Читать книгу Unconditional Surrender онлайн

23 страница из 62

Next door to "Beaches" there lived three R.A.F. sergeants in what was called "the studio." Here beaches were constructed in miniature, yards and yards of them, reproducing from air-photographs miles and miles of the coast of occupied Europe. The studio was full of tools and odd scraps of material, wood, metals, pastes, gums, pigments, feathers, fibres, plasters and oils, many of them strongly aromatic. The tone was egalitarian in an antiquated, folky way distantly derived from the disciples of William Morris. Two of the sergeants were mature craftsmen; one, much younger, wore abundant golden curls such as the army would have cropped. He was addressed as "Susie" and, like his predecessors in the Arts and Crafts movement, professed communism.

In their ample spare time these ingenious men were building a model of the Royal Victorian Institute. Guy took every opportunity to visit them and admire their work, as it daily grew to perfection. He paused there now.

"Been to see the Stalingrad sword?" Susie asked. "Nice bit of work. But I reckon a few machine guns would be more to the point."