"Mary Stewart - Wildfire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

death, and never once mentioned Nicholas. Nor did anyone else, except Mother, who occasionally asked
after him in her letters, and even, on two occasions, wondered if we were thinking of starting a family. . . .
After a year or so I even managed to find this amusing, except when I was run-down and tired, and then
the gentle timelessness of Mother and Tench Abbas Rectory became more than I could bear.

So in mid-May last year, when London had been packed to suffocation for weeks with the Coronation
crowds already massing for the great day, and Hugo Montefior one morning took a long look at my face,
took another, and promptly told me to go away for a fortnight, I rang up Tench Abbas, and got Mother.

"A holiday?" said Mother. "The beginning of June? How lovely, darling. Are you coming down here, or
will Nicholas find it too dull?"

"Mother, IтАФ"

"Of course we haven't got television," said Mother proudly, "but we can listen to the whole thing on the
wireless. . . ."

I spared a glance for Montefior's salon windows, which have a grandstand view of Regent Street. "That
would be lovely," I said. "But, Mother dearest, would you mind if I went somewhere else for a bit first?
Somewhere away from everything . . . you know, just hills and water and birds and things. I'd thought of
the Lake District."

"Not far enough," said Mother promptly. "Skye."

Knowing Mother, I thought for one wild moment that she was recommending heaven as suitably remote.
But then she added: "Your father was talking about it at the Dunhills' garden party the other day. It rained
all the time, you know, and so we had to be indoorsтАФyou know how it always rains for the Dunhills' garden
party, darling?тАФ well, it did so remind Maisie Dunhill. They were there a fortnight once, and it rained every
day."

"Oh," I said, as light dawned. "Skye."
"And," said Mother, clinching it, "there's no television."

"It sounds the very place," I said, without irony. "Did Mrs. D. give you an address?"

"There are the pips," said Mother distractedly. "We can't have had three minutes, and they know how it
puts me off. What wasтАФoh, yes, the Dunhills ... do you know, darling, they've bought a new car, a huge
thing, called a Jackal or a Jaeger or something, andтАФ"

"Jaguar, Mother. But you were going to give me the address of the hotel where the Dunhills stayed."

"Oh yes, that was it. But you know Colonel Dunhill never drives at more than thirty-five miles an hour,
and your father saysтАФwhat, dear?"

I heard Father's voice speaking indistinguishably somewhere beyond her. Then she said: "Your father has
it, dear, written down. I don't quite know how. . . well, here it is. The Camas Fhionnaridh HotelтАФ"

"The what hotel, Mother?"

"CamasтАФI'll spell it." She did. "I really don't thinkтАФI don't rememberтАФbut this must be the one. What