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

No police would be, it isn’t criminal to leave your job without notice. They say he fell for a girl, very likely, and decided not to go home.’

�Is he married?’

�No.’ He sighed. �Well, I’ll get on with your yearlings, but I can’t give you even an approximate date.’

�Simon,’ I said slowly. �Didn’t something like this happen before?’

�Er… do you mean Ballard?’

�One of your liaison men,’ I said.

�Yes. Well… I suppose so.’

�In Italy?’ I suggested gently.

There was a short silence the other end. �I hadn’t thought of it,’ he said. �Funny coincidence. Well… I’ll let you know about the yearlings.’

�I’ll have to get on to Clarksons if you can’t manage it.’

He sighed. �I’ll do my best. I’ll ring you back tomorrow.’

I put down the receiver and started on a large batch of customs declarations, and the long morning disintegrated towards the lunch hour. Maggie and I said nothing at all to each other and Christopher cursed steadily over his letters.

At one sharp I beat even Maggie in the rush to the door.

Outside, the December sun was shining. On impulse I jumped on to a passing bus, got off at Marble Arch, and walked slowly through the park to the Serpentine[15 - the Serpentine – (зд.) цепь прудов в Лондонском Гайд-парке]. I was still there, sitting on a bench, watching the sun ripple on the water, when the hands on my watch read two o’clock.

I was still there at half past. At a quarter to three I threw some stones with force into the lake, and a park keeper told me not to.

A spoilt bad-tempered bastard. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had been used to saying things like that, but she was a gentle see-no-evil person who had been made to wash her mouth out with soap for swearing as a child and had never taken the risk again. She was my youngest sister, fifteen years my elder, unmarried, plain, and quietly intelligent.

She had reversed roles with our parents: she ran the house and managed them as her children. She also to a great extent managed me, and always had.

A repressed, quiet, �good’ little boy I had been: and a quiet, withdrawn, secretive man I had become. I was almost pathologically tidy and methodical, early for every appointment, controlled alike in behaviour, hand-writing and sex. A prim dim nothing, as Maggie said.