Kill the Cynic by Ina Disguise - HTML preview

“What are you doing?”  Andi, Margaret’s improbably feminine friend, fiddled with her exquisitely styled hair.

Margaret looked up from the computer. “Buying curtains – this dude is selling 9 giant sage green velvet curtains for 99p.”

“Why on earth do you want 9 giant sage green curtains?”  Andi pouted at herself in the mirror before adjusting her cleavage and smoothing down her shiny pink skirt. “How do I look?”

“Fabulous darling.  No-one would ever guess that you used to be a man.” Margaret’s deadpan expression did not change as she teased Andi. “The curtains are for room 10.”

“Room 10?”

“Yes, at the Mermaid Hotel – that place we stayed at last month remember?  The curtains are in Poole.  We can drive down next week and pick them up.”

“Poole is 300 miles away.  Does Malcolm know that you plan to buy curtains for his hotel?”  Andi wriggled into her other skyscraper heels and reached for her handbag.  “Is there a budget?”

“A budget?  No of course not.  You don’t walk into other people’s hotels and demand to redecorate.  I thought we could sneak in and do a bit of renegade decorating next month as a surprise for him.”  Margaret continued to browse for matching curtains.  “I have to get the curtains first and then match up the paint.  Room 10 needs quite a lot but I can still double the room rate for about two hundred I reckon.”

“And you’re going to pay for that?” Andi grimaced prettily and took out her compact to examine her lips more closely. Her mobile rang, yet another call from the lengthy range of suitors that seemed to enjoy the constant rejections and delays involved in failing to successfully woo Andi. She ignored the call. “And what about the other rooms?”

“I thought we would just do one at a time.  On this occasion I thought we could be very important and yet uncommunicative Albanians.  Disguise ourselves, check in, refuse to leave the room.  Three days and we’ll be done. I wasn’t really thinking about money.  I just thought it would be a fun way to spend three days whilst mother is away.  The carpet is quite good in that room.  Sage green will bring that out quite well, I think.” Margaret turned to youtube for some Albanian lessons from Viola. “You’ll have to do all the talking though, he knows my voice. I’ll just have to say things like Mire and je a lot.”

“Live the rhoum at iz.”  Andi practised her broken Albanian English.  “We ir not hahngray.  No nid for surviss.”

“Perfect.  Are you game?” Margaret almost smiled. “I thought a blonde wig, fur coat and maybe some red lipstick.  He’ll never guess it’s me.”

“Yes, but I don’t see why we are doing this.  Is Malcolm your new muse?” Andi turned her protesting phone off to prevent any more calls from lovelorn men. “I think he will know it’s you. I can tell these things.”

“Not Malcolm, no.  I think maybe the Hotel is? How on earth will he know it’s me if I don’t speak and look fairly odd? I’m distinctive only by my appalling scruffiness normally.”

“Trust me, he’ll know.  You know someone got done for criminal damage for doing someone else’s hotel room up a few years back?  We could pay cash though, and then ring the papers to report it.” Andi was clearly enjoying the prospect of secretly redesigning the Mermaid, despite the potential risk to her nails.

“That kind of foils my plan to return as Greta from Austria to do the appalling room with the plasticised bunk beds. He might be OK about it, but I like that hotel.  I would rather go back as myself once I’ve completed all the rooms. Rarely have I experienced the inexorable joy I felt looking at his broken joinery, neglected light fitting and blown double glazing.”

“You’re planning to spend nearly three grand redesigning someone else’s hotel? Don’t you think that by the time you are Fifi from France or Angela from Argentina he might notice something?” Andi twitched at her stocking tops with a trace of nervousness.

“I wasn’t really thinking about it like that.  I just thought – he seems like a nice chap.  It’s not going to be done otherwise. I like doing nice things for people.  Why does it always go so horribly wrong? No-one ever likes anything, so I thought if I do it in secret, it won’t really be me doing it.” Margaret started to look despondent.  Andi noted that she was, in fact, terribly upset and her plans to reinvent someone else’s hotel was an effort to distract herself, so she decided to be gentle.

“You don’t think you should speak to him about it first?  You could always redesign my dining room.  At least it wouldn’t cost you anything and I would like it.” She smiled prettily, as if flirting with an invisible camera.

“I can do that too?  Drat, someone else wants the curtains.  I bet they are closer to Poole. We will need a folding ladder, filler, lining paper, coving and some cream and sage green paint.” Margaret pushed up her paint covered sleeves and scratched her head, causing her unbrushed hair to stand up in a messy bouffant. “That brown in the bathroom could do with being a yellower shade too. And we mustn’t let him carry the bags up. I will have to do it, with a series of monosyllabic negative sounding Albanian grunts.”

“I think you need to go and speak to Malcolm.”  Andi adjusted an earring. “Maybe take some swatches and paint samples.”

“God no, what a bore.  He will think I am touting for business. They never understand.” Margaret got up from the computer and carried her enormous teacup towards the kettle. “I don’t suppose I can really afford it, to be honest.  And what happens after that? That place would make a fabulous bistro and the village could do with a high end joint, but would I really want to do it?” The former stately home caterer sized up the imaginary opportunity.

“Are you sure you don’t just fancy the pants off Malcolm?” Andi giggled and stroked her legs.

“I’ve done the alcoholic thing until I’m blue in the face.  It’s always the same. They tell you how terribly unimportant you are until you crack your way in, then you become so important that doing anything at all is an excuse for a drink.  I like him, and we seem to get on, but you would have to fall in love with the hotel and work around him really. Maybe I’m just trying to fall in love with the hotel.  That would be ironic, wouldn’t it?  Work your way up to an unreasonable level of catering excellence for years, then fall madly in love with a broken hotel.” Margaret chuckled.

“Quite sweet really.  I’m not sure why, but quite sweet.” Andi removed a pink nail file from the handbag and filed a meticulously painted nail. “Should I bring a team with me to do the heavy work?”

“That would kind of miss the whole point of me doing it as a gift?  Do you want your dining room done or not?” Margaret returned to her customary state of contemptuous misery. Feminine chicks were so lazy.  Always looking for a way to get someone else to do it.

“I don’t want to break a nail.”

“Sit and watch me doing it then?  Look at this.  Who the hell celebrates World Gin Day?”

“An old lush with a fucked up hotel?”  Andi smiled nastily as she browsed the search results for Malcolm.  “He’s only five years older than you…Maybe you should do something with your hair?”

On balance, Margaret decided that she would go down the coast and speak to Malcolm before launching her Mermaid Hotel world domination plan. Malcolm was aware that Margaret had been looking for a property on the coast, so she decided that this was the best pretext on which to open the conversation, during which she hoped she would be able to broach the subject of redecorating his hotel, or at least figure out whether it would be an unwelcome change. If honest, she did find him attractive in a kind of abstract, wouldn’t-touch-another-boozer-with-a-bargepole kind of way, she supposed?  He did seem very easy to talk to. Maybe she did want to take the world by storm by re-opening his defunct bistro? She would have to work around him to prevent his being stressed, she reasoned.  Maybe suggest a franchise arrangement? She decided to play it by ear and see how it went. She phoned the day before she was due to go down. Andi agreed to forgo a date or two and look after Margaret’s elderly mother for the night.

“How did the phone call go?”

“Like battle of the sexy voices.  Malcolm and I should record ourselves talking about washing machines or something and start a premium rate line. Our voices are so ridiculously raunchy no one would notice.” Margaret laughed.  “Even I was succumbing until he started talking to the cat.”

Andi laughed. “See you tomorrow then.”

Margaret drove the three hour trip back down the coast to see Malcolm with mixed feelings.  “What did she really want?  Was she just lonely? She decided, at length that this was an extension of her current project. Announcing your eccentricity to the public and then seeing how it went when you announced it in person. Yes, she thought, perhaps it was this that inspired her. At least it was a night off from crying over other people’s spilt milk. She was still unable to fathom why her mother had bothered having her at all, since her siblings, unhelpful, spiteful people who constantly complained, were considered so superior to her whilst she single-handedly earned their inheritance. Maybe she was looking for an escape route? Twenty years ago to the day, she had been living with an alcoholic in an extremely upmarket hotel in Somerset.  Could it be that she actually preferred that monotonous uncertainty?  At least she hadn’t had to worry about the next attack from her siblings back then.

On arrival, Margaret noted that Malcolm appeared to be sober and had shaved his beard off.  Wow, she thought, I would appear to be of some importance, for once.  He was probably doing something else that required relative smartness, she surmised.  She experienced a wave of inexplicable nervousness and was relieved when he announced his urgent need to make phone calls.  She sighed with contentment as she looked at the well fed seagulls and misty grey sea as she consumed several cups of tea in her hotel room.

An hour or so later, Margaret made her way down the dark staircase, noting that another guest had attempted to fix the broken light that she herself had attempted to mend a few days earlier.  She could tell by the way the antique chair had been dragged out next to the perilous bannister.  Good luck with that, she thought as she remembered the strobe lighting effect that putting a light bulb in had produced, and the uncherished steak knife that lurked in the out of date fuse box. This made her feel a lot better. There is a peculiar comfort in broken things if you happen to like fixing them. She visualised the Mermaid Hotel with appropriately applied sticking plasters, and smiled.

Ringing the bellpush at reception, Margaret saw that Malcolm was considerably more relaxed and was relieved.  She realised, of course, that a good half gallon of alcohol had been involved in the meantime, but at least she wasn’t upsetting him anymore. He made her some tea, and they proceeded to the lounge.

Margaret introduced herself as a former Michelin level chef.  Malcolm immediately assumed the role of crusty old patron of the arts and asked whether she perhaps wanted to get back into it again?

“I don’t think so, no?”  Margaret looked confused. “I thought I would just ask your opinion of a property we’ve found.”  Margaret had decided that talking about her love of property repair might be a good way of steering the conversation in the vague general direction she optimistically hoped to go in.

Malcolm, still confused and assuming that he was in a paternalist role, did his best to look kind, interested and intelligent, spreading himself across his tartan wing chair, chosen for its fatherly qualities.

Already exasperated, Margaret explained the extensive structural work required on the property, its inconvenient location and the nature of the problems with her grasping, irrational and unhelpful family.  “I am only five years younger than you, by the way Malcolm.”

Malcolm seized on the opportunity to talk about something he understood. “I’m a mess, yes.  At least I know I’m an alcoholic.  I can see it in other people, you know.  They deny it but I know I’m a wanker.  Playing cricket on the beach etc. My last girlfriend was a pisshead too.”

“Booze is boring.” Margaret shut down that line of the conversation.  She wasn’t really there to wave a teetotal flag. What would be the point?  Boozehounds are boozehounds.

Malcolm swiftly moved on to the safer issue of property. “Ah a wee but an’ ben for you and yer mither.” Malcolm visibly shrivelled in the seat as he retreated into the role of bitter old man, sniggering.

“Um, no.  Since the stroke, mother needs something slightly post-Georgian.  She doesn’t take corners terribly well.” Margaret did her best to remain pleasant and firm despite the attempted slight. “There is a large flat just down the road I could turn over.  It would sell better.” Margaret had hoped to bring this line of chat towards the matter of the hotel.

“No love lost with your relatives then.” Malcolm did not appear to understand the problems, logistical, legal or seriously unpleasant that Margaret had carefully outlined.  In typical boozer fashion, he struggled to put full stops on the conversation where there were none. Margaret was aware of becoming impatient. He followed this up with a comparison of inheritances, with no basis in terms of facts.  He was apparently missing out on the family castle.  Jesus, thought Margaret, this dude is a bit tacky.

“Now Malcolm, class is a funny thing.  My parents were working, my siblings are from their ‘yuppie oik’ period, and I have more in common with the seriously posh Scottish gentleman across the road than with any of them.  And they had the private education too, I went to a scruff school. Their values are very poor.” Margaret successfully diverted the mean-spirited Malcolm away from obsessing about parental demise. “So, what do you think then?  Low ceiling price Dumfries, or easy to sell Anstruther?”

“Oh Dumfries, yes buy that one.  Weegies hate the east coast.  They come here, buy houses because they love the summer.  Winter comes and they are cold and bored.  This is MY area.  I’m from here.  Fucking Weegies.”

Margaret had heard about this phenomenon before.  People who lived outside Glasgow seemed to believe that Glaswegians had some sort of superiority complex that as far as she knew, did not exist.  Andi had once been bitterly asked what Glaswegians call Aberdonians, and had replied that she didn’t remember calling them anything? I see, Margaret thought, if we move to the East Coast we will get thought of as ‘Weegie bastards.’  Turn up for the books, she thought.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to find the evidently well-heeled Malcolm to be a spiteful, small minded twat? It was the booze, she reasoned, the slow toxic self-depreciation.  Just as well she had brought the vitamins.

“Well, I’m terribly sorry, I have to go now.”  Malcolm got up to leave. “It would be different if there was a bottle of wine or whisky, but I have to go.”

“Thank you so much, Malcolm.”  Margaret made her way out to the car to get her recovery kit for Malcolm.  She would just leave it behind the desk, she reasoned, and say nothing.  She couldn’t be bothered explaining why. B complex vitamins for his nerves, zinc for his ailing general health, and bacteria chocolate that she had recently discovered for his digestion. When she had placed this, she fired an email off to Andi. “Shambolic rich pisshead. Why do people like this waste so much, and not even in a fun way?”

She had gone there with the intention of making a fool of herself, probably not in the way Malcolm had expected, and felt quite vindicated.  Margaret wondered how many times she had done something nice for someone that did not understand or value it.  It was part of her oddness that this did not seem to matter, but at least she had spared herself a great deal of work this time.

The waitress in the morning appeared to believe it had been some sort of failed booty call, and pounced on Margaret as she returned her key to reception. “Do you want to see Malcolm?”

“No, no.” Margaret frowned, then realising what was being analysed. “Not yet.”

Breakfast was, as usual, excellent, and Margaret drove back to Glasgow feeling she had done the right thing.  Odd, but efficient. You didn’t expect that level of mean-spirited immaturity in the well off, she thought, but Margaret had been amongst sufficiently elite crowds to know that it wasn’t all that unusual. She had learned in the course of her many lives, that people varied in pretty much the same way no matter what their income bracket. She was quite glad to be outside all that with her over generous eccentricity and bizarrely inefficient work ethic.

“There will never be another Tim, unfortunately.” Margaret sighed.  “And I wouldn’t inflict my family on him for the world.” Andi and Margaret were passing his architectural gem house on their way back from shopping.

“Just see if you can talk him into letting me oil his grooves.” Andi laughed “I’d love to help you with that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.  Tim’s panelling is not to be trifled with.” Margaret assumed her aghast expression. “We could get married and wave at each other from across the road. That might work, if the family were somehow eradicated by a mysterious random event of some sort. I don’t think that’s going to happen though, and I’m rather ancient.”  Margaret slumped in the driving seat. “I’ve wasted my life on family scum and trying to please people that aren’t worth pleasing. I suppose the modern way is to leave your mother and father in a house they can’t handle, ill or not.  The big mistake in modern terms, is caring about anything, in fact.”

www.inadisguise.com 2014