Burning Down George Orwell's House Read online

  The hands of the bedside clock didn’t budge and Ray realized that the batteries had gone dead or the cord had come unplugged. The bed grew less comfortable by the minute. Hard lumps in the mattress familiarized themselves with the tenderest parts of his back. He heard noises—not necessarily in the room, but not necessarily outside either. Then there was some commotion down in the parking lot. Car doors slamming. Something that sounded like a gunshot followed by a lot of laughter. There might have been a party going on. The noise got to be too much. He threw the covers off and crept to the window. It looked as if the entire population of the island had gathered. They formed a rowdy convoy of rusted trucks with squeaky axles and drove off into the night. Ray put a pillow over his head.

  After another hour, or maybe two or three, he threw the blanket off and got up. The noise outside had stopped. He found the driest of his clothes and slipped down the stairs, which creaked enough to wake the other hotel guests, if there were any.

  A voice asked from the lounge, “Is that you, Ray?”

  It took a moment to discern the hirsute shape sitting next to the dying fire. Spilt or drooled whisky glimmered in Farkas’s beard. Only a few small embers remained in the fireplace.

  “What are you doing up?”

  “Oh just enjoying a wee dram. Pour yourself one.”

  Ray went to the bar and grabbed the first bottle within reach. It opened with a corky pop. He picked up two glasses that smelled mostly clean.

  “Just a wee bit for me. Do you see that slip of paper that says ‘Wolfman’ on it?”

  “Not really.”

  “That’s my tab. Put two tick marks on it.”

  “Is that your nickname?”

  “Gavin’s idea of a joke,” he said, “not that I find it all that humorous. You might have noticed that he’s what you might call unhinged, especially when it comes to outsiders. I’ll ask you to stay on his good side, if you can find it.”

  “That’s good to know—I’ll stay out of his way.”

  “Aye, please do. I once watched him pummel a tourist senseless in the hotel parking lot for no reason anyone could see. They had to airlift the poor sod to a hospital.” Ray took the chair next to Farkas’s and handed him the glass, which he held to his nose. “A bit of the cask strength, then? A good choice.”

  “Cask strength?”

  “Not watered down, like we do. This is the pure thing. Slàinte.”

  “Is that Gaelic?”

  “Aye. ‘To your health.’ ”

  “Slàinte.”

  The whisky was stronger than anything Ray had ever tasted. It felt like molten lead in his windpipe. The pain felt great.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Farkas said, “but I would be remiss if I didn’t ask what you’re doing here. You’re obviously a clever man—we’ve all read about your advertising awards.”

  “Thanks,” Ray said, but heard more sarcasm in his voice than he might have preferred. “It’s hard to explain. I knew I needed to get out of Chicago. I considered Nova Scotia, but that didn’t feel authentic or something. I’m kind of obsessed with George Orwell, so I decided I wanted to see—I needed to see—where he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

  “I can respect that, I suppose. But most sensible people might have come for a short holiday, a couple of days at most, but six months?”

  “For starters. Maybe I’ll stay longer. Who knows?”

  “Who knows? ‘Nobody knows,’ ” Farkas sang. “ ‘No-body knows.’ Cheers, Ray.”

  “Cheers, Farkas.”

  “So how do you find the local malt?” Farkas asked.

  “Delicious. I drink quite a bit of it back in Chicago. I drank quite a bit, I should say.”

  “And you know that we keep the best of it for ourselves, don’t you?”

  “That would make sense.”

  “Sense, aye—that’s precisely what it makes! We make scents at the distillery. You’ll have to let me show you around one day.”

  “You work at the distillery? I’d love to see it,” Ray said, and meant it. “I’m going to pour one more of these and call it a day.”

  “Jet lag is it?”

  “Among other things. One more for you too?”

  “I wouldn’t say no.”

  Ray poured two more drams and with his eyes now fully adjusted to the low light was able to find his own tab. It said “Chappie” at the top and had more tick marks on it than he could count.

  “Cheers, Farkas.”

  “Cheers, Ray. Down the hatch!”

  Farkas drank the entire glass in one long gulp and against his better judgment Ray did the same.

  “Okay, I’m going to get some sleep. Or try to.”

  “You’re in the right part of the world for counting sheep, I’ll tell you that much. And if I don’t see you at breakfast I’ll pop up to Barnhill one of these days to say hello.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Farkas pulled on his coat. “Now let me see what kind of havoc those boys have wrought this time. Good night, Ray.”

  “Good night, Farkas.”

  Back in bed, if sleep ever arrived Ray didn’t recognize it as such. Rain pounded against the glass. He stayed under the covers, more than a little drunk, eventually watching the hazy morning light creep across the ceiling to signal the start of his first day on Jura.

  THE BANGING AT THE door came as a relief. Ray leapt from bed fully naked and, he soon realized, with his penis more or less erect. He bent over for his pants just as Molly stuck her face into the room. She screamed, and then she laughed. He tried to cover himself, but with one foot wedged halfway into a pant leg he fell over and landed on his sore back. His dick stood up like a half-inflated balloon animal. Molly didn’t move or even avert her eyes. “Up and at ’em, Mr. Welter,” she said. “So to speak.”

  It wasn’t funny. “Would you please close the door?” he asked.

  Molly did just that, though with herself inside the room. She delighted in his embarrassment. Her smile made her look like a different person.

  “What are you doing? Turn around!”

  “You act like I’ve never seen a naked man before,” she said.

  He pulled his pants up under the blanket. They were still wet. “Have you?”

  “Well … no. But you didn’t know that!”

  He buttoned his jeans. “What do you want?”

  “Mrs. Campbell told me to knock you up and fetch you for breakfast.”

  “Breakfast? What time is it?”

  “It’s nearly half past six. I can’t help it if you’re going to sleep all day. What’s it going to be?”

  “What’s what going to be?”

  “Breakfast. Jesus.”

  He needed to urinate.

  “What do you have?”

  “Eggs, bacon, potatoes—”

  “That sounds perfect.” He would’ve agreed to anything at that moment so long as it meant getting rid of her. “Now, if you’ll please excuse me, I really need to—”

  “The full Scottish then?”

  “Great, I’ll be right down, I promise.”

  “I’m supposed to wait for you.”

  “Wait for me?”

  “That’s what Mrs. Campbell said. ‘Wait for him.’ ”

  He pushed past Molly to get to the bathroom, where, without closing the door or lifting the seat, he found just enough time to get his dick out again before unleashing a flash flood. She watched him from the doorway without any sense of shame. “That’s it—take your sweet time,” she said. “It’s not like I have a ferry to catch.”

  There was no rushing him. He stood there for what felt like ten minutes, until the muscles in his shoulders slackened. He washed his hands and tried to dry them with the damp towel. Deep black lines had formed beneath his eyes. Soreness had taken charge of every muscle.

  Molly sat next to him on the end of the bed while he pulled on a pair of socks. “Do you have school today or something?” he asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve finished every class the school offers. Now I tutor some of the other kids, if you must know. Hurry up.”

  She marched him down the steps like a prison guard escorting him to his execution. The lounge was empty except for Pitcairn, who sat next to the fireplace slurping at his tea. “You up at last, Chappie?”

  “No.”

  Pitcairn looked like a man who slept even less than Ray did, someone beset on all sides by trouble. Some of it by his own design, to be sure. Given what Farkas had said about Pitcairn’s temper, Ray really hoped that Molly wouldn’t tell him what had transpired upstairs, that she had been sexually harassed—however inadvertently—by a hungover American.

  “He wants the full Scottish,” she yelled into the swinging kitchen doors. “How do you take your tea?” she asked.

  “Do you have any coffee?”

  Pitcairn snorted into his newspaper. “You won’t like the coffee,” he said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you’re a fucking Yank,” he said. “Because you come here and you expect everything to be precisely like you have it back home. Only you’re not back home, are you? So why do you bother traveling in the first place? Save us both the trouble.”

  “Actually, Jura is my home now,” he said. “I don’t have any place else to go, so you’re just going to have to deal with having me around.”

  “You listen to me, Chappie. There’s no dealing with seeing our ancestral land taken over by foreigners, do you hear? Making too much noise and disrupting the natural order of things. Nobody invited you here—you remember that!”

  “That’s enough, Gavin,” Fuller said. He stood in the kitchen’s doorway and brandished an iron skillet. He had a rag wrapped around the handle, like it was hot from the oven.

  “Enough fucking foreigners, I say.”

  “Get used to it,” Ray told him. Not exactly his wittiest retort of all time, but he didn’t know what else to say.

  “I won’t be getting used to any such thing,” Pitcairn said.

  “Any coffee you have will be great,” Ray told Molly.

  “Coming right up,” Fuller said. “One word of advice: don’t let Gavin bother you. He’s a little bit of an arsehole to everybody at first.”

  “Later he becomes a complete arsehole,” Molly said.

  “Mind your language, Molly,” Fuller said, and retreated to the kitchen.

  “Aye, mind your fucking language, girlie,” Pitcairn said, and returned to his newspaper.

  Molly went into the kitchen and returned with a cup of lukewarm tar into which someone had spooned four packets of artificial sugar. Ray did everything in his power to swallow a sip. Determined to enjoy every drop, he steeled himself, but the second taste brought the previous night’s nausea out for an encore. “You know something?” he asked Pitcairn.

  “What’s that?”

  “You were right—I don’t like the coffee. In fact, it tastes like shit.”

  Molly, who was busy packing her school bag, released a laugh.

  “I told you so, Chappie,” Pitcairn said. “But in all fairness, there’s not a man, woman, or child who can finish an entire cup of Fuller’s coffee. In the future, however, I would appreciate it if you’d watch your language around my Molly.”

  “How old are you anyway, Molly?”

  “Almost eighteen, why?”

  He had exposed himself to a seventeen-year-old.

  “Seventeen and sharp as a whip,” Pitcairn said. “She’s got her mother’s brains, God bless her.”

  “She’s got your looks though,” Fuller said, “the poor thing. Full Scottish breakfast, Mr. Welter.” He placed an enormous plate of food in front of Ray, along with a cup of tea.

  “Thank you. But please call me Ray. There’s absolutely no reason to—what the hell is that?” On his plate sat a possum that had puked up its own guts.

  “That,” Pitcairn said, standing up, “is haggis. You ask for the full Scottish, that’s what you get. Come on, girlie. Old Singer doesn’t like to wait, you know that.”

  Ray had thought of haggis—the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep cooked inside its own stomach—as a national myth, like the Loch Ness monster or the tradition of not wearing underwear beneath a kilt. He waited for Pitcairn and Molly to leave, picked at his food, then pushed the plate away and headed back to his room to catch a few more hours of sleep. Mrs. Campbell caught him before he got to the stairs. She wore the same assortment of black dresses she had on yesterday.

  “I suppose you’ll be checking out, then, Mr. Welter?” she asked.

  “Checking out? Already?”

  “They’re expecting you over at The Stores and Mr. Pitcairn is to meet you there after he’s dropped Molly at the ferry.”

  “Now?”

  “After he’s dropped Molly at the ferry. Have you packed your things?”

  “I was still hoping to take a shower—a bath, I mean.”

  “At this time of the day? You took one last night if we’re not mistaken. We hear everything that goes on in this hotel.” If not on the entire island. “Now you collect your things and don’t worry yourself over that mess on the floor. We’ll tally up your bill. It looks like you had yourself quite a bit of whisky last night.”

  Ray had forgotten about all the tick marks added to his bar tab after he went to bed the first time, but he wasn’t prepared to argue with her about that. He would get Pitcairn and the rest of those deadbeats to pay him back another time. What on earth had happened to the world-famous Highlands hospitality? “I’ll pack my bag and be right down, Mrs. Campbell,” he said.

  Ray folded his damp clothes back into the suitcase and resigned himself to spending his first two weeks at Barnhill catching up on lost sleep. The jet lag had hit harder than he thought possible. Maybe that’s all it was—the constant shaking, the nausea—maybe it was all just the stress of travelling. Mrs. Campbell stood waiting for him behind the reception desk. No evidence suggested the presence of other guests. “We trust you had a pleasant stay, Mr. Welter,” she said.

  He didn’t know how to respond. He had only just arrived and she was expelling him into the cold and rainy morning. Ray did what anyone would do in his position: he lied. “Great, thank you. The room was very comfortable.”

  “We are glad to hear it. That’s one night, plus supper and breakfast and your lounge bill. One hundred sixty pounds, fifty pence please.” She slid a slip of paper across the dusty counter.

  Given the state of the US dollar, the bill came to something like two hundred and fifty dollars for a bed and two meals he didn’t eat. The homeless people back in Chicago were accustomed to better cuisine. “A hundred and sixty pounds?” he asked.

  “And fifty pence, please. It looks to us like you had yourself quite a bit of whisky last night,” she said again. “Perhaps that’s why you look so peaky this morning.”

  That was when he snapped.

  “I looked peaked because I didn’t get any goddamn sleep. That … that so-called stew kept me up half the night on the shitter. I didn’t even drink that whisky. Okay, maybe four or five of them, but Pitcairn and Pete and Sponge, or whatever his name is, they put them on my tab after I went to bed.”

  “Mr. Welter!” she said. “We are appalled. We are terribly sorry if our food does not conform to your standards, but we will not stand here and listen to your abusive language. Perhaps that’s appropriate in your America, but not here and certainly not in our hotel. As for the bill, if you are so distraught by our service we will tear it up.”

  And she did. She snatched the paper from the counter and tore it into tiny pieces, which she placed into the pocket of her outermost dress.

  “Good day, Mr. Welter,” she said and turned to fiddle with the unused keys hanging behind the counter.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Campbell,” Ray said. “I was out of line.” She faced him, and he struggled to come up with something to say, some way to explain his outburst, but nothing came to mind. “It’s the jet lag. I … I … no, that’s not it. I have no excuse. Take the money and please forgive me. I’m so sorry.” Without counting the wad of pound notes, nor returning his change, she slipped them into the same dress pocket. “I haven’t slept in days, but it’s more than that.” He could hear the rain tapping against the windows, the sizzle of peat bricks in the fireplace. “I can’t even think straight anymore. I’ve quit my job. My wife is divorcing me.”

  “Little wonder too,” Mrs. Campbell said. “Given your attitude.”

  “The tragic part is that I know you’re right. My attitude is the problem. That’s why I’m here. Now the only thing I have left in the world is a rented house I can’t totally afford. This island is my final hope. If I don’t get myself together I don’t know what I’m going to do, and I’m already in the process of sabotaging my stay here too. I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Campbell. You have a beautiful hotel.”

  “There, there, Mr. Welter,” she said. He didn’t know which of them was more embarrassed. “Let’s not worry. These misunderstandings happen. We’ll see if Mr. Fuller has some tea on. A spot of tea—that’s all you need. You just sit next to the fire and we’ll be right back. We’ll forget all about this nonsense, what do you say?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Campbell. I’m so sorry.”

  “Not at all. You take a seat and try to dry those wet clothes. You’ll catch your death on Jura dressed like that.”

  For one of the few times in his life, Ray did what he was told. The leather chair felt like an enormous, broken-in baseball mitt. Mrs. Campbell hadn’t deserved that kind of abuse. He had made the worst possible first impression and now word would spread across the island about what an asshole that Ray Welter was. He vowed to make himself inconspicuous. He would blend into the scenery, go native. “Fuck are you doing, Chappie?” Pitcairn demanded and Ray snapped awake. “Sitting on your arse?”

  “I’m not feeling so good. Mrs. Campbell went to—”

  “Oh, I’m not feeling so good. Is that a reason to keep me waiting outside? I got better things to do than look after the likes of you. Get your twee little boots on. They’re expecting you over at The Stores. I’m in a fucking hurry.”