he can rush out and start snapping everything that moves and the girl is all scrubbed and virginal with her hair pulled back from her face and her skin glowing with health and expectation. She blushes like fury when the bloke asks her whether she would prefer tea or coffee and goes berserk pouring it out for him. Not like the other married couples in the room who just stretch out their hands for pieces of toast from behind spread newspapers.
‘Do you know what the weather forecast is?’ says the bird brightly when I bring them some more marmalade. The bloke loves his marmalade.
‘I think they said we were in for a fine spell.’
‘Oh, goody. Did you hear that, Roger? Lots of lovely Dickies.’
She turns to me. ‘My, my–husband is very keen on photography.’
‘Not very good, though,’ says hubby bashfully.
‘Oh, darling! You’ve won the club trophy two years running. And what about that photograph you had published in Camera News? “The Old Forge by Moonlight”.’
‘It was very dark.’
‘That was the way they printed it, darling.’
She turns to me again. ‘Don’t you listen to him. He’s awfully good, really.’
What a nice kid! I think to myself. Ain’t love grand? Nice to know that there are still a few pleasant, uncomplicated people about. I avoid Carmen’s glance as she sneaks into the dining room. One thing you can never tell about her is whether she has dark rings under her eyes.
In the days that follow, I begin to take a special interest in love’s young dream and it is therefore a surprise when, one morning, only Roger appears at the breakfast table. He is looking strained–a condition which does not totally surprise me–and fiddling uneasily with the cord of his Leica.
‘Shall I wait for modom?’ I say thoughtfully.
‘No. She’s having breakfast in her room today. Just a cup of coffee for me, thanks.’
A cup of coffee? That is hardly the stuff to give Wee Georgie Wood the strength to blow up a couple of balloons for a kid’s birthday party. What ails our boy? Whilst others bosh back their sausage and egg, Roger gazes glumly out of the windows towards the oil tankers which are leaking slowly across the horizon. When he eventually departs, his coffee is cold and untouched and there is no sign of wifey. I watch carefully and he does not go upstairs but leaves the hotel and walks slowly along the promenade. He is not heading for civilisation, but open country. For the first time that I can remember he has not taken a picture of anything before he disappears from sight.
What is up? A lover’s tiff? I wonder what wifey’s mood is at this moment. To find out I ask the waiter who has taken her breakfast up. Tear-stained and without appetite, are his comments and he has an untouched tray to prove it. Mrs Richards does not come down until eleven o’clock and sits by herself writing postcards until lunch time when Mr R. returns and they go silently in to lunch. After lunch they go up to their room and then it is Mrs R. who emerges, her eyes wet with tears, and goes off by herself.
The next day they are down to breakfast together but there is an air of crushing silence about them that makes me clear my throat every time I decide to speak. They spend the day together but in the evening it is Mr Richards who eats alone in the dining room while his wife takes her meal upstairs.
On the third day I become elevated to floor service and see neither of them but the fourth I am told that there is a breakfast to be taken up to Number Six. One breakfast! I tap discreetly on the door and a voice so low I can hardly hear it tells me to come in. Mrs Richards is propped up on a couple of pillows and, as far as I can see, is alone. Again, she looks red-eyed with crying.
‘Are you going to have it in bed, modom?’
She looks at me for a long moment and then her lower lip starts trembling.
‘Now come on,’ I say. ‘Don’t–’
But it is no good. She bursts into floods of tears and throws herself face down on the bed.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she moans.
‘Come on, cheer up,’ I say. ‘Look, I’ve brought you a nice kipper.’
I feel a right berk saying that, but what can you do in the circumstances? ‘Shall I fetch the doctor; I think he’s sobered up–I mean up and about.’ Stupid slip, that, but like everyone else in the place, Dr McDonald seems partial to his ‘wee drappy’.
‘No. I don’t need a doctor. No, I’m sorry. Leave the tray. I’ll see if I can face something later.’
‘Shall I find your husband?’
At the mention of the word ‘husband’ she starts sobbing twice as violently and buries her face in the pillow. I try and comfort her but she waves me away and in the end I find myself shaking my head in the corridor.
I see neither her nor her husband for the rest of that day and imagine that they must have checked out. It is therefore a surprise when, next morning, I am told to take breakfast to Room Six. Again, just one breakfast.
This time there is a more cheerful response to my knock on the door and I notice that Mrs Richards is wearing a frilly nightdress and a trace of make-up.
‘Morning,’ she says brightly, before I can open my mouth. The sparkle in her eyes may be the remnant of a tear or a return to the mood she was in when I first saw her.
‘Morning.’
‘I’m sorry about yesterday. I was very down in the dumps. I don’t know what came over me.’ While she is talking her hands are gripping the edge of the counterpane and she looks into my eyes as if trying to find something.
‘Don’t worry. I expect you felt a bit strange, being married and all that.’ I know Peter O’Toole would have put it better, but he had the education.
‘You’re very understanding. Do you often get women who burst into tears all over you?’
‘Not so far. I’ve only been doing this job for a week.’
I give her a quick rundown on my curriculum vitae–no madam, it does not mean what you think it does–and she nods understandingly.
‘So you’re new at it, too?’
I am not quite certain what she means, so I give her a sympathetic smile–at least, I hope it is sympathetic–and keep my mouth shut.
‘I’ve brought you some nice grapefruit segments,’ I say eventually, as her eyes continue to follow the passage of the blood round my body.
‘You’re so kind, you always try and bring me something nice, don’t you?’
‘It’s all part of the service.’
She is a very appealing bird, this one, and I can feel myself getting my guinea-pig stroking syndrome (I got that word from ‘It Pays to Increase Your Word Power’. Thank you, Reader’s Digest.)
‘Roger said you were kind.’ Her lip starts to tremble. Oh, no! I can’t stand this
