The taxi dropped me at a London hotel. It may have in Holborn, it may have been Chelsea; it wasn’t Mayfair. I was excited to be there, though the hotel did not resemble the photo on the website.
I could live with that, but I was not prepared for the neighborhood’s night life. As a fan of The Closer, I am accustomed to watching Brenda Lee Johnson and the Major Crimes unit, sometimes accompanied by her FBI agent husband, Fritz, bust criminals. So I wondered, Was that a drug deal going down over there? Or was it a group of drunken young people staggering home after a night at, well, I would say a poetry reading, wouldn’t you? At the pub, I guessed.
The taxi driver seemed a little spooked, too, as he carried my suitcase up the steps. “Be careful.”
I checked in, relieved, but was dismayed when the hotel clerk told me I would be staying in a building around the corner. He gave me two keys. “This is for the front door. Be sure it locks behind you.”
I was taken aback. “Will you walk me there, please?”
“Okay, ma’am.”
Armed with a ring of keys he accompanied me. The hotel clerk was more nervous than I as we scuttled past a small group of people who seemed to be dispersing. I wished I could walk him back, but it wasn’t possible.
I need not have worried about unlocking the front door. It was open! I locked it behind me, though not all of the guests bothered. As soon as I double-locked the door of my room, I put on my cozy jams, checked my e-mail, and retired to bed with a copy of the TLS.
And then… Someone rapped at the door.
I don’t know about you, but at 3 a.m. I am not accustomed to strange guests in a foreign country. I did not even phone the hotel clerk. What could that poor man do? I turned off the lights and pulled the covers over my head. Yes, that should work…
Soon I heard the person treading down the stairs.
After that initiation, I fit into the neighborhood. We all ignored one another. And I enjoyed my life as a tourist. I checked off 10 things to do in my guidebook and looked at some very expensive books at Cecil Court, an alley of several antiquarian bookshops.
Did I come home with an English accent? Huge disappointment. No.
But I have made a list of novels set in hotels, or with scenes in hotels
The Hotel, by Elizabeth Bowen
The Little Hotel, by Christina Stead
The Glass Hotel, by Emily St. John Mandel
Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brooker (Booker winner)
A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster
The Hotel New Hampshire, by John Irving
The Grand Babylon Hotel, by Arnold Bennett
Grand Hotel, by Vicki Baum
Winter Solstice, by Rosamunde Pilcher
The Holiday, by Stanley Middleton (Booker winner; the protagonist stays in a hotel on holiday)