Read Online Lighthouse by Alison Moore - Free Book Online Page B

and went to the top of the stairs, and at that moment Bernard came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, and Conrad came up the stairs. She would not have minded a scene, but Conrad just looked at her and at Bernard and went without speaking into his room and that was unbearable.
    Ester did meet Bernard at Ida’s house again, but she did not go in. Ester remembers Ida opening the front door, turning away to call for Bernard and then turning back and looking silently at Ester until Bernard appeared in the hallway and took Ester away. Ida did not say, ‘You’ve got a nerve coming here.’ She did not say, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’ She did not say, ‘The sight of you makes me sick.’
    Even Bernard once said to Ester, ‘What kind of woman does that?’
    ‘It was you too,’ she reminded him. ‘He was your brother.’
    ‘Well, I never liked him,’ said Bernard, ‘but he was your fiancé.’
     
    Opening one of her dressing table drawers, Ester rummages through the jumbled contents, until, at the back, at the bottom, she finds what she is looking for – the perfume which Bernard gave to her as a wedding present. The case, like the one she found in the suitcase in room six, is designed to resemble a lighthouse, but this one is wooden, cylindrical rather than squared beneath the domed top, and less detailed than the silver one, but it does still have its vial of perfume inside. She takes it out. On one side of the glass vial, ‘DRALLE’ is written in relief. On the other side there is a sticker which says, ‘Veilchen’. On the handle of the stopper there is an engraving of a dove, or a pigeon. She has not worn the perfume for years. She takes the stopper out of the bottle, puts it to her nose and smells the essence of violets.
    Bernard married her quickly, as if he were afraid that she would change her mind, go back to his brother, or on to some other man. She went with him to the small town in which he was living. He liked, she was sure, to keep her far away from his brother and her old boyfriends and everyone she knew, as if loneliness were sure to keep her faithful.
    Getting on for twenty years later, Bernard has aged well. He is a big man but he works out, lifts weights. He takes pride in his appearance. He is always well groomed. He smells of camphor, swearing by this essential oil which is, amongst other things, a disinfectant, a decongestant, an anaesthetic and a stimulant and which he adds to his bathwater every morning. He dresses nicely and wears polished shoes with segs in to make the soles and heels last, and his feet tippety-tap across the wooden floorboards.
    She returns the perfume to her dressing table drawer and moves to the bed. Slipping off her shoes, she lies down on her side, sinks her head into the soft pillow and closes her eyes. Her breathing slows and her bare feet twitch as she falls quickly into sleep.
    In her dreams, she hears the slow, teasing start of a tap dance, and when she wakes up there is a blanket over her, covering her exposed midriff and her bare legs.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Stewed Apples

    Futh sleeps badly before waking early, aching and sweating in twisted bedclothes. Getting stiffly out of bed, he finds a radiator blazing despite the hot weather. The small room is stifling. He turns the radiator off and tries to open the French windows but they are locked and there is no key. Taking off his damp pyjamas, he gets back into bed. He is unused to sleeping naked. He remembers how naked he felt the first time he went back to Angela’s house and slept there without his pyjamas.
    He had been in a bar. It was some months since he had seen Angela, since she had given him the lift home from the motorway service station. He had arrived at the bar with some people from work but they had all gone and he was alone with a woman. They were sitting on a very soft sofa which he found difficult to get out of. The soles of his shoes were stuck to the tacky floor. She was