"Gwyneth Jones - A North Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Gwyneth)

A North Light
Gwyneth Jones
A carefree traveller's life is full of evenings like this one. You have the money, you
have the looks, you have the style; you even have what used to be called the letters
of introduction, in the old days. Yet still you find yourself winding along the
disturbingly narrow lanes, livid green pasture on either side, a voluptuous sunset
overhead, and nowhere to spend the night. The grass, growing in a stiff mohican
strip down the middle of the asphalt, confesses that this is a route only used by
those high-slung, soot-belching, infuriating tractors. The desk staff at the quaint,
olde-worlde (but surprisingly expensive) little inn that just turned you away тАФ with
the offensive smugness of a fully booked hostelry in high season тАФ obviously sent
you on a wild-goose chase.
Never again! you say to yourself.
But the lure of the open road will prevail. Wanderlust.


"My God, here it is," breathed Camilla.
The house stood four-square and somewhat sinister in its bulk of yellow stone, at
the top of one of those endless rank pastures. No trace of a garden, except for a
bizarrely suburban machicolation of cypress hedge. The gate at the road announced
the services of Jonas O'Driscoll, Builder. Also, vacancies. But vacancies cannot be
trusted.
"Should be okay," said Sheridan, scanning the whereabouts and liking the
isolation. "It's fucking huge for a B&B. Unreal!"
"Not at all," she corrected him. Camilla was always wise to the local ways.
"Traditional Irish rural industry needs bedrooms. The only crop that thrives in this
country is babies. Breed them up for emigration, ship them out and look forward to
a comfortable retirement on their earnings."
"That's cold-blooded, isn't it?"
She laughed. "I like it. It shows a fine ruthlessness. Children as a business
venture, why not?" She was childless herself.
"Bring me tangle-curled barefoot peasant girls," groaned Sheridan. "Bring me a
reeking cottage with a pig looking outтАФ"
Mine hostess was at the door, a young woman with mouse-brown hair cropped
short as a boy's, her large behind embraced in boyish dark blue jeans; pink cheeks,
naive round hazel eyes and a cute, piggy turned-up nose. The tourists smothered
their giggles as she welcomed them in to a stark, tiled hallway with a huge varnished
pine dresser and varnished pine umbrella stand. Pokerwork signs hung on the walls,
inscribed with the rules of the B&B (all credit cards, rooms must be vacated, etc.)
тАФ Miniature warming pans, decorative teacloths, china donkeys on a knick-knack
shelf. Everything excruciatingly new. The travellers caught each other's eyes and
sighed. Their hostess was Noreen O'Driscoll. She'd had a phone call from the inn,
and she could show them to an ensuite room. She beamed naively when they
accepted the astonishing price of a night's lodging; displayed flushed puzzlement
when they insisted on shaking hands.
Camilla and Sheridan liked to shake hands with the natives. They followed her
round denim bottom up the varnished pine stairs, savouring the touch of that
scrubbed peasant skin тАФ already worn down (she can't be more than twenty-five or
so, poor girl) to the texture of spongy sandpaper.
Room number four, ensuite. How many rooms are there? Maybe six, maybe