Guests with Shooters

Guests with Shooters

Just as I open the door of my manor house a guest rushes out holding a 12 bore shotgun, the barrel of which is dangerously close to my nostrils, once again both my sphincter and patience is put to the test, to the fullest extent.

“Oh, I am dreadfully sorry old bean, I never saw you coming,” he bleats with exemplary English, before pointing the business end away from my face.

“Jesus, shouldn’t that thing be in a case or a locked cabinet?”

“It’s okay, the safety is on.”

“Having both barrels of a gun pointing up your nose feels less than safe. How many times have I asked…last time I insisted even, that your guns are not assembled whilst on my property? If you were at home you’d have to have it in a locked gun cabinet with licence from the police to own a gun, but you come here, wander around with it, and then point the damn thing at me.”

“Yes, of course, sorry again, Innkeeper.”

At certain times of the year, folk from the smoke descend on rural retreats dressed in tweed all with privately manicured accents and shoot their guns at wild birds and such. They have to stay somewhere befitting their status and often choose places like Mortons House Hotel. One group come twice a year in November and February.

The Featherstone party arrive with a dozen guns and as many gundogs one Autumn morning. Long before the sun rises to enlighten a beautiful blue sky, I venture into the manor after a sleepless night. I am not expecting to meet anybody, lest of all one holding a gun to my nose. Regular guests that have frequented the hotel for more than a decade come as a group and that spend a good deal of wonga can sometimes expect the rules to be stretched. My general manager knows this but also how I hate having shotguns in the hotel.

Today isn’t the first time I doubted the wisdom of turning a blind eye and not raising my blood pressure unduly by taking the group to task. During their last visit the whole group walks into a busy reception area after a day’s shooting, with muddy boots and guns slung over their shoulders. Mr. Featherstone eyes my frown and me as he marches over and dumps a brace of pheasant on the desk, blood, guts and feathers all over it.

“There you go Innkeeper, a little something for you and your good lady.” Clearly he doesn’t know much about Sybil. One, she is in her opinion much more highly ranked than good and, the other, is that there is no chance of her eating pheasant.

“Oh my goodness,” Mrs. Blue Rinse walks out of the Oak Room carrying her sherry and sets eyes on the shooter, the blood, and turns tail.

“Nothing to worry about madam,” the lead shooter shouts. “We are not loaded but the game on the menu here is fresh tonight!” Of course the group laugh, but me and the pheasants can’t see the funny side and another sherry is needed next door along with a Tenor Lady incontinence pad.

“Colin, I know you struggle with admonishing the Featherstone group because they are stalwart regulars of this place, but for fuck sake man, they scare the living daylights out of our other guests. Guests that pay the bills and your wages.”

“Okay, okay, I will have another chat with them later.”

“I want the guns broken down, barrels under the bed, and butts in their cars. Never should the two be in the hotel together or as an assembled gun, got it?”

“I will have a go when I decant their wine before dinner, which is when they pay the greatest attention to me.”

The GM is a more than decent chap but he will no doubt dilute my demands for his favourite punters who, I am sure, tip him very well. Colin would love to be one of those fellows in the deerstalker hat; he’d enjoy the whole eat, shoot, drink and be merry scenario, not to mention the chance of pointing a loaded gun up my nose.

I am none too certain exactly where the hotel stands on the legality of allowing our policy to be shot to bits by an Eton accent, but I pretend to be for Colin’s benefit.

The day passes with the utterly mundane chores that paperwork provide me, Sybil is quiet opposite, she is either accounting or shopping online; it is impossible to tell sometimes. Sybling is off getting her hair dyed, both sisters now need to hide a little greying at the gills and love the gossip that comes free at the upmarket salon in Poole. Ted has taken down an old iron rain gutter that is blocked; he is busy cleaning it up before repainting and fixing it back to the wall of the manor. Before leaving a little earlier than normal after lunch service, I replace a light bulb for Barb who is so vertically challenged even her steps won’t bring the lamp within her reach. I am due back in time to greet the shooters and those wanting a pre-dinner drink in the Oak Room that will be warmed by the huge fire.

I spend my afternoon at the driving range; I plan to have a rare game of golf with “the Major” and haven’t hit a ball in nearly a year. Arriving straight from the hotel I must look like I am in the wrong place, I take off my tie and hang my jacket up and have a warm up by swinging a club around. I’d be better placed in a bank looking like this. Other ball bashers seem unconcerned at my lack of dress sense though. After a couple of buckets of balls have been thinned, shanked, sliced, and hooked, I decide enough is enough. I reckon it best not to bet with the Major after this display.

A brief shower, change of shirt, and it is time to head back to work.
Colin approaches me, having returned to duty without a fresh shirt or apparently a shower. He has clearly dozed all afternoon mixed with plenty of X-box. “Boss, a bit of trouble in the bar, we let in a couple of men that could, at best be described as ‘oiks,’ not the usual upmarket folk you like, but they have been okay until just a moment ago.”

“What is the problem?” I ask.

“They are both sloshed and have gotten a bit abusive. I refused to serve them and now they are being threatening and profanity of the spoken word is rife.”

“Have you asked them to leave?”

“No, I hoped you would?”

“Colin, you’re the GM, just ask them to leave.”

I check the reservation diary, the restaurant bookings, and chat with reception about the afternoon shift. We are busy, the Featherstone’s occupy the Castle Room and we have twenty other diners in the main dining room. The Castle Room is already prepared, white wine chilling in buckets of ice, and the reds at room temperature awaiting the house sommelier (Colin) to decant them into crystal. As I raise my head from the bookings I smell the gentlemen before me.

“Why don’t you try and throw us out?” One drunk swaggers.

“We’d like to see you try.” The other offers with more slur. “We just want a quiet drink to celebrate but after a few, you want us out?”

“Gentlemen, by the looks of things you have celebrated well, it is in our opinion that we have offered you sufficient hospitality. As the owner and licensee I have the right to decline you service, and that is what I am doing, politely. Therefore, I think it best to ask you to move on and thank you for your custom.” There were words of too many syllables as the inebriated chaps conferred for a while.

“Fuck you! We want another drink.” The guy looks like a friendly drunk, a laughable one not a punching drunk; I figure he wants to be a nuisance. The front door opens and in trots a Black Labrador. One of the gundogs has darted in without the following owner stopping it, the tail wagging would normally have me in a tailspin, since dogs are strictly forbidden as guests or patrons. I have seen signs that the shooters overlook this policy, the odd patch of dog hair around the fireplace, the sight of a departing pouch when the owner sees me, that sort of thing. The lab is followed in by the first of the returning party, Mr. Featherstone himself.

The drunks demand another drink with more force and further obscenity.
“If you don’t serve us, we’ll help ourselves and there is fuck all you are going to do about it.”
I round the reception desk and put a supportive arm on the lead sprayer of abuse and start to guide him out.

“Get your pompous hands off me or I’ll whack you.”

“There won’t be any need for that; I suggest you leave now as you have been asked.”

Both barrels of a shiny gun rest on the shoulder of the drunk, who turns to meet them with his now chalky white complexion. Sobering up often takes time, but with a gun up your nose it speeds up big style. The troublesome and tipsy twosome depart without another word as the reception fills with gun toting guests.

“Thanks for that Mr. Featherstone,” is all I can say as I bend to pat the excited hound sat next to the gunman.

“No worries, glad to be of service; the sight of mine and a dozen or so guns did the trick, or then maybe it was my dog, Nigger eh?” He laughs and ascends the stairs with the dog, inappropriately named after the Labrador in the 1955 film The Dam Busters.

Mr. Featherstone may not err on the side of political correctness, but I am bloody glad his guns point in the right direction now. Needless to say, I am expected to overlook the weapons that accompany the group and turn a blind eye to Nigger the dog, too.