"Bragg, Melvyn - Crystal Rooms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bragg Melvyn)

on her cheek in the usual way. She was awake immediately.
"I'm going to London with lake," he said.
"Now?" She glanced into the dark outside the thin arc of bicycle-lamp light.
He nodded. He must not let her see his fear. Although she was only nine - two years younger than he - she was quicker to scent a mood and she could comprehend him in a moment.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing," Harry whispered. He heard lake moving downstairs and was aware that his time was running out. He made a brave effort. "I've always wanted to go to London."
"You have." Mary had divined the fear and the desperation of her brother, but she knew also that he must conceal it from her. "I'm glad you woke me up.
"I'll bring you something back." She saw the misery beating against his white, thin face. He saw the face of their mother in her expression. He wanted her to kiss him. But she merely nodded. Awkwardly, Harry reached out and touched her cheek, unable to kiss her but unable to leave without touching her. "You take care now," he said gamely. "You look after yourself."
She waited until the door banged, even until the van started before she let herself cry. One day she would make Fiona suffer.
The wind buffeted the van and rocked it and Harry sensed that lake was scared. lake had told Harry to get some sleep but the
boy was too alarmed to sleep as they left the desolate estate, sleet its natural element, and turned south, yellow lights lancing the enemy dark, hounded by the demons in the wind, making for London.





"Oh do shut up!" she said. Silence. Ah! The power. A few minutes later the noise started up again. This time her comic raspberry had the same silencing effect. But it was not long term and, at the third reminder, she flapped a hand and detonated the alarm which gagged the clock. Now it was willpower alone: the first test of character and so soon and every morning.
Although she knew that Tim, her husband, had left an hour before, she stretched a leg over to his side of the bed but it was cold and she lingered only for the moment in which, to her hardheaded
embarrassment, on this as on most mornings she experienced a gulp of thanks for her docile, loving, ineffective, unsuccessful, good-looking, almost-upper-class, what-does-she-see-in-him? or how-can-he-put-up-with-her? husband of now four years. As she swung Out of bed and came face to face with herself in the large florid gilt wall mirror, placed to enhance her sexual relish but simply ignored by Tim and now kept on as punishment, she met the second hurdle of the day. What did she look like? She was merciless.
Feet, too big, legs egg-white, hairless and stocky, topped by sumo thighs. Belly folds that cascaded over a crotch once boasted as (and still) insatiable but now stabled in monogamy and preserved for Tim's increasingly absent-minded outings. Breasts formerly her glory now sagging? flopping? pendulous? - there was no kind word for them - and needing all the technology of old-fashioned bra engineering to turn into what Martha called in others "lovely tits there". Face - forever pale, once thought strangely attractive - she could make no comment on it. Nor, alas, did many others these days. Thus stood Martha Potter, successful metropolitan journalist, in her forties, aching for fame and, as was not unusual, badly hung over.
She was vaguely aware - behind the creases of pain (sitting up was always a mistake) - that outside her madly over-mortgaged, small but perfectly positioned terraced cottage in deeply smart Holland Park, there was a gale, a storm, a hurricane, a tornado, a killer Force Ten or the Big Wind, depending on which of her six daily newspapers she picked up first. But contact with anything except her own reputation was fleeting. Volcanically through the alcohol, which had served its secondary purpose as a blocker-out of serious disturbance, came the clear and undeniable memory of that bloody interview by that bloody bloody man in that bloody American magazine. The relevant pages had been faxed over from New York by an old friend.
Martha had told him it was off the record. Strictly. Before, during, after lunch, and anyway did it matter between two hacks, even if he were a USA superstar hack ("I've adored you for years, she told him, rather loudly, intending others to overhear, restaurants were her stage) and she a mere UK wannabe? But - God! Help! He had printed the lot. Who could be trusted? Stitched her up. Screwed her. Was this because she had not made a pass? (Or had she? At about four-thirty the maitre d' had cautioned against yet another port: she refused to remember the precise wording of







her reply. After that was blank or patchy at best.) Didn't matter. Deed done. Damn. Damned.
For it was of the Royal Family they had talked. He the disappointingly Quiet American (Martha wanted cowboy boots and coke, raw bourbon and a deeper drawl - he was nothing like his PR), she become the eager-to-please (was this yet another penalty of the convent education?) English girl insider who wanted to sprinkle England's own stardust gossip over this ex-colonial Prince Hunk of the prints. Social suicide. She stood up, an act of some boldness, and unfolded the faxed sheet whose contents could well nobble her in the peculiar and often spiteful machinery of the British class and media labyrinth.
"Two things about the Royals get my goat," she read herself saying, in anguish at the deception of that American bastard, that Man! - "the family rubbish and the loot. We're supposed to revere them as the model family. A Holy Family for a Godless age, but just look at them! Ask any junior Foreign Office brat about Phil the Greek's appetites abroad." The language here grew lurid and Martha groaned through it. "As well as slaughtering the other birds -" Oh no! No! They would mug her in the streets. And it went on. "Charles and Diana, yawn one and yawn two, scarcely meet; the poor sods have a busted marriage and can't find the bottle to say so. Her brother, just married at great expense, is back with one of his old girlfriends. Anne's on a divorce which is a shame and nobody knows what Fergie's for. Edward's just plain curious and Margaret is a sport but where are we? Royal Family? Holy Mary! Royal cock-up more like." Martha had to admit she liked the restrained innuendo there. "What is this ridiculous sham for? I'll tell you: tourists, snobs and the lower orders."
And then she slammed into what she called "the loot". The Queen on more than a million pounds a day. The family not paying any income tax, not using its state-subsidised wealth to "set up an orchestra, found a college for inner city kids, put its money where its mouth always is. Even the Maundy Money the Queen doles out comes from the taxpayer. What is this? When did we vote to make her the richest female on the planet? As for style and taste - forget it." Martha took several deep breaths. It would be all over town by dinner. It could be nasty - people could get very unpredictable about the Royals. Was she damagingly out of step or cleverly ahead of the game?
The best way was to affect to ignore it. Head down. Get on
with her own work. Get her byline on to a talked-about piece
a.s.a.p.
Mark Armstrong had agreed to see her. Riding so high after yet another dramatic programme on Northern Ireland, Mark was a major talent in the television land in which Tim, Timmy, Timmo, as a gallant independent film producer, was being handed such a rotten deal. Armstrong was late-middle-aged, his own man. There were few rumours about him and none damaging to that central nervous system of professional integrity and effectiveness, widely admired as much for his occasional column in the quality newspapers as for his dominating television work. lust the target she needed.
Something like a sigh of pleasure crept into the wracked misfortune of her morning mind. She would get him. That could do the trick. She would nobble him. A diversionary tactic. She yawned at full stretch - her morning exercise. If only she had a personal fitness coach to visit her every morning. Some Aussie hunk.
The bottle of Sancerre was about a third full. The wine was warm but it did the business. Martha picked up her new see-thru black knickers and laughed aloud: they were in a twist.




Mark Armstrong was feeling indescribably content and fully aware of the danger of such an enviable state. He subscribed to the ancient gods. The older he became, the more sense their mythology made of his life, just as Romantic poetry made more sense of love. Now just tippling out of his sixth decade - could it be true? When did it happen? - Mark Armstrong was a pagan, a Scot, a democrat; intellectual but uncorrupted by elitism, wilful, butterhearted, about-to-be twice divorced, childless, hippo happy in his bath, and broke. In the still warm water he sang "Oh what a beautiful morning" practically in tune. Timing it well, Prue, his secretary, who came in three mornings a week (and he was pushed to afford even that), she of the easy, lean figure and of the consuming boyfriend collapsing in Venture Capital, put on the kettle in the surprisingly tiny, really" kitchen. The kitchen was not out of proportion with the rest of the Bloomsbury flat. Prue was a touch embarrassed for him. Mark considered he was lucky to have landed up with quite so much.