Room 2D

From Phoenix 3 It was Mr Lloyd’s habit, whenever he had to leave the upper part of the school to go down to that part of it which had been built on the lower level, beyond the tennis courts, to make a point of going the long way round and pass by the assembly hall, which doubled as a gym during the day. It had windows facing on to the corridor, and anyone passing by could quite easily glance into the hall and see what was going on. On this particular day, though he’d had no actual reason to do so, he’d decided to take a walk down to the other school building. Past the hall. Mr Forbes was taking a gym lesson. A class were being put through their paces, and since the activity which the girls were engaged upon when Mr Lloyd chanced to pass by involved lying on their backs and bending their legs up and over to touch the floor with their toes behind their heads, first to one side and then to the other, it seemed a good enough excus...

From Blushes 27 Ten o’clock on a wet Thursday evening in February just has to be the worst time in the life of an ageing, penurious bachelor. Thus the reflections of Cyril Regis, ageing penurious bachelor of no certain address, as he brooded over the impressive bank of telephones — all of them contemptuously silent — of Custom Car Hire. Once divorced and once stood up at the registry office, Cyril was going nowhere at the speed of light and knew it. Such pleasures as he enjoyed nowadays were few and fleeting and, some might say, a trifle esoteric — not to mention, very often, more damn trouble than they turned out to be worth. Controller of all I survey, he mused — to wit, four silent telephones, one base radio of uncertain reliability, one grotty office, and, somewhere out there in the dripping darkness, three of Custom Car Hire’s finest. Which thought brought him to the evening’s indubitable remaining pleasure — the return of ...