Читать книгу Five Quarters of the Orange / Пять четвертинок апельсина онлайн

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Reinette shook her head. “You’re crazy,” she said at last. “You know Mother would never let you go into town on your own. You’re too young. Besides-”

“I wouldn’t be on my own. You or Cassis could take me on the back of your bike,”

I continued stubbornly. She rode my mother’s bike. Cassis took Father’s bike to school with him, an awkward black gantrylike thing. It was too far to walk, and without the bikes they would have had to board at the collège, as many country children did.

“Term’s nearly over. We could all go into Angers together. See a film. Have a look round.”

My sister looked mulish.

“She’ll want us to stay home and work on the farm,” she said. “You’ll see. She never wants anyone to have any fun.”

“The number of times she’s been smelling oranges recently,” I told her practically, “I don’t suppose it will matter. We could sneak off. The way she is, she’ll never even know.”

It was easy. Reine was always easy to move. Her passivity was an adult thing, her sly, sweet nature hiding a kind of laziness, almost of indifference. She faced me now, throwing her last weak excuse at me like a handful of sand.