The comedy hotel, p.6
The Comedy Hotel, page 6
‘What will happen to her?’ Annette asked.
Neither parent seemed capable of answering this and so Alec spoke up.
‘A mauvais quart d’heure in court,’ he said. ‘She’ll get probation. It’s lucky she’s only sixteen. If she was seventeen she could get something harsher.’
‘How do you know?’ Laurie asked.
‘They’ve been in touch with me. The court needs a report on the home life, the school record and a medical history before they can put a child on probation. I’ve told them she’s an exemplary pupil and that the shoplifting is quite out of character.’
‘What is probation, anyway?’ Judy asked.
‘It’s a supervision order. It doesn’t amount to much. She’d have to keep in touch with the probation officer and they’d keep an eye on what she was up to. But if they thought that she was unrepentant or wilful they could fine her or make a supervision order with conditions. This would mean that she would be given a few little jobs to do every week for however long the order lasts.’
‘You know a lot about it,’ said Annette.
‘I’m a headmaster. Occasionally one of our little lambs falls by the wayside, but none has ever surprised me as much as Helen.’
‘We were pretty surprised ourselves,’ said Judy who, I could now see, had been totally dispirited by the whole business.
‘Which reminds me,’ said Laurie, lighting up a cigar, ‘we have a favour to ask you. You and Annette,’ he said, looking at me.
‘Of course,’ said my wife, somewhat incautiously to my mind.
‘The thing is,’ said Judy, ‘we’ve got to go to France to look at this house.’
‘And we can’t take Helen out of school because of her O levels,’ said Laurie. ‘Baron we can put in kennels.’
‘I see,’ said Annette. ‘You’d like us to put Helen up?’
‘It’s only three days. She can hardly stay with her headmaster,’ Judy said, smiling at Alec.
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Send her round. I’ll lock up my valuables.’
My continual attempts to be humorous aren’t always successful and this one produced the sort of silence that breaks a comedian’s heart. I was obviously the only person who thought it odd that they should ask us to provide Helen with hospitality after she had robbed my shop, but then I’m used to being in a minority.
5. WINNING BID
The following week, as rain swept in to postpone our hopes of summer, I bought a girl in an auction on a riverboat. It was the last thing I expected to happen.
The occasion was a charity evening organized by one of those vehemently male associations, membership of which provides a boys’ night out for housebound husbands who justify their guilty absence by raising money for deserving causes. I belong to the Chamber of Commerce myself, an organization with more selfish objectives, but Laurie, who had acquired a couple of tickets to the event, thought that an evening drifting down the Thames and getting drunk would make a welcome change from marital fisticuffs.
I always imagine that in years to come when clouds are dispersed by planes spraying chemicals and the weather is controlled by governments, people won’t believe the rain we had to put up with, but once we were in the boat, and seated for dinner in a surprisingly large room, there was something cosy about the pitter patter on the river beyond our window.
It was one of those evenings where a lot of eating and drinking is accompanied by tedious speeches replete with vulgar jokes some of which I probably invented myself when I was sixteen and have heard twenty times since. The speeches give way to an interminable charity auction when the main fund raising takes place – footballs signed by Bobby Moore or even a more recent soccer hero, cricket bats signed by brilliant batsmen, obviously not English, and, for all I know, the discarded jockstraps of forgotten pugilists. After that there is a cabaret.
You might have thought that such an occasion would attract as big a crowd as an open air rally for agoraphobics, but there was something about the charity label that pulled in men who were usually at home. I was only there myself as a kindness to Laurie who, depressed now almost beyond hope, implored me to go with him.
The champagne certainly cheered him up. ‘I’m going to liquidate some capital,’ he announced as he toyed with his chicken roulades.
‘You mean spend money?’ I asked.
‘That’s it,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘If this place in France is anything like the picture I’m going in with both feet.’
He was wearing his usual brown suit which I idly studied for bloodstains. His moustache was beginning to look like a moustache again.
‘Does Judy like it?’ I asked.
‘Loves it. I think she’d sooner live there than here. Since the Helen business her priorities seem to have changed.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘She talks about France more than she talks about her daughter.’
For a couple whose marriage was as fragile as theirs to even contemplate a joint venture like this struck me as odd, but then people strike me as odd. They don’t even conform to their proclaimed pattern.
‘Don’t talk about liquidating capital,’ said a man who was sitting on Laurie’s other side. ‘Things are so bad I had to sell a vineyard last week.’
I leaned forward to take a look at this impoverished guest. He was a fat, red-faced man of about fifty who didn’t appear to be suffering unduly from his financial reverses. For no apparent reason perspiration coursed down his cheeks.
‘We’re all walking on eggs, mate,’ Laurie told him. ‘But I’ve got a feeling that things are going to improve.’
The man looked at him keenly. ‘What gives you that idea?’ he asked.
But before Laurie could deliver an upbeat view of the nation’s economy there was a banging on the top table – a spoon on a plate, by the sound of it – and gradually everybody stopped talking. One of those bright young men who always seem to have more energy than you was on his feet and delivering some sort of speech, which was a suitable moment for me to allow my mind to drift off to the problem of my shops. I have never liked people making speeches at me – it seems so antisocial. After all, I have things to say too.
We were cruising under Maidenhead Bridge when I gathered from his tone that the end was in sight. This year, he declared, charity begins at home. People were dying in Asia, starving in Africa and vanishing in their thousands in the sinister ghettos of South America, but tonight’s effort was directed at London where a thousand people slept rough in the streets. This piece of commercial chauvinism attracted tremendous applause.
And then the auction began. A bewildering collection of prizes, most of them donated by philanthropic traders, were dangled before the drunken bidders. Alongside the inscribed baubles of showbiz and sporting heroes were such material delights as a crate of wine, a set of bagpipes, a flight in a balloon, a week in Mauritania, a Rolls-Royce for a month, a weekend in the Alps, a home computer, a chaise longue, an octagonal greenhouse and a hang glider.
Lot 38 was Sadie Beck.
The murmurs of approbation that greeted her appearance seemed to put bagpipes and hang gliders into perspective. What I noticed first were her creamy shoulders protruding from a silk black dress. A matching black bow in her fair hair held it in a ponytail, and she had one of those pert faces that the papers used to describe as gamin – wide eyes, snub nose and small round mouth. I took my wallet out.
‘What is on offer here exactly?’ I asked Laurie.
‘Dunno, but I suggest you sit on your hands,’ he said.
What was on offer, the auctioneer announced with only the barest hint of innuendo, was a night out with Sadie Beck – theatre tickets and free five-star dinner afterwards. The proposition was sufficiently ambiguous to produce predictable guffaws and it seemed to me, from some distance away, that Sadie Beck had blushed. From that moment, of course, it was merely a question of saving her from these unworthy animals.
I was just considering what sort of opening offer would sound reasonable when a shout of ‘One hundred pounds’ came from Laurie’s choleric neighbour.
‘One fifty,’ I said immediately.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Laurie. ‘You’ve got a wife at home.’
‘I’m giving to charity,’ I said. ‘I’m like that.’
From a table at the other end of the room there came a call of two hundred pounds and it was followed immediately by another of two fifty.
‘Three hundred,’ shouted Laurie’s neighbour after a long consultation with his wallet.
‘Three fifty,’ I said.
The auctioneer was beaming triumphantly now at the interest being shown at Lot 38. Greenhouses and home computers had a limited appeal in comparison.
Sadie Beck was looking at me, her most determined supporter. I tried to indicate, with a reassuring smile, that her future was safe with me.
Somebody called four hundred. He didn’t look like the sort of person Sadie Beck would care to spend an evening with, being both corpulent and unkempt, and I called four fifty.
‘Where do you think this is going to end?’ I asked Laurie. I had rather expected to have won the prize by now.
‘It could go four figures,’ Laurie said. ‘They’re showing off, aren’t they? Half of them have never been out with a pretty woman, and they’ve had enough drinks to go for it.’
A new voice from the top table called five hundred and I wondered if he was there to push the price up. I looked at Sadie Beck’s creamy shoulders and thought of the homeless poor sleeping on the Embankment.
‘Six hundred,’ I said.
‘I thought you were going up in fifties?’ Laurie asked.
‘I’ve thrown in a sixty-second lap,’ I told him. ‘I’ve got to shake the others off.’
I thought it had had the desired effect because it was some time before anybody said anything.
‘Come along, gentlemen,’ cried the auctioneer. ‘Have you all done at six hundred?’
‘Seven hundred,’ said the fat man, but not with much enthusiasm.
‘Eight hundred,’ I replied in a tone of voice that was intended to convey that any other bidding would be quite hopeless and produce only frustration, defeat and humiliation. This time the silence was eloquent. The auctioneer scanned the room, seeking out those who had been bidding and inquiring, with raised eyebrows and hands, whether they had retired from the battle.
‘Sold to Mr Hadfield,’ he announced. ‘Now, Lot thirty-nine.’
I winced at the mention of my name and was modestly surprised that he knew it. I had imagined myself to be incognito among these drunken do-gooders: now I could see stories in the local press (Shops Owner Buys Girl) or even something punchier in the national tabloids (Knickers Tycoon in Charity Leg-over Shock).
A member of the organizing committee headed in my direction and with him came Sadie Beck. Some girls, lovely at a distance, are not improved by proximity: discouraging flaws emerge on the approaching beauty. This was not the case with my prize who seemed to get better the closer she came. Her blue eyes and her limpid complexion temporarily deprived me of the power of speech. I stood up.
‘This is Sadie Beck,’ said the committee man. ‘A bargain at eight hundred pounds.’
I passed him the wodge of fifty-pound notes that he was indirectly asking for and he gave me an envelope containing theatre tickets and restaurant vouchers. I smiled at Sadie Beck.
‘You didn’t fancy the bagpipes then?’ she asked. She had a husky voice that was intensely sensuous.
‘You can’t take bagpipes out to dinner. You’d look silly,’ I said. ‘What do we do now?’
‘I think I give you my phone number,’ she whispered. ‘A snip at eight hundred pounds.’
‘It sounds like a bargain to me,’ I said. ‘Write it on the menu.’
She sat in my seat to write down her phone number while Laurie gaped. Shoulders had not previously struck me as one of nature’s erogenous areas but hers, seemingly sculpted in ivory, were made to be kissed. I nobly resisted the temptation and nervously put the menu in my pocket hoping that Annette wouldn’t find it there. Central heating had made it difficult to destroy embarrassing literature.
Sadie Beck stood up and held out her hand very formally.
‘Are you going?’ I said. ‘You only just got here.’
‘I’m helping out tonight, Mr Hadfield,’ she said. ‘Our date is for May twenty-five.’
I shook her hand and let it go reluctantly. She seemed quite stunning to me.
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ I said. ‘Do you enjoy the theatre?’
‘I love it,’ she replied and gave me a smile into which I could read all the things I wanted: her helpless desire for me, her deep gratitude that I had made it happen, her passionate hopes for our future relationship. And then she was gone.
‘Well,’ said Laurie, ‘you’re well buggered.’
‘What?’ I said, sitting down. I was feeling both elated and confused.
‘Buying a girl in front of all these people? What will Annette say?’
‘Annette’s not here, is she?’
‘But a lot of people are.’
‘My wife has always been in favour of charitable works,’ I said. ‘It’s something she likes to encourage.’
‘I doubt whether she’ll be too happy if you go poncing off to the theatre with a bird like that, mate.’
A young man clutching a notebook came up to our table.
‘Local paper,’ he said to me. ‘You won the date with Sadie Beck? Could I have your name?’
‘Peter Huntley,’ I said.
‘I thought the auctioneer said Hadfield?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I noticed that mistake myself.’
Our temporary guest arrived with enough baggage to stay a lot longer than the three days her parents had mentioned. By the time she had unpacked in her room it was littered with hair dryer, compact disc player, a pile of cassettes, curling tongs, an armoury of cosmetics including hair spray and a cream for dealing with spots, a bottle of vodka (for her hosts?), a dozen videos and a pile of lurid-looking paperbacks. I thought she was going to ask for her own personal television and recorder.
When she came downstairs for dinner Annette was still busy in the kitchen and so it fell to me to offer her a drink and generally exhibit a hospitable streak which in the circumstances did not come easily.
We sat down and talked about her, both carefully avoiding the vexed subject of larceny. I am now an authority on sixteen-year-old girls. What do you want to know?
I suppose the biggest surprise is that they don’t call their teachers ‘sir’ any more. In fact they feel closer to their teachers than they do to their parents, partly because their teachers are younger and partly because their parents ‘don’t really know what’s going on’.
Their heroes are good-looking men, usually in adverts. They want to go to college purely because they can’t make up their minds about a career. Their favourite activity is listening to very loud music and drinking (the vodka wasn’t for her hosts, and Helen was now sipping a sweet sherry).
But – I have to admit it – they work hard. Helen Curtis is studying home economics, German, French, sociology, biology, chemistry, physics, maths, English and English literature and will take all ten subjects in her O level exams this summer. For the last two she has to write five essays each.
She sat in the chair and told me all this as if she hadn’t recently found time in her crowded schedule to rob my shops. But she’s a pretty little thing with her long blonde hair and it is not difficult to listen to her. She is the sort of girl who, if she was serving you over a shop counter, you would establish eye contact with, which was not always something that seemed necessary when you were out shopping.
When we sat down to dinner Annette tried to draw her out on the subject of her parents. The look in Helen’s eyes told me that we were exploring unwelcome territory.
‘My father was always bent,’ she announced as if she was revealing a fondness for golf.
‘Bent?’ said Annette.
‘A busy little word, bent,’ I said. ‘It has at least five quite different meanings.’
‘I meant dishonest,’ said Helen Curtis, the student of English. ‘When he was about twenty he switched the numbers on the front doors of two houses so the survey would get him a mortgage.’
‘He told you that?’ Annette asked.
‘He’s very proud of it.’
‘He’s very proud of you,’ I said, feeling that somebody should speak up for the absent father.
‘Well, I can’t say I’m proud of him.’
‘And what do you think of your headmaster, Mr Benson?’ Annette asked.
‘Weak,’ said Helen briefly.
She had an inner confidence that was unnerving in one so young, and she behaved as if the thieving spree had been the work of a quite different girl.
‘A tough nut,’ said Annette, when Helen had gone into the hall to make a phone call. ‘What happened to the carefree days of childhood?’
‘They don’t have them any more,’ I said. ‘They study sociology.’
Helen’s phone call was shorter than I had feared. An hour and a half’s chat to someone in Alice Springs was the sort of thing that I had expected.
‘Why did anyone buy the first telephone when there was no one to speak to?’ she asked when she came back.
‘That’s something that I’ve always wondered about,’ I said. I was afraid that she was going to sit around now so that we felt obliged to entertain her or submit to her choice of viewing on television, but she said that she was going upstairs to do her homework.
‘What is it?’ I asked, interested.
‘An essay on poetry.’
She disappeared upstairs, Annette vanished into the kitchen, and twenty minutes later when I seemed to have been reduced to watching a chat show on television, the front door bell rang for rather longer than was necessary. I got up to answer it.
Standing on the doorstep, a Sony Walkman clamped to both ears, was Steven Benson. He was wearing black jeans, black T-shirt and Chelsea boots. His dark hair, cut in a fashionable style which meant that the bottom inch was very short and the rest not cut at all, looked as if it hadn’t seen a comb for some time. His face looked tired and had no colour.
