We have gone on holiday by mistake.

Bruce Robinson

After dinner, Julian goes up to his room. He's only just started getting undressed, when there's a smart rap at the door.

"Housekeeping, love."

He opens the door, to find a freckled little woman with warm brown eyes that match her uniform, pushing a trolley.

"Just bringing you some towels, luvvie." She gives a smile that lights up her whole face. "I'm Pauline, love. If you want any clean clothes, or towels, or linen, just phone the front desk, and I'll bring them up to you, alright?"

"Oh ... thank you very much," Julian says. "That's very kind of you."

"It's no trouble at all, love," Pauline calls from the bathroom where she is arranging towels in various sizes.

"Um, I thought Pauline was the lady who does the cooking?"

"That's Colin's Pauline, love," Pauline says, popping her head around the door. "I'm Phil's Pauline. You know Phil, don't you? Drives a cab. He's a lovely man, isn't he?"

"Uh, yes. He's really nice."

"Now, I hope you're all set, love," Pauline said, preparing to push her trolley onward. "I'm off duty tonight, so if you need anything urgently, just phone the front desk, and Colin will take care it. Alright, love?"

∘•········ʚ ♡ ɞ ········•∘

After Pauline leaves, Julian has a long hot soak in a tub filled with milk and honey bubble bath, then conscientiously takes his medicine, before lying on the bed wrapped in a bathrobe, reading The Art of Loving. It makes him think about Noel, and wonder when he is going to get there. 

He wishes he asked Noel when his dinner with Jeannie started – if he had a 7 pm dinner, he could be finished around 9.30. Then again, maybe his dinner started at 8.30 pm, which means he would have hardly sat down.

Julian thinks to himself that he barely knows Noel. Is he the sort of person who is always late? Would he think it was alright to just not show up, and give an excuse next time he saw Julian? Would Julian even see Noel again? He never asked Noel where he was staying, so he doesn't have a number or address where he could contact him.

Did the kiss mean as much to Noel? He'd seemed to like it, but he made it sound as if he was used to kissing lots of people. Julian hasn't really had much experience of relationships, and hardly any with other guys. Maybe he doesn't have a clue what he's doing, or how things work.

He can't concentrate on the book, so he puts it in a drawer in the bedside table, and starts flicking through the channels on the television. Each one seems to be showing Julian's favourite films or television shows, or programs on subjects that interest him. He hesitates between a documentary on Miles Davis and an old episode of The Goodies, before choosing Withnail and I on a comedy movie channel.

It's only just started, and he pulls the quilt over himself, props himself up on the pillows, and gets lost in a story which feels as if it's part of his own consciousness. It was this film that had made him suspect that he was physically attracted to men - because when a semi-nude Paul McGann is giving you a raging stiffy in the cinema, and you have a hot, tight feeling in your gut as you mentally shout, "Kiss, damn you, kiss!" when he's in bed with Richard E. Grant, you cannot be entirely heterosexual.

Perhaps even more importantly, it was this film that had first propelled him into comedy, given growing confidence by first quoting the film ad nauseam to a bunch of like-minded fellow students, then beginning to daringly ad lib his own dialogue to the movie. Gradually he realised he was making people laugh, he was capable of being funny. At least to the sort of studenty crowd who were obsessed with Withnail and I.

When he began performing in comedy clubs, so nervous he felt physically sick, and far too scared to tell anyone he knew about it, his onstage persona was at least partly based on Withnail – flamboyant, bitter, slightly queer, filled with extravagant boasts, undercut by a devastating self-hatred. He couldn't help being aware though that being Withnail was not going to be enough.

His dream was a comedy partnership with someone who could be the sexy, pouting Marwood to his fragile, nervous Withnail. Someone younger, prettier, less intellectual, more working-class. Someone who would, in short, give the audience a raging stiffy as Julian's character postured and bragged and made a fool of himself. And the Marwood character would ignore all the physical boundaries, and they would flirt and flirt until the audience were mentally screaming, "Kiss, damn you, kiss!"

Maybe they actually would kiss. Just once, so everyone could lose their collective shit.

Were audiences ready to watch two men kiss in a comedy show? Julian isn't sure.

And they needed a hippie stoner, and an old failed actor called Monty, and a dish of eels, not to mention a buddy road trip into madness. But they had to find their own way of doing things, not the alcohol-fuelled mayhem of Bruce Robinson's film, more a Withnail and I on acid. They couldn't be actors, they had to find a different slant. Struggling musicians? Or some very ordinary sort of job, like dustmen or milkmen?

Julian grabs pen and paper from a drawer and begins making notes. It's stupid, because nobody will let him write comedy scripts in the Afterlife, he's pretty sure. He doesn't have a comedy partner, and only a vague idea how it would work, but still writes his ideas down.

The movie finishes, on the same tragic note that never fails to make Julian feel melancholy, as the two friends lose each other, and Withnail proves himself a talented actor, although with no one to witness his performance from Hamlet but the wolves in the zoo.

He turns off the television, puts his notes away, takes his bedtime medicine, brushes his teeth. Changes into boxers and a tee-shirt to sleep in, gets into bed. He isn't sure Noel is even coming, and he can't stay up all night on the off-chance. Mary said he needed to get his rest. He switches off the lamp, puts his head on the pillow, and completely fails to fall asleep.

It is almost midnight, and he is just starting to get drowsy, when he hears a soft knock at the door.

A voice whispers, "Joo'n, are you awake?"