Читать книгу Terminus: A Story from the collection, I Am Heathcliff - Louise Doughty - Страница 7

TWO YOUNG WOMEN ARE standing in a hotel lobby, on either side of a polished-wood reception desk. They are staring at each other.

It is a Tuesday in February. Outside the hotel, lorries bump and thump along a dual carriageway. Beyond the dual carriageway, there is a wide esplanade, and beyond the esplanade a beach, where grey and brown waves chop against the pebbles, and a red warning flag furls and corrugates in the wind before straightening with a snap.

‘Do you have any form of identification?’ the young woman behind the desk asks politely, lightly enough, but the thick ticking of the clock on the wall behind her makes the query sound emphatic.

The hotel lobby is empty, apart from the two women. Victorian-era, once very grand, it has a vaulted ceiling and curving staircase, but the carpet is frayed now, the furniture worn. From the bar and restaurant on the other side of the lobby comes the faint smell of disinfectant and cabbage, even though no one has cooked cabbage in this hotel for over fifty years.

The reception desk is shiny oak; the brass clock ticks loudly; the walls are painted a leaden green colour that hints at a sanatorium. At the end of the reception desk is a white plastic orchid in a brown plastic pot.

Who are you?

Good question.

The other young woman, the one in front of the desk, is called Maria. Maria has never been asked for identification at a hotel before, but then she has never shown up like this, walking in off the street with no luggage, a small backpack, and a stare in her eyes. A beanie hat is pulled low over her black curls, and there are shadows beneath that stare. The receptionist is slender, with a neat navy jacket, and fair hair in an immaculate ponytail. Her skin is very fine, the only make-up she wears is a slick of pale lipstick. Maria knows how she looks to this young woman. They are each other’s inverse.

Maria reaches into the backpack and hands over a driving licence. The receptionist glances at it and hands it back. She doesn’t write anything down. Maria scans the receptionist’s face for signs of suspicion or hostility, but her expression is a calm, professional blank. Maria thinks how habituated she now is to interpretation, how experienced at watching a face.

In high season the room the receptionist offers – a deluxe double with a sea view – would be over two hundred pounds a night, but it’s a Tuesday in February, and Maria gets it for eighty-five. Breakfast is included.

‘Would you like to pay now or at checkout?’ the receptionist asks.

Maria has two credit cards that she has never used: when she applied for the mortgage on her flat three years ago, the broker told her it would be good for her credit rating to have a couple of cards, or even a small loan, as long as she made the repayments on time. The mortgage companies liked evidence of an ability to service debt. This amused Maria at the time, the idea of a company thinking that being in debt already made her a more attractive proposition. She never uses the cards, and, as she pulls one out of her purse, she takes a quick look to check that she has even bothered to sign on the back. She hands it over. That’s how easy it is, she thinks. She can’t use the joint account, but she has the credit cards. The bill won’t arrive for a month.

Why didn’t I think of this before?

The deluxe room is medium-sized and has mushroom-coloured walls. There is a huge sash window, almost floor to ceiling, that looks straight out over a narrow ornamental balcony with rusting ironwork, across the dual carriage-way to the sea. Maria drops her backpack, sits on the bed, and stares at a distant oil rig, blurred against the horizon, the brown-and-grey water still chopping and falling, the red flag furling and snapping repeatedly. After a while, she closes her eyes, begins to breathe deeply, and falls into a short but intense sleep.

When she wakes it is still daylight: just. She rises from the bed, switches the kettle on, makes a cup of tea, and returns to the bed, sitting upright and sipping the tea while she stares at the flag, the oil rig, the rearing waves. She thinks to herself, quite distinctly, So this is what it feels like, a breakdown. She thinks, To get the full benefit, I must not attempt any decisions, not even small ones.

She sips her tea. She watches the flag.