his wife one afternoon. And it was in this room that Miss Lavinia Sergeant, the celebrated actress, caused a scandal by attending a song recital without a male escort, a scandal she compounded by smoking a cigarette when the concert was over. He gets up to look at the poppies at the ploughman’s feet and at the shepherdess in the oak grove behind him, whose face is the face of Lily Corbin. She never fails to cheer him up, this girl, with her look of guileless invitation, but will anyone pay any attention to her in years to come, he asks himself, if nobody knows her story?
He wanders back to his office, where the prospectus for the Beltram Highlands Development lies on his desk. An aerial photograph on the cover shows a slender valley strewn with computer-generated bunkers and greens that resemble a string of cartoon amoebas, swimming around the hotel and its lake. Inside, in the computer-generated bar of Scotland’s premier golf resort, a superb selection of single-malt whiskies is provided for the Beltram Highlands’ clientele – the decision makers, the high-flyers, the people who expect the best. Famous international designers have been consulted at every stage in the creation of Beltram Highlands. Only the finest materials and fittings have been used. ‘A perfectionist’s eye for detail characterises every aspect of the Beltram Highlands,’ he reads, and yet the bedrooms could be from any of a hundred business hotels in Frankfurt or Birmingham or Brussels, were it not for the fact that they have no numbers, bearing instead the names of the immortals: Jones, Nicklaus, Hogan, Woods. Throughout the hotel will hang paintings by internationally recognised masters of sporting art, depicting the timeless triumphs of these sporting heroes, whose exploits can be enjoyed once again in the magnificent video library that will be available to guests, either to rent or to purchase from the hotel shop, which will also stock a superb range of top-quality equipment from every leading manufacturer.
‘Give it some thought,’ Giles had urged him, handing him the envelope as if it were a confidential document that could make him millions. ‘Give it some serious thought,’ he said, but it requires no thought at all. ‘Purgatory,’ Malcolm mutters to himself, dropping the prospectus into the bin in his office. He reads – the current economic climate…the ongoing malaise of the domestic tourism sector…a restructuring of the Beltram portfolio – then pushes the letter aside to continue writing to the suppliers who have not yet been notified of the closure. Taking care to phrase each letter differently, in a couple of hours he thanks another twenty people for their services over the years. Intending to write to Mr Ryan of Powerpoint Electrics, he picks up another blank sheet of paper, but as he gazes at the letterhead’s silhouetted oak he begins to think again of his daughter. He tries to envisage her, as she was the last time he saw her. Entering the house where her mother lived, she looked back at him. As the door closed she waved, perhaps because she was told to, and she did not smile. On her purple T-shirt her name was spelled out in silver sequins. That afternoon, he now remembers, she snatched her hand away when he was leading her across Oxford Street.
‘Dear Stephanie,’ he begins, for the sixth or seventh time. ‘Your letter arrived a couple of days ago. I’m sorry I didn’t answer right away, but I had to get my thoughts in order before replying,’ he writes, then crosses the words out. ‘I was saddened to read that you think you can’t talk to your mother. I don’t know what has happened between you, but you have to discuss this with her. Of course I won’t say anything until you tell me to, but she has to know that we’re in contact now,’ he continues, and crosses this out too. Below the cancelled lines he starts another draft. ‘First things first: for years I have hoped to see you again. I do want to see you now – more than you can possibly imagine. You should have seen my face when your letter arrived. I could hardly believe it was from you. If I –’ he writes, but a knock interrupts him and Mr Ainsworth is standing in the doorway.
‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’ Mr Ainsworth observes.
‘Nearly done,’ he smiles.
‘Care to join me? A small postprandial?’
‘My pleasure,’ he says. ‘Five minutes?’
‘Excellent man. Excellent,’ says Mr Ainsworth, winking. ‘I’ll be back,’ he adds, and over his shoulder Malcolm sees Mr Morton striding across the lobby, sweeping his cane forcefully in a wide arc, as though whisking litter from his path.
Sitting at the bureau in room 8, Edward writes:
I am, after all, visiting the family. There was a party at Mike’s place two nights ago. At 2am we had words, and I decided shortly after, while stewing in my bed, that now was as good a time as any to make the trip. Niall Gillespie came round yesterday, to install the new software, and he helped me find a hotel within striking distance of the parents. An Internet search came up with a place called the Oak, around ten miles from the parents. It sounded rather special from its website, with a billiards room and an indoor pool and something called the Randall Room, which has a wall made of glass and murals from floor to ceiling – like a mad millionaire’s conservatory, Niall said. Normally it would be out of my price range, but it has an Amazing Special Offer for August: ‘Experience the style of a bygone time, at the prices of a bygone time.’ And they are not kidding – it’s ridiculously cheap. So Niall booked a room for me, and I thought the least I could do, after all his help, was to buy him a pint or two, which is why I wasn’t at home when you rang.
And now I have arrived at the Oak, which is indeed quite a place, but empty, or almost empty. When I stop typing the only sound I can hear is a rustle of ivy outside the window. And the corridors smell empty – there’s no hint of perfume or cigarette smoke or any other trace of a passing body. I feel as if I’ve turned up at some country mansion on the wrong day, after everyone has fled back to the city. And it really is a mansion, with a vast garden – a hundred metres from the road to the front door, I reckon. Pass through the door and you’re still a long way from the reception desk, which lurks in the corner of an echoing hall that has a double-decker gallery running around it, reached by a huge staircase. The galleries are as wide as a road, with columns at every angle of the gallery – marble, it feels like, or very high-class fakes if not. I’m on the first floor, in a room you could swing a tiger in. Quite sparsely furnished, but with a sumptuous bed in the middle. And as for the bathroom – glazed tiles cover the floor and walls, and the bath is an ancient freestanding tub that would take both of us quite comfortably. It has a wide curvaceous rim, and taps with enormous four-sparred handles, and a shower nozzle that’s as big as a sunflower. The toilet is an antique as well: the chain has a fat sausage of porcelain dangling from it, and the cistern seems to be about ten feet in the air. Judging by the noise, it holds a hundred gallons.
The new software didn’t go quite to plan. Niall promised me a seductively female voice. Like Lauren Bacall, he said. I’d be happy with Ethel Merman, I told him – anything’s better than the drone who’s currently in residence. The name of the new voice was ‘Sandra, high quality’, which suggests a Las Vegas call-girl, don’t you think? (What I had before was ‘Fred’, it turns out.) The sex change was a very swift operation, but the result was not at all Lauren Bacall: more like an over-keen intern on some Midwest radio station. Still, definitely a big improvement: unfailingly clear and her intonation was appreciably more ingratiating than Fred’s. I write ‘was’ because Sandra has left me, after less than a day. When I switched on the computer this morning it was Fred the depressive automaton who spoke to me. I don’t know what has happened, and it’s beyond my capabilities to get Sandra back.
It’s even hotter today than when you left. My scalp feels as though it’s got ants crawling over it and I’m dripping on the keyboard. Thunderstorms are forecast, the manager tells me. His name is Caldecott – an obliging and tactful chap whose timbre suggests someone on the lower slopes of middle age, but with an older man’s undertone of world-weariness. That’s what running a hotel does
