A Pure Clear Light. Madeleine John St.
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Название: A Pure Clear Light
Автор: Madeleine John St.
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежные любовные романы
isbn: 9780007393152
isbn:
‘Can we go to Italy?’ asked Thomas.
This time everyone spoke with one voice. ‘No,’ they cried. ‘We’re going to France!’
‘If she’d got herself a bloke,’ said Simon, ‘the problem wouldn’t arise.’
‘Oh, Mother of God,’ said Flora, taking off her make-up. ‘If..’
‘What’s all this Mother of God racket we’ve been hearing lately?’ said Simon. He was lying in bed looking at a script.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Flora.
‘Then I wish you’d knock it off,’ said Simon. ‘It’s making me nervous.’
‘Why should it do that?’
‘Well, since there’s no such being as God, it’s a bit too spooky by half to be hearing about the Mother of. Be reasonable.’
‘Ah,’ said Flora. ‘Reasonable. Raisonnable. Well, who are we to know what’s reasonable. Let alone raisonnable.’
‘The very people,’ said Simon. ‘That’s who.’
‘Us sinners,’ said Flora. ‘We sinners.’
‘Yes, that’s one of many possible appellations.’
‘It’s the most raisonnable.’
‘Listen, Flora,’ said Simon. ‘I married you for your looks, not your brains.’
‘I’m one seamless whole,’ said Flora. ‘Take it or leave it.’ She got into bed.
‘It’s too late even to talk about leaving it,’ said Simon. He turned off the lamp and held her in his arms, still lying on his back, and kissed the top of her head. ‘I’m stuck with it,’ he said.
‘Brains and all.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m doomed.’ Flora said a few Hail Marys to herself, and fell asleep. Simon disengaged his arms, and turned over, and, after a while, fell asleep too.
Flora was thinking about the vast existential difference – it was, wasn’t it? – between being right, and having, as the French say, right, or right-ness: raison: reason. There, right-ness, or even righteousness, was reasonableness; and wrongness was therefore the consequence – or was it the condition? – of a logical error, a mistake. In French, to be right, d’avoir raison, was to have worked out a sum correctly, whereas in English there was no necessary suggestion of the reasonable: to be right in English was more like a piece of luck. Or a gift of God. Or a doom.
Flora was thinking about all this because she wanted to be right; the desire had arisen and was growing in her, she knew not why. The necessity was becoming almost urgent, whether to be right, or d’avoir raison, whichever it might more accurately be; and if it were a question after all of working out a sum correctly, then that would be existentially a rather different or even an entirely different affair from succumbing to a doom.
In any event, insofar as she could do the sum at all, or insofar as she could embrace her doom, Flora concluded that it would only be right to ask Lydia to come to France with them.
‘Floating World, hello.’
‘Oh Lydia is that you? Flora here.’
‘Oh Flora, hello, how nice.’
‘I know I mustn’t keep you during working hours, you must be so busy –’
‘So must you –’
‘Yes, thank God, I suppose, it’s just, I was wondering, are you going away this summer, have you anything planned?’
‘Yes, I’m going down to Italy for ten days; I’m sharing that villa in Sardinia for a bit that the Carringtons have taken with Robert’s sister, but she can’t go down until after – anyway – so that’s what I’m doing.’
‘Ah. Yes, well – I’d been wondering whether you might like to come to France with us – Simon can’t get away after all, you see, so we’ve some space –’
‘Oh, so sorry, I would’ve loved to, but it’s all settled now. You were sweet to think of me.’
‘Couldn’t you come on?’
‘Now that would be flashy; how I wish; but I can’t really leave the Floating World for that long, you see – not at this time of the year. It’s really my busiest; it’s like Christmas for Hamleys –’
‘Oh, yes, of course, yes, obviously. Well –’
‘Thank you anyway. It would have been lovely.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing. Sardinia will be lovely too.’
‘I hope so. I’ve just been and bought a new cozzie.’
‘You are brave!’
‘Yes. I had a brandy first.’
‘Did you really?’
‘Yes, truly. And then I just marched into Horrids and got it.’
‘Horrids, gosh.’
‘They have such a huge selection.’
‘That’s a point.’
‘And I couldn’t face going from shop to shop to shop.’
‘You are clever.’
‘I could do with being thinner.’
‘The swimming will see to that.’
‘So I do hope. Darling I must go now, I have to telephone the printer.’
‘Yes, right, I should be getting on with it myself, I’m doing the VAT returns. Have a lovely time in Sardinia if we don’t speak again beforehand –’
‘And you in – where, exactly?’
‘The Périgord.’
‘Oh how lovely.’
‘We’ll be in touch afterwards anyway, won’t we?’
‘Yes of course.’
They said their good-byes and Flora hung up. Well, so – she felt an odd sense of anti-climax. Honour on the one hand and selfish inclination on СКАЧАТЬ