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West London Tertiary College, took Cheung up to his room for the night once or twice a
week, and helped me get out for an hour in the evening now and again by arranging for me to
meet them both in the Beckford Arms.
He was fond of telling me horrible stories about people treating one another dreadfully or
about human cruelty to animals. One story was about a group of lads at the seaside who
caught crabs and mutilated them by poking them with iron rods, breaking off a leg or a claw,
and another was of a rabbit-hunting expedition he was persuaded to go on when he was about
twelve years old to a warren not far from Twyford. He thought they were going to look at the
rabbits, not to kill the poor things. To his horror the boys he was with lit petrol soaked rags in
front of some of the burrows and tried to blow or waft the smoke down into them. This
attempt to drive the rabbits out of the safety of their earthworks failed, but they caught one
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that ran straight towards them when fire from their rags spread through the long grass where
it was hiding. He watched as the others surrounded it and battered it to death with lumps of
wood.
He passed on to me other grim stories that originated with Andrew or Cheung, probably
thinking that they would comfort me. In a curious sort of way they did. However bitter my
feelings about Tom, and however sad the evaporation of my imagined wonderful new life at
Goodmans Hotel, my misfortunes were not nearly as bad as being set alight or beaten to death
with sticks.
The work on Vincent s computer network, arranged when he came to the hotel with
Lizetta, also helped divert me from gloom. The project engaged my mind for one day a week
with new people and brought some of my old technical expertise back into use. His staff were
all  straight , but none of them was put off when he introduced me by saying that I used to be
the computer manager in a big accountancy firm and now ran a gay hotel.
By doing this he saved me from worries about  coming out . His staff were used to meeting
gay men when they were out on consultancy assignments in the hotel and tourist industry,
and were far more interested in asking me questions about my business than they were in
talking to me about their own computer system. They were not particularly interested in
specifics about Goodmans Hotel, but liked to speculate on the extent of the market for hotel
rooms for gay men in London, how many of the guests were business visitors and how many
were holiday makers, whether demand was growing, and if there was potential to develop
package tours to London for gay visitors from the provinces and abroad.
They gave me copies of a few reports they had produced for owners of small hotels to show
me how they advised on ways to increase profit or reposition a business in the market, and
talking to them gave me a wider view of the tourist industry and made me feel less trapped by
my circumstances. Andrew had begun with one modest shop. Why should Goodmans Hotel
not become a base from which to expand?
After my work on enhancements to the computer network was finished Vincent asked me
to help for one day a week on a large contract with a US tour operator. The corporation was
introducing a range of  themed holidays in Europe aimed at middle America, and one of
these, to be called  The Essential Scotland , was to be based in a large Victorian hotel in
Dunblane. Vincent s company had been hired to produce ideas and costed plans to make this
 Essential experience a success.
The project s objective did not appeal to me greatly. The  Essential Scotland the US
citizens from middle America were to experience was to consist of coach trips to Loch
Lomond, excursions during the day to castles and other historic or quaint places, and evening
entertainment with bagpipes and Scottish dancing. However, helping to plan the activities did
not mean I had to like them, and when the two full-time consultants assigned to the project
spoke to me about it with an irreverence that would have horrified the US client, it seemed as
though it might be fun.
We held meetings to develop our proposals and present them to the corporation s
European representatives, but the work was interspersed with scurrilous suggestions, such as
providing tartan baseball caps decorated with haggis feathers, or putting items such as Texas
style grouse-burger with French fries on the dinner menu.
At the third of the meetings I attended we were joined by the group bookings manager
from the hotel in Dunblane. He had a high-pitched voice for a man and rather camp
mannerisms, but made it clear he was not gay by pointedly mentioning a girlfriend several
times. Since he was someone I could never imagine myself having more to do with than
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necessary, I hoped he was not going out of his way to announce his heterosexuality because of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]