seamen’s jacket. ‘No luck?’ he says – at least, I think it must be ‘no luck’. The way he pronounces his words it sounds more like ‘no suck’, though that wouldn’t make sense, would it?
I shake my head again; he says something else I can’t understand and wanders unsteadily up the street. I do hope that he is all right. I watch him go up to another woman who listens to what he has to say and then steers him towards a doorway. She is no doubt going to give him succour. Oh dear, I feel like one of those people in the Bible who passed by on the other side. If only all the Belgians were able to speak English as well as the man at the Hotel Twerp – I mean, Antwerp.
My suitcase is beginning to get heavy so I look round eagerly for signs of a hotel. There are lots of bars and one or two clubs but no – wait a minute! There we are: Hotel de Plaisir. Luckily my French is good enough to tell me what it means: Hotel of Pleasure. Sounds jolly enough, doesn’t it? It is a bit shabby, set into the wall of the narrow street, but I suppose you could say that its condition adds to its charm. Certainly, the large red light above the door bathes the front of the building in a warm, welcoming glow.
I go through the door and am faced by a counter, behind which stands a small fat man wearing a beret and a hooped T-shirt. His moustache might have been applied with an eyebrow pencil and he looks at me suspiciously.
‘Good evening,’ I say cheerfully. ‘Do you speak English?’
‘Little,’ says the man unenthusiastically. I notice that he smells of garlic – in fact, everything seems to smell of garlic.
‘I’d like a room for two people,’ I say.
The man’s face splits into the imitation of a smile. ‘Good thinking,’ he says. ‘What you try to say? You want to work ’ere?’
‘I want to spend the night here with my friend – my girl-friend.’ I add that hurriedly because I don’t want the man to get the wrong idea.
‘You both working, are you?’
‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘My friend is at the Hotel Twit – I mean Twerp – I mean Antwerp, at the moment.’
‘Business good?’ says the man, starting to light an evil-smelling cigarette.
‘We’ve put up sixty tonight,’ I say, not without a touch of pride.
The man stubs his match against the end of his cigarette. ‘Sixty?! And now you want to come ’ere? On Sunday night? With the Russian one ’undredth and forty-second fleet paying a goodwill visit?’
‘It all helps to add a little colour, doesn’t it?’ I say gaily. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to squeeze us in?’
‘With your work rate, I would be imbecile not to,’ says the man, revealing a new sense of urgency and purpose. ‘Come, I show you to room.’
‘What time is dinner?’ I ask as, what I assume to be the manager, leads the way upstairs. ‘I could eat a horse.’
‘You could eat a whore’s what?’ says the manager, stopping on the bend of the stairs and looking at me suspiciously. ‘We no want any cabaret acts ’ere. Our customers are simple seafaring men who in most cases crave only the satisfaction of the most basic of appetites.’
‘Just like me,’ I say. ‘I don’t want anything fancy. Just something good, solid, substantial and filling.’
‘Y-e-es.’ The manager scratches the front of his trousers in a way that I find rather uncouth and continues to lead the way upstairs. To tell the truth, I have not really warmed to the man. A gentleman would have carried my suitcase. So much for all the stuff about Continentals falling over each other to kiss your hand. I thought it sounded too good to be true.
‘ ’Ere you are. This do you very well – like everything else, yes? ’O, ’O, ’O! English joke, no?’
‘No,’ I say, firmly, looking round the small, stuffy bedroom without attempting to disguise my lack of enthusiasm. ‘There’s hardly room to swing a cat in here.’
‘You no need to swing cat,’ says the man. ‘Flagellation is too sophisticated for my clientele. They like simple stuff.’ He looks round the door and closes it quickly. ‘Just like me! Welcome to Hotel de Plaisir.’ So saying, he unzips the front of his trousers and produces what at first glance I take to be a plug of chewing tobacco. I am about to tell him that I am not a chewer when I see what the thing really is. Despite my understandable lack of experience, I am able to recognise a cupid’s quiver – especially when it is quivering as much as this one.
‘How dare you!’ I say. ‘Put that away at once. I’ve got an empty matchbox somewhere if you don’t mind it bashing against the sides.’
‘Just a quick one!’ sings out the loathsome low-lander. ‘So I can recommend you to my customers.’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ I say sternly. ‘This kind of shenanigans puts a totally different complexion on our relationship. I suggest that you accept my offer concerning the matchbox before it is too late. I have a pair of tweezers in my make-up bag.’ Of course, this kind of talk is all terribly forward and quite unlike the real me but I find that it is the only thing that a certain type of man understands.
‘Shenanigans?’ says the man slowly. ‘What is they?’
‘English lessons are extra,’ I say bravely. ‘Now, unless you pull yourself together, I’m going to check out of this hotel immediately. I don’t mind a little joke’ – I lean on the word little – ’but enough should be as good as a feast to a blind horse.’
‘Blind whores?’ says the manager looking puzzled. ‘You talk about the rest of the girls? They old; sure; toothless, maybe, but not blind.’
At this confusing moment, the door opens and a woman comes in. At first, I think she is wearing fancy dress. She can’t be a day under fifty and yet she is sporting a thigh-length mini skirt with a slit running up to her vaccination mark and a lurex top holding her sagging breasts as if they are the last two melons left at the bottom of a sack. You could use her high heeled shoes to plant potatoes and she is wearing more make-up than a New Guinea chieftain at a fertility rite – although it is less tastefully applied. The outfit is completed by a plastic rose which she holds between her teeth. Her teeth she holds between her finger and thumb.
‘Alors, Fifi mon ange,’ says the manager. ‘Qu’est-ce que tu veux, mon petit chou?’
His tone is pleasant enough but Fifi replaces her teeth and snaps at him savagely. I do not understand everything she says because, like so many foreigners, she speaks too fast but I do catch ‘… espèce de putain!’ accompanied by a ferocious glance at myself. I seem to remember that putain was not in the dictionary we had at school and meant something rather uncomplimentary.
‘Is this your mother?’ I say, bending over backwards to be pleasant, as is my wont. ‘Comment allez-vous, madam?’
I had not expected my inquiry after the lady’s health to be met with a kiss on both cheeks, but I am amazed when the tarty old frump spits on the carpet! Disgusting, isn’t it? I don’t know if this place appears in the RAC Continental Guidebook but I intend to kick up one hell of a fuss when I get back to England. No wonder more people are holidaying at our homespun watering places these days. It isn’t just because the country is bankrupt.
Things are made even more unpleasant when Fifi slaps the manager round the face and he punches her in the stomach. I had not expected anything quite so brutal from our Continental cousins and I steel myself against the inevitable shock that accompanies the sight of the manager enmeshing his fingers in the recumbent Fifi’s hair and proceeding to drag her from the room. I am even more disquieted when Fifi is revealed as wearing a wig. This whimsical female subterfuge is something that the manager presumably discovers when his headlong progress down the stairs is arrested by the landing two floors below. What a rum business it all is. Taking everything into consideration, I wonder if it would not be advisable that Penny