Goodmans Hotel - 7. Chapter 7

The daily onslaught at work prevented me from brooding, but the true nature of the change from being half of a couple to being what might optimistically be called unattached or available became clear within a week. The word desperate might be a better one for my state of mind. Tom, evidently, had tired of me, but my notions before his departure that I might be tiring of him had been delusions.

At Lindler & Haliburton a myriad of technical and staffing issues filled my days and left me tired in the evening and at weekends. Peter’s absence in the US made work more predictable, probably less stressful, but less interesting too. He was anxious to keep up with office politics and retain as much influence in the firm as possible, and we exchanged e-mails every couple of weeks.

He flew back to London for the quarterly meetings, and on the first of these return visits invited Lizetta and me for lunch. Caroline and Vincent, a new client he had recruited at the last Hotel and Catering Exhibition where the firm now had a small stand, joined us at the restaurant. At first Vincent’s presence puzzled me, business lunches with clients usually being separate events from social meals with colleagues or friends. Momentary but very expressive eye contact between him and Lizetta after we had ordered our meal revealed that to her he was more than a business client with us to be entertained. He was not a handsome man, balding and a bit overweight, but he had a warm friendly smile and an easy confident manner.

Later, when we were on our own, she pretended that their affair was my responsibility, saying that they would never have met had I not encouraged Peter to involve the firm in the Exhibitions. They lunched together a couple of times and arranged to meet for dinner a couple of weeks later, and after it she took him back to her flat. He ran a management consultancy specialising in work for the tourist industry and was married, but not – according to Lizetta – happily.

Caroline, wearing a charcoal business suit tailored perfectly to her figure, sat next to me on my right. Events at the Hotel des Amis, now over a year ago, were clearly forgotten. After the first course she took my hand in hers for a few moments and said she thought it was unfair that so many good-looking men were gay, blatantly teasing Peter by making up to me in front of him. Pleased to be able to make a fresh start with her I made ambiguous comments about not wanting to be stereotyped and saying that, like a lot of gay men, I found some women very attractive. For a while Peter ignored us.

As usual he dominated the conversation. He pressed Lizetta for information about the old codgers and whether any of them was planning retirement. He had heard that one of them was going to hospital every week for outpatient treatment. ‘Anything serious?’ he enquired, obviously hoping that it was.

‘That’s not for me to say, or for you to ask,’ Lizetta answered.

‘Oh come on, what’s ailing him? Gout, heart condition?’

‘None of those things.’

‘What is it then? Bladder?’

‘You won’t get anything out of me. You may as well drop the subject.’

‘We’ve eliminated a few things. What’s left? Cancer? Come on, we’re all dying to hear the grisly details.’

Caroline intervened. ‘Lizetta is quite right to say nothing. Anyway Mark and I don’t want to hear about all this, and I’m sure Vincent doesn’t either.’

‘Bah! All right, let’s hear from one of you then. Mark, sitting there flirting with my wife, what’s happening to you in that fast moving high-tech world of yours?’

‘For some unknown reason the IT Unit’s work has been remarkably stable for the past month or two,’ I said, daring to hint that his absence might be the cause.

‘You sure? In the States change, not stability, is normal. Except for the very biggest partnerships which have their own IT consultancy arms, the middle-rankers are shutting down their own IT Units and contracting the work out. Could be the new trend, saves employing a gang of expensive technical experts who claim they have to be there for reasons nobody else understands. If it’s happening in the States, won’t be long before it happens over here. Maybe you should think about a move to one of the companies taking on the work. Jump aboard now before the bandwagon starts rolling.’

This warning may have been typical Peter bravado, but there had been a few articles in business computer magazines recently about companies doing exactly what he described. City firms were constantly being reorganised, merging, or shifting away from old static markets into new expanding ones. We had to adapt in a world of frequent reorganisation where people often changed from job to job. ‘Thank you for raising the subject,’ I said ironically.

Caroline came to my aid: ‘The demand for IT staff is as high as ever, at the moment they’re the last people who should worry.’ She looked directly at Peter. ‘Would it be possible for us to act as though we have come out to enjoy each other’s company over a meal, not to bully everyone into submission?’

‘Hmph! What are we going to talk about then? Shopping?’

Vincent diplomatically began an anecdote about a recent assignment his company had completed. The owner of a guest house in a small Midlands town had asked them to recommend ways to improve business. The consultants who went to investigate discovered that he created problems for himself by finding fault with his guests and constantly putting them right, but was completely unaware that by doing so he was putting people off. The man boasted about getting the better of his guests, proudly telling of an occasion when shopping in the local supermarket he saw a couple of his clients buying food; he followed them back to the hotel and used a shortcut to sneak in through the back entrance to await their return. As they came in through the front door he challenged them by asking if they knew that guests were not allowed to take food up to their rooms for environmental health reasons. When they pretended not to have any food with them he asked to look in their bag.

Vincent’s gentle humorous manner, the way he smiled and chuckled as he spoke, infected us all. The guest house proprietor, he said, also had a dog, a neurotic terrier that would growl and snap at people at the front door. In the breakfast room he allowed it to pester hotel guests for titbits. The dog would alternately whine pitifully and growl, and if anyone was brave enough to proffer a scrap of food it would snatch suddenly at their fingers leaving teeth marks on their hand. The most difficult thing about the assignment was finding a way to explain to the owner, without causing offence, that he himself was the cause of his lack of bookings.

Vincent’s genial way of speaking made even Peter relax. Nevertheless the remarks about the possible new trend in computer services were probably right. Why should an outside company not be hired to replace the IT Unit, much as Ferns and Foliage were contracted to supply the decorative plants? Whether such a change would be beneficial, no one could know for sure until afterwards. Yet if rival firms began to put out their IT work Lindler & Haliburton would almost certainly follow their lead.

The following Sunday in Chiswick I mentioned the subject to Andrew over dinner. ‘What would happen to your job in practice?’ he asked. ‘Presumably the company that took it on would need experienced staff and you could find a job with them.’

‘Possibly, yes. And someone at Lindler & Haliburton would be needed to deal with the contractor, making sure a good service was being provided, costs were tightly controlled, authorising necessary changes and so on. But that would be a less senior job than the one I have now. Otherwise it might mean redundancy.’

‘It could be your opportunity to make a real change. What sort of redundancy payment would they give you?’

‘I don’t know. Redundancy is always a risk in the City. Worrying about it could make you neurotic. You’d never withstand all the pressures if you let vague doubts about the future get to you. The firm’s IT Unit is actually quite efficient. The current arrangement may well be the most cost effective.’

‘Maybe, but you’ll have a major influence over any decision. With Peter out of the way you can probably make the arguments for and against look as good or bad as you want. Is there anyone except Peter who knows enough to challenge you?’

‘He’s not completely left the scene, and he could be back in a year’s time. Contracting out the IT services could take longer to arrange than that.’

‘You must control developments as far as you can. The big questions are do you really want to make a complete break and go into business for yourself, and, if so, doing what? A hotel for instance?’

‘You’re going miles and miles ahead of me. Why a hotel, except that you’re keen on the idea? Another job that makes use of my current skills might be the best thing. Anyway, what about the people who work for me?’

‘They’ll find other work, or take redundancy like you.’

‘That may not be so easy for some of them – they’re not all ideal employees.’

‘You and that friend of yours in Personnel will do what you can for them. You have to think of what’s best for you. Even the flowers in the meadow compete with one another to have room to grow.’

The possibility of me setting up a small hotel had somehow become an occasional topic for speculation. Perhaps I had unintentionally encouraged him in the idea by telling him about Georges and the Hotel des Amis, and about a weekend I had spent in Brighton some months after starting work with Lindler & Haliburton, driving down in the then newly acquired Vauxhall to stay in a pleasant bed and breakfast that advertised in the gay press. Nothing exceptional happened, but somehow everything was so enjoyable, the guest house proprietors were friendly, and for once, there and later in a gay bar, I fell easily into conversation with interesting people. I picked up a handsome, sensitive, intelligent Canadian in a club on the Saturday night, – only a one-night stand but somehow an exceptionally happy, satisfying one-night stand – and in the morning when we sat together at the breakfast table, the man who served us discreetly pointed out, with a gentle encouraging smile, the note at the foot of the breakfast menu saying that additional meals would be charged at so much per head.

But opening a guest house was perhaps, for me, merely a subject for amusing discussion, an imaginary escape route when pressures at Lindler & Haliburton were heavy, no more than an occasional pleasant day dream. Providing somewhere to stay that was comfortable and clean for gay men visiting London, making them welcome and hearing something of their lives was appealing, but new businesses set up by inexperienced people usually fail. There was a high risk of bankruptcy.

Yet the idea must have begun to take hold. At the last Hotel and Catering Exhibition a fresh-faced young salesman in a brand new suit persuaded me to buy a subscription to the trade magazine The Caterer and Hotelkeeper. If what lay ahead for me at Lindler & Haliburton was what had happened to my old boss in the IT Unit, a growing dissatisfaction which worsened with age, even festering into bitterness at wasting my life there, a radical change now while most of my working life still lay ahead would make sense.

Peter gave me another little stimulus to think about my future by sending me a copy of an article from the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of corporations concentrating on their ‘core business’ and contracting out most of their support services. Not surprisingly the author was a director of a company which provided office services and computer systems to several major US corporations, and predictably he made all he could of the benefits whilst skimming over potential drawbacks. In a clever piece of low key marketing he concluded that such arrangements might not suit everyone, but recommended that all organisations, private and public, evaluate the use of outside service companies as an option. How difficult it would be to argue against that, and once an evaluation began the door would be open to persuasive people such as himself.

Peter’s motive was not one of animosity towards me – he was careful to explain that he wanted me to be aware of the trend rather than be surprised and overtaken by developments – but what if he was discussing the subject with others in the firm? The same day, as though collaborating with Peter to spur me into action, Andrew rang to suggest having another look at Goodmans Villa, the house he had taken me to see almost two years ago. It was no longer on the market but he thought if we approached the owner she might be willing to lease it to us.

‘What started you thinking about that place again?’

‘I happened to pass it the other day and rang the estate agent for a chat. There would be no harm in making a few enquiries. If we could get a lease on it for say ten or twenty years we should be able to make it pay.’

‘There’s still a job for me here at the moment. Maybe the hotel is a long way in the future, something for my retirement.’

‘What harm would there be in having another look at the place, if I can arrange it? If you don’t want it maybe I could raise some money and let it out as flats. That’s what it’s being used for at the moment.’

‘London is full of flats and hotels. What’s special about that particular house? Why now?’

‘Why not now? We may be able to do a good deal on the house. There is an impasse between the property company that has bought up half the neighbourhood and the owner of Goodmans Villa who doesn’t want to see them tear it apart. If she would give us a long enough lease at the right price, we could make a viable business out of it. There’s nothing to lose by going to see it again. Since we last went the flats have been re-let, but the agent will take us for a look round.’

He seemed determined, and no good reason to refuse came to mind. After fixing a date for the visit he surprised me further by saying that Tom would be back and suggesting he come with us. He knew the circumstances of our break-up, and should have been aware that I would be reluctant. With sham indifference I said, ‘Why should he want to come? He’s not interested in buying it, is he?’

‘He could be useful – his practical experience of plumbing and wiring – but if you’d rather he didn’t come...’

Giving away my hurt feelings I said, ‘If he’s working for you again and you really want to bring him I suppose it’s your decision. Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t need to be there...’

‘Don’t think too harshly of him. Tom’s no saint, but the two of you can be friends, can’t you? Put up with him for my sake, even if he’s out of favour with you.’

The estate agent arranged to collect us from the garden centre by car. Arriving fifteen minutes early, I found Tom and Andrew together in the staff room upstairs and responded sullenly to Tom’s greeting, avoiding looking at him. To my annoyance, Andrew excused himself saying he had to make a ’phone call, leaving Tom and me together sitting beside the table used by the garden centre staff during their breaks.

‘You been all right?’ he asked.

I would have preferred silence. ‘So-so.’ Making an effort to be polite I asked: ‘How was Manchester?’

‘Did OK, plenty of work.’

Annoyed even more by his casual manner I said pointedly: ‘I tried to ring you.’

‘I was staying in a caravan on the site, working every day except two. It wasn’t easy to get to a ’phone. Hardly saw Manchester, none of the gay bars, nothing like that.’

‘They wouldn’t let you out to send a postcard?’

‘Wasn’t like that.’ He looked up, his face miserable. ‘I thought about calling you but wasn’t sure what to say. You might have been angry with me.’

What was he talking about? ‘Why should I be angry with you?’

‘Andrew’s told me things. I thought you ought to have a chance to find somebody who would be more like your sort of people.’

Had our break up come about because of some off-hand remark of mine to Andrew about Tom and I not having all that much in common? What could Andrew have said to him? ‘What do you mean, my sort of people? What sort of people are they?’

‘You know what I mean. This isn’t easy for me.’

‘Do you think it’s easy for me?’

‘You don’t know, Mark, you don’t know half of it.’

‘Half of what?’

The estate agent’s arrival brought this awkward exchange to an end. We went down to the car, and I sat in the passenger seat to avoid being next to Tom, with whom I now felt absolutely furious. Had he ditched me over some stupid misunderstanding? A lack of shared interests was something we could have done something about. We could have increased the stock of things that we had in common by going to new places and finding new interests together.

When we reached Goodmans Villa and walked up to the front door he hung back. In the hall a scattering of advertising pamphlets littered the floor. The agent, Andrew and I stepped over them, but he stopped to pick them up. I watched him, thinking: you fool, what are you doing that for, picking up other people’s rubbish?

He straightened up abruptly, almost as though he had heard my thoughts, and returned my gaze, making me ashamed of thinking of him so sneeringly. What good would come from being angry with him? If there had been a failing it was probably mine. Why had I not talked to him about finding more activities we could share, rather than complaining to Andrew about us not having enough in common? For all the differences between us, Tom was in every way my sort of person, and should never have been allowed to doubt it.

He was looking around the empty hall wondering where to put the papers he had collected. I went over to him, took them from him, tidied them into a neat bundle and put them at the side of one of the stairs.

He avoided looking at me, but my eyes were now constantly drawn towards him. He must have showered and shaved immediately before coming out. His black curly hair seemed light and fluffy, and his denim shirt curved over the contours of his muscular shoulders. He wore new jeans, and my fingertips could almost sense the rough texture of the dark material.

I turned away from him, reminding myself we were there to look at the house, and tried to act calmly and sensibly. My hunger for him had become too strong; it engulfed me. Standing close to him made me sweat and tingle inwardly. My hands seemed to develop a will of their own and wanted to reach out to touch him. Paying attention to what Andrew and the estate agent were saying was impossible.

After a brief look around the ground floor, where the tenant was out, we descended the dark staircase to the basement. The ‘garden’ flat remained unoccupied and had deteriorated since our last visit. When the agent opened the door at the top of the stairs the smell was awful, much worse than before. In a corner of the back room were a twisted pile of bedding, two large holdalls packed to bursting, an orangeade bottle half full of dubious liquid and some festering take-away food cartons. The lock and security bolts of the door to the garden had been forced, bare wood showing where the frame had split apart. The person who had been dossing in the room was absent.

‘You’d think one of the tenants would have let me know about this. One of them must have seen or heard something. I suppose now I’ll have to call the police.’

Tom said: ‘No, don’t do that, what harm’s he done? There’s no call for that.’

Andrew agreed: ‘He’s right, what are the police going do about it? They can hardly put a twenty-four hour watch on the place.’

The agent shook his head. ‘I’m thinking about insurance. If there’s any damage, if he – or they – cause a fire or steal anything from upstairs, the insurers will want to know that the police were informed straight away.’

‘The insurers will know only what you tell them. Tom will put the man’s things outside and board up the door; we’ll check tomorrow to see if he’s moved on. If not we’ll let you know and you can call the police.’

The agent shrugged. ‘If you’re volunteering to do the work...’

‘Yes,’ Tom confirmed, ‘you forget about it. I’ll bring some polythene sheeting, put the bedding and the holdalls outside and cover them up, and I’ll make the garden door secure. That’ll be the last of him.’

We moved on to the front basement room where black mould had spread extensively over the walls. ‘Is anything being done about the damp?’ Andrew asked.

‘No. To tell you the truth I’ve been meaning to sort this garden flat out but haven’t got round to it. The damp proofing specialists are pretty good these days. They’d have a damp course put in and the replastering done in two or three weeks.’

Tom disagreed: ‘We’re not talking damp courses here. The soil at street level must come up four or five feet on the other side of that wall. Depending on how bad it is they might have to dig a trench outside, install a waterproof membrane and improve the drainage.’

‘There isn’t a problem here. We can get a free quote for the work from a specialist who’ll provide a twenty-year guarantee. Damp proofing is routine these days.’

We returned to the less sticky air of the ground floor and continued upwards. On the first floor, as with the ground floor rooms, having furniture in place gave a much better idea of their size. Each of the main rooms was big enough to divide into two twin-bedded hotel rooms with en suite facilities.

On the next floor up we met the tenant, a middle-aged woman who showed us her flat and talked all the time. She ushered us into the bathroom and said to the agent, ‘I know I mentioned it last time you came, but I’m sure the toilet is leaking. I’ve put a mat around the base but it’s always wet.’

‘As I told you, someone will be coming to look at it.’

Looking at the lavatory I thought I could see a fine crack running down the pedestal beneath the glaze, and bent down to look more closely. A few drops of moisture were visible. Tom came up beside me, standing so close that his hips were a couple of inches from my face. Turning my head slightly I could see the brown leather belt threaded through the loops of his jeans, and his shirt creasing where it disappeared into the waistband. My pulse quickened and my face flushed. The others had moved out into the hall.

After straightening up I felt dizzy. The very molecules of the air around me seemed energised by his presence. My state of arousal must have been visible. He said hoarsely but softly: ‘I think something’s give way.’

‘What?’

‘The toilet bowl or the connection with the drain. Something’s give way.’

‘Oh... Not very nice.’

‘It’s not healthy. That estate agent wants shooting.’

Going in front of him on our way out of the room I paused deliberately, making him bump into me. ‘Sorry.’

‘S’okay,’ he said softly. The smile he gave me, my first for so long, told me that his mood too had lifted. We followed Andrew and the agent back out onto the landing, where we paused at the foot of the narrow twisting staircase leading to the attic. From above came a familiar old piano tune from the twenties or thirties. ‘Sounds like they’re in. Do we need to bother with the attic rooms?’ the agent asked.

‘A quick look,’ Andrew decided. Tom and I followed, and I could not resist putting my hand on top of his on the stair rail as we went up. He looked back and smiled again. How desperately I hoped his desire for me had rekindled. Halfway up the bare wooden stairs was a tiny bathroom somehow squeezed into an area below part of the roof. At the top was a small square of landing barely big enough for two to stand, with the doors of two bedsits on either side of it. The agent knocked at the one on the left, but the sound reverberated so much that the doors on both sides opened in answer. On the right was a Middle-Eastern looking man of about thirty with a thin line of black moustache, and at the door on the left stood a boy who looked too young to be living on his own.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, lads, can we just have a quick look, if it’s not too inconvenient?’

The boy went back into his room and the music ceased abruptly; Andrew and the agent followed him, while Tom and I accepted a gesture of invitation into the room opposite. Text books with scientific diagrams were strewn around the table and bed, and on a cabinet was a partly disassembled computer. The tenant was unsmiling, resentful of our intrusion, and we glanced quickly around, directing our eyes upwards towards the ceiling as though checking for damp.

‘Something wrong with the computer?’ I asked.

‘I’m studying computers and electronics. Imperial College.’ After a pause he added ‘Darren has been playing his music very loud, sometimes in the night.’

‘Darren?’ He must have assumed I was someone to whom he could make a complaint. ‘Very late? Did it keep you awake?’

‘It makes it hard for me to study.’

‘Did you ask him to turn it down?’

He didn’t reply, but stood looking at us, obviously wanting us to go. ‘Sorry for disturbing you.’ Tom followed me out onto the landing.

The room opposite was smaller, perhaps only half as big. We could see Andrew sitting on the bed talking to the boy. The ceiling sloped down so much that he would have banged his head if he had sat up in bed suddenly in the night. The bed and a small bedside cabinet took up about half the floor space, and against the opposite wall was an ugly old fashioned wardrobe. In between was a little corridor of carpet. A chair, a wash basin and a small table with an electric kettle and a cooking ring occupied the space under the window. The boy had covered the walls of the room with posters, mostly of rock stars, but there were a few of American blues singers, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker and Bessie Smith. The indicator lights on his compact stereo system flickered to music that we could no longer hear. Andrew was interviewing him.

‘I think I know where you mean, a hamburger bar on the corner near the Underground station isn’t it? How long have you been there?’

‘Since I came to London; about four months.’

‘And before the hamburger place, where were you?’

‘I was at a school.’

‘Did you finish your exams?’

‘No, I left.’

‘Ah – and where was this?’

Tom and I glanced at each other, and then at the estate agent who raised his eyebrows. We all three stared in concert at Andrew trying to make him look round. He ignored us for several minutes before raising a hand in our direction, palm open, as though trying to deflect our collective gaze.

‘And how have you found the big city?’

‘It’s great. I could make some tea or coffee if you like. I’ve only got paper cups though.’

‘From work? Paper cups are fine by me,’ Andrew said.

The estate agent looked at his watch. ‘Sorry, Andrew, I have to go back to the office. Darren, what’s that I can see moving about over there?’ He nodded towards a small aquarium that stood on the bedside cabinet.

‘They’re my terrapins.’

‘You’re not allowed pets. You’ve been told.’

‘They don’t disturb anyone. Nobody knows they’re there.’

‘They’re against the rules. They’ll grow too big for that tank. Then what’s going to happen? You’ll have to—’

Andrew interrupted him. ‘Oh, if need be I expect I could find a place for them at the garden centre.’ He turned to the boy. ‘You could come in to feed them. Surely there’s no harm in them staying where they are for the moment. You’re right, we ought to get moving. Thanks for letting us see your room. Can’t say I eat a lot of burgers, but I hope we’ll see each other again sometime.’

At the estate agent’s office we had coffee while we looked at architects’ drawings of the house and at a file containing various leasing agreements and other papers. Andrew asked if there had been any more interest from the property company.

‘As before they seem to be stalled. They own the terrace and most of the mews, which have all been converted into modern flats, but if they could develop the whole site including Goodmans Villa and the adjoining house, with some new building at the back, they might have another thirty or forty units. The owner’s stubborn, they’ve offered the old lady well over the market value, but she won’t let them gut the place for sentimental reasons. You stand to do very nicely out of a lease if she’ll agree to one. When she dies, the heirs will probably want to sell up. They might buy the lease back from you at a premium, but whatever happens you should get a good return on your investment. You can’t lose.’

‘We’ve been thinking of turning it into a guest house. Renovation costs will be substantial, the place has been neglected for years. We need to have a shot at a business plan...’

When we were nearly ready to leave Andrew rang the garden centre to ask one of his staff to collect us. He had himself dropped off first at Biddulph Mansions, reminding Tom as he got out of the van of his promise to board up the basement of Goodmans Villa. We continued on to Tom’s flat, not needing to tell one another in words that we were impatient to make love. As soon as we were through the front door I wrapped myself around him. He pushed it shut and pressed me against the wall, leaning his weight against me and holding me tightly as though to stop me getting away. When he released me a little I edged sideways towards the bedroom; he weighed down on me again, rubbing himself against me but keeping me trapped against the wall, as though I had been trying to escape. After two more of these pretend captures and releases we reached the bedroom doorway.

As I stepped backwards into the room he pushed me onto the bed and lay on top of me. A minute later he left me briefly to relieve himself. Longing for his return I rocked myself slowly from side to side, this latest brief absence, after so many weeks apart and the hours of anticipation while we looked over the house, an agony. My desire for him was so intense that if he had spread his shirt and jeans out on the bed for me I could probably have made love to them.