Chapters
99
The
next day, for old times' sake, I played another round of golf. I wasn't at all rusty; eighteen holes, eighteen strokes. I
hadn't lost my touch. Then I had breakfast for lunch and breakfast for dinner. I watched my video of Leicester City's 5-4
victory
in the Cup Final, though it wasn't the same, knowing what happened. I had a cup of hot chocolate with Brigitta, who
kindly
looked in to see me; later I had sex, though only with one woman. Afterwards,
I sighed and rolled over, knowing that
the next morning I would begin to make my decision.
I dreamt that I woke up. It's the oldest dream of all, and I've just had it.
[p. 311]
Author's Note
Chapter 3 is based on legal procedures
and actual cases described in The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of
Animals by E. P. Evans (1906). The first part of Chapter 5 draws its facts and language from the 1818 London translation of
Savigny and Corréard's
Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal; the second part relies heavily on Lorenz Eitner's exemplary
Géricault: His Life and Work (Orbis, 1982). The third part of Chapter 7
takes its facts from The Voyage of the Damned by
Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts (Hodder, 1974). I am grateful to Rebecca John for much help with research;
to Anita
Brookner and Howard Hodgkin for vetting my art history; to Rick Chiles and Jay McInerney for inspecting my American; to
Dr Jacky
Davis for surgical assistance; to Alan Howard, Galen Strawson and Redmond O'Hanlon; and to Hermione Lee.
J.B.