The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story by Philip Hensher

The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story by Philip Hensher

Author:Philip Hensher [Hensher, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241307168
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-08-02T00:00:00+00:00


6

In the morning he lies there on the single bed, imprisoned in his hangover, trying to piece together the fragments of the evening and feeling that he nearly did something very, very silly.

He opens his eyes.

The heat of the sun throbs from the closed curtains and the sounds of the street intrude into the painful stillness of the dim, narrow room. He lies there for most of the morning, instantly feeling sick if he moves at all.

At some point he falls asleep again, and when he wakes up he feels okay.

He is able to move.

To sit.

To stand.

To peel back the edge of the curtain and squint at the white, fiery day – the glare of the vacant lot next door.

The sky’s merciless scream of blue.

It is eleven fifty, nearly time for lunch, and he is hungry now.

He feels strange, as if in a dream, as he descends the cool stairs.

Descending the cool stairs, he really feels as if he is still in bed, and dreaming this.

The dining room.

Murmur of voices – Russian, Bulgarian.

The buffet of congealed brown food.

The microwave queue.

And there they are, Sandra and Charmian, at their usual table, which is where he sits now too.

As he approaches – feeling weightless, as if he is floating over the filthy carpet – Sandra says, ‘We didn’t see you at breakfast, Bernard.’

She seems more or less unaffected by the night’s drinking – her ruddiness only slightly attenuated, her voice only marginally hoarser than normal.

Charmian, sitting next to her, looks quite pale.

‘No, I, er …’ Bérnard mumbles, taking a seat. ‘I was sleeping.’

‘Last night too much for you, was it?’

Bérnard laughs weakly. Then there is a short pause. The thought of eating has lost most of its appeal. ‘It was good,’ he says finally.

‘It was, wasn’t it,’ Sandra says.

She has already eaten – the emptied plate is on the table in front of her. Charmian too is just finishing up.

Bérnard opens his can of Fanta and pours most of it into a greasy glass.

‘You not having anything?’ Sandra asks him, moving her faint blonde eyebrows in the direction of the buffet.

‘Later, maybe,’ Bérnard says. He is starting to think that this was a mistake, making an appearance here. He feels less normal than he thought he did. The taste of the Fanta – a tiny sip, the first thing to have passed his lips today – makes him feel slightly more grounded.

Charmian stands abruptly.

He finds it hard to believe, now, that he considered making some sort of move on her last night.

He is pretty sure he didn’t actually say anything, or do anything. Still, even just having had the idea embarrasses him.

She is off to the buffet for seconds. He watches, briefly, her cumbersome waddle as she passes among the tables. Others are watching her too, he sees.

Somewhere near him, Sandra’s voice says, ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Charmian really likes you.’

Bérnard feels, again, that he is still in bed upstairs and just dreaming this.

‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed,’ Sandra says, when he turns to her, with a look of pale incomprehension on his face.



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