Dark Entries

we lived about forty miles from London, too many for urban participation, too few for rural self-sufficiency);

The Coffee Room was so low that Gerald had to dip beneath a sequence of thick beams. “Why ‘Coffee Room’?” asked Phrynne, looking at the words on the door. “I saw a notice that coffee will only be served in the lounge.” “It’s the lucus a non lucendo principle.”

Pots of money too.” “What makes you think that, Dudley?” asked the marzipan voice of Mr. Appleby. Conversation about Mrs. Pagani was now general. “Couldn’t behave as she does if she hadn’t, Mr. Appleby,” replied Dudley.

“We’ll just go straight on,” said Phrynne. “Until we find it.” Left to himself, Gerald would have been less keen. The stones were very large and very slippery, and his eyes did not seem to be becoming accustomed to the dark.

Immediately she opened the door (which included two large tracts of coloured glass), I apprehended a change in her; essentially the first change in all the time I had known her, for the woman who had come to my parents’ house a fortnight or three weeks before, had seemed to me very much the girl who had joined my class when we were both children. B

“Where’s the Bell?” Gerald had found the hotel in a reference book. It was the only one allotted to Holihaven. But as Gerald spoke, and before the ticket collector could answer, the sudden deep note of an actual bell rang through the darkness. Phrynne caught hold of Gerald’s sleeve. Ignoring Gerald, the station-master, if such he was, turned to his

“Mel,” said my father, “you’re supposed to write novels. Haven’t you noticed by this time that everyone’s lives are full of things you can’t understand? The exceptional thing is the thing you can understand. I remember a man I knew when I was first in London …” He broke off. “But fortunately we don’t have to understand. And for that reason we’ve no

The small dining-room was oval with a ceiling which, though probably flat, was painted, after the manner of Biagio Rebecca, to appear steeply concave.

Nothing further was said for several minutes. Gerald was beginning to realise that they had yet to evolve a holiday routine.