Moonshine. Victoria Clayton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he was a newspaper reporter. After we passed Cheltenham he struck up a conversation with the woman next to him. He was a retired miner with silicosis. I saw again his eyes, mild, uncomplaining, his long upper lip and his patchily shaven chin as he talked about his passion for gladioli. And then, as I dozed, it grew redder and more angular, with fierce eyes and bared teeth. It became my father’s face.

      I roused myself and pulled my jacket closer round me, for though it was July the breeze from the sea was freezing. A young couple sauntered past, arm-in-arm, gave me a curious glance and walked on. I fell again into a waking dream in which my father’s face was constantly before me. His expression of ferocity as he threw down the newspaper at breakfast ten days before had lodged itself so securely in my memory that whenever I ceased to think actively it floated up from my subconscious to fill the vacuum.

      We had been sitting in the dining room, a shrine to Victorian mahogany, brown leather and second-rate watercolours. There were always twelve chairs round the table and we had occupied the same places from the time my brother and I had left the nursery. As in a dentist’s waiting room, we sat as far apart from one another as the arrangement allowed.

      My father was a small man and, with characteristic perversity, had chosen to marry my mother, who at five feet eleven was seven inches taller than he. This had embarrassed me horribly as a child. It seemed to detract from the dignity of each and I was afraid that people might laugh at them. If my father was in a good humour with my mother, he called her ‘Lanky’. Her name was actually Laetitia.

      When I examined the photograph on my mother’s dressing-table of my father in uniform as a young subaltern I could see he might once have been attractive. His hair had been thick and sandy, his brows well marked, his expression keen and pugnacious. Now he was largely bald so that clumps of hair sprouted above his ears in speckled tufts and his eyebrows were unruly. He bore a striking resemblance to a wire-haired fox terrier. He spoke in an aggressive, impatient manner and when he was angry the spaces between the thousands of freckles on his face became tomato red and the bridge of his short, hooked nose grew purple.

      Of course he was going to find out.

      When I had seen the newspaper neatly folded by his plate, placed there by our daily, Mrs Treadgold, I knew the moment of revelation had come. The story had been the third item on the television news the night before. I had switched it off with a fluttering heart and a sick feeling in my stomach as soon as I saw Burgo’s face appear on the screen. Luckily my father considered television plebeian, so he never watched it. For the remainder of the evening I had sat in painful suspense by the telephone in the hall in case one of my father’s cronies at the Army and Navy Club should have seen the news and be stirred by curiosity to ring him up on the pretext of condoling with him. No one had. Perhaps they too were a little frightened of him.

      I cannot explain why I was afraid of my father. I could not remember a time when I had not heard his approach with apprehension. Even when he was in a jovial mood, there was something combative in his voice and manner. And I knew how rapidly the joviality could turn to rage. I could be coldly analytical behind his back and sarcastic, even defiant, to his face, but none the less I dreaded his anger.

      The moment had come. I had braced myself inwardly and pretended to be busy with the marmalade while he cut the rind from his bacon, buttered toast and poured himself a second cup of tea before picking up the newspaper. I heard the abrupt cessation of crunching as his eyes fell on the offending photograph. He had let out a sudden roar of fury that made me drop my knife.

      ‘What! … No! … I don’t believe it!’ My father’s voice, usually distressingly loud, had an ominous strangled sound. He clutched the edge of the table as though unseen hands were attempting to drag him away.

      My heart, which had been pounding more or less continuously for the last few days, skipped a couple of beats. But I forced myself to look indifferently, even coldly, at him. We were alone in the dining room – my mother being an invalid now and Oliver unable to get up before noon. My father’s small brown eyes were watering with shock and he was making a gobbling sound in his throat. I watched him, wondering with a frightening detachment if he were about to have a stroke. He threw his napkin to the floor, clapped his hands on to the arms of his chair, stood up, strode round the table to where I sat and prodded energetically at the front page of the Daily Chronicle:

      ‘Well? Is there a word of truth in this?’

      I stared up at him dumbly. He seemed to interpret my silence as denial.

      ‘I want you’ – my father was breathing heavily and his eyes were bulging and crazed with red lines – ‘to tell me why anyone should … want to make up this disgusting farrago of lies.’ I noticed with a detached part of my mind that a blob of spit had landed on the butter. I made a mental note of exactly where so I could scrape it off afterwards.

      ‘Well? Well?’ He tried to shout but violent emotion had divested him of strength. ‘Are you going to give me some sort of … hah! … explanation?’

      I stood up, perhaps subconsciously to give myself the advantage of height. I was three inches taller than he. I wiped my fingers slowly with my napkin while schooling my face into an expression of challenge and defiance. ‘If you mean, have I been having an affair with Burgo Latimer, yes, I have.’

      He landed a smack on my jaw that knocked me sideways and made my teeth rattle. ‘Whore! Bitch! Shameless whore!’

      I shut my eyes to prevent tears falling and though my cheek immediately began to throb I remained outwardly calm. I braced myself for a second blow but it did not come. Probably it was the undeniably proletarian flavour of domestic violence that saved me.

      ‘By Christ!’ he said at last. ‘That ever a child of mine … behaving like a bitch on heat … common little tart … the disgrace … never live it down … sacrifices for my country … my own daughter … how am I going to hold up my head in the club?’

      I knew it would be pointless to attempt an explanation. I let him rave uninterrupted to get it over with as soon as possible.

      ‘I blame your mother,’ he concluded, in a tone into which some of the bittersweetness of having been deceived and betrayed was beginning to trickle. ‘She’s filled your head with sentimental claptrap. I suppose you fancied Latimer was in love with you. I hope he was good enough in bed to justify compromising the first decent government we’ve had for years. Don’t imagine you were the only one! He’ll have had his leg over every party worker under forty. What fools women are!’

      ‘You kept your word, I see.’ Kit evolved from the darkness and stood before me, laden with bulky objects. ‘Feeling better?’ He dropped a pile of blankets on the bench beside me and proceeded to wrap me in them. A man in uniform approached with a tray.

      ‘Just put it there. We’ll help ourselves, thanks.’ Kit put something into his hand and he slid away with a respectful murmur. ‘Now.’ Kit began to unwrap packages. ‘Never let it be said that we English can’t enjoy a picnic whatever the weather, even in the middle of the night on a ship trying to stand on its head. Cheese sandwich, madam? Or would you prefer cheese and pickle? Or there’s cheese and egg, and, for the connoisseur, cheese and sausage.’

      ‘I thought you said something about a mill-pond.’ Suddenly I found I was even a little hungry.

      ‘So I did when it was. As smooth as. But we’ve got out beyond the point now and it’s blowing up. No’ – as I turned my head to look – ‘just take my word for it. Now have some hot coffee and if you eat up your sandwiches you can have a treat afterwards. I managed СКАЧАТЬ