The Bachelors (31 page)

How
long will it take, he wondered to distract his mind, for Matthew to marry Alice?
Not knowing at the time that it would take four months — a week before the baby
was born — Ronald laid a bet with himself for three months.

It is
all demonology and to do with creatures of the air, and there are others
besides ourselves, he thought, who lie in their beds like happy countries that
have no history. Others ferment in prison; some rot, maimed; some lean over the
banisters of presbyteries to see if anyone is going to answer the telephone.

He
walked round the houses, calculating, to test his memory, the numbers of the
bachelors — thirty-eight thousand five hundred streets, and seventeen point one
bachelors to a street — lying awake, twisting and murmuring, or agitated with
their bedfellows, or breathing in deep repose between their sheets, all over
London, the metropolitan city.

THE END