Free The Happy Prisoner by Monica Dickens Page B

friendly. If she wants to be so stand-offish, at least she might do her job properly. I don’t think I’m going to like her very much. Just listen to that little pest upstairs. D’you want anything, before I go and murder her?”
    â€œNo, thank you,” said Oliver meekly.
    When Elizabeth came in later to say good night, he did not talk to her, but waited quite impatiently for her to go. He could feel approaching one of the waves of weariness and depression that attacked him from time to time, and until it passed over he could not be interested in anybody except himself. He turned out the light, and making a peevish face to himself in the darkness, settled down to indulge in a little self-pity.

Chapter 4
    When Oliver was depressed, the whole house knew it. As he was usually quite happy, he made heavy weather of these fits of
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, like a robust man who thinks he is dying if he has a cold. He did not think himself into his moods; they just arrived, and that they left him was due to no exercise of willpower on his part. He had no more control over them than a sunbather waiting for a cloud to pass away from the sun.
    Since, apparently, he must suffer them occasionally, he made the most of them and did not attempt to disguise his weariness of soul. If he felt cross, he was cross. If anybody bored him, he showed it. If he did not like some dish of his mother’s, he left it on his plate, instead of throwing it out of the window as he normally did. Cowlin, the gardener, had a fox terrier who had found out Oliver’s mealtimes and used to stand with his hind legs on the lawn and his front paws against the outside wall, head on one side, jaws slightly parted, eyes lustrous.
    When Oliver was depressed, nothing could be done for him. He was determined to savour his melancholia to the dregs. No book that you produced was readable, he did not want the wireless, no food tempted him and he would admit to no appetite, any visitor you offered him was a bore. In fact, he used to put down his book and hastily pretend to be asleep when the doorbell rang. He wasted a lot of time doing this for the postman, the laundry, Joan Elliot, Evelyn’s local cronies and Mrs. Dalrymple, who collected half-crowns for the Hinkley savings group. When Hugo Trevor, who was his friend as well as his doctor, came to see him, Oliver would tell him not to order his artificial leg. He would never walk again and did not want to. Dr. Trevor, an imperturbable man with short limbs, who looked as though he had been carved out of one block of stone, would sit by him and talk about anything and everything but his health, which was the only thing Oliver wanted to talk about at these times. In the end, he would get up, tell Oliver harshly that he was neurotic and go in search of Mrs. North, who was also his friend, leaving Oliver to wallow in the pathos of being misunderstood.
    Then one morning, for no reason at all, he would suddenly feel quite different. He knew it before he was properly awake. A lightness over his eyes, a vitality in his limbs, even in the one that was not there, a tingling in his scalp, as if he could feel the very hair growing, an urge to hop out of the window and across the lawn all told him that the mood had passed. He would try himself out by thinking of all the most irritating things he knew: Mrs. Cowlin’s creep, Heather’s charm bracelet, Violet’s habit of standing in front of the fire with her legs straddled, Fred Williams’ Sunday suit, his mother’s transatlantic habit of saying, “
mm
-hm”, and “
mm
-k” when she meant yes and no, Elizabeth’s prim little mouth if she thought you were being too familiar. If he could contemplate all these things with equanimity, he would look at the day before him to see whether it seemed full of possibilities, or a dragging cortège of ticking minutes. Then he would think about breakfast. If he could pass all these tests, he