The Inn at the Edge of the World by Alice Thomas Ellis Page A

listened to Mabel. Oh, Mabel . . .
    One by one they gathered in the bar.
     
    Anita and Jessica had both changed their clothes for the evening: Anita because she’d been well brought up, and Jessica because the bottoms of her trousers had got splashed walking from the boat. She had a lot of fashionable clothes that she had gathered, in one way or another, from kindly wardrobe mistresses who seemed to know what would suit her better than she knew herself. It saved a lot of trouble and thought, but she always felt guilty when she dirtied them.
    Eric was delighted with these ladies: already they had added tone to his establishment. He felt quite recovered and able to handle the responsibilities of the landlord; and now he thanked God that Mabel had gone. No longer need he worry that she would shock, alienate or sleep with any of the guests. As he regarded Jon his thankfulness increased. Mabel would have had him for breakfast. It was also fortunate that the guests were all single, since he usually had trouble with married couples. Men, who would not if left to themselves complain, were often impelled by the presence of their wives to mention that the soup was a little cold, the cup cracked or the steak tough; while the women could be worse, tracking him through the hotel to tell him, tight-lipped, that the creaking of the inn sign had kept their husband awake all night and with the pressure of work he’d been under he needed all the sleep he could get and they’d come here to rest didn’t he realize. Sometimes they complained that the waitress had insulted their husband, and as, at one time, he had employed casual labour from the mainland, Eric had to admit that they were probably right. There had been an incident in the summer when Mabel’s Glaswegian mates were making merry and a wife had come down in her nightie, beckoned him from the bar and abused him in front of everyone. She hadn’t tackled the mates. Oh no. They were wearing black leather, and some of them, male and female, had their bald heads tattooed. What, Eric had wondered, did she expect him to do? He was running a business, wasn’t he, an inn? People came to inns to drink, didn’t they? It was bad luck if the interests of the residents and the passing trade proved to be incompatible, but what was he supposed to
do
about it? It was also exasperating to observe, when these married couples were together, that they didn’t seem unduly devoted to each other, eating in silence unless one of them found something untoward in the salad. Eric had not, himself, been married long enough to appreciate the nuances of the married state.
    Sometimes, still, he pictured himself throwing out the mates in ones and twos to lie in the seaweed, but it would have been impracticable to try. He hoped they wouldn’t take it into their tattooed, bald heads to come over during the next few days, bringing Mabel with them. It was an unlikely contingency, since they enjoyed comfort and the caravans they usually lay around in would be cold at this time of year. Eric crossed his fingers.
    He was ambivalent about the continued presence of the professor and Mrs H., who seemed to be glued to their bar stools, and had got involved in a covertly acrimonious discussion on the rival merits of wooden and fibreglass boats. Neither of them held any particular brief for either form of craft: rather each was concerned to prove that he, or she, was more familiar with the complexities of the matter than the other. It made tedious listening, but they gave the bar something of a lived-in air. He only hoped the professor would not make one of the curious remarks with which he was wont to startle ladies. He supposed the man had some sort of inferiority complex, but it could be embarrassing. Mrs H., too, could swear like a parrot when she felt like it. The girl seemed negligible: the only danger there was that she might start crying.
    ‘What’ll you have then?’ Eric asked his guests. He was satisfied