Jonathan Lee - High Dive

‘Punctual as always, Mrs Harrington.’

‘You,’ she said with a hospitable grimace. ‘Still poorly?’

‘Poorly?’

‘Pale.’

‘Me?’

‘Roller coaster,’ she said, and traced a wavy line in the air with the ferrule of her stick.

Moose tried to laugh but managed only the maintenance of his current smile.

‘Arm pain,’ she said.

He felt his smile fail him. ‘How did you know?’

‘You confided.’

‘Did I?’

For a moment her eyes slid sideways towards another regular, Miss Mullan. On every other week of the year she was Mr Mullan, chairman of a FTSE 100 toiletries company.

‘Perfectly fine now, thanks, Mrs H. A little sprain. I’m not dead yet.’

‘Geoffrey said that. My Geoffrey, before he died.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Moose said. ‘That was thoughtless of me.’

Mrs H couldn’t move her shoulders much, so to indicate a shrug she simply turned the palm of her right hand towards the ceiling. ‘His death,’ she said. ‘Second-best thing that ever happened to me.’

‘What was the first thing?’

‘Motorcycle,’ she said, and continued her voyage towards the restaurant. The breakfast crowd parted as she waved her stick on a low axis from side to side, as if it were white and she were blind, the wood knocking at shins and kneecaps, opening a path to where the best table was.

With Freya safely installed behind the reception desk, her chin on the heels of her hands, still frustratingly bad at disguising her boredom, he did his usual check of the restaurant (tidy) and the lavatories (shiny). He walked up to the first-floor storage room, where the hotel held long-term luggage and other items like cribs and wheelchairs. There had been a spontaneous staff party in the hotel last night and sure enough he now located, in a dusty corner, a few dozen miniature bottles of booze. A condom wrapper too. Jesus. An untouched Marathon bar. Interesting. He ate the Marathon and found Mimi from Housekeeping. Asked her to put the unused items back in the minibar cupboard and ensure that it was double-locked. № 1-1-1-1 combinations on padlocks, please. Then, coming down the thickly carpeted staircase, careful not to touch the handrail and impart unnecessary smudges, he passed Chef Harry’s temperamental tabby cat, Barbara. Usually she begged for food. Lately she’d been depressed. Gave him a withering droopy-whiskered look that seemed to say ‘What’s the point?’

‘This is as good as it gets, Barb.’

She pinned her ears back and yawned.

He asked Marina, the Grand’s Guest Relations Manager, whether there’d been any further press enquiries about the conference, or any changes to the block-booking numbers supplied by the Prime Minister’s secretary’s secretary. There hadn’t been, so after he’d marvelled at the wondrous way she blew upward at her hair between sentences, the soft fringe fluttering darkly, he took his disappointment and arousal to the cupboard he called his office. A memo to finish. A briefing pack on important guests. Documents authorising the installation of extra security and CCTV — nine cameras, twelve, the requirements kept shifting. Paper sprouting from his IBM Wheelwriter. No natural light in here. Assuming the overall manager stepped down in a few months, as planned, and assuming also that the PM’s visit was a major success; assuming all this and assuming that the Group Executive Committee was as good as its word, Moose would soon be moving upstairs into an office with a door plaque saying ‘General Manager’. Overall control. Decent salary. Sun and sea view. He wished he were not so reliant on recognition, but it gave him the little lift he needed to get through each seventy-hour week.

Paragraphs taking shape. Letters sometimes interlocking. Clack clack clack and only four errors. The dyslexia always an itchy label on his thoughts, irritating his attempts at eloquence. The calendar on the wall showing sun touching fields and September festooned with breezy leaves. He was in the habit of crossing out each finished day, boxes of cancelled life, a pencil not a pen, as if he might at some point want to reinstate a long-lost Tuesday. The filing cabinet had his little gold statuettes on top, men with torsos that were upside-down triangles. They were standing on the edges of diving boards. Along with the hatstand, these were his favourite office items.

Did he own any hats? No, technically he did not. But built into his belief system these days were a number of convictions — never take taxis, never be afraid of combining carbohydrates — and one of them was that a hatstand was something every man ought to have. The thing about hats was, you never knew when you might want to start getting into them. Freya had said to him, ‘Why don’t you use it for coats, in the meantime?’ But his daughter was missing the point. He was saving the hatstand for a hat. He could picture it: the first delicious instant when, with casual carefulness, he’d toss onto one of its lovely curling limbs an Ascot cap, a Balmoral bonnet, a beret, a boater, a fez or a fedora. It was a small moment of magic he’d stored up for the future.

He reached for a folder entitled ‘Conservative Party Visit’ and began to refine his strategies, taking breaks only to phone universities and ask them to send more prospectuses.

In the afternoon there was a meeting with the following agenda:

1. Alarm clock roll out. 201 + spares. Testing committee. Features. LED light? Serving the long-sighted, late-sleepers, etc. (PF)

2. Napkins for functions during conference. Scottish supplier. Problem? Conference blue? (PF)

3. Snagging request from Cameron House. (PF)

4. Training prog for additional temporary staff. (PF)

5. Canapé vote. (PF)

6. Fax machine installation. (PF)

7. Mitigating annoyance of CCTV for non-conference guests? (MV)

8. Towels not soft enough — what’s the point of trying to be cheap on fabric softener? (DN)

9. Riots. (PF)

10. Irish protesters. (PF)

11. Security threats. (PF)

12. Any other business.

In the ‘any other business’ section of the meeting — so seldom used for anything except birthday announcements — there was a discussion about the fact that the hotel hadn’t suffered an overflowing bath for the best part of nine months, which was thought to be a record. There was also a complaint from a maid about further strings of semen found on floral-pattern curtains. Who were these curtain fuckers? What was their plan?

Once item 12 was dealt with, the ever-sleazy Peter Samuels asked Fran a mischievous question. She was the p.m. Housekeeping Manager, a black lady with striking eyes. Turndown, purchasing, scheduling. Thirty-two staff under her command.

Fran said to Peter, ‘Nah, no no, not what happened. Here ’s the story. OK. So. The wife came out of the bathroom, yeah? Wet and naked.’ Fran paused for effect. Silence fell around her. Only Marina smiled. Perhaps she’d heard the story already. ‘And this guest, she’s wearing nothing except a skimpy little white towel tied up around her hair. This is when I’m covering for one of those lazy-ass summer girls, Veronica the Vomiter, you got it.’ A nervous laugh from the assembled staff, two of whom had personally recommended Veronica for the job. ‘And she says to me, this guest, her tits out, her arse out — everything out — she smiles and says all casual, “Carry on, darling, but shut the curtains, will you? I don’t want the neighbours seeing me naked.”’

Hush around the table. Men full of longing leaned in. ‘What did you do, Fran?’

‘Well,’ Fran said, ‘I carried on making the bed, didn’t I? And then I explained to her, real polite, that if the neighbours saw her naked they’d shut their own fucking curtains.’