"Connie Willis - Fire Watch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

happen almost si-multaneously, lighting my way home.
"Come to fetch me, did you, old tom?" I said gaily. "Where've you been? Knew we were o
kippers, didn't you? I call that loyalty." I talked to him all the way home and gave him half a tin o
kippers for saving my life. Bence-Jones said he smelled the milk at the grocer's.

November 13 тАФI dreamed I was lost in the blackout. I could not see my 'hands in front o
face, and Dunworthy came and shone a pocket torch at me, but I could only see where I had c
from and not where I was going.
"What good is that to them?" I said. "They need a light to show them where they're going."
"Even the light from the Thames? Even the light from the fires and the ack-ack guns?" Dunwo
said.
"Yes. Anything is better than this awful darkness." So he came closer to give me the pocket to
It was not a pocket torch, after all, but Christ's lantern from the Hunt picture inthe south na
shone it on the curb before me so I could find my way home, but it shone instead on the firew
stone and I hastily put the light out.

November 20 тАФI tried to talk to Langby today. "I've seen you talking to the old gentlema
said. It sounded like an accusation. I meant it to. I wanted him to think it was and stop whatev
was planning.
"Reading," he said. "Not talking." He was putting things in order in the choir, piling up sandba
"I've seen you reading then," I said belligerently, and he dropped a sandbag and straightened.
"What of it?" he said. "It's a free country. I can read to an old man if I want, same as you can
to that little WVS tart. "
"What do you read?" I said.
"Whatever he wants. He's an old man. He used to come home from his job, have a bit of br
and listen to his wife read the papers to him. She got killed in one of the raids. Now I read to h
don't see what business it is of yours."
It sounded true. It didn't have the careful casualness of a lie, and I almost believed him, excep
I had heard the tone of truth from him before. In the crypt. After the bomb.
"I thought he was a tourist looking for the Windmill," I said.
He looked blank only a second, and then he said, "Oh, yes, that. He came in with the paper
asked me to tell him where it was. I looked it up to find the address. Clever, that. I didn't gues
couldn't read it' for himself. "\But it was enough. I knew that he was lying.
He heaved a sandbag almost at my feet. "Of course you wouldn't understand a thing like
would you? A simple act of human kindness?"
"No," I said coldly. "I wouldn't."
None of this proves anything. He gave away nothing, ex-cept perhaps the name of an artificial
I can hardly go to Dean Matthews and accuse Langby of reading aloud.
I waited till he had finished in the choir and gone down to the crypt. Then I lugged one o
sandbags up to the roof and over to the chasm. The planking has held so far, but everyone w
gingerly around it, as if it were a grave. I cut the sandbag open and spilled the loose sand into
bottom. If it has occurred to Langby that this is the perfect spot for an incendiary, perhaps the
will smother it.

November 21 тАФI gave Enola some of "uncle's" money today and asked her to get me the bra
She was more reluctant than I thought she'd be so there must be societal complications I am
aware of, but she agreed.
I don't know what she came for. She started to tell me about her brother and some prank
pulled in the tubes that got him in trouble with the guard, but after I asked her about the brandy
left without finishing the story.