'Hotel Portofino's "Alliances" Include Too Much Negroni, a Vegetarian Dog & an Errant Grenade

Cecil may look very dapper with his three-piece suit and perfectly coiffed hair, but every time he comes on the screen, the Wicked Witch theme music from The Wizard of Oz plays in my head. Yes, my friends, the snake in the grass has returned to Hotel Portofino and is slithering around, leaving barbed remarks in his wake. “Have you been keeping your nose clean,” he smirks at Billy. When Billy says he has, Cecil replies, “Good man though I shan’t be taking your word for it.”

Bella is doing her best to avoid her husband, but although the hotel is lovely, it’s not actually that big, and Cecil eventually tracks her down. “It looks like you were lying in wait,” Bella tells him. “I don’t understand why you’ve come back. There’s nothing for you here.” To Bella’s surprise, Cecil is extraordinarily contrite. “When you are here, and I’m back in London, I feel half the man I do than when I am with you... I will do better, whatever it takes,” he tells her. Bella is still wary but later gets tipsy with Claudine (who notes quite accurately that Cecil is hanging around the hotel, like body odor). Bella confesses that after so many years of marriage and the shared history of losing a son, she’s not sure she is ready to or wants to divorce him.

Claudine wonders about Bella’s lovelorn pen pal, Henry. Bella tells her she hasn’t written to Henry in months and he was a port in the storm during a difficult time. Alas, poor Henry is not aware of this. He writes to Bella that he will be traveling to Italy soon as a tutor for a family. “It is my only wish to see your sweet and oft-imagined face again,” he writes Bella.