"Mark Morris - The Chisellers' Reunion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Mark)

The Chisellers' Reunion
a novelette by Mark Morris

Foreword

It's hard to talk about this story without sounding like a cliquey tosser.
Basically the idea for "The Chisellers' Reunion" came from a visit that
Nicholas Royle and I once paid to Conrad Williams at his then home in
Warrington. Seven Arches, which appears in this story, is a real place, as
is the condemned school next to Conrad's parents' home. For more Seven
Arches-based fiction, read Conrad's excellent first novel, Head Injuries.
About ninety per cent of what happens in this story is true. I'll leave
you, dear reader, to decide where the fact ends and the fiction begins.

You know in cartoons when, say, Daffy Duck's terrified and he's been
gripping something so hard that he has to peel his hands away with a sound
like parting strips of velcro? Well, that was what my hands felt like on
the steering wheel when I stopped the car in front of Conrad's house in
Warrington.
It was weird and frightening. I hadn't been here in a year, and yet I had
been driving almost on automatic pilot, as though I used this route every
day, as though it had become second nature to me. It was inevitable, I
suppose, that my mind should have been on other things, but it was still
scary to think that I had negotiated the M62 without even being aware of
it.
The reunion, of course, was an annual black day on all our calendars, but
this year was made doubly worse by the shadow of Stuart's suicide. It had
been Conrad who had phoned me up and told me the night before last, in a
voice of such icy control that as soon as he said, "Hello, Mark, it's
Conrad," I just knew that something terrible had happened. Apparently
Stuart had driven his car at high speed into a brick wall. He hadn't left
a note, but nobody seemed to be in any doubt that it was suicide. He
hadn't been killed outright, but had died in hospital two days later
without regaining consciousness.
As I replaced the receiver, feeling numb as though with cold, all I could
think of was his poor wife, Wendy, what she must have been going through.
I had been at their wedding five years ago, had seen the joy on her face,
her undoubted love for Stuart and his for her. The wedding had come just
two weeks after the reunion, and I for one was going through the euphoric
stage, having survived the initial week or so of nightmares born from
black depression and self-loathing. I never discussed with the others how
the reunion made them feel, but I could sense the celebration in the air
on this day, and not just because of the wedding. It was like being
released from prison, knowing that there were fifty glorious weeks before
the dreaded day rolled round again. The euphoria, of course, never lasted
for long. The reunion was like the centre of time, sucking us inexorably
in towards it year after year. It undermined the foundations of our days,
of our lives even, with its dark twisted roots.
Anyway, getting back to Stuart. I wondered whether he had ever told Wendy
anything about the reunion, or whether he had hidden his real feelings