WE TOOK A CAB and went down winding hilly road after winding hilly road; there were Victorian houses, some with little front yards and some without. Here and there we saw a palm tree.
“I see you have palm trees here,” Jordan said to the cabdriver.
“Oh, yes, it’s quite warm here all winter,” the driver said.
“What sort of hotel is the Castle?” Jordan asked.
“Oh, it’s a five star hotel. Oh, it’s very elegant. Cost a fortune to put up.”
At a considerable distance from the railway station, we drove through tall gates surrounded by greenery and stopped at a portico before the entrance to the hotel, which was constructed of stone. The lobby was carpeted in red with enormous yellow and green flowers, and filled with fat, nineteen-thirtyish “modernistic” furniture.
Upstairs we were escorted to a three-room suite: large and light and spotlessly clean, painted white, with white furniture. Our room had a balcony looking out on to the Castle grounds: these were undulating and heavily planted with evergreen trees, dense and green to the point of blackness. I was reminded forcibly of The Magic Mountain. I could see myself lying on a chaise on the balcony, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the thick silent forest.
Mark said it was cool.
“I wonder why everything is white,” Jordan said. “It looks like a hospital. You do like it, don’t you?” he asked me, anxiously.
“It’s marvelous,” I said sincerely. “It’s awfully nice.”
It was dinner time, so we went downstairs. The dining room was enormous, with large windows and off-white paneled walls. Through the windows you could see the omnipresent, brooding grounds; the trees were always still.
On the table was a plate of toast, cold and curled, the only form of bread available at the Castle Hotel. We had a cheerful young uniformed waiter. He brought us big soup plates, each with half an inch of clear soup nestled in the bottom.
“Meals must be included,” Jordan said.
After the soup was taken away, we were brought a plate of fish fillet with red sauce. Then came a small slice of meat, faintly lamby, on a large plate. In addition, the waiter passed around two kinds of potatoes and some varieties of bean. At this point some very old musicians filed in, took their places on a low platform directly behind us, and broke into an awful cacophony that raised all the small hairs on the back of my neck. It appeared to be a tune from Mary Poppins, played in march tempo.
“What’s that?” we asked the waiter.
“Harry Evans and the Orchestra,” he replied. He took away our plates. For dessert we were offered a “choice of cold sweets from the trolley.” They were rainbow-colored and trembled slightly. “We also have Castle Pudding with jam sauce,” the waiter said.
The other diners were middle-aged, and looked strangely out of date: the women had marcelled hair and bosomy print dresses; the men’s suits had wide shoulders and wide pleated pants, or trousers. The familiar Time Machine sensation crept over me.
“Sometimes in London,” I said, “I felt as though I had gone back eighty years. It was weird. But here … it could be nineteen thirty-five. Don’t you think so?”
“I wish you wouldn’t overstate things,” Jordan said. “It could easily be nineteen thirty-nine.”
Mark said it was wild.
All eyes followed us as we left the dining room. I felt rather flashy in my Mary Quant dress with the outrageous hemline. We went upstairs and watched television, on a set that we had ordered, for an hour. It was even more horrible than London television: the clergyman who read the evening sermon looked as though he were melting. I put the drops in Bruce’s eye and tucked the children in. Then Jordan and I took a cab to the Imperial Hotel: the cabdriver told us it was the best hotel in Torquay.
“Maybe it’s more modern than the Castle?” Jordan asked hopefully.
“Oh, the old Castle’s gone down,” the driver said. “Once it was five star. Now I think it’s only three. But the Imperial’s very nice. Royalty stay there.”
The Imperial had a swimming pool and a beach, and no furniture in the lobby. The people wandering about were slender and none of them had finger waves.
“We’re full up,” the girl said. “Sorry.” Back we went to the Castle and so to bed.