The Hotel
By chant
- 324 reads
I don’t recall agreeing with Linda to stay at the hotel, and was even a little surprised to find her with me – why I don’t know, in forty-three years of marriage we had rarely holidayed apart. She seemed preoccupied, said nothing when I mentioned the smell of sulphur in the bedroom, which I intended to complain about. It usually takes time to adjust to new accommodation, I find; the ice needs to be broken. Our room was upholstered in olive, with a wreath of chrysanthemums on the bedside table. The ceiling was supported by beams of solid oak, a little on the low side but you could see the quality of the woodwork. We should be quite comfortable here, I thought, once the bad odour had been dealt with.
The hotel staff were blandly amicable, as were the other guests – most older, as you would expect for this time of year. Some more youthful types floated about, whom you’d have to be resourceful to collar. A few children too, by and large quiet and well-mannered despite being left by their parents to roam freely. The patterned green wallpaper favoured by the hotel for its communal spaces was artlessly charming, and the food seemed substantial enough. Linda said little over dinner, perhaps troubled by her arthritis. On the way out of the dining area, we stopped to talk to a pleasant pair, he a retired doctor, I don’t recall if she did anything. They too were hazy about their reasons for staying at the hotel. Increasingly this is what you expect with age, and you can only laugh about it. We agreed to meet at the reception and stroll the grounds together, but Linda must have gone back to the room, and though I waited a good half hour for them, they never showed up.
Our bête noire we encountered the following morning, a garrulous foreigner, either loud-mouthing in a guttural tongue, or spouting his cod philosophy in imperfect English. ‘Consider the straight stick, how it appears bent in water,’ I heard him saying. I am a practical man, and have no time for existential flights of fancy. He punctuated every other sentence with “you understand”, somewhat patronising I thought, though his softly spoken companion didn’t seem to object. After ten minutes of his monologue Linda and I moved table, though we could still hear him at the opposite end of the room. From the rasp in his voice, a heavy smoker I would imagine, or a drinker. I have never smoked, and Linda only the occasional puff in her youth.
The clink of plates and cutlery was a bright start to the day; it was less clear what would come next. Linda seemed to have no plans. In fact this was much in the manner of our retirement and I had sometimes reflected that, though the road is clearly signposted for much of life – school, work, marriage, children – once the office is left behind and the pension drawn … What now? I remember asking my daughter. She had merely shrugged and smiled. Linda had found it easier than I, though not having worked, the transition was less pronounced for her. And now we found ourselves on this unplanned vacation; I didn’t even know for how long we were staying. If we had brought the car, we might have driven out into the countryside.
Trimly leafed, with bundles of red berries, a mountain ash stood outside our bedroom window. Now I come to think of it, I’m not sure Linda and I were sharing a room; we must have booked separately, though why we’d done so I had no idea. I sat in a velvet chair and thought back to our last afternoon at home. Linda was in the swimming pool, floating on her back as she sometimes liked to do, though not for long periods. I waded in to join her. Strangely I had no nostalgia for home, though the house and its garden were our shared enterprise. I hadn’t even phoned our daughter to let her know we’d arrived safely. No, I was comfortable here, reclining by the window. Below, a boy, perhaps thirteen, was walking a black Labrador in the walled garden. There was an apparent ease about him I don’t recall feeling when I was that age – perhaps some people were more naturally suited to life than others. Remember Tommy at thirteen, I called to Linda.
They had opened the French windows in the lounge. The sophistical foreigner was loitering, a mouth organ in his sallow hand, on which he puffed a few snatches. He was full of questions as you might expect. I find it intrusive when people want to know your age, and what you did for a living – a conversation should be allowed to develop without a reliance on such mundane facts. He seemed to fancy himself as an artist, though I wasn’t convinced, and his organ playing was amateurish at best. I was politely evasive, went out for a breath of fresh air, and when I came back was pleased to see he’d gone. They had a real fireplace, which would be cheery on winter evenings I remarked to one of the other guests. There were a number of us there, affably waiting, as you do often wait, without quite knowing why. In fact, I don’t recall who they were or what we talked about, but I remember we were laughing, all laughing, and chatting away, one or two quite pretty girls among them, and Linda who had rejoined me by this stage I think, the time passing most enjoyably now, the sunlight in my eyes getting steadily stronger.
@ianjmclachlan
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