I was sat at the far end of the bar while two gentlemen talked to each other not far along. I'd rested my rucksack on the stool I was sitting on. Nursing my bag on my knee with a flask in front of me that looked out of place next to the pumps. The barmaid didn't know what she was doing, and kept apologising intermittently.
She did eventually find the ledger that had all the room bookings in. Somewhere amongst the administrative disarray. I'd been sat there so long that my bar prop companions began to ask me questions, though I was thankfully saved from having to give them any real answers.
Contained within the ledger, there was no booking with my name against any room. Though I hadn't organised the accommodation. I'd been too busy standing in holes looking for slickensides in the clay.
The job had been sprung on me, and the first I'd known about had been a phone call about stopping overnight. When I knew who was accompanying me, I'd blurted out my only awkward concern about not getting a twin room. I couldn't imagine the journey being either amusing or stimulating.
The barmaid had looked amused, although the room had been booked in Anne Marie's name, not the companies, and it was a double room.
A double room? A plausible error amidst the chaos? I'm not sure that this could be adequately explained away that easily. I knew she'd made the arrangements, because she'd phoned to tell me. How going all this way away from the site was justified by the immediate proximity of the bar and restaurant. The familiarity of somewhere she stayed at before, above the unforgiving whims of the intervening stretch of the M6.
There was this unsettling possibility that this had all happened on purpose. How awkward would it become to try and remain on her list. Would this happen again?
Had some plan been derailed due to the indecisions of consulting engineers? How fifty trial pits had shrunk to fifteen. Akin to some phonetic trickery that I recalled from a time when I'd looked out from the other side of the bar. That once this was the case, Anne Marie had been taken off this job. I could manage by myself. She would get to stay in the office.
And so, perhaps I was spared. Spared something, that was for sure. And as if to add further to the mess, the offending room had been given to some other guests.
The alternative room was small and shabby. It reminded me of Avonmouth, with the dilapidated and worn thin look of the fittings. That and an ingrained distrust of anywhere that had a wood effect downpipe in the bathroom.
