wonderful stay’, I childishly write, ‘As long as you do exactly as we say!’ and leave it on the bedside table for the ghosts.

  ‘Make sure we don’t pay extra for that champagne,’ I brief Jonathan as we bounce our cases down the stairs. ‘And try not to tell them you’ve cooked with Michel Roux.’

  Jonathan tells our host, Sara, that we are leaving. We can see her mind buzzing round. ‘It’s clear you cannot accommodate us,’ he says.

  ‘We feel uncomfortable,’ I add. ‘You made us feel uncomfortable.’

  She takes a breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but you were late,’ in a chiding sort of a way.

  ‘Eight minutes, Sara. Eight. Not ten. Not even fifteen. Not twenty. Eight. Eight minutes late. That’s nothing. Your website, I seem to recall, says this is a relaxed hotel.’

  ‘Not when it comes to dining,’ she says.

  She tells us they work very hard on the dining experience. She says her husband cooks all the food. She says timing is very important. I say it is obsessive. That it spoils the experience. Sara tells us she thinks it was deeply disrespectful to go for a walk before dinner. She says it is very rude to be late.

  I coldly repeat, ‘Eight minutes. Eight minutes.’

  I tell her it’s mad. Twice. I know I say mad twice, but I’m not sure now whether I put an It’s or a You’re in front of it. She begins to explain how a kitchen works. Jonathan tells her he knows how a kitchen works. He has cooked in a lot better restaurants than this. He tells her he has cooked with Michel Roux. She says he should understand then. I say it’s she who doesn’t understand. She asks us if we would keep Gordon Ramsay waiting eight minutes. I double-take. So this is how they see themselves. And it’s news to me that Gordon Ramsay is a paragon of virtue, arbitrator of good manners and politesse. I remind her it was my birthday, and not just any birthday. I tell her I wanted to see the loch, I tell her the regime in the hotel is not relaxed, that their ethos runs counter to having a nice time. Something ripples across her face. It is a brainwave. She asks if we are always late. Nonplussed, I say we are sometimes late. Ten minutes, maybe. Here or there.

  She smiles. A very self-satisfied smile. Enough said. She nods knowingly. She’s won, apparently. She’s proved her point. We are the late people.

  We pay. We are gone. We are excited, as if we have escaped, broken out. As we drive past the sign saying, Not far now to Hotel A—! I suggest we buy a spray can and tag it with Not far now to Jo’berg. Or Robben Island. Ha Ha. We go to the paper shop and buy the Sunday papers, which the £300-a-night hotel beginning with ‘A’ on Loch Tay (south side) does not get delivered. Maybe the paper shop owners were late for dinner once too. I tot up how much the £300-a-night Best Inn of the Year must save on Sunday papers and TV licences, never mind the cost of the tellies. We go to the nice outdoor-trekking shop. I buy a better pair of waterproof trousers. We tell them about the eight minutes. We hire a canoe. We tell the canoe man about the eight minutes. We climb a Munro. At a cairn in a dense wet cloud we tell some fellow walkers about the eight minutes. We look for somewhere to stay. A real Scottish woman suggests a place (after we’ve told her about the eight minutes) in a nearby village (beginning with ‘F’), which boasts the oldest tree in Europe, or the pub down the road. Let’s try the oldest-tree place, I say.

  The hotel beginning with ‘F’ in the village which also claims to be the birthplace of Pontius Pilate (really), has a cherry tree outside in full bloom. There is a roaring fire with real peat. There is an antler chandelier. Comfy old sofas with tartan cushions everywhere, and a stuffed capercaillie in a glass vitrine. Big old floorboards that creak. It feels as if any minute Archie from Monarch of the Glen will charge downstairs, or Susan Hampshire will swan past in a Highland shawl fastened with a large heirloom brooch with entwine
d thistles on it. This was it!

  But alas. No room at the inn. We tell the Scottish-style receptionist (not Scottish either) about the eight minutes. She cannot believe it. I like her. But still no room at the inn. They’ve been booked up for weeks. Probably nearly as long as we’d been booked up in the hotel beginning with ‘A’ (ending with ‘g’, nine letters).

  ‘So, you didn’t see this hotel on the web?’ I meekly and meanly enquire of my choose-the-wrong-thing-again husband.

  We limp back to the pub down the road.

  ‘Rooms? No problem, mate!’ (Not Scottish either.) We can even choose. Because every room is vacant. How much? Thirty quid. This Aussie gallant runs the bar, cooks, serves the food and takes guests to the rooms, all at the same time. All by himself. He runs around. Yes, mate. Sure, mate. No problem, mate! I like this place. I like him. I like the wonky windows in the room and I even like the view of the two mossy old caravans outside in the field. More Scottish-style to me. There’s a clock radio. And milk. I’m happy here. It’s a laugh. I hop into the shower. Sing. We’re free! And we can eat any time we want! No problem, mate!

  I get out of the shower. My smile fades. ‘Oh no.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The ghosts.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My pyjamas. Oh no . . .’

  I realise I did not get my pyjamas when we made our escape. The ghosts at the hotel beginning with ‘A’ had hidden them under the sodding pillow. My all-time-favourite birthday pyjamas. And then made the bed. So I couldn’t see them. Or pack them. My going-away pyjamas. My comfortable sky-blue cotton pyjamas with the splattery pink dog roses. And now it’s a long narrow windy road back, all the way round to the other side of the loch. It’s miles. And tomorrow is our last day. And the last thing I want is to waste the morning driving back to the hotel. But at the same time, I don’t want the hotel to get my favourite pyjamas. I want my pyjamas. I have never wanted them so much. Suddenly they have become irreplaceable. I look longingly out of the window, past the trailer homes, down the field and across the loch in the direction of the hotel. I wonder if there is a boat we can hire. Anything would be better than driving back.

  We drown our sorrows at the bar. I tell our Aussie host about the very expensive hotel, beginning with ‘A’, ending in ‘g’, nine letters, south side of the loch (Tay), halfway down. I tell him about the eight minutes, about my birthday, about not being allowed in the dining room, about sitting on the naughty step.

  His eyes spin into liquorice gobstoppers.

  So I tell him about the cold triangles of tiny toast, and the refolded napkins, and the folded loo paper, and whisking the wine away, and the baby kippers, and the measly spots of butter, and the South African dictatorship and the telephone reminder calls.

  ‘The Hotel A—?’ he says, incredulous.

  ‘The very same,’ I nod.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I promise,’ I nod.

  ‘Wooaah . . . You’re kidding me,’ he says.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Straight up?’ he says. ‘The bloody expensive Hotel A—?’

  ‘Straight up. The very one.’

  ‘Blimey!’

  And then I tell him about my stranded pyjamas. How they were hidden under the pillow, and how they are my favourite pyjamas, and how I long to get them back, but how I cannot bear the idea of returning all the way back on the windy road, and how tomorrow is our last day, and now somebody – probably Badass – at the Hotel A— is going to get my beautiful birthday pyjamas. I ask him if we can hire a boat across the loch.

  He roars and rubs his hands. ‘Don’t worry, mate. We’ll get your pyjamas back. My boss is gonna love this!’

  With that he leaps up and rushes to the kitchen. Through the swing doors we see him dialling a number. We fall silent as the Australian barman begins to regale John, owner of the pub beginning with ‘L’, about the couple who have just arrived: ‘You’ll never believe it, mate! They have just been . . . wait for it, mate, thrown out of . . . wait for it,’ he cackles, ‘the Hotel A—! Straight up. And you’ll love this! Wait for it, wait for it. It was because they were eight minutes late for dinner! Heh, heh.’ He roars with laughter. ‘Yeah, that’s what they said. God’s truth, I’m telling you! Wouldn’t let them in! Barred them! Yeah! Heh heh. And! Get this! It was her birthday! Barred on her birthday! Heh, heh.’ He laughs some more. But I don’t hear him mention anything about my pyjamas.

  When he eventually comes back we order another pint.

  ‘Will you really be able to get the pyjamas?’ I ask hopefully.

  ‘No problem, mate. Consider it done,’ he says, chortling.

  I would like a little more detail. How, and when exactly; but it feels ungracious to press him on it.

  ‘Um, when, I mean how, um, would you get them?’ I ask in a friendly, trying-to-be carefree way.

  ‘Oh, I’ll just go and get them.’

  ‘Would you?’ My little eyes sparkling.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Um, when . . . would you?’

  He looks at me, a bit glazed now.

  ‘It’s just that, er, we’re leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah, no problem, mate. I can post them then.’

  ‘Really?’ Eyes not quite so sparkling.

  ‘Sure.’

  At dinner (eight-thirty or was it nine?), two huge lamb shanks arrive on two huge plates. Each naked shin bone, presented erect, sticks out of its mound of marinated flesh with a sprig of rosemary sprouting from the top. It is a lone palm tree on a dessert island in a red ketchup sea. A nuclear bomb has gone off and here is the last atoll. The lumpy waves glimmer in a chemical sunset gleam.

  ‘How’s that?’ our host enquires.

  ‘Fantastic!’ we chime.

  He brings us each another climate-change island for dessert. An off-white sheet of icing crashes off an apple-pie-berg into, this time, a luminous sulphur-coloured sea. The red squiggles must be seal blood, or the last remnants of polar bears.

  *

  As we leave the next morning, I write down my address carefully, and insist on pressing a fiver for the postage into our Aussie barman’s hand. To be fair, he doesn’t want to take it. I know, deep down in my heart, he’ll never stop by the no-rhododendron drive of the Hotel A—, let alone go in and ask for my pyjamas.

  We visit the anything from two-to nine-thousand-year-old yew tree (conjecture varies); we stroll beside the beautiful Loch Tay; and four years later, we hear that the hotel beginning with A goes into administration, as the owner/chef – first name beginning with P, second name beginning with G and ending in S – scarpers back to South Africa. ‘Suppliers rage as Loch Tay hotel boss bolts for South Africa’ the Daily Record reports. ‘Exclusive: AN AWARD-WINNING hotel is fighting for survival after its owner returned to his native South Africa leaving a trail of debt.’

  I hope Sara told her husband how deeply disrespectful that was.

  THE BLACK PURSE

  We are going to the literature and music festival, Latitude. More civilised, Jonathan and I reckon, with the campervan – our tent days are over, but the dogs are not allowed to go, so we have sent an email out to all our friends and acquaintances to see if someone fancies a long weekend at our cottage in the country in return for looking after them.

  That someone turns out to be Barbara and Bill and their two teenage sons, fourteen and sixteen, Lenster and Socrates. We have met a few times, Barbara is a writer and Bill is an actor. They would love a break from their small London flat and Barbara has some writing to finish. I am pleased because maybe this will help us get to know them a little better, as I have always been a little awkward with Barbara – a little nervous, my own paranoia and feelings of insecurity, I am sure. Bill and Lenster will be the forward party, arriving early for the instructions; Barbara and Socrates will join them the next day.

  Bill and Lenster arrive. Hooray! We go through the dog food instructions,
how to feed them, how much, when, where; the garden; the greenhouse watering; the keys; the fire; the hot water switch; the car parking; how the stove works; dishwasher; washing machine; there is a lot to take in. I change the sheets, put clean towels on the beds and maps and instructions out on the dining room table. Bill says that it will be a holiday from their busy lives, fresh air, walks and excursions to the pub, they can hardly wait. We have supper together, Lenster is funny and clever and curls up with the dogs. And so, in the morning, off we go.

  When Jonathan and I arrive at the festival site, about six hours later, Latitude is a long queue of campervans to get into the top field, and then a long queue to the Ladies, and a long queue for the beer tent, where we have to pay £2 per plastic glass on top of the £7 per astronomical pint. And the clouds are building. Of course they are. There are queues everywhere you look, the venue tents are small, their capacity likewise, and there are a lot of people. And now we discover there is a ginormous commission at the ATMs, which shouldn’t bother us, because I should have loads of cash, which I should have brought from home, which I had stashed away – almost a thousand pounds in notes, fifties, twenties, filling a black purse to bulging, which I was barely able to zip up. This unlikely amount, a quantity never before held in my hands let alone stuffed into one purse, was my earnings from my Christmas pop-up shop which had done surprisingly well in December, and instead of putting it in the bank I was using it as my own personal ATM. I kept the purse under my gloves in a small cupboard in the dining room, but now, as we pat our pockets to pay for our astronomically expensive beer, I realise with a sinking feeling that I have forgotten to bring any of it, and we will have to queue for the ATM and fork out the astronomical charges. But also, against my will, I cringe slightly, thinking of the unattended purse in the cupboard under the gloves. Not for a second do I think it won’t be okay. But I chastise myself for my foolishness. I shouldn’t have left it there. It is a preposterous thing to leave a purse lying around with a thousand quid in it. But I also tell myself not to worry, and I quickly move on and forget it.