One Damn Thing After Another Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew he’d be so thrilled.” No way of quarrelling with this, alas.
    â€œTomorrow then, as usual, and you can hear all the news. Like all holidays, you know, quien más tiene más quiere.” Her Spanish was rudimentary, a degree more so than her German.
    â€œAh yes,” solemnly, and much given to sibylline meaningless aphorisms, “decir y hacer no comen a una mesa.” Saying anddoing don’t eat at the same table: self-pitying remark and meant to convey ‘I can’t afford expensive holidays on the coast’.
    â€œSure you can’t stay?” hopefully. “I’m rather exhausted.”
    â€œAh, yes, one always comes back tired from holidays. Ir por lana y volver trasquilado.” No sympathy forthcoming.
    â€œTras what? Go for wool and come back–?”
    â€œShaved – no, cropped.”
    â€œSheared. Yes, quite. Tomorrow then. He’s had breakfast, has he?”
    She went into the kitchen and wrote down ‘Dogfood’. The beast gambolled about. His name was Dog, generally spoken as Hangdog. Sometimes, as now, Maddog, at others Saddog; when he felt amorous, Gaydog. He was supposed to be a Gun Dog, at which he was useless, though he pointed at things. But he was large enough, and made enough noise, to keep people respectful: as Watch Dog he bristled at every step, including Arlette’s. He had been Arthur’s idea, after a repulsive person had come up the stairs one day, and smeared blood all over their front door. He was, in fact, perfectly gentle and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Wouldn’t know how. As Talleyrand said of his wife, wins the first prize for imbecility. He was really like Joe Gargery: what larks, eh, old chap?
    â€œWhat larks we have, Dog, hey?” Arthur came in and dumped numerous things on the table needful to supershepherds.
    â€œAh, yes, I met her in the supermarket. Wouldn’t work today of course. Caught sight of me and went Yoohoo, hallo, old chap.”
    â€œI’ll do the strict minimum,” said Arlette, making faces at the kitchen floor.

Chapter 4
Failures
    Seven in the morning, drinking a cup of coffee. Obscurely, she felt a little stale, a little sour. Trying to rationalize this, she brought it home to a puritanical worry at a duty not performed: something of which she had said ‘I’ll think about that tomorrow’. And now it was tomorrow.
    A woman had asked for help and she’d done nothing about it. It had sounded so dreary. There was nothing to do, that was sure. Ninety per cent. Well, a strong probability. She realized that a dialogue was taking place between the fiend and her conscience.
    Neudorf – that is no distance. You can be there in a few minutes. Very likely the woman works, and will already have left. Nonsense, it’s not even seven-thirty and if she has, you can leave a note in her box.
    Angry at being so unwilling, she threw on a jacket, took the car keys. The Lancia coughed and hawked, cleared its throat and spat several times in a bronchial, early-morning bad mood.
    Strasbourg south of the river is – as in London – at once a drop in social standing, and the suburbs there, despite resolute efforts now and then to be bright and modern, are depressed and down at heel. Neudorf is the nearest, and the oldest, and least-planned; a hundred streets pell-mell in a heap, named with a thumping lack of originality after Alsace villages, so that it is never possible to recall which is which though they have much character, varying from one minute to the next. Some are rambling and villagey, with old cottages and truncated bits of lichened orchard, where peasant obstinacy has held the speculative builder at bay. Others are slums; lightless alleys smelling of drains, leprous blocks looking like Berlin beforethey bombed it; worst of all when the sun shines. She lost two minutes looking it up on the streetmap.
    A block too big for the ground it occupied; lowering down.