Read Online An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray - Free Book Online

to me that that’s the only reason anyone knows about these things, so they can act superior and have heated discussions in pubs and make everyone else feel guilty for not watching more television.’
    ‘You go and talk to Mrs P then,’ Bel scowled, ‘and I’m sure she’ll be delighted to share in your informed opinions. Maybe you can swap traditional recipes, you can give her kidney beans à la Charles –’
    ‘So where’s Frank bringing you tonight, then?’ I said, as the gloves appeared to be off. ‘Badger-baiting? Mud-wrestling? Are you going to drink cans in a field?’
    ‘The pact!’ she cried, outraged. ‘The pact!’
    ‘ Habeas corpus ,’ I countered. ‘The pact isn’t sealed till you fulfil your half.’
    ‘I called her,’ she protested. ‘She gave me her work number and said she would be delighted to hear from you any time.’
    ‘Well, that’s no use!’ thumping my hands on the table. ‘You know I hate using the phone.’ In fact, I abhorred all modern gadgetry – gadgets , even the word had an ignoble ring to it. ‘Couldn’t you call her back and tell her to come over here?’
    ‘What are you, an invalid? I’m not your lackey.’
    Maybe Mrs P would call her – but no! The pact had not been honoured, and I was going to make a stand. ‘The pact has not been honoured,’ I told her, ‘and until it is, we remain in a state of war.’
    ‘War?’
    ‘So I must insist on joining you tonight as chaperone.’
    ‘Charles,’ she warned, glaring at me through her black-frosted eyelashes.
    ‘I insist.’
    ‘Every day you plumb new depths, do you know that?’
    ‘Be that as it may,’ I replied peaceably. ‘So where are we going?’
    *
    ‘Go on, Ask Me Hole, you useless fucker!’ Frank was shouting abuse at the top of his voice, between dips into a bag of coagulated chips. ‘Go on, you shit-bag, run, for fuck’s sake!’
    I chuckled to myself. My hound, Jasper, had turned out to be a superb brute, and had left Ask Me Hole and the pack trailing in his wake. Bel’s choice, meanwhile, the insipidly named Piece of Lightning, seemed to have given up the ghost entirely.
    Ascot it wasn’t, but the proprietors of the dog-track had made a brave effort to lift it above its inherent squalor. There was a well-lit bar with a long glass window from which one could look down on the action; mixed in with the luckless reprobates gambling away their welfare were several groups of normal people. Frank, however, had eschewed the bar as for ‘ponces’, and dragged us out to shiver in the stands with red-eyed, desperate types as whippet-thin as the dogs to whom they had entrusted their fortunes. None of them was quite as terrifying as Frank himself, though, and I was oddly comforted by his presence. They all seemed to know him, anyway: throughout the races a litany of Mickers, Antos and Farrellers approached to pay their respects – ‘All right, Francy, how’s your wobbly bits?’ they would say, or ‘Howya Frankie, get up the yard ya bollocks.’
    He seemed to have grown even larger in the open air; beside him Bel looked small and pinched, her eyes glowing sparely like cold blue moons. I don’t know if she was still sulking because I’d insisted on coming along, although Frank didn’t seem to mind, or if she was ashamed of me seeing him in his natural milieu, or if it was something else entirely, but she’d hardly spoken two words all night: she kept her face buried deep in her muffler, and her eyes locked on the track. After asking her twice if she was all right, and offering her a chip, Frank had left her to her silence. We’d discovered I had a hitherto untapped gift for picking winners, and I had risen several notches in his estimation.
    ‘Who’d you fancy for the next one?’ he said respectfully, ‘Up the Duff or Gordon’s Couscous?’
    ‘Neither,’ I replied. ‘Look at them there in their pens. These are dogs whose spirits have been snuffed out. They might be fast, but neither of