“Good morning!” he shouted down to me. Scottish readers gave us disgruntled looks from the neighboring garden benches. The very wind was like a librarian’s shushing.
He asked me if I wanted to wait for him down in the garden to have an aperitif at one o’clock. It was a pleasant, tempting offer. The aperitif to a pleasant and tempting life, perhaps, in which it would always be cocktail hour in this autumnal garden, and in the endless autumns that followed. I would spend my days ensconced under the window of this poet, this fake, efficient acting-god of the establishment. And at night, again as a perpetual guest, I would return punctually to that other hotel, her hotel. I noticed a last aftertaste in my mouth of that useless brew the man gave me to drink last night.
I returned his greeting loudly, happy to irritate the English guests and happy, too, in the euphoric knowledge that I was only passing through. Enjoying the prospect of the pleasure in departing of he who departs, the joy of suddenly finding myself with a ready-made itinerary that will allow me to vacate this bogusly British establishment without so much as a farewell.
“Thanks, but I can’t. I’m just leaving.”
Of course, when it comes to hotels, every departure is made without a farewell. It’s true that their rooms and closets submit willingly to the pleasure of being filled. Their shelves and drawers welcome the symbols of our existence, and our shirts flap on their coat hangers like flags over effortlessly conquered islands. But she was right: traveling with a purpose changes everything. The thrill of occupying a virginal room seems pale to me now next to the joy of vacating one and the converse delight of leaving without looking back — of packing up, glancing at the map, and going.
~ ~ ~
The Hotel Life
This week our critic draws out his summer with an off-season trip to the seaside. Should we be taking advantage of the autumn offers at the Royal Marina Hotel and getting one over on the calendar? We’ll leave it to you to decide.
THE LOW SEASON
Do you recall that a few years ago I reviewed the Royal Marina for a special summer issue? Well, they don’t at the hotel, where the staff do not seem to recognize me (I do recognize them; as you know, I have a photographic memory when it comes to a good receptionist). On my return, at first glance at least, I can report that little has changed. Except for the season — which, in this sort of hotel, changes everything. No difficulty this time in getting a room with a view of the sea. Too much of a view, perhaps, and too much sea — the damp reaches up as far as the floor I’m on, and as I write, a stiff, autumnal tide has just swallowed up the beach below the promontory.
The room is long on antiquated comforts and short on modern conveniences. In its heyday, this place was the last word in choice summer holiday destinations for the chic. It reminds me a little of the hotel I wrote to you from a week ago. Except that, for now, the damp air of the Marina carries no whiff of imminent bankruptcy or closure. It sits atop its hill with its slate-roofed dormers, its overelaborate balconies, with its miserly exterior touch-ups in various shades of white, and with no castle or cathedral to compete with — the sturdiest monument in this city with a hotelier’s soul that would balk at the slightest change. The sea and the port have never managed to awaken in it a spirit of adventure.
When the time comes for an overhaul, it will be met with obliging town councilors, swiftly granted permits, and local philanthropists. An extra word—“spa” or “resort”—will be appended to the proud sign over the front door. There will be much re-tiling of bathrooms.
The cost-cutting and foot-dragging in the actual implementation of it all will be born, in this case, out of the respectable inertia that rules over all life in the city. And of the dependence on routine of a clientele who would be most put out to return for the nth summer to find everything out of place, the radiators refitted, the drafts and a thousand other discomforts that provide such good conversational fodder disappeared.
This was not, in the beginning, a hotel without ambition. But the pretension that remains is all inherited. All the rough edges and all the shrillness have been polished away by the same hundred years of use that have left every step worn smooth and all the upholstery faded. Take a close look if you stay here — there is nothing in this hotel that on closer inspection does not reveal itself as mended, patched, repainted, or repaired. In the shadows behind the gilding and the stucco, it’s superglue and 3-IN-ONE that truly reign in the Royal Marina.
Some will be depressed by this fondness for the quick fix. I liked it on my first visit, actually — this discreet, domestic, tumbledown feel. That summer, I would often walk among the unruly hydrangeas in the garden. Weeds pushed through the gaps in the fence. There were card games afoot; you could hear the bouncing of tennis balls, and splashing in the ridiculously deep swimming pool. On this second visit, however, I haven’t set foot there. The tables and chairs are stacked under green tarps, the lawn is permanently damp and I don’t have any sensible shoes.
The empty lounges and the hallways smell like some antique cleaning product, some pine spray discontinued long ago and taken, perhaps, from some magnificent reserve piled up in the basement. They gave me a half-price room that’s taller than it is wide, with unreachably high moldings and a bay window overlooking the beach. The moisture and the salty air seep in through the cracks. Every morning, the furniture is covered in a fine, white dust that tastes of the sea and medicine, and I’ve gotten into the habit of running my finger along the backs of the chairs and bringing the salt to my lips during the downtime I spend in the room.
There weren’t many of those, though, as every wasted minute I spent far from her, or from the possibility of finding her, pained me. I arrived in that city — the first on her list — when, according to her dates, she would already be getting ready to leave again. It was going to be difficult to find her, and I almost preferred it that way. I wasn’t expecting to catch up with her right away, and deep down, I would have felt awkward if I had. Maybe more than she would.
It was getting dark early, there were intermittent showers, and the sun shone only in short spells, never enough to dry the sidewalks or warm the air. I checked into the Royal Marina confidently — my review from three years ago could well have steered her there. In the end, it felt more forgivable to be following her trail if she thought that she was in fact following mine.
I didn’t ask for her at reception; I dreaded the tired, old lecture about respecting clients’ privacy and feared the staff would put her on the alert. And besides, what exactly could I ask them if all I knew was that she was tall and elegant and about forty? All the same, for a few days it felt as though I was about to run into her any moment in the lobby or in the dining room, around every hallway corner. Whenever I used the elevator, I would get nervous as the doors opened. I would prepare myself, compose my face. But there would be no one there: just an empty hallway or the dull, stale air of the lobby.