"Campbell, Ramsey - The Parasite 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Campbell Ramsey)

What would she rather be doing, for heaven's sake? Following Diana's lead, developing her so-called psychic powers? Yes, she ought to be sailing around beneath the ceiling while her body took it easy on the bed; that would make her name - Rose the Astral Moth. She wished that memory - nightmare, hallucination, whatever it had been - would hurry up and fade.

Nor had Diana's dictionaries of the Tarot been encouraging. The Three of Swords reversed was mental alienation; Five of Swords reversed was connected with burial; Queen of Swords meant sterility, the Moon was darkness, terror, the occult. There were other meanings, but these seized her attention: the Tower meant catastrophe, the Queen of Pentacles reversed was evil, suspicion, fear. `Those cards didn't mean anything. I was tired,' Diana had reassured her, though how could that affect how Rose had shuffled the cards?

Her ideas were chafing against one another without sparking. She saw no point in forcing herself to write. She typed a postscript to Bill's letter to Jack. `See you in Munich - where we'll drink you under the table!' Writing letters often made her banal.

The aerogramme slipped, silent as Valentino, into the postbox. Above the white fire of the river, clouds like mountains softened by snow rode the sky. When Rose strolled back she found two people standing in her driveway. `Can I help you?' she called.

The small woman in the shabby coat turned first. Her face looked aged by resignation. Elastoplast held her glasses together, hair the colour of dust sprouted from beneath her headscarf. `We're all right,' she said, gripping her husband's hand. His shoulders towered above her, expensively padded by a brand-new overcoat. He turned.

He must be her son, not her husband. Perhaps he was twenty, but his smooth flesh was babyish. His cheeks glowed as though rouged; his blank eyes looked overwhelmed by chubbiness. The whole of his chin glistened with saliva.

`Sorry,' Rose said, apologizing as much for her instinctive shock as anything, and retreated inside her house.

She couldn't help it: she hoped the woman wasn't her new neighbour. Perhaps she was only visiting, like the other strangers Rose had seen recently in Pulwood Park: a fat man who dodged quivering from side to side of the road; a youth with hair twice the span of his head; a thin girl who stood gazing at her cupped hand as though it held a treasure. How many residents must be peering from the shelter of their curtains? Well, Rose wasn't going to. She climbed the stairs, feeling vaguely expectant. Perhaps an idea was about to declare itself.

Before she reached the landing, the doorbell rang.

She started, and felt guilty. The woman's son had looked not merely harmless but helpless. Besides, while Rose could see a woman's face in the lowest of the frontdoor panes, obscured by the frosted glass and surrounded by an aura of fragments of flesh, the woman seemed to be alone. When Rose opened the door she came face to face with someone entirely new.

Was she a gipsy? She carried a capacious tartan handbag, the sort which might hide items for sale, or pamphlets, but she wore a mauve twin-set, and looked like the keeper of a stall at a parish jumble sale, hardly a door-to-door saleswoman; her timid smile was ready to retreat. Beneath the pale crust of makeup she was middle-aged.

`I'm sorry if I'm bothering you,' she said, and had to clear her throat. `I'm Gladys Hay. We have the house next door.'

Six

Gladys seemed afraid to enter. As soon as she'd braved the hall she halted, her small plump hands burrowing mouse-like through a mass of papers in, her bag. `You shouldn't let me in your house just because of who I say I am,' she said reproachfully, and produced a crumpled smudged envelope bearing a South African stamp. Colin and Gladys Hay, it said, where old Mrs. Winter had used to live.

`I do hope I'm not bothering you. I heard you typing before.'

`Don't worry about that, I've finished now.'

`Are you a typist?'

'No,' Rose said with a hint of pique, `I'm a writer.'

`A writer? A writer of books?' Her small square face looked trapped in embarrassment, her cheeks burned as if slapped.

`Yes, Bill and I have written a few. There's one.' Rose had meant to put Gladys at her ease, but her gesture seemed too casual, affected.

Gladys ventured timidly to gaze at the book. `Shared Nightmares. Oo-ooh,' she said with an extravagant shudder. `And you write with your husband. You must be very close. We are too, Colin and I. We look after each other.'

She'd sat down and had opened the book. `Would you like some coffee?' Rose said.

`Oh, yes please.' She glanced up anxiously. `Only if it isn't any trouble.'

Rose was quite glad to retreat to the kitchen; Gladys was rather overwhelming. Shortly Gladys followed her, accompanied by the muffled rustling of her handbag. She sat, slipping a little, on Bill's home-made pine bench. Her face reddened at the slip, and doled out a short selfconscious laugh. `Is that your greenhouse?' she blurted as though anxious for distraction.

`It belongs to both the houses. The lady who lived next door before you used to grow vegetables. Bill and I used to pay for half. We're no good at gardening, unfortunately.'