"House On Parchment Street" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

Carol blushed. "I will. Thank youЧthank you for cheering me up."
Miss Emily patted her hand. "You come anytime you like, dear."
"Goodbye."
Miss Emily closed the door. Carol threaded her way through the maze of the colorful garden. Then she stopped. On the other side of the gate, blocking it with his bicycle, was a familiar, fair-haired boy.
Carol's mouth pinched into a thin set line. She glanced back at Miss Emily's door, but it was firmly shut. So she walked to the corner of the yard, stepping delicately in the pansy bed, and climbed onto Miss Emily's white fence. The boy coasted in front of her before she could jump down.
"You're still angry," he said. "I can tell." He put out a hand to balance himself. His eyes were grey and undisturbed.
"Will you please move."
"Please, I want to talk."
"I know. If you had known I was Bruce's cousin, you wouldn't have called me a matchstick." The color flared into her face at the word.
"I wasn't going to give you an excuse. We were rotten, that's all. You aren't a matchstick, Carol. That's your name. I remember now. I'm Alexander."
"I want to get off Miss Emily's fence."
Alexander sighed. "Oh. Right, then. You're still angry, and you won't talkЕ ."He rode slowly beside
her as she walked, her chin high. "Will you just answer a question? Just to be polite. Where's Bruce?"
"He went to Wellingborough."
"Mm. He had intentions to go, then. Е He does that, sometimes, you know. He sort of vanishes. Without a word of warning. Everyone else went to Wellingborough. But then, what's in Wellingborough? I mean, why should he go there, if he doesn't choose to?"
Carol looked at him. "He didn't go there?"
"No. So I thought I'd look round for him a bit, because I'd rather go nowhere with Bruce than somewhere with everyone else. You know."
Carol opened the gate. "I don't know why you would," she said crossly. "I wouldn't like to go as far as the other side of the street with him." She closed the gate and went across the lawn toward the front door, standing open to the still summer day. She heard her name called before she reached it. She saw Alexander's face between the leaves above the high wall.
"I'm really quite nice inside," he said, smiling helpfully. "I say, if you see Bruce, tell himЧУ
The sharp slam of the door cut his sentence short.
She saw Bruce finally in the late afternoon as she sat on the window-seat in her bedroom chewing the end of a pen, with an unwritten postcard on her lap. He came slowly through the gate, wheeling his bicycle. He walked stiffly, his head bowed, and bits of his clothing fluttered oddly. She straightened slowly, seeing even from that distance the long weals on his forearms.
Aunt Catherine came out of the laundry room as he wheeled the bike to the porch. He let it down easily, kneeling beside it. He looked up at them as they came out the back door, and his face was a map of angry scratches.
Aunt Catherine knelt on the walk beside him. "Bruce, what happened?" She turned his face gently from his bicycle so she could see it. He sighed through stiff lips.
"Two flats. And the body is so scratched."
"I noticed. Bruce, what happened to you? You look like you tangled with an irate zoo."
He was silent a moment. His eyes flicked to Carol's face, then away. He sighed again, his hands moving over a torn tire. "Oh Е I wasn't thinkingЕ . They saw a picture at Wellingborough this afternoon. I met them when they were coming homeЕ . They took a shortcut through the fields where Emily Raison does her berry picking." He paused again. The wheel spun futilely under his hands. "Well. They were all excited about the picture. It had a man in itЧSteve McQueen. And he had a motorcycle, and he could jump anything with itЧhills, hedges, wallsЧanything, as long as he had the momentum. All heЧall he had to do was jerk the front wheel up and sail overЧ"
Aunt Catherine touched her eyes with her fingers. "I see. Oh, Bruce. Don't tell meЧ"
"Well, you asked me to. And it seemed a good idea at the time. We did have a hill for momentum, but I
can't remember why we chose a blackberry hedge to jump over."
Something broke inside of Carol. She sat down on the sidewalk and gurgled helplessly into her knees. "Steve McQueen on a bicycle," she gasped. "I can just see it. Even if you had cleared the blackberries, you would have bent the bicycle frame landingЧ"
She felt the sudden coolness of Bruce's shadow as he stood up. She lifted her head. "How do you know? I suppose you've done that, too. No. Perhaps you had sense enough not to do that at leastЧ"
"Bruce!"
"I didn't laugh at you when you broke Mrs. Brewster's teacups swinging the flail, or nearly burned the house down to warm your feet. They were good ideas, even though they didn't turn out, and it's not fair of you to laugh at mine."
Carol rose. Her eyes glinted. "I didn't know you wanted me to be nice to you." "I don't! I'm talking about fairnessЧ" "So am I, and you couldn't be fair about anything Чespecially nicenessЧeven if you wanted to be, which you don't!"
Aunt Catherine looked up at them helplessly. "Shall I make you a scorecard?" she suggested. Bruce's fists clenched. He stepped across the bicycle and went into the house. The slam of the door rattled the porch windows. Carol folded herself into an angular shape on the
walk, her knees bent, her head hidden in her arms. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment. Her voice was muffled. Aunt Catherine spun the bicycle wheel. Light danced endlessly from one spoke to another.
"I'm not," she said reflectively.
Carol went to curl up again on her window-seat. She rested her chin on her knees and stared outside and saw nothing. The house was quiet around her, as though it were drowsing in the afternoon. Light fell in a changeless pool on her floor boards. She stirred restlessly, hunched against herself, and saw the fishpond, open water lilies burnished in the sunlight. The trees were motionless beyond it. She hugged her knees in a tighter grip, and loosed her breath in a slow weary sigh. Then she uncurled, her feet hitting the floor with a thump. She went aimlessly downstairs, sliding down the banister when the stairs began to crack sharply. She sat a moment on the end of the banister, her chin in her hand, staring at nothing. The living room door opened so abruptly she jumped.
"Harold! Oh, Carol. I'm glad you're still here. Father Malory is coming to dinner tonight, and I haven't been able to use the stove, besides forgetting I even asked himЧWould you mind going down to the cellar and getting a blackberry pie out of the freezer? Thank you, dear. Harold!" She touched the top of her neat hair lightly in despair. Carol dismounted. She heard Uncle Harold's shout back, as she opened the cellar door and over it, Aunt Catherine's voice calling up-
stairs. "Bruce! I need some flowers!"
She found the freezer in the room beyond the coal cellar and shifted things in it until she found a pale pie in a plastic bag, neatly labeled. A shadow leaped onto the freezer lid as she closed it, and she jumped, then laughed. The great black cat slipped through her hands so sleekly she barely felt it. She followed it into the last room where it scratched its claws a moment on Mrs. Brewster's table, then began threading a private maze on the floor, through boxes, stacks of mildewed books, dusty figurines, until it leaped up on the table and then into the window-ledge, brushing as it leaped the dark crown of the broad-brimmed hat of a man.
He stood still as though he were listening for a sound in the quiet house. Beyond the thick stones church bells tolled four o'clock, distant, leisurely, as from another world. His face was a still cold silhouette beneath the flow of sunlight from the cracked window. He turned abruptly, a drawn sword in his hand, and walked into the wall.
III.
CAROL LEANED AGAINST THE CELLAR DOOR, HER HEART leaping against her ribs, her mouth dry as if she had been running. She reached behind her and pushed the bolt that locked the door. Then she eased down to the floor and rested her face against her knees, the pie bag in one limp hand at her side. Her heartbeat slowed gradually; she began to hear sounds about her: the rattle of pans in the kitchen, the back door closing, footsteps in the hall. They stopped in front of her. She jumped, but instead of a strange, dark, somber face, she saw only Bruce's face, patterned with scratches. He held a handful of daisies. She swallowed the dryness away from her throat. He was quiet a moment. Then he drew a breath, as though to speak. Uncle Harold came out of the study, and Bruce closed his mouth. "What in heaven's name," Uncle Harold said, "did
that to your face?"
"A blackberry bush. I rode into it."
"It looks very painful. Did you put something on it?"
"No. IЧNo."
"There must be something in the houseЕ ." He turned Bruce slowly, surveying the damage, and Bruce's shoulder jerked under his fingers. "It looks like you dove into it headfirst."
"I think I did."