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

`Oh, Gerhard wrote,' she said as they climbed the steps to the tall cottage of St Michael's station. The train dwindled, a kite's tail of lit windows. `He's traced our German rediscovery.'

`Fine. The book is shaping up.' Rediscoveries in Film was to consist of interviews with neglected innovators. `And we can charge our Munich trip against tax.'

`There are also some proofs for correction.'

`Perhaps you could make a start on them while I cook dinner.' He sounded happier: routine always calmed him. `After dinner I'll work on them. They'll make a change from students.'

They reached the path between the Mersey bank and the Esso petroleum bunkers. The muffled glow of the sky was caught in lattices of trees. The path was just visible, glimmering like whitewash, between ivied banks. `Sometimes I wonder if I'm losing touch with my students,' she said.

They ducked beneath a waste pipe thick as Bill's midriff. An abandoned car rusted among brambles. `You're not still blaming yourself for that John Wayne business?' Bill said.

`I wouldn't say blaming, exactly.' She had taken her students through Rio Bravo, the most enjoyable Western she knew and one of the most fruitful to analyse - but her students could see only John Wayne's politics: his presence wiped out the rest of the film, destroyed its personality. `But one has to take their feelings into account,' she said.

`Take them into account, yes, but don't indulge them. You're trying to teach them to examine things they might take for granted.'

`I know.' It was just that sometimes she felt frustrated -felt that she contained untapped resources, though she had no idea what they might be. `But there used to be times when students would give me insights I hadn't had before.'

`Well, we still get that in our collaborations, don't we? Don't look so glum. "You could be a wonderful dancer instead of letting people set fire to you." '

`The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. "It's no use knocking there, everybody's dead," ' she responded, laughing.

`The Diabolical Doctor Z. "With luck your boy friend may have a rich and fulfilling life as a paraplegic." '

`Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. "Soldier who fell for your country, you did not fall upon deaf ears." '

`Oh, that was the Roger Vadim film - what was its name? Hello.' They were quoting their book of unforgettably bad lines and plots from films, Watch Out for Sodomite Patrols! A television showing of Sodom and Gomorrah had given Bill both the title and the idea for the book, which had sold spectacularly.

The path led them on to higher ground, overlooking the Mersey. Bricks, samples of the rubble that underlay the ridge, protruded through the earth. Cows slept beyond a barbed-wire fence, among odd concrete stumps which poked up through the grass. Down by the river a whitish patch rose screaming from the rubbish tip and broke into seagulls.

If Rose was still uneasy, there was the reason: old Mrs. Winter, who had lived next door to the Tierneys and who had shared their greenhouse, had died near the tip a couple of months ago. She must have wandered off the path and broken her leg in the dark. She'd lain there all night in the sub-zero winds, dying of exposure.

`Anyway,' Bill said, `our books aren't out of touch.' That was true; she had even seen her students enjoying Watch Out for Sodomite Patrols! It had helped them afford their house in Fulwood Park. Sometimes she felt luxuriously guilty that such a simple idea had made them so much money.

Fulwood Park shone through the gap in the hedge at the end of the path. The Italianate villas and aggressively contemporary mansions stood in gardens like small parks, screened by trees. One villa, lit for a party, was bright as a ship. Beside Rose, beneath a railway bridge which had been boarded off from pedestrians, the wind from the Mersey hooted, an enormous insubstantial owl.

Infrequent streetlamps lit the private road of Fulwood Park, conical drops of milky light frozen as they were about to fall. Everything looked theatrical: the red bole of the postbox, the chained bollards which fenced off a garden for residents only, the mass of clover which covered the pavement, each pale leaf separate and distinct, embalmed by the icy light.

Among the villas, the Tierneys' pebble-dashed house and its Siamese twin looked cosily out of place. The twin's windows were lit, but it felt unfamiliar; Rose had yet to meet the new owners. She might have to wait until after New York.

She had emerged through the hedge, and was making for their gateless drive, when her stomach clenched. She glanced sharply along Fulwood Park. Branches glared, frozen explosions of wood, above the lamps; patches of light and inky darkness led toward the main road. Someone had just stepped into a patch of darkness.

When he reappeared he was too distant for her to be able to make out details. It didn't matter; she had realized what had made her nervous. Of course, the man was wearing a crash helmet; that was why his head was smooth and gleaming.

TWO

`I can see a baldy man,' a little girl was saying. `I can see a blancmange,' but Rose, when she woke, found that she was looking at a hamburger's initial M, which did look like a plastic sketch of a blancmange. Around Rose on the airport bus each voice seemed to be jabbering in a different language, or was jet lag making her hallucinate? `Are we nearly at auntie's now?' the little girl said, and Rose was running to Uncle Wilfred and Auntie Vi, who embraced her like a treasure they had lost.

She must wake up, for here was the bridge into Manhattan. Against a dark blue evening sky which had soaked up the last of the light, rank on irregular rank of lit windows, brilliant perforations in computer cards, mounted towards brazen wisps of cloud. She could sense how the city was teeming; she thought it must never sleep. But even when the foothills of the skyscrapers towered over her she felt that she hadn't quite arrived, that she was still flying over the Atlantic.