Ester’s alcoholism

Ester’s alcoholism emerges as a pattern woven into ordinary routines rather than as a single dramatic crisis. She drinks gin during visits to Ida, eventually starts drinking in the morning, and takes her first gin of the day at the hotel before finishing work. The narrative marks the habit through repeated, physical details, even as Ester cannot recall when it began or account for all the infidelities she does remember.

Drinking During Visits to Ida

When Ester first accompanied Bernard to visit his mother, the visits were stressful enough that she carried a small bottle of gin in her handbag. She drank from it at petrol stops and whenever she went to the bathroom, fitting her drinking into the journey and the private intervals of a family visit.

Ida’s hospitality could appear solicitous: she welcomed the couple, served Ester coffee and breakfast in bed, and would not let her wash up. Yet Ester associated Ida with the scrape of a hairpin against her scalp, and the visits brought her into a family history she found difficult to face. She had hoped to see Conrad, but he repeatedly made himself scarce; when she asked Bernard whether he expected his brother to be there, Bernard left the question unanswered for much of the drive before challenging her about caring whether Conrad was present. The gin is a concrete part of how Ester endured these visits, though the narrative does not reduce her drinking to a single cause.

Eventually, Ester stopped going with Bernard. At first she made excuses, then gave no reason, and Bernard did not ask for one. He continued visiting Ida alone and returned in a bad mood, carrying ironed underpants and paired socks. The change removes the journeys during which Ester had drunk from her handbag, but the habit itself persists in other settings.

A Habit Without a Remembered Beginning

Ester cannot remember when she began drinking in the morning or sleeping in the middle of the day. She does remember her first infidelity, but not all of them. That uneven recollection places alcohol within a broader pattern of time and experience that she cannot fully reconstruct: the onset of morning drinking is indistinct, while particular episodes of sexual behavior remain available to memory only in part.

The account does not identify a single initiating event or offer a diagnosis through explanation. Instead, it presents the drinking as an established part of Ester’s life and makes the uncertainty itself significant: the routine has become recognizable even to her, but its starting point has receded from memory.

Drinking in the Hotel Routine

At the hotel, Ester’s drinking is explicit and measured by the day’s sequence. After getting up, putting on make-up and her cleaning clothes, she waters the Venus flytraps in the bathroom. She has propagated the one plant she brought from home until she has half a dozen; she feeds them insects, sets them in the sun, and talks to them. She then eats breakfast alone, checks out guests, cleans a downstairs room, and returns to the bar.

There, with customers present, Ester has her first gin of the day without tonic. She is hot, flushed, and damp. In her next drink she adds tonic, rolling the cold glass across her forehead and holding it against her breastbone as condensation runs down. The contrast between the first gin and the following drink makes the repetition plain: drinking begins before her working day is over, and the glass becomes something she also uses against the heat.

After checking out a boy who leaves with a new girlfriend, Ester watches them walk into the street, drains her glass, and removes her rubber gloves. The sequence places alcohol beside the ordinary demands of hotel work and the small encounters she observes from behind the bar. It does not interrupt the routine so much as accompany it.

Repetition, Memory, and Private Strain

Ester’s drinking appears in more than one setting: first as gin concealed in her handbag during stressful family visits, later as a morning habit whose beginning she cannot recall, and at the hotel as a drink taken before the day’s duties are complete. These circumstances show the habit recurring across changes in her life, without establishing that any one relationship or event wholly explains it.

The narration’s emphasis on what Ester remembers and what she cannot remember gives the pattern its particular shape. She can identify her first infidelity but not recall them all; she knows that she drinks in the morning but cannot say when she started. The novel thus presents alcoholism through repetition, bodily routine, and gaps in recollection, rather than through a neat account of origin or recovery.