Free The Weeping Women Hotel by Alexei Sayle

sensitive bearded face of
their puppeteer. Since that moment Julio had been inside her head, her constant
companion, her special friend. Helen stood at the top of the stairs and, like a
TV reporter, relayed the scene at the gala dinner of the Percussionists
Licensing Society to him now.
    She had
carried this man around with her for over twenty years. Helen pointed out new
things to him’ all the time and when she saw something wrong — the ugliness of
a modern building, say, or some drunken boys behaving badly in the street — she
would apologise to Julio on behalf of her country. He was with her for her
first period, he sat alongside her during her A levels and he was watching
benevolently the first time she sucked a boy’s cock. Helen consulted Julio
Spuciek on every major decision in her life and he always told her she was
doing the right thing.

 
     
     
    4
     
     
    Harriet was trying to
remember how much water she’d drunk — she knew she was supposed to walk ten
thousand steps a day, eat five portions of fruit and vegetables, drink two
litres of water and consume a minimum of three portions of oily fish during the
week; the authorities seemed to have turned the simple business of staying
alive into a full-time job. Also, if you drank the two litres of water then set
out to walk the ten thousand steps as she had just done, then pretty soon the
frantic hunt for the lavvy would begin. In the brief period when she tried to
stick to the government’s instructions Harriet was constantly being chased out
of hotels by security men or in burger bars staff would bang on the door of the
stall she was using shouting, ‘You no buy nothing, you gotta buy something to
pee!’ So she would have to purchase a giant flame-grilled bacon burger to pay
for her use of the toilet, thus undoing all the walking and water drinking. In
the end Harriet decided it was best if she stayed near her house and only drank
tea, coffee and alcohol.
    Since
she’d become the sort of woman who had a personal trainer Harriet’s visits to
Muscle Bitch had ceased, though she hadn’t of course stopped the direct debit
that paid for her membership. During their weekly workouts in her upstairs
room, with Patrick watching over her and urging her on, she put a lot of
conscious effort into her exercises to show him she was sincerely trying to get
fit, but when he wasn’t there she couldn’t find the motivation to do them at
all. Lying on the floor with her toes hooked under the radiator fully intending
to do twenty half sit-ups she would come to fifteen minutes later still lying
on the floor having spent the time daydreaming about wallpaper with the smell
of burning trainer toe in the air.
    So this
act of taking on a personal trainer had resulted in Harriet losing what muscle
tone she’d had, thus giving her sagging flesh the appearance of having gained
even more weight. She also seemed to be spending a lot more of her time lying
on the floor daydreaming about wallpaper, so some of her customers had begun to
complain about repairs being delivered late. Harriet told herself that she
couldn’t afford to begin losing any business because of Patrick. The financial
cost of employing him, forty pounds a week spent on nothing, was something she
could just about afford but it was really starting to annoy her: she had plenty
of nothing already. Sulkily she said to herself it wasn’t as if Patrick seemed
bothered whether he taught her or not; he took the money every week curtly
without acknowledgement, then sat around her flat for hours expounding his
bizarre theories, killing any shred of the mild excitement she’d first felt in
knowing him. One day in the upstairs room as a gentle misty rain fell outside
he said, ‘Y’know, Harriet, what I wonder?’
    ‘No,’
she mumbled petulantly.
    ‘I
wonder what the Australians were doing fightin’ in Vietnam . I mean you can sort of understand why the States was there and the
Vietnamese of course … though they