Dark Entries by Robert Aickman Page B

Gerald suddenly said he couldn’t stand it.
    ‘Darling, it’s not doing us any harm. I think it’srathercosy.’ Phrynne subsided in the wooden chair with its sloping back and long mud-coloured mock-velvet cushions; and opened her pretty legs to the fire.
    ‘Every church in the town must be ringing its bells. It’s been going on for two and a half hours and they never seem to take the usual breathers.’
    ‘We wouldn’t hear. Because of all the other bells ringing. I think it’s nice of them to ring the bells for us.’
    Nothing further was said for several minutes. Gerald was beginning to realise that they had yet to evolve a holiday routine.
    ‘I’ll get you a drink. What shall it be?’
    ‘Anything you like. Whatever you have.’ Phrynne was immersed in female enjoyment of the fire’s radiance on her body.
    Gerald missed this, and said ‘I don’t quite see why they have to keep the place like a hothouse. When I come back, we’ll sit somewhere else.’
    ‘Men wear too many clothes, darling,’ said Phrynne drowsily.
    Contrary to his assumption, Gerald found the lounge bar as empty as everywhere else in the hotel and the town. There was not even a person to dispense.
    Somewhat irritably Gerald struck a brass bell which stood on the counter. It rang out sharply as a pistol shot.
    Mrs Pascoe appeared at a door among the shelves. She had taken off her jacket, and her make-up had begun to run.
    ‘A cognac, please. Double. And a Kummel.’
    Mrs Pascoe’s hands were shaking so much that she could not get the cork out of the brandy bottle.
    ‘Allow me.’ Gerald stretched his arm across the bar.
    Mrs Pascoe stared at him blearily. ‘Okay. But I must pour it.’
    Gerald extracted the cork and returned the bottle. Mrs Pascoe slopped a far from precise dose into a balloon.
    Catastrophe followed. Unable to return the bottle to the high shelf where it resided, Mrs Pascoe placed it on a waist-level ledge. Reaching for the alembic of Kummel, she sweptthe three-quarters-full brandy bottle on to the tiled floor. The stuffy air became fogged with the fumes of brandy from behind the bar.
    At the door from which Mrs Pascoe had emerged appeared a man from the inner room. Though still youngish, he was puce and puffy, and in his braces, with no collar. Streaks of sandy hair laced his vast red scalp. Liquor oozed all over him, as if from a perished gourd. Gerald took it that this was Don.
    The man was too drunk to articulate. He stood in the doorway, clinging with each red hand to the ledge, and savagely struggling to flay his wife with imprecations.
    ‘How much?’ said Gerald to Mrs Pascoe. It seemed useless to try for the Kummel. The hotel must have another bar.
    ‘Three and six,’ said Mrs Pascoe, quite lucidly; but Gerald saw that she was about to weep.
    He had the exact sum. She turned her back on him and flicked the cash register. As she returned from it, he heard the fragmentation of glass as she stepped on a piece of the broken bottle. Gerald looked at her husband out of the corner of his eye. The sagging, loose-mouthed figure made him shudder. Something moved him.
    ‘I’m sorry about the accident,’ he said to Mrs Pascoe. He held the balloon in one hand, and was just going.
    Mrs Pascoe looked at him. The slow tears of desperation were edging down her face, but she now seemed quite sober. ‘Mr Banstead,’ she said ina flat, hurried voice. ‘May I come and sitwith you and your wife in the lounge? Just for a few minutes.’
    ‘Of course.’ It was certainly not what he wanted, and he wondered what would become of the bar, but he felt unexpectedly sorry for her, and it was impossible to say no.
    To reach the flap of the bar, she had to pass her husband. Gerald saw her hesitate for a second; then she advanced resolutely and steadily, and looking straight before her. If the man had let go with his hands, he would have fallen; but as she passed him, he released a great gob of spit. He was far too incapable to aim,