I asked about a room, if possible one with a balcony facing the sea. She checked in a ledger, ran her finger down the page, paused at a certain blank space and frowned. Then with a brief, obligatory smile for me, she turned a curious, enquiring glance on the pale owner of the place. And:
“Room number, er, seven?” she said. But with the inflection or emphasis that she placed on “seven,” it was almost as if she had said “thirteen.”
And it was then that I noticed the other woman’s agitation. Ah! That’s the word I was looking for, missing from my previous brief description: her “agitation,” yes! A sort of physical and (however suppressed) mental disquiet. She opened her mouth, and her throat bobbed as if she swallowed, but no word was uttered, just a small dry cough.
I turned back to the German girl. “Room seven? Does it look out across the Channel? Does it have a balcony? I’ll be needing it for four or five days.”
“It is—” the girl began to answer, at which the pale woman found her suddenly urgent voice:
“Seven is a corner room. It only looks half-way out to sea. That is, the view isn’t direct. We usually leave it…we keep number seven empty, as a storeroom.” And nodding—blinking and fluttering her hands—she repeated herself: “Yes, we use it as a storeroom…Well, usually.”
Now disappointed and perhaps a little annoyed, I said, “The sign at the main entrance says you have vacancies. That’s why I stopped here. So are you now telling me I’m wasting my time? Or rather that you are wasting it, by causing me to stop for nothing?”
“Mister, er…?” She managed to control her blinking.
“Smith,” I told her. “George Smith.” (Actually, that isn’t the name I gave her; George might be correct but Smith definitely isn’t. I think I’ll keep my real name to myself if only for fear of ridicule. And anyway, what’s in a name?)
“Well, I’m Mrs. Anderson—Janet Anderson—and this is my hotel,” she replied. “And I must apologize, but we’ve been very busy and I’m really not sure that room seven is ready for occupancy. It may well be full of linens and…and blankets?” She seemed almost to expect me to answer some unspoken question, or perhaps to accept what she’d told me.
“It may be?” Frowning, looking from one to the other of the pair, I shook my head. “So what’s the problem? I mean, can’t we simply send someone to check it out?”
By now Mrs. Anderson’s hands (and incidentally, that wasn’t her name) looked ready to fly off her wrists! “A problem?” she repeated me, and then: “Send someone to…to check it out?”
“Ah…!” the German girl’s sigh was perfectly audible, and probably deliberately so. “Das ist mein fehler! Ich bin schuldig!” she muttered. And then, reverting to English as she turned to the older woman: “No, no, Madame! I am sorry, but this is my fault. I did not think it was important to tell you that I have tidied and made clean number seven. The room has been empty for quite some time, yes, but is now ready for a guest…er, with your permission?”
Gripping the edge of the desk—in order to steady herself, I supposed—Mrs. Anderson said, “Do you think so? Ready for a guest?” She sounded anxious. “Is it all right? Is it really?”
“I am sure of it.” The German girl nodded. “Shall I let Mr., er, Smith see the room for himself? Perhaps he will not want it after all.”
She turned and reached for a key in an open cabinet on the wall behind the desk; at which the older woman at once appeared galvanised and quickly moved to block her access. For a moment the scene was frozen, the two women staring hard at each other, until finally Mrs. Anderson gave way and, however reluctantly, stepped aside. Then, blinking her eyes ever more rapidly, in a veritable torrent of words, she said, “Yes of course…by all means…do show him the room…there’s no problem…none at all! Be so good as to attend to it, will you, Hannah?”
With which she hurried out from behind the desk, offered me an almost apologetic, twitching half-smile, and without further pause went off into the hotel’s cool interior.
More than a little bemused, I could only shake my head as I watched her pass out of sight. It had been a very odd five minutes…
It was as Hannah had said: room number seven was very clean and tidy. Small but spacious enough for me, with its double bed and white-tiled bathroom, it was most privately situated on a split-level landing three steps up from the main floor at that end of the hotel farthest from reception. And I could see why it might be used occasionally as a storeroom: set apart from the rest of the guest-rooms, it could well be that it was originally intended as such, only to be converted at a later date.
Following Hannah through the hotel, which seemed paradoxically empty, I had attempted to orient myself as best possible, only to find it a rambling, irregular sort of place whose design overall was higgledy-piggledy and very confusing. One thing I had noticed for sure: close to the bottom of the three steps that rose to my landing, there was one door that opened into a small bar-room—a little too close for my liking, by reason of my once-liking, and I could smell the beer—and another leading to the large dining-room with its panoramic window looking across the bay. To one side there was also a flight of dog-leg stairs marked “Private: Staff Only,” that climbed to a landing before angling out of sight toward the front of the hotel. According to Hannah the rooms up there were occupied by a pair of female, casual workers from the Czech Republic—“common room-maids,” as she described them, sniffing and tilting her nose—also by Mrs. Anderson, by Hannah herself, and by “the chef.”
So much for the interior layout…
As for number seven, the somewhat isolated room I was being offered: “I’ll take it,” I told her, after opening curtains and double-glazed, floor-to-ceiling sliding doors, and stepping out onto the canopied balcony, from which the view of the promenade and beach was sidelong, less than perfect but acceptable.
“As you wish,” Hannah answered, handing me the key. “When you return to reception you may want to check in. Mrs. Anderson insists on payment in advance—by cash or card, whichever you choose, but no cheques—and, if you intend to eat in the hotel this evening, you may wish to order your meal in advance. Now, if there is nothing else, I—”
“Hannah, if you’ll permit such familiarity,” I cut her off, “may I ask you a rather awkward question?”
“An awkward ques—?” she began to repeat me, then paused to raise a knowing eyebrow before continuing: “Ah! About Mrs. Anderson, I think. Her, er, mannerisms?”
I nodded. “You’re very astute.”
“No, not really.” She shrugged. “Anyone could see that Mrs. Anderson is of a nervous nature. Well, she always has been, but recently…” And there she paused.
“Recently?” I prompted her.
But Hannah shook her head. “No, it is not my place to speak of such things. Not behind her back, and not to a stranger.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “It’s just that I feel concerned about her. Perhaps I’ve upset her in some way—something I may have said or done? She didn’t seem to want me here!”
Hannah bit her lip, thought it over for a moment, and said, “No, it is not you. It is this place, this area which she finds disturbing…” And looking around the room, and out through the balcony doors, she waved a vague, all inclusive hand at nothing in particular. “Even this room—perhaps especially this room—or some of the things that have happened here.”
“Things have happened? In this room?”