Scandalous Risks. Susan Howatch
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу Scandalous Risks - Susan Howatch страница 1
Название: Scandalous Risks
Автор: Susan Howatch
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежный юмор
isbn: 9780007396412
isbn:
Susan Howatch
SCANDALOUS RISKS
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HARPER
A division of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1990, then in paperback by Fontana 1991 and by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
Copyright © Leaftree Ltd 1990
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 978000739642
EBook Edition © JUNE 2012 ISBN: 9780007396412 Version: 2016-10-05
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
PART ONE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
PART TWO
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
PART THREE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
PART FOUR
ONE
TWO
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
‘For the true radical is not the man who wants to root out the tares from the wheat so as to make the Church perfect: it is only too easy on these lines to reform the Church into a walled garden. The true radical is the man who continually subjects the Church … to the claims of God in the increasingly non-religious world which the Church exists to serve.’
JOHN A. T. ROBINSON
Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich 1959–1969 Honest to God
‘We all need, more than anything else, to love and be loved.’
JOHN A. T. ROBINSON
Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich 1959–1969 Writing about Honest to God in the Sunday Mirror, 7th April 1963
I
I never meant to return to the scene of my great disaster. But one day, after yet another wasted weekend among alcoholic adulterers, I took a wrong turn on the motorway and saw the sign to Starbridge. Immediately I tried to escape. I drove up the next slip-road, but as I crossed the bridge to complete the U-turn I made the mistake of glancing south, and there, far away in the gap between the hills, I saw the spire of the Cathedral.
1988 dissolved into 1963. I glimpsed again my Garden of Eden, and as I hesitated at the wheel of my car, the rope of memory yanked me forward into the past. I forgot the U-turn, I forgot the motorway, I forgot my wasted weekend. On I drove to Starbridge along that well-remembered road which snaked between the hills before slithering to the floor of the valley, and ahead, appearing and disappearing with each twist of the road like some hypnotic mirage, the Cathedral grew steadily larger in the limpid summer light.
The city stood in the heart of the valley, but it was the Cathedral, eerie in its extreme beauty, which dominated the landscape, and as I stared at the spire I saw again that vanished world where the Beatles still had short hair, and skirts were yet to rise far above the knee and the senior men of the Church of England still СКАЧАТЬ