Home life
Alarms and diversions
Alice Thomas Ellis
The daughter recovered miraculously quickly from glandular fever. The doctor was astonished to find her so well when she was taken to him for treatment after being thrown off a horse. I wasn't present at this accident and I am glad. It sounds Wildly Western with horses bolting, feet caught in stirrups, the daughter being dragged and people flying about in the air like so much popcorn. She was not badly hurt, but is anti-horse at the moment, and my nerves are somewhat out of condition. What next, I ask myself, looking over my shoulder. I spent last night alone here since every- one else has temporarily shot back to London to pick up the articles of clothing they couldn't live without for a second longer, or to see their best friend. I went to sleep at about nine and woke later to hear rain bucketing down and some ghosts talking in the kitchen below. I remembered quite positively that I had turned off the television because it was boring, and I had the wireless in bed with me, silent. Never- theless,I wondered if I could possibly have turned the telly on again in a fit of absent-mindedness. I was not at that time in the least bit alarmed, merely wishing to ascertain whether the voices belonged to the television or to ghosts. If the television, I thought, it was incumbent on me to go downstairs and turn it off, since I believe it is both expensive and a fire hazard to leave it on indefinitely.
I felt about for the light switch and couldn't find it because, when it's dark in the country, it's good and dark; so I crawled out of bed and felt my way to the door — a matter of a foot or two. Then I got completely disoriented and, after I slapped the dressing-gown for being on the door when I didn't expect it, I paused to consider.
Hang on, I said to myself. What do you think you're doing crashing about in the middle of the night proposing to confront a roomful of ghosts? So I felt my way back to bed, got in and stayed there. Maybe it was just the rain-water guggling through the mosses etc, but it sounded exactly like a number of men talking.
The night before, I sat up until 3 a.m. sipping Scotch and trying to learn Arabic. Akram taught me several useful words, including the one for tree. The way I said it sounded a bit like 'Cheshire', and we agreed hopelessly that I would probably go to my grave under the impression that the Arabic for tree is cheese. Abdul Hamid, who was Sultan when Akram's great-great etc grandfather flourished, got annoyed with him and threatened to kill him by drowning him.
The word for tying stones to people and chucking them in the ocean is tabhir and I don't think we have a corresponding one. Lapidation is the translation of the word for throwing stones at people and I was getting frustrated with the inadequacy of English when I learned that other lan- guages have certain idlenesses in them, too. For instance, the Turkish for Monday is 'The-day-after-Sunday', and for Satur- day 'The-day-after-Friday'. That does seem a little uninventive.
Next day, when everyone had gone, I heard a hooter in the garden and there was a Japanese on a scooter. He said he was a geologist from Cambridge and wanted to go and look at the stones in the stream, so I said it wasn't my stream but he could go anyway. I nearly despaired at the thought of all those foreigners who can talk perfect English and study their subjects in it, while I, if I had crept down to listen to the ghosts, might have found they were talking in Welsh, and wouldn't have been able to understand them — well, only a word or two — despite its being my native lan- guage. I intend to stay awake longer tonight and leave the door open an inch or two so that I'll be able to hear and, when I've got the time, I'm going to learn to be a linguist.
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