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

high heels and hoity-toity. 'You made us miss our tea, luv,' one of them said to me. `Yes, well, a
good thing, too,' I said. `You look as if you could stand to lose a stone or two.
Even Dean Matthews looked as though he did not com-pletely understand him. He said, "Did
set them up in the crypt?" and then introduced us. "Mr. Bartholomew's just got
in from Wales," he said. "He's come to join our volunteers." Volunteers, not fire watch.
Langby showed me around, pointing out various dimnesses in the general gloom and then dra
me down to see the ten folding canvas cots set up among the tombs in the crypt, also in pas
Lord Nelson's black marble sarcophagus. He told me I didn't have to stand a watch the first
and suggested I go to bed, since sleep is the most precious commodity in the raids. I could
believe it. He was clutching that silly pil-low to his breast like his beloved.
"Do you hear the sirens down here?" I asked, wondering if he buried his head in it.
He looked round at the low stone ceilings. "Some do, some don't. Brinton has to have
Horlich's. Bence-Jones would sleep if the roof fell in on him. I have to have a pillow. The impo
thing is to get your eight in no matter what. If you don't, you turn into one of the walking dead.
then you get killed."
On that cheering note he went off to post the watches for tonight, leaving his pillow on one o
cots with orders for me to let nobody touch it. So here I sit, waiting for my first air-raid siren
trying to get all this down before I turn into one of the walking or nonwalking dead.
I've used the stolen OED to decipher a little Langby. Mid-dling success. A tart is either a past
a prostitute (I assume the latter, although I was wrong about the pillow). Bourgeois is a catchall
for all the faults of the middle class. A Tommy's a soldier. Ayarpee I could not find under
spell-ing and I had nearly given up when something in the long-term about the use of acronyms
abbreviations in wartime popped forward (bless you, St. Kivrin) and I realized it must b
abbreviation. ARP. Air Raid Precautions. Of course. Where else would you get the bleeding
from?

September 21 -Now that I'm past the first shock of being here, I realize that the hi
department neglected to tell me what I'm supposed to do in the three-odd months of this prac-ti
They handed me this journal, the letter from my uncle, and a ten-pound note, and sent me pac
into the past. The ten pounds (already depleted by train and tube fares) is supposed to last me
the end of December and get me back to St. John's Wood for pickup when the second letter ca
me back to Wales to sick uncle's bedside comes. Till then I live here in the crypt with Nelson,
Langby tells me, is pickled in alcohol inside his coffin. If we take a direct hit, will he burn like a t
or simply trickle out in a decaying stream onto the crypt floor, I wonder. Board is provided by a
ring, over which are cooked wretched tea and indescribable kippers. To pay for all this luxury
to stand on the roofs of St. Paul's and put out incendiaries.
I must also accomplish the purpose of this practicum, whatever it may be. Right now the
purpose I care about is staying alive until the second letter from uncle arrives and I can go home
I am doing makework until Langby has time to "show me the ropes." I've cleaned the skillet
cook the foul little fishes in, stacked wooden folding chairs at the altar end of the crypt (flat in
of standing because they tend to collapse like bombs in the middle of the night), and tried to slee
I am apparently not one of the lucky ones who can sleep through the raids. I spent most o
night wondering what St. Paul's risk rating is. Practica have to be at least a six. Last night I
convinced this was a ten, with the crypt as ground zero, and that I might as well have applied
Denver.
The most interesting thing that's happened so far is that I've seen a cat. I am fascinated, but t
not to appear so since they seem commonplace here.

September 22 -Still in the crypt. Langby comes dashing through, periodically cursing va
government agencies (all abbreviated) and promising to take me up on the roofs. In the mean