Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

accent was different. A thrill ran through me, up the back of my body. I was alarmed and I was hungry. I launched myself again at his face, the room blurred, vision shrank and all was touch, strokes, kisses, hot tongues. Above it my mind always threatening the tip into disgust, or worse the harm. But I closed my eyes and I let myself be carried by the trembling oddness of what was happening.

Hangover Deluxe

Bees were buzzing somewhere. I could feel the heat of the sun through closed eyelids. Kept them closed because I was, I knew, on a precipice – if I opened my eyes I would be awake. It would be, as you know, a bad thing to be awake after drinking quite as much as I had. I took some measured breaths. So far so okay, so . . . open. I cracked my eyes. Whiteness. I wrinkled up my face. It’s easy enough if you do it all at once, I thought, and forced myself to, sitting upright with my eyes open, and my body was only marginally upset with me. I laid my hands on the red cover. Still wearing at least the upper part of my suit, then. My hands interested me as something slightly alienated from the rest of the scene, aching, an echo of something last night, and now it was black suit fabric against red duvet fabric, then my hands, which had pulled back the covers and helped me into bed the night before, during a period when my mind was, at least it seemed to me at that moment, away from the controls. Piloting blind.

I was in one of the guest rooms, the slope of the ceiling high up like a church. Me in bed in a church. In a big red bed. And in the bed, more than me. Visible one – by arms over the edge of one side and two – by a pair of feet on the pillow next to me. I saw part of a black suit on the floor. Tom’s white suit was nowhere to be seen. Oh, I thought, that doesn’t seem right, and scrunching up my face again, got out of bed to deal with direct matters and rehydration before all of this. No trousers on. Boxers on. Socks on. Whatever I had done, I had done with my socks on. I went mechanically towards the en suite, barely seeing, I stuck my hands under the tap, drank from them salty sweet and cold, used the toilet, washed up, ran water over my eyes, came shuffling back out across a vast carpeted floor the exact same sanguineous colour as the walls.

The great red bed was installed in the massive high-ceilinged room. Light from the big window, white woolly-sky light, still too much. Who on earth had decided to make the room this way? Who wanted their guests to be struck in awe at atmospherics, acoustics, an assault of one single lurid colour, to think what, first thing, when they woke to face whatever the day would bring them? I stood and stared at the bed. It really was large enough to fit three adults quite comfortably, without them even having to touch in that space, even if they were journeying sleepers who rolled about and kicked. It could not, I thought, fulfil its place in the narrative of sacrifice, suffering, grand rites, that the room suggested for it; ludicrous to think so.

The way rich people live. I would suggest to Mark they changed the sheets to something a little less satanic.

I contemplated going over to the bed to pull back the covers to see who it was.

I knew though, of course, for the moment I was too stunned to let myself know, to remember all that I remembered, saving myself from myself.

I decided, for self-care, to reconstruct my memories of the night after coffee. I recovered my trousers, changed my mind and pulled off a long dressing gown from the back of the door. The MacAshfalls provided gowns for their guests. They were, yes, an incredible lot of people, I thought, admiring the jade-green silk and the tiger stitched across the back.

Too Much of a Body and Things Done With It

Down the great planks of the staircase, right at the bottom and into the kitchen, large and mild and elegant and familiar – I reached out my hands and grabbed hold of the counter in the centre of the room, bent over, sucked in air, and let out a long gasp.

‘There is a woman in my bed.’

‘Melodramatic as usual,’ said Mark, coming out from the pantry. ‘I’m making some food for the masses. Sit down, and I will tend to you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and immediately rubbed my throat. Prickly skin. Grimy, ‘Christ,’ I said.

‘Sinner,’ said Mark, looking amused. I threw up my hands.

‘Seriously though, Danny, you have a good time last night?’

‘You sound extra posh and atrocious when you’re angling for details,’ I said, ‘Danny. Echh.’

‘Nothing wrong with Danny,’ he said, putting down a cup of tea and a plate of reheated sausage rolls in front of me. ‘This now, fruit later.’

‘Fruit, oh no. No.’

‘Fruit, you idiot. I’m just letting you know, you’re getting an apple after you eat this muck. How do you survive?’

‘With an unexpected grace.’

‘And how are you feeling anyway?’ said Mark.

I looked over at him. It was not a Mark sort of question. I bit into the pastry of the sausage roll and felt my stomach rumble awkwardly. Margarine and meaty blandness. If Mrs MacAshfall had made this, or Mark, I felt sure it would have alcohol in it. And some type of fruit. Meat and fruit together. I shuddered involuntarily. Through the window I could see a willow swaying. Curious thing.

‘Did Tom . . . uh . . . last night?’ I asked.

‘Use your words, Daniel.’ Mark’s big, smirking, kindly face.

‘What . . . ?’

‘Because, well. I confess I heard something.’

I put my hand over my head,