Reader, I Married Him. Tracy Chevalier
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Название: Reader, I Married Him

Автор: Tracy Chevalier

Издательство: HarperCollins

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isbn: 9780008150594

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СКАЧАТЬ but no bowl, nothing to feed him in … All this came out, bit by bit, as the boys started telling me their story, why, that same morning, after being up all night, roaming around with a dog they never really intended to have, it was a good thing I’d come upon them, walking out of the park from my morning run … And, as for me, well, seeing some young men with a little dog, and leaving, after the conversation I had with them, with a pit bull terrier on a chain – one of the most dangerous dogs in Britain, all the papers say, with the most attacks on babies and toddlers, getting mauled in dog fights, all of it, you name it – it just shows how interesting life is, in stories and out of them. Because not only did I leave that morning with Mr Rochester on his little chain, but by the time I left I’d told his previous “owners” pretty much the full plot of Jane Eyre, and though all four of them thought it sounded “pretty fucking lame”, they agreed that the scene in the red room had its merits. “Yeah,” Steve said, quietly, as though to himself, after I’d finished telling that bit, “my gran used to put me in a room like that.”

      Anyhow, I’ve gone on and on, and Reed gave me, he gave all of us, a word limit and I need to start counting words now. But the reason I wanted to get it down as a story for class is because it was due to the events I’ve described that my life went into a change position when I came upon Mr Rochester that day. That was the “incident”, the “pulse moment”, you see – Reed said that straight away when I told him after class about what had happened to me in the park that morning. “This is all a story, Katherine, a great story with a pulse moment that kicks the whole thing into life. I think you should write it all down sometime,” and then we arranged to meet the next day and have a dog walk together because it turns out he was a pit bull man himself, he used to have one when he was a boy. “Let’s go for it,” he said, referring to the dog walk idea and doing that thing with his hair that I like so much, twisting it back with one hand so that he looks diffident and shy.

      And change, yes, change. Because now the story is done and I’m still training, of course I’m still doing all that, but I’m writing more, too, and reading, and Mr Rochester is a total peach and we take him to the park, twice every day, Reed and I, and we sometimes run into the guys there – Steve and Keith and Dave and Kevin – and they take a look at Mr Rochester then and I might tell them a bit more about his namesake because they occasionally ask after “Jane” and what else went on in that book and apparently, it’s written all over me, Reed says, I “could bring fiction to troubled kids in a new way”.

      And Reed? You’ve probably guessed. I married him. We decided that pretty soon after he said “Let’s go for it” about the dog walk but also meaning the idea of the two of us together. He said the whole thing lit up for him, as it did for me, the second I told him about my meeting with a so-called “dangerous dog” and the boys who gave him to me and what we talked about that morning, the boys and I, and what happened then, and what happened next. After that, as he said, it was just a case of writing it down.

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       TO HOLD

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       JOANNA BRISCOE

      READER, I MARRIED HIM because I had to.

      You see, we did in those days. There was no glimmer of a choice.

      My hand in marriage was requested by the boy with the triangular Adam’s apple and a shuffling thirst for a girl. He was the lad who worked for his parents’ motor garage on a yard beyond the village, and I hadn’t expected his offer after a lifetime of nods, three conversations, one dance and no kiss with him. But he knocked on our door and asked my father, who postponed his answer, crimson-necked. Using half an excuse, he told Dougie Spreckley to wait.

      As my parents’ only child – no further births; no boy to help with the rough work; no man’s wages to soften old age; only one womb available for the grandchildren they already treasured – I was aware that all hope lay with me, though they never said it, and the knowledge made me swallow a rise of nausea. They were good parents.

      It was Mr Tay-Mosby with his Mosby Hall who was the bright dream on the other side of Gibbeswick.

      The Hall lay along the Oxenhope road, behind park walls, vegetable garden abutting the moors. He had shown the Hall and gardens to me when I was a girl, just as he had taken me once to the fells and Tarey Carr beyond, where the bogs slumped and beige fogs sickened when the winds weren’t screaming.

      The espaliered walls, the choke of cabbages, ended in a gate that led straight through to where the gorse was webbed with nests and the merlins soared to Gibbeswick Fell. Tay-Mosby hiked daily through the tussocks accompanied by his dog, Ranger Boy, surmounted the head of the waterfall as he chopped at thorns with his stick, walked by the beck to where the quarry was, the Pennine Way, the views further west to witch country.

      He contemplated me as I grew. I was only aware of his appraisal as a blush inside me, because he wouldn’t look at me with his eyes. He turned away with a statue’s indifference if he ever spoke to me, yet he watched me too; my skin knew it.

      My mother was flustered by him, and mentioned him repeatedly; my father merely nodded his approval. I was fifteen when I understood their hope that I might one day have a chance with John Tay-Mosby, though he was as old as a father, and the shock of the realisation was so much worse than the terror of the blood when it first came out of me, worse than the killing of baby birds by Dougie and his friends, worse than seeing my father bang his head against the door because the beet crop’s roots grew cysts.

      You’re so pretty, they said, pretty as a picture, bonny as the day, smooth down your frock, stockings at sixteen. I was the picture; my parents were the frame. Mr Tay-Mosby looked at me by not looking at me.

      “Will she have me?” Dougie said to my father, to silence. “Please. Sir?”

      “Will you – will you – shall we be married?” Dougie stumbled to me, his neck bulge so close it blotted out the clouds behind him.

      In my surprise, I couldn’t answer. I was nearly nineteen by then; I was taking my teaching certificate, and they were scrimping and dressing me, and it was for Mr Tay-Mosby’s benefit as I was nudged towards him. All points led towards the Oxenhope road. By prettifying me, they wound me in shrouds that went over my mouth, but not my eyes.

      My mind shot along that road. The garden. The tussocks beyond.

      “Yes. I will, then. Thank you,” I said to Dougie, and wanted to hurt myself, but beyond the Adam’s apple was not the sky, only the stick of Tay-Mosby.

      The rumour of my engagement to Dougie Spreckley was put about the village, and my parents waited for Mr Tay-Mosby to emerge from the Hall with his own offer, but John Tay-Mosby wouldn’t marry me, though I could see him considering it, fighting with himself then resisting, as my parents rose and fell with the currents from the Hall. He would take aristocracy, or something close to it. I knew this. He did.

      My wedding night, it was like a wound that was scab-crusted and could only be broken with battering, Dougie pounding and belabouring, all concentration tight in a face like sinew, his eyes closed, and though I cried out and so nearly begged him to stop, so nearly, I knew that if I didn’t let him through that night, he would СКАЧАТЬ