Unexplained Laughter by Alice Thomas Ellis

Author:Alice Thomas Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781780338873
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Hywel came home alone. He had been singing, and when he came in he came in singing. He only sings when the house is empty. He looked to see that I was asleep, as he used to do before Elizabeth came, and he sang as he used to do before Elizabeth came. Elizabeth who was bright and full of laughter has brought silence with her. She has stolen me from Hywel, and the house from Hywel and all the song from Hywel. The women in the village say, ‘Poor Elizabeth, she has a lot to put up with, with that big old house and Angharad, and Hywel working so hard on the farm,’ but their eyes gleam as they speak and they do not like her. Sometimes I like her. Sometimes I think ‘Poor Elizabeth’. And if I could cry I would.

‘Good heavens,’ said Lydia. ‘Rock drawings. How very peculiar.’

‘Where?’ asked Betty, her tone sceptical.

‘Here,’ said Lydia.

‘Good heavens,’ said Betty.

They stared at the flat blade of rock jutting out of the turf-clad flank of the hill.

‘Perhaps they’re druidical,’ said Betty hopefully.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Lydia. ‘The men are wearing jackets and trousers and the women have got short skirts. I think the druids were clad mainly in woad.’

‘But who would come out here to scribble on rock?’ asked Betty unanswerably.

Lydia didn’t answer. She was peering closely at the drawings. ‘One of them’s got a stethoscope,’ she said. ‘Several of them have got a stethoscope. I think it’s all the same man, only the females are all different. What an odd thing. Oops.’

‘What?’said Betty.

‘Don’t look,’ said Lydia. ‘It’s rude.’

‘Dear, oh, dear,’ said Betty, who naturally had looked. ‘It is a bit.’

‘They’re rather good drawings,’ said Lydia. ‘Simple but effective.’

‘I don’t like that one,’ said Betty distastefully.

‘It isn’t actually prurient,’ said Lydia, gazing at it. ‘More sort of clinical. Dispassionate observation.’

‘Some things are better not observed,’ said Betty.

‘There’s a theory that anyone who has witnessed the act depicted here is incurable,’ said Lydia.

‘Incurable from what?’ enquired Betty.

‘From the neurosis induced by witnessing the act depicted here,’ explained Lydia. ‘Though put like that it all sounds a bit circular. And anyway, when you think of what goes on on telly now, if it was true we’d all be raving.’

‘I very seldom watch telly,’ said Betty.

‘Nor do I, pet,’ said Lydia indulgently. ‘Only some times when I’m tired it sort of forces itself on my attention.’ She sat down and leaned back against the rock looking out over the sweep of moorland. ‘If we had a dog we could let it off the leash now and it would go and roll in the heather.’

‘No, we couldn’t,’ said Betty. ‘It might chase sheep.’

‘I would have trained it not to do so,’ said Lydia. ‘I should be very firm with it.’

Betty began to open her mouth to argue that it wasn’t well trained at all until she remembered that it didn’t exist, and she had vowed not to get drawn into Lydia’s idiotic fantasies.

Lydia grinned to herself.

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