Goodmans Hotel Read online

  On the way up to my room I saw his victim methodically mopping the restaurant floor. Pausing to wish him goodnight, I decided to ask for a final beer. He smiled, did not speak but put down his mop and went into the kitchen to find Madame. She looked tired as she came towards me, but smiled and asked in a gentle, almost coy, voice: ‘Would you like your beer in the lounge, or in your room, Monsieur?’

  ‘Oh – in my room,’ I answered, taking her question to be a hint that she wanted to close up.

  ‘Yes, certainly. If you want to go up, Georges will bring it for you.’

  I could perfectly well have waited the few moments it would take her to bring me a bottle and glass, but she evidently thought it polite to offer me this little service. I went upstairs and sat on down on my bed to wait. Five minutes later Georges knocked.

  He stood in the corridor, bottle and opener in one hand, glass in the other. He had let down his hair so that it framed his features, transforming his face, making him much more attractive. I should have reached out to take the beer from him, but amazed by the change in his appearance I hung back. He stepped forwards into the room and put the bottle and glass down on the bedside table, holding out the bottle opener.

  ‘You want me to open it now?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  He prised off the bottle’s cap and poured a little beer into the glass, watching the collar of froth rise towards the rim. This effervescence seemed to fascinate him. ‘It’s good beer,’ he said, looking up.

  ‘Yes.’ What was going on in his mind to give rise to this odd ritual over opening a bottle of beer? Was he curious about me, like a child meeting a stranger? ‘I expect Madame will be waiting for you.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t wait. If you want I will go, or if not I can stay for a few minutes maybe. Maman knows everything I do.’

  An inner voice was telling me to be sensible and get rid of him quickly, yet there he was, lingering in my room, saying he could stay for a few minutes. Was he attracted to me sexually? What had he meant by saying that his mother knew everything he did? If he was trying to tell me that he was available for sex, did I want to sleep with someone like him? Would not to do so be to act as a predatory male taking sexual advantage of someone vulnerable?

  With his hair down, his warm brown eyes looking at me intently, he did seem very attractive. If we wanted each other, why should a difference in intelligence rule out our making love? If I told him to go because of that, would it not be another unfair rejection, as wrong as Peter’s barring him from serving us in the dining room? Twice I opened my mouth to speak but my thoughts were so muddled I could not formulate any words; when I tried a third time I said in a voice that seemed almost not to be mine, ‘Stay. Sit down.’

  He sat on the bed and looked at me with a hunger that was unmistakable. I reached out to touch him, we embraced, began to discover each other physically, and made love. Afterwards for a little while we lay with our arms around each other, but when he sensed that he was in danger of falling asleep he got up. As he dressed I asked him, ‘What have you got in those pockets?’

  He unbuttoned them and pulled out two plastic water bottles, the type that cyclists carry on long distance rides. ‘A cyclist was here, he gave me these. Every day I fill two up for him, this one with water, this one zumo de naranja.’

  ‘Zumo de—?’

  ‘Zumo de naranja, orange juice, he was a Spanish man.’‘Oh I see, of course, Spanish. He was your friend, when he was here?’

  ‘Yes, he was very good friend to me.’ He folded his arms around himself and made kissing noises, rocking his shoulders. ‘Five nights.’

  We smiled at each other, embraced briefly and said good night. Satisfaction and self-assurance had replaced the unhappiness and worry Peter had caused during the meal. I finished the remains of the beer and settled down to sleep, not sure whether the happiness over purging myself of collusion in Peter’s nastiness was justified, or whether I ought to feel guilty for having taken advantage of Georges.

  The next day I went down for breakfast loathing the prospect of the week to come. An empty cup and crumpled serviette at the table where Peter and Caroline sat told me Marie had already eaten and returned to her room. Peter was on to me almost before I sat down: ‘Look as though you haven’t slept. Had a less than perfect night ourselves as it happens. Some bloody couple upstairs thrashing about half the night. You know what the bloody French are like.’

  ‘Bit of tummy trouble in my case,’ I lied, hoping to divert any suspicion that I might have been the cause of the noise.

  ‘Poor thing, nothing serious I hope?’ Caroline asked. She did not look in the slightest as though she was suffering from the effects of a sleepless night. She had delicately applied a little eye shadow and mascara, and donned a beautifully cut jacket with fine blue and white stripes.

  As I shook my head Georges hurried from the kitchen to our table carrying a glass of orange juice. I prayed he was not about to give me away. ‘Zumo de naranja,’ he said, putting it in front of me and departing at speed back to the kitchen without another word.

  ‘Not that bloody half-wit with his nonsense language again,’ Peter said, this time thankfully in a voice not loud enough to be heard in Paris.

  ‘It’s not nonsense,’ Caroline said, ‘it’s Spanish for orange juice.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Zumo de naranja. It’s Spanish for orange juice.’

  He smiled. ‘How on earth could someone like him have picked that up?’ The idea seemed so ludicrous to him that he began to laugh. ‘Still having trouble with his own language, and they’re trying to teach him Spanish!’ Again he laughed, at first a little, then with abandon, his shoulders shaking and his eyes becoming moist.

  While he was convulsed with amusement at his own joke Caroline said, very softly but distinctly, ‘Village idiot knows more Spanish than Peter does.’ She had spoken too quietly for him to make out most of her words, but he picked out his name.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘I said someone Spanish must have taught him, Peter dear.’

  He looked at her quizzically. ‘Well, wouldn’t have been an Italian, would it?’ he said, and was seized by laughter again, shaking his shoulders and creasing up his face.

  When the laughing fit subsided he said, ‘Better stroll over to the garage and find out what progress has been made. Won’t call on you for translation unless I have to, since you’re under the weather. Don’t worry about the bill. I’ll settle up with Madame for all of us.’

  When he was out of earshot I leaned across towards Caroline. ‘I heard what you said.’

  She turned to face me. ‘And I’ve noticed the way you look at attractive men. Wouldn’t dream of saying anything to anyone else about it of course.’ She gave me a smile so brittle and so forced that it made me cringe inwardly. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she said, getting up from the table.

  Some hours later Peter rang me in my room to say the Porsche had been pronounced roadworthy. After checking a second time that everything was packed I picked up my bag and turned towards the door. I had been unable to think of a ruse that would enable me to say goodbye to Georges in privacy. The prospect of spending the rest of the week with Peter and Caroline was unbearable. Returning my bag to the luggage stand I went downstairs.

  The three of them were looking at a map of the area on a wall near the entrance. ‘I’m afraid my stomach is still playing up. I think it would be a bit risky for me to try to drive very far at the moment. If you could take Marie on the back seat, perhaps it would be best for me to join you at the house a little later.’

  They fussed over me for a minute or two, offering to fetch a doctor, get me something from the chemist, or take me to a hospital. I declined all offers of help, and assured them that the best thing was for them to go on without me. Marie did not look at all happy at the prospect of sharing the small back seat of the Porsche with several suitcases, and for her to have to endure some uncomfortable hours of travel
was unfair, but for me to pretend to be friendly towards Peter and Caroline for five whole days after what had happened at the hotel was impossible. Giving up their protestations about abandoning me, they set off in the heavily laden Porsche.

  Two days later I rang Peter to ask how things were at the house, claiming still to be ill but assuring him that the worst was over. ‘Come down anyway,’ he coaxed, ‘you can be ill perfectly well down here. Caroline and Marie will look after you.’

  ‘That’s very kind, but I don’t want to risk passing this on to you.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. Come down as soon as you feel up to the journey then.’

  I stayed at the Hotel des Amis for a further two days, thrashing about, to use Peter’s phrase, in my room at night with Georges. He never remained with me until morning. Madame, he said, insisted he return to his room so she could get him up in time to start his day’s chores. As well as having his company for an hour or so at night, I spent quite a few hours on his vegetable plot where we picked French beans and weeded between the rows. Conversation was sparse, consisting mainly of him explaining to me how he tended his various crops, but we enjoyed looking at each other as we worked, and would pause to watch the comings and goings at the hotel and the garage. He even taught me a little French, the words for various garden tools, for pinching out the side growths of tomato plants, and that a vegetable garden was called a jardin potager.

  Madame, as he had claimed, knew we were making love. She and I chatted together during the afternoons; her attitude was not at all disapproving. She had first learned that Georges was gay when he was found ‘touching’ another boy at school. At first she had been concerned, but he had listened when she lectured him about such things being done only in private, especially with someone of the same sex. He had never shown any interest in girls. Several other male guests at the hotel before me had taken him to their rooms. She wanted more than anything for him to be happy and lead as full a life as possible. At least, she said, she did not have to worry about girls claiming that he had made them pregnant. She wished he could meet someone who would stay with him long term, but accepted this was unlikely in a rural community.

  In many small hotels in France the husband is a qualified chef, and he and his wife together undertake the running of the hotel and restaurant. Here, though, Madame ran the hotel alone, and the chef drove in every day from a nearby village. Despite Peter’s derogatory comments business seemed to be good. At lunch times the restaurant was packed, and other guests were always in evidence at breakfast time. Madame had a friendly smile for everyone, including me, except for one occasion when she told me off for buying Georges chocolate. ‘He makes a pig out of himself with chocolate, Monsieur. Will you be taking him to visit the dentist before you go?’

  What I did do for him was to drive him into Poitiers to buy him a couple of good quality shirts and a smart pair of jeans as a present. While there I drew some money from a cash machine and when the time came to settle my bill I added a substantial tip. With that charming old-fashioned politeness that survives in France, Madame did not immediately put the money in the cash drawer but said, ‘Your friends already left a generous tip, Monsieur,’ and put the extra money on the counter between us, as though offering the notes back to me.

  ‘Oh, they did, did they?’

  ‘Yes, I was surprised. I thought they were not very pleased with the hotel, but when Georges went to tidy the room he found some money left out on a bedside table. I think perhaps it was the lady who left it, not her husband.’

  ‘My friend was angry because his car broke down. He made us all suffer because of it. That money was from him and his wife, this is from me.’ How surprising that Caroline, in the mood that produced her barbed comment to me at breakfast, had left a substantial tip. Possibly she saw it as a way to compensate for Peter’s dreadful behaviour towards Georges and had not told him about it.

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur, and thank you for keeping Georges company. He will miss you, certainly, it can be lonely for him here at the hotel. He is not too unhappy in his life, but he will be sorry to see you go.’

  She called him out so that we could say goodbye. We shook hands, then hugged each other; as we parted he looked at me with the same expression of hunger he had shown on that first night when he brought the beer up to my room. Regrettably there was no real prospect of us ever meeting again. As I turned the Vauxhall onto the road they stood at the hotel entrance smiling and waving goodbye, and that hungry look of his stayed with me, unsettling my thoughts during the drive down to the river Lot and, from time to time, returning to haunt me for months afterwards.

  I arrived at the house in mid-afternoon on the last full day before Caroline, Peter and Marie began their return. They were already preparing to leave. Their welcome was less than enthusiastic, and when they decided to have cold drinks on the patio they seemed to have forgotten about me until, almost as an afterthought, as Caroline was about to sit down she off-handedly told me to fetch myself a glass of whatever I wanted from the kitchen.

  Later Peter asked me to help hack back some brambles in the garden, and while we were chopping and thwacking he said, ‘Lucky your stomach bug cleared up in time for the drive home. I’d begun to think you might be stranded for weeks in that grubby little hotel.’

  The Hotel des Amis had not been at all grubby, but the true target of the jibe was not Madame or Georges but me. Except for that one remark of his, my feigned illness was not mentioned again. Caroline and Peter adopted a policy of speaking to me only when necessary. Marie confided that they had been hoping my fluent French would help them settle a dispute with the farmer who had sold them the house about vehicle access to the rear.

  The next day she and I followed the Porsche on the unexceptional journey back to England. The nearer we came to home the more I worried about the damage that my holiday escapade with Georges might have done to my career, and the more dubious my own motives and behaviour in ingratiating myself with Peter seemed.

  Chapter 2

  After the holiday Peter did not invite me into his office or walk across the floor to my workspace to greet me. During the first week I saw him once in the distance heading for the lifts, looking straight ahead; if my existence did register on the edge of his field of vision he ignored me. Evidently he had decided to freeze me out. For several days I sat ever more uneasily at my desk, afraid whenever the telephone rang or an e-mail message arrived that retribution for my pretended illness in France was imminent.

  The familiarity of the files, forms, manuals and directories on the shelves above my desk and in the drawers of my cabinet was reassuring in a way, but they represented a world of low profile routine tasks, not likely to bring me to the notice of those with influence over my career. As though to reinforce my descent from grace, no correspondence or messages of any importance awaited me, no crisis had occurred that needed my particular talents, whilst a plague of tedious minutiae had accumulated, irritating queries, petty niggles, and circulars that were barely worth reading.

  Even a routine small order for a software package that should have been placed during my absence was back on my desk, not sent off on the feeble excuse that the supplier was keen to send a sales representative to visit. Anyone in my little team ought to have known that hearing another lot of sales patter would be about as welcome as the computer going down during a demonstration. We were supposed to be software and network engineers, not excuse engineers.

  There was to be no swimming session the first week of my return because of the partners’ quarterly meeting. The following Thursday would be the first significant test of whether Peter was sufficiently annoyed to bar me from attending. If he really wanted to embarrass me he might even make the arrangements without letting me know, leaving me to learn from his secretary that she had issued the invitations but been told not to inform me.

  On Tuesday, half expecting a rebuttal, I sent her an e-mail asking if the session was to go ahead. The return message contained
a rebuke the seriousness of which was difficult to judge: Peter says yes, meet 12.30 at reception, if you’re absolutely sure your health is up to it !!?!! Presumably he had asked her to use those precise words, but were they a jibe not ruling out the possibility of forgiveness, or a warning that a death sentence was imminent? At least for now I was not completely banished from his presence, and as normal I contacted the other swimming partners, all of whom confirmed they would attend.

  Downstairs at reception Peter nodded to me grudgingly without smiling or speaking. As we walked to the baths he talked intently all the way to one of the senior partners, trying to persuade him of some accountancy issue he thought should be raised with the Institute of Accountants. My attempts to make conversation with a couple of the old codgers failed to evoke more than minimal and patronising responses. Whatever Peter’s faults his outlook was much broader. He did not discriminate in his treatment of the accountants and the support staff; he was confrontational and rude to both. Crucially he realised that the latest office technology was essential if the firm was to compete with its less staid rivals.

  Did I really want to reinstate my previous working relationship with him after his behaviour in France towards Georges? I wanted to get on. Partly for the money, but too because more responsibility and more demanding work were stimulating. After being in the same job for a year or so, the daily routines always came to seem like a trap. Ambition drove me on, and I learned more and more to mimic the ways of the senior people around me, I suppose hoping to be accepted as one of them. Peter had been the key to my progress so far, and whatever his behaviour in France, to advance further meant regaining his favour.

  A certain level of discomfort in the working environment at Lindler & Haliburton was something to which I was resigned. The firm’s impressive office building, the staff in their expensive suits, the luxury cars and the business lunches had impressed me at first, until awareness of the snobbery and greed that lay behind the image spoiled the illusion of just rewards for exceptional ability. Facade was what really counted. Anyone who came into work wearing casual clothes and talking about being at a disco the night before would be judged a maverick, irrespective of ability; instead of creating an ambience of wealth, dependability and propriety he or she would be seen as belonging to a different, less privileged world. If I was to make progress my private life would have to stay private.