On a recent holiday, my neighbours tried to kill one another. At least, he tried to kill her. I’d been democratically elected to intervene, but found it more traumatic in a foreign tongue than I would have done in English; never quite certain whether, or when, to do so: unsure of the point when it passed from domestic row, with each side verbally giving as good as it got, to wife battery. Screaming, of course, is much the same in any language – and its onset invariably marks the stage where you definitely need to get involved - but I ran out only to find hotel security staff already on the scene.
Funnily enough, this is the first time in years that I’ve stayed in a two or three-star hotel – and on the last occasion, exactly the same thing happened! Can this really be mere coincidence? Do people who are unhappy with one another resent spending the extra money, or does holidaying on a budget cause seething resentment? On that previous occasion – a winter break on Cyprus – the walls were so thin, I’d considered asking to change the room right from the off. They hadn’t even bothered to plaster over the blockwork; they’d just painted it white, like campus accommodation back home.
Ominously, no sooner had I settled into my room, than noises from the neighbours had begun to be intrusive…….. "Why didn't you bring it with you?" a woman's voice was asking, petulantly."Why don't you eff-off," her partner retorted. Charming! Presumably the dour-looking young couple I'd encountered in the hallway soon after arriving. And on the other side, I guessed my neighbours must be the elderly Welsh pair seated near me at dinner: the old lady had a distinctive chirpy little voice, like a bird. I could hear her every exclamation. "Well, I wish I had your constitution," she was saying; "I really do. I can't eat chops like that. Say what you like, but I can't - and I never could."The old man's gruff, monosyllabic replies were less clear. It seemed a novel idea, to envy him - stooped, liver-spotted, pebble glasses perched on his bony beak of a nose - and yet I’d watched him put away two bottles of beer with his dinner, so age had its compensations, apparently."Now you're never going to manage those trousers like that, are you?" I could hear his wife saying to him. "Do you want me to help? Wait a minute, then, wait a minute - don't get in a fluster!"My momentary irritation dissolved into a kind of wonder at their tenacity - with life, with one another.
There was a small television usefully bolted to a bracket on one wall and I switched this on, in an effort to cover these adjoining conversations, while pouring a couple of fingers of the Barcadi I'd bought in the duty free at the airport. The tv was showing an old repeat of Friends, with subtitles. Oddly, the first break contained an advertisement for the ubiquitous building blocks which surrounded me. Their versatility was initially established in a series of close-ups, in which they were sawn in half, drilled and buttered with mortar - to rise, under competent male hands, into an ugly wall - and finally an ugly building of box-like simplicity. Then a genial, bearded man seemed to be recommending them to camera - before posing proudly with his young family in front of the imposing eye-sore which had presumably been erected on his behalf. "But they're not bloody sound-proof, mate!" I shouted at the family man on tv.
*
The fact that the walls were thinner in that Cyprus hotel – and the rucks at once longer and less dramatic - made it worse than our recent experience, in a way: I routinely became an unwilling witness to a place the unhappy young couple visited nightly; a very bad place. I awoke in the wee small hours of the very first night, the drink having worn off, unsure why at first; until, from the wall behind the bedhead, I realised I was hearing the rather petulant, whiney tones of Ms Miserable, next door, and the deeper, argumentative voice of Mr Miserable, evidently in the middle of a barely-controlled ding-dong. I couldn't ignore them and couldn’t get back to sleep; so I was forced to lie there, while they argued, half-a-dozen feet away.
Because they weren’t actually raising their voices, protest seemed unreasonable. I tried a pillow over my head; which meant I was unable to distinguish most of the words, but then continued hearing the two voices merely as sounds: now rising to a crescendo, now falling away to pianissimo - alternating, then overlapping - by turns freighted with feeling, or cool and conciliatory. As a matter of fact, although they were Brits, the pillow meant it was also like listening to another language, at times; perhaps an unfamiliar opera in a foreign tongue, where you guess the meaning and import of a duet from the tone and inflection of the singers. In this case, the import was pretty obvious: whatever it was Mr Miserable was saying, and however he was putting it – the same thing, over and over again, ad nauseum – the message was plain enough, even in a different room. You don't love me enough. I don't feel wanted, I felt he was saying. I don't have your respect. I don't feel attended to, I don't feel needed, I don't feel loved. And no wonder – the tiresome bugger!
Hard to know who was the most irritating of that pair. Frankly, they both got on my nerves - Mr Miserable going on and on and on, grinding away at her resistance - and Ms Miserable, with her whiney voice, holding out on him. It was a bit of a toss-up, really. And I sensed this wasn't simply a bad patch, a dry spell, or a bit of tetchiness after a difficult journey. The Miserables, you felt, just didn't have it any more - assuming they’d ever possessed whatever IT is. "Oh God, I'm just so-o tired," the woman wailed, finally. "I can't do it - I can't. I can't go on with this. I just have to go to sleep!""Amen to that," I piped up.
The next night was nearly as bad as the first. It wasn’t an argument, this time: Mr Miserable snored. Were the walls really that thin, or was his snoring really that loud? Perhaps a bit of both. Ms Miserable certainly found it loud, on her side. At first, she merely sighed restlessly. Then she called Mr Miserable’s name. She cursed. And the next step was to shake him, or prod him, I expect; because there was an interruption in the snoring sound and it resumed at a slightly different pitch. In desperation, Ms Miserable must have hit him then, or kicked him – because I could distinctly make out a nasty grunting noise. And it worked - he did actually stop, for a while…..But then I heard Ms Miserable wail: “Oh-oh Go-d!” Mr Miserable’s snores had resumed.There are times when bedtime moaning and blasphemies are a good sign in a relationship. This wasn’t one of them. This was an exclamation of irritation and disgust. I prayed I’d never feel that way about anyone – and I was certain I never, ever wanted anyone to feel that way about me – not even for one moment in the middle of the night.
After a week of this, I would have been climbing the walls – or banging on them. Mercifully, the Miserables couldn’t stand each other, any more than I could stand them - and within days they’d either gone home, or found some sort of Relate resort, where they could combine holidaying and bickering, with the added benefit of an umpire. Actually, I don’t think it’s too fanciful to suggest that these couples want a witness. When you row that loudly, that persistently, it’s no accident: you need the world to know what you put up with the other fifty weeks of the year. Like unpaid therapists, you’ve cast your hapless fellow guests in the role of adjudicator - the place where someone will take your side, where your suffering will finally be understood.
Our more recent disturbed night in the Canaries ended much more strangely. Next morning I went to Reception: not so much to complain – it was hardly their fault – but simply to find out if everyone was in one piece and make it clear that either the couple responsible were found new rooms, or we were. Yet the apartment next door appeared to be empty as I passed – the cleaners were already in – and to my astonishment, reception staff pretended they knew nothing of the nocturnal disturbance at all. This was just - and only just – conceivable, but highly unlikely. Even though they were on a different shift, they must have known about a couple who’d either been expelled or hospitalised. I found it spooky to deny their existence – and not a little insulting to my intelligence to be told I must be prone to nightmares! Why lie to me? Had the Tourist Police reassigned them to a no-star establishment, under cover of darkness? It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it; the heartbreak hotel to which deviant guests from every other establishment are incarcerated……..
*
Clearly, you get a better sort of person staffing the front desk in four and five star hotels: there may be a tendency to fawn unnecessarily; but at least they occupy more or less the same reality and don’t try to mess with your mind. I’d always assumed that the obscene amounts of dosh you part with in such places bought a ‘can-do’ attitude from the staff - and a better quality of fixtures and fittings, too, perhaps. Not so. I now realise one pays mostly to have neighbours who know how to behave.
The walls and floor coverings are thicker in the best hotels, the balconies better separated, air conditioning obviates the need for open windows and the fabrics are more luxurious; all of which may deaden sound. In my very favourite hotel, even the corridors have the stilled hush of a private chapel; which, I think, is entirely as it should be. Come to think of it, I’ve never even seen anyone else in the corridors there – and I’ve definitely not been aware of anyone in neighbouring rooms. Yet on the whole, I think one’s fellow guests in such establishments must have the decency to argue quietly. I can picture them, hissing fiercely across the acres of deep-pile carpeting at one another between clenched teeth: “Yuh-are-ur-complete-und-utter-vastard!” “Yuh-are-ur-artless-vitch!”
Alternatively – and this, I think, is far more likely – five-star folk are happier. Either people with unresolved conflicts and rocky relationships go two and three-star because they’re not willing to spend as much on a holiday with someone they secretly despise; or, better-off people are more contented with their lot. And with good reason: not only is their holiday spending power higher; but also their holiday companions seem to be less argumentative! We might even suggest that top hotels are active in conferring happiness upon their guests – and not merely in superficial ways, such as the size of the bathroom and length of the pool – but also, in the profound sense that they confirm the higher status of their visitors, relative to those staying in adjacent hostelries with less stars. I kid you not: research at Pennsylvania State University published a year ago – which had examined a representative sample of about 20,000 Americans, from 20 to 64, between 1972 and 2002 - found that happiness was relative. The wealthier people were, in relation to their peers, the happier they reported feeling. And the poorer they were, compared to neighbours and peers, the less happy they felt. (It follows that, even though they may not consciously be aware of it, the guests in cheaper hotels are providing a service while they put up with full-blown domestics in the night and stodgy dinners by day: they’re actually boosting the happiness quotient of those in better establishments nearby.)Personally, I suspect those staying in better hotels are happier simply because they’ve had an undisturbed night’s sleep.
