An Evening of Long Goodbyes Read Online Free

devised to restrict and minimize the awesome power of her face, emphasizing instead her natural and deep-rooted uncertainty. Critics and industry, even as they fell in love with her, insisted unanimously that she couldn’t act. (Of Whirlpool , for instance, in which she plays a kleptomaniac taken advantage of by an unscrupulous psychoanalyst, one reviewer said: ‘it is sometimes difficult to tell from Miss Tierney’s playing whether she is or is not under hypnosis’.) Preminger was the only director who seemed to understand her and what she meant to those who saw her; in his and her best film, Laura , she spends most of her time dead, appearing on screen in the form of a painting and in the flashback testimony of the suspects for her murder.
    I’d seen both films before, though, and drained by the exertion of making dinner I dozed off. As I did so I experienced the curious sensation, not for the first time in recent months, that in some inexplicable way the film was watching me ; I slept tormented by bad dreams, in which vampiric images of women enticed me, withholding focus and changing at the last minute into hideous monsters that grinned toothlessly and made meaningful gestures at a vast chimney lined with empty bottles. I woke to the sound of voices at the door and a new, more crippling pain in my stomach. The voices belonged to my sister and the Thing and had distinctly romantic undertones, but I found myself unable to get up and intervene. ‘Cease,’ I cried weakly, but my voice cracked and my head swam and I lay there powerless in a pool of sweat. In the corner the muted television showed pictures of people in some kind of makeshift campsite – thousands and thousands of people, weeping and lamenting. Then, in one of those moments of extreme clarity that nausea brings, I perceived that my cocktail glass had been removed from the table. Mrs P was back! With the last of my strength, I pulled on the bell-rope and its clang echoed distantly around me as I passed out of consciousness.
    When I came to again – parched, pain rampaging through my intestines – I was in my bed. The little bedside lamp illuminated two anxious faces, my sister’s and Mrs P’s (the latter looking a shade guilty, I noted, no doubt realizing that it was effectively through her negligence that I had been forced to poison myself), and one gormless and oblivious, face, which belonged to Frank. Biting her lip and putting a hand on my shoulder, Bel asked if I were all right.
    ‘Beans!’ I gasped.
    ‘What?’ she said.
    ‘I think he has eaten many kidney beans,’ Mrs P shuddered. ‘Many kidney beans not cooked.’
    ‘Beans!’ I cried again deliriously.
    ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Bel said. ‘Charles, listen carefully, did you soak the beans before you cooked them?’
    ‘Of course I didn’t soak them,’ I said. ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘What do you think?’ Bel said to Mrs P. Mrs P threw her hands in the air and turned away, speaking agitatedly in Bosnian, or whatever it was.
    ‘They did seem rather crunchy,’ I recalled.
    Frank gave me a wink. ‘On the batter, eh? Hair of the dog’s what you want.’
    ‘What?’ I said, then ‘Oh,’ as he produced a hip flask. The thought of putting my lips where his had been repulsed me but I would have done anything to rid myself of this mortal agony, so I steeled myself and swallowed a mouthful of very cheap whiskey – and it worked, in that soon I was copiously throwing up into a silver champagne bucket. After that I felt a little better, better enough to request a moment in private with Bel.
    ‘Charles,’ she said, sitting beside me and stroking my brow, ‘when are you going to learn to stop being such an idiot?’
    ‘Never mind that for the moment,’ I snapped. ‘I’d like to know what’s going on.’
    ‘Well, we came home and found you rolling around the floor, so we –’
    ‘Not that, damn it, Bel – that Frank, what is he doing back here?’
    Bel drew