Coming out of the newsagent, having primed the owner for Sal’s arrival, Bill spotted his sister heading along the waterfront towards him. He waved her over.
‘Sorry, Billy,’ she said, ‘that took forever.’
‘Really?’ said Bill. ‘I thought you were very quick. Are you going in right now? I’ll come with you if you like.’
‘In where?’
‘The newsagent.’
‘Oh,’ said Sally, ‘I wasn’t going there. I found us rooms.’
‘Rooms?’
‘At a B&B.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we need them.’
A lifetime of being Sal’s brother and she was still able to surprise him. He underestimated her, he realised. He was used to thinking of her as someone he needed to help and protect. And now she was looking after him, anticipating his needs, just at the right moment. Thandie was furious this time. They had been through some rocky patches in their marriage, sure, but she had never threatened to call the police before. Of course, he couldn’t go home, not with things the way they were between them. He needed space, time to figure out what to do next. And who other than Sal would realise this? Sal, who knew him better than anyone?
‘Sal, you’re the best,’ Bill told her. ‘But you don’t need to come and stay with me. I’ll be fine on my own.’
‘Where else am I going to stay?’ said Sally.
Bill was moved beyond words. He threw his arms around his sister and hugged her close.
Sally led the way to the B&B she had found. It was on a seedy strip not far from the station, a row of stucco-fronted buildings with pieces missing, like chunks of icing snaffled off a wedding cake. They all had signs outside them with names like ‘Seaview Cottage’ or ‘Ocean Sands’, despite the fact that the only water you could see from their rooms was rising damp. You could smell the sea though, that familiar tang in the air, mixed with the stench of bubbling fat from the chip shop on the corner and wafts of sour heat from the launderette next door to it.
‘Most places were full,’ explained Sally, ‘because of it being the summer, and a weekend, but I got lucky with this one, and she’s only going to charge us two pounds extra a night for the sheets.’
Sally led him up the stairs to an establishment optimistically monikered ‘Shady Palms’. There wasn’t a palm tree in sight. Though to be fair, it did look quite shady. Bill thought maybe he had seen it before, in a documentary about the explosion of drug use in beach towns. He began to feel a creeping sense of discomfort, as if the cockroaches he was sure were in there had come out and started crawling up his legs.
‘She says not to turn the door handle, because it might come off,’ said Sally, as she let them into the building using a key with a large tag shaped like a fish, ‘but if you turn the key and sort of jiggle the door with your shoulder, it opens quite easily.’
The front room had been converted into a reception area, with a wood veneer desk that housed an ancient computer and a world of unfiled papers, the office chair behind which had one wheel missing and was being propped up by a phone book. Bill couldn’t remember when he had last seen a phone book. This one was from 1997. The landlady of the B&B was sitting in a different chair, a high-backed padded leather, or possibly pleather, one with a tear in the arm that had been fixed with masking tape. From nowhere, Bill remembered that pleather had recently been rebranded ‘vegan leather’. The chair had its back to the door and was facing a television, mounted on the wall, that was showing QVC. A woman on the screen was extolling the virtues of cubic zirconium jewellery. Bill could see six bracelets and four rings on the landlady’s visible arm and hand, all featuring stones that were slightly too brightly coloured to look real.
‘Hey, Violet,’ said Sally, ‘we’re back.’
Violet got up and turned to them. She was deeply tanned and wrinkled from sun damage and might have been anywhere from forty to sixty. As well as the jewellery Bill had already seen, she also had a ring in her nose, two in her right eyebrow and several in each ear. Her hair had been twisted into dreadlocks and dyed a variety of bright colours, and she was wearing a tie-dyed caftan. Bill, thrown by the kaleidoscope of colour, said the first thing that popped into his head: ‘Are you vegan?’
‘No food in the rooms,’ said Violet.
‘No. I just meant – the chair,’ said Bill.
‘I’m not planning to eat it, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Our rooms are on the top floor,’ Sally told Bill. ‘They’re really hot, but that’s good in the winter, but it’s not winter, and anyway in the winter, they’re cold. But we can have the windows open when we’re in our rooms. Now. Not in the winter.’
‘Great,’ said Bill, trying to tear his eyes away from Violet. He had just noticed that she had rings on her toes as well. He would use her in something, he knew. Bill had a weakness for writing about eccentric landladies in inns and taverns – she would transpose nicely to a tavern.
‘I carried your bag up already,’ said Sally. She was heading for the stairs, and Bill hurried along behind her.
‘When did you have time to pack me a bag?’ Bill asked.
‘I didn’t,’ said Sally.
Of course, thought Bill, Thandie must have already packed his bags for him.
‘I put you in the room at the back,’ said Sally when they reached the sweltering top landing, ‘because it’s quieter, so you can write.’
‘That’s really thoughtful. This redraft is driving me mad.’
Sally stared at him, amazed. ‘Redraft?’
‘Of the play. Charles II. Though I’m worried if I call it that, people will wonder whether it’s the sequel to a play called Charles.’
‘You’ve written a whole play?’
‘Yes. Well, no, not exactly, it only goes as far as the return from exile. So really I should call it Charles II Part 1, but that’s going to confuse people even more.’
‘Can I read it?’
‘When I’ve finished it, of course.’
Now it was Sally’s turn to throw her arms around him. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ she said. ‘I know how hard it’s been, comparing yourself to Shakespeare all the time, but I knew you’d get there.’
Bill was surprised, again, at Sal’s insight. He’d never discussed it with her, the pain he felt at all the Shakespeare comparisons in his reviews: ‘derivative’, ‘a pale copy’, ‘too in thrall to Shakespeare’. He didn’t try to write like Shakespeare, it just came out that way. It shouldn’t be a bad thing, but you try telling that to newspaper critics.
‘I don’t even like Shakespeare,’ added Sally. ‘All those words.’
Bill thought of remonstrating with her, then thought better of it. Another time.
She detached herself from him and handed over his room key, which had a tag shaped like a lobster. It was very pink and there was a little hole where its eye had fallen out.
‘You’ll be all right here for a while, won’t you?’ she said. ‘I need to start looking for a job.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Bill. ‘Great attitude. Straight back on the horse. You’ve been fantastic today. Don’t forget that newsagent on the front, will you?’
Sally looked confused, but she nodded. ‘Newsagent,’ she said. ‘Right.’
She headed back down the stairs, while Bill unlocked the door to his room. A new cloud of heat hit him, rich and damp and smelling of mushrooms. He went into the room without closing the door behind him, and tried to open the window. Eventually it grudgingly budged, and Bill noticed that there was some kind of exhaust from the launderette next door, belching steam directly beside it. He hastily shoved the window back down again, hoping it wasn’t toxic.
The room had a thick royal blue carpet, curling up at the corners. The single bed had a matching thick blue coverlet, with miscellaneous stains. The curtains, which might have been of use had they too been thick and blue, were flimsy and a once-white grey, and hung unevenly where some of the plastic hooks had snapped. The wallpaper was shiny and white with little blue flowers, and there was a huge patch of yellow-brown damp colonising the wall opposite the bed. There was no bathroom, but at the foot of the bed was a ceramic sink with a single, dripping cold tap. Beneath the sink was an overstuffed wheelie case that he didn’t recognise. It was in a terrible state – must have been the worst piece of luggage that Thandie could dig out of the loft, another signal of her contempt for him. He hesitated in front of it, uncertain whether to unpack into this repellant cesspit – was this really the best that Sal could find? – or to give up on his posturing and head home. If that was even an option now.
It’s all material, he tried to tell himself. Just think how much more convincingly I’ll be able to write about degradation now that I’ve been so thoroughly degraded. Oh God, he was probably inhaling spores! He didn’t want to hurt Sal’s feelings, but neither did he want to die tragically young of a fungal respiratory disease. He needed to make a decision: stay or go home. To B&B or not to B&B? That was the question.
Maybe there was a third option. He texted Anthony: ‘You free for a drink?’
Then he found the least stained section of the coverlet and sat down – very gingerly – to wait.