One Damn Thing After Another Read Online Free

Arlette a little cattily.
    â€œWhy is it that adultery is screamingly funny in the theatre? Because it is so singularly the opposite outside? For saying that all the world’s a stage, that old bastard Shakespeare has much to answer for. The fact is, that the advice Mr Coward gave Mrs Worthington is sounder than he knew.”

Chapter 3
The last day of the holidays
    In the last week, there is always an urge to get back and slop about in bedroom slippers, saying loudly ‘Comfort again at last.’ This fights with the joys of lingering-by-the-wayside. But with Arthur in a car there were rituals to perform, as well as autoroutes to be avoided, and they took the long way round. The Lancia was urged at a gallop out of Brittany, with cries from Arlette of ‘Civilization again at last’ upon reaching the marches of Normandy.
    But one must climb every step of the Mont Saint Michel: one must tread the holy ground (sadly desecrated) of the Grand Hotel at Cabourg: one must climb the hill at Trouville to look at the four views.
    â€œEven if you had a straw hat, even if you had a gardenia inyour buttonhole, by no stretch of the imagination could you be made to look Proustian.”
    â€œNo,” agreed Arthur readily enough. “But I wish to resemble a famous character in fiction: who can it possibly be?” There was silence for some time before Arlette said, “Mr Tod.” He meditated vengeance at length before saying, “Of course – Mrs Tabitha Twitchit.”
    From the Seine to the Somme: Gothic churches, and Flemish town halls, with Arthur lecturing upon the deplorable provincialism of Betjemanesque tastes in architecture.
    Even with a small agile Lancia, one cannot hurry the roads of Champagne and Lorraine, and it was early evening before the sudden frenzy to be home overtook them, and they galloped over the bleak grey plateau, welcoming the red cliffs of the Col de Saverne, and the first Alsatian houses.
    â€œFirst one to see the cathedral spire gets a choc. No,” generous “–two chocs.” How absurd to be homesick for a city adopted only a few years ago. How pleasant again to be trundling along the Avenue des Vosges, swept by a chilly shower of rain, looking severely out for any architectural monstrosities that might have sprouted in their absence. For supper they picnicked off stale bread and liverwurst, in the stale-smelling dusty livingroom, instead of the fleshpots of the Moselle valley. After a day this long, one goes on driving the damned car in one’s head, and goes to bed instead, thankfully early, with an old James Bond book.
    Arlette, freed of hotel bolsters, steely cylinders known as the polochon, plunged in voluptuary, got the giggles at the arrival of her consort, wearing buttercup yellow pyjamas, his reading glasses perched upon his eyebrows to find his way.
    â€œWhat’s that you’ve got?” he asked severely.
    â€œHunting Tower
by John Buchan.”
    â€œHo, yes – well, snigger as you may, ye’ll no fickle Tammas Yownie.”
    â€œAnd you?”
    â€œBy the same unerring instinct,
Greenmantle
. Not another word, please. Lovely, it’s only half past eight.”
    The ghastly realities of next day: filthy flat, dirty washing strewn everywhere, and Shopping to do. Arthur stumped off to the post-office where, nothing having been forwarded, all the month’s mail had been kept ‘en instance’. No Paris paper since they were home a day early and not yet officially ‘back’: but a huge depressing pile of sordid threats – what would happen if one didn’t do something quick about the television tax, the parking fine, the bank overdraft and several repair bills. Strasbourg. lent enchantment by distance, was hideously actual through the computers of all the service companies.
    The Administration, refreshed by repose through July and August, was zealous: right-thinking people do not go away in