6. Aug, 2020

'The Last Resort'

Chelle and Phil were finally here, having flown in on reopened deals, still in the midst of a pandemic, a crisis, a hiatus in normalities.  

“Great to have the beach to ourselves,” they laughed, scanning the white sand with slight desperation, sweeping it for company, but feeling less on holiday than acutely stranded, a feeling that was growing with each passing day of their fortnight.  

The hotel’s bright bars and scenic seating areas were all theirs for the choosing, lonely neon-lit spots in whose windows they sat as forlornly as subjects in an Edward Hopper diner.  The staff were scarce and even now overstretched.  It gave Chelle and Phil the feeling that there was little time for the friendly passing smiles and a brief chat as meals were served, or to laugh about the unseemly cocktails, enormous and with sexy names, which the couple presented on Instagram to family and friends back home who hadn’t managed their escape.  

They had the beach to themselves, and equally, themselves to talk to.  Holidays were for meeting up with people, chatting, breaking out from coupledom into expansive groups, not for this twilight of isolation.  Looking out at those white sands and blue skies alone, they felt this foreign nature’s indifference to their presence, a pointlessness in their existence highlighted.  They were not a naturally introspective couple and so they did not like it.

Focussed on news that upon their return they would have to isolate in quarantine now for fourteen days and flights might be delayed, they tried to find a fellow traveller to grumble about it all with.  Now and again, this middle fifties couple had seen a family group about, one of those blond units of parents with pre-teen children and caramel tans; white shorts and chinos flashing in the sunlight as they crossed the beach, the street, looked into restaurant windows, always up ahead somewhere and never within eye catching distance.  Phil and Chelle (never a Michelle) had christened them ‘the Golden Nuggets’ and had a little game, now grown almost wistful, of catching up with them.

“This is scandalous!” Chelle said again, scanning phone updates from their travel company.  “What’s happened to that rep of ours?  Not a sign of her in the hotel for days and no answer to my texts!”

“If we could only talk to someone else, we could find out what other people are doing,” agreed Phil, scanning the horizon again outside their hotel window.  “I’m sure when we first came there were other people staying here.”

“Not many and not in our hotel.  Perhaps they got wind of all this early and got themselves off home?”

“More fool them!” scoffed Phil.  “Fancy rushing back after all that time stuck in lockdown in England.  Make the most of it, I say!”

He looked around as if, even now, there might be an audience, apart from his wife, to agree with him and offer bluff approval.

“We should try to find the Golden Nuggets and talk to them,” said Chelle, with a shake of the stripey highlights she had managed to have refreshed in time for the holiday for the first time in several months. She had been able,then, with relief, to revert to the usual topic of conversation with the girl who did her hair for her and be praised for having the gumption to get away.

“They might be German,” said Phil, reopening the guessing game about the blond people.

“Or Dutch”

“Or American,”

“Or Swedish.”

“Well, whatever they are, they’ll speak English, won’t they?  Nearly everyone does, “ observed Phil complacently, settling fattish legs a little wider in his long shorts and meaning that, even if they were returning to a different destination, he and Chelle could still talk to them about flights and such things.

This was how it had come about that today’s search for the elusive family became more urgent to the couple trying to make a joke between themselves about their increasing unease at their situation.  Phil and Chelle promenaded along the broad, beachside streets looking for the family and then, unsuccessful, opted for a tour of the medieval castle ruins which were a feature of the small town.  It had once been a port of strategic military significance many kingdoms ago.  They walked through it and along the sand coloured ramparts and from this vantage point, Chelle suddenlyspotted them.

“Phil, look!  They’re over there, look, down there!  They must have been round here just before!  Fancy that!”

Phil looked and saw the familiar foursome walking away - fresh, bright, attractive in the sunshine.  On impulse he hallooed them and waved, Chelle joining in, their eager cries carrying and floating down.  As one, the group wheeled round and looked back up at them, faces like sunny open flowers surrounded by their flaxen hair.  Phil and Chelle continued waving frantically and Phil shouted,

“Hold on!  Wait!  We’re coming down!” and with mutual haste, they rushed below towards the company they had been seeking for days.

Hurrying out of the ancient gateway at the bottom, they expected to see the family right outside on the path but there was nobody there.  They looked about, astonished that the people had gone away again.  True, they hadn’t waved back but they had stopped, looked up at them, clearly had heard them.

“How rude!” exclaimed Chelle, finding herself close to exasperated tears with the frustration of it all due to the rising panic growing between herself and Phil.

“Perhaps they just didn’t understand we wanted to talk to them,” suggested Phil.  “Here, come on, no need to get upset.  We’ll be fine, you know.  Let’s just carry out a bit, we’re bound to see them, they can’t have gone far.  Only a bit of fun, Chelle.”

It had started out as only being a bit of fun but, by now, it wasn’t, being able to make contact with these only other holiday makers had come to seem crucial, critical even, to both of them.  Their adult confidence in themselves was eroded, their coupledom insufficient, lacking in safety in numbers.  Faced with the strangeness of being alone in the resort without the like minded to say, ‘you’re doing right, you’re entitled to travelling, look at all of us having a great old time here, not like those dull stay at homes who don’t know how to enjoy life’ they felt lost.

Chelle and Phil knew how to enjoy life, in fact, they would have said they were known for enjoying life, that anybody would point to them and say, now there was a couple to envy with just how much they got the most out of enjoying life which, if it wasn’t about having holidays abroad, what was it about?  These were the kind of people Phil and Chelle were used to palling up with on holidays but now that there were none of them about, the white sand, the blue sea, the idyllic setting, was emptying of its charm for them.  They were starting to worry quite seriously about getting home.

“We need to get some answers,” said Phil.  “Look, we know which hotel they stay in, don’t we?  We’ve seen them going in there.  Let’s just go there and ask for them, leave some kind of message if they’re not there.  Ask when they’re around and say we want to have a chat with them about travelling.  Maybe they’ll have a rep about since ours has gone AWOL?”

“That’s a very good idea,” said Chelle, reassured by what sounded like a sensible plan.

The white hotel fronts, lacking their residents, were an array of empty promises, a pointless modern bulk cluttering up the shape of the old place, as marooned as shipwrecks.  Phil and Chelle found the one they had seen the family disappearing into previously and went inside.

The reception area was quiet but there was a man behind the desk who greeted them with the smoothly deferential aplomb they were used to receiving in the resort as visitors and this was calming, as if they were, after all, in the right place.  He was smart in a black suit and white shirt, head tilted with a listening smile as they began.

“We're in a hotel down the road” Phil started saying.

“There’s a family staying here we’ve got friendly with,”  Chelle exaggerated, interrupting and the man gave a small, quizzical nod, as if he knew that this was not quite true.

“We’d like to talk to them, all this trouble about flights and so on, for getting home, we want to see how it’s affecting them, what to do,” explained Phil.

The man was gentle with them, outspreading welcoming palms.

“Why rush home?  There is all of the place to enjoy here for you.  No crowds.”  Phil and Chelle agreed that this was so.  “And your holiday, is it ended?”

“Not yet, not for several days.”

“Then, I think I have the solution for you,” said the receptionist.  “Change hotels.  Come to stay here, with me, then you are quite sure to meet your friends, and you will have plenty of time to chat with them over your dinners.  Far more convenient.  And no more anxiety about your journey home.”

“Oh, well, er,” demurred Phil but Chelle was eager.

“Whyever not, Phil?  Let’s do it!  There’s nobody else but us staying in ours after all.  We need to hook up with other holidaymakers to find out what to do, don’t we?  Is there a travel rep that comes in here dealing with the family?” she asked.

The receptionist’s smile was wider than ever.

“Of course!” he said. “Everything is here.  You should have come to stay with me in the first place.  Then you wouldn’t be worrying about anything!”

Phil and Chelle were grateful for the sales pitch, to the point of making the decision and leaving their original hotel.  Grasping at straws was turning into something tangible they could do.  

“What will we say to them, though?” said Chelle, feeling it would be rudely disloyal to bolt as the hotel’s only customers.

“Say nothing.  I will speak to them,” offered the receptionist, a suggestion they gladly accepted.  “I will explain it all, then you may leave without bother.”

Soon they had the key to a new room and went upstairs to look at it, before hurrying back to their old hotel to pack up their things hastily and leave for this one.  They laughed that they still hadn’t found out the names of their fellow travellers but told each other it didn’t matter, they would be on speaking terms soon enough and they were almost giddy with relief, paying up their bill quickly and hurrying back to the new hotel.  Its reception area was cool, lined with dark coloured marble on the walls, pillars of it in the dining room’s expanse which could be seen from there, a far more old fashioned seeming building altogether than most of the new build outfits. The dark suited manager was as poised as ever, opening a very large ledger on the desk and asking them to sign in and register.  He watched over them doing so, his smile widening even more, if that were possible, as the formalities were concluded.  After this, they went up in the lift and as the doors opened, further down the corridor they heard the sound of youngsters laughing happily and, hurrying out, Chelle was sure she caught a glimpse of several bare, tanned legs turning the corner.

“They are here, Phil!” she said.  “Did you see?”

“Yes.  I saw them.  Well, we’re in the right place now, aren’t we?”

They were both quite sure that they were.

“I’d better send another text to that hopeless rep of ours, Phil.  Just to let her know we’ve moved hotels.”

“Yes, but we won’t need her now, will we?”

“No...That’s funny,” said Chelle.  “There’s no signal on my phone.  Never mind, I’ll do it later.”

They passed the receptionist once more when, unpacked, they decided to go out again for a walk around before dinner.

“I think we saw our friends before,” said Chelle to him.

“Oh, yes, you’ve just missed them.  But don’t worry” the receptionist assured them with his white, white smile, “You will have all the time in the world now that you are fully booked in here with me.  All the time in the world."