After a short pause, Bérnard says, ‘Okay.’ And then, feeling obscurely that he should ask, ‘Why not?’
The man is still smiling. ‘It leaks, you see,’ he says. ‘It leaks into the lobby. So please don’t use it. I hope you understand.’
Bérnard nods and says, ‘Sure. Okay.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ the man says.
When he has left, Bérnard has a look at the bathroom. It is a windowless shaft with a toilet, a sink, a metal nozzle in the wall over the toilet and what seems to be an associated tap — which is presumably the unusable shower — a flaky drain in the middle of the floor, and a sign in Greek, and also in Russian, Bérnard thinks, of which the only thing he can understand are the numerous exclamation marks. He switches off the light.
Sitting on one of the single beds, he starts to feel that it is probably unacceptable for him not to have access to a shower, and decides to speak to someone about it.
There is no one in the lobby, though, so after waiting for ten minutes, he leaves the hotel and starts to walk in what he thinks is the direction of the sea.
In addition to the shower, there is something else he feels might be unsatisfactory: he was sure the hotel was supposed to have a pool. Baudouin had talked about afternoons spent ‘vegging next to the pool’, had even sent him a link to a picture of it — the picture had shown what appeared to be some sort of aqua park, with a number of different pools and water slides, populated by smiling people. The whole thing had seemed, from the picture, to be more or less next to the sea.
And that was another thing.
The hotel was advertised as five minutes’ walk from the sea, yet he has been trudging for at least double that through the desolate heat and is only just passing the Lidl.
In fact, to walk to the sea takes half an hour.
Once there he hangs about for a while — stands at the landward margin of a brown beach, thick with sun umbrellas down to the listless flop of the surf.
He has a pint in a pub hung with Union Jacks and England flags, and advertising English football matches, and then walks slowly back to his hotel. The Lidl is easy to find: there are signs for it throughout the town. And from the Lidl he is able, with only one or two wrong turnings, to find the Hotel Poseidon.
In the hot lobby he walks up to the desk, where there is now someone on duty, intending to talk about the shower situation and the lack of a swimming pool on the premises.
It is the smiling man, who says, ‘Good afternoon, sir. There is a message for you.’
‘For me?’
‘For you, sir.’ The smiling man — middle-aged, with a lean, tanned face — pushes a slip of paper across the desk.
It is a handwritten note:
Dropped by — you weren’t in. I’ll be in Waves from 5 if you wanna meet up and talk things through. Leif
Bérnard looks up at the smiling man’s kind, avuncular face.
‘Are you sure this is for me?’ he asks.
Still smiling kindly, the man nods.
Looking at the note again, Bérnard asks him if he knows where Waves is.
It is near the sea, the man tells him, and explains how to get there. ‘It’s a popular place with young people,’ he says.
Bérnard thanks him. It is already five, and he is about to set off again when he remembers the shower, and turns back. He does not know exactly how to put it, how to express his dissatisfaction. He says, uncertainly, ‘Listen, um. The shower…’
Immediately, as soon as the word shower has been spoken, the smiling man says, ‘The problem will be sorted out tomorrow.’ For the first time, he is not smiling. He looks very serious. His eyes are full of apology. ‘I’m very sorry, sir.’
‘Okay,’ Bérnard says. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the man says again, this time with a small deferential smile.
‘There is one other thing,’ Bérnard says, emboldened.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘There is a swimming pool?’
The man’s expression turns sad, almost mournful. ‘At the moment, no, sir, there is not,’ he says. He starts to explain the situation — something about a legal dispute with the apartments next door — until Bérnard interrupts him, protesting mildly that the hotel had been sold to him as having a pool, so it seems wrong that there isn’t one.
The smiling man says, ‘We have an arrangement with the Hotel Vangelis, sir.’
There is a moment of silence in the oppressive damp heat of the lobby.
‘An arrangement?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What sort of arrangement?’
The arrangement turns out to be that for ten euros a day inmates of the Poseidon can use the pool facilities of the Hotel Vangelis, which are extensive — the aqua park pictured on the Poseidon’s website, and also in the leaflet which the smiling man is now pressing into Bérnard’s hand.
The smiling man has a moustache, Bérnard notices at that point. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Thank you. What time is supper?’
‘Seven o’clock, sir.’
‘And where?’
‘In the dining room.’ The smiling man points to a glass door on the other side of the lobby. Dirty yellow curtains hang on either side of the door. Next to the door there is an empty lectern. The room on the other side of the door is dark.
—
‘You wanna party, yeah?’ Leif asks, smiling lazily, as Bérnard, with a perspiring Keo, the local industrial lager, takes a seat opposite him.
Bérnard nods. ‘Of course,’ he says, fairly seriously.
A tall, tanned Icelander, only a few years older than Bérnard, Leif turned out to be the company rep.
Now he is telling Bérnard about the night life of Protaras. He is talking about some nightclub — Jesters — and the details of a happy-hour offer there. ‘And then three cocktails for the price of two from seven till eight,’ he says. ‘Take advantage of it. Like I told the others, it’s one of the best offers in the resort.’
‘Okay,’ Bérnard says.
Leif is drinking a huge smoothie. He keeps talking about ‘the others’, and Bérnard wonders whether he missed some prearranged meeting that no one told him about.
Who were these ‘others’?
‘Kebabs,’ Leif says, as if it were a section heading. ‘The best place is Porkies, okay? It’s just over there.’ He takes his large splayed hand from the back of his shaved head and points up the street. Bérnard looks and sees an orange sign: Porkies.
‘Okay,’ he says.
They are sitting on the terrace of Waves, he and Leif. Inside, music thumps. Although it is only just six, there are already plenty of drunk people about. A drinking game is in progress somewhere, with lots of excitable shouting.
‘It’s open twenty-four hours,’ Leif says, still talking about Porkies.
‘Okay.’
‘And be careful — the hot sauce is hot.’
He says this so seriously that Bérnard thinks he must be joking and laughs.
Just as seriously, though, Leif says, ‘It is a really fucking hot sauce.’ He tips the last of his smoothie into his mouth. There is a sort of very faint disdain in the way he speaks to Bérnard. His attention always seems vaguely elsewhere; he keeps slowly turning his head to look up and down the street, which is just starting to acquire its evening hum, though the sun is still shining, long-shadowedly.
‘So that’s about it,’ he says. He has the air of a man who gets laid effortlessly and often. Indeed, there is something post-coital about his exaggeratedly laid-back manner. Bérnard is intimidated by him. He nods and has a sip of his beer.
‘You here with some mates?’ Leif asks him.
‘No, uh…’
‘On your own?’