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

particularly how Stuart's death would affect it.
Finally Conrad finished his beer and stood up. "Anyone fancy another
Tyrannosaurus?"
"Tyrannosaurus?" I was a bit slow on the uptake; my mind was on other
things.
"Tyrannosaurus Rex - Beck's," Conrad and Nick chorused, to which Nick
added, "You thick chiselling twatter."
"Fuck off, you bald bastard," I said to Nick - sparkling wit or what?
"Shouldn't we be getting over there?" I added.
"It's only six o' clock. We've got hours yet," said Nick.
"I know, but...I dunno. I'd like to get there. It'll make me feel as
though we're starting to get it over with."
"We can't get it over with until..." Nick's voice faltered for the first
time since we had entered the house. He glanced at Conrad, who was
standing in the doorway, carefully peeling the label off his beer bottle.
"I know that," I said quickly, filling the suddenly uncomfortable silence.
"It's just that I hate sitting around here. I'd rather be over there. I
can't explain why. I just would."
"You're fucking weird," said Nick. "Tell him he's fucking weird, Conrad."
"You're absolutely Patrick," Conrad said.
This time Nick joined me in giving Conrad a blank look.
"Patrick Swayze - crazy," Conrad supplied obediently.
"At least I don't look like a cross between Roy Orbison and Kojak," I
said.
Conrad whooped with laughter. Nick said amiably, "No, you just look like a
total cunt."
The upshot of all this was that we went to Seven Arches a bit earlier than
we normally would. My real reason for wanting to break the routine was as
a way of...I don't know, acknowledging that Stuart wasn't here, that
things were different, that the emphasis had changed. I didn't voice this,
of course (I might have done if I'd got either Conrad or Nick on their
own, but not when all three of us were together), but Conrad seemed to
pick up on how I was feeling, agreeing that we might as well be over there
as sitting around here getting stir crazy (his words, not mine). Nick just
shrugged and said that he could just as easily get pissed at the viaduct
as sitting around here. However he warned me that if it started raining
again and he got wet he was going to rip my balls off with his teeth. I
told him I'd look forward to it.
We took the beers and went out of Conrad's back door, then climbed over
the fence into the playground of the junior school where we had all met
over twenty years ago. It was abandoned now, most of its windows either
broken or boarded up. Conrad said that developers were going to tear it
down and build a new housing complex for old people, but he had been
saying that for the past seven years. As we each set foot on the pitted
concrete of the playground, still etched with the faint markings of
netball courts, memories clustered around us as they always did. I guess
officially the reunion didn't begin until Denton turned up, but for me it
always started here. This was the equivalent of being a professional
footballer and turning up at Wembley two hours before kick-off in the cup
final. The nerves started to kick in as the preamble got under way.