by Jonathan Lee
—
On the pavement outside Amadeo’s Susie was standing with two girls and a guy. Freya slowed and tried to find a way to—No, too late to cross the road.
“Well,” Susie said. “Look who it isn’t.” As a greeting it didn’t even make sense.
“Hi, Sooz.”
“This is her,” Susie said, turning to her friends. “I was just telling them. Saying that I knew someone who could give us access, but she didn’t have any convictions, so.”
“That’s nice of you, Sooz. Thanks a lot.”
“Nice shoes,” Susie said, and the sneeriness in her voice was truly world class. One girl sniggered and the other shook her head. The boy was chubby and had a flop of blond hair, green braces over his shirt, and he held out his right hand and said, in the poshest voice she’d ever heard from a person under thirty: “Very pleased to meet your acquaintance.”
“She won’t be pleased to meet you,” Susie said. “She doesn’t care one bit about the cause.”
“Shh,” the blond boy said. “Now, Freya, what’s this I hear? You won’t help us with a little stink bomb? It’s just, you know, it gets us in the news. Stupid pranks, not much upset caused—inconvenience, right?—but when it gets into the news we get a few column inches to elaborate on, well—”
“The cause,” Freya said.
“You catch on quickly. They could use you in the SWP.”
“That’s not what he’s from,” Susie said, too eager. “He’s the LPYS. He edits Socialist Youth.”
He smiled. “All true,” he said. “And what do you do, Freya?”
There was a pause—she didn’t know how to answer this—and all at once the girls and the boy looked at each other and laughed. It was a strange moment, more like a half-scene in a dumb nightmare than a real exchange. It left her feeling sick.
“Sorry,” the blond boy said. “Didn’t mean to embarrass you. But are you sure you couldn’t help us out a little?”
Why did she want to cry again? Susie was staring at the entrance to Amadeo’s.
“I—”
“Yes?” The blond boy was touching her wrist. Gentle. The girls whispered to each other.
“I’m not going to throw any stink bombs around the hotel.”
“Of course.”
She had their attention now. It was the same as before. They were going to laugh again. “But there’s a back entrance, where the kitchen staff smoke. I—I could maybe let someone in, I guess, if it’s just for a joke.”
“You legend,” he said. “That would be excellent, really excellent.” Her offer had stiffened their expressions.
“One person. On the Friday. But only if I know exactly what—”
“Chanting outside. A stink bomb inside. No damage done—you have my word, Freya. You’re doing your bit for free expression.”
Susie stepped forward and flung her arms around Freya—“I knew it, Frey-Hey. I knew”—and in this moment Freya thought of the time she’d asked Susie’s little sister to name her ten favourite people. Six of them had been animals, two of them were her mum, and first place went to a plastic doll called Amanda Jane whose eyes were alarmingly large.
3
How the hell to get out of here? His contract only gave him six days sick pay a year. After that the cheques would stop coming. The unions had been bruised by Thatcher’s assaults. In hospitality a few broken ribs. He hoped she knew what she was doing. Hoped he’d have a chance politely to ask her. To say, “Hey, Maggie, how about helping our industry?” But it was true too, that a couple of years ago it was impossible to sack bone-idle staff. They used to wave their union cards and grin, speak without respect. He wanted his employees to think of him as a nice guy, but the moment they took advantage it stung him. Now he felt gravely betrayed by his own body. The head of bloodflow. The department of hearts. I fed you, didn’t I? I watered you? I did my bit to relieve your urges? There was that time I rubbed moisturiser stuff on your skin. Still you decided to go on strike.
Mr. Marshall was leaning into the room, his head crowned by irrepressible grey curls, his face expressing the exact combination of compassion and apathy that made doctors good at their jobs. His features were lengthy. His shoes had a frightening shine. A heart that would probably never fail him. A body that had probably been run for many years on death-repelling breakfast juices, improbable quantities of exotic fruit, the fine sea spray of expensive sailing boats gliding cleanly between private islands.
“Is the sun in your eyes?” Mr. Marshall said. “I’ll get a nurse to get that sun out of your eyes.” He stepped back into the corridor. “Monica!” he said. “Sun out of his eyes!” But Monica, whoever she was, didn’t come.
“Actually,” Moose said, “I like to see the trees.”
“Trees,” Mr. Marshall repeated, frowning. He seemed to be wondering how a man of his abilities had failed to factor them in. “You still living up on the old what’s-the-name?”
“Brighton Heights.”
Marshall frowned again.
“That’s just what we call it. Because…well, there’s the hill, if you remember. And it’s an ironic thing, because it’s not that high really, it’s not like you’re up there with the gods looking down, though you do feel a bit separate to your surroundings. Also, when we were out in New York, Freya and I ended up visiting these sort of relatives who live in Brighton Heights in Staten Island, which has these grand old houses, and a lake that’s really a reservoir. It’s a long story.”
“It sounds it,” Mr. Marshall said. “You’ve got to do what the young chap says, Moose.”
“Dr. Haswell?”
“Haswell. Right…” Haswell whose eyes had a hard athletic intent, cold as the mints Moose used to eat before a diving meet: sugar-packed and powerful, the tingle-fresh sense you’d burnt your tongue. “This is our show,” Marshall was saying. “Chance to return a favour. No use getting down. Couple of days. Hope to keep you in this nice little room. I’ll never forget that party for my fourth.”
“Fourth?”
“Marriage,” Mr. Marshall said.
“Oh. That was your fourth, was it? Our pleasure to host you, anyway. Maybe bear us in mind for future…celebrations.”
“Thanks also for the voucher. Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. A heart requires care. No fags yes. No spirits yes. Cut down on those crisps and sweets you keep squirrelled about your person.”
“Energy,” Moose said. “I work long hours, like you.” He objected to the word squirrelled.
“Look after it, or one day it’ll be total blackout. Ticking time bomb is what people say. Tick tick. Tick.” Mr. Marshall sneezed. “It’s all nonsense, more or less, but however it helps to think of it.” With an unpleasant lusty look he inspected the contents of his handkerchief. “Like I said, the only thing a heart really resembles, if you’ve actually held one, is a blood-soaked fist. Break too many knuckles and you can’t go on fighting, yes? And you want to keep fighting, don’t you? Fighting against the body’s immemorial attempts to make us all look and feel like shit.” Briefly he barked with laughter. “Is that wife of yours still carrying on with an American chap?”
“Ex.”
Marshall’s hand shot up to his ear. “She is then, is she?”
“Carrying on with him in London now, I think. Or with someone else.”
“God,” Marshall said, running fingers through his hair. “Jesus.” For about five seconds he looked fiercely upset. “You’re in pain?” he said.
“No. It’s actually fine.”
“You’re sure? I can get them to up your intake.”
“My heart.”
“Yes?”
“Ever since Viv went, I’ve tried to keep it away from attractive, feisty women. I’ve done it many favours. I’ve tried to preserve it.” He allowed himself a gentle smile.
“Well,” Marshall said, “I wouldn’t say you’ve done it many favours. But best advice I ever heard? Marry someone mediocre. Medically what’s o
n your mind? I’m here to help.” A quick glance at his watch.
“I suppose…Well, I guess the only thing is that I’m still slightly nervous that this might happen again, or what this means for me, and so on…I haven’t had a chance to really discuss my—well, my condition fully with anyone, because obviously you’re all so busy and everything…So that’s part of the nerves, I suppose, though I’m definitely not complaining.”
The admission of nerves. The request for more attention. Moose could see straight away that he had made a double mistake. The truth was there in the shine of Mr. Marshall’s eyes, little hoops of light that were interpretable as distaste. Wanting on a great scale—that’s what made people shameful. Nervous patients were the medical equivalent of needy hotel guests, probably? The light sleeper, the hot-water junkie, the badly asthmatic anti-allergen guy, the vegan woman who dislikes meat almost as much as people made of it.
Mr. Marshall held one foot behind him, your basic quadriceps stretch. “Nerves are natural, Moose.” He shifted to the other leg too quickly to reap a reward.
“You want to hold for thirty seconds at least,” Moose said.
“Heart attacks make doctors nervous too. People are always surprised to hear there are still, in this day and age, uncertainties around the most appropriate treatments, yes? Bed rest, for example, has been for most of my career the most simple and established of ministrations for the kind of infarction we’ve been looking at here. But just the other day I read a journal piece—well, was told about one—suggesting that, in a forty to fifty male like you, the prevalence of deadly blood clots in the legs should force a reappraisal even of the bed-rest strategem.”
“It’s a comfort to hear all that,” Moose said.
“Stay off the smokes, yes? The cigars.”
“I don’t smoke cigars.”
“Quit smoking. All of it. Assume, every time I stare at you, that what I’m saying is give up smoking. Do that and you’ll be fine. Best thing? Get some bed rest.”
Narcoleptics, Moose thought. Of all hotel guests, narcoleptics are the most highly prized. Shut the door. Leave them be. Rarely hear a peep. When they get hungry they order to the room. You charge them extra even though it costs you less, frees up the restaurant to squeeze in more covers.
In hospitality the thing that killed you was headcount, the sheer size of the payroll in a luxury place. That and the two hundred towels washed each day, the sourcing of vintage lampshades, the touching up of rooms every Monday and Friday: suitcase scuffs, shoe marks, loose plaster, broken mirrors. The maintenance required was amazing but you did it without thinking, just got on with the jobs, and maybe that was the secret? Today he’d spent a lot of time speculating that his life would be better if only he spent a lot less time speculating. He’d been thinking of Viv too. Her puzzling combination of confidence and insecurity. She was the kind of woman who’d turn up at a fancy-dress party holding a photo of the person she was meant to be.
Mr. Marshall had gone. From the corridor came the clinking of water glasses, an affable social sound, restorative and daily. It was the afternoon.
—
Monica the nurse, laughing.
“No no,” he told her. Her happiness was lifting the pain in his chest. “I’m serious. Never need to pay for that stuff.”
“What, ever? Come on, you’re teasing me.” Not pretty, no, but something invitingly inquisitive about her dark mouth, the way it was never wholly closed.
“Look,” he said, “think it through.” A moment of hesitation, of industry guilt, but it gave way soon enough to his desire to entertain. “Try this at my hotel and there’ll be trouble, but here’s the thing. At the desk, at check-in, say you’d like a no-smoking room. Then go up to your room and open the minibar. Mix yourself a couple of gin and tonics, eat a nice chocolate bar, throw the mini whiskies in your suitcase. Then light up a fag, smoke it, flush the stub down the toilet, and go downstairs. Complain that your room smells of smoke.”
“No,” she said.
“Yes. People do this. A small group in the know. Seasoned travellers. Downstairs, the person at the front desk apologises and assigns you a different room—probably a better one, because no one wants you complaining twice. Then they get housekeeping to check out the reported smoke-smell. Housekeeping confirm they can smell it too. Front desk send a bottle of wine up to your new improved room, though by then you’re already drunk.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“When you move rooms on the same day you check in, it leaves virtually no trace.”
“What if I emptied out the whole minibar, though? Everything.”
“That’s what I’m saying. In a way it’s even less suspicious. We get loads of faded rockers staying. It’s not unusual to be asked to empty out the minibar completely, before they arrive, and therefore not unusual for the minibar attendant to discover that he needs to completely refill a given minibar. Applying charges—it’s not his job.”
The nurse sat down on the end of the bed and then got up again, shaking her head, ringlets swaying. “You win. My mind is blown.”
“The other thing is, at the end of your stay, when they apply the minibar charges to your bill, you could just say, ‘No, I didn’t have anything from the minibar.’ ”
“That simple?”
“Yeah.” Why was he saying all this? Why was he spreading the word? “The truth is no good front-desk agent will accuse a customer of lying, whatever the situation. You think we want to go through your bins looking for little bottles? They know the minibar attendants make mistakes. Peer in. Mess of bottles. Ticking little items on a chart. They know papers and room numbers get mixed up. Human error. They know other fallible people copy those details onto the guest’s bill. They know some temp-staff maids drink a couple of gins while they clean and then blame it on the customers. They know summer staff sneak into vacant rooms and smoke, have a party. The only thing that shows you’re lying is if you give an over-complex excuse. If you just say, ‘Didn’t have anything,’ we take it off your bill in a heartbeat, and then you eat and drink for free.”
She gave him such an excellent smile.
Performance.
He experienced a moment of thinking this hospital wasn’t so bad, of thinking the enforced removal of all motion from his life might even be a blessing. The feeling did not last. He was napping three or four times a day. In the afternoons he was nicely heavy with doziness. Quickly it began to amaze and depress him that, during these colourful breaks in consciousness, time still seemed to pass. He woke to find a trolley had moved. A clipboard had disappeared. Situations changing and him playing no active role at all. And he was tired too, by the effort of recalibrating all the reference points in his life. Having one heart attack increased the likelihood of others. Dying at fifty of an exploded heart was a distinct possibility now. That would mean his twenty-fifth birthday—twenty-fifth!—had been a halfway point in his life. He resented all the months spent having showers, the weeks spent brushing teeth, the days driving lost along thin grey roads with a map spread out on his knees.
4
One of the final times she saw Roy Walsh was in the bar at the Grand. The morning had been lit by worries for her father. The afternoon had been overcast. She spent most of it behind the desk.
George the Doorman came inside. He took his top hat off. He glanced at the list of returning VIPs taped to the inner rim. With a brisk hand he combed his hair. She watched him go back to his preferred position on the pavement, a safe distance from any awning-based birds, until eventually a customer arrived. She checked him in and it was painless right up until the moment when she smiled and handed him the key. He looked at it with something like disgust and announced that he’d like a free upgrade. Why did so many people wait until after the admin had been done? If they asked politely, pre-allocation, you were so much more likely to meet their needs.
“I’m with Britvic,” the new guest said, as if this should mean something to her.
She lied and told him there were no suites available. She said the King of Nairobi was staying. That statement almost always put people in their place.
She went back to her Jumbo Jotter pad. Worrying about her dad had loosened other thoughts about her mother. It was like a buy-one-get-one-free kind of deal, except you didn’t want the paid-for thing and you didn’t want the free thing either. She’d been trying to set some of her ideas down.
Mum was often bored with life. Basically need to avoid that—e.g. remain only bored with JOB.
She stared at these lines, the forward tilt of her own handwriting. Why was it that, when in a bad mood, her mother had always tried to find ways of making everyone’s character feel foreseeable? Everything people did or said was anticipated and discounted in advance. “Oh, you would say that.” “Well, that’s typical.” She was a lecturer in Linguistics. Some days she saw cliché in everything. There was nothing malicious about it, probably. Her dad always said it was a symptom of The Depression. You could tell he capitalised it. But she seemed fully convinced that everyone’s personality was locked on a single predictable track—except hers, because you could tell she thought of herself as unusual. It seemed to Freya that her mother, trying to reinforce this sense of herself as unusual, would sometimes make herself happy when she wanted to be sad, and sad when she ought to have been happy, and angry for the sake of being angry. She was committed above all to contrariness, was she? She wanted to keep people on their toes.
Some mothers threw parties. Mine threw crises.
She was quite pleased with these last two sentences. She thought they might one day be the seed of an extremely profitable screenplay. She opened The Colour of Magic under the desk and read a few more pages. Twoflower and the upside-down mountain and the dragons that only exist in the imagination. The characters’ journeys were being controlled by gods playing a board game. She snorted at a line from Rincewind.