Ester looks at the man lying asleep at her side. He is turned towards her, the ends of his fingers resting on her arm, just touching her, his butterfly still reaching for her spoiling rose. He has a crumb of egg yolk in the stubble at the corner of his mouth. She moves away, and his fingertips slip from her skin.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, she leans down and gathers her clothes from the floor. She puts them on, picking off hairs.
His jeans lie tangled at the end of the bed and she reaches for them, going through his pockets and finding a packet of cigarettes and a red Bic lighter. She takes a cigarette to the open window to light it, leaning her bare elbows on the sill and watching the people going by down below. When she exhales, her smoke puffs out over their heads like bad weather.
Dropping the burning cigarette end out of the window, not waiting to see it land, to see the sparks as it hits the pavement, she turns away. She pauses in front of a full-length mirror to tidy her hair and her face, the smeared pink of her lipstick. Then, slipping her feet into her flats, she leaves the room.
She is a few steps away from the still-closing door when she sees Bernard arrive at the top of the stairs at the other end of the corridor. He looks her way, sees her, and holds up the rubber gloves which she left on the bar beside her tonic bottle. She walks steadily towards him, takes the gloves and thanks him, and then fetches the cleaning cart she has already sent up in the lift. Wheeling it into the next bedroom, room six, she is aware of Bernard watching her before turning and going back down the stairs to the bar.
Ester goes first into the small en suite bathroom and picks up the used towels which have been left damp on the floor. She sprays disinfectant onto a cloth and wipes down the toilet, pours bleach into the bowl. She cleans the bath, pulling a clump of hair from the plughole. Rinsing her cloth and squirting more disinfectant, she polishes the sink and the tooth glass. She mops the lino, straightens the shower curtain, puts out clean towels and complimentary soap.
In the bedroom, she strips the sheet from the bed, shakes it out and inspects it and then smooths it over the mattress again. She turns over the pillows, plumping them up. She wipes down the laminate furniture, hoovers the carpet and sprays the room with air freshener. As she unplugs the vacuum cleaner, she hears footsteps in the corridor, heavy shoes coming from the far end, passing the door of the room she is in and going down the stairs.
She centres the vase of plastic flowers on the dressing table and puts a sachet of instant coffee, an individual portion of UHT milk and a packet of two plain biscuits by the kettle and a mint on one of the pillows.
She pushes her cleaning trolley out into the corridor and down to the far end, fetching clean bedding from her linen cupboard. She opens the door to room ten and finds the messy bed vacated, the bathroom empty.
Downstairs, the question mark steps through the door leading from the guest rooms into the bar. Thinking about having another drink but deciding against it, he crosses the room and exits into the street, into the midday heat, walking away in the shade. Bernard, standing behind the bar, watches him go.
Ester is expecting a Mr Futh to arrive in time for lunch, and a honeymoon couple around four. The rooms are ready and she has asked the kitchen to prepare a plate of cold meats for Mr Futh. Fetching herself a measure of gin and a fresh bottle of tonic from behind the bar, she sits down on her stool and waits for her guests to arrive.
CHAPTER THREE. Beef and Onion
‘Do you ever get a bad feeling about something?’ says Carl. ‘A bad feeling about something that’s going to happen?’
‘Sure,’ says Futh. ‘I used to get panic attacks on aeroplanes.’
‘I’m not keen on flying,’ says Carl. ‘I was once on a plane and had a really uneasy feeling and had to get off again. I don’t like being underground either. I avoid the tube and the Channel Tunnel.’
‘One time,’ says Futh, ‘I was flying to New York and while the plane was taking off I couldn’t stop imagining there being a fire or a terrorist on board and not being able to escape.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, nothing. It was fine, you know. I used a relaxation technique.’
Carl frowns and says, ‘But I mean, do you ever sense that something’s going to happen and then it does?’
‘Oh yes,’ says Futh. ‘Last Christmas, I visited my dad and his girlfriend, and I just knew he was going to be in a bad mood, and he was.’
Futh drives forward, off the ferry, following the car in front. They are waved on by officials in orange waterproofs. They sail through customs, passing others whose cars are being emptied, and through passport control. Then they are off, away.
Futh says, ‘And I know I’ll spend next Christmas with them too, and it will be just as bad.’
Carl nods, but he is still frowning. ‘Why don’t you spend the week in Utrecht with me and my mother?’
‘A whole week?’ asks Futh. ‘At Christmas?’
‘I mean this week,’ says Carl. ‘I’m attending this conference midweek but my mother would look after you.’
‘Oh,’ says Futh, and he is thoughtful for a moment before saying, ‘That’s very kind of you, but I have all my accommodation booked.’
‘My mother would love to have you stay and I’ll only be gone for a few days, I’ll be back on Friday evening. We could travel together on the Saturday. Are you on the late ferry?’
Futh says that he is and again he muses for a while before saying that he would like to but cannot.
Carl is quiet. He seems troubled and Futh wonders whether Carl is offended.
‘I’ll see you on the ferry though?’ says Futh.
Carl gives the slightest nod.
Futh hopes that his driving is not bothering Carl. In explanation, as they get onto the motorway, Futh mentions to Carl that he has not been driving very long and has not done much motorway driving. ‘And I’ve never driven abroad,’ he says. He accelerates, moving out to overtake the thundering lorries, his small car trembling in the middle lane.
Prior to taking a driving test in his forties, Futh had relied mainly on public transport and hitchhiking. When Futh left home, his father sold the family house and moved in with his sister, Futh’s Aunt Frieda. Futh, visiting, would hitchhike there and back and Frieda, who did not approve of hitchhiking, warned him to watch out for strange men.
‘And strange women,’ added his father.
‘Just be careful,’ said Frieda.
Futh thought that she worried about him unduly. When he was little, when he climbed on rocks, when he was reckless, trying to be like the other boys, she would say, ‘You’ll fall. You’ll hurt yourself.’ And then he would indeed fall and hurt himself and she would tell him, ‘You’re an accident waiting to happen.’
When she took him to the swimming pool, she made him wear armbands even though he told her he could swim. Sometimes he went to the river with Kenny, and later he went on his own. Frieda warned him against swimming in the river, because of the current and the weeds and the rocks, and there were parasites and diseases and God knows what in that river, she said, and every now and again someone drowned. When he last saw Frieda, some weeks before coming to Germany, she asked him not to go, not to drive all that way, not to walk all that way, not to go on his own. She telephoned the day he left to warn him to look after his feet, to keep his passport safe, to be careful. ‘Stay away,’ she said, ‘from that river.’