And so it was that Cheryl Kite had no choice other than to abandon her own vehicle at the side of the road and to drive the two men and their Ford Cortina all the way back to Stranraer, with Billy in the back seat calling out to God and chastising Him for a ‘terrible appendicitis’ and Seamus saying over and over again that Mrs Kite was ‘the kindest woman in all the world’ and apologising repeatedly ‘for inconveniencing you in this way’. As soon as she reached the medical centre, Cheryl took Billy inside then rang the hotel from a callbox in the waiting room. It was already half-past six. Paolo had taken off for Easter celebrations with his family in Glasgow and Lockie was the only person left at Killantringan with the wherewithal to run the hotel.
‘Lachlan?’ she said, when Kite picked up in the office.
‘Mum? Where are you?’
‘I’m in bloody Stranraer with a bloody Irishman who probably drank too much of our whisky last night and developed cirrhosis of the liver.’
Given what had happened to her husband, Cheryl had a predictably short fuse when it came to men overindulging an appetite for alcohol.
‘What?’ Kite replied. ‘How did you end up with—’
‘Never mind.’ He could tell that she was annoyed and just wanted Kite to listen to what she had to say. ‘I’m not going to be able to get back for at least another hour. You’ll have to take orders for dinner, make sure people in the bar get served, ask Wilma to turn down the beds upstairs if she’s not needed in the restaurant. And tell John he’ll have to take pasta off tonight’s menu. It’s sitting in the boot of my fucking car two miles up the road.’
‘I could drive up with someone and fetch it.’
Cheryl cursed. ‘It’s locked and I’ve got the only key.’
There was no night manager at Killantringan. Shortly before dawn on Good Friday morning, Michael Strawson had sneaked downstairs and placed microphones in both of the office telephones. Listening to the call in Churchill, he was impressed by Kite’s apparent sangfroid.
‘Mum, it’s fine. I’ll handle it. Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worried,’ she replied tersely. ‘I just need you to take care of things. Do you think you can do that? Do you know what needs to be done?’
‘Like I said, I’ll handle it. How long do you think you’re going to be?’
‘How should I know? They’re both a pair of wet blankets. If I don’t at least make sure they see a doctor, God knows what will happen to them.’
‘Maybe check them in, then get a taxi back to your car?’ Kite suggested.
‘Yes, that’s a good idea. Could you ring one for me?’
She gave him the address of the medical centre. Kite immediately rang the local taxi service in Stranraer, wondering why his mother couldn’t have done it herself. Inevitably, there was no answer. He tried again three minutes later and was told that all of the firm’s drivers would be busy until at least half-past eight. Listening in, Strawson considered this to be a slice of good fortune: it would give him an extra hour to observe how Kite coped in his mother’s absence. He needed to see how the young man reacted to adverse circumstances, to setbacks and confrontations. If he could run the hotel solo, and deal with whatever variables Strawson and his team chose to throw at him, BOX 88 would be given a good indication of his ability to cope with the inevitable operational pressures of France.
Strawson threw everything at him. The dining room was full so he sent his lemon sole back (twice) and claimed that a bottle of Puligny-Montrachet 1982 was corked when it wasn’t. He complained about the volume at which the Richard Clayderman album was playing in the bar, saying that he had already heard it three times over the night before and couldn’t Kite find something else which was less ‘predictable’. Before dinner he had asked Kite, who was trying to make a brace of gin and tonics in the bar, to write down the addresses and phone numbers of the best five golf courses on the Stranraer peninsula. Could Kite call each of them in turn and ask if it was necessary to reserve a tee-off time for the following afternoon? With Cheryl Kite still fifteen miles away in a Stranraer hospital, detained by two role-playing Irishmen, Strawson then demanded to have cheese and biscuits and a glass of red wine sent to Churchill after dinner, despite knowing that the hotel did not offer room service. Kite took the tray up himself, only to be told that Strawson was ‘allergic to Stilton’ and that there was not enough hot water to fill the room’s enormous, free-standing bath. Kite apologised for the numerous inconveniences Strawson had suffered and promised to knock the price of dinner off his bill. He then rushed to the attic to turn on the thermostat, switched the Stilton for a slice of Caboc, told Wilma to take orders in the restaurant and quickly took a round of orders in the bar. The crowning moment came when Rita Ayinde organised a power cut which left the hotel in almost complete darkness for fifteen minutes. With the guests grumbling that they were unable to see the food on their plates, Kite found a torch and a box of candles in the office and had almost illuminated every room on the ground floor when the lights suddenly came back on, to widespread relief and applause. Throughout all this, at no point did Kite display any signs of panic or irritation. When his mother returned, and failed to acknowledge the extraordinary lengths to which her son had gone to keep the show on the road, he did not lose his temper nor storm out into the night. Only once, when the elderly couple – to
