Free Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach Page A

brother to fix the lethal electrics. She had emailed the previous guests and informed them that Myrtle House was reopening under new management, dogs welcome. She had set up a website, with a link to the tourist board and various cycling and rambling magazines. And now that the guests were arriving – in dribs and drabs, but these were early days – she laundered the sheets and cooked the breakfasts. At first Buffy had taken command in the kitchen but as black smoke poured out of the Raeburn Voda had elbowed him aside and done the job herself. ‘It’s not like cooking for your kids,’ she said. ‘Our customers are actually paying for this, you know.’
    So he had taken on the less taxing role of skivvy. After all, he was used to receiving orders from a director; as long as he hit his marks the two of them worked amicably as a team. And he remained mine host, meeting and greeting, serving at table and generally running the show. He liked a house full of people, it reminded him of the old days of his marriages.
    He could admit it now; the bachelor years at Blomfield Mansions had been bloody lonely. Now, when he locked up, he could almost feel his customers slumbering upstairs, warm mammals safe for the night. And though there were occasional complaints, for example the erratic hot water in the bathroom, so far these had been voiced in a mild, apologetic manner as if it were all the guests’ fault. How simple such complaints were, compared to the complex, passive-aggressive guilt trips laid on by his wives, or the strident accusations of his children!
    ‘I was saying to Iris, weren’t you in that thing?’
    ‘What thing?’ asked Buffy, pouring out the coffee.
    ‘That thing set in an old people’s home.’
    ‘No, silly,’ said Iris. ‘That was Michael Gambon.’
    It turned out that they were keen theatregoers. They passed a pleasant hour listening to Buffy’s reminiscences. How his old mate Eldon James, well in his cups, had gone to see a show only to realise, when the curtain went up, that he was supposed to be in it. How he himself, in his final public appearance, had played a bedridden patriarch and during one performance had fallen asleep.
    ‘Not that it mattered,’ he said. ‘It was a deathbed scene anyway. That’s the problem with being old, one gets the snuffing-it roles. Johnny Gielgud must have died fifty times before he finally shuffled off this mortal coil. At least he’d had some practice.’
    Outside the rain was still drumming on the veranda roof. Far off, the church clock struck twelve.
    ‘Time for a snort.’ Buffy got to his feet. ‘Glass of Pinot Grigio, anyone?’
    ‘Oh no, we couldn’t …’
    ‘Come on, keep me company.’
    The two women looked at each other. ‘We don’t usually drink in the middle of the day.’
    ‘That’s what they all say,’ said Buffy. The other one being
I don’t usually have a proper breakfast
. Those were always the guests who packed it away – sausages, black pudding, the full monty.
    ‘But don’t you have anything else to do?’ asked Freida.
    ‘No,’ said Buffy.
    ‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Iris. ‘And, well, we are on holiday, I suppose.’
    They all said that, too. Buffy returned with a bottle and glasses. Those who protested the most, he had discovered, always knocked it back the fastest. They settled down for a natter. It turned out that Iris had a brother who was going through a midlife crisis.
    ‘Earring, ponytail, the lot,’ she said. ‘And now he’s joined his son’s band, he plays the guitar … he wears this little waistcoat, and his
tummy
… Oh, the young are so forgiving.’
    ‘Not in my experience,’ said Buffy. But then he could hardly blame them. And in fact, as time passed things had improved between him and his offspring as they found themselves stumbling through the same mistakes that he himself had made. Frieda and Iris were good listeners; lesbians often were, in his experience. He found himself talking about