The Millstone Read Free Page A

he sat upright and looked worried and uneasy: he thought that I had been hurt by what they had said about Hurt, as I well might have been, though in fact was not. I knew, however, as soon as I saw the reflection of this possibility upon his face, that they would go: and go they did, scrupulous as ever about personal relationships, just as they were unscrupulous about gin. I kept them talking for five minutes on the threshold, gazing anxiously from one to the other; pretty, tendril-haired Dick; hatchet-headed Alex with his stooping stork shoulders; and pale, cross, nail-chewing, eye-twitching, beautiful Lydia Reynolds, in her dirty Aquascutum mackintosh. I wondered if I could ask any of them to stay and share my ordeal, and it crossed my
mind later that they would actually have enjoyed such a request, all three of them together: they would have leaped with alacrity at the prospect of such a sordid, stirring, copy-providing evening. But then, my thoughts obscured by need, I did not see it that way, and I let them go and see Fellini without me.
    When they had gone I wandered back into the sitting room and sat down on the hearth rug and looked once more at the contents of my bottle of gin. There was not very much left. Not enough, I thought. Not enough, I hoped. I felt rather odd already; my head was swimming, and I felt slightly but unnaturally gay. Drink always cheers me up. I almost felt that I might abandon the whole project and go to bed instead, or cook myself some bacon and eggs, or listen to the radio: but I knew that I would have to go through with it, having once thought that I might, and regardless of its possible effectiveness. It would be so unpleasant, and I could not let myself off. So I picked up the bottle and carried it into my bedroom where I undressed, and put on my dressing gown. On my way to the bathroom I tripped over the flex of the Hoover, which had been standing in the hall all week, and missed the bathroom door knob the first time I aimed at it. I remembered that I had not eaten since lunch. But it was when I tried to run the bath that the measure of my state was brought home to me. All the hot water in the flat was run from a gas heater in the bathroom: it could be got to run at a fierce enough heat, if one managed to control the flow of the water with sufficient care: there was a very intimate relationship between the volume of water coming from the tap and the strength of the gas jet. With too much water, the temperature would drop to tepid: with too little, the gas would extinguish itself entirely and the bath would run icy cold. It was difficult enough to regulate at the best of times, but that evening I just could not get it to work at all. I sat on the bathroom stool, letting the water run, and
testing it with my finger, and trying again: eventually I thought I had got it right, so I put the plug in and while I waited I drank the rest of the bottle off, neat. It was so thoroughly nasty undiluted that I felt the act of drinking was some kind of penance for the immorality of my behaviour. It had an instantaneous effect: I felt immediately so drunk that I nearly fell into the bath in my dressing gown. However, I managed to stand up and get it off and drop it on the floor: then I climbed into the water.
    I climbed out again at once, for the water was stone cold. I had erred on the side of too little volume and everything had gone out but the pilot light. Shivering, I stood there and gazed, defeated, at the hot tap. Perhaps, I thought, the shock to my system would have the same effect as the heat might have done. My unnatural cheerfulness increased as I became aware of the absurdity of the situation: I managed to struggle back into my dressing gown, and then tottered back along the corridor to the bedroom, where I collapsed upon the bed. I felt so sick when I sat down that I stood up once more and decided that I would have to try to walk it off: so I walked up and down the hall and round all the