Palladian
“That’s no recommendation, though,’ said Gilbert, shaking hands across the bar.
‘Heard a lot about you, of course. Worst pub in these parts, Charlie said.’ ‘Good old pal – Charlie,’ said Gilbert, with a gesture of cutting his own throat. ‘What’re we having?’ ‘Double brandy, since you so kindly ask,’ said Charlie.
‘Half of mild for Charles,’ Gilbert called over his shoulder to his wife.
Tom sat on his corner stool drinking his fourth whisky. On summer evenings he hated this cool, beery interior and the same old backchat across the bar, and Mrs Veal, moving nervily under his scrutiny, pathetically blasé, flirtatious with a little group of car salesmen, travellers and bookies, her every gesture calculated to inflame him, whereas nothing moved him any more but whisky, and all her hard work was wasted, unless it could be that she was satisfied in some way merely imagining the hidden fires consuming him.
He drank in the pub and suffered the irritation of it, to postpone that last stage of be...ing alone with the whisky, a stage wherein the hours would lose their significance, for there would be no closing time, no reason for stopping.MoreLess
‘Heard a lot about you, of course. Worst pub in these parts, Charlie said.’ ‘Good old pal – Charlie,’ said Gilbert, with a gesture of cutting his own throat. ‘What’re we having?’ ‘Double brandy, since you so kindly ask,’ said Charlie.
‘Half of mild for Charles,’ Gilbert called over his shoulder to his wife.
Tom sat on his corner stool drinking his fourth whisky. On summer evenings he hated this cool, beery interior and the same old backchat across the bar, and Mrs Veal, moving nervily under his scrutiny, pathetically blasé, flirtatious with a little group of car salesmen, travellers and bookies, her every gesture calculated to inflame him, whereas nothing moved him any more but whisky, and all her hard work was wasted, unless it could be that she was satisfied in some way merely imagining the hidden fires consuming him.
He drank in the pub and suffered the irritation of it, to postpone that last stage of be...ing alone with the whisky, a stage wherein the hours would lose their significance, for there would be no closing time, no reason for stopping.MoreLess
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