It had been a birthday treats
of Peter Pascoe, front row stalls at the Kemble Theatre with
after-show drinks provided by Eileen Chung, the Kemble's Director.
But her latest project should have set his storm warning flashing,
a huge outdoor community production of the Mediaeval
Mysteries.
I sent an invite to your boss. Only he hasn't replied.
'He's not that keen on formal social occasions,' said Pascoe.
Thing is, I want to audition him.I think Andy Dalziel might be just
abut perfect for God!
And pascoe had to sit down suddenly or else he might just have
fainted anyway.
Deterctive-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was being sick into a
bucket.
He counted, and quickly discounted, the six pints of bitter chased
by six double wiskies in the Black Bull; scrutinized closely but
finally acquitted the Toad-in-the-Hole and Spotted Dick washed down
with a bottle of Beaujolais in the Borough Club for Professional
Gentlemen; and finally condemned a glass of mineral water accepted
unthinkingly when one of the pickled onions served with his cheese
had gone down the wrong way.
It had probably been French. They boasted on their bottle that the
stuff was untreated, this from a nation whose treated water could
fell a healthy horse.
The retching seemed to have stopped. He raised his eyes and looked
around the kitchen.
Mabel had known there would
be silence. That was the point, after all. No infants cooing or
wailing. No children playing down the lane. All those sounds of her
failure and regret would be left behind, and in their place there
would be silence.
There had been the one. A tiny thing, born still and silent.Ten
years past, but even now she found herself returning to the birth
to touch Jack’s arm, reach out. She should have. She should have
looked into the baby's small face and known if it was a boy or a
girl, and then stood beside Jack as he buried it. She should have
allowed herself that grief.
Mabel stood at the window. November was here in the Alaska
wilderness, and it frightened her because she knew what it
brought—cold upon the valley like a coming death. The most of all,
darkness.
She entered last winter blind, not knowing what to expect in this
new, hard land. Now she knew.
Fethering is on the South Coast,
not far from Tarring. Though calling itself a village, it isn't
what that word immediately brings to the mind of people nostalgic
for an idealized, simpler England. Despite the presence of many
components of a village -- one church, one shop, one pub, one
petrol station, and a whole bunch of people who reckon they're the
squire -- Fethering is in fact quite a large residential
conurbation.
High on the Chalk
Etretat
Tuesday, 7th December, 1999
Sister Dearest,
The view from up here is amazing, but it's too cold to write
very much. My fingers can barely hold the pen. But I promised
myself I'd start this letter before returning to
England.
They were going to get
me.
I saw them waiting near the bus stop. Melanie, Sarah and Kim. Kim,
the worst one of all.
They'd spotted me.
I stood still. I couldn't really see that far, even with my
glasses.
Kim didn't wear ordinary glasses, of course. Girls like Kim never
wear glasses or braces on their teeth. They never get fat. They
never have a silly haircut. They never wear stupid baby
clothes.
If I ran back they'd only run after me. So I went on walking.
I tried to think what to do.
Daddy told me to try teasing her back. But you can't...
Jim Javis. Want to know who
that is? It's me! That's my name. Only thing I've got, is my name.
And I've give it away to this man. Barnie, his name is, or
something like that.
He keeps asking me things. He wants to know my
story, that's what he tells me. My story, mister? What d'you want
to know that for? Ain't much of a story, mine ain't. And he looks
at me, all quiet.
"It is, Jim," he says. "It's a very special
story. It changed my life, child, meeting you."
Funny that, ain't it? Because he changed my life, Barnie did.
I can't believe my luck, and that's a fact. Here I am with food in
my belly, and good hot food at that, and plenty more where that
came from, he says. I'm wearing clothes that smell nice and that
don't have no holes in, neither. The other boys are upstairs in
their hammocks, all cosy in the big room we sleep in. And
downstairs there's just me and him, special.
Once upon a time we were one
land. One great plain spread from all being now called England to
the Lowlands so that the Thames and the Rhine came together and
then the plain was swamped, the chalk rocks split and great white
cliffs were left bare.
But that, in these islands, was once upon a time, a time
without famous names. And what is history about
time without a name to it
Thomas Carlyle told us that 'No great man lives in vains.' 'The
history of the world,' he said, ' is but the biography of great
men.' Perhaps he was right. And so our story begins with the first
name we ever remember in the history of our English-speaking
peoples, Julius Caesar. And it begins also with the writings of
Churchill who traced the history of his nation, his
English-Speaking peoples.
WHEN THE DOOR BELL rings at
three in the morning, it's never good news.
Alex Rider
was woken by the first chime. The bell rang a second time, and he
looked at the alarm clock glowing beside him. 3:02 A.M.
He rolled
out of bed and walked over to the open window. Alex was fourteen,
already well built, with the body of an athlete. His hair, cut
short apart from two thick strands hanging over his forehead, was
fair. His eyes were brown and serious. There was a police car
parked outside.
There was no possibility of taking a walk
that day.
1
I
was glad of it: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw
twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the
chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and and humbled by my physical
inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.
2
The
said Eliza, John, and Georgiana were now clustered round their mama
in the drawing-room; Me, she had dispensed from joining the group;
saying, 'Until she heard from Bessie, that I was endeavouring to
acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, she really must
exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy,
little children.'
3
A
breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It
contained a bookcase. I soon possessed myself of a volume, and I
mounted into the window-seat, and, having drawn the red curtain
nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.
4
I
feared nothing but interruption, and that came too
soon.
5
'Madam Mope!' cried the voice of John
Reed.
6
'Where the dickens is she! Lizzy! Georgy!
Joan is not here.'
7
Eliza just put her head in at the door, and
said at once,
8
'She
is in the window-seat, to be sure.'
9
And
I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged
forth.
10
John
Reed was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than
I, for I was but ten.
11
He
bullied me continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every
morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near.
12
'What were you doing?' said he.
13
'I
was reading.'
14
'Show the book.'
15
I
returned to the window and fetched it thence.
16
'You
have no business to take our books; you are a dependant, mama says.
Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves. Go and stand by the
door.
17
I
did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw
him lift the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively
started aside with a cry of alarm. I fell, striking my head against
the door and cutting it. The cut bled, the pain was sharp. My
terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.
18
'Wicked and cruel boy! You are like a
murderer.'
19
'What! Did she say that to me? '
20
He
ran headlong at me. I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder, and I
received him in frantic sort. Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs.
Reed. She now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and the maid
Abbot.
Jane
Eyre 作者：Charlotte Brontë
英国文学经典，BBC于2003年12月人气调查，本书排行第十号于100本英国人喜欢读的书的清单上。
Something didn't smell
right.
Ginger stopped halfway down
Ashmore Street and sniffed the air.
Her nose tingled.
Her insides tightened.
Was it?
She couldn't be sure.
All the normal
walking-to-school smells were there. The soft tang of carports
warming up in the sun. The faint but exotic fragrance of mums and
dads frying breakfast for their kids. The lovely minty aroma of
families cleaning their teeth and telling each other jokes and
laughing and spraying toothpaste around the bathroom.
Ginger sighed and tried not to
feel jealous.
She could still smell
something else.
Something not right.
I'm going to ignore it, Ginger
decided. I'm not going to let it spoil my day.
发博文
加载中…
