Page 70 of The White Octopus Hotel
And she didn’t care, in that moment, about Bella, or the writing paper, or the scavenger hunt. She didn’t care about anything at all except saving Max Everly’s life. The tentacles ripped out into the night, and she yelled as they tore through her skin, wrapping around Max and helping her to pull them both back onto the roof.
When they stood up to go a few minutes later, she glanced over the edge of the wall, but Roth had vanished. Eve led Max downstairs to the bathroom. She could feel a white-hot flame of anger burning inside her as she thought of Roth, standing there watching, doing nothing to help. As soon as Max was back on the ward, she would return to the Roth Suite and demand an answer, whether it was forbidden or not. But as she hurried down the stairs with a setof spare clothes for Max, she met Roth coming up. They noticed each other at the same instant and froze—Eve on the landing and Roth near the bottom of the stairs. For a moment, there was no sound at all but for the hissing of the gas lamps. The light wasn’t enough to see Roth clearly, but Eve noticed he was still wearing his coat and that his dark hair was streaked with grey. His face was angled away from her, but she could tell he was tall, and probably somewhere in his midfifties.
“Mr. Roth,” she said.
“Miss Shaw. I didn’t expect to see you here. Ought you not to be on the ward?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Her voice came out harsh with anger. “You saw what happened on the roof. Why didn’t you help?”
He lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “What would you have had me do? Besides, it looked as if you had the situation well in hand.”
Eve wondered whether he had seen her tentacles, but if he had, then surely he would say something? She realised they were on the same staircase from the black-and-white photograph of the servicemen lined up in their hospital blues. The one with that dark figure in the corner that Max had said must have been Nikolas Roth.
He never spoke to any of us, but we were aware of him lurking in the shadows sometimes….
“The servicemen all think that you dislike them,” she told him. “That you don’t want them here.”
She wondered if he might deny it, but after a pause he simply said, “Of course I don’t want them here.”
“Then why offer your hotel at all?”
“Sometimes we are forced by circumstance.”
Eve considered asking why he’d been wandering the grounds in the middle of the night, but she doubted she’d get much of an answer and it was his property, after all, to wander about as he liked. Unlike the internees, he wasn’t a captive.
“The hotel will close, you know,” she said, relishing the spite of the words. “It will close in 1935, never to reopen.”
Roth tilted his head slightly. “You’re mistaken, Miss Shaw. There’s an old legend that the White Octopus will close its doors for good on the day snow falls from the ceiling and other lives are glimpsed within the mirrors, but the truth is this hotel will go on forever.” He nodded at the laundered hospital blues in her hands. “Isn’t there some shivering fellow waiting somewhere for those?”
Eve realised that, without her coat, she was freezing in the unheated stairwell too. Scowling, she began to walk down the stairs. Roth retreated into the shadows of the landing to make space for her to pass. She could barely make out the glimmer of his eyes through the dark.
“Might I say,” he spoke quietly, “that I admire your dedication to your duties very much. The internees are lucky to have you.”
Eve was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Whatever your private feelings, you ought to have had the courtesy to welcome the men to your hotel. They’ve experienced things you cannot imagine.”
“I daresay.”
“Don’t send any more flowers to my room,” Eve said. “I want nothing from you.”
“As you wish, madam.”
Eve left him behind and quickly walked down the corridor to the bathroom, feeling guilty for the time she’d been gone. She passed the clothes through the bathroom door to Max and once he was settled back on the ward, she returned to Room 17, took the key from her pocket, and stared at it for the longest time. She simply did not know what to do.
She could almost feel Bella’s little ghost tugging insistently on her hand, but there was Max holding on to the other hand, until it began to feel as if they might rip her in half between them. Theoctopus burned as it travelled up to her collarbone and trailed its tentacles gently over her neck and shoulders. Eve didn’t know what sheoughtto do. So, for perhaps the first time in her life, she did what shewantedto do. She put the key away and she stayed in 1918. Not forever. But just for now. To be close to Max. To enjoy whatever last moments they might be able to spend together.
Chapter 45
The next morning, Eve was surprised to find a box of ice skates had been sent up to the ward for the men, with “Mr. Roth’s compliments.” It seemed a feeble way to make up for his bizarre behaviour the night before, but the men who were fit enough to use the skates were delighted.
Max refused to go, at first, but Eve bullied him outside with the others. There was a time to sit quietly alone and be sad—she knew that herself all too well—but there were also occasions where you needed sunshine and fresh air and mountains. After half an hour on the ice, Max was almost smiling. The POWs soon insisted Eve join them, but she’d never skated before and was hopeless at it.
“Here,” Max said at last, after the tenth time she’d fallen. “Take my hand.”
Eve let him haul her upright, but he didn’t let go as she’d expected. With his arm to steady her, she managed to skate slowly over the lake. They were surrounded by other men, but in some way, it felt as if they were the only people there. She was glad to have an excuse to hold Max’s hand, to feel the warmth of his touch through their gloves. She felt such utter joy at the sight of him smiling. Things felt different between them after last night. How couldthey not? It was a delight to do something normal. To not think of dark things for a while. To pretend to be ordinary people.
But soon enough, it was time to return inside for lunch, and Eve reluctantly let him go. They trudged back to the hotel and were almost at the front doors when Max lightly touched the sleeve of her coat. They were so close to each other, shoulder to shoulder in the snow, and for a bright second Eve thought he was going to kiss her. But then he just nodded down to the skates they were each carrying and said gruffly, “Thanks. For this morning and…you know. For last night.”
“Of course,” Eve said softly.
