In the winters Olive would sleep leaning up against Galway in his basket in the utility room and once in the morning I found my two-year-old in there as well, all three lying in a warm sleeping breathing heap, Galway, Olive and Mark. We lived in the country then, on a smallholding: those were the good days. Olive, golden-eyed and silky black, would box his ears when he was a puppy and misbehaving, a quick one-two with either paw, and then Galway would remember his canine nature and chase her up the apple tree outside the back door, and she would sit there and sneer down at him, and he would sit and gaze up at her with doleful, rather envious eyes, as if he wanted to be like that, to be able to impose swift and just retribution, and then leap up a branch and be superior. He was a sturdy, grave animal, affectionate but somehow distant, slightly disdainful, as if Olive the cat had had rather too much influence on his growing years. I don’t know if he exactly had a soul or not, but his spirit certainly outran his death. This is the story of Galway, our yellow Labrador, who did stay around. Enough of that, they tend to say, that’s enough, I’ve failed, I’m off, sorry and all that but goodbye. The effort of communicating without words for a lifetime has altogether exhausted their spirit. They’re such bundles of emotion in life, they’ve none left over in death. Dogs don’t normally haunt: when they’re dead they lie down: their graves are quiet. I’ve known cats hang around the living for years, and a canary once – but that’s another story. A flash of a tail disappearing round the door, a kind of shifting blur under the table where it used to eat, yet when it was alive you got the feeling it didn’t really care for you one bit, it wouldn’t acknowledge you at all. For a time after a cat dies you see movements out of the corner of your eye. You know they do, because of the way they haunt houses. Queen Gertrude plc A radio play (#litres_trial_promo)Ībout the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Living by the Small Print (#litres_trial_promo) Live Like a Dog, Alone (#litres_trial_promo)įreeze Eggs, Freeze Eggs! (#litres_trial_promo) How Donna Came to Win the Lottery (#litres_trial_promo) What the Papers Say (#litres_trial_promo)
Rich, mad, greedy, deceitful, vulnerable her characters may be, but the stories maintain a defiantly optimistic air and sparkle with the irrepressible wit with which Weldon writes about the lives of modern men and women.Ĭover Page (#u3ea9f3d1-dbf8-5ba6-9bb2-8221e4b3330f) A travel writer watches, horrified, as her father runs of with her best friend, but is soon planning revenge.The entire collection is shot through with Weldon's trademark mischievous deceitfulness, her hidden meanings and agendas.
A Christmas gathering turns murderous for one unhappy guest. A sculptor finds love while protecting a Roman graveyard from property developers. Oriole, an enormously successful businesswoman married to the ineffectual Hugh, begins to re-evaluate her life, when her best crockery keeps mysteriously flying through the air. Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide: A Collection of Short StoriesĪ wonderful collection on topical themes from the controversial ‘product-placement’ author of The Bulgari Connection.A superb new collection of stories: shrewd, sharp, insightful, with a cheerfully dark view of the world.The wronged wife remains a lingering presence even after the mistress has moved in to her home.
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