Read Online Goya'S Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky - Free Book Online

fearfully late, under-fingernails all painted, you know how it is. So I hurried.”
    He thought now: There are things you do out of love. They make you bigger. For ten years I’ve been shrinking.
    â€œThe maître d’ wouldn’t let me in! Asked me was I meeting a table. I gave him the name and he said they weren’t there. The mendacity. He told me I needed a tie, so I asked him does he have one for me. ‘This is the Savoy, sir.’”
    Edelweiss nodded his approval.
    â€œI said: ‘This is the mentality that produced the Terror.’ And then the conversation.”
    Bosie and Lavinia.
    â€œBosie despised me already. Particularly unhappy because I’m late, something he can’t stand. He doesn’t even acknowledge me. No preliminaries. Evie, I can tell, is upset because I’ve abandoned her for an hour with Mummy and Daddy; not angry but saddened, which makes it worse, let me tell you.”
    Dacres remembered.
    â€œâ€˜I was just going to have Turley’s send you the letter,’ Bosie said. ‘But we don’t know where you’re living, do we. And Lavinia wanted to meet in person. So here we are.’”
    Here we are, Dacres had thought. En contre-coeur .
    Bosie had his points all ready, assembled in his head. They marched out.
    â€œI remember he said, ‘We’ve been patient with you, Evelyn. Too patient perhaps.’ He couldn’t hear, artillery shell, so he always spoke much too loud.”
    Dacres was surprised they’d chosen a public place: the couple at the next table listened in over spinach. Evie was playing with a coin, spinning it around and around until Lavinia leaned over and snatched it away.
    â€œThey were cutting us off,” Dacres told Edelweiss. “Cutting us off, if we married. Because they didn’t approve of me. Well nor would you. They thought this would affect us—they really did—when neither Evelyn nor I cared a fig. At that age these things just roll off your shoulders, don’t they? Now you see me abasing myself in this piss-pot city for a hundred dollars, for”—he caught himself before saying “a room for the night”—“whatever I can get.”
    â€œBosie was angry. Apoplectic. Usually he was, I must say. But gentle with animals, hounds—which in my experience is a bad sign.
    â€œHe said: ‘We’ve been patient with you, Evelyn. Too patient perhaps.’ He said now their patience was at an end. Lavinia was crying into her triangled napkin. The waiter came—how do they know, do you teach them?—at exactly this moment, when we were all silent, all raging, and Bosie put on his civil face again, and told him yes, we needed nothing. I thought, If the mackerel comes now, are we going to eat it? Will they hang me in this tie? But I smiled sweetly up at him too, automatic: I don’t think Evie forgave me that. She was glaring.
    â€œâ€˜Well,’ said Bosie, ‘I didn’t think this day would ever come.’ Long suspiration. He didn’t look upset, however. He was talking to me the entire time, did I mention that? When I come in, not a word, not a hello, no preliminaries. But as soon as I sat, he addressed himself to me, though speaking to Evie. Now what do you think that meant?
    â€œâ€˜Of course, Evelyn,’ he said, looking at me, ‘when you come to your senses you’re always welcome at home. Always welcome.’
    â€œLavinia sniffed in agreement.
    â€œâ€˜Everything you need is in here.’
    â€œHe took a fat envelope from his inside pocket and placed it infront of me. I smiled. I hadn’t said anything, but I was smiling. I couldn’t suppress the laughter. The nonsense of him, his bluster, I couldn’t take it seriously. And his mistake: the simple blunt stupidity, I mean. I had nothing but contempt for these people: I had to make my own way. But that’s beside the