Chapter 23
23
After Abby left, my first thought was to rush over and tell Reginald, but sense won out in the end. It wouldn’t be fair to get his hopes up when all I’d managed to do was secure another meeting with more people who would probably be against my idea. I did visit him, but we confined our conversation to chatting about his daughter, Jeannie, who lives in New York with her husband. He’s prodigiously proud of her, showing me pictures not only of her and her husband, but their children, children’s spouses and grandchildren. They used to fly him and Annie over once a year, but that stopped when she fell ill and now Reginald feels he’s too frail to make the journey. They talk frequently on the phone, and she’s coming over to see him in a month or two.
I’ve elected not to say anything to Jock just yet either. In my fantasies, he jumps at the chance, comes down and we pick up exactly where we left off, but I’m realistic enough to know that he may not feel like that at all. The messages we’ve exchanged have been friendly, but no more than that, so it’s possible he’s moved on. If he has, that will definitely be a dent in my dream, but I’ve realised it doesn’t diminish my enthusiasm for the hotel project, so I’ve decided to hold off until I have a concrete proposal to put to him.
It’s just before ten and I’m making my way to the hotel to meet Abby and the others. I’m scanning the parked cars for her silver Porsche, but there’s no sign of it. I’m just about to congratulate myself on getting here first when she climbs out of the passenger side of a van. A large, bearded man who looks to be in his fifties steps down from the driver’s seat. Behind this van I spot another, and a woman and man who are probably my age get out of it. I’m guessing the woman is Ella; she’s blonde and very pretty. That would presumably mean the dark-haired man with her is Noah, so the big guy with Abby must be John. After brief introductions during which I learn that Ella is also from Leeds but John and Noah are both local, Ella hands me a large box with a pair of sturdy-looking boots inside.
‘Put those on,’ she instructs. ‘They’ll feel like lead weights at first, but they’ll protect your feet and you’ll soon get used to them.’ I glance at her and notice that she’s wearing a similar pair under her jeans, although hers are scuffed from hard use.
She’s not wrong. I feel like I’ve got clown’s feet once I’ve put them on, but there’s no time to get used to them as, after handing me the same hi-vis jacket and hard hat I wore yesterday, Abby crosses the road and unlocks the steel mesh gate.
‘Fuck me, Abs!’ John exclaims, looking around him in dismay once we’ve congregated in the lobby. ‘Couldn’t you find a proper shithole to buy?’
‘You’re funny,’ she tells him sarcastically. ‘You should be on the stage.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘The original plan was to redevelop it as flats, but the local council didn’t like that. So then I was just going to mothball it until it either fell down or the council changed their mind, but Beatrice seems to think it could be viable to reopen as a hotel.’
‘What do you want from us?’ Ella asks.
‘I’d like you to take a look around and try to get a feel for the amount of work that might be needed to bring it up to standard. I’m not talking super detailed at this stage, just t-shirt size it.’
‘What, like small, medium, large and fuck-off enormous?’ John continues, still staring around him in disbelief. ‘I think we can answer that one right now.’
My heart sinks. In my down moments, this is what I feared would happen. They’re going to tell Abby it’ll cost a fortune and she’ll promptly lose interest.
‘When you say “up to standard”, what are we talking about?’ Noah asks.
‘I want to open it as a four-star hotel,’ I tell him. ‘That’s what it was in its heyday. In the public areas like here and the dining room, I want to restore the art deco feel. I’d also like to rip out that hideous concrete staircase and recreate the original. Here, I’ve got a picture of what it looked like.’ I fish out the photos and go through them until I find the one of Reginald and Annie that clearly shows the sweeping staircase in the background, handing it to Noah.
‘You’ve got no chance of that, darlin’,’ John observes dismissively, looking at the picture over Noah’s shoulder. The way he’s just called me ‘darlin’’ gets my back up and I decide I don’t like him.
‘Why not?’ I demand, trying and failing to keep my tone calm.
‘Fire regs,’ he says simply. ‘You would probably have got away with it as an original feature of a historic building, but a new one would have to conform to all the latest regulations, including fire doors and stuff. That’s probably why they took it out in the first place. Am I right or am I right, Michael?’
‘He’s right, I’m afraid,’ Noah agrees, completely ignoring the fact that John just called him by the wrong name. ‘There might be something else we can do, though. Is there a service staircase as well as this one?’ he asks Abby.
‘Yes, at the rear of the building.’
‘OK.’
‘What are you thinking?’ Ella prompts after a pause.
‘I agree with Beatrice. If you’re going to recreate the art deco vibe in here, you can’t do it with those hideous doors and a concrete staircase. But, instead of trying to recreate the original staircase, we could put in some retro-style lifts here. You know, the ones they used to have back in the day with dials above the doors and arrows pointing to which floor they’re at. There’s a company that makes them. All the lifting gear and so on is modern, but they look antique. As long as the service staircase meets the fire escape requirements, I think we’d be fine.’
‘What about the floor?’ I ask, pointing at the geometric-patterned tiles in the photo. ‘Can we recreate that at least?’
John walks over to a corner of the room and lifts the carpet, which comes away easily to reveal a sheet of wood underneath. ‘We might not have to,’ he remarks. ‘Who wants to bet that they just laid this over the top of it to take the carpet? Give us a hand, Michael.’
‘Why does he keep calling Noah Michael?’ I ask Ella as the two men set to work trying to lift the sheet of wood and Abby wanders over to watch.
‘It’s his thing.’ She smiles. ‘Everyone has a nickname, the more obscure the better. Noah is named after Michael Fish.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘A weather forecaster who was famous for failing to predict a hurricane in 1987. Noah predicted the flood in the Bible, Michael failed to predict the wind. See?’
‘Blimey, that is obscure. Have you got one?’
‘Yes. I’m Carol, after Carol Vorderman. She was the mathematician on the TV program Countdown back in the day. I’m the project manager, so we’re both, to use his words, “numbers birds”.’
‘What about Abby?’
‘She doesn’t get one because she’s family.’
‘They’re related?’
‘No, but he’s been like a surrogate father to her. She lived with him and his wife for a while when she first came south to work on site, and she still stays with them whenever she’s down. It was John that persuaded her to apply for your show.’
‘Really?’
‘Yup. He was worried Abby was working too hard and not playing enough. Don’t be fooled by him. Underneath the gruff exterior lies a real teddy bear.’
‘I can hear you, you know,’ John calls from the corner of the room.
‘You were meant to,’ she replies with a smile.
‘Gotcha, you bastard,’ John exclaims triumphantly as he and Noah lift a large sheet of wood off the floor. ‘Oho. Come and have a look at this.’
It’s absolutely filthy, but underneath the piece of wood that John and Noah are now leaning against the wall is a clearly recognisable pattern.
‘Assuming they’re not too damaged, they’ll probably clean up pretty easily,’ Noah observes. ‘I wonder why they covered them up?’
‘All BudgetWise hotels have to have the same look and feel,’ I explain. ‘Grey carpet with the company logo in the public areas, dark blue in the bedrooms. You might not be able to tell which town you’re in, but you’ll always know you’re in a BudgetWise hotel. I did a case study on them when I was at university.’
John is evidently not at all interested in the BudgetWise business model, as he’s now examining the light switch, flicking it on and off a couple of times.
‘Power’s off,’ Abby tells him.
‘I figured. The wiring looks modern though, so we might not have to replace it. Another big win. What’s through here?’
We follow him into the dining room and the three of them spend a moment taking it in.
‘Vision?’ Ella asks.
I show her the picture of the room set out for the wedding.
‘Those mirrors are gorgeous,’ she remarks. ‘I wonder where they are now?’
‘Flogged off, I expect,’ John replies.
‘They won’t be cheap to replace,’ Ella observes, still staring at the picture.
‘I don’t know,’ Noah says, taking the picture off Ella and carrying it over to the window for a better look. ‘I reckon we could knock something together that would look the part, even if it wasn’t genuine.’
‘What about furniture, though?’ Ella persists. ‘If you’re going for art deco as the room vibe, modern furniture is going to clash. Either that or you’re going to have to track down someone who can make it in the same style, and bespoke is always pricy.’
She’s got a point and my mood slumps again.
‘Can I suggest something controversial?’ Noah says suddenly. ‘What if you didn’t go art deco in here?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘What kind of food are you planning on serving?’
‘If I get the chef I want, it’ll be modern British, showcasing local, seasonal ingredients. Why?’
‘That’s what I thought. If you restore this room to its art deco days, you’re kind of creating an expectation that the food will also reflect the period. Do you see what I’m saying?’
‘But if we don’t, it will clash with the rest of the hotel,’ I point out.
‘That’s not always a bad thing. Hang on a minute. There’s a hotel my brother-in-law took my sister to for their wedding anniversary last year. Let me see if I can find it.’ He fishes out his phone and, after a minute or two of searching, shows me a website. The hotel is exactly what I had in mind when I described my dream to Jock all those weeks ago. It’s a stone country house with mullioned windows set in beautiful gardens. He scrolls through some of the photos, showing me wood panelled sitting rooms with huge fireplaces and gorgeous bedrooms with sumptuous ensuites.
‘What’s your point?’ Abby asks after a moment.
‘What I’m showing you is a historic building with all its period features, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Now look at the dining room.’ He flicks to a picture showing an incredible modern room, with glass walls opening onto the garden.
‘Oh wow. That’s stunning,’ I breathe.
‘Yes and, according to my sister, it actually fits with the vibe of the place perfectly.’
‘So what you’re saying is modern food needs a modern room?’
‘I think so, yes. It also solves a lot of problems.’
‘OK,’ I say after reflecting for a moment. ‘I suggest we pause this room until we have the chef on board, but in principle, I like the idea if we can do it well.’
‘Let’s have a look at the rest of the place then,’ John declares, leading the way back into the lobby.
It takes us a couple of hours to tour the whole hotel, as Ella, John and Noah want to look in every room and discuss the plans for it. In the end, we agree that the standard rooms will have a common look and feel, but the larger rooms with the sea views will be where we focus on creating something a bit more special to attract a premium price. What I’m most happy about, however, is that most of the issues with the building appear to be cosmetic rather than structural, and the others are talking about it as if it’s a feasible project now. Even John has stopped harrumphing and started writing notes on his pad.
‘Right,’ Abby says as she locks up a while later. ‘Next steps. Ella, I want you to work with Noah and John to put together a report on what we’d need to do to the building. Beatrice, you need to write me a full business proposal with projected costs and revenues. If we’re really going to do this, we’ve got to put a bullet-proof case to my dad. Oh, and you’d better talk to your chef. If we don’t have him on board, we won’t have a USP.’
She’s gone for it and given me an excuse to talk to Jock. I could dance for joy.