Rosie Dixon - Confessions from a Package Tour

‘What time is dinner?’ I ask as, what I assume to be the manager, leads the way upstairs. ‘I could eat a horse.’

‘You could eat a whore’s what?’ says the manager, stopping on the bend of the stairs and looking at me suspiciously. ‘We no want any cabaret acts ’ere. Our customers are simple seafaring men who in most cases crave only the satisfaction of the most basic of appetites.’

‘Just like me,’ I say. ‘I don’t want anything fancy. Just something good, solid, substantial and filling.’

‘Y-e-es.’ The manager scratches the front of his trousers in a way that I find rather uncouth and continues to lead the way upstairs. To tell the truth, I have not really warmed to the man. A gentleman would have carried my suitcase. So much for all the stuff about Continentals falling over each other to kiss your hand. I thought it sounded too good to be true.

‘ ’Ere you are. This do you very well – like everything else, yes? ’O, ’O, ’O! English joke, no?’

‘No,’ I say, firmly, looking round the small, stuffy bedroom without attempting to disguise my lack of enthusiasm. ‘There’s hardly room to swing a cat in here.’

‘You no need to swing cat,’ says the man. ‘Flagellation is too sophisticated for my clientele. They like simple stuff.’ He looks round the door and closes it quickly. ‘Just like me! Welcome to Hotel de Plaisir.’ So saying, he unzips the front of his trousers and produces what at first glance I take to be a plug of chewing tobacco. I am about to tell him that I am not a chewer when I see what the thing really is. Despite my understandable lack of experience, I am able to recognise a cupid’s quiver – especially when it is quivering as much as this one.

‘How dare you!’ I say. ‘Put that away at once. I’ve got an empty matchbox somewhere if you don’t mind it bashing against the sides.’

‘Just a quick one!’ sings out the loathsome low-lander. ‘So I can recommend you to my customers.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ I say sternly. ‘This kind of shenanigans puts a totally different complexion on our relationship. I suggest that you accept my offer concerning the matchbox before it is too late. I have a pair of tweezers in my make-up bag.’ Of course, this kind of talk is all terribly forward and quite unlike the real me but I find that it is the only thing that a certain type of man understands.

‘Shenanigans?’ says the man slowly. ‘What is they?’

‘English lessons are extra,’ I say bravely. ‘Now, unless you pull yourself together, I’m going to check out of this hotel immediately. I don’t mind a little joke’ – I lean on the word little – ’but enough should be as good as a feast to a blind horse.’

‘Blind whores?’ says the manager looking puzzled. ‘You talk about the rest of the girls? They old; sure; toothless, maybe, but not blind.’

At this confusing moment, the door opens and a woman comes in. At first, I think she is wearing fancy dress. She can’t be a day under fifty and yet she is sporting a thigh-length mini skirt with a slit running up to her vaccination mark and a lurex top holding her sagging breasts as if they are the last two melons left at the bottom of a sack. You could use her high heeled shoes to plant potatoes and she is wearing more make-up than a New Guinea chieftain at a fertility rite – although it is less tastefully applied. The outfit is completed by a plastic rose which she holds between her teeth. Her teeth she holds between her finger and thumb.

‘Alors, Fifi mon ange,’ says the manager. ‘Qu’est-ce que tu veux, mon petit chou?’

His tone is pleasant enough but Fifi replaces her teeth and snaps at him savagely. I do not understand everything she says because, like so many foreigners, she speaks too fast but I do catch ‘… espèce de putain! ’ accompanied by a ferocious glance at myself. I seem to remember that putain was not in the dictionary we had at school and meant something rather uncomplimentary.

‘Is this your mother?’ I say, bending over backwards to be pleasant, as is my wont. ‘Comment allez-vous, madam?’

I had not expected my inquiry after the lady’s health to be met with a kiss on both cheeks, but I am amazed when the tarty old frump spits on the carpet! Disgusting, isn’t it? I don’t know if this place appears in the RAC Continental Guidebook but I intend to kick up one hell of a fuss when I get back to England. No wonder more people are holidaying at our homespun watering places these days. It isn’t just because the country is bankrupt.

Things are made even more unpleasant when Fifi slaps the manager round the face and he punches her in the stomach. I had not expected anything quite so brutal from our Continental cousins and I steel myself against the inevitable shock that accompanies the sight of the manager enmeshing his fingers in the recumbent Fifi’s hair and proceeding to drag her from the room. I am even more disquieted when Fifi is revealed as wearing a wig. This whimsical female subterfuge is something that the manager presumably discovers when his headlong progress down the stairs is arrested by the landing two floors below. What a rum business it all is. Taking everything into consideration, I wonder if it would not be advisable that Penny and I gave serious thought to finding alternative accommodation?

In the end, I decide to stay. It is getting late and, who knows? Maybe all Continental hotels are like this. So far, I have not come to grips with enough foreigners to know what the form is. I very nearly comes to grips with Fifi because she rips off one of her high-heeled shoes and waves it under my nose before racing out of the room and rushing down the stairs. She looks like Hopalong Cassidy dragging herself through the door on one grotesquely high heel. I imagine that she is going to retrieve her wig, and wait in the room until the screams and shouts have died away. I do hope it is not as noisy as this all the time. In my present condition a good night’s undisturbed sleep is absolutely vital to my well-being.