An Evil Streak

by An Evil Streak (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  So Diomedes left Criseyde and Troilus took her back. A happy ending, would you call that, or a worse tragedy than the original?

  When Pandarus says he hates Criseyde, what are we meant to think? I take it to mean that he identified totally with Troilus. That deserting his friend, his brother, was deserting them both and doubling his failure in love. No wonder he hated Criseyde. Through her body he had pledged his word and she proved faithless. The shame was his also.

  I shall never forgive Gemma for leaving me. It serves her right that she is condemned to a lifetime of Christian forgiveness. Life without her is intolerable for me, but I live. Alas, I live. And I have lost David and Catherine also.

  Without Gemma my days are as if technicolor had not yet been invented. I am bored. And the pain in what passes for my heart makes me want to scream and cry.

  I have another reason to hate Criseyde, which Pandarus never had. Removing bloodstains from carpets and upholstery is very difficult and expensive. She was inconsiderate. That must mean she plans to come back. She could not do that to my flat and disappear for ever. You cannot leave your blood on someone’s floor and sofa and vanish from his life. She must come back one day, although it is a long time now since I saw her and when I write she doesn’t answer; when I ring she apologises and hangs up. I am an old man but one day I shall surely pick up the telephone or answer the door and it will be she. I cannot endure to believe otherwise.

  They say that Hell is a sense of loss. How God must be laughing at me.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1977 by Warner Books

  This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

  57 Shepherds Lane

  Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU

  United Kingdom

  Copyright © Andrea Newman, 1977

  The moral right of Andrea Newman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781911420385

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author is indebted to Professor Nevill Coghill, from whose translation of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (Penguin 1971) the epigraphs are taken.

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