"Karl Glogaver - 02 - Breakfast In The Ruins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

Karl knew why he liked to come here. In the whole of London this was the only
place where he could find the peace he identified with the peace of his early
childhood, the peace of ignorance (or "innocence" as he preferred to call it).
He had been born at the outbreak of the war, but he thought of his childhood as
having existed a few years earlier, in the mid-thirties. Only lately had he
come to understand that this peace was not really peace, but rather a sense of
coziness, the unique creation of a dying middle-class. Vulgarity given a gloss
of "good taste". Outside London there were a few other spots like it. He had
found the right atmosphere in the tea-gardens of Surrey and Sussex, the parks in
the richer suburbs of Dorking, Hove and Hay-wards Heath, all created during the
twenties and thirties when, to that same middle-class, confines had been a
synonym for beauty. For all he knew too well that the urge which took him so
frequently to the roof garden was both infantile and escapist, he tolerated it
in himself. He would console himself sardonically that, of all his other
infantile and escapist pursuits - his collection of children's books, his model
soldiers - this was the cheapest. He no longer made any serious attempts to rid
himself of these unmanly habits. He was their slave, just as much as he was the
slave of his mother's childhood terrors; of the rich variety of horrors she had
managed to introduce into his own childhood.

Thinking about his childhood as he sat in his usual place on a soft summer's day
in June 1971, Karl wondered if his somewhat small creative gift was not, as most
people would nowadays think, the result of his unstable upbringing at all.
Perhaps, by virtue of his sensitivity, he had been unduly prone to his mother's
influence. Such an influence could actually stunt talent, maybe. He did not
like the drift of his thoughts. To follow their implications would be to offset
the effects of the garden. He smiled to himself and leaned back, breathing in
the heavy scent of snapdragons and tulips, believing, as he always did, that it
was enough to admit a self-deception. It was what he called self-knowledge. He
peered up at the blue, uncluttered afternoon sky. The hum of the traffic in the
street far below could almost be the sound of summer insects in a country
garden. A country garden, long ago...

He leaned back on the bench a fraction more. He did not want to think about his
mother, his childhood as it actually was, the failure of his ambitions. He
became a handsome young aristocrat. He was a Regency buck relaxing from the
wild London round of politics, gambling, dueling and women. He had just come
down to his Somerset estate and had been greeted by his delightful young wife.
He had married a sweet girl from these parts, the daughter of an old-fashioned
squire, and she was ecstatic that he had returned home, for she doted on him.
It did not occur to her to criticize the way he chose to live. As far as she
was concerned, she existed entirely for his pleasure. What was her name? Emma?
Sophy? Or something a little more Greek, perhaps?
The reverie was just beginning to develop into a full-scale fantasy when it was
interrupted.

"Good afternoon." The voice was deep, slightly hesitant, husky. It shocked him
and he opened his eyes.

The face was quite close to his. Its owner was leaning down and its expression