Читать книгу The Blind Man's House. A Quiet Story онлайн

20 страница из 63

Why had she been afraid in the car? She had forgotten why. How foolish! There was indeed no reason for any fear.

She rushed down the stairs, crying out: 'Julius! Julius!'

The light had mellowed across the village green, sinking deeply into every blade of grass, then soaking the soil like wine. The sky above Mr. Boss the butcher, Mrs. Irwin, post-mistress, Teak, stationer and bookseller, and the Methodist Chapel, was of a blue so magnificently self-satisfied that only one small ragged cloud, urchin and homeless, dared to cock at it a streaming finger.

The four ladies were gathered about the table.

Mrs. Ironing smiled brightly about her. It was one of her irritating traits that she should be so bright as well as so stupid, for this lent weight to the theory, very prevalent during these years in England, that if you had any brains you must be a cynic. To think well of life meant simply that you were Shakespeare's Idiot's Tale, signifying nothing as indeed Mrs. Ironing did.

She said now, with a kind of gurgle because she was biting her thread: