The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted

by William Coles

  ‘You couldn’t get me some pudding?’ he said. ‘This gout…’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Oliver. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Trifle,’ said the major. ‘Couple of brandy snaps. Some strawberries.’

  ‘And some cream?’

  ‘Lots of cream,’ he said. ‘Fill it to the brim.’

  Oliver took the major at his word. At the puddings table, he spooned in a mound of trifle, placed a brandy snap on each side and then topped the whole lot off with thick Dorset double cream.

  As Oliver walked back to the major’s table, he held onto the bowl with both hands. As if in slow-motion, Oliver glided up behind the major, concentrating hard on not spilling a drop. At that exact moment, Pat moved his chair back to go up for a second helping of pudding. He slammed into Oliver. The tall German tottered. The bowl arced.

  A brandy snap spattered onto the back of the major’s neck. The bowl, brimming with cream, trifle and strawberries all ended up going down the front of Pat’s canary yellow waistcoat.

  For a second, the three of them just stood there, marvelling at the chaos.

  ‘You bloody idiot!’ Pat shouted. ‘Look at me! Look at me!’

  I looked at him. The whole dining room looked at him. The better part of his waistcoat was covered in cream and lush trifle. A stray strawberry lingered on his trousers. On the pointed toe of his cowboy boot were the remains of a brandy snap.

  ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ Oliver said, mopping ineffectually at the yellow waistcoat. The cream smeared deeper into the brocade.

  The major, meanwhile, remained in his seat, ignoring the brandy snap on his shoulder to take a leisurely sip of his wine.

  ‘Get off me!’ Pat slapped Oliver’s hands away. ‘Get off me!’

  The two girls must have been used to their father’s rages and were staring at the table, but Pat’s lover was shocked.

  She stretched a hand to him. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘It is not okay!’ said Pat.

  I was enthralled. I wondered if he was actually going to hit Oliver.

  Anthony bustled over. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘Oliver, go and clean yourself up.’ He beckoned to me and to Roland. ‘Kim, clean up this mess. Roland, help the major. Take him to the cloakroom.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself,’ said the major. ‘Though a brandy might be in order.’ He looked over his shoulder, saw the brandy snap and plucked it off his coat. He took a leisurely bite before having another draught of wine, paying no attention to the cream that was still on his coat.

  Nothing much more happened during the meal. Greta had gone off to powder her nose and I was talking to Cally.

  ‘Can I see you later?’ she asked.

  ‘I’d love that.’ I removed the two pudding bowls. She’d had trifle and clotted cream, while Greta, forever dieting, had had a small spoonful of fruit salad.

  ‘Will you take me to your room?’

  I laughed. ‘My room?’ I said. ‘It’s not what you think it is, I can tell you! It’s about a quarter the size of your beach hut, the walls weep when it’s wet and the mattress is probably the most uncomfortable thing you’ve ever sat on.’

  ‘It sounds charming.’ She was tipsy and she giggled. ‘Where shall I meet you?’

  I looked round the dining room. We were down to the last handful of tables. ‘In your car in thirty minutes?’ I said.

  ‘Perfect.’

  Minutes later, I was kissing Greta and Cally goodbye. As soon as Anthony had released us, I flew back to my room, because although it may well have been small, it was also grubby. I only slept there once or twice a week, when Cally was away in London, so I hadn’t actually cleaned it since I’d started working at the Knoll House.

  I pushed the door open, switched on the light and looked at my room with an unflinching eye.

  Clothes strewn everywhere, bedclothes that hadn’t been changed in ages, various stains on the tiled floor, and all overlaid with a general hum of pheromones and sweat.

  I threw open the window and the door and bundled my clothes into the laundry bag. These included all the colourful, luxurious shirts that Cally had given me. She never showered me with presents in the true toy-boy tradition, but the one thing she did like to do was buy me new shirts with cuffs and full collars. She had bought about five of them, stripy and floral and paisley – all different but every one of them pulsing with colour.

  I made a trip to the laundry for fresh bed sheets. There was no air-freshener to hand so I sprayed the room with aftershave. Removing the floor stains – the mud, blood and assorted bits of scum – proved more difficult. I didn’t have a brush, so I attacked the floor with a wet towel. I was like those ladies by the Ganges who scrub their clothes away to nothing on the rocks by the riverbank.

  It wasn’t great, but after I had borrowed a candle from Oliver the worst of it was indistinguishable in the shadows.

  I put on a fresh shirt and trousers and went up to the car park where Cally was already waiting for me in the twilight. It was quite still that evening, not a breath of wind, and the pines were heavy with scent and sap.

  I kissed Cally and led her back to my lair. She had a bottle of champagne. We went round the back so that there was less likelihood of being spotted. We tripped and sprawled in the darkness and ended up rolling around on top of each other, kissing and making out in the grass and the weeds.

  Above us, not eight yards away, we could hear Janeen arguing with Darren. She was angry; he was placatory.

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I want you.’

  ‘All right, did you shag her?’

  ‘Course not. Come on, baby.’

  ‘What did you do with her?’

  ‘Nothing happened!’

  Their voices began to fade as they walked away. I could still hear Janeen’s shrill voice, but I could no longer make out what she was saying.

  Cally was lying on top of me. She winked at me. ‘Just like every other guy,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘If he’s got a chance of getting some fresh oats, he’ll take it.’

  ‘Just like every other guy?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And does that include me?’

  She smiled at me, her eyes appraising me. ‘You, Kim? Ah yes, I often wonder what will happen when some pretty young floozy comes along and throws her cap at you. What will you do? Are you still going to be like every other guy? Will you still want to try something new?’

  ‘I’m not every other guy!’ I said.

  She kissed me on the side of the mouth. ‘Maybe,’ she said, and then kissed me on the other side of my mouth, ‘and maybe not.’

  Did she know then? Had she already divined my Achilles’ heel?

  ‘I want to see your room,’ she said. ‘I want to christen it.’

  ‘How do you know it hasn’t been christened already?’ I asked.

  ‘Saucy,’ she said with a kiss. ‘But it hasn’t yet been christened by me, and that’s the only thing that counts.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Though actually you will be the first.’

  ‘I should hope so too.’

  She stood up and took my hand and led me to the top of the hillock. We scuttled to my room. It would have been much more cool and much more stylish to have been brazen, but I think we were both still enjoying the secrecy of it all.

  I tugged her inside and closed the door behind us.

  ‘Don’t you ever lock your door?’ she asked.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I can come and visit you whenever I like?’

  ‘You certainly can.’

  She put the bottle on the bedside table, picked up the candle and held it up high as she gazed about the room. ‘The floor’s still wet,’ she observed. ‘The window’s open and I think I am getting a distinct whiff of aftershave.’ She plumped the bed. ‘Fresh sheets too!’ And then her hand strayed to the drawers
, which she tugged open one by one to reveal the dirty clothes that had been packed inside. ‘And your laundry all neatly folded too! You have been busy!’

  I laughed and kissed her. ‘Do you normally do that when you visit a chap’s bedroom for the first time?’

  ‘No,’ she said as she sat down on the bed and dragged me down beside her. ‘Normally I put on my white cotton gloves to test the picture frames for dust.’

  ‘Well, that’s me in the clear. I don’t have any pictures.’

  ‘You don’t, do you?’ She stared at the breeze block. The walls really were singularly depressing. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Do you have a marker pen?’

  I shook my head.

  She rummaged in her bag and seized on her lipstick. ‘This will be perfect,’ she said. ‘Never tried lipstick before. Now sit yourself at the end of the bed, open the champagne and pour out a glass.’

  I poured the champagne into the grubby tumbler that I had borrowed from the kitchens. The fizz was about to bubble over the top, but I did the old waiter’s trick of sticking my finger into the froth. The bubbles died in an instant.

  She took a gulp of champagne and then, with relaxed, easy movements, started sketching me on the wall. She was very happy; and seeing her like that, I was happy too.

  I was slumped against the end wall, so I could not see her work.

  ‘Did you see that idiot who started shouting after Oliver chucked trifle over him?’ I said.

  ‘Tosser.’

  ‘Apparently he’s some big-name soap-star.’

  ‘Never seen him before in my life. And he’s still a tosser.’

  ‘Split from his wife and he’s down here with his new girlfriend. Got to be at least fifteen or twenty years his junior.’

  ‘How unsavoury,’ she said, drily, and we laughed. I passed her the tumbler. She sipped as she continued to draw. Her lipstick was nearly finished. ‘You could sell that piece of information, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Who’d buy it?’

  ‘Just call up the Sun. They’ve even got a freephone number. Ask for the chief reporter, Mike Hamill. He knows me. If they get a good picture of Pat with his new girlfriend, you’ll make more money in five minutes than you do in a month here.’

  ‘And how do you know Mike?’

  ‘He helped me out when I nearly had my fifteen minutes of fame.’

  ‘Nearly? Why only nearly?’ I said. ‘Anything good?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Ask Mike.’

  ‘I just might. So I just give him a call?’

  ‘Any time after ten thirty. They barely start work before noon.’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of place.’

  She studied me for a while, twirling the champagne tumbler just a few inches from her lips. ‘Actually, I think it is.’

  ‘How’s that picture going?’

  ‘I’m done.’

  I got off the bed to have a look. It is always difficult to assess a picture of yourself by another. But I liked it. There was a carefree attitude in that young man with his tumbler.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘Are you going to sign it?’

  ‘Of course.’ With the remnants of the lipstick she lacquered her lips and kissed the wall just beneath the picture.

  I slipped my hand about her waist and we were kissing again.

  How quickly I used to drink in those days. The bottle was near empty. We kissed and my room’s much-vaunted christening was on the verge of taking place when Cally broke off.

  ‘I see what you mean about this bed,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if it’s the most uncomfortable bed I’ve ever been on. But it’s got to be in the top three.’

  ‘Would it help if I went underneath?’

  She looked at the dreary breeze block walls and the scuffed door and the flickering candle. And then she sniffed. I think it was that final sniff that decided her.

  ‘I’ve got another idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll book a room in the hotel.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I’ll spend the night,’ she said. ‘I haven’t stayed in years.’

  ‘Cool.’

  We arranged to meet by one of the side doors of the hotel, so that I wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet of the night porter. Good to her word, Cally was waiting there for me fifteen minutes later with a second bottle of champagne. She took me past the nursery and the children’s dining room and up the back stairs. As we skulked along the carpeted corridors, I felt as if I were breaking into the Bank of England. At every turn, I expected to be spotted by one of the managers or one of the guests who, I don’t know, would instantly have blown the whistle to prevent a guest from bedding a member of staff.

  Cally’s room was on the first floor, just past the main staircase. We had almost made it there when she spotted the giant-sized Chippendale chair on the staircase. I’d not seen it since my first day at the hotel, in fact had forgotten all about it.

  Cally was about to open the bedroom door, when she stayed my hand. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I’ve always wanted to make love on that chair.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ I said. Even at my most swashbuckling drunk, I would not have dreamed of having sex on the hotel’s main staircase.

  ‘We’ll carry it to my room,’ she said. ‘Quickly, come on!’

  I could have hemmed and hawed, but when she said it like that, I didn’t have much option. She had already darted down the stairs and was busy manhandling the chair away from the wall. The chair was in the style of an old Chippendale and at least seven feet tall. It was heavy but not too heavy.

  We each took an arm and Cally led the way up the stairs, while I followed four steps behind her. I was sure it wasn’t going to fit through the door, but eventually we put the chair on its side and worked it around the corner of the doorframe.

  Cally triumphantly shut the door. ‘This deserves a toast!’ she said.

  We opened the champagne and then set the chair up by the window. The chair was easily big enough for both us and so we sat on it side by side, nursing our tumblers of fizz and gazing out through the open window. It all felt very daring, as if we were two young children who had set up a play-den among our parents’ most prized antiques.

  ‘How long do you think it’ll be before they notice the chair’s gone missing?’ I asked.

  ‘Good point,’ she said. ‘And since we’ve gone to all the trouble of getting this chair into the room…’

  ‘It would be a shame not to use it.’

  Very business-like, I eased off her top and she helped me off with my clothes and like the seasoned lovers that we undoubtedly were, we were very quickly in the saddle.

  ‘Are you going to sit back and think of England?’ I asked.

  ‘Are you going to stand up and be a man?’ she riposted, and we laughed. The laugh stretched all the way from her cheeks to her neck, to her breasts and to her rippling belly. I don’t think I have ever laughed so much during my love making as I did when I was with her.

  Getting that giant’s chair out of the bedroom was not nearly as easy as it had been to get it in. In theory it should have been a mere matter of putting the earlier process into reverse. But for some reason, the back of the chair kept getting stuck against the wardrobe.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said. We stared at the chair, which was now half in, half out of the room.

  ‘Maybe it’s like toothpaste,’ she said. ‘No way of putting it back in the tube.’

  ‘It must be possible,’ I said. ‘We’re just not using our brains.’

  ‘We could just leave the chair in the room,’ she said.

  ‘At least more people would get to have sex on it.’

  ‘Though we could always try chopping a few inches off each leg,’ she said.

  ‘Knocking down the wardrobe would probably be easier,’ I said. ‘Let’s try something different. We’ll get it out.’

  ‘Girls like that in a guy,’ she said. ‘They like confidence. Even if you don’t much know what you’re doing, they still like a guy with confide
nce.’

  ‘I’m oozing it,’ I grunted as I tugged the chair back into the room and started to turn it round. ‘Anything else that women like or don’t like in a guy?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we’ve got this piece of furniture out of the room.’

  Eventually, we heaved the chair through the door, though only after a lot of scuffing. It had to go out almost diagonally, with me outside in the corridor lifting the chair high over my head.

  We were so elated that we took our eye off the ball. We were bumping the chair back down the stairs. I missed my footing, stumbled and the chair hammered into the banisters. Cally held on tight and just stopped the chair from smashing into my head.

  We heard a voice from downstairs. I knew it well. ‘Everything all right there?’

  The sound of footsteps hurrying towards the stairs.

  The chair was now all but blocking the stairs. We looked at each other and we each realised there was no time to be lost. Leaving the chair where it stood, we tore back up the stairs. Anthony was already behind us – confronted by the sight of the giant chair abandoned on the staircase.

  ‘Hi!’ he called. ‘What’s going on?’

  He was too near for us to return to Cally’s room. We raced up to the second floor, Cally giggling as we ran. Anthony had stumped up to the second floor behind us. He called out again, but we never stopped and we never looked back.

  I was all for holing up in a linen cupboard, but Cally was adamant that we should return to our room. ‘I’ve paid for it!’ she hissed.

  Back down the back stairs. Scampering along the corridor. A brief glance at the staircase. The chair was still discarded on the middle of the stairs, just where we’d left it. Cally fumbled with the keys and we plunged into the sanctum of her room.

  Except one thing wasn’t quite right, and it was some minutes before I worked out what it was. When we’d left the room to return the giant’s chair, the door had been left partially open. And when we’d arrived back, the door was shut.

  We had been lying in bed for twenty minutes. From outside in the corridor we could hear the night porter cursing as he heaved the giant’s chair back to its proper place.