An Endless Summer(7)

But no. It wasn’t.

The Onslow Hotel had been downgraded to the Norman Bates Motel. How long had Dad been in the city? A couple of months? Not even. He hadn’t just upped and left, he’d put the Onslow staff in charge and he’d done the odd check-in and business call on the phone when he wasn’t wining and dining Mum.

What the hell had happened? How long had the Onslow been like this? This was not what I expected to arrive to. Not. At. All.



***



My hand traced along the peeling, blistered paint of an outside picnic table, the very same one I’d been sitting on in the photo when I was fourteen. I had thought that merely being here would transport me back to that time, a happier time.

But I was so wrong.

My zombie-like, depression-filled trance was broken by the sound of an approaching car. The screaming of the fan belt was only out-blasted by the deafening sound of heavy metal music from the stereo. A weather-beaten, white Mazda hatchback scaled up Coronary Hill and sped into a long, winding circle. It flicked up gravel as it turned and halted with a violent jolt in the Onslow car park. I sidestepped away from the picnic table and into the shadows to get a better view of the new arrival and to avoid being seen.

Blissful silence followed as the engine of the Mazda was shut off and the car door flung open with a pained screech. I ducked behind an overgrown bush and took in the lean figure of a guy, somewhere in his mid-twenties, in fitted black jeans, boots, and a crumpled white shirt. Dark, greasy hair fell to his collar. He readjusted his shades and stretched his limbs to the sky with an almighty groan before reaching into his top pocket for a ciggie. My first thought was that he might be a weary traveller making a pit stop; he looked like a wiry musician, maybe? Or a grubby stand-up comedian looking for a gig at the local. He bent into his car and reached for something in the back seat. Just when I was sure he would bring out a guitar, he pulled out a leather jacket and haphazardly slung it over his shoulder before slamming the car door.

His boots crunched over the gravel as he made his way towards the hotel. Reaching into his pocket, he foraged around to expel a long chain with an array of keys – keys I would recognise anywhere. They were Dad’s.

With his brief distraction, tall, dark, and greasy kicked a wayward can as he stepped up to the porch.

“Piss and shit,” he mumbled.

Charming fellow.

He unlocked the door with expert ease; he was, obviously well used to the old door, the special twist, and jiggle the lock needed before it would open – something only a few select people would know about. Once he unlocked the main door, he moved on to the side poolroom French doors and it suddenly dawned on me: After Chris left, Dad had put on a new barman – this must be him. Matt, was it? What the hell was he doing – or, rather, not doing – and more to the point, what the frack was he doing opening the hotel at two p.m. mid-week, or any day of the week, for that matter? For as long as I could remember, the Onslow Hotel was a seven-days-a-week trade, three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. Not even Christmas was sacred (something I’d been painfully aware of when I was a kid). At the latest, the pub would open its doors at ten a.m. Monday to Saturday and eleven a.m. on a Sunday, and as far as shutting up at midday went, it just didn’t happen. The restaurant may have been closed, but there was always someone to mind the bar. Always.

My troubled thoughts were jolted by a mobile phone ringing. My heart leapt at the unexpectedness of the sound blaring from Matt’s phone.

He fetched the mobile out of his shirt pocket. “Yello? Maaaaaaaaate,” he drawled as he disappeared inside the hotel.

I stepped out from my hiding place in the bushes, feeling suddenly stupid for spying on him, a stranger. Surely there must be a misunderstanding, maybe a family medical emergency, or maybe Dad had negotiated some hour change or something. Not likely, but it’s not like it was something he would have necessarily told me.

As a thousand thoughts ran through my mind, my gaze lowered onto a smouldering ciggie on the ground near the garden bed. Matt must have flicked it before he answered the phone. The smoking cylinder was in good company with what seemed like a hundred other half-smoked ones. Not a single one of them had actually hit the designated smoke trays provided for smokers. I stomped on the lit smoke and anger pulsed through my veins.

Oh, hell no!

I twisted my foot into the earth, trying to contain my fury. Once the ciggie was well and truly obliterated I decided that the time for lurking in the shadows was over and headed towards the open bar door, towards home.

I was well accustomed to the smell of faint cigarette smoke and stale beer. After all, I had spent the majority of my childhood living here, but the interior was dank, dark, and smelly for other reasons. The small amount of sunlight that filtered through a broken Venetian blind highlighted a stream of unsettled dust particles. They danced before my eyes that strained to adjust to my grim surroundings. I heard a one-sided, muffled conversation from the restaurant bar out back. Matt was rummaging around, still on his phone.