"MacLeod, Ian R - TheNoondayPool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

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
linking compartment doors, sealing him off from the toilets at both ends. Beyond
pulling the communication cord, there was no way he could even talk with anyone
else on the train.

So Sir Edward shifted in his seat and clenched his fists, the train rumbled
through the night, and the sensation in his bladder became a fiery ball of need.
And his discomfort was worsened by the thought that it was he, he who had
lunched at Balmoral and whose name had been mentioned in the same breath as the
Germanic greats, should be dragged down to the level of an anxious, wriggling
schoolchild. He checked his half hunter fob watch, heavy on the gold chain that
Richter had given him: only twenty more minutes of this agony to go. But the
thought brought little comfort. Nothing brought any comfort. He drummed his
fingers on the cold glass. Faintly, beyond the spinning rails, he could see the
gray gleam of the river in the carriage lights, that river whose moods and
seasons he had portrayed in numerous songs, two quartets and his one great tone
poem. The river . . . the water . . . the . . . no . . . Something lifeless and
gray, tumbling end over ragged end out of the darkness toward him. In fear, he
jerked his eyes away. A moment later, it struck the glass.

Brown tentacles crawled back and down. Only mud and yet still the shock was
almost too much. His bladder nearly gave way, and for a moment the pleasure of
doing so almost overbalanced the terrible shame. But he held himself in, and
crossed his legs tight as the mud spread into a lopsided star across the glass.

The minutes clawed by. The train began to slow: just for him, an unscheduled
stop at the local station, for the great man alone. He hitched himself upright
as the train halted, and moved with slow, painful steps toward the carriage
door. The guard, who had run along the side of the train, opened the door for
him and stepped to one side with an almost military salute. The great man eased
himself down to the platform. The station, he saw, was closed. The first class
waiting room was locked, and with it the toilets. As was (he was in no mood to
be fussy) the second class waiting room: the last scheduled train would have
departed several hours before. In the warm lights of the carriages, faces were
pressed to the glass, straining for a glimpse. They would see him walking at: an
awkward shuffle, bent half double, and would remark how much older the great man
had suddenly become, how the recent photographs in the newspapers couldn't be
quite so recent after all.

Sir Edward's chauffeur was waiting at the far end of the platform. Home, he told
himself as the train pulled off through billows of steams, wasn't far off along
these deep country lanes he knew so well. Somehow, clenching every muscle in his
body, he climbed down the steps from the station and into the Bentley's leather
interior. The pain was no longer localized in his bladder, but drove itching
needles through his entire body, and burned like a brand over the ache in his
lower back.

The Bentley started up. Headlights swung across hedgerows and trees before
centering on the narrowed, rutted road. The chauffeur, with whom Sir Edward