She’d addressed them by name, had checked the details on their tickets and said that that was lovely. An hour later it had surprised them to hear elderly people on the plane talking in North of England accents when the counter clerk at the travel agency had so specifically stated that Signor Bancini’s Italian class came from Windsor. Dawne had even remarked on it, but Keith said there must have been a cancellation, or possibly the Italian class was on a second plane. ‘That’ll be the name of the airport,’ he confidently explained when the pilot referred over the communications system to a destination that didn’t sound like Venice. ‘Same as he’d say Gatwick. Or Heathrow.’ They ordered two Drambuies, Dawne’s favourite drink, and then two more. ‘The coach’ll take us on,’ a stout woman with spectacles announced when the plane landed. ‘Keep all together now.’ There’d been no mention of an overnight stop in the brochure, but when the coach drew in at the Edelweiss Hotel Keith explained that that was clearly what this was. By air and then by coach was how these package firms kept the prices down, a colleague at work had told him. As they stepped out of the coach it was close on midnight: fatigued and travel- stained, they did not feel like questioning their right to the beds they were offered. But the next morning, when it became apparent that they were being offered them for the duration of their holiday, they became alarmed.
‘We have the lake, and the water-birds,’ the receptionist smilingly explained. ‘And we may take the steamer to Interlaken.’
‘An error has been made,’ Keith informed the man, keeping the register of his voice even, for it was essential to be calm. He was aware of his wife’s agitated breathing close beside him. She’d had to sit down when they realized that something was wrong, but now she was standing up again.
‘We cannot change the room, sir,’ the clerk swiftly countered. ‘Each has been given a room. You accompany the group, sir?’
Keith shook his head. Not this group, he said, a different group; a group that was travelling on to another destination. Keith was not a tall man, and often suffered from what he considered to be arrogance in other people, from officials of one kind or another, and shop-assistants with a tendency to assume that his lack of stature reflected a diminutive personality. In a way Keith didn’t care for, the receptionist repeated:
‘This is the Edelweiss Hotel, sir.’
‘We were meant to be in Venice. In the Pensione Concordia.’
‘I do not know the name, sir. Here we have Switzerland.’
‘A coach is to take us on. An official said so on the plane. She was here last night, that woman.’
‘Tomorrow we have the
Dawne had still not spoken. She, too, was a slight figure, her features pale beneath orange-ish powder. ‘Mingy’, the old man had a way of saying in his joky voice, and sometimes told her to lie down.
‘Eeh, idn’t it luvely?’ a voice behind Keith enthused. ‘Been out to feed them ducks, ’ave you?’
Keith did not turn round. Speaking slowly, giving each word space, he said to the receptionist: ‘We have been booked on to the wrong holiday.’
‘Your group is booked twelve nights in the Edelweiss Hotel. To make an alteration now, sir, if you have changed your minds –’
‘We haven’t changed our minds. There’s been a mistake.’
The receptionist shook his head. He did not know about a mistake. He had not been told that. He would help if he could, but he did not see how help might best be offered.
‘The man who made the booking,’ Dawne interrupted, ‘was bald, with glasses and a moustache.’ She gave the name of the travel agency in London.
In reply, the receptionist smiled with professional sympathy. He fingered the edge of his register. ‘Moustache?’ he said.
Three aged women who had been on the plane passed through the reception area. Had anyone noticed, one of them remarked, that there were rubber linings under the sheets? Well, you couldn’t be too careful, another agreeably responded, if you were running a hotel.
‘Some problem, have we?’ another woman said, beaming at Keith. She was the stout woman he had referred to as an official, flamboyantly attired this morning in a two-tone trouser-suit, green and blue. Her flesh-coloured spectacles were decorated with swirls of metal made to seem like gold; her grey hair was carefully waved. They’d seen her talking to the yellow-and-red girl at Gatwick. On the plane she’d walked up and down the aisle, smiling at people.
‘My name is Franks,’ she was saying now. ‘I’m married to the man with the bad leg.’
‘Are you in charge, Mrs Franks?’ Dawne inquired. ‘Only we’re in the wrong hotel.’ Again she gave the name of the travel agency and described the bald-headed counter clerk, mentioning his spectacles and his moustache. Keith interrupted her.
‘It seems we got into the wrong group. We reported to the Your-Kind-of-Holiday girl and left it all to her.’
‘We should have known when they weren’t from Windsor,’ Dawne contributed. ‘We heard them talking about Darlington.’
Keith made an impatient sound. He wished she’d leave the talking to him. It was no good whatsoever going on about Darlington and the counter clerk’s moustache, confusing everything even more.
‘We noticed you at Gatwick,’ he said to the stout woman. ‘We knew you were in charge of things.’
‘I noticed
