Chapter 11: Wrinkly Waltzers

Almost everyone was up on the dance floor dancing, even Elsie dancing with an old gent in his own wheelchair, when George and Sally turned up at the Royal Hotel. So none of the guests of their acquaintance even saw their arrival.

They had spent some time in their relaxing walk, exploring the resort well past the Grand Pier and back again before popping into the hotel, lured by the sound of dance music from within.

“The band must have been having their break when we passed the hotel earlier,” George says, “because I honestly didn’t hear a thing.”

“Me neither,” replies Sally, “although I wasn’t really intending on going dancing tonight, I’ve got completely the wrong shoes, I’ve still got my comfy trainers on.”

“Well,” George says, “after our lovely evening stroll, I’m a little parched and I could definitely do with a beer, so let’s go have a look and see what’s going on shall we? I’m sure I heard Dot booming out earlier that the ‘girls’ were going out dancing somewhere. At least the music is something that you could waltz to, even in trainers.”

“Ah, so you’re a ballroom dancer are you?” Sally asks, “I shall have to watch myself around a talented charmer like yourself, George.”

“Well, I’m not that charming, or that much of a dancer, but I did learn to dance while I was in the Army ... they must have thought my unit was lacking in social skills,” George chuckles, “And Molly used to love dancing, particularly when we were younger. She was so much better at it than I was.”

‘Of course I was, George, I was so much lighter on my feet than you ever were,’ Molly says in his ear with an amused joyfulness in her tone, George thought, ‘and yes, of course I’m full of happy thoughts, George. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘And I was thinking to myself, mind, “are none of my own thoughts mine any more?”,’ George thought to himself. ‘that’s what I was thinking.’

‘They’re your thoughts George, certaInly, but I can read you like an open book, more like a sort of open audio book!’

‘Then I suppose you want me to dance with this woman, this possible rival for my limited range of affections?’ George thought knowing now that Molly appeared to be hanging on his every thought in his head.

‘Don’t get ahead of yourself, George,’ Molly gently admonished him, ‘if your head gets too big thinking that you’re God’s Gift, I might find myself getting lost in this expanding chasm that you might delude yourself is your beautiful mind. Just be yourself, Sweetheart, enjoy Sally’s company and ask her to dance. If you look around, you will see a very wide range of footwear, the hotel management here are just delighted to see as many people buying their drinks, eating their bar snacks and tipping the bar staff and band, to bother worrying about the odd squeak from a rubber sole. It’ll all polish out in the early hours of the morning when they bring out the dining tables ready for Sunday breakfast, although I think most of their guests are enjoying themselves so much tonight that they may only make it to brunch!’

Sally interrupts George’s thoughts, “I think the barman is ready for your order, George,” she says recognising that once again he was losing concentration and wondering if he was showing early signs of dementia. She wondered if she could sneak a word with Sofija about it later.

“Ah, right,” George eased his mind back into the real world, “now, what would you like, my dear?”

“I think I see the lights are on the coffee maker at the back of the bar. Are you still serving coffee?” Sally asks the approaching barman.

“Indeed we do madam,” the barman smiles at the attractive older woman, admiring the heightened colour of her cheeks coming in from the cool sea breeze to the warmth of the hotel bar, “what would be your pleasure, madam, sir?”

“Well, I’d like a black coffee with a Drambuie stirred into it, please, it was starting to get a little chilly outside and I may need a hint of warmth in me for the walk back to our hotel,” Sally replies.

“Of course madam, a Drambuie coffees straight up, coming right up,” the barman replied, turning to George, “and something equally warming for you sir?”

“Oh I’m quite warm enough from the walk and I’m hoping to get some additional exercise on the dance floor if I play my cards right,” George smiles, “so I’ll trouble you for a bottle of Leffe from your cold shelf, please.”

“It’s no trouble at all, sir,” the barman smiles as he turns to start the coffee machine churning out the black coffee into a glass cup with a handle. He poured a measure from the selected liqueur bottle into a stainless steel measure before deftly pouring that into the glass cup which was still filling up with streams of hot espresso coffee and hot water. Then the barman fetched the bottle of Belgian wheat beer from the glass-fronted refrigerator, popped the crown cap top and poured the contents carefully into a tall glass before presenting it to the tall, distinguished gentleman who ordered it. After that the barman fetched the finished alcohol-laced coffee from the dispenser and set that in front of the cheerful lady, thinking to himself, ‘what a nice old couple they look’, although he did notice, as barmen are conditioned to do so, that the lady had no rings at all on the ring finger of either hand, while the gentleman did have a thin band of gold on his left ring finger and an even thinner band of gold adorning his pinkie on his right hand. ‘A widower,’ he guessed, ‘possibly wearing his late wife’s ring on his little finger? Yet still staying true to his late wife, at least until tonight.’

“Cash or card, sir?” he asks the gentleman, thinking that a blurting out of the price, especially being a tad higher than almost every other bar in town, was inappropriate in this instance. The gentleman could ask if he cared to know the price.

“Oh, card please,” George replies, “I usually only carry enough cash for the newspapers nowadays.”

“I know, sir, paying by card or phone seems to be the new norm nowadays,” the barman says conversationally as he set the card machine displaying the price for the gentleman’s indulgence. And George waved his credit card across the machine without any apparent qualms. The machine accepted the payment without gratitude or comment, it was after all only a machine, but the barman was gratified to note that George had silently added the 10% service charge offered as an optional extra. “Thank you, sir, madam,” he smiles, “I do hope you enjoy your evening here.”

“Thank you,” Sally beamed, having already blown across her coffee and breathed in the sweet honey and roasted notes of the delicious coffee mixture and then she enjoyed the first slightly hesitant sip of the hot black liquid, savouring its heat followed by the delightful caress of alcohol and caffeine on her tongue. “Ooh, that’s just right!”

George too, buried his upper lip in the white foam of his wheat beer, and enjoyed sucking in a cool draught of the bitter nectar, setting the glass down again, admiring the urgent beading of bubbles up the tall glass that was already misting up with condensation, before picking up the glass again, saying, “Well, shall we see if we can find ourselves a table?”

“Actually, sir,” the barman interjects, “I did have a glance around as you came in, just to check what I’m afraid I already knew, as we are surprisingly full tonight, considering the time of year, but it is a mild and dry evening and there is quite an appetite in evidence for dancing tonight. I see that there are odd spaces out there but no table for two. But ... although the management frown on people drinking at the bar, I do have a couple of stools that I keep in the back for quiet nights or for barman/customer conferences, you know, which you are free to use on this end corner of the bar. That position has the advantage that you can see quite comfortably over the dance floor, your drinks will be safe here from any molestation and the spot is ideally placed if you require refills. Shall I fetch the stools, sir, madam?”

“Indeed er ... Michael,” George leaned forward enough to read the barman’s lapel label, “a perfect suggestion that is much appreciated. Er, do you have much ‘drink molestation’ here?”

“None at all sir,” Michael assures him with a smile, “it was merely said as you were strangers to the bar and possibly the town, and may have had concerns at other establishments, but we don’t have that kind of crowd come in here. I thought that by added persuasive argument, it made the possibility of sitting up here an attractive alternative to the hassle of borrowing chairs and trying to fit yourselves on already congested tables.”

“Thank you, Michael, the proposition you suggest is much to our liking, agreed Sally?”

“Agreed.”

‘Good man, that Michael,’ Molly added to George’s thoughts, ‘Things are looking up for you, George.’

Boris had scootered around Weston-Super-Mare for half an hour, mostly up and down the curving promenade, but he did visit the Grand Pier as it was still open when he reached it. He was delighted to see that it advertised disabled access to all parts of the pier. He wasn’t actually interested in using any of the facilities except, possibly, the disabled toilets. Boris kept a careful lookout but he didn’t see any evidence of surveillance either by British Intelligence or the KGB. Although he kept referring to them familiarly as KGB in his thoughts, he was of course aware that their name had been changed many years ago to the Federal Security Service (FSB), in Russian the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, but he preferred the old acronym as a reassuring comfort to himself of the good old days, as he considered them.

He had surreptitiously turned up his hearing aid earlier and listened while the women passengers had asked Angela in the Sea View Hotel Reception where old fashioned dancing could be found locally and he heard the name Royal Hotel mentioned. So, as he was making his leisurely way back to the Sea View Hotel, he saw the tall gentleman George and his lady Sally, walking in the same direction just a few metres ahead of him, as they approached the large illuminated sign for the Royal Hotel.

The couple turned at the sign, and walked on the path by the illuminated public gardens towards the equally well-illuminated Royal Hotel, and their diversion piqued Boris’ interest.

Boris decided to follow the couple at a discrete distance. He saw them disappear into the rather grand old entrance to the Hotel and wondered how he was going to get in but he soon noticed the disabled access ramp to one side, which was also brilliantly illuminated and he made his way confidently up the ramp in his scooter and entered the hotel without difficulty. By the time he got there the couple he was following had disappeared from view, but he followed the sound of music, and the signs also indicated that he was heading to the dining room and lounge bar, so he confidently followed the signs.

There didn’t appear to be anyone taking money for entrance to the bar or the ballroom, so he assumed that entrance was free. He steered through the doors and stopped to one side on the edge of the room and close to the wall, without causing any obstruction, so that he could observe without being too obvious to the observed. He smiled to himself at the thought of his spy training all those years ago in Dresden, none of the instructors who taught him how to sneak around and carry out surveillance without detection had said anything about using electric scooters or wheelchairs, but Boris knew very well by now that the old, crippled or wheelchair bound were usually ignored by most people and were therefore perfect vehicles for spying on people.

However that view of the disabled being ignored, in this particular hotel, the rather grandly entitled Royal Hotel, a least three staff had approached Boris during his short journey into the building, to politely enquire if he needed any assistance and had given him directions to the ballroom without hesitation or any perceived condescension.

These simple acts of kindness for aged or disabled people was something that made him think how different England was compared to his home, the USSR. the only Russia that Boris knew. Boris was certainly aware from his time at the care home how English people regarded disabled people, that in the main nobody really saw them and a few people were often offhand or even rude to the old and the infirm, but in the main most people took care not to impede wheelchairs and were General most solicitous to older people in general and disabled people in particular. These British people, and the mainly foreign staff who were doctors and nurses, were very caring towards their elderly and less-abled citizens.

Boris was also only too aware that this attitude was relative to where you lived; he loved his Mother Russia but it could be a very cruel place for any nonconformity to the expected. He couldn’t include the rest of the United Kingdom in his assessment of attitudes because he hadn’t taken the trouble to visit the other places, they were not within his remit as instructed by his boss, but he assumed that this level of simply ignoring the disabled was reasonably extensive but so was the care with which such elderly and disabled were treated once the able-bodied realised the difference in mobility. Boris had noticed that in the old East Germany the attitudes were similar to Russia and were the opposite to here in England.

He recalled his childhood home in a rather isolated rural part of the Urals, a faming community with a vast agricultural collecting warehouse in the settlement that most people that weren’t actually working on the land were directed to work. Anyone who were unable to work, through mental or physical disabilities, were usually forced into a home appropriate to their condition. It reminded Boris of his brother Pieter, who was two years younger than Boris but was born, in Boris’ words as ‘a retard’.

The boy Pieter was feeble-minded and couldn’t learn how to use the toilet, how to talk coherently, and certainly hadn’t learned how not to lose his temper in the frustration of being locked into his own head and unable to communicate to everyone.

Pieter found that he could communicate with Boris and vice versa, they were close brothers and friends and Boris knew that he loved him and was loved in return even if Pieter was stupid and couldn’t play games very well or even talk in a way outsiders could comprehend. Boris calmed Pieter down because Boris would talk to him slowly and patiently and use gestures to show Pieter what to do and Boris also protected him from the abuse of other boys who liked to pick on any weakness. That toughened Boris up during his childhood, so he could fight and fight dirty if necessary because he knew he had to win every fight or Pieter would suffer were Boris to fall. But, as time passed and when Boris had to go to school and then college, because he was brighter than most of his peers and had some sort of spark in him that people higher up the food chain noticed, Pieter was left behind and very soon their parents had to put him in the care home in their village.

Care Home! How easily that expression had come to him now that he was a resident of some years standing in an English Care Home, even one as badly run as his one was, that much was obvious even to Boris.

But Pieter was locked up in a sanatorium, which more like a prison, and certainly not a “home” where he would be properly cared for. At home Pieter would sometimes self harm, just biting his knuckles in frustration when he couldn’t do something simple that he found was so difficult for him to do. When Boris visited the sanatorium, that first and only time, during a holiday from his far away school, he was shocked to find that the sanatorium had taken out all Pieter’s teeth to stop him from biting himself and others. He was housed in a filthy dormitory wearing ragged pyjamas far too big for him that were soiled with excrement that smelt to Boris that was days old and the boy was clearly distressed and desperately thin from hunger and wholesale neglect.

Boris was thrown in the village lock up as he beat up several of the sanatorium guards trying to force them to care properly for his brother, but that task was clearly beyond their skills or their orders. By the time Boris was released from the lock-up, Pieter had also been mercifully released from his continuing existence in this world, a victim of unconformity and an unwillingness of the State to care for those that were unproductive or no longer potentially productive. Boris loved his Mother Russia, but it wasn’t perfect and its self-isolation from the rest of the world meant that it would always have that fear of never learning from its mistakes, unlike the rest of the civilised world that appeared to be able to do.