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12M

3

   Cardigan Guardians

   by

Rachel Bilney

 

Chapter 3

 

I worked as a chambermaid. Not much of a job, but it paid the bills [just about], the girls I worked with were a good laugh and you did get to meet interesting people, some of the time [though no rock stars or famous actors]. I worked at the Juniper Bush Hotel in the posher part of Newcastle [yes! there is one]. It was a fantastic old house, well two old Victorian houses actually, knocked into one and had been ‘lovingly restored’ and made into a family run hotel by Mr and Mrs Jackson, known locally for having got lucky with the lottery and winning a considerable, but undisclosed, amount of money in a syndicate in their previous jobs. Now the overly proud owners of this impressive, yet tackily decorated hotel, they had turned their backs on all that they knew and had lived with, thus far, and had become a perfect example of the nouveau riche… incredibly wealthy, hobnobbing with other wealthy, and occasionally well-known, people, but not quite knowing how to go on. They disassociated themselves from all their staff by pretending to be very posh and claiming they always had been, insisting the lottery win had nothing to do with them owning the hotel and that they would have made the investment regardless of whether they won on the lottery or not. This, of course, doesn’t explain how they both worked in a soap powder factory [where they had met twenty-five years ago] and hadn’t got round to buying the hotel until they, coincidently, won the lottery.

         The job didn’t pay particularly well, but it suited me for the time being. I only worked mornings, the majority of the staff was nice and I actually found cleaning therapeutic! Equally, it’s usually a good talking point, when out for the night with the lasses. If you tell anyone you’re a chambermaid it raises a few eyebrows, encourages a few winks and causes the odd dirty ‘ho ho!’. People, [especially those who have either never worked in a hotel or never stayed in a hotel], always have this image of chambermaids wearing very short, sexy, black, tight dresses with a white, frilly pinny, black sussys and stockings and high, high heels… the archetypal French maid. Also, there was perhaps something about women that spent their working lives round bedrooms that weren’t theirs that conjured up images of naughty, ‘Carry-On style’ goings-on. It couldn’t be further from the truth. I had lost count of the times I’d seen the excitement slide off a man’s face when posed with the question, “So, if you don’t wear the sexy, black dress thing and sussys, what do you wear?” and I’ve been forced to reply,

         “Well, actually, it’s an incredibly sexy, blue, polyester housecoat thing, A-line, skimming the knee, naturally, press studs to the neck, with a delightful blue and white checked collar and trim on the sleeves. You could have the figure of Kylie Minogue and still look like a sack of potatoes in it, oh and you usually have bleach stains all over it, burst coffee and sugar sachets in your pocket and the gentle odour of Ajax or Vim emanating from it… kinky enough for you?”

         Highly impractical as it is, I often craved the reality of other people’s ideals of what chambermaids were all about, especially when there was a good-looking bloke in room seventeen and you had to knock to take him some fresh towels and you know that no matter how you did your hair or make-up, when he opened that door he wouldn’t see Jennifer Lopez or even you on a good day, but he would see something akin to Nora Batty, all thanks to the delightful blue overall and the nature of the job, which was basically to clean things up and skivvy after everyone.

         I did enjoy the job, though, most of the time. Usually when I went in a room, I would turn on the radio on the alarm clock by the side of the bed and sing and [occasionally dance!] my way round the room, stripping beds and dusting and washing teacups and cleaning the bathroom and though it’s repetitive, there is a sense of achievement when you look back at the room, all clean and tidy and void of belongings, just clean, tidy furniture, perfect for the next guest and then you simply go on to the next room and do it all again.

         I even had a favourite room. Room twelve. I was responsible for the six rooms on the very top floor of the hotel, rooms twelve to eighteen [there was no room thirteen out of superstition]. They were my rooms, that I cleaned every day and which I knew like the back of my hand. Each room was different and as my floor was really the attic, there was a sort of quaintness and almost secret-cupboard-like feel to the rooms, as they were slotted into the nooks and crannies of the roof space. Most had sloped roofs at some point in the room and some had their own miniature staircase leading up to them, as they were slightly higher up than the other rooms, fitting into the tallest part of the roof. From a practical point of view, they were a bloody nightmare, especially when you had to carry down laundry and take up sheets, towels, cleaning stuff and Hoovers etc and I was constantly banging elbows and legs on banisters and doorways. Yet, even so, this was outweighed by the fact that it was still like my own little sanctuary in the roof, away from the hectic hustle and bustle of the reception area, dining room and bar.

         When I split up with Danny’s dad, Pete, I had imagined, and hoped, that I would one day meet someone else, but had never thought it would be at work. The majority of the work force was female and of the available males, namely chefs and barmen, not one looked promising. They were either sixteen, very spotty and greasy-haired or too old, fat and bald, there was no middle ground at all. Of course there were always the guests, but it was the sort of hotel that attracted couples on city breaks, wealthy spinsters and coach loads of American and Norwegian pensioners, stopping off to see Hadrian ’s Wall before heading for Edinburgh or York. They appreciated the chintz and tweeness of the individual rooms and the very English rose garden that Mrs Jackson was particularly proud of and where she spent most of her time, swanning around, looking busy with her two Yorkshire terriers scurrying around her ankles, yapping in frenzied circles.

         Young-ish, attractive, single men were very thin on the ground, needless to say I had completely ruled out the possibility of meeting one at work, in fact I never even considered it. It would probably be a complete waste of time even if one did magically appear in the hotel as they would not be able to see beyond the blue polyester overall. That was until Darren appeared, like the shopkeeper in the Mr Benn programme, as if by magic!

         He had actually worked in the hotel for some time before I came across him, as our paths literally never crossed. I tended to work mornings, Darren usually began work later in the morning and finished later. He was employed to keep the garden tidy and cut and clipped and also to mend things, deal with rubbish and any other job which couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be done by a chambermaid, waitress or receptionist. Mr Jackson liked to think he could fix things too and often strutted about with his fat belly [swollen with too much good food and far too much beer and wine... now money wasn’t an issue and he lived in a hotel where it was all found in abundance.] He would bark orders and brandish screwdrivers and hammers, pretending he was going to fix something, but was needed elsewhere for something far more important and pressing, like entertaining his newfound, posh friends in the bar. In reality he didn’t have a clue what he was doing and, therefore, Darren got to do most jobs round the hotel. For the most part, I was up in the top of the hotel and Darren was way down below, in the garden usually, that was until one Thursday morning when two tiles fell off the bathroom wall in room twelve.

         I loved room twelve. It faced southeast and was, therefore, usually bright and sunny when I went in to clean it, often in winter too. It had a huge window which looked out on the garden and I often whiled away a few minutes listening to the radio, or reading a guest’s magazine they had left lying around, whilst looking out of it [although I never saw Darren]. The walls were clean and simple, painted cream, the bedding and curtains were actually complimentary, the curtains being pale-blue and the quilted throw for the bed being a traditional, country cottage type of blue and cream. Mrs Jackson had almost excelled herself in this room, how she had got it right in this room and so horribly wrong in the majority of the others with their hideous combinations was beyond me. The bathroom had a plain, white suite, which was not only nicer to look at, but also much easier to clean than the disgusting brown one in room fifteen and the equally awful avocado one in room seventeen, as it didn’t show the dust or clash with the tiles. There was generally a nice feel about the room, I can’t explain why, perhaps nice things had happened there in olden days, whereas people had perhaps died in all the other rooms! Perhaps it was just coincidence then that this was where I met Darren, or was it fate?