Yellow Dog by Martin Amis

Author:Martin Amis [Amis, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36830-0
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2003-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Clint entered the conference room, the next day, to a standing ovation. There was nothing triumphal in it. Rather, the applause expressed a grave and considered solidarity – a sense that, though much had been achieved, much abided their care; a sense that, however uncertain the outcome, the attempt itself had spoken, and not in a quiet voice, for professional intrepidity and esprit.

‘Well thanks, lads, for the moral support. Thanks, Chief. Appreciated. It was never going to be easy out there last night, but I was … “Doing Beryl” was my baby, and I wasn’t about to mess this one up. No danger.’

It was Desmond Heaf’s practice, when the paper mounted one of its coups de théâtre, to retire to the sidelines for a day or two. He now had the air of a fuddled corporal emerging from a foxhole. ‘Would you care to take us through it, Clint?’

‘Okay. Beryl’s done a runner on us. Yup. Seems she approached the door, heard Donna belting it out – and she’s done a runner.’ Down the far end of the passage she was disappearing into the motes at the vista’s end. ‘So be it: plan B. I got Dodgem out from under Donna and hauled him next door. I said, “Dodge? You know what you got to do, boy? You got to go in there and do Donna.”’

‘I almost gave birth when I saw it,’ said Heaf. That morning’s edition rattled faintly in his grip: WHY I DID DONNA BY AINSLEY CAR * WORLD EXCLUSIVE * Dodgem Goes Apes**t After Hotel Sex Fest. ‘Why I did Donna?’

‘“Do Donna?” says Dodgem,’ said Clint. ‘“Why do I do Donna?” I said, “You don’t do Donna. What you do is you ‘do’ Donna: when I give the word, you make a racket and smash up the furniture, and we’ll do the rest.” He said, “But why, mate?” I said, “If it’s motivation you’re after, she’s just cost you your marriage.” Course I was rewriting it in my head: the piece. Like: “When I realised that those three hours of madness might mean the loss of little Beryl, my anger naturally turned on the rotten slag who’d led me astray.” Et cetera. Then I rang Marge Fitzmaurice.’

Clint’s colleagues were listening with unrelieved solemnity, their faces dry and grey. Even Supermaniam looked like Voltaire.

‘I told Marge to get her vanity case and her fat arse over to the Bostonian instanter … It was a pleasure to watch her work. If you turn the page, Chief – the bruises on the inner thigh? And on the bosom? Then we slung in the black eye and the split lip. I told Dodge to get started. Give him a minute and I’ll call Security. Well I heard a thud or two, nothing much, and I looked back in: Ainsley’s on the floor, and there’s Donna in her pants smashing his head in with a glass ashtray. Said he took a right swing at her, so she did him. After that it was just logistics.

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