"Ian R MacLeod - The Noonday Pool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

IAN R. MacLEOD

THE NOONDAY POOL

Peg could hear a train coming. The night express. She pushed hair from her eyes
and sank down on her knees to the earth. She was in the place between the reeds
and nettles, where steel tracks and the wandering river were drawn together by
the hills. She could hear the dark beat emerging from the shimmering night, the
stuttering engine breath. She waited. There were stars on the river, starlight
on the rails.

The train was fast. The sound became a wall, blocking the hills. A long scarf of
smoke diamonded with sparks trailed the sky. Carriage lights pearled the river.
Peg reached down, pushing her fingers through a wet thatch of grass, curling
them back around the mud.

The tracks wheezed and creaked. The train was upon her. Lights and wheels
blasted by with the city reek of oil and coal. She fixed her moment, crouching
on the trembling soil. She balled the mud tight until it began to worm through
her fist. She held what was left and hitched back her arm. Biting her lip, she
hurled it at the streaming carriage lights. * * *

These were painful moments for Sir Edward. Just hours before, he'd been basking
in waves of applause. Who, after all, who would dare to criticize his own
interpretation of his symphonies? -- even if he had known in his heart that the
orchestra had played the over-familiar work by rote, and that the second French
horn had been disgracefully off key in those vital, yearning opening bars of the
slow movement.

Afterward, there had been hands to shake, and then the Trustees of the orchestra
and some other worthies had taken him to Armando's, his favorite London
restaurant where the maitre d' of twenty years standing knew all his foibles.
Apart from the predictably excellent food, dinner had been a bore. The worthies
had laughed dutifully at his jokes and nodded seriously at his creakingly
ancient stories of meeting Brahms and Joachim, even though he was sure that they
must have heard them almost as many times as he had himself.

He left in time to catch the late express back to the Midlands. Even before the
recent trouble with his lower back that Dr. Walters in Harley Street still
insisted was probably nothing more than sciatica, the great man had come to
dislike sleeping away from home. And the guard -- whom he'd known for almost as
long as Armando's maitre d' -- had kept a first class compartment locked
specifically for his use. The great man had sunk back into the plush seats,
relishing the absence of company and gentle pull of the train as it drew into
darkness from the lighted cavern of the station.

But after an hour or so, his bladder, filled with the remains of several glasses
of wine -- and, he now remembered, at least three helpings of Armando's
excellent coffee -- began to feel like a distended balloon. And the guard, ever
conscious of the great man's desire for solitude, had thoughtfully locked the