Goodmans Hotel - 12. Chapter 12

Andrew’s revelation about Tom’s past demolished the illusion that I had escaped from the ruthless culture of City opportunism into a new sunlit world of honesty and fraternity with other gay men. All the warmth and colour my new life appeared to contain had existed in my imagination; the reality was as cold and grey as concrete. Rather than being a place of openness and honesty, concealed motives and deception were as pervasive at Goodmans Hotel as they had been in the ‘straight’ world I had left behind. Those life-changing decisions to accept redundancy and buy the lease on Goodmans Villa were not, as they had seemed, informed judgements made from sound knowledge and understanding, but reckless gambles based on false information.

However foolish the change might have been, it could not be reversed. The hotel had to be run, as did Andrew’s businesses. Hard work would provide me with a diversion from self-pity and constant suspicious thoughts about everyone and everything around me.

Even to speak to Tom on the ’phone was unbearable, and when he rang the day after that dreadful meal with Andrew, in a calm deep voice I said ‘I have nothing at all to say to you,’ and when he began to plead I repeated the words and hung up.

Andrew’s first call from New Zealand came over a week later. With a determined effort to avoid making accusations, I asked politely about his journey and we discussed his plans for the week. My good opinion of him had been shaken, but his personal qualities and achievements in life had to be balanced against the way he had misled me about Tom. His failing health and the need to ensure his staff would continue to have jobs to go to were good reasons for moderating my antagonism towards him. If only for their sake, I would fulfil my promise to check that his businesses were run properly.

Darren made allowances for my low spirits. He did not take offence at my constant grumpiness. I suspect he had warned Cheung about my state of mind, because although I was as curt with him as I was with everyone, he always greeted me with a smile and tried to make conversation, asking after my health or whether the hotel was busy. They avoided displays of affection for each other in front of me, perhaps afraid of reminding me of my own freshly acquired solo status, but passing the lounge one day I saw Cheung affectionately pat Darren’s backside as he reached up for a book from a high shelf. Well, enjoy the fascination with one another before it fades, I thought cynically.

My general disillusion was such that even the hotel guests appeared in a different more suspect light. What secret anxieties and guilty yearnings lay hidden behind their masks of cheerful greeting and warm words? This jaundiced outlook lasted for a week or more, but some inner mental process gradually drew me back towards equilibrium; something in my make-up seemed to refuse to allow me to be permanently miserable.

The arrival of an attractive couple from South Wales, one dark and one fair, helped along my progress towards a less negative frame of mind. As soon as I saw them I could tell they were having an affair. The way they stood side by side, their arms almost but not quite touching and the way they glanced lovingly at each other made it evident that they doted on one another. My first reaction was to think they were making fools of themselves by openly showing their infatuation, and to wonder how long it would take for the unpleasant side of their natures to spoil their illusions about each other, but for three days their obvious affection did not waver. My envy of their happiness grew stronger and stronger, until my sourness towards them seemed unreasonable even to me, since they had done nothing to deserve my sneering thoughts. Then I felt ashamed of my attitude; my feelings of misery and frustration were, after all, not of their making.

On the last morning of their stay they had not come down by the time breakfast was over, presumably tired by sight-seeing during the days and late nights in the clubs. The cleaner reported that he had left their room untouched as the door was locked and they did not respond to his knock.

At two o’clock they had not emerged and I went up to check. The door was still locked and there was no answer to my gentle tapping. I used my pass key to let myself in. In the semi-darkness, covered by a sheet, they lay together in the twin bed nearest the window, their limbs wrapped around each other. One of them was breathing slowly and heavily. Only their heads and one foot protruded from the sheet, a corner being wrapped around the ankle.

Neither of them stirred. I could not resist gazing down on their unconscious figures, working out to whom the exposed foot belonged from the way they lay beneath the contorted sheet. How fortunate they were, sleeping contentedly in each other’s arms. If they could lie so happily together, so clearly a couple even in sleep, what was wrong with me?

A growing sense of guilt about spying on them broke the spell cast by their sleeping forms. What was I doing there, sneaking around in their room while they lay clasped together in sleep? What if one of them woke, discovered me and thought I was there to steal from them? I crept out, shutting the door with hardly a sound, and stole away the mental image of them lying together under the crumpled white sheet.

They came down a couple of hours later and looked in at the little office to pay their bill, completely unaware of my intrusion. We shook hands and with genuine warmth I wished them a good journey home and hoped they would come back to the hotel the next time they visited London. If Goodmans Hotel provided a comfortable and welcoming place for men like them, surely it was an enterprise I could feel pleased about.

Relentless sexual frustration was a daily reminder of my return to single status. After the long period of regular love-making with Tom my appetite was strong. Irrepressible urges began twisting my thoughts, imbuing everyday social and business contacts with lewd sexual connotations. My mind constantly saw in others the persistent lust that was swamping me, and almost any vaguely attractive man in almost any circumstances became, to my imagination, a potential debauchee.

For a time I thought that an outlet for my desires might be found among the hotel guests, but any kind of sexual involvement with them threatened to cause awkward complications. How could the commercial part of the arrangement be kept separate from the sex? Might a man refuse to pay for his room after having slept with me, hoping that embarrassment and fear of being accused of selling sex would prevent me pursuing the debt or calling the police?

Even if nobody tried to get out of paying for his stay, word would surely spread. In gay bars when Goodmans Hotel was mentioned people might say, ‘Oh yeah, stayed there, had the manager.’ What if Darren realised what was going on and followed my example? My intention was to run a clean comfortable hotel, not a brothel.

One Friday night, when Darren was at the club with Cheung, I ventured out to a bar in the West End to look for a pick-up, leaving a note with the number of my mobile ’phone pinned to the office door in case of emergency. There were three or four men drinking on their own among the crowd, and after conversation developed with one of them I brought him back to the hotel. Reluctant to let him know anything about myself, rather than going down to the basement flat I pretended to be one of the guests and took him up to a vacant second floor room.

As we were unaccustomed to each other physically the sex was rather clumsy, but becoming intimate with a stranger again after so long was exciting, and the pretence of being a hotel guest added an element of adventure to what might otherwise have been a fairly uninspiring one night stand.

Had he wanted a telephone number, my mobile ’phone would have allowed me to keep any subsequent meetings from Darren, but we parted without either of us expressing any interest in meeting again. I wondered what he thought of our night together, whether he was simply content with having sex with me once, or if he had found I was not at all what he wanted and gone away disappointed.

That one night apart there never seemed to be time for me to go out looking for pick-ups. The only aids easily available to assuage my desires were magazine pictures of naked men and my own hands. The satisfaction was meagre compared to holding a lover in my arms. Sometimes alone in bed at night I imagined the hotel rooms above me writhing with acts of love, while I lay alone in the basement like a wretched doorkeeper, not permitted to share in the pleasures of the house above.

Of all the gay men around me, the one who might have been my choice for starting a new relationship was the manager of the garden centre. He was seven or eight years older than I, and not ‘with’ anyone as far as I knew. Darren had been over to his small terraced house to see the long narrow garden almost completely taken up by a series of ponds where he grew aquatic and marsh plants. He was fit, even-tempered, intelligent, and had the great advantage of not looking at all like Tom.

Andrew sometimes described him as an excellent employee, praise which contained the implied criticism that, however well he did his job, he was unwilling to commit himself beyond his contracted hours or show the broader interest that might have made him a potential business partner. To a lover this characteristic might have been welcome – workaholics do not have much time to devote to relationships.

Unfortunately my ignorance of gardening irritated him and he had never been very friendly towards me. Whenever he and Darren talked they would litter their conversation with multi-syllabic horticultural terms and discuss esoteric subjects such as biological methods of pest control. My attempts to contribute to discussions of this kind only made me seem stupid. Once he forced me to admit that never in my life had I planted seeds, waited for them to germinate, and watched the plants go on to develop flowers or bear fruit.

Darren, in contrast, never criticised me and was my constant support. As he gained experience he took on more and more responsibility for the hotel. He had settled in well at West London Tertiary College, took Cheung up to his room for the night once or twice a week, and helped me get out for an hour in the evening now and again by arranging for me to meet them both in the Beckford Arms.

He was fond of telling me horrible stories about people treating one another dreadfully or about human cruelty to animals. One story was about a group of lads at the seaside who caught crabs and mutilated them by poking them with iron rods, breaking off a leg or a claw, and another was of a rabbit-hunting expedition he was persuaded to go on when he was about twelve years old to a warren not far from Twyford. He thought they were going to look at the rabbits, not to kill the poor things. To his horror the boys he was with lit petrol soaked rags in front of some of the burrows and tried to blow or waft the smoke down into them. This attempt to drive the rabbits out of the safety of their earthworks failed, but they caught one that ran straight towards them when fire from their rags spread through the long grass where it was hiding. He watched as the others surrounded it and battered it to death with lumps of wood.

He passed on to me other grim stories that originated with Andrew or Cheung, probably thinking that they would comfort me. In a curious sort of way they did. However bitter my feelings about Tom, and however sad the evaporation of my imagined wonderful new life at Goodmans Hotel, my misfortunes were not nearly as bad as being set alight or beaten to death with sticks.

The work on Vincent’s computer network, arranged when he came to the hotel with Lizetta, also helped divert me from gloom. The project engaged my mind for one day a week with new people and brought some of my old technical expertise back into use. His staff were all ‘straight’, but none of them was put off when he introduced me by saying that I used to be the computer manager in a big accountancy firm and now ran a gay hotel.

By doing this he saved me from worries about ‘coming out’. His staff were used to meeting gay men when they were out on consultancy assignments in the hotel and tourist industry, and were far more interested in asking me questions about my business than they were in talking to me about their own computer system. They were not particularly interested in specifics about Goodmans Hotel, but liked to speculate on the extent of the market for hotel rooms for gay men in London, how many of the guests were business visitors and how many were holiday makers, whether demand was growing, and if there was potential to develop package tours to London for gay visitors from the provinces and abroad.

They gave me copies of a few reports they had produced for owners of small hotels to show me how they advised on ways to increase profit or reposition a business in the market, and talking to them gave me a wider view of the tourist industry and made me feel less trapped by my circumstances. Andrew had begun with one modest shop. Why should Goodmans Hotel not become a base from which to expand?

After my work on enhancements to the computer network was finished Vincent asked me to help for one day a week on a large contract with a US tour operator. The corporation was introducing a range of ‘themed’ holidays in Europe aimed at middle America, and one of these, to be called ‘The Essential Scotland’, was to be based in a large Victorian hotel in Dunblane. Vincent’s company had been hired to produce ideas and costed plans to make this ‘Essential’ experience a success.

The project’s objective did not appeal to me greatly. The ‘Essential Scotland’ the US citizens from middle America were to experience was to consist of coach trips to Loch Lomond, excursions during the day to castles and other historic or quaint places, and evening entertainment with bagpipes and Scottish dancing. However, helping to plan the activities did not mean I had to like them, and when the two full-time consultants assigned to the project spoke to me about it with an irreverence that would have horrified the US client, it seemed as though it might be fun.

We held meetings to develop our proposals and present them to the corporation’s European representatives, but the work was interspersed with scurrilous suggestions, such as providing tartan baseball caps decorated with haggis feathers, or putting items such as Texas style grouse-burger with French fries on the dinner menu.

At the third of the meetings I attended we were joined by the group bookings manager from the hotel in Dunblane. He had a high-pitched voice for a man and rather camp mannerisms, but made it clear he was not gay by pointedly mentioning a girlfriend several times. Since he was someone I could never imagine myself having more to do with than necessary, I hoped he was not going out of his way to announce his heterosexuality because of some curious notion about me being interested in him.

The lampooning of the US visitors and Scottish customs might have been inhibited by his presence, but we tested his ability to take a joke by asking him during a coffee break if he thought it would be possible for a baseball match to be included in the Highland Games to help the US visitors feel at home.

‘They can have a day’s cattle rustling included if they’re willing to pay for it,’ he answered. ‘You’d do well to give some attention to indoor events and entertainments. A wet day will spoil any outdoor excursion, no matter how fine the views when the weather’s clear. Have you considered movies with a Scottish theme? Give the Yanks a bunch of heather, plenty of photo opportunities and a tin of shortbread and they’ll probably be happy enough, as long as we can keep them entertained.’

His sense of humour was fine, but at times he tended to be hectoring and argumentative. Vincent’s two consultants went up to Scotland several times to see the Dunblane hotel and discuss local arrangements with him, and they said he was domineering towards his staff. My commitments in London made the trip impossible for me, but they brought back photographs which gave a fair impression of the place, inside and out, and of some of the nearby attractions, a golf course, a local salmon stream and a distillery.

As long as the hotel and Andrew’s businesses were trouble free, working a day a week for Vincent was manageable. However, tiredness after a couple of months of this workload was inevitable, and a few weeks after the turn of the year an incident at the garden centre put me under real pressure.

The manager rang me late one afternoon to tell me that a member of his staff had run off with the day’s takings. Leaving the hotel unattended I hurried over to find him talking to two heavily built men near the cash desk. They looked unlikely customers for winter flowering plants. They stopped talking as I approached and stood glaring at the manager across the counter. Since I’d gone over straight away his casual dismissive greeting, ‘I’ll join you upstairs in a second,’ annoyed me.

I went up to the little staff room to wait. When he came up I asked, ‘Who on earth were they?’

‘They came in by mistake. Seem to have been given the wrong address. Anyway, about the theft, sorry to drag you over here. He’s got away with the best part of the day’s takings. Fortunately I’m always taking money out of the cash drawer and putting it away in the safe, but he timed his move well.’

There was a self-contradiction in these statements. If he frequently removed money from the cash drawer the best part of a day’s takings would not have been there to be stolen, but this was not a good time to query the inconsistency. ‘Who did you say took the money?’

‘You always were straight to the point! You’ve probably guessed already. It was Jamie.’

My question was an obvious one to ask, hardly ‘straight to the point’, and why should he think I had guessed Jamie was the thief? ‘Have the police been in yet?’

‘Police? No.’

‘How long is it since you called them?’

‘What’s the point in bringing them into it? We won’t be seeing that money again. We’d only be making unnecessary trouble.’

‘We can’t pretend that nothing has happened. The insurers will want to know that we’ve notified the police. Unless he’s spent it all already we may be able to get back what’s left.’

‘We won’t see any of the money again, you can forget about that.’

‘It isn’t our money to forget about. The insurers will want details, the loss will have to be shown as a debit in the accounts.’ This was standard practice, and my tone was not provocative, but he lost his temper.

‘Don’t make things harder for me than they are already. I’ll make the money up out of my own pocket if you’re that fussed about it.’

‘I’m not "fussed" about anything. This is Andrew’s money. What do you think we should do? Let people steal whatever they want from him and do nothing about it?’

‘What Andrew said to me was that you would be keeping an eye on the books. He didn’t say you’d be coming in interfering with how I run the place.’

‘You asked me to come over because of a theft. If you’re running a business and someone steals a significant amount of money, why would you not inform the police?’

He looked at me contemptuously. ‘You don’t know anything about this business. You were just some sort of computerised accountant before Andrew helped you set up that hotel.’

His mouth, which had never shaped itself into a smile in my direction, was spitting at me now. Had he always disliked me? I could overrule him and call in the police myself, but doing that would antagonise him more, and if he walked out the effect on the business would be far worse than the loss of a day’s takings.

‘Thanks for telling me what you think of me.’ I said. ‘All right, you’re the one who knows all about the business, you decide what to do. We can’t pretend the money is still in the till. Somehow or other the loss has to be covered for the accounts. Other than that do whatever you like.’

‘I told you. I’ll make the money up out of my own pocket. Forget it.’

‘What did you call me over for if you intended to cover it up?’

‘I don’t know.’

We were silent for a minute or so, searching for a way to discontinue hostilities. Tentatively I asked, ‘Do we have a home address for Jamie, maybe someone should call to see if...?’

‘Yes, he lives in one of Andrew’s flats. Let me deal with it. You’re acting for Andrew, so you had to know what happened. It’s best for me to sort it out. Thanks for coming over, but you don’t need to do anything.’

‘If that’s how you want it.’ I left the shop insulted and offended. Evidently his occasional critical comments, for example that I did not know my daisies from my dandelions, had not been mildly humorous reproofs but were signs of serious dislike. How totally misconceived my earlier thoughts had been about us perhaps being compatible in a relationship.

The next morning he had recovered his temper and rang in a conciliatory mood wanting to tell me more about the theft. When he called I was about to set off for Vincent’s offices and had to put him off until the evening. He was locking up when I arrived at the garden centre, and he took me upstairs where he made a pot of tea. We found it difficult to know how to start, and uncomfortably I asked, ‘Have there been any developments?’

Ignoring my question he said, ‘I know what you’re thinking, but there’s been nothing between Jamie and me for a few months.’

‘There was something between you, earlier?’

‘Everyone knows there was.’

‘Everyone who works here, maybe. I didn’t. If Jamie was around we said hello, that was about it. No one ever said anything to me about... you and him.’

He looked at me doubtfully. ‘You’d better hear the whole story. Andrew will have to know sometime, one way or another.’ He had grey shadows around his eyes and looked miserable. Knowing nothing of my problems, as well as resenting having to report to me while Andrew was away, he probably imagined me having a contented comfortable life, smugly looking down on those who were less happy.

‘Talk to me then. Andrew always speaks well of you. We’ll do the best we can, he can’t expect more than that.’

‘I’m sorry for dragging you into all this. You really didn’t know about Jamie and me?’

‘No.’

‘I shouldn’t have spoken the way I did yesterday, the situation is driving me nuts. You remember the two men who were downstairs when you came into the shop? They were trying to make trouble. The whole mess had got beyond me by the time I came up here to see you. All of this is my own stupid fault. You knew Jamie – enough to say hello to, you said?’

‘Yes.’

‘He was an old flame. We hadn’t seen each other for years and years, and one night we bumped into each other in a club, and... things started up between us again. He was out of work. I took him on as favour.’

‘And he’s let you down rather badly?’

‘Yes. A couple of months is about the longest my boyfriends ever last. The sexual interest waned, but we hadn’t fallen out or rowed. We carried on being friends and his work was okay. The first signs of a problem came a few weeks ago when he began to slip out more and more frequently to the betting shop.

He worked in a betting shop before I took him on. People in that line usually stay in it. I should have suspected something. If we hadn’t been sleeping together maybe I would have made a few ’phone calls and checked him out more. Suppose that’s what happens when it’s not your brain that’s making the decisions.’

‘We all fall into that trap. A winning smile robs us of all our powers of judgement.’

A little more relaxed now, he nodded. ‘Thanks for saying that. It’s the sort of thing Andrew would have said. There’s more. Jamie ran up gambling debts, and the two men who came into the shop yesterday were looking for him. They were threatening to make trouble unless I gave them his address or paid what he owed.’

‘He’s the one who got himself into a mess; if he came to us, told us he was in trouble... we might be able to help... but as things are...’

‘The two men who are after him came back to the shop today, asking where they could find him, talking about him owing money. They stood staring at the till.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Told them if he owed money it was nothing to do with the business, that he’d disappeared.’

‘Is there much cash here now – if they tried to break in?’

‘No, not even in the safe. I took everything down to the bank last minute. We’ve got a good alarm system, with an automatic dial up to the police. It’s not like a jewellers, there isn’t a lot of small high value stuff on the shelves. You don’t get dodgy people in the pub coming up to you and asking if you’d like to buy a nice garden trowel or a bag of potting compost, do you?’

‘Actually, no one has ever offered to sell me anything in a pub. Must be something about me.’

‘Or the pubs you go to. What will you say to Andrew?’

‘Probably nothing. The loss of part of a day’s takings won’t ruin the business, why detract from his holiday by worrying him about it?’

For a while we chatted about Andrew’s holiday and speculated about how much longer he was likely to be away. We were interrupted by the sound of someone banging on the shop door and the display windows below us. Downstairs through the glass of the door we saw the two thugs, who even if we were hidden by the darkness of the shop would have seen the upstairs light and deduced that someone was in. We opened the door a few inches, each of us keeping a foot planted firmly against it. They glared at us through the gap.

‘You know why we’re here. This is our third call. Your time’s up. The cash, or the address of the man who owes it, now.’ They leaned hard against the door; we pushed back, barely able to resist.

‘Like I told you this afternoon, the man you’re looking for has left. He used to work here, but not any more.’

The taller of the men tried to force his boot into the space between door and doorframe. They were likely to win the struggle eventually because of their greater weight. In a drawer under the counter was a remote control unit for the shop’s alarm system, but it was impossible to reach it without giving up our defence of the door. I had my mobile ’phone with me, pulled it from my pocket, and held it up high where they could see it.

‘You’re making threats and demanding money. Fuck off, or it’s the police, now.’

One of them took a step back, then threw all his weight against the door, but we held it firm. ‘You fucking queers,’ he snarled. They backed off and walked to their car, parked across the road. We watched them drive off, then locked up, turned off the upstairs lights, and from the first floor windows checked again they had gone. The garden centre manager’s car was parked at the back, and after double checking all the doors and windows we set the alarm system and he drove me the short distance back to the hotel.

‘Will we get out of this alive?’ I asked.

‘Good job you were there. From my point of view that is, not from yours. During opening hours there’s always two or three of us on the premises, so it’s not that easy for them to make trouble. Thanks for backing me up tonight. Don’t worry about it, it’s my problem.’

Had I not been so tired, anxiety over what had happened might have kept me awake, but in fact I slept deeply and hated having to get up early to help with the breakfasts. A week or a fortnight in Sitges or Mykonos would have done me good. Casual sex with another tourist or a local man wanting a good time would have refreshed me and made me feel less sexually frustrated. Perhaps those few days, which now seemed an age ago, with Georges at the Hotel des Amis were the best that life would ever offer me by way of a relationship. If only other people were as straightforward and good natured as he and his mother had been. Maybe holiday affairs were a sort of fertile terrain between the frost-hardened wilderness of casual sex and the treacherous precipices of long term relationships.

A chance for a break did come, albeit in a rather unpleasant way, and only for a weekend. At one of the meetings about the Dunblane project that the Scottish hotel manager attended we discussed itineraries for coach trips, some of which were to include lunch near Inverness. He said that the waitresses at a particular restaurant were ‘fine Highland girls in traditional dress’ and were sure to cheer up the menfolk.

‘Well, not all of the menfolk,’ I remarked humorously.

‘Oh now,’ he said loudly, ‘I’ve been forewarned about you; some of us would prefer not to hear about certain kinds of behaviour, thank you very much.’

One of Vincent’s consultants said, ‘Mark’s a good colleague, we all know he’s gay, do you have some kind of problem with that?’

‘Excuse me, it isn’t me who has the problem. I think you’ll find your US client, who is footing your bill, would be none too pleased to hear an avowed homosexual is working on their project. Organisations that provide family holidays for middle America support traditional conservative values, and quite rightly so in my opinion.’

With difficulty we returned to the business of the meeting, but the incident reminded me of all the past consternation and confusion over ‘coming out’ at Lindler & Haliburton. Even here, with colleagues who were gay friendly, prejudice had infiltrated. Whatever my problems at Goodmans Hotel, having my own business had saved me from being plagued by discrimination.

I mentioned his outburst to Vincent later in the day. ‘He’s completely wrong about the client. Our contract with them has an equal opportunities clause which covers sexual orientation. The subject was specifically raised by them in discussions, and they asked for assurances that our policy matched theirs. He is the one who is out of line, not you. You’re not going be put off by him, are you? Do you want me to speak to him?’

‘No, but Lizetta often says that companies are usually quite happy to adopt equal opportunities policies, but whether their doing so has any real effect is difficult to determine....’

‘Don’t give up on account of this. That bigot will have won if you do. Give it another month or so. Look, for god’s sake don’t say a word about this to anyone here – my wife meets me at the office sometimes – but Lizetta and I are hiring a cottage up in Scotland in February. Why don’t you come and stay with us for the weekend?’

Vincent’s support did make me feel better. Nothing might come of his hoped-for weekend away with Lizetta, but the invitation to join them was kind. ‘A break would be nice, but wouldn’t I be rather in the way?’

‘Nonsense. You’ve played host to us at the hotel, if you spend a weekend with us we’ll be taking our turn, that’s all. My main problem is coming up with a good excuse for the wife.’

On the occasions when he and Lizetta had come to the hotel for Sunday dinner he told her that he was meeting a business associate at the airport, but a convincing excuse for a whole weekend away would be far more difficult. The affair sometimes seemed terribly precarious. At the hotel they ate Sunday dinner with Darren and me, and then spent a few hours together between hotel sheets, twice in one of the guest rooms and once, when all the rooms were taken, on the futon in my flat downstairs, like a couple of teenagers with strict parents making love at a friend’s house.