Dave Hart Omnibus

by David Charters

  BEHIND ME is another family, and they’re almost as bad. Toby, Jasper and Monty must be aged between four and eight, wholesome, well-scrubbed, terribly well-spoken well beyond their years, and immaculately dressed in identical clothing from some middle-class mail order catalogue. Their pretty, tired but enthusiastic, cheerful in adversity, long-haired thirty-something mother is wearing loose, practical trousers and a white blouse and cardigan, probably from Marks and Spencer, and is actually holding hands with her very tall, slightly other worldly, professorial husband, who’s staring around the departure hall, as if he hasn’t been in one before. They are the hardworking, fair-minded, serious, law-abiding, aspiring lower middle classes at their nauseatingly cheerful worst. Announce that there’s a six hour flight delay, and they’ll shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Oh well, never mind. Let’s see where we can sit down – isn’t this exciting, children?’ and start to play ‘I spy’ while mum gets out packs of home-made sandwiches and a flask of tea. They are probably schoolteachers, or civil servants at the Department of Social Security. For all I know he might even be a vicar, and no matter how well they do, how hard they work, they’ll never know what it feels like to make a million dollars at bonus time. In their world, it simply doesn’t happen.

  I’m too young to be a grumpy old man, and I know it’s wrong to sneer – though I’ve never quite worked out why – but people like this make me sick. They lead plodding, one-track lives, where the most exceptional thing that happens is falling in love, getting married, having kids, raising them, and launching a whole new, selfperpetuating cycle. Eventually they have grandchildren and then they die, without ever making a bean. What are these people for?

  I’m beginning to feel stressed by the delay, so much so that I start taking deep, relaxing breaths. What if I can’t actually leave the country? What if the inscrutable official at the desk looks at my passport, glances briefly at me and presses some hidden button to call the police to take me away? ‘Fugitive investment banker caught at Heathrow’ – I can see the headlines now.

  There’s a commotion ahead. A lot of people are shouting, and some are moving forward, crowding around what looks like a middle-aged man lying on the ground. Women are saying things like ‘Oh, my God’, and one of the airline ground staff is making an urgent phone call from the check-in desk.

  I can’t bear this any longer.

  ‘Excuse me! May I come through?’ I surprise myself with the strength of my voice, as I step forward and the crowd parts and people look at me expectantly. ‘Excuse me – may I come past? Thank you.’ They automatically step aside as they hear a voice of authority. Several people are kneeling helplessly beside a grey-haired man in a crumpled tropical suit. He looks very pale and it’s not clear if he’s still breathing.

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘No.’ I step forward, lifting my feet carefully over the prone victim of what I suppose must be a heart attack, and present myself at check-in. ‘I’m an investment banker.’ I turn to the check-in attendant. ‘Dave Hart, seat 1A.’

  There’s a buzz of angry conversation behind me, and the check-in girl seems reluctant at first to take my passport and ticket, but I stare her out and she finally lets me through. I can feel a wave of hatred hitting my back from the crowd as I walk down the jetty towards the waiting airliner. Some people would be bothered by this, but not me. I have investment banker’s immunity to the feelings of the Little People. This is a result. Instead of standing in line like some gormless twerp, I can get on board, relax and order my first glass of champagne.

  I’M ON MY third glass, munching canapés, sitting in the best seat on the plane – seat 1A, the only one that Rory would consider on the rare occasions when he used public transport, rather than taking the corporate jet. I’ve booked a suite at the Bay Club, Jamaica’s hottest new property, with scuba diving, water skiing, tennis, golf, a Givenchy spa, and the closest thing you’ll find to haute cuisine dining in the English-speaking Caribbean. I’ve also got Dan Harriman’s list of hot numbers to call. I may be a fugitive from justice, as well as from my soon-to-beex-wife, with no job, no prospects, and no future, but life is good, at least for the moment. First Class is almost empty, which is how I like it. Just a few business types quietly sipping champagne and reading.

  The plane was thirty minutes late taking off, because they had to remove the bags of a passenger who had been taken seriously ill before take-off. I’m philosophical about these things. It allows me time to chat to a very pretty blonde stewardess called Maxine, who’s half-French, has small boobs and a cute backside. It’s all going really well, until she explains that the announcement they’ve just made isn’t strictly accurate. The man who was taken ill actually died. And one of the First Class passengers apparently stepped over him in order not to be delayed at check-in, while he was actually dying! We look around at the other passengers and wonder who it might be. After that I lose interest in Maxine.

  I glance at the curtain that separates First Class from the rest of the plane. Back there in World Cattlemarket Class I can imagine Mick and Jason and Kennie arguing over who gets the last plastic chicken korma from the trolley, while Toby, Jason and Monty munch contentedly on mum’s sandwiches, probably made with gluten-free, organic wholemeal bread, low-fat margarine and cold breast of free-range chicken. Any time now the adults will be served their last alcoholic drinks, the lights will be dimmed, the air conditioning turned off so that the cabin gets hot and stuffy, and the cattle will doze off and start snoring for the duration. Gross.

  There is a story that Rory once took his family on a holiday to Australia. Naturally, they all had seats in First Class, along with the nanny and the au pair. But it was a long flight and the kids started misbehaving. Rory, as a man accustomed to being in charge of his destiny, found this all a bit too much and finally lost it, threatening the kids that if they didn’t behave, he’d send them ‘back there’ – he pointed to the curtain – where they’d never been before. His kids were pretty scared and took a peep behind the curtains. All they’d ever done in their lives was board an aircraft and turn left. They didn’t know what happened if you turned right, and probably thought that behind the curtains on the right was where the baggage was kept, and the fuel was stored, and where the engines were. When they saw there were actually whole rows of people asleep back there, they really freaked out, got the point and came back to sit down and be quiet for the rest of the flight. It made a real impact on them. They were terrified.

  And the best thing of all? They weren’t even looking at Economy Class. Behind the curtain was Business Class, where Rory made the rest of us sit on corporate trips.

  After dinner and a movie, I doze for a while and finally wake up to the welcome news that we’ll be landing in half an hour. As a jaded long-haul traveller, I don’t usually get excited any more about flying, but this trip is different. I feel like a kid who’s been let out of school early.

  In the baggage hall I grab a porter, and I’m delighted to see that First Class baggage really does come off before Mick’s. I watch while Jason and Kennie climb all over the carousel, and wonder if it will start up and slice their fingers off. They look sweaty and filthy, their T-shirts covered in the spilt remains of whatever food they were served in-flight. Toby, Jasper and Monty are still looking well scrubbed – probably cleaned off by mum in the toilets half an hour before landing, while dad – the vicar – is staring around the arrivals lounge, obviously never having seen one before.

  I’m through Immigration in a flash – no arrest warrants here – and a beaming black man in a white suit is holding a name card with ‘Mr D Hart – Bay Club’ on it. While Mick is still waiting for his baggage, I’m in the back of an air-conditioned stretch limo, sipping a glass of mineral water so cold that I fear it could crack the enamel on my teeth. This is living.

  I HATE the Bay Club.

  For starters, they don’t allow hookers. Why any businessman would ever stay here is beyond me. On my second night, after conquer
ing my jet-lag, and with no sign that anyone was after me from the UK, I decided to have a party. Not quite on the scale of my last party in London, but a party nevertheless. I made a couple of phone calls, took a shower, put on my hotel dressing gown, and sat on the sofa in my suite nursing a large Scotch and water. Then the phone rang.

  ‘Mister Hart?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s reception, sir. There are two…’

  There was an awkward pause. ‘Yes?’

  ‘There are two… young ladies here. They are asking for you, Mister Hart.’

  ‘Excellent. They must be my nieces.’ I chuckle knowingly, as if sharing an in-joke with the man on reception. ‘Why don’t you show them up?’ I’ve used this line before, and generally it works. The guy on reception knows they aren’t my nieces, and he knows that I know that he knows. And what I’m suggesting is that he shows them up, rather than sending them up, because obviously I’m going to slip him a couple of large denomination notes for being accommodating.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mister Hart, but it’s against hotel policy.’

  ‘What? Are you saying hotel guests can’t entertain visitors in their suites?’ I raise my voice to emphasise the point. ‘In their thousand-dollar-a-night suites?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mister Hart. Would you like to speak to the night manager?’

  ‘Certainly not. I want to speak to you. Right now. In person. Kindly come up straight away, and bring the young ladies with you.’ As I say this, I reach over to my wallet and reluctantly start unpeeling hundred dollar bills. Whoever this fellow is, he takes his job seriously. This is going to be expensive.

  ‘That’s not possible, Mister Hart. I’m sending the young ladies away. There are many other attractions at the Bay Club, Mister Hart. Have you tried the Givenchy facial, or the pedicure? Or how about a golf lesson? Or tennis?’

  I can’t believe I’m hearing this. ‘Do you know who I am?’ I positively roar the words down the phone. There’s a pause at the other end, and then a different, older voice comes on the line.

  ‘We know exactly who you are, Mister Hart.’ This totally freaks me out. Who is this? What does he know? How can he know anything at all about me? I only got here two days ago. ‘And you must know that an upmarket family resort hotel cannot allow ladies of this type on the premises.’

  I hang up. Damn, I swallowed a Viagra tablet forty minutes ago. Swallow them quickly, they say, in case you get a stiff neck. I should have waited until the girls showed up. Now I daren’t even go down to the bar for a drink in case I embarrass myself. And what about the girls? Who will pay for their taxi out to the resort, or pay them for their time, or their trip home? I imagine some vengeful Yardie pimp with a revolver slipping into my room at night and firing round after round into my sleeping body. I sit in my room, torturing myself and steadily draining the mini-bar.

  The next day at breakfast I have the feeling that everyone is looking at me. Not just the staff, but somehow I get the sense that the guests know all about the scene last night at reception, when a couple of hookers were turned away. A couple of hookers? Yes, that’s right. He wanted two of them, the twisted, perverted beast. I look across at the elderly couple spooning up mouthfuls of muesli at the table on my right. They nod cheerfully and smile ‘Good morning’, but I know that they know.

  After breakfast I wander over to the pool to lie in the sun and snooze. Amazingly, every sun-lounger is taken. I look around and can see nothing but an oil slick of nearly naked Germans, Scandinavians and Dutch people, roasting slowly in the Caribbean sun. Where do they come from so early in the day, and how do they get all the best places?

  I wander down to the beach, which is the private property of the hotel, but runs alongside a public beach that is open to anyone. Sure enough, members of the public are wandering across our beach. And then it gets worse. Mick is here, with Kennie and Jason, and his appallingly bovine wife.

  ‘Hey, Mister – wasn’t you on the same plane as us? Wasn’t you the one what stepped over that bloke what was dying?’ Kennie is looking up at me from the deep, possibly deadly pit the male members of the family are excavating. It’s already up to his chest, and must have taken real labour. Perhaps Mick isn’t just a benefits parasite, but works as well, as some of the more enterprising ones do, and digs up roads or operates a digger machine in his working life?

  I ignore Kennie and stare out to sea, imagining that I must cut a romantic figure, dressed in my Villebrequin shorts, my Ralph Lauren polo shirt and my Rayban shades – echoes of Tom Cruise.

  ‘We’re staying at the Coconut Club – the other side of the bay from this place.’ It’s a gruff male voice, estuary English, and I realise that Mick is talking to me. ‘The beach isn’t as nice there, so we come here instead. Belongs to this posh place, but they can’t stop us, see?’

  Feeling trapped, I reluctantly acknowledge him.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You bet. And there’s a barbecue here tomorrow night as well.’ He winks conspiratorially. ‘Might even see if we can slip in.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘By the way, that fella died.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Stone cold dead. “Brown bread,” as we say down our way. In case you was interested.’

  ‘Not really.’ I find this exchange slightly surreal. Is he trying to prick my conscience in his slovenly, uncouth way? Doubtful. Probably just trying to make conversation. Under other circumstances, the first thing I’d do would be to tip- off hotel security about gatecrashers at the following night’s beach barbecue, but I’m so fed up with the hotel, with the nearly naked Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians, and with the prospect of spending a thousand dollars a night in order not to get laid, that I actually chuckle.

  ‘See you at the barbecue.’

  Mick grins and gives me the thumbs up.

  I wander along the beach, and it gets worse. The Wholesome Family are here too. Toby, Jasper and Monty splashing in the waves while the vicar stares at people making sandcastles as if he hasn’t seen them before, and Missus Wholesome spreads out a blanket and starts slicing up a melon and putting pieces onto brightly coloured paper plates that she must have bought in a local supermarket.

  ‘Weren’t we on the same plane?’ She looks up and smiles as I walk past.

  I shake my head. ‘No. You must have seen my cousin, Dan Harriman. Flew out a couple of days ago. We look very similar. He’s a total shit, steps over dying people if they’re in his way, does drugs, hookers, booze, you name it. Even tried to smash his boss’s head in with a machete.’

  She tilts her head on one side to stare at me, and I realise that under other circumstances she might be quite attractive – well, at least shaggable – and she laughs. ‘It was you. You stepped over…’

  ‘Don’t tell me. I stepped over a dying man. I know I stepped over a dying man, although I didn’t know then that he was dying, and realistically there was nothing I could do even if I did know. I’m not a doctor, and I’m not a first-aider. At least by getting out of his way I could give him some privacy. And dignity. It’s better than standing round gawping at him.’

  ‘Don’t sound so defensive. You weren’t to know.’ She has long brown hair tied up in a bun, freckles and a delightful snub nose. She’s definitely fuckable.

  ‘I’m not. Just rational. Are you staying at the Coconut Club with…’ I nod towards Mick and his family.

  ‘With Mick? Yes. He told us about this beach. Apparently there’s a barbecue tomorrow night, and he wants us all to gatecrash it. But I don’t think Trevor wants to.’

  Trevor? I might have known her husband would be called Trevor. He looks like a Trevor.

  ‘Well, I’m actually staying here. I have a suite. Tell Trevor you can all be my guests. See you around eight?’

  ‘We’d love to. Are you sure it’s all right if we all come?’ She stands up and holds out her hand. ‘I’m Sally by the way. Sally Mills.’

  I shake her hand and find she has
a delightfully firm grip. I love it when women have a firm grip. Anyway, she’s wearing a conservative one-piece swimsuit that covers up rather too much and has never been seen by any designer known to man, yet still she looks attractive. For a moment I imagine lying on my back on my bed in the hotel, while a naked Sally Mills sits on my face and goes down on me.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. See you tomorrow. Let’s hope it’s a big night.’

  ‘Let’s.’ She smiles and catches my eye, and I wonder briefly if she’s flirting. Well, what woman wouldn’t, if she met me, on a beach in the Caribbean? Tom Cruise’s half-brother. Especially if she was married to Trevor the teacher.

  I’M FLYING.

  We’ve got a big table near the barbecue, just a few yards from an improvised dance floor that’s been put together on the beach, and waiters are running a shuttle service of cocktails from the bar. Mick has helpfully sat himself next to Trevor, and keeps making him drink more, which he’s obviously not used to, while Mick’s wife, Claire the Human Pudding, is on Trevor’s other side, keeping him wedged in. The kids are all over the place, running round causing havoc.

  I’m playing the role of perfect host. I greeted everyone when they arrived, and made them all laugh by explaining how there’d been a bit of tension at the hotel. Apparently the Germans and the Dutch and the Scandinavians were in the habit of going out to the pool last thing at night, and spreading out their towels and magazines and personal odds and ends on the loungers to claim the best sunbathing spots. Well, last night someone went out even later and threw all the Dutch and Scandinavians’ things in the pool, leaving only the Germans’. Outrageous, what some people will do, and this morning it nearly caused world war three. We all have a laugh, Mick gives me a sideways glance, but I don’t react, and instead we settle down to drinking, which I’m quite good at.