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

he kept in his pocket.
"Here," he said, "have a beer on me. I'm really sorry, Connie. No hard
feelings, eh?"
We took the beer and drank, Conrad tentatively. He swilled his first
mouthful around and then spat it out. It emerged pink and frothy.
"You disgusting chiseller," I said.
"Better out than in."
"I thought that was farts," said Nick.
"Whatever."
We stood around in the playground and drank beer for a couple of minutes
like teenagers whose exams had just finished. Desperate stuff, but like I
said earlier we're a sad bunch of bastards. We were all twenty-six and had
made little of our lives. Nick had already been married and divorced
twice, unable to sustain a relationship, whereas Conrad and I hadn't even
got off the starting blocks in that particular race. Career-wise we hadn't
fared much better. Nick was one of those guys who are full of big schemes
that, through a combination of bad luck and bad planning, never quite come
off. Conrad worked as a clerk for North West Water. And I was currently
unemployed, having drifted through a variety of jobs since leaving school:
night-watchman, 'Pizzaland' waiter, book shop assistant. I even had a job
in a sausage factory once, as a result of which I will never eat sausages
again.
His beer two-thirds gone, Nick wandered across and picked up the remaining
six-pack. "Only six bottles left," he said. "We'll never get pissed on
that. Why didn't you stingy bastards provide any alcohol?"
"You can have mine," said Conrad. "Drinking makes my North and South hurt
anyway."
"And I'm not that bothered," I added. "Like I said before, this isn't a
Russell."
"Russell?" Nick raised his eyebrows.
"Russell Harty, you chiseller," said Conrad.
"Oh yeah, right." For a man who'd just been given a sizeable beer
donation, Nick looked pretty put out. "Have you two signed the pledge or
what?"
"Nah, we're just not in the mood," I said.
Nick looked at us in disgust but didn't ask why. He already knew the
answer, and didn't want it spoken aloud.
He contented himself with muttering, "Chisellers," then the three of us
made our way across the playground and behind the school onto the playing
fields beyond which lay Seven Arches. The fields covered such a vast area
that a kid playing golf was just a speck in the distance. Nobody said
anything when the viaduct came into view. I shuddered, unable to decide
whether the arches themselves were like eyes watching our arrival or black
mouths sucking us in.
I was scared. Really scared. Things were different this year, things were
unravelling badly. As we passed beneath a set of sagging goalposts, the
ground in front of them churned to mud by Grobelaar wannabes, Conrad
muttered, "Remember when I wrote a note asking Jackie Prentice out? We
were all playing football here when she walked up with her mates and
ripped the note into tiny little pieces. Chucked it all over me like