He was an American. What a businessman from Chicago who wore a Rolex watch and carried (or rather, Jonny carried) calfskin suitcases was doing in a dump like the Gilmore Hotel, I don’t pretend to know and Jonny certainly didn’t. His name was Tudorlap, Clarence Tudorlap. It’s strange enough to have stuck in my memory, for I noted nothing of Jonny’s story in my diary. In the public places of the hotel he was loud and vociferous in his condemnation of all things British. The United Kingdom was inefficient, old-fashioned, indeed stuck in a time warp, dirty and cold, and it was always raining. The heating didn’t work, the trains didn’t run on time, shop “clerks” were rude and officials ignorant.

Jonny, who I’d never thought of as especially patriotic and probably hadn’t thought of himself like that, suddenly couldn’t stand any more. He’d just run upstairs for the tenth time that day and come down to hear Tudorlap telling the receptionist that the best thing that could happen to this country would be for the United States to “nuke” it accidentally so that it “sank without trace.”

“You shut your fucking mouth,” said Jonny.

There were quite a lot of people standing about listening and a couple of them laughed in a shocked sort of way. A very good-looking girl Jonny described as “lovely, a real lady” said, “I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know why you people come here. We don’t want you.”

For some reason, none of this reached the ears of the management. The receptionist appears to have told no one and nor did Tudorlap. He took his own private revenge. His room was No. 54. Every time he went up there, and he went up far more often than he need have done, he left the inner door of the lift open. Jonny had to run up the stairs to the top and close that door. He was sure Tudorlap watched him through the spyhole in his door and, when he and the lift had gone, summoned it again. Not to use it but for the simple pleasure of leaving that door open.