Two Eerie Tales of Suspense

by Paul Torday

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

In BREAKFAST AT THE HOTEL DÉJÀ VU, Bobby Clarke arrives at a hotel on the Mediterranean shore. A former MP, unseated by the expenses scandal, he is 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 treated, having valiantly served his country for 30 years. He settles into his new surroundings but it soon 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? In THEO, John Elliott is the recently appointed vicar of St Joseph's - a dilapidated church with a congregation of 16 and a leaky roof. Having entered the Church more by default than through any great calling, he struggles to inject some life into his ailing parish. His wife Christine longs for them to escape the endless rounds of coffee mornings and cake sales. Then Theo, a child at her school, starts to exhibit strange marks on his hands and feet that vanish almost as soon as they have appeared. What has produced these marks - is it physical violence or something stranger? And what really did happen to the previous vicar of St Joseph's...

Release date: October 9, 2014

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Print pages: 208

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 whitecaps 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 cufflinks and collar stiffeners, and his set of ivory-backed hairbrushes. In the bathroom he laid out his razor, shaving brushes and various lotions. He had not packed his pillboxes. 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 brain-work: 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 to 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, Derwent White, who was then an MP himself, and had complained to him about how hard it was to make ends meet. His father-in-law had advised him to use the system to pay himself back a little more in expenses. ‘Everyone does it,’ Derwent had told him.

But everyone didn’t do it, or at least they hadn’t been caught doing it.

When the affair – the newspapers called it a ‘scandal’ – blew up, Bobby’s first thought was to travel to his constituency and gather support. He believed he was a popular MP and was liked by his constituents. He thought they would rally behind him and see him through this difficult period. He had not expected the sourness with which he was greeted. His agent wouldn’t look him in the eye and one man at a drinks party said, not to his face but well within his hearing, ‘I hope these bent politicians rot in hell.’

Then Bobby fell ill. He fell ill and the rest of the scandal, and the general election that followed, passed him by. He wouldn’t have been readopted by his constituency anyway, but his illness meant that his constituency never actually had to deselect him. It was a convenient excuse and, after thirty years’ service, they simply forgot about him. Now he was out of hospital and unemployed, although, in a way, it didn’t matter as much to him as it might have done to other people he could think of. He had achieved a measure of financial independence. He had always been prudent with his money and he felt sure – as sure as one could ever be – that he need feel no anxiety about that aspect of his life. Employed or unemployed, he would never have to worry about where the next meal was coming from. And his needs these days were not great, in any case.

Now, he really must make the effort to get up from this chair by the window and walk through to the bathroom. He pictured himself running a hot bath. He could imagine lying in it, soaking away the stiffness from the journey, relaxing at last and banishing this odd sense of detachment that had overtaken him. Then he would dress and go downstairs and order a whisky and water. He would sit with his drink and people-watch. He and Margaret used to play that game together:

‘Oh, that one’s a banker, I’m sure of it.’

‘Do you think so? I think he looks as if he’s just out of prison.’

‘What is his wife wearing?’

‘Do you think she could possibly be his wife? She’s years younger than him.’

And so on. There was no Margaret to help him with the guessing game tonight, but it would be interesting to observe his fellow guests. He had no thought of entering into conversation with any of them, not just yet. This place was far enough from home that nobody would recognize him. There would be no awkwardness of that sort: nobody would cut him or, worse, offer him sympathy.

It was just the usual snares of chance acquaintanceship that he had to worry about. The trouble with friendships in a small hotel like this was that they were easy to strike up, but difficult to deal with if they became irksome. He had found, from long experience of staying in hotels or on board cruise ships, that it was best to keep one’s distance. He didn’t mean to be stand-offish. He just wanted peace and quiet: he would exchange smiles and ‘good mornings’ with anyone and everyone, but he didn’t want to end up sharing a table with complete strangers. He had his own routine and he was going to allow himself the luxury of being quite selfish on this holiday, and sticking to it.

He wondered what the dining room would be like. He had failed to inspect it before he came upstairs. He had a clear picture of it in his mind, however, no doubt as a result of reading the brochure before he made the booking. He pictured a large, airy room, with chandeliers overhead and lots of candles on linen-covered tables. The light would be sparkling off the myriad glasses on the tables: wine glasses with large bowls, champagne flutes, water glasses, crystal decanters dotted here and there. And it would be glinting, too, off the silver tableware, which he had imagined would all be engraved with the crest of the family that had once lived here, before the house became a hotel. It was certainly the sort of place, now that he thought about it, in which guests would wear either suits or evening clothes to dinner, and that meant he would have to change. What a lot of effort just to eat a few mouthfuls, however delicious the food might be, especially when he didn’t feel hungry: not at all.

He lay between the clean sheets of his bed, sheets as smooth and flat and cool as marble. He did not even draw the curtains and, from where he lay, he could see a drift of stars across the black sky, like spring flowers emerging from the frozen ground of an unearthly garden. He lay between the clean sheets, not moving, scarcely breathing, and waited for sleep to take him. But it was not so much sleep as a million memories, fragmented and brilliant, that presented themselves to his watchful mind.

From his earliest childhood, Bobby had been haunted by a sense of guilt. Other children with such a psychological burden would have dreamed of becoming a superhero, and then grown out of it: not Bobby. Instead, it made him feel he should devote his life to public service.

He and his mother had lived in a cottage on the outskirts of a small village in Bedfordshire. He had dim memories of a larger house, but when he asked his mother about where that house was and when they had lived in it, she only answered, ‘This is where we live now, so you had better get used to it.’ The house he had once lived in stood like a shadow behind the cottage that was his home for all of his childhood and youth. Behind the cramped little sitting room where they sat, or where Bobby sat and his mother worked her way through piles of documents that never seemed to grow any smaller, was the shadow of a drawing room with a grand piano in one corner and long windows overlooking green lawns. Bobby remembered a nursery too, and the person who came to wake him up every day was not his mother but someone who called herself ‘Nanny’. But, over the years, this shadow of another house grew fainter, becoming just a dim, unanswered question in his mind.

His mother worked as secretary to a local school, assisting the board of governors for what must have been a small salary, because life was a struggle. There was nobody else who could help them: both sets of Bobby’s grandparents had been killed in bombing raids during the war. The struggle was all the more noticeable because his mother, whatever she might say, had the standards and expectations of someone who had been used to a more luxurious style of living. She would often begin to make some unfavourable comparison, then almost bite off her tongue when she saw how avidly Bobby was listening for clues about his earliest life. She never enlightened him.

Of course Bobby wondered a great deal about who his father was, or had been, and where he was now. He couldn’t remember the precise moment in his life when he began to worry about this. As a young child he had accepted the fact. There ha. . .