"Simon Ings - The Wedding Party" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ings Simon)

Devonshire countryside. No sound impinges from outside. The
foot-and-mouth crisis has occasioned a wholesale slaughter of livestock in
this region. Nothing moves. It is as though the holocaust has been
extended even to the insects and the birds.

тАЬHe hasnтАЩt a choice!тАЭ

She looks out the window at the rain. If you can call it rain, drizzle
scrubbing the land and the sky into one.

Drizzle subsumes everything, the yellowish panic-ulateтАФfaint traces
of a bruiseтАФthat must, I suppose, mark a nearby pyre. It subsumes too,
and utterly, the fine spray from the hose, which runs above the five-bar
gate. The hose spans the farm track on thin scaffolding. And thereтАЩs the
bucket where I dutifully scrubbed my boots an hourтАФ Jesus, no, two hours
ago. Impatient, I turn her chair; I force her to look away from the window,
away from the near-bankrupt ruin that was a Devon dairy farm (itтАЩs not even
ours, we just rent the house).

She hates it when I pull her chair about, when I take advantage of her
condition. I stroke her head. тАЬStop it,тАЭ she says.

тАЬHe really has no choice,тАЭ I insist. тАЬIf it was any-one else heтАЩd have
got away with it. But Beneson was the only left-footed striker on the team.
The national team. They wonтАЩt let it go.тАЭ

RedsonтАФmy lover, ho ho; anyway, my brother-in-lawтАФhe was
working the qat caravans out of Somalia when he surprised a burglar,
com-ing in through his kitchen window. Got terrified. Shot himтАФand thought
that he was within his rights so to do. And he would have beenтАФhad the
burglar not turned out to be a national hero.

Hope can do this. She can get him out. Overland from Mogadishu to
Nairobi. Round the lake to Kampala and from there by air freight to Libya.
By boat to Lebanon, then Syria, Cyprus, тАЬCome on!тАЭ
 Hope can do thisтАФbecause she has done it herself. After we split
she went back home to Malawi, as safe a country as youтАЩre going to get in
central Africa, working at the Dzaleka refugee camp in Dowa. Only she got
caught up with the Congolese mafia that run the bus concessions out of
Lilongwe and Blantyre, and had to run in the end. If you can call it running.
They drove her and drove her, nowhere was safe. And when she had had
enough of runningтАФif you can call it runningтАФshe bit the bullet. She slipped
through, slunk through, squeezed herself painfully through EuropeтАЩs
ever-tightening netтАФdid a good job of it, tooтАФbut in the end it was too
much. She had to call me, make some sort of peace with me, beg me to
help her cross the Chan-nel into Britain. Which I naturally did.

The snakeheads have Europe sewn up. From the Balkans right
through to Sangatte, so they say. And that was enough for me. I got out of
all that, and quick. For several years now, the nearest IтАЩve come to that line