I asserted that my room was booked and paid for by the travel company organising my trip. Maarika, the lovely Estonian trainee receptionist, said the room was booked, yes, but not paid for. I insisted, she resisted, I gave way. I handed over my credit card and signed here, here and here. She handed over the card key to room 286 and said she hoped I would sleep well.
Only when I was standing in the tiny, not particularly clean room overlooking a noisy road junction did I realise that Maarika’s hope might have been sincere. It was 11 o’clock on Saturday night. Police and ambulance sirens blared more or less continuously. From every fourth car issued the boom, boom, boom of a boom box. The double glazing was old, cheap, badly fitted and useless. I was sober. Sleep would be difficult, if not impossible. I manoeuvred my wheeled suitcase back out of the door and returned with it down to the lobby.
Miss Estonia had just left the building, said her colleague. He, however, listened with utmost gravity to my complaints about the noise. He’d have a word with the manager, he said, about having me moved somewhere quieter. He disappeared through the door behind him and re-emerged a minute later looking elated. The manager had given his assent. So, sir, he said, on behalf of the management would I now please accept, with his apologies, my new key card for room 186.
So back upstairs with my suitcase I went, congratulating myself on my assertiveness. My plan now was to go straight to sleep in the quietness I’d earned for myself by my positive action. Room 186, however, when I found it, was the room directly below room 286, and therefore closer to the street and if anything even noisier. The manager and his underling must have been having a laugh.
My victor’s laurels shrivelled and died. Unable to face another expedition down to the reception area, I threw a non-homeopathic sleeping pill down my throat and removed my clothes. As an afterthought I sent an email to the travel company representative saying that the hotel they’d booked me into was a noisy, overpriced dump, which I resented having to pay for. I didn’t expect her to read the email until Monday morning, but she must have read it immediately, rung the hotel and read the manager the Riot Act. Because no sooner had I finished cleaning my teeth than there came a polite knock on the door and there was the hotel manager beaming unctuously and ingratiatingly at me.
I’ve forgotten the exact words. But the gist of what he said, and what he implied, was this. Please understand that in democratic eras such as this, sir, it is sometimes hard to distinguish between the wheat and the chaff and in your case we failed to notice the signals. We see now what fools we’ve been. Please allow me personally to transport your luggage to the equivalent of our presidential suite, which we keep in reserve especially for this kind of misunderstanding. In my own time, please, would I follow him up to room 416. And with that he stepped into the room, seized my suitcase and made off with it.
Room 416 was roughly the size of a squash court, freezing cold, with three beds in it. The manager had respectfully laid my suitcase on the middle one, together with my new card key. I thumbed off the air-conditioning, removed my clothing again and inserted myself gratefully between cold, tight sheets. Peace, and rest, at last.
But before I drifted off I heard voices close by. A tap was turned on. The wall my pillow was resting against must have been wafer thin. On the other side a man and a woman were taking a bath together. They were discussing the behaviour of a friend of the woman. This friend had overstepped the mark in some way. The man opined that she might see sense eventually; the woman thought it unlikely. Off went the tap. Then silence — apart from the occasional squeak of buttock slipping on plastic. Then reciprocal animal noises indicated that the woman’s friend’s transgression was now completely forgotten and that these two were having sexual intercourse in the bath. I could hear the rhythmic slap of the bath water and the delirious little cries of the woman as clearly as if I was in the bath with them. I was merely a last-minute guest in the room next door, but I already knew this couple more intimately, possibly, than anyone else in the world.
In the morning they emerged from their room as I was passing the door, and we three stood facing each other in the tiny lift. ‘What a dump,’ I said. They looked at each other. ‘We’ve had worse, haven’t we, love!’ said the man.
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