"Murdoch, Iris - The Nice and the Good" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murdoch Iris)

'Your harem is dying to see you!'
'That's good! Bless you, sweetheart, and I'll ring again tonight.
'Octavian, you are bringing Ducane with you, aren't you?' anve mm Gown.
'Splendid. Willy was wanting him.'
Octavian smiled. 'I think you were wanting him, weren't you, my sweetheart? V 'Well, of course I was wanting him! He's a very necessary man.'
'You shall have him, my dear, you shall have him. You shall have whatever you want.'
'Good-eel'



Two

'You must put all those stones out in the garden,' said Mary Clothier.
'Why?' said Edward.
'Because they're garden stones.'
'Why?' said Henrietta.
The twins, Edward and Henrietta Biranne, were nine years old. They were lanky blonde children with identical mops of fine wiry hair and formidably similar faces.
'They aren't fossils. There's nothing special about them.'
'There's something special about every stone,' said Edward.
'That is perfectly true in a metaphysical sense,' said Theodore Gray; who had just entered the kitchen in his old red and brown check dressing-gown.
'I am not keeping the house tidy in a metaphysical sense,' said Mary.
'Where's Pierce?' said Theodore to the twins. Pierce was Mary Clothier's son who was fifteen.
'He's up in Barbie's room. He's decorating it with shells. He must have brought in a ton.'
'Oh God!' said Mary. The sea-shore invaded the house. The children's rooms were gritty with sand and stones and crushed sea-shells and dried up marine entities of animal and vegetable origin.
'If Pierce can bring in shells we can bring in stones,' reasoned Henrietta.
'No one said Pierce could bring in shells,' said Mary.
'But you aren't going to stop him, are you?' said Edward. 'If I'd answered back like that at your age I'd have been well slapped,' said Casie the housekeeper. She was Mary Casie, but since she had the same first name as Mary Clothier she was called 'Casie', a dark pregnant title like the name of an animal. 'True, but irrelevant, Edward might reply,' said Theodore.
'If it's not too much to ask, may I have my tea? I'm not feeling at all well.'
'Poor old Casie, that was hard luck!' said Edward.
'I'm not going to stop him,' said Mary, 'firstly because it's too late, and secondly because it's a special occasion with Barbara coming home.' It paid to argue rationally with the twins.
Barbara Gray had been away since Christmas at a finishing school in Switzerland. She had spent the Easter holidays skiing with her parents who were enthusiastic travellers.
'It's well for some people,' said Casie, a social comment of vague but weighty import which she often uttered.
'Casie, may we have these chicken's legs?' said Henrietta. 'How I'm to keep the kitchen clean with those children messing in the rubbish bins like starving cats '
'Don't pull it all out, Henrietta, please,' said Mary. A mess of screwed up paper, coffee beans, old lettuce leaves and human hair emerged with the chicken's legs.
'Nobody minds me,' said Casie. 'I'm wasting my life here.'
'Every life is wasted,' said Theodore.
'You people don't regard me as your equal '
'You aren't our equal,' said Theodore. 'May I have my tea please?'
'Oh do shut up, Theo,' said Mary. 'Don't set Casie off. Your tea's there on the tray.'
'Lemon sponge. Mmm. Good.'
'I thought you weren't feeling well,' said Casie. 'A mere bilious craving. Where's Mingo?'
Mingo, a large grey unclipped somewhat poodle-like dog, was always in attendance upon Theodore's breakfast and tea, which were taken in bed. Kate and Octavian were ribald in speculation concerning the relations between Theodore and Mingo.
'We'll bring him, Uncle Theo!' cried Edward.
A brief scuffle produced Mingo from behind the florid castiron stove which, although it was expensive to run and useless for cooking, still filled the huge recess of the kitchen fireplace.
Theodore had begun to mount the stairs bearing his tray, followed by the twins who, according to one of their many selfimposed rituals, carried the animal between them, his foolish smiling face emerging from under Edward's arm, his woolly legs trailing, and his sausage of a wagging tail rhythmically lifting the hem of Henrietta's gingham dress.
Theodore, Octavian's valetudinarian elder brother, formerly an engineer in Delhi and now long unemployed, was well known to have left India under a cloud, although no one had ever been able to discover what sort of cloud it was that Theodore had left India under. Nor was it known whether Theodore in reality liked or disliked his brother, his contemptuous references to whom were ignored by common consent.
He was a tall thin grey-haired partly bald man with a bulging brow finely engraved with hieroglyphic lines, and screwed-up clever thoughtful eyes.
'Paula, must you read at the table?' said Mary.
Paula Biranne, the twins' mother, was still absorbed in her book. She left the disciplining of her children, with whom she seemed at such moments to be coeval, entirely to Mary. Paula had been divorced from Richard Biranne for over two years.
Mary herself was a widow of many years' standing.