Goodmans Hotel

He came to see it when the decorators had finished, and as we stood outside looking at the restored and repainted stucco facade, the tidy garden, and new signs in gold lettering on a green background big enough to stand out, but not so big as to look like advertisement hoardings, the appearance of the premises filled me with joy. Everything was the way I wanted it.

Except, that is, for one thing: the tenant in the attic. Andrew had befriended the gawky boy he was so taken with when we inspected the house with the estate agent. According to him Darren was sensitive and intelligent, and his having been abandoned by his parents to fend for himself in London was disgraceful. He would, he said, happily have found somewhere for him himself, but Darren was not earning enough to pay for a self-contained flat, and at his age with his boyish appearance and trusting nature he was too vulnerable to be pushed out into the risky world of multi-occupied accommodation. There was no question that his circumstances were very hard, and although letting him stay meant having him occupy what could have been another hotel room, albeit up three flights of stairs, Andrew had helped me so much in setting up the hotel his arguments were difficult to reject.

At weekends he took Darren on trips to museums, gardens, art galleries, the theatre, classical music concerts and jazz clubs. When he proposed taking him to Paris for a few days Tom and I were seriously worried that he was becoming infatuated, but he dismissed the idea, saying that he was old enough to be Darren's grandfather and that there was nothing sexual about their friendship. On a cold day seeing them leave the hotel together that was what they looked like, a grandfather and grandson going out for the day, Andrew white haired, well wrapped up in a thick overcoat, scarf and gloves, the boy in jeans and a T-shirt, or on wet or extremely cold days draping himself in one of the lightweight but ludicrously long raincoats that were a teenage fashion at the time.

At first, I suspected that Darren was simply flattered at being treated so generously by a rich older man, and that his claimed interest in the places Andrew showed him was largely a pretence. However, given the chance, he would detain Tom and me for half an hour with detailed reports on their expeditions to Kew Gardens, Greenwich Observatory or some other attraction, and after hearing several of these enthusiastic accounts I had to accept that he was genuine.

All the same, however much pleasure Andrew derived from his company, in the first days of the hotel he was an unwanted complication. He kept his room clean and tried not to be a nuisance, but would ask me for advice about all sorts of things, about opening a bank account or going to some club or other he had heard about. Returning from the burger bar sometimes he would interrupt me in the kitchen or the office with some mildly amusing story about the people he worked with, referring to his place of employment by derogatory names such as the grizzle-in-a-bun bar, the dieters' disaster, the nutritionists' nightmare and the odious offal outlet. He had taken this dead end job shortly after arriving in London because he was down to his last few pounds, and passing by on his way to the Underground saw a placard in the window advertising for staff.