Read Online Gordon Williams by The Siege of Trencher's Farm--Straw Dogs - Free Book Online

people were content, at this stage, to be briefly introduced to Ryman and then to talk among themselves.
    “It’s like winning the bloody pools,” he said, taking a disrespectfully large gulp of Hal Saperstein’s Glen Grant.
    “What is?” she asked, still antagonistic.
    “Coming over here on one of these culture jaunts. One minute there I was at home, a bum with four kids and twenty barmaids to support – the next you’re supposed to be Clark Gable. D’you know something, Mrs. – what was it again – Macwhat? Is that supposed to be Scottish? Anyway, whatever your name is, I’ll tell you my mother used to tell me to put on clean underwear when I went out of the house, if yese git run down, Pathrick me bhoy yese’ll want clean underwear in the infirmary or yese’ll make me ashamet o’ye. Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, if they saw my underpants they’d deport me. D’yese fancy a look at them yourself like?”
    “No thank you.”
    “You show good taste.”
    After a few more drinks she found herself laughing with him, in spite of herself. Everything he said seemed like a deliberate attempt to make her think he was a human disgrace.
    “You’ve never read any of my stuff? Och, I shouldn’t bother between you and me and the gatepost, they’re hardly worth the effort, most of the good lines are pinched anyway. Jesus Christ Saviour of Little Children, are all these mighty men gathered here in my name? They must have empty fucking lives.”
    He went on and on, talking to her as though she was a fellowwaster from a Paddington pub. The party became loud and noisy. People stood in the hall and in other rooms. There was coming and going from upstairs. George was nowhere to be seen. People came up to Patrick and said stupid things. She tried not to laugh when he insulted them with carefully polite replies.
    “Am I familiar with Graves? Oh sure, most of my best friends are in them right now. Did you ever hear of the paper in Ireland that was reporting this funeral and they said Councillor O’Toole slipped and fell in on top of the coffin and the incident cast a gloom over the subsequent proceedings? You didn’t? It’s a well-known story. Very evocative, nay redolent.”
    People smiled energetically and obviously didn’t understand him. She felt that they were fellow-conspirators. She later couldn’t even remember why it was they decided to go upstairs, but she remembered standing inside a dark room with her back against the wall and Patrick trying to talk her on to the bed. All they did was kiss – it must have been a farcical sight, for she was six inches taller than he was. She remembered him going on and on about how you could get quickie divorces in Mexico City and how he was small and ugly and women didn’t like him and his wife hated him because he’d got her pregnant in the first place and he wouldn’t drink so much only he was the loneliest man in the world and she was the first truly beautiful woman who’d understood him.
    She didn’t remember going home with George. In the morning she had a terrible headache. The phone went about ten. Patrick wanted her to come over to his hotel. It was a fantastic effort, in her condition. She’d told herself she was only going to let him know he wasn’t as pathetic as he made himself out to be.
    Of course she’d known why she was going, feverish with thehangover, so depressed the house seemed like a soundproof cell.
    “So there you are, all my sexual tricks from A to B,” he said when they finally stopped making love. “I hope you notice I had a shower in your honour? I knew you’d be used to hygienic men. I’d have cut my toe-nails but I’ve only got the one razorblade and I need to shave for my audiences. Is it true what they say about these Yanks?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Here, watch it, you shouldn’t speak with your mouth full, don’t you know any manners at all? You’re depraved! No, here, this girl I know, she’s telling me these