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

�He was in the office this morning, talking to Yardman.’

�Getting his version in first[117 - Getting his version in first – (разг.) Первым хочет рассказать свою версию о случившемся], I suppose’.

�What happened?’ he asked interestedly.

�Billy picked a fight.’ I shrugged. �He resents my existence. It’s ridiculous. No one can help what his father is. You can’t choose your birth.’

�You feel strongly about it,’ Simon observed, ordering another pint.

I shook my head to his invitation.

�So would you, if you had to live with it. I mostly get treated as a villain or a nit or a desirable match, and not much else.’ I was exaggerating, but not unduly.

�That last doesn’t sound too bad,’ he grinned.

�You haven’t had half the debs’ mums in London trying to net you for their daughters,’ I said gloomily, �with your own mother egging them on.’

�It sounds a wow.[118 - It sounds a wow. – (разг.

) Звучит классно (великолепно, потрясающе).]’ He had no sympathy for such a fate.

�It isn’t me they want,’ I pointed out. �It’s only my name. Which is no fun at all. And on the other end from the wedding ring I get bashed around for exactly the same reason.’

�Very few can feel as strongly as Billy.’

I looked at him. �There were the French in seventeen eighty-nine[119 - the French in seventeen eighty-nine – Французская буржуазная революция], remember? And the Russians in nineteen-seventeen[120 - the Russians in nineteen-seventeen – Октябрьская революция].

They all felt as strongly as Billy’.

�The English like their aristocrats.’

�Don’t you believe it. They don’t mind them from the social point of view because titles make the scandal sheets juicier. But they make damn sure they have no effective power. They say we are a joke, an anachronism, out of date, and weak and silly.

They pretend we are these things so that we are kept harmless, so that no one will take us seriously. Think of the modern attitude to the House of Lords, for example. And you – you still think it funny that I want this sort of job, but you wouldn’t think so if my father was a… a farmer, or a pub-keeper, or a schoolmaster. But I’m me, here and now, a man of now, not of some dim glorious past. I am not an anachronism.