The New Sonia Wayward (2012)
“‘Don’t think I don’t know where you keep it nowadays.’ The astounding insolence of this – Petticate was later to reflect – might have been less devastatingly effective than it was had not the words been ingeniously humiliating as well.
During his first period of alarm before his new situation, he had, it will be recalled, passed a self-denying ordinance against solitary drinking. Later, when his resolution had first weakened and then appeared unnecessary, he had acted in what he now realized wa...s a thoroughly bizarre fashion. Although there could be no possible objection to the Hennwifes knowing that he had reverted to his normal habits in this matter, he had in fact resumed drinking in a way that was entirely furtive and clandestine – keeping brandy and a tumbler under lock and key, and having recourse to them only when he believed himself entirely safe from observation.
This freakish conduct, he supposed, was not without a psychological foundation: every occasion upon which he took a drink was now a symbolic re-enactment of that other secret deed by which his whole present course of life had been determined.MoreLess
During his first period of alarm before his new situation, he had, it will be recalled, passed a self-denying ordinance against solitary drinking. Later, when his resolution had first weakened and then appeared unnecessary, he had acted in what he now realized wa...s a thoroughly bizarre fashion. Although there could be no possible objection to the Hennwifes knowing that he had reverted to his normal habits in this matter, he had in fact resumed drinking in a way that was entirely furtive and clandestine – keeping brandy and a tumbler under lock and key, and having recourse to them only when he believed himself entirely safe from observation.
This freakish conduct, he supposed, was not without a psychological foundation: every occasion upon which he took a drink was now a symbolic re-enactment of that other secret deed by which his whole present course of life had been determined.MoreLess
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