A young Australian woman on reception wore a white vest, which showed off the blue tribal tattoo that covered her right shoulder. She informed him that it was thirty-five pounds for a room for the night and there was only one bed left. She gave Arthur a rolled-up gray blanket and floppy pillow and directed him down a corridor to the room at the end.
Arthur had expected that he might have to share a twin room, but he stepped inside the room to find three bunk beds and five German girls sitting on the floor. They all wore denim shorts and too-tight checked shirts over colored bras. They were sharing a crusty loaf, slab of Edam cheese and cans of cider.
Masking his surprise Arthur bid them a cheery hello, then located the bed in the room that wasn’t piled high with clothes and rucksacks. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself by climbing into his bunk and finding that his knees seized halfway up, so he excused himself to reception where he read a three-day-old newspaper until the girls filed out of the room. He watched as they gave one another donkey rides as they headed out for the night.
He thought about how exuberant he himself used to feel as he got ready to meet Miriam when they first started courting. Butterflies flew in his stomach as he washed, shaved, slicked back his hair with a comb and smear of Brylcreem. He made sure that his suit and shirt were pressed, his shoes were buffed. He would put his comb in his pocket and whistle as he walked to meet her. There was an ice cream parlor where they would sit in the window and drink lemonade with a blob of vanilla floating on top, or they sometimes went to the cinema. At that time a trainee, he didn’t have much money so he would save up all week just in case Miriam wanted to go for a nice meal, but she was happy to go for a walk with him and with their simple dates. He didn’t know at that time that she’d lived with tigers, and had a poem written about her by a famous French writer.
A group of girls passed by the hostel window. One wore a bridal veil and an L sign; the others sported red devil horns, red tutus and fishnet stockings. They sang a song at the top of their voices. “Like a virgin,” were the words he heard.
They waved to him and he waved back. For Miriam’s hen night she had gone for a meal with her mother and two friends to a Berni Inn. It had been the height of sophistication. The night before his wedding, Arthur and his friend Bill (now deceased) had been to a football match and enjoyed two pints of shandy afterward. All his senses had been heightened by the excitement of marrying Miriam the next day. The lemonade in the shandy had been sweet; the football chants made his ears throb. He could feel the label in his shirt rubbing his neck. Every inch of him had been ready to make Miriam his wife.
Their wedding day had whirled by like the confetti that swirled down on them as they left the church. The reception was for thirty people in a community hall. Miriam’s stern-faced mother made the sandwiches and pork pies as their wedding present. Arthur’s parents paid for them to go on honeymoon for two nights to a farm. They set off that night with tin cans jangling and a cardboard Just Married sign taped to the back of Arthur’s Morris Minor.
The farmhouse had been teeth-chatteringly cold. The sheep bayed all night and the landlady looked as if she had swallowed a wasp. But Arthur loved it. Miriam got ready for bed behind a wooden screen in the bedroom and Arthur in the toilet shed outside. He had to tuck his pajamas into his boots and carry his clothes across a muddy field.
Miriam looked beautiful in her floor-length cotton nightdress with pink embroidered roses around the neck. He had tried not to groan with desire as he touched her waist and she shuffled toward him. They had got into bed and made love for the first time. It was his first time. And afterward they had lain in each other’s arms and talked about where they were going to live and the children they were going to have. And even now, that day was the best of his life because it was so full of tenderness and relief and desire. Even though they had many wonderful days after that—the births of Dan and Lucy, family holidays—that time with Miriam, when they were spending their first hours as husband and wife, were the greatest. He hoped that the girl with the L sign would experience the same feelings on her wedding day.
The thing was, when you got to his age, it was unlikely that there would be more wonderful days to come. Ones where you stopped and thought, I will remember this day forever. He had held Kyle and Marina when they were babies and smelled their sweet baby-milk breath and wriggly bodies. He wondered what there was now to look forward to.
He wished that he was no longer in London but tucked up in bed with his customary hot chocolate and newspaper. Instead, he was here, alone, perturbed.
Recognizing his melancholic mood, he told himself that the best thing he could do was to go to bed. He returned to his room and climbed into his bunk at just gone midnight with his ankle throbbing. He snuggled under his blankets fully clothed and tried to think about his honeymoon. Buses rumbled past the window and there was a lot of shouting and he finally drifted to sleep to an ambulance siren.
He was awoken at three in the morning when the girls returned. They were drunk and singing in German. One had brought a man back to the room. He climbed with her into the bunk below Arthur. There was giggling and much swishing of bedclothes.
Luckily the creaking and rocking of the bed that ensued only lasted a few minutes. The other girls giggled and whispered. Arthur tugged his own itchy blankets over his head, though his eyes were wide. At first he told himself that they couldn’t possibly be having sex. Who would go out, meet someone and then fornicate in a room full of others? But it was obvious from the panting and sighing that this was the type of activity going on beneath him. He thought about how much things had changed and that he sometimes didn’t like this new modern world very much.
The chattering slowly died out and the couple in the bottom bunk kissed noisily for a while. He heard the zip of a bag, a packet of tissues being opened and then there was quiet.
Lying there, he thought about how this was the first night in a year that he hadn’t been alone. He hadn’t imagined that he would ever spend a night sleeping in the company of others. Strangely, he found that the gentle breathing and snores that began to ripple around the room comforted him as he went back to sleep.
In the morning he climbed down out of bed while the girls were all still asleep. As he slipped on his sandals, the man from the bunk below sat on the floor fastening his trainers. He wore dusky pink jeans rolled up at the ankle. They clashed with his wiry copper hair. “Shh.” He held his finger up to his lips. “Let’s sneak out of here, man,” he said in an American accent, as if Arthur was part of his plan.
Arthur wanted to explain that he was a lone traveler, that he hadn’t been part of last night’s antics. He wasn’t with the German girls in any respect, but he just nodded.
“Do you know which way it is to King’s Cross?” he asked as they stood on the doorstep blinking at the early-morning light. The hostel breakfast was a brown paper bag left at reception with his name on it. Someone had written “Arthur Peeper.” The American man had helped himself to a bag with the name “Anna” written on it.
“Er, head left and you’ll come to a tube station. You can get to King’s Cross from there.” The man looked in his bag and wrinkled his nose. “An apple, flapjack and carton of orange. Jeez...is that it?”
Arthur thought that he was being rather ungrateful, seeing as he had enjoyed sex, got a bed for the night and stolen himself a free breakfast.