“a cautionary and amusing tale” - Ned Sherrin
GOODMANS HOTEL
Alan Keslian
Published by Gayles Books at Smashwords in 2009
ISBN 0-9547693-3-3 (ebook number)
Gayles Books
Isleworth, Middlesex, United Kingdom
www.gaylesbooks.co.uk
Available as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk
All rights reserved
Copyright © Alan Keslian 2001
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Goodmans Hotel
Chapter 1
‘Bloody gearbox is playing up; not supposed to happen with a Porsche.’
Peter Haliburton, first syllable pronounced ‘hail’ as in ‘hail storm’, his wife Caroline, her friend Marie and I stood looking at the delinquent vehicle in a lay-by about seventy kilometres from Poitiers. An hour earlier he had rung Porsche customer services who recommended a garage with an approved Porsche mechanic, but the problem had not been as serious then and he decided against diverting from our scenic route through France.
He was not an easy man to argue with, or to talk to in any way at times like this. A partner – expecting soon to be a senior partner – with a firm of City accountants, the prestigious car was a public statement of his growing status. He doubtless considered it a reward for talent and hard work; office gossip debunked it as the outcome of determined string-pulling.
Marie and I had followed the <de luxe> vehicle from London in my modest Vauxhall. Now he stood glaring at it, his face flushed. Opposite him Caroline forced a thin smile, resigned to the inconvenience. He looked challengingly at each of us in turn, as though one of us might have caused the problem. To break the awkward silence I asked, ‘Has it been playing up for long?’
‘Hmph! If there had been an inkling that something was wrong before we set out I’d have had it seen to,’ he said, as though I had accused him of being negligent. Caroline opened her mouth as though about to speak, then closed it without uttering a sound. His gaze fell on me again. More calmly he said, ‘Everything was perfectly normal until we hit French soil, or French tarmac I should say.’
After glancing briefly at Marie, who looked terrified, he turned to his wife. ‘Bloody thing. Caroline, you try it for a while before I go berserk.’
Five kilometres further on the car pulled up again. Peter got out and walked round to the driver’s door, while Caroline slid over to the passenger seat, carefully holding her finely pleated skirt in place. Evidently he was not satisfied with her ability at the wheel. She must have felt awful. Neither Marie nor I found the courage to go over to her to say a few sympathetic words.
Although outspoken and abrasive, Peter was not usually this offensive. At work he enjoyed controversy, and recklessly disrupted long established practices and relationships. The firm, a staid accountancy practice called Lindler & Haliburton, still bore his grandfather’s name and the family connection allowed him to defy the gentlemanly atmosphere of respectful conduct and play the <enfant terrible>.
The three-year-old Vauxhall reflected my less elevated position. The accountants were the professionals, the firm’s <raison d’être>. Several promotions during my six years’ employment and the high demand for computer experts in the City did not change the fact that I was counted among the ‘support staff’. The most recently recruited trainee accountant was regarded as intrinsically better than me. He might not earn as much to start with, but in a few years time could expect to rise in rank and salary above all us lesser beings.
Marie was a rather frumpy woman of about thirty in an old-fashioned looking dress of flowery cotton whom I had met for the first time that morning. She was not very talkative, but smiled a lot and we exchanged pleasantries now and again. The journey had been fine until Peter’s car developed the transmission problem.
He pulled up for a third time in front of a dilapidated garage converted from what once must have been a barn. Ahead was a road junction with a small collection of miscellaneous buildings including a few houses and a hotel.
‘Bloody woman’s made it worse,’ he announced to the neighbourhood as he got out of the car. Caroline did not react but sat stiffly, her face expressionless.
‘Hello,’ he shouted to a man in overalls who walked towards us from the garage. ‘You speak English?’
The response was a shake of the head, and I hurried forward to act as translator. The garage owner confirmed that the nearest approved Porsche mechanic was in Poitiers, and that the best plan was to get him to come out with his <équipement de dépannage>. He telephoned to make arrangements, and returned to say that the earliest the mechanic could be with us was eight-thirty next morning. Peter was not satisfied.
‘Tell him we need to have the car attended to straight away. How far is it to Poitiers? We’ll have a breakdown wagon take the Porsche in. You can drive us all down there in the Vauxhall. Tell him we can’t wait until the morning.’
I passed on the message, but after unwillingly making a further telephone call the garage owner returned shaking his head. Whether we stayed where we were or went to Poitiers, the car would not be repaired until the morning, <absolument pas>.
Peter refrained from another outburst, reluctantly turned to me, shook his head and said: ‘Is there an inn or hotel of some kind over there?’
Large signs at the front and on the side of the building, clearly visible from where we stood, told us we were looking at the <Hotel des Amis>.
‘Looks as though it is.’
‘I suppose we’ll have to bivouac there for the night. What do you think? Caroline? Marie? Willing to rough it, or should we ask Mark to take us to look for somewhere better?’
‘It’ll do for one night. At least you’ll be on the spot when the car is fixed in the morning,’ said Caroline.
‘Good girl. Marie?’
‘It looks quite respectable from here; these little family run hotels in France can be very nice.’
‘The garage owner probably runs the hotel too. That would explain why he’s arranged things so that we’re stuck here for the night.’ He looked expectantly at me.
The accusation was groundless, but not worth arguing about. ‘Maybe. Do you want me to drive you over and come back for your luggage?’
They decided they could manage the couple of hundred yards to the hotel on foot and I put their bags in the back of the Vauxhall. At reception, Madame, who although middle-aged had retained much of her prettiness, took a handful of keys and showed us up to a large double room on the first floor. Marie and I watched from the corridor as Caroline and Peter inspected it, looked without enthusiasm at the shower and lavatory, but finally pronounced the accommodation acceptable for one night. The allocation of two smaller rooms on the second floor to Marie and myself was then a formality. As we went to get our things from the car we heard Madame call out loudly towards the back of the hotel. ‘Georges! Georges!’
A young man of perhaps twenty, his long hair pulled back tightly into an untidy bun, rushed from the dining room to help with our bags. He had smudges of chocolate around his mouth and smears of it on his T-shirt. In the pockets on the outer thighs of his military style trousers were bulky cylindrical objects that made them stick out rather like a clown’s costume pants. He looked uncertainly at our assorted collection of baggage until Madame told him to take the two cases nearest the stairs up first. Though Peter looked at him open mouthed, thankfully he made no comment. Georges’ hands looked perfectly clean, but Caroline, unwilling to trust him with her property, was visibly alarmed as he picked up her finely stitched leather suitcase.
In my room, as I took my toilet things from my bag and hung up my jackets and trousers, misgivings about the wisdom of making the trip returned. Peter and I were colleagues, not really friends; he did not even know that I was gay. Our working relationship had been good. My expertise with the firm’s computer network was useful to him, and for someone in my position making a good impression on more senior staff was the key to getting on. Until the invitation to spend a week with him at his house in France our social contact had been limited to office celebrations and Thursday lunchtime trips to the swimming baths with other colleagues.
We had started work at the firm on the same day, but did not speak to each other until a year or more later when he needed urgent help with a technical problem that had been souring relations with an important client. I worked extra hours, unasked and without extra pay, to devise foolproof ways to exchange data between the two firms’ computer networks, and trained those who would be using the new procedures. Had they failed I would probably not have been given another chance to show my abilities, but luckily there were no hitches. The client was impressed and wrote an approving letter to a very senior partner who congratulated Peter, who in turn congratulated me.
The invitation to join the Thursday lunchtime swimming sessions, attended by half a dozen of the firm’s most senior men, followed that success. They rarely said much to me, but simply having my name known to a group of the top men was a useful step. A fortnight later Peter delegated to me the task of contacting everyone to confirm the arrangements, and although most of the time this entailed speaking to their secretaries and sending e-mails, occasionally a partner himself would answer my call. This servile role made me feel awkward, but a few months later my own boss, the head of the information technology unit, handed me a letter from Personnel telling me of my first promotion.
Peter had ambitions he was determined to achieve. Whilst the other partners considered the computer network to be a kind of over-complicated piece of office equipment not worthy of much attention, he saw using the latest technology as a way of attracting business from rival firms that were less up to date. We met several times every week, the two of us often discussing potential new technical developments for an hour or more in his office. Sometimes he took me to meetings with clients to discuss ways of making the firm’s service more flexible, more comprehensive, and of eliminating delays.
The conservative kowtowing atmosphere made me decide against revealing that I was gay. Nobody else who worked there had come out, at least not to my knowledge, and my impression was that any kind of sex outside wedlock was considered too sordid to be mentioned. The reaction to an upstart like myself who broke with custom was likely to be haughty disapproval. Also the effect on the partners who attended Thursday afternoon swimming sessions had to be considered. How would the old codgers, as we support staff called the senior men, feel if they learned a gay man had infiltrated their group and been present while they changed into their swimming trunks?
My second promotion brought me responsibility for four staff, and the risk of hostility were I to come out was greater than ever. Until practised in my new role, I was vulnerable to anyone who might want to show me up as a novice manager. The firm was a highly competitive place. An individual’s status was determined not solely by salary, but also by job title, promotion prospects, houses, cars, family standing, and holiday arrangements. Every time someone succeeded in pushing himself a little further forward, those close to him fell a little further behind. To ‘bend over for someone’ was a term used by some of the male staff to mean being subservient, to accept humiliation. To have handicapped myself by declaring myself to be a ‘bender’ would have been foolhardy.
The electronic warbling of the telephone in my room recalled me to the <Hotel des Amis>. Peter was ringing to say he wanted us all to meet downstairs in ten minutes to go for a walk. He asked me to pass the message on to Marie and to find out from Madame what was on the menu for dinner that evening.
My knowledge of French was probably the only reason he had asked me to join him at his house in the Lot Valley. One day at work his secretary overheard me on the phone talking to a friend in French. One or two nearby colleagues knew a few words, but not enough to understand that we were arranging to go to a gay club. She happened to pass by during this call, and a couple of days later he summoned me to his office and asked, ‘Don’t happen to speak French by any chance, do you?’
I told him about my school exchange visits to a French family. ‘Booked your holidays yet?’ he asked. ‘If not you might like to come down to my house in France near the River Lot sometime. Caroline and I enjoy having company. She’d be delighted to have you as a guest. Languages are not one of my strengths. She knows a bit of French but those little linguistic problems that crop up now and again can be damn embarrassing.’
Not sly enough to invent a fictitious booking for Spain or Greece I mumbled vaguely about not having any definite plans, and when he repeated the invitation a month later I had still not thought of a convincing reason for turning him down. Besides, being more friendly with him could only help my career. Fearing that to spend a whole week with them might prove unbearable, I set up a potential means of escape by saying I had always wanted to visit Bordeaux, and asked if he would mind me fitting in a day or two there.
‘Good idea. We know each other well enough now not to have to put up a front. Go with you and have a bit of a fling myself for a few days if I could, but you know what married life is. You’re right to make the best of your chances while you can. There will be four of us, Caroline is bringing her friend Marie. Better warn you about Marie, I’m afraid you’ve no chance in that direction. She’s the religious type, fiancé away on missionary work, Philippines or somewhere. Still, you know what the French are like, you won’t have to look far if you want a bit of <mademoiselle>.’
At the <Hotel des Amis> Marie smiled bravely when she opened the door of her room, and we went down together to meet Peter and Caroline. We all strolled along a forest path Madame had suggested to a small lake full of fish. We walked around it, joking that the evening meal would probably turn out to have been caught there. On our way back we noticed behind the hotel a large well kept vegetable plot, in which vigorous plants were disciplined into a patchwork of geometrically straight rows, a dozen or so different crops arranged in a neatly executed ground plan. Working steadily, too absorbed in ordering his vegetable brigades to notice us, was Georges, the young man who had helped earlier with our baggage.
That evening at dinner Madame took our order for aperitifs, but it was Georges, in a clean T-shirt, his face freshly washed, though still in his old trousers with their bulging side pockets, who brought them to our table. He uttered a series of odd syllables that made no sense to me, but seeing him pick up the orange juice I gestured towards Marie. The remaining three drinks were all <pastis> and he positioned them carefully on our place mats. As he was on his way back to the kitchen Peter destroyed any hopes that he had forgotten his earlier bad temper. He bellowed in a voice that echoed around the restaurant: ‘I hope that half-wit won’t be serving us our dinner.’
He was a quick judge of people, and had realised what my own mind had been groping towards, that Georges had limited mental abilities. Peter’s anger was to be mercilessly released on Madame and Georges.
In an instant she was at our table to ask if anything was wrong. Caroline and Marie stared at each other as though daring one another to speak, while I looked unflinchingly at Peter, unsuccessfully willing him to moderate his words. ‘Tell her,’ he instructed me in a determined tone, ‘that in the restaurant I expect to be served by a waiter or waitress, or failing that by Madame herself. I do not expect to be served by the village idiot.’
I squirmed. Her English was not good, but the word idiot is common to both languages; she must have understood it. I ought to have refused, but the vicious nature of the insult he wanted me to deliver shocked me, and fearful of making the situation even worse by infuriating him more, I lamely said to Madame in French, ‘Monsieur would prefer it if the young man who brought our drinks did not serve us our dinner.’
In a gentle voice that filled me with shame she replied, ‘Georges is my son, Monsieur, he often helps me in the restaurant; but if you prefer, of course I will serve you myself.’
‘Forgive us, Madame, thank you.’ When she had gone, my voice quavering, I said, ‘He’s her son.’ Caroline’s face remained expressionless, but Marie gulped mouthfuls of air and looked as though she was about to cry.
Peter tried to justify himself. ‘Being soft with her will do no good. What she has to learn is that the way to make a success of a business such as this, stuck out in the middle of nowhere, is to put the client first, second and third. Exposing customers to a mental defective is only going to put them off. That’s the harsh reality of her situation. Country inbreeding, I expect.’
Resolved, too late, to stand up to him I said, ‘She’s probably been running the place happily and profitably for decades. Why create a problem for her?’
‘Look around you,’ he said, waving an arm and glancing around the room. ‘There are three occupied tables; there would be two if it were not for the complete fluke of our being here. It speaks for itself.’ At times when he could not have his own way he had been condescending and rude to people in the office, but never as hateful as he was now.
After the main course I complimented Madame on the food, and said how neatly kept the vegetable patch behind the hotel was. She smiled, and with a brief sulky glare at Peter said that her son cultivated the plot entirely on his own, and that the green salad and tomatoes we had eaten had come from his garden. He might not, she said, be able to do everything that more successful men could, but he worked diligently and deserved respect for his efforts.
‘You and Madame seem to be getting along very well,’ Peter commented.
‘Polite conversation,’ I answered grimly, trapped in the hypocrisy of trying to appease Madame without being insubordinate to Peter. When Georges passed our table carrying some empty cartons through the restaurant, I caught his eye and gave him a reassuring smile.
The others went up to their rooms straight after the meal, but I lingered in the hotel lounge over a beer, scolding myself for my stupidity in not refusing Peter’s holiday invitation from the first. Putting up with him at work was one thing, but his cruel, pointless dismissal of Georges and the way he had used me in the process were despicable.
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.
I suppressed my anger towards Peter over events at the <Hotel des Amis> and followed those around me in thinking of him as strongly motivated and showing leadership. There was a good side to him that emerged sometimes when he was not competing with his peers and not upset because his authority was being challenged. He often used his extensive commercial knowledge and range of contacts to help people, even if there was no obvious business reason for doing so, and a stranger’s good opinion was the only likely reward. He was considerate to his secretary, who had school-age children, and had asked me to set up a workstation for her at home so she could be with them when they were ill without having to take time off. Other partners with staff in a similar situation had refused permission for them to do the same, despite a circular from Personnel encouraging flexibility. Peter’s secretary spoke of him admiringly, almost reverentially, as though the Peter she knew was completely different from the abrasive character who confronted everyone else.
For three weeks my punishment continued, although at the next Thursday swim he did greet me verbally. If he was softening it might have been a good time for me to go to his office to grovel before him. The danger was that if he detected that my apologies were not sincere, the effect could be to worsen the rift. My dishonesty in France had not, in my opinion, been a serious deceit. Fibs about being ill were a small fault compared to his despicable attitude to Georges, and it was the cruelty of his behaviour that had made the prospect of spending the whole week at his house in France unbearable. Why should I have to apologise?
Also, if he decided to question me about my time at the <Hotel des Amis>, what would I say? Admit something very close to the truth, or tell him a pack of lies? Either option was fraught with danger. Better to hope that another route back to favour would offer itself soon.
The first step towards my rehabilitation came about because of a large indoor plant at reception, actually a small tree, which had dropped all its leaves. On my way to the lifts one day I heard Peter raise his voice to the uniformed man at the security desk: ‘I asked for that corpse to be removed days ago. Why is it still there?’
The tree’s condition justified his choice of the word ‘corpse’. The bare withered branches were like a warning message to visitors, suggestive of neglect or pollution, a contradiction of the desire to give those privileged to enter the premises an impression of longstanding success and propriety. The security man was flustered by Peter’s anger and began to waffle, ‘None of us in security has done anything to it sir, we keep an eye on it, much as we can. Trouble is everyone in the building goes through this way, anyone might have harmed it, we don’t know what could have been done to it while our backs were turned.’
‘Oh bloody hell!’ Peter said in exasperation.
The office manager would normally have been called upon to sort out this minor irritation, but she was off sick. The problem was nothing to do with the information technology unit, but I stepped forward, grasping the opportunity to help.
‘Office Services are having a few problems at the moment.’
He looked at me sharply. ‘No need for you to concern yourself. You’re being paid to cope with rather more demanding things than this.’
The same might have been said of him. ‘Yes, but if it would help... a couple of ’phone calls...’
The security man, hoping my offer would excuse him from further responsibility, backed away.
‘Hmph. I’ll give Office Services a few problems if they’re not careful. If you think you can do something to get them moving...’
‘I’ll certainly try.’
The contractors, a firm called Ferns and Foliage, were easily traced on the firm’s database. Elaborating the truth a little I told Office Services that Peter was so annoyed about the dead tree he had asked me to deal with the issue personally. Then I rang Ferns and Foliage, who, being told that one of the senior partners had complained that the plant was making a bad impression on important clients, said they would supply a replacement the next day.
When their man arrived I was called down to sign for it. He was attractive, very much my type, a strong thirty year old with dark curly hair. We had seen each other before, when he had been tending the firm’s plants and had caught me looking at him. He had been standing on a small portable step ladder, leaning forward above a big container to clip excess growth from the top of some climbing plants. Suddenly he had turned his head and looked straight at me, as though he sensed my gaze. Blushing, I had tried to pretend to be searching for some papers in a side drawer.
I walked diffidently up to reception where he stood holding a clipboard. ‘You need a signature?’
‘One replacement tree,’ he said, holding the clipboard out towards me without any hint of recognition.
I signed a docket with the words One Ficus benjamina (large) scrawled on it and asked, ‘I wonder what finished off the old one?’
‘Someone’s probably tipped the dregs of tea or coffee or the remains of a carton of milk into the pot. Milk will kill any plant, it sours the soil. That one all right for you, gov?’ he said, looking towards the replacement.
I disliked him using the term ‘gov’, but his deep, warm, working-class voice excited me. To extend the conversation with the security guard looking on and passers by on their way in and out of the building was impossible; lots of straight men wore well fitting jeans, and there was nothing about him to suggest that he was gay. ‘Thanks, it’s fine,’ I said, risking a smile of appreciation. Grasping the main stem of the dead plant in his right hand he lifted it up as though it weighed almost nothing and strode out into the street. We had met. If I saw him again I would definitely say hello.
We bumped into each other a few weeks later. He was doing his rounds with a watering can, and had stopped to refill it in the little staff refreshment room on my floor. I decided to take a tea break and followed him in. ‘You’re here again.’
‘I’m helping out. Your usual man is away this week.’
‘But you have been in to tend the plants before?’
‘Yes, I’ve been in a couple of times.’ He smiled, lifted the watering can from the sink and stood looking at me, not sure what to say.
‘How do you find us?’
‘To be honest with you this is not a very friendly place. I expect most people here are pretty high up, too much on their minds. No offence like.’
I could not resist flouting office etiquette by offering him a cup of tea or coffee. Surprised, he became charmingly coy and looked down. ‘You don’t need to do that for me, gov.’
‘I’m getting myself one, so it’s no trouble to get one for you. At least it will prove we’re not all unfriendly.’ While the tea was brewing I asked, ‘Do you have other calls in this part of London?’
‘My firm does a few contracts around here, a bank and a couple of other companies. The main problem is parking, and finding somewhere decent for lunch.’
‘There are a couple of sandwich bars, and a pub across the road. They’re not bad.’
‘Sandwich bars, might try one of them next time I’m up this way.’ He paused and bit his lip. ‘There’s a good pub, the Beckford Arms, near the garden centre where I’m based.’
Although I was unfamiliar with that part of London, the Beckford Arms was well known and listed in the gay papers and magazines. ‘I’ve heard of it. Never been there, it’s not my area.’
‘It’s friendly, more somewhere people go to talk and have a quiet drink, not a place where they’ve all got one thing on their minds. More like a local pub. Friday evenings is good, lively but not too crowded. It’s a good evening out if you’ve got a few mates with you.’
‘Next time I’m down that way I’ll have to look in. I’m Mark, by the way.’
‘Tom. I go most weekends. Saturdays it gets crowded quite early, Fridays are easier if you want to talk, until the last hour or so when everyone comes in.’
My weekend was free apart from the weekly shopping and cleaning the flat. The effort of trying to pick someone up, deciding where to go, getting myself ready, all the awkward tentative manoeuvres that looking for a partner for the night requires, had seemed too daunting since my return from France, and all my nights had been solitary. Frustration would drive me to end this period of celibacy somehow or other before much longer, and the vague invitation to the Beckford Arms spurred me to act. Even if nothing developed with Tom the pub was worth investigating. Other men there might be of interest, if only to chat to, and if necessary more familiar territory in the West End was only an Underground ride away.
On Saturday evening, showered and meticulously groomed, I arrived at the Beckford Arms at about nine-thirty. While ordering my drink at the bar I spotted him through the throng, sitting at a corner table with an older white-haired man. I took a roundabout route towards them so that he would see me approach, prepared to flee instantly if his reaction was not welcoming.
He saw me, grinned and stood up. ‘Hello, Mark, isn’t it? Great to see you. This is Andrew, he’s my boss.’
‘I don’t want to barge in.’
He found a chair for me while the older man and I shook hands. ‘Good thing you turned up. Tom’s been pestering me about his holidays. We’ve exhausted the subject now, haven’t we?’
‘No we ain’t. It’s nearly a year since I had any time off. To ask about a holiday now is not unreasonable.’
‘Tom, if you have a holiday you’ll be bored stiff after a couple of days. You’re like me. I haven’t had a holiday for yonks. All my time is taken up with business. My advice to you is to forget about holidays. What’s the point in them? We’re too busy. We don’t have time.’ He took a sip from his glass and looked at me. ‘What about you?’
His question was so vague almost anything would have done in reply. ‘I had a week in France a couple of months ago.’
‘Enjoy it?’
‘Mostly.’
‘Went to France, ages ago. Pyrenees. Crossed over into Spain. Beautiful, love to do it again one day, when I retire maybe. I bet things are different for you, let me guess, a salaried position with a big employer. Tom and I are not so fortunate. Ferns and Foliage is a little shop I run selling a few gardening bits and pieces. I scrape around for business here and there to keep a couple of people who work for me busy, looking after the pot plants in office buildings, that sort of thing.’ He spoke softly in humorous self-deprecation.
Tom immediately contradicted him, his voice quiet but clearly audible. ‘It’s not a small shop, you must have about twenty people working for you. You ain’t fobbing me off this time, Andrew. I bet everyone else, except me, knows how much holiday they’re allowed. I bet every one of them has a contract saying what his holidays are, like people are supposed to have.’
‘Now you mention it, what does your contract of employment say?’
‘You never gave me one.’
‘I must have done.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘You don’t want to be the same as everyone else.’ He turned from Tom to me. ‘Mark, let me give you a piece of advice. Never have staff.’ He took another gulp from his glass. ‘Tell me, what is it you do in the company? Accountancy, isn’t it?’
So, Tom must have spoken to him about me, and the mention must have been favourable; my hopes for the evening grew. ‘Lindler & Haliburton is a firm of accountants, yes, but I’m one of the support staff, in the information technology unit.’
‘Good... an important job, good money I’ll bet, even if you’re not one of the accountants. Perks?’
‘Company car. A Vauxhall, nothing special.’
‘Special enough compared to one of my old vans.’ He went on to ask me lots of questions about the job; there was a rhythm to his speech that was mildly hypnotic. Normally people change the subject if I mention computers and accountancy, but he was keen to hear about the office computer network, my past promotions, and somehow he got me to tell him about Peter and the swimming sessions with some of the senior partners. At the mention of swimming he raised a finger and looked at Tom, ‘That’s something you’re keen on, isn’t it?’
‘I go to the baths most weeks, a couple of times if I can, like to keep fit.’
‘You certainly look fit,’ I said, glad to say something to him after answering Andrew’s questions and wanting to make clear to him that he attracted me. I bought a round of drinks, and having returned was about to ask Tom if he had anywhere in mind for his holiday when Andrew resumed his interrogation. He asked about my personal life, where I lived, what I did in my spare time, and about my family background. Somehow everything came out, that my parents were killed in a car crash, that my sister and I saw each other once or twice a year, that the money inherited from my parents had paid for my flat in Chiswick, that I had a degree in computer science, was definitely gay, not bisexual or undecided, and did not currently have a boyfriend.
‘You make me envious,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You’ve plenty going for you, nobody could deny that.’ He sat back, rubbed his chin, and seemed to have run out of questions.
Tom, who had sat silent again since the interrogation resumed, asked: ‘Have you finished asking him for his life story?’
‘Almost. Only a couple more things. So what about future plans? Hoping for a relationship? Anything else?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh, come on. Promotion? Bigger flat? Better car?’
‘Sometimes I think it would be nice to get together enough money to leave the firm and go into something completely different.’
‘Ever thought of starting your own business?’
‘There are lots of self-employed consultant types in computer services. Or I could become a financial adviser, making use of some of the knowledge of investment I’ve picked up at the firm. Maybe that’s not all that much of a change though.’
‘Aha! A gay financial services company? Perhaps... others seem to have done well out of it.’
‘A gay business of some kind might not be a bad idea. Or just a job with other gay men.’
‘What else is there? Running a pub or a club might be hard going if you’ve no experience. There seem to be more and more estate agencies about, how about one specializing in places for gays?’
‘Isn’t there one already? Anyway, not sure if it’s me. Not that I’m ruling anything out. For a long time to come Lindler & Haliburton, or somewhere very similar, is likely to be my lot.’
‘Well maybe. But you’re right to think about making a change. When to leap and which way... a difficult judgement. One final thing before I go, the very last question. This chap Peter you mentioned, the partner. Is there any chance of meeting him sometime? There’s an exhibition coming up at Olympia in a few weeks. I’m sharing a stand with a furniture supplier, not the domestic market, business requirements – offices, hotels, restaurants, anything commercial. It’s their exhibition stand really, but I’m providing them with flowers and a few house plants, and helping to man it. If I send you a few complimentary tickets, do you think you could get him to pay us a visit?’
‘He’s not responsible for office services or the plants or anything, to be honest I think it’s a bit unlikely.’
‘Business contacts, especially a senior man, are always useful. If you get the chance, you could simply say a couple of free tickets had turned up in the post. I’m not going to pester him, don’t be concerned about that, well maybe as far as to say hello, shake hands, and exchange business cards. I’ll send you a few tickets; if you want to come along with Peter or bring someone else with you, or come on your own, make use of them. If not throw them in the bin.’
He had so far prevented me from exchanging more than a few words with the man who was my reason for being in the Beckford Arms. At last Tom broke into the conversation again. ‘You’ve been talking business and asking him questions all evening, Andrew. Mark’s come in for a quiet drink, he doesn’t want to hear about no trade exhibition.’