Haven't They Grown(33)
‘He said that no holiday was worth going on unless it had a great swimming pool as well as a great beach. He said it as if it was something he’d always thought and passionately advocated, though he’d never mentioned it before. It was so weird. He was the one who’d booked our holiday, chosen the place, everything. He’d happily booked an apartment on a gorgeous beach, with no swimming pool – but only about thirty footsteps from the most stunning, clear blue sea! – and then suddenly he was in the most horrendous mood because going to the hotel had ruined everything for him. Seeing that pool had made him think that his holiday was beyond flawed.’
‘Mum, he sounds like the biggest arse that ever lived.’
‘He certainly acted like one that day. He looked as if he might explode with murderous rage at any moment. Dad was taking the piss out of him, Flora was warning him to stop, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Then, suddenly, he leaps up from the table and storms over to reception. No one knows what he’s planning to do or say. Obviously we follow him, and find him negotiating with the receptionist: why can’t we come and swim in their pool every day if we want to, if we eat at the restaurant? No one else is using the pool. The receptionist explained that the pool is for hotel guests only. An argument started, lasting twenty minutes at least, with Lewis insisting that anyone who eats in the restaurant surely qualifies as a temporary hotel guest, and the receptionist saying, no, it doesn’t work like that, a guest is someone actually staying in the hotel.’
‘Ugh. Weren’t you horribly embarrassed?’ Zan asks.
‘Weirdly, no. Anyone watching would have noticed no one but Lewis, so the embarrassment, I figured, was all his. Not that he felt it for a second. Once he saw that his valid guest argument wasn’t going to work, he tried another tactic. He asked if we could pay a small fee to come and swim at the hotel, as day guests. The receptionist was nearly in tears by this point.’
‘I’m not surprised. I’d have said, “You like our pool so much? I’ll be happy to drown you in it, you fucker.”’
‘Zan, don’t swear.’
‘Ugh, Mum, relax. What happened next?’
‘The receptionist said no to Lewis’s day-membership scheme, even after he told her in great detail about various hotels in the UK that allow people to do precisely what he was proposing.’ I laugh at the memory. ‘What does a Corfu hotel receptionist care if the Quy Mill Hotel in Stow-cum-Quy, Cambridgeshire, lets anyone buy a day membership for a tenner? She just kept saying, “My boss not allow, my boss not allow”. It looked as if Lewis was defeated for once – Dad was helpfully pointing that out, saying, “Come on, Lewis, you’ve tried your best. Isn’t it time to give up now?”’
‘Ha! Dad always thinks it’s time to give up. Like, even before you’ve started trying.’
‘True. But in this case he was right, or at least we all thought he was. Lewis had other plans, however.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Asked if there were rooms available at the hotel. “You seem pretty empty,” he said, stressing the last word.’
‘As if the receptionist cares,’ Zannah mutters scornfully. ‘It’s not her hotel. She’s not going to get a share of the profits even if it’s full.’
‘I guess. She looked very confused and said, “You want to stay here?” Lewis said no, he didn’t, he had no intention of staying there, but since the only way he was going to be able to use the pool was to book a room, then that was what he’d have to do – that was what the receptionist was forcing him to do. He tried to book two rooms, there and then: one for him and Flora and one for me and Dad. We said not to book one for us, we were quite happy with the beach, but Lewis wouldn’t listen. Trouble was, they didn’t have two double or twin rooms in the hotel. They weren’t empty, whatever Lewis thought, and all they could offer us was some kind of self-catering villa in the grounds that slept six people and was part of the hotel but also self-contained. Thankfully, it counted, for pool-using purposes. Dad and I were begging Lewis to see sense and be happy with the beach, not waste his money, but he was a man on a mission. He booked the villa – “the most expensive changing room I’ve ever used”, he called it later. Two grand, it cost – in 1997. The craziest thing was, none of us slept a single night there, even though it was much plusher than our beach apartment. Again, Dad and I tried our best to make Lewis see sense – since we’d got it now, we might as well use it, we said – but he was adamant. He said, “I want that receptionist to see that she’s made me spend two thousand of my hard-earned pounds on a villa that we’re going to use for maximum half an hour a day, and for nothing apart from changing into and out of our swimming costumes.”’
‘Okay, I have a theory and a question.’ Zannah sits up. ‘You said before, “Flora was warning him to stop” – in the hotel restaurant. Warning who? Lewis, to stop making a fuss about the pool, or Dad to stop taking the piss out of Lewis?’
‘Dad. Flora has always been a peace-maker. A soother-over of potentially troublesome things.’
‘That’s what I thought you meant. Was she scared Lewis would hit Dad or something, if he didn’t stop teasing him?’
‘I think she might have been, yes. It’s hard to explain when you don’t know Lewis, but he could get into these weird states, almost like a maniac, and he’d be so full of passionate determination … It didn’t happen often, but when it did, he could be scary.’