Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

‘The bones straight.’

Christopher blinked and laughed. ‘Well, well, what do you know? The still waters of Henry might just possibly be running deep.’

‘Deep, nothing,’ said Maggie. ‘A stagnant pond, more like.’

‘Slimy and smelly?’ I suggested.

‘No… oh dear… I mean, I’m sorry…’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Never mind.’ I looked at the paper in my hand and picked up the telephone.

‘Henry…’ said Maggie desperately. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

Old Cooper tut-tutted and doddered away along the passage, and Christopher began sorting his varnished letters. I got through to Yardman Transport and asked for Simon Searle.

‘Four yearlings from the Newmarket sales to go to Buenos Aires as soon as possible,’ I said.

‘There might be a delay.’

‘Why?’

‘We’ve lost Peters.’

‘Careless,’ I remarked.

‘Oh ha-ha.’

‘Has he left?’

Simon hesitated perceptibly. ‘It looks like it.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He didn’t come back from one of the trips. Last Monday. Just never turned up for the flight back, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since.’

‘Hospitals?[14 - Hospitals? – (зд.) Больницы проверили?]’ I said.

‘We checked those, of course. And the morgue, and the jail. Nothing. He just vanished. And as he hasn’t done anything wrong the police aren’t interested in finding him. No police would be, it isn’t criminal to leave your job without notice. They say he fell for a girl, very likely, and decided not to go home.’

‘Is he married?’

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I’ll get on with your yearlings, but I can’t give you even an approximate date.’

‘Simon,’ I said slowly. ‘Didn’t something like this happen before?’

‘Er… do you mean Ballard?’

‘One of your liaison men,’ I said.

‘Yes. Well… I suppose so.’

‘In Italy?’ I suggested gently.

There was a short silence the other end. ‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ he said. ‘Funny coincidence. Well… I’ll let you know about the yearlings.’

‘I’ll have to get on to Clarksons if you can’t manage it.’

He sighed. ‘I’ll do my best. I’ll ring you back tomorrow.’

I put down the receiver and started on a large batch of customs declarations, and the long morning disintegrated towards the lunch hour. Maggie and I said nothing at all to each other and Christopher cursed steadily over his letters. At one sharp I beat even Maggie in the rush to the door.

Outside, the December sun was shining. On impulse I jumped on to a passing bus, got off at Marble Arch, and walked slowly through the park to the Serpentine[15 - the Serpentine – (зд.) цепь прудов в Лондонском Гайд-парке]. I was still there, sitting on a bench, watching the sun ripple on the water, when the hands on my watch read two o’clock. I was still there at half past. At a quarter to three I threw some stones with force into the lake, and a park keeper told me not to.

A spoilt bad-tempered bastard. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had been used to saying things like that, but she was a gentle see-no-evil person who had been made to wash her mouth out with soap for swearing as a child and had never taken the risk again. She was my youngest sister, fifteen years my elder, unmarried, plain, and quietly intelligent. She had reversed roles with our parents: she ran the house and managed them as her children. She also to a great extent managed me, and always had.

A repressed, quiet, ‘good’ little boy I had been: and a quiet, withdrawn, secretive man I had become. I was almost pathologically tidy and methodical, early for every appointment, controlled alike in behaviour, hand-writing and sex. A prim dim nothing, as Maggie said. The fact that for some months now I had not felt in the least like that inside was confusing, and getting more so.

I looked up into the blue gold-washed sky. Only there, I thought with a fleeting inward smile, only there am I my own man. And perhaps in steeplechases[16 - steeplechases – лошадиные бега по пересеченной местности (с препятствиями)]. Perhaps there too, sometimes.

She had been waiting for me as usual at breakfast, her face fresh from her early walk with the dogs. I had seen little of her over the week end: I’d been racing on Saturday, and on Sunday I’d left home before breakfast and gone back late.

‘Where did you go yesterday?’ she asked.

I poured some coffee and didn’t answer. She was used to that, however. ‘Mother wanted to speak to you.’

‘What about?’

‘She has asked the Filyhoughs to lunch next Sunday.’

I tidily ate my bacon and egg. I said calmly, ‘That coy spotty Angela. It’s a waste of time. I won’t be here anyway.’

‘Angela will inherit half a million,’ she said earnestly.

‘And we have beetles in the roof,’ I agreed dryly.

‘Mother wants to see you married.’

‘Only to a very rich girl.’

My sister acknowledged that this was true, but saw nothing particularly wrong in it. The family fortunes were waning: as my parents saw it, the swop of a future title for a future fortune was a suitable bargain. They didn’t seem to realise that a rich girl nowadays had more sense than to hand over her wealth to her husband, and could leave with it intact if she felt like it.

‘Mother told Angela you would be here.’

‘That was silly of her.’

‘Henry!’

‘I do not like Angela,’ I said coldly. ‘I do not intend to be here for lunch next Sunday. Is that quite clear?’