Читать книгу Sex, Lies & Crazy People - John Hickman - Страница 4

As born and bred Londoners, we tried to maintain sunny dispositions. My initial search was close to home but dense populations, racial tensions, and riots soon led to a lost elegance.

I told Dad. “London resembles the quality of newspaper left out too long in the sun.

Sought-after leafy suburbs like Kensington and Bayswater are too pricey. Brixton and

Notting Hill, although less expensive, are not places where white people want to be.”

Reluctantly Dad agreed. “You’ll have to look further afield.”

I’d found a few possibilities dotted around Kent and Sussex. Neglected country pubs with a few bedrooms to rent. Dad soon shot me down in flames. “They’re just not big enough, Son. We’d take up too many rooms ourselves.”

Drowning in the task he’d given me I paced the room trailing cigarette smoke like a steam engine. “But everything any good is too expensive, and anything affordable is too small, or somewhere you don’t like.”

After another diatribe from Dad I spotted a smaller advertisement for a private hotel in London Road, Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

He reacted well. “Could be our ideal world. No riots, no gangs of white thugs and no black people.”

“The sort of place where if you wear a loud shirt you’ll be labelled a revolutionary,” Gramps added.

Situated between a church and a pub, the hotel was the biggest I’d seen. As a bonus it had its own large car park out front. An impressive four stories high it looked dowdy.

The upper floor window frames were painted a hideous red, which didn’t match the rest of the building. Overall it looked unloved and uncared for. Inside was worse, but spacious with more than thirty bedrooms.

A few elderly tenants were living out their twilight years in what could only be

described as cheap, cold comfort.

I ticked another box.

In the basement were disused staff quarters. An old fashioned kitchen sported

equipment that had been there since Queen Victoria was a girl. Cooked food moved to the ground floor dining room in an antiquated pulley operated dumb waiter. Nearby, at its heart stood another antiquity. A coal-fired boiler that creaked, groaned and rattled like a ship in its death-throws. I half expected Vincent Price to turn up any minute.

Upstairs, appalling grunge accumulated over the years disguised underfoot what once had been grand Axminster carpets. I poked at blackened sludge with the toe of my shoe, and thought, incontinence here a distinct possibility.

This was more like a Dickensian doss house than a private hotel. Its sash windows hadn’t been opened in years, which was a shame because this decrepit Victorian edifice had once been a Grand Duchess. Now it was as if she was waiting for something dramatic to happen—a match perhaps?

If the building had a pulse it was barely alive but had I achieved the impossible?

Knowing that Dad wanted a hotel run-down enough to negotiate favourable terms, then how good was this?

I hurried home.

Gramps was semi-supportive. “Between a church and a pub, you say,” he grinned. “Most bases are covered then.”

Gran glared. “Put a cemetery next door to the church and it could be a wheel-barrow job.”

Dad staved off her negativity with a cheery smile. “What’s a church if not for lost

causes, Mother?”

He turned to me. “Had I known how well you’d turn out, Son, I’d have been nicer to you when you were a child.”

I beamed with pleasure.

The property owners were shrewd Jewish businessmen. They refused to negotiate with me because I was under twenty-one years of age but agreed to meet Dad on site.

I felt crushed with disappointment at being left out at the final stage but met their realtor

instead. He had good teeth, a well-cut suit and a convincing line in bullshit. The only man in London with a suntan; I noticed it was beginning to smudge the collar of his custom-made shirt.

“The landlords are prepared to commit to a new twenty-year lease,” he gushed with his campaign poster smile.

I ticked another pre-selection box. I’d found a lease.

The hit by the Seekers, I’ll Never Find another You was on the wireless. I wandered about not wanting to get too excited should Dad’s project fall through.

When the landlords waived money upfront in lieu of £2000 per annum rental, payable six months in advance instead of twelve, I ticked my final pre-selection box.

I’d found a hotel Dad could buy—without any money!