"Mcauley, Paul J - Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

the long strips of the ancient field system beyond the hummocks where the
village had been. Everything was quiet and still, the solitude emphasised
when a train passed.
"It's a lonely place," Beaumont remarked, uncannily echoing Tolley's
thoughts. "But it's not as bleak as this in summer. Buttercups all over
the place, boats on the river. People like to picnic here."
"Yeah? You know, I wish the title to the land was still in the family.
This would be a great place for a hotel; just think of those ruins as a
feature in the grounds."
"It's nice enough as it is," Beaumont said stiffly.
"I'm sorry. I forgot you English don't like things to change."
"And you Americans don't know anything else; that's why you think the past
is quaint instead of real." Perhaps it has been intended as a rebuke, but
the man was smiling, and after a moment Tolley smiled too.
They were amongst the scattered remnants of the manor house now. Beaumont
laboriously framed and took a picture of the chimney, then turned up the
collar of his Norfolk jacket and asked, "Did you have a look at the
cemetery?"
"The graveyard? Just a glance."
"They still use the church a few times a year, you know. Come on, I'll
show you the gravestones. Some of the inscriptions are rather funny."
But first he led Tolley beneath the spreading shade of the yew tree behind
the church, where two gravestones stood apart from the others, their brief
inscriptions blotted by lichen. "Them are the buggers that are causing the
trouble, according to Marjory."
"I thought your wife said it was the woman?"
"Who knows? Seems daft to me, talking like this. It's this place,
Professor Tolley, if it's anything. Not anyone who was buried here. Down
in the mines, you know, there are galleries you don't like to be alone in,
old workings with a funny feeling to them. Miners are as superstitious as
sailors; like it or not, I suppose a bit of that rubbed off on me. About
places, though, not ghosts."
Tolley thought of the initials scrawled in the steam on the kitchen
window, then thought of his room. How could a feeling, a sense of place,
do that? He said, "Let's take a look at those inscriptions you mentioned."

Rather than funny, Tolley found them prim and touchingly pious, almost
wistful. Death had not been an end to these people, but an interval, a
sleep. He left Beaumont photographing them, and stepped inside the porch
of the little church. The iron handle of the door was stiff; then it gave,
and the door creaked open.
It was colder than outside. Tolley shivered, looking at the brief row of
pews either side of the aisle, the plain pulpit and the draped altar
beyond. The windows were narrow, their slots edged with dogtoothing:
Norman, perhaps, although the glass was Victorian. Below, tablets were set
in the rough stone walls, one listing the names of those killed in the
Great war, a dusty poppy wedged in the iron holder beneath it, another
mentioning a Victorian incumbent of the parish. The next was in memorium
of Alfred Tolley, squire of this parish, and his wife Evangaline, both
dead in the same year, 1886. Was that when the manor house had burned