We have boiled eggs, carefully tupperwared away yesterday morning as I triaged the contents of the fridge; we have a rogue ski jacket in the process of repatriation, temporary victim to one of those odd Displacements of Things that crops up with enough travelling and too much scope for experiment—in amongst the drill bits in the very bottom of a jiffy bag, itself inside a bag-for-life bag in the footwell, is a single black nut, T8 gauge, that hitched a lift to London in my back pocket but belongs down there with four bolts and another three nuts, in their plastic tray in the hot shed—and a non-matching pair of salopettes, ditto, but oddly not Heather’s ski boots, which remain in London; and a bottle of sriracha, my own private stash. We have my mother’s sewing machine and a book full of pictures of ceramic tiles, and we have a ukulele, a skateboard, a large bag of paper coated with potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate for cyanotype prints, a small wok and a steamer and, since the ferry, a large bottle of whisky and a normal-sized bottle of gin.
What we do not have, despite all the many things that we do have, is toothpaste. We had eaten pizza, we had walked back from the promenade along the sea, Dex had whirled around the smooth and generous contours of the skatepark, we had stepped onto the beige sand, had watched the squashed amber trails of sunset, and, tired and glowing, we had walked back through town to our hotel. In the lobby, a pool table, a little too sure of itself in that white, tiled space. Dex and I nodded to each other, cognoscenti of the eight ball that we are. The night porter, a stocky and slightly frantic figure with an impressively red face, walked around the counter, clattering a pair of cues. He grinned apologetically, searching for the English words in the way that I sometimes rummage in the laundry basket for the least dirty tennis shorts: “I do not ’ave… the blue?” He was scratching the tips of the cues. Heather, meanwhile, was scouring her international change purse. It had begun well enough, with a promising one-euro piece, and a twenty cent coin in among the shopping trolley tokens and the coppers, but we fell ultimately short of the two euros for the pool table, so we forewent whatever that particular clash of sporting titans might have been billed as, Battle of the Beize, or maybe Chalk-free in Calais, and, because we’re on holiday, took the lift up one floor.
Heather was emptying my washbag. She was holding a flannel in one hand and a jar of shaving soap in the other. “Where’s the toothpaste?” We didn’t have any. She knocked on Dex’s door. Dex didn’t have any either. We were stranded in a foreign land without toothpaste. I knew I had to go in search of toothpaste. It was my Captain Oates moment. I set off for the lobby, and took the stairs. The night porter appeared from a back room, and raised an eyebrow.
—You don’t have any toothpaste, do you?
—We only have it in these kits.
He had opened a large drawer and he held up a small plastic sleeve with a flimsy white plastic brush and a dolls house-size white tube.
—I really only need the toothpaste.
I imagined the bottom of the drawer, odd little orphaned tubes cast out from ruptured sleeves.
—We only have it in these kits. It’s one euro thirty.
—Okay, I’ll have one, thanks.
He handed it over and waited.
—I don’t have any money on me, but I’ll settle up in the morning, just put it on room 110.
—It would be much better to pay for it now.
—Oh? Well okay, I mean, I could go back to my room and get one euro thirty. Or you could just put it on my bill.
He conceded that this was an option. I returned, marginally triumphant, but with more non-biodegradable plastic than toothpaste. We carefully squeezed out little beads of the minty marvel, leaving what we hoped would be just enough for the morning.
This morning, the lobby was transformed into a bustling hive of breakfasting. A young woman in a t-shirt the red of the night porter’s face was flitting from table to table, capable, busy, swift, as only someone who had done this, in this space, hundreds of times could do. Since we had never done this, in this space, ever before, we made tentative steps to assemble a meal. I couldn’t find the butter. Our host pointed to the fridge. I didn’t see the egg cups. She produced a shot glass. I tried to make a coffee with milk by pressing the ‘coffee’ button, followed by the ‘milk’ button, rather than the ‘coffee with milk’ button, and watched, mesmerised, as the cup filled with coffee, then as the milk flowed in a smooth, white fountain overflowing the cup and forming a glistening, amorphous puddle on the clean floor. Her face, barely wincing, was almost beatific. Perhaps it was resignation, or maybe simple pity.
Dex and I packed the car as Heather constructed three sandwiches from purloined baguette and cream cheese. I saw the long-suffering woman and, sensing an opportunity for a redemption of sorts, I declared that I owed the hotel for a toothbrush kit. She seemed surprised. I told her I had taken one last night, and she told me there was no record of it.
—I should have kept quiet about it, I suggested, conspiratorially.
—Oh, no, she snapped. We can’t have that.
I felt shame. She was tutting at the computer screen, her eyes darting from one line to the next. She was now humming a soft, low tone.
—No, no record of it here. Did you ask the porter?
—Yes, and I said I’d square up in the morning.
She slowly nodded. The hum returned. We both understood. We were at an impasse. How could I pay for an item that didn’t appear on the system?
—I must have imagined it, I said.
Her brow unfurrowed.
—Bonne route, Monsieur.