Hotel de Dream (4 page)

“I offer my resignation, your Majesty.”

The words came clear through the wall and Mrs Houghton flinched. Exiled royalty—not her subject matter, but irresistible all the same. She pulled a couple of cashmere sweaters out of the suitcase and laid them gently on a shelf.

“It was your Majesty's duty to continue until the end,” the voice went on. “I never expected that you, of all people, would pull out now. If you'll forgive the language.”

Now there were sounds—creaking knees, a heavy sigh—of a person rising from an uncomfortable position on a lino floor. A tap was turned off and parts of an anatomy scrubbed. Mrs Houghton waited for the Royal answer to these accusations. But there was silence. Ill at ease, for it was bad enough having been thrown out by her sister-in-law in Knightsbridge and finding herself in this dirty, eccentric boarding house, without scenes of this kind being enacted in the adjacent room, Cecilia Houghton went over to the writing table and roused her characters in the hope they would provide some consolation.

“Just imagine, Melinda,” she said in her brightest tone. “By tonight you and Johnny will be officially engaged! And after all you've been through—the first meeting in Czechoslovakia in '68; the bad period when you, Melinda, went in with the revolutionaries and despised Johnny for keeping his safe job; the time when you wanted to emigrate, Johnny, and Melinda had met the feminists and wouldn't go and live abroad for your sake. All over now, and you are going to settle down and live happily in the country—Dorset, I think.”

“Will I have to go off the Pill?” Melinda asked sulkily.

She had settled, as Cecilia Houghton had expected she would, on the bed beside the half-filled suitcase. The red silk dress she had been wearing last night, when she and Johnny had celebrated their engagement in a Chelsea restaurant, showed signs of fatigue but was as alluring as ever, her dark hair dishevelled now and falling on the white
shoulders dotted with freckles so often described in the previous two volumes of the trilogy.

“Not yet,” her creator snapped. “There will be problems in your marriage first. I thought you had the imagination to realise that, Melinda. As for you, Johnny, you will have to show a good deal more consideration to Melinda once you are married. Some of those bad habits—poring over your books until late in the night, the dope smoking you went in for in Volume Two—will simply have to go. Melinda may talk of independence, but hearken ye unto me, all women need attention, and plenty of it!”

Johnny had materialised over by the window and was leaning against the sill in one of his typical defiant attitudes. He avoided Mrs Houghton's bright, admonishing eye and reached in the pocket of his jeans jacket for cigarettes.

“I'm going to get you a suit,” Mrs Houghton went on, a note of cruelty in her voice. “Once your uncle dies and leaves you the legacy, that is. You can scarcely own a small farm and go up to a show in London once a month dressed like that!”

Johnny's shoulders rose and fell in angry resignation. He glanced at Melinda, but without warmth; there seemed to be little understanding between the lovers this morning.

“It was a tiring night on the town.” Mrs Houghton finished her unpacking and smiled firmly at the young couple. At the same time she wondered if it was wise to leave them in this state, and go down to tea. Once, when she had been writing them in a first-floor suite at Bournemouth, they had disappeared while she was at lunch and she had had to go back to London to find them, two days searching Islington and the King's Cross area before finally coming across them huddled in separate corners of a disreputable pub. She had written the scene in, but reluctantly; and time and money had been wasted. It would be the last straw if they escaped the Westringham, leaving her with long blank days and the company of the other residents.

“We haven't had a meal for a long time,” Johnny said after a threatening silence. He looked more than ever today, Mrs Houghton reflected, like a mixture between Belmondo and Mick Jagger, and she wondered if she could modify his appearance slightly in the final volume. Too Sixties, she muttered under her breath as she laid out fresh paper and the little pot of white substance so essential for obliterating mistakes. But what does a Seventies man look like? Of course, age will change him. Mellow him, she corrected herself. And short hair can work wonders. Yes, a visit to the barber in the opening chapter, that's the thing.

“I thought this was meant to be realism,” Johnny said. “You did our engagement dinner a week ago, before the trouble at Aunty Joan's. I'm starving.”

“I want to get out of this dress,” Melinda said. “I stink like a polecat. Where have all my pairs of trousers gone?”

Mrs Houghton swore silently. Sometimes she wondered whether the university education she had allowed her characters hadn't been an error. Johnny had rebelliously attended lectures in English literature at London University, before dropping out and then going on to the riots at LSE; Melinda had dabbled in graphic design at Hornsey. Johnny's half-baked grasp of such things as realism, imaginative writing and the use of metaphor was more irritating than Melinda's occasional pronouncements on modern art.

“You can have breakfast as soon as I've had my tea. Then off to the barber for you, Johnny. And no more trousers at the moment, Melinda. A nice coat and skirt—and perhaps a woollen dress. Now, are you both going to be good while I'm away?”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Mrs Houghton regretted them. Johnny clapped his hands to his long, greasy locks as if he had been promised a beheading. Melinda tore at her dress, which ripped open in front, showing the expensive new lingerie provided in her trousseau. She had never seen them look so unco-operative. And if
there was one thing Cecilia Houghton dreaded it was the Block. She knew from experience that it could last for weeks, and that no amount of literary laxatives had the slightest effect on it, whether ingested in the form of the all-night reading of crime novels, or the short sharp jabs of gardening manuals. She must keep Johnny and Melinda sweet at all costs, for their relationship was of the utmost importance in the third part of the trilogy, the roles of the other characters kept to a minimum. Where was her compassion now? How could she hope to produce well-rounded personalities if she treated them with such insensitivity? Already, Melinda looked distinctly two-dimensional in her torn dress on the bed. Johnny resembled a cardboard cutout in his menacing attitude against the window.

“Forgive me!” Mrs Houghton went over to both and stroked them lovingly. Johnny, who had shown an evil streak at the Encounter Group therapy session to which Mrs Houghton had taken him in the first volume, shook her off roughly. Melinda gave a better response, filling out under Mrs Houghton's gentle fingers. An idea flitted into the writer's mind.

“You know I want you to say what's going to happen! I want you to take over completely, and many times you have, my dears, only needing to be pulled in from time to time for the sake of the structure. Suppose we all sit down when I've had my tea—”

“And we've had our breakfast,” Melinda put in, tears in her large eyes.

“Yes, yes. And then we can decide together what comes next. In the meantime, I'd like you to do a little detective work for me. There's most definitely something odd happening in this hotel. And you are uniquely well placed to find out what it is.”

“Something odd?” Johnny's eyes brightened for a moment. Then he glared again. “Your idea of something odd is a man forgetting to send flowers on his wife's anniversary, Mrs
H. Sorry but I'm just not into sniffing round the marital rows in this dump.”

“Not at all! There's exiled royalty undergoing torture in the next room, Johnny. I heard it before you woke up. Now why don't you slip in there in a minute and then report back later?”

Some of the old life seemed to be returning to the characters, because both Melinda and Johnny burst out laughing and Johnny threw his cigarette end out of the window with his usual aplomb.

“And I don't have to go to the barber?” he said after a pause.

“Not if you don't want to,” Mrs Houghton lied. “No, some king or queen of a forgotten country is confined in there. You know my curiosity, Johnny. Melinda, will you?”

The idea was working well. Johnny and Melinda went to the door and Mrs Houghton showed them into the passage, then headed for the stairs and the welcome cup of tea.

“You really shouldn't let your imagination run away with you like this, Mrs H.,” Johnny shouted down at her. She heard the door of Room 23 open and then close again, and smiled with satisfaction. He had really sounded quite affectionate this time.

“Cridge!”

Mrs Routledge peered down the dark stairs that led from the dining room of the Westringham Hotel to the black basement where her servant lived. She was used to the smell, which was like stagnant water at the bottom of an enamel pitcher and a horrible sweetness thrown in, the effect of Cridge's tobacco on the stale, damp air, but this morning it was particularly sickening. Cridge had a habit of defecating in a selection of antique jars and vases stored there and forgotten by a former resident, and on Thursdays he would come up, go through the dining room with them and empty them in the Gentleman's Cloaks behind the reception desk in the front hall. Today was Wednesday. Mrs Routledge wobbled over the top step, her nostrils drawn together and her eyes searching the gloomy air for the man.

“Cridge, you'll serve the tea, please. Come up at once.”

The top of Cridge's head appeared a few steps below Mrs Routledge. It was yellow and striped with grey hair, like a badger. His eyes, of the same colour but with an admixture of red from the long hours spent under the Westringham, looked up at her without expression. Mrs Routledge sighed with disgust. Cridge had been with her only two years, but his abject stance and the atmosphere of hopeless servility which emanated from his threadbare naval jacket and worn slippers often led her to think that he had obeyed her every command since childhood. Sometimes, on Thursday evenings when the air from the basement was cleaner and Mrs Routledge permitted one of the residents to treat
her to a sherry from the bar, she boasted that Cridge had been the butler in her father's mansion in Worcestershire. “He used to give me piggy-backs. Didn't you, Cridge? And of course”—here she would give a little smile, modest and self-deprecating, showing that even the upper classes could suffer deprivation in their upbringing—“I saw more of Cridge than I did of my own parents. We children were brought up by the staff, you know. Dressed in our finery and brought down to tea in the drawing room. That kind of thing!” Now, as the wretched figure lurched past her into the little room with its arrangement of five tables, plastic ferns and thick teacups upside down on the sideboard, she repressed her loathing and attempted a tone both brisk and friendly. This was for the benefit of Mrs Houghton, who had booked in early this morning and spoken of grand relations who had had to move temporarily out of their house in Knightsbridge while it was undergoing redecoration.

“And not so many lumps of sugar in the bowl, Cridge,” she hissed. “Two each is quite sufficient.”

Steps sounded on the flight of stairs that led to the first-floor bedrooms and Mrs Routledge gave Cridge a sharp nudge in the ribs.

“Yes, Miss Amanda,” said Cridge, in response to this particular blow. He shuffled over to the sideboard, turned the cups to a receptive position, and with an unsteady hand poured the tea into them. For a moment his lingering subterranean smell was obliterated by PG Tips. Mrs Houghton, for indeed it was she, swept into the dining room and then stopped dead. Mrs Routledge was accustomed to this first reaction from her guests and went towards her with a wide smile.

“This is your table, Mrs Houghton. Near the door, of course.”

“Thank you.” Mrs Houghton took a handkerchief from the crocodile handbag in her hand and covered her nose, then made a pretence of blowing it. She sat down heavily
on the little gilt chair. Mrs Routledge saw that the handkerchief was of poor quality. She then wondered about the crocodile. A scarcely visible film of hardness passed over her features.

“A very pleasant part of London,” Mrs Houghton remarked. “It does one good to change one's ambience from time to time, don't you agree?”

Mrs Routledge still stood staring at her suspiciously, and the novelist hoisted her bag on to the table, knocking over the plastic fern as she did so.

“I'm so sorry.” She readjusted the tiny, waterless container and drew from her bag this time a gold initialled cigarette case and matching lighter. The cigarette once in her mouth, she pressed what appeared to be a sapphire button on the lighter, and flame sprang reassuringly upwards. Mrs Routledge's features softened.

“There seem to be problems in the room next to mine,” Mrs Houghton said, taking advantage of this. “Not that I don't have the greatest sympathy for the poor things. An eastern-European country, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?” Mrs Routledge was suspicious again, but with different cause. She had had people suffering from mental illness trying to hide out in the Westringham before. And there had been sounds of speech from Mrs Houghton's room, never a good sign.

“I mean, of course, some exiled monarch or other …” Mrs Houghton's voice tailed off. “I didn't feel, somehow, it was one of ours. If you know what I mean, Mrs Routledge.”

At this juncture Mr Poynter manifested himself on the stairs and came into the dining room. At the same time, Cridge put a cup of tea down in front of Mrs Houghton. He had mixed in condensed milk and two lumps of greyish sugar stood on the saucer.

“Good heavens,” Mrs Houghton said. She was gazing at Cridge. And the crocodile bag slipped from her lap to the floor, where it lay on its side, handles a ready trap for Mr
Poynter's feet. Mr Poynter, however, avoided this.