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

when his muzzle came off and, to the boos of the crowd, he abandoned the race to leap over the hoardings and snatch a hot-dog from the hand of a small boy.
    The pub was seedy and glum and my white wine arrived in a diminutive bottle with a screw-off lid. My sister joined Frank in a conciliatory Guinness, and as they clinked glasses I looked about at my fellow drinkers. Was I the only one in evening wear? These chaps were a uniformly rough-looking lot, and many of them, I realized, were directing unfriendly stares at me.
    ‘Quite an ambience, this place,’ I laughed nervously.
    ‘We come here a good bit,’ Frank told me, ‘don’t we, Bel?’
    ‘That’s right,’ Bel looking me straight in the eye. ‘It’s our favourite pub.’
    I sighed inwardly; I came up against this kind of attitude quite often in my dealings with girls in general, and Bel in particular. They love to flirt with transgression: give them a lout who breaks the odd window and they will pull each other’s hair out for him – without ever diluting or moderating their own careful delicacy, needless to say. Sometimes Bel reminded me of an E M Forster heroine, traipsing about the jungle in a ballgown, with a full set of china and embroidering work for the evenings. What was she looking for, I wondered, in her lonely dallyings outside her own realm; while keeping that same realm locked tightly up inside her.
    ‘Well, I like it here too,’ I said to annoy her. ‘We should do this more often. I like the company of the working man. Good, honest folk, enjoying their time for reflection after a hard week in the jar factory.’
    ‘You always get a deadly scrap in here,’ Frank said. ‘Last week me and me mate, right, saw these two scumbags we know, and we go up to them, straight in with the dujj, and bop! I loaf one of them and then I see his mate’s got me mate on the ground and he’s stampin on his head, so I grab this bottle, and smash , right between the fuckin eyes. The both of them fuckin legged it.’
    I absorbed this silently.
    ‘I was just laughin,’ Frank added.
    ‘Aha,’ I said.
    ‘That’s one of the cunts there,’ he said, raising his voice. ‘See that cunt sittin at the bar? The poxy little fuck? That’s one of the cunts we done.’
    The cunt in question was a short man with a crew-cut and a long fresh scar down his jaw. As Frank spoke he turned his head slowly in our direction. An interchange of baleful stares ensued. Caught in the middle, I rubbed my nose and coughed and was beginning to hyperventilate when, mercifully, the cunt bowed his head. Frank snorted victoriously. Bel let out a worried coo.
    ‘Ah, don’t mind him,’ Frank assured her. ‘Sure he’s only a cunt. Anyway if there was any bother you’d have Charlie and me to protect you, wouldn’t you?’
    ‘Ha ha,’ I said, but this was my cue to go. ‘Look, I forgot, I have to, um…’
    ‘See a man about a dog?’ Frank chortled, the meaning of which escaped me; Bel smirked triumphantly as I put on my topcoat and hastened outside in a cold sweat to hail a cab.
    It was a long ride back, and at the door I bade farewell to a sizeable portion of my winnings. But I didn’t care, it was such a relief to be home: I closed the door and leaned back against it thankfully. The rich aroma of cooking floated up to me, and I went into the kitchen, where Mrs P was just that minute taking a tray of cinnamon buns out of the oven, piping hot with the sugar frosting still sizzling on their golden tops. My entrance took her by surprise – in fact she practically jumped out of her skin, only this time the tray acted as ballast.
    ‘Buns,’ I said, ignoring this. ‘I’ll just pinch one, if I may –’
    ‘Hmm yes,’ she recovered in time to swerve nimbly away, moving the tray just out of my reach, ‘but Master Charles, they are for your dear mother in hospital.’
    ‘She won’t mind,’ I said, deftly stepping around to her tray side.
    She reversed. ‘Now Charles, please to