Argosy (UK), January 1955 — page 108: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

106 MARGARET BONHAM the coal range crackling, he had gazed at the bells that hung sedately, innocently, from their hooks. He looked at them with perhaps a shade less enthusiasm, but without real suspicion. It must have been a draught. He was thankful he hadn’t woken his wife. That evening when he got home, he noticed that the bells had been taken down and the cups put back. He was about to protest, but realized in time that his mother-in-law was in the scullery with his wife. She was apt to turn up thus unheralded, when someone in her village came over and could give her a lift. George groaned inaudibly, but saw reason; after all, they were her cups, so to speak. He’d thought of taking the bells round to Albert, but his wife became piqued if he went out while her mother was there, so he stayed at home and fiddled with the wire- less he was mending. By the time his mother-in-law left, it was well after nine, the children were asleep, and he couldn’t ring his bells. He took them out of the cupboard where his wife had hidden them, and put them on the dresser and looked at them meditatively. ‘The kitchen was warm and bright, and they shone with a cosy domestic brilliance, reflecting red-gold gleams from the fire. A little defiantly, he lifted down the cups again. He woke at ten to three and heard the bells ringing. This time he knew he was wide awake. He sat up and pinched him- self hard, so painfully that in the morning when he dressed he saw two purple nail-marks on the white skin of his upper arm, above the faded summer tan. He put out a hand to his wife’s shoulder, but did not touch her. It crossed his mind that some people suffered from noises in the head, he forgot why, indigestion or blood pressure or one of those things, but he remembered hearing Mrs. Selby from Mount Cottage complaining about it at a whist drive. ‘‘ Ringing in my ears,” she’d said, ‘“‘ something terrible.” George’s hand hovered over his wife, hesitated, retreated; if he woke her she might hear it too. He prayed silently for indigestion or blood pressure. Come to think of it, he didn’t feel so good. His heart banged, he was sweating like a pig, his stomach was far from peaceful. He sat shivering intently, and after ten minutes the sound faded and died. He lay down again; but it was nearly an hour before he slept. Albert was out the following evening when George, looking pale and harassed, delivered the bells to his cottage. “ Albert’s gone to a Legion meeting,” his wife said. ‘‘ He left your change for you. He’s got a practice fixed up tomorrow comiclbooks.comn ‘ \ 9 ef <a, el A fae ‘at CL) +5) tharne