Endless Night / Бесконечная ночь. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I noticed the Sale Bill. Why? Fate up to its dirty work? Or dealing out its golden handshake of good fortune?[2 - Fate up to its dirty work? Or dealing out its golden handshake of good fortune? – РќР° СЃРІРѕСЋ беду? Р?ли СЃСѓРґСЊР±Р° преподнесла РјРЅРµ счастливый билет?] You can look at it either way.

Or you could say, perhaps, that it all had its beginnings when I met Santonix, during the talks I had with him; I can close my eyes and see: his flushed cheeks, the overbrilliant eyes, and the movement of the strong yet delicate hand that sketched and drew plans and elevations of houses.

One house in particular, a beautiful house, a house that would be wonderful to own!

My longing for a house, a fine and beautiful house, such a house as I could never hope to have, flowered into life then. It was a happy fantasy shared between us, the house that Santonix would build for me – if he lasted long enough…

A house that in my dreams I would live in with the girl that I loved, a house in which just like a child’s silly fairy story we should live together �happy ever afterwards’.

All pure fantasy, all nonsense, but it started that tide of longing in me. Longing for something I was never likely to have.

Or if this is a love story – and it is a love story, I swear – then why not begin where I first caught sight of Ellie standing in the dark fir trees of Gipsy’s Acre?

Gipsy’s Acre. Yes, perhaps I’d better begin there, at the moment when I turned away from the Sale board with a little shiver because a black cloud had come over the sun, and asked a question carelessly enough of one of the locals, who was clipping a hedge in a desultory fashion nearby[3 - in a desultory fashion nearby – (зд.

) резкими движениями].

�What’s this house, The Towers, like?’

I can still see the queer face of the old man, as he looked at me sideways and said:

�That’s not what us calls it here. What sort of a name is that?’ He snorted disapproval.

�It’s many a year now since folks lived in it and called it The Towers.’ He snorted again.

I asked him then what he called it, and again his eyes shifted away from me in his old wrinkled face in that queer way country folk have of not speaking to you direct, looking over your shoulder or round the corner, as it were, as though they saw something you didn’t; and he said:

�It’s called hereabouts Gipsy’s Acre.