"Duncan,.Lois.-.A.Gift.Of.Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

"I certainly can," her mother said defensively. "I learned to drive when I was Kirby's age. My father taught me. I haven't had a chance for years because we've flown everywhere and taken taxis and so on, but believe it or not, I drive beautifully."
"But to buy a car!" Nancy kept repeating the words. "We're not going to be here more than a few weeks, are we? If we buy a car we'll just have to sell it again when we leave. Wouldn't it be simpler to rent one?"
"Nancy, dearЧ" Their mother regarded them with troubled eyes. She turned to her other daughter. "KirbyЧ"
"What is it?" Kirby asked, her face going suddenly pale. "Is something wrong?"
It was a stupid question. Of course, there was something wrong. There had been something wrong for days, for weeks, for months even. Now that the words had actually been spoken, Nancy could feel, with a sick kind of acceptance, the great wave of wrongness rising higher and higher above them, ready to come toppling over to swamp them all. With a violent effort she braced herself against it and made her mind go closed.
"We were talking about the car," she said.
"And why we'll be buying it." Now that she had decided to tell them, Elizabeth was not to be turned from the subject. "Our stay hereЧwell, it's not going to be for a couple of weeks or even months the way it usually is when we settle places. We are going to be here in Florida for a long, long time."
"We are?" Kirby said incredulously. Her face was blank.
"I didn't tell you sooner," their mother continued, "because I wasn't sure myself how things would be. I wanted to see the place again first. It had been so many years, and with renters in and out, it could have been in terrible shape. And I didn't know either how I would feel here. There are so many memories."
"You mean, about grandmother?" Kirby asked.
"Yes, and your grandfather too, although he died so very long ago. I didn't know if the sadness would come rushing out to meet me as I came up the driveway." She smiled a funny little smile, reassuring on her lips but somehow not in her eyes. "Well, it didn't happen that way. It's the happiness that has stayed, all the good years and the love and the peace. I can live here and beЧhappy. I think."
"But Dad?" Brendon said. "What about him? How can he work here? His job is to travel all over the place writing articles and taking pictures."
"That's right," their mother said. "It is."
"He couldn't live here with us, could he?"
"No."
There was a moment's silence.
Don't go on, Nancy wanted to scream. Please, don't say anything more! But the words stayed knotted up inside her. She sat frozen, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, while her mother continued.
"Your father is an unusual sort of man," Elizabeth said slowly. "He is a man who is made for travel and adventure. That's why he's such a good foreign correspondent. It isn't easy for a man like that to drag a family along with him everywhere he goes. He has triedЧand I have triedЧwe really haveЧ"
"You meanЧ" Kirby's eyes were wide with astonishment. "You mean, you're getting a divorce?"
"Yes," their mother said. "Your father has reached a point in his career where he needs his freedom. He is being offered chances to go places, to cover events, that are too dangerous for a wife and children to go along on."
"Like in war zones," Brendon said. He could understand this. He was counting the years until he too would be old enough to work in a war zone. "Will he ever come back and see us?"
"Of course," Elizabeth said. "Whenever he's in the United States, he'll come. He'll have so many adventures to tell you about, and he'll write and send pictures. Maybe you can visit him once in a while at lovely placesЧZermat, perhaps, for skiing on winter holidays, or Capri in the springtime. Meanwhile, we'll live here, and you can go to school andЧ"
"School!" Brendon exclaimed in horror. "You mean you can't just teach us stuff at home?"
"Oh, Brendon, you'll love school!" his mother said. "And you girls will also. I could teach you well enough in the early years, but you'll have so much more fun going to a real school now that you're older. There'll be clubs and parties and football games and dancesЧ" She turned to Kirby. "Did I tell you that there's a dance studio here in Palmelo? It's new since I last lived here, and it's supposed to be a good one. It's run by a Madame Vilar who used to dance with the Ballet Russe."
"It is?" A little color was beginning to come back into Kirby's face. The clouds moved from her eyes and light flickered across them, not surface light, but a brightness coming up from the depths. "Does she teach the Cecchetti method?"
"We can certainly find out." Elizabeth turned to Nancy and reached over to cover the clenched hands with her own. "I know this will take some getting used to. It can't help but be a shock. But your father and IЧwe've been talking it over for a long time now. We do feel it's the best thingЧ" She let the sentence fall off and plucked it up again very brightly, too brightly.
"There are so many things here to make us happy. Old friends live here, people I grew up with. We'll have a chance to put down roots. You'll get to know other children. We'll live in a real house. There's the beachЧour own beach, not a resort area. There's even supposed to be buried treasure out on one of the sand bars. And we'll get a piano!" Her hand tightened pleadingly on Nancy's. "I used to take piano when I was a child. Wouldn't you like piano lessons, Nancy?"
"No," Nancy said, "I wouldn't."
Slowly she drew her hand out from under her mother's. Across from her, Kirby's eyes still glowed at the thought of dancing lessons. Brendon stood, smiling slightly, the dimple showing in his left cheek, his gaze already focused beyond the dunes to the green water dancing in the morning sunlight.
"Is that strip out there the bar where the treasure is?" he asked.
What was wrong with them? Nancy asked herself in amazement. Didn't they realize that their whole world was crumbling apart at the foundations? Didn't it matter to them that their father, Richard Brendon Garret, was no longer going to be a regular part of their lives?
"I don't want music lessons," she cried bitterly. "I want to live the way we've always lived! I don't care if we never have a real home! I want to be with Dad!"
She closed her eyes tightly and reached outЧoutЧacross the miles, the hundreds and thousands of milesЧto the place where their father was.
She found him in Paris. He was seated in one of the sidewalk cafщs under a blue-and-red awning with a plate of bread and cheese in front of him, and in his hand was a glass of wine. His eyes were clear and green like Brendon's, and his brows were Nancy's, straight and blond, and his great handsome head was tilted sideways as if listening intently to what the man across the table from him was saying. It was a business lunch and he was getting briefed on his next assignment. There was a notebook by his plate and a pencil, but the page of the book was empty, for he had not been taking notes. His mind was away from the conversation; it was stretching out toward Nancy, toward all of them. She felt it touch her and sweep over her, painful and unsettled.
"He isn't happy," Nancy cried. "I know he's not! I bet if you phoned him right now he'd say he wanted us back again!"
"But he would never give up his work," Elizabeth said. "It's too much a part of him. And I can't follow along behind him any longer. I'm tired, dear. I have to settle. I need a home."
The tears she had not shown them on her cheeks were in her voice.
"It would take a very strong woman to stay married to a man like your father. In our case, it's like a lamb being married to a lion or a nesting pigeon to aЧaЧwell, an eagle! We both of us wish things were differentЧthat we were differentЧand we both of us love you. Can't you understand that, dear, and accept it?"
"No," Nancy said, "I'll never accept it."
She got to her feet and left the porch.
She could feel her mother's unhappiness flowing after her like a warm river, but she closed her mind against it. At the moment she had room only for her own.


2

Kirby had always danced. She could not remember when she had started, although her parents had told her that it was when she was three years old. She had got up from her nap one day and come whirling out of her room like a ballerina going onstage. During the ten years that followed it had become a part of her, like eating and sleeping and breathing. There had never been a doubt hi her mind that someday she would be a professional dancer.
It came as a decided shock to learn that Madame Vilar did not wish to take her for a pupil.
"She is far too old to begin training at Vilar Studio," the woman said decidedly. "I never accept new pupils over the age of nine."
She spoke past Kirby as though she did not exist, directing all statements to her mother.
"But Kirby has had instruction," Elizabeth said. "She has attended dance seminars all over Europe."