Breakfast at the Hotel Déjà vu

by Paul Torday

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

From the author of the bestselling SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN (released as a film starring Ewan McGregor), a tale of the unexpected... Bobby Clarke arrives at a hotel on the Mediterranean shore. He is a former MP, unseated by the expenses scandal, who is now spending time abroad to recover from a major illness. The other purpose of his stay is to write his memoirs in order to demonstrate that he was unfairly pilloried for 'a minor accounting error', having valiantly served his country for 30 years. He settles into his new surroundings but soon it becomes clear that all is not as it seems. For a start Bobby seems to have no memory of the immediate past. Each time he sits down to continue his memoirs he finds only a blank page. Every morning as he comes downstairs the same scene replays itself in front of him: a young woman and her son pass him on the stairs. And what has become of his wife?

Release date: December 8, 2011

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Print pages: 111

Sample

The view from the window of his hotel room was just as he had hoped it would be. Twenty feet below Bobby’s window was the
decking of a sun terrace. Faded white umbrellas sheltered sets of wooden chairs and round tables. He opened the window and
leaned out to obtain a better view. He could glimpse the tops of the heads of a few people who were enjoying the afternoon
sunshine, or else sitting in the shade reading newspapers. Beyond the decking, wide stone steps led down into a sort of garden:
a garden in the Mediterranean manner, of course, with few flowers and a number of bushes and shrubs dotted around an area
of scruffy brown grass. A gravel path meandered through this undistinguished space and then disappeared between two tall cypresses.
He knew somehow that this path descended to the rocky seashore and then followed its line around the promontory to the headland.
There were no other buildings in sight, just an uninterrupted view of the blue sea.


And what a blue! It reflected an untroubled sky in which the sun was now sinking. There was no wind – at least, there were
no white caps on the water, just a glassy calm stretching away into the infinite distance. He breathed in, experiencing a
sensation of pure pleasure at having arrived here after a tedious journey. There must have been some faint breeze, for he
sensed it against his cheeks and, at the same time, became aware of the inimitable fragrance of thyme, and rosemary and myrtle,
that he associated with this part of the world.


A faint click made him turn around and he saw that his suitcases had been brought upstairs: discreetly, for he had not been
aware of the porter either entering or leaving his room. Well, the man couldn’t expect to get a tip if he didn’t let people
know he was there. Bobby decided that he might as well unpack first, before indulging in any exploration of the hotel. Unpacking
was an activity he always enjoyed. He supposed it was some sort of nesting instinct. He hung up his suits in the large oak
wardrobe: a beige linen suit to wear on expeditions into the village; a dark-blue suit to wear in the hotel restaurant in
case it should be one of those places where people dressed up in the evenings; and a lightweight tweed suit for walking on the rocky hillsides above the hotel. He had
read – or someone had told him – that the views were delightful. There was an old monastery, clinging to the side of the mountains,
that he believed would repay a visit. Next he set out the leather boxes containing his cuff links and collar stiffeners, and
his set of ivory-backed hair brushes. In the bathroom he laid out his razor, shaving brushes, and various lotions. He had
not packed his pill boxes. He had finished with pills. At one point during his illness he had been taking ten different things
in the morning and the same again at night. What a bore it had been!


But that was all in the past. The illness that had nearly killed him, the operation that had saved him, and the long and dreary
recuperation that followed – all the details had faded from his memory leaving behind only a sensation of unpleasantness gone
by, and the hope of better times to come. Now he was as good as new: or rather, he was new, quite new. It was as if he was
beginning his life all over again. He was looking forward to a few weeks of absolute rest and quiet, interspersed with some
light brainwork: some ideas he was turning over in his mind for a memoir. But it would not be the usual self-congratulatory
political biography. He wanted to attempt something more interesting than that.


He folded away his shirts and ties and other garments and placed them in a tallboy that stood next to the wardrobe. Once his
unpacking was complete, he stood in the middle of the room and surveyed his new home. It would do. It would definitely do.
There was no television or radio to distract him. The bed was large and looked comfortable (he would soon find out if that
were true). There was no minibar or any of the other contraptions common to so many hotel rooms: no Internet connection, no
electric trouser press. Even the phone was an ordinary phone – an old black handset that must have been installed decades
ago – and not one of those contraptions with dozens of buttons and lights that he found so hard to cope with. All in all,
the room was … civilized. The furniture matched, the faded remnants of gilt and paint suggesting a rather more ornate past,
and the room itself was large and light, with Turkish rugs spread over a threadbare carpet. A comfortable armchair, with a
reading lamp beside it, sat in one corner and there was a sofa at the end of the bed that looked a convenient place on which
to throw his clothes when he undressed at night. A rather grand writing table with a lyre-backed chair stood against one wall:
he could easily imagine himself writing not one, but several chapters of his memoir at such a desk. And the bathroom was perfect: a large
area of white marble floor surrounding a full-length, cast-iron bath in the centre of the room. The floor might be cold underfoot,
but he loved a big bathroom more than anything, and now he had one. The washbasin had brass fittings and marble surrounds.
Even the towels were enormous.


He was very glad he had finally made the effort to come here. It had been a project of many years standing. He had long promised
himself that, one day, he would cancel all his other engagements, make the journey to the hotel, and simply exist. He had never managed to do so. There had always been a reason why either he couldn’t fit it into his schedule, or else Margaret
could not come. Margaret! She should be here with him. It felt wrong that she was not. But if he were honest, just at that
moment, he did not really miss her.


How had he first heard about this place? Who had told him about it? He could almost hear the words: ‘It’s heavenly. Quite
unspoiled; marvellous cooking; decent wine list. And the views! The views are to die for.’ But maybe it wasn’t friends who
had told him. He might have read about the hotel in the travel section of one of the Sunday newspapers – except that it didn’t
seem like the kind of place that had been discovered by the newspapers at all. There were absolutely no concessions to modern
life. And it was altogether too quiet for a place that had been ‘discovered’.


There was simply nobody about. On the way here, the roads had been empty, the village had looked half-asleep and the only
shop that was open when the taxi drove past was the pastry shop. That had looked inviting. He would make a point of investigating
it on his walk tomorrow. The entrance to the hotel was understated, as if it were simply the drive of someone’s house. The
car park had been empty, and in the lobby there had been a single person behind the counter, waiting to check him in. The
receptionist had been polite, but not effusive, and the formalities of registration had been minimal. He had made the booking
some time ago and half wondered if it had ever been confirmed, but the receptionist replied simply, ‘Oh yes, we have been
expecting you, Mr Wansbeck’. And that was all. He had been shown to his room and handed a large key with a brass fob. Then
he was left to himself.


And now what should he do? He had unpacked. The afternoon, or what remained of it, should be used. He thought he should take
some exercise before dinner as the fresh air might give him an appetite. At the moment he had none. In truth, he felt rather listless, as if the effort
of travelling in trains and taxis had drained him of energy, when all he had done was sit in one seat after another for the
last few hours. It felt more like he had journeyed for days rather than hours. Instead of leaving the room, Bobby pulled the
chair to the window and looked out at the view.


The brightness of the afternoon was fading into a gentle evening. Strips of cirrus cloud had appeared on the horizon, streaked
with gold and red as the sun sank towards the distant horizon. The air was very clear. An inshore wind had started to blow,
bending the tops of the cypresses. As day turned to dusk, the sea changed from blue to steel grey, and small waves began to
crest and break, streaking the surface with foam. The rock promontory no longer looked inviting but cold and unfriendly. Bobby
leaned forward to peer down at the sun terrace below. It was empty. The people he thought he had seen earlier, sunning themselves
and reading, had all gone inside. They would be getting ready for dinner, he supposed, having their evening bath and deciding
what to wear to the restaurant.


Bobby sat back in his chair and remained motionless for a long while. Far out to sea the dusk gathered, then rolled inland
like a dark tide. A single red light like an eye blinked on the horizon – a navigation marker or a light on a fishing boat,
Bobby could not tell. It was time for him, too, to think about having a bath and changing for dinner but, just at that moment,
the effort seemed too great for him.


‘I’ll give myself five minutes,’ he said aloud. This feeling of inertia was not unknown to him. Ever since his illness, he
had been surprised to find that his normal levels of energy would suddenly disappear, as if a tap had been turned off. He
knew he would be fine in the morning. The stay would allow him to recharge his batteries and when he returned home his convalescence
would at last be over and he would return to his duties with his once-customary vigour. Although, at that moment, he could
not think what those duties would be. He had resigned the party whip and stood down as a member of parliament before the last
general election. After thirty years of serving his constituency and – he liked to think – his country, he had ceased to exist,
at least in a professional sense. And all because of an accounting error, which had been picked up by the Daily Telegraph.

Quite a few years ago, Margaret’s father had paid off the mortgage on the flat in Chelsea in which they lived when they weren’t
down in Bobby’s constituency. In the first instance, he had provided Margaret and Bobby with the deposit to purchase the flat
as a wedding present. Then, a few years later, after some inspired investment on the stock market, he had paid off the balance
owed to the building society.


However, Bobby had continued to claim the mortgage interest from the House of Commons Fees Office. He also claimed for the
monthly sums of money he paid his wife for secretarial and management services, through a company she had formed for the purpose.
In truth, she did very little; Bobby managed most of his own paperwork but Bobby’s father-in-law had suggested it would look
‘more at arm’s-length’ if the payments appeared to go through a company rather than straight into Margaret’s pocket. And Bobby
had done no more – or less – than dozens of other colleagues.


Then the Daily Telegraph had included his name on a list of other MPs caught up in what became known as the ‘expenses scandal’, and that was it: his
career was over. He had devoted his life to representing his constituents but that meant nothing to the journalists who wrote
about him, or those of his constituents – and there were many – who read the paper. He had served his country – his country, not just his party – with diligence and commitment, but his career had been brought to an end, just to sell a few more copies
of a newspaper. At least, that was how it appeared to him. The worst part, or almost the worst, was that the Telegraph was the very newspaper that, until that day, had been folded up and placed on the table beside his coffee cup every single
morning of his life. He felt as if an old friend had stabbed him in the back.


In Bobby’s case, it had all started in the simplest way. He had been having lunch with his father-in-law, who was then an
MP himself, and had complained to him about how hard it was to make ends meet. Derwent White, his father-in-law, had advised
him to use the s. . .