Guy N. Smith - Throwback

VIP免费
2024-12-19 0 0 364.19KB 147 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
PART ONE
SUMMER
CHAPTER ONE
GRADUALLY THE girl came to the conclusion that she was ill. It could not be
anything else.
She pushed her way across the pavement, stood with her back against a brick
wall, felt the rough surface scraping her skin through her blouse and jeans.
The brickwork seemed to move, like a piece of automatically operated emery
paper. Up, down, up, down. Her groping fingers found a doorpost, gripped it;
it was moving too. Up, down, up, down, gyrating.
People pushed past her, bumped into her. A woman clutched at her, almost
pulled her down, but somehow she held on. Everybody was rushing, a seething
mass of hastening humanity as though everybody was ill, that they were
hurrying back to their homes before they collapsed in the street. A street
that undulated like a slow-motion roller-coaster, had you clinging on to
anything you could find, throwing up. Somebody had been sick, she could smell
it. It might even have been herself.
Jackie Quinn just stood there, made a supreme physical effort to stay upright.
That feeling of faintness kept coming and going, waves of black and red, hot
and cold. Sweating and shivering. A hubbub of voices, louder, dying away,
rising again, human voices crying out inarticulately, but nobody stopped; they
all had somewhere to go. Maybe she ought to join them, stagger along with the
shambling tide.
Her brain wasn't working properly, even her terror was numbed by a sense of
incomprehension. Frightened one second, accepting the situation the next. I'm
Jackie Quinn. I don't know who I am, where I am. Yes, you do, you're in
Shrewsbury. Where's Shrewsbury? How did I get here, where am I supposed to be
going? I don't know, just stay where you are, you can't do anything else.
She narrowed her eyes, exerted all her remaining will power in one big push to
adjust her vision; pushed again and made it for a second or two. The street
was a sloping bend, traffic at a standstill, some of the vehicles empty,
abandoned by their drivers as they, too, joined the lemming-like stampede.
Run, because you can't do anything else. But Jackie remained where she was.
There was definitely something wrong with her eyesight. Like tunnel vision,
the tunnel becoming narrower and darker, people fleeing. Fleeing from her? An
awful sensation of guilt; blurred faces glancing back every so often. She
could not quite make out the fear in their expressions but she knew it was
there. You've done this to us, Jackie Quinn.
No, that was damned stupid. Whatever was the matter with her was the matter
with them also. Only I'm not going with you, wherever you're going. I'm going
to stay right here, try and work it all out for myself. Then the tunnel
darkened, blanked everything out. Who am I, where am 1? I don't know.
A shrieking wailing sound, a dazzling blue light that seared her eyeballs, the
concrete beneath her starting to heave up again. She felt her stomach coming
up, didn't try to stop it, turned her head away and let the spew come with its
own force. Falling, hitting the hard pavement but still hanging on to that
wooden post; if you let go you'll be swept away.
After she had vomited Jackie felt marginally better. Another flash of
lucidity, much stronger than the last one, opening her eyes but the light was
too bright. Not just the flashing bulbs of ambulances and police cars caught
up in the stationary traffic but dazzling sunlight like you found in tropical
areas. Squinting, determined to watch what was going on. Noise that had her
wincing, cowering back. A police car, a red and white one, had ploughed into
the standing cars and an ambulance had gone into the back of it. Vehicles were
shunted, buckled.
People were screaming. Everybody had gone mad.
I'm mad, too, she thought. But what the hell is the matter with me? She had to
find out, get help. Still holding on to that wooden upright she twisted
herself round. People buffeted her as they streamed past but she managed to
maintain her grasp. A shop window, some kind of display, but it did not
register in her brain because she wasn't interested, only in the reflection in
the glass. That familiar street scene but she forced herself to dismiss it,
didn't want to see it again. Only herself!
Oh God! Her own image came at her, barely recognisable from the one she had
studied in the mirror before leaving the house that morning.
Which morning?
It was her face. She pressed herself up against the heavy-duty glass pane in
her anguish. Her smooth skin had become blotched and rough, almost raw in
places. The eyes had sunk back into dark sockets, pinpoints of blue that
glistened unnaturally. Her pert nose and lips were thick, squat, almost
mongolotd in appearance. Smooth silky carefully groomed blonde hair was
tangled and awry, coarser, as though a new growth predominated; darker too.
Her breasts appeared to have inflated, she could feel them pushing against the
restriction of her bra. And then the vision faded, darkened, and she thought
she was going to pass out.
She sank down to her knees, sobbed. It was like a feverish nightmare where
weird fantasy became macabre reality amidst a heap of sweat-soaked bedsheets.
You kicked and tossed, fought your own battle, sweated it out, and eventually
everything turned out all right. Closing her eyes, trying to pray only she
could not remember the words, not a single one. Crying with frustration and
fear, beating her fists on the hard pavement. The concrete should have been
damp linen, it wasn't. It was concrete, real concrete. Reality!
She slumped against the wall, cried out with pain as a passer-by trod on her
outstretched foot, kicked it in blind anger before stumbling on. She was
trembling, pushing hard in an attempt to make her brain work, a motorist
jamming his finger on the starter-button on a frozen winter's morning. Come
on, for God's sake come on, you bastard!
It hurt, like a darning needle penetrating her brain, bringing with it
blinding migraine pains, darkness streaked with crimson, a crazy reflection of
the workings of her own mind, loose wires that did not connect. Fusing.
Then, without warning, everything came right again. You're ill and you're
lying in a street, Shrewsbury. You came here shopping like you do every week
but something went wrong. She could see, painful in the bright sunlight, but
she could see all right. Oh Jesus, what was the matter with everybody?
Crowds everywhere, a shambling disorientated throng which surged one way then
the other like mobs of rival soccer hooligans charging one another, climbing
over the tangled heap of crushed metal where the police car and the ambulance
had shunted the traffic jam, uniformed figures sitting motionless inside the
vehicles seemingly oblivious to everything around them; they might even have
been dead, held upright by their seat-belts. Fighting, falling, being crushed
by motiveless feet.
Jackie pressed herself back against the wall, took a deep breath but did not
close her eyes in case her vision went again. Try to think logically. It
wasn't easy; a man with a blistered face came gambolling down the pavement,
saw her and checked. Stooping, peering, tongue licking festered lips, eyes
bright orbs that glowed with primordial lust. A hand reached out, would have
grabbed her had not somebody bumped into him, sent him staggering. A shriek
like that of a wounded animal at bay came from those diseased lips and then
he, too, was swept up by the tide of relentless, purposeless movement, and was
gone for ever.
Jackie scanned faces; wild and fevered all of them, a hopelessness about their
expressions. Some fought, but only because others got in their way. A kind of
exodus but nobody was going anywhere in particular.
They're ill, she thought, like me. But how can everybody be ill? Her brain
threatened to blank out again, a flickering hesitating light bulb in a
thunderstorm, a transformer that could not take the additional load. A
helmetless policeman in the midst of a bunch of teenagers, his headgear a
football, the game being played under elementary rules. Kick it, watch it
bounce, kick it again. The officer joined in, booted it high into the air but
nobody went after it; everybody was too busy going nowhere in particular.
She told herself she could not stop here. I have to go home. Where's home?
Thinking again, overloading her delicate aching thought-mechanism so that it
bleeped and gave off a mass of red floaters in front of her eyes. Her home was
up in the hills thirty miles away from all this madness. Jon, her husband,
would be there, totally oblivious to all of this. Maybe he wouldn't even care
if he did know because their marriage was finished and no doubt he had that
Atkinson girl with him. A kind of mutual agreement that you came to when there
was nothing else left between you. You both had lovers, made a pretence of
keeping it a secret from each other but it was all a waste of time because you
both knew anyway. A facade, a game you played. Go and enjoy your day's
shopping, dear, I'll be OK (because Sylvia will get my lunch and I'll be able
to screw her). Stop on late if you want and go to Tiffany's because you know I
don't like dancing. I know you'll jive all by yourself. (If you find yourself
a man for the night please don't tell me because it'll spoil our little game.)
But I want to go home! Maybe under normal circumstances she would have given
way to hysteria. Women were crying and screaming all around her. Damn it, I'm
going home!
She stood up again. Funny, she should have been weak, legs threatening to
buckle under her, throw her back down to the ground. But she felt strong; ill
but strong. It was illogical, too complicated for her to work out.
She held her bare arms out in front of her, gazed at them in revulsion. It was
as though she had dipped them in a bath of scalding water, the skin peeling
yet hardening, knitting together again in a strange kind of plastic coating.
So rough, they didn't hurt half so much now.
Check your reflection again in that shop window. No, I don't want to see.
Well, you can't stop here.
She found herself running, a crazy zig-zag sprint that took her across the
road, weaving in and out of cavorting, stumbling men and women, reached the
opposite pavement. A hand closed over her arm, grasped her wrist, but she
threw it off. Keep going, up those steps to the church above. Don't stop.
It wasn't a church. She knew that only too well, had been in here often
enough, every week in fact. St Julian's Craft Centre, much of the church
edifice untouched, stalls where once there had been pews, the altar removed
during the process of deconsecration. Stained glass windows that flickered
brightly, had her turning her head away because her eyes hurt. So cool and
refreshing, she could stop in here forever; die here!
No, you're not going to die. Pull yourself together. A man, the only occupant
of the interior, features she recognised in spite of the awful disfigurement,
but she had never known his name. He was to be found in here most weeks, a
browser who wore a long frayed black coat, summer and winter alike, a long
straggling beard giving him a bohemian appearance. Today he looked wild-eyed
at her, acknowledged her with a smile that had spittle stringing down his
hairy chin.
"They ... did ... this . . .'He had difficulty getting the words out, a
physical effort like one who stammered, wrenching the sounds out of his
throat.
'Who?' Jackie barely recognised the sound of her own voice, a nasal grunt that
had her drawing in breath to refill her lungs.
He regarded her steadily, a look that said, 'You fool, you don't even know.'
'The Russians,' he said at length, leaned his full weight back against a
creaking stall table.
She stared, tried to take in his words, let her own personal computer process
the data, spit out the answer.
The Russians. Her mind threatened to go blank again; a familiar ominous word.
The Russians! She had to fight to comprehend and it hurt. And then her
smarting burning flesh went cold.
'The . . . Russians'
He nodded, closed his eyes momentarily, reminded Jackie of a drowsy bird of
prey.
'Somehow. . . they've done . . . this.'His breath rasped in his throat. 'Not
... the bomb ... we wouldn't be here now if it was. Something . . . else . . .
don't know . . . what.' Fighting for air, wheezing, holding hard on to that
table. 'We're all going to ... die!'
The shock to her system blanked her out again and she moved away, walking
unsteadily across the flagged floor, her footsteps echoing. An open door; she
knew she had been through it before. A corridor; through another open door.
This time it was the aroma of cooking food which brought back her hazy powers
of thinking, hit her like a whiff of smelling salts to a fainting person. Her
brain whirred again, that starter-motor turning over sluggishly and just
managing to fire; only just.
Of course, she was in Delany's. She came in here every week; baked jacket
potato and cheese and a pot of peppermint tea. The familiar smell had revived
her and in that instant she knew she had to eat. Whatever had happened to her
body it still cried out for food.
The vestry restaurant in the old church was empty. Ovens steamed, a kettle was
boiling dry. Jackie moved up to the counter. Everybody had gone, spilled out
into the street leaving the food to spoil and waste, yielding to a sudden
panic before their reasoning was blotted out. Hers would go soon, her system
could not stand this stop-start much longer. Then she, too, would follow the
masses, turn into a human lemming.
Some kind of nut shortcake in a long tray, divided up into square portions.
She grabbed one, took a bite, chewing noisily and spilling crumbs. Christ, she
was starving so she could not be as ill as she thought. A glance down at her
hands and she jerked her eyes away. Her fingers were raw, thicker as though
they were swollen, but not bleeding. Just unsightly, ugly.
Time wasn't on her side, any second she might click back into being a mindless
moron again. Don't push too hard, thinking hurts but you've got to get the
hell out of here. This place was hell. The car, it was parked on the big
riverside park. She thought she knew the way, back down through the Riverside
Shopping Centre and over the suspension bridge. But even if she managed to
find it, would she be able to drive it? You might black out suddenly. The
streets would be jammed with abandoned vehicles and crowds aimlessly blocking
the way; mobs that would surely go on the rampage.
Despair. She wouldn't make it, neither could she stay here. In that case . . .
and somewhere in the recesses of her confused mind she remembered the empty
house in First Terrace. It was a long way from here, further than the car park
down by the river, but it was out of town and maybe she would make it.
A year or two ago she used to go there quite a lot, in the days before
Pauline's mother had died. A calling place, mainly to fill the afternoon in
before it was time to go to Tiffany's. As far as she knew the place was still
empty, some structural problems that had prevented the family from putting it
on the market. Subsidence caused by the drought of 1976 had cracked the
foundations and, accord-. ing to Pauline, the insurance company were being
bloody awkward about it, looking for loopholes and trying to get the family to
have a cosmetic job done and put it up for sale at a third of the market
value. They were still arguing, which meant the place was still unoccupied.
And for the moment that was the place to go.
In those few seconds before her mind fogged again Jackie had the foresight to
fill her empty plastic carriers with food from the counter, scooping up
anything within reach, regardless of how it broke or crumbled. The rest of
that nut crumble, handfuls of fresh salad, some baked potatoes that were going
cold. A morass, a bag in either hand, and then the mist came down again.
She wandered aimlessly around the restaurant, shied away from the steaming
unattended stoves because fire terrified her; a creature seeking a way out
from an unfamiliar place.
She found her way back into the main church. That man was still there but now
she did not recognise him, did not remember having seen him before.
'They did this.' He regarded her with a glassy stare, still dribbling. The
Russians.'
Fear; because she did not understand his words and his whispered tone
frightened her. He was a threat to her safety. She ran blindly, not knowing
where she was going, a panic-stricken flight that took her back outside into
the hot dazzling sunlight, blinded her so that she did not see the flight of
stone steps.
She screamed as she fell, felt the impact, but strangely it did not hurt;
rolling, bumping, her inflamed body cushioning the blows, still clutching
those carriers as they spilled scraps of natural wholefood in her wake.
Landing on the pavement below where everything came back to her again. The
fall had jump-started her brain, set her sluggish reasoning in motion once
more.
People still milled about aimlessly, unintelligible shouts and grunts filled
the air. Pushing, shoving, a young girl screaming as they trampled her,
maddened cattle preparing to stampede.
Jackie Quinn pulled herself up, scrambled back up those steps, still carrying
her squashed food. For a few moments, at least, she knew the way she had to
go, through St Julian's again and out the back way; keep clear of the crowds
and hurry whilst she still remembered which way to go.
There were fewer people on this side of town. A woman was slumped on a bench,
she looked dead, and a man sat beside her apparently unaware of her presence.
He looked up once as Jackie hurried by but he gave the impression that he did
not even see her. He might have been blind.
It was amazing, frightening, how her strength had not waned. If anything she
felt stronger, fitter, except for the smarting of her flesh and that constant
thumping headache. In those first few awful minutes (hours?) she had weakened,
felt abominably ill, but now that sensation had passed. She refrained from
looking down at herself, didn't want to know; it was as if she had been given
another body, a strong coarse squat butch frame. A sex change? God, she'd
never look at herself again.
Hurry, your mind could go again at any second and then you'll be lost!
It was a long way, maybe two miles. Over the English Bridge, turning to the
right, preferring to walk in the road because there were people about again,
most of them sticking to the pavements, an instinct that was too ingrained in
them for them to venture on to the highway. Yet.
A jumble of motor vehicles, a dozen or more minor crashes except for the one
in the middle of the road where a lorry had shot the lights and gone over a
Mini. The lights were still working, eerily, pointlessly; red, amber, green,
but nobody was going anywhere.
A body lay on the tarmac, stark naked. Man or woman, it was hard to tell
because it was mangled and bloody, probably thrown from the crushed car.
Jackie thought she might spew again but that feeling of nausea was stopped
instantly by an animal-like roar that had her forgetting the carnage.
A man was coming round the back of a bumped Ford pick-up, shouting hoarsely,
pointing at Jackie. In one fleeting second she saw and understood. He was big
and muscular, blotched skin like everybody else, and naked from the waist
downwards. He wanted her, all right, and for one reason only!
She broke into a run, her carrier bags bumping and jogging against her, fast
strides that scarcely affected her rate of breathing. Weaving her way through
the line of cars, aware of his padding bare footsteps. Louder, closer, he
would catch her soon, it was inevitable. Her heartbeats speeded up in time
with her pounding head.
And then she heard a scream, half-checked and turned her head back to look.
Her pursuer had altered his course, spied a woman propped up in a newsagent's
doorway. A couple of bounds and he had her, threw her roughly down on the
concrete. She struggled, screamed again but it was futile. So deliberate, so
fast, a stag taking his hind by force on the rutting stand. A forced mating,
any female was fair game.
Jackie fled, veered to the other side of the road because she spied a bunch of
youths and wanted to avoid passing close to them. They did not appear to
notice her. More than her life was at stake.
With relief she saw and recognised the Monkmoor lights. A phone box; an idea
that hurt like a migraine stab almost blanked her out again. She would ring
Jon, he would come and rescue her. Whatever had been between them in the past
was a strong enough link. He would not desert her in her terrible hour of
need.
Jackie Quinn glanced around, furtively, guiltily. A youth on the opposite side
of the road was watching her, yet his expression was not one of lust like the
man who had chased her, rather vacant as though he saw but did not understand;
almost hypnotised.
She dragged the heavy glass door open, went inside and let it bang shut behind
her, a vibration which jarred her nerves, speeded up the thumping in her head.
Jon would come, he did not have to drive through the blocked town. Down the
A49; she could even walk down and meet him there. Another thought, perhaps he
would not believe her, think that it was some ruse on her part or else she had
gone mad. Everything up in the hills would be perfectly normal, nothing
untoward ever happened up there. You've got to believe me, Jon. Something's
happened, everybody's come out in ghastly rashes and nobody knows what they're
doing. Except me and I might go on the blink at any second. It's the Russians!
I know it is because ... a man told me it was. Oh God, it sounded lame, a
kid's fantasy. You've got to believe me, please. Her head was vibrating as
though there were steam pistons in her brain. A robot, controlled by ... Oh
Christ Alive, her vision was tunnelling again, like looking down a telescope
from the wrong end, seeing just a circle with a tiny grey telephone ringed in
it. Start dialling now before it's too late!
Her forefinger was almost too thick to go in the hole. Fumbling, missing and
having to start again. Pushing with all her psychological strength, a
tremendous effort.
0... 5. ..8. ..8. ..4. ..It was going to take hours. The dialling tone started
up another vibration in her brain, a minute pneumatic drill boring into her so
that the tunnel was becoming even narrower. She could barely make out the
numbers now. 8 ... 4 ... One slip and you'll have to start all over again. 5
... 5 ...
And then everything went black and red and the receiver was swinging on its
flex like a pendulum gone berserk, banging against the pay-box.
It took Jackie Quinn some time to work out exactly where she was. A wide main
road, totally deserted, not even an abandoned vehicle. The river below, a deep
muddy current, the grass on either side brown and sun-scorched; dying.
Just walking, aimlessly, because there was nothing else to do, accepting what
she saw with numbed apathy. The fear, the pain were gone. There was nothing
left.
She still carried the plastic bags filled with mushed food because it never
occurred to her to discard them, a mindless living thing in a dead world.
Scattered trees that appeared to have gone into their annual leaf-fall, but if
you looked close you saw that the foliage was shrivelled and blackened instead
of a golden brown tint. Heat scorched. But Jackie Quinn was not aware of this
nor anything else.
The thumping in her head began again, more persistent and painful than before,
bringing with it a glimmering of fear, the beginnings of realisation again.
Stopping, holding on to a low branch of a withered tree. Waiting.
The pain came back, brought everything else with it. Oh God, she hadn't
managed to phone Jon, hadn't made it in time. A sensation of helplessness,
hopelessness, seeing the scorched countryside and knowing that it was not just
a month of hot June weather that had done this. It was . . . she didn't know
what it was, only that suddenly the whole world had changed.
She would go on to Pauline's mother's house. There was a phone there and she
would try again. The blackouts were becoming more frequent; she had to hurry.
Almost running when she saw the traffic island. Miraculously she had continued
in the right direction; not far now.
The pub, its doors closed, an atmosphere of finality about it. The housing
estates beyond, people standing about, flesh-scarred caricatures of their
former selves, not understanding, not caring. Just living, but for how long?
Death was surely the next stage, Jackie prayed that it was because to go on
living like this was too awful to contemplate.
There had been a pile-up on the island, a car and a van meeting head-on, an
articulated lorry ploughing the wreckage up on to the concrete, flattening it,
a body in the road. No help had arrived and it certainly would not be coming
now. Even if it did it was too late.
She broke into a run, felt her vision beginning to channel before it actually
did, forced into the road again where the kerb had been built up in Sundorne
Road, not a footpath, just a meaningless raised stretch of tarmac, dangerous
because one could so easily fall back into the road; but it didn't matter
anymore. There would not be any traffic again, ever.
Turning left into First Terrace, sensing her power of reasoning beginning to
fade. Number One, she knew it so well. Almost derelict, broken slates on the
roof, a square hole dug out by the front door where the surveyors had
attempted to investigate the subsidence cracking. The grass lawn a foot high,
withered as though it had been sprayed with paraquat, the flowering bushes in
an advanced state of macabre autumnal change. There had been no rain for
months.
She saw the front gates framed in a tiny circle, dilapidated woodwork that
hung heavy on the concrete, her hands closing over them even though they
seemed a hundred yards away. Pushing, dragging, almost falling headlong as
they yielded to her efforts, a tinkling of metal as a rusted hinge snapped and
clinked on the ground.
The throbbing was fading, that tiny circle magnifying, knowing only too well
now what was happening to her. The feeling came and went, her logic an
early-morning mist evaporating in the warmth of sunlight. So much stronger
again, the waistband of her jeans straining as her body filled with unnatural
physical strength.
Another couple of strides and then everything was gone. She stood there on the
short weed-covered drive not knowing where she was nor why she was here, not
questioning, still holding on to the carrier bags because there was no reason
to jettison them.
She breathed deeply then found a new rhythm, one that flared her nostrils into
wide squat cavities, her lips pulled back to expose strong white teeth,
realising that her body cried out for something but not knowing what. Then her
stomach rumbled and she knew that she needed food. The bags dropped from her
hands, spilling out their contents, but they were ignored; reaching up,
pulling at foliage, sniffing it but it was brown and bitter, unpalatable. She
grunted with rage, tore at more branches, cast them aside. And overhead a
wheeling crow cawed its own anger and frustration. It, too, was having
difficulty in finding food in this burned-up land.
CHAPTER TWO
'Jesus CHRIST, what wouldn't I give for some proper food.' Sylvia Atkinson
wrinkled her freckled features in disapproval as she chewed on a handful of
freshly pulled bean sprouts. 'Being a health food freak isn't my idea of
eating, Jon.'
'It's the difference between surviving or dying.' Jon Quinn regarded her
steadily, furrowed his brow and wondered how long it would be before she went
over the top, ran up that flight of steps and out into the remnants of the
world they had once known. 'At the moment we have two advantages over the rest
of the population of Great Britain, maybe even over the western world. We have
a seed-sprouter and an almost unlimited supply of fresh food, and, as far as
we can tell, we're more or less all right, just like we used to be. God knows
how everybody else will finish up, how much longer they'll last. All we can do
is stop down here and wait.'
They ate in silence, everything that had to be said had been said during the
last few days. Now they were starting to get on each other's nerves, which was
inevitable. He studied her carefully, let his gaze run over the small slim
figure clad in a soiled cheese-cloth dress, sandalled feet and purple
toenails, ran his eyes all the way back up her again. Her short dark hair was
tangled and needed combing but she wasn't in the mood, her complexion so much
paler without make-up. Dark eyes that no longer shone, were pouched and baggy
underneath. A permanent expression of hopelessness, she was fast giving in,
becoming a problem that he could well do without. Jackie had more resilience,
would have come up with a few constructive ideas by now. And, that constant
nagging thought, where was Jackie?
Shrewsbury, no doubt. Alive or dead? It was anybody's guess who was alive or
dead out there.
He found himself studying the interior of the cellar again even though every
square inch of it was indelibly imprinted on his mind. Boring, but it was the
sole reason they were still alive.
The idea of converting this underground ten-by-ten cubicle into a nuclear
fall-out shelter had seemed a crazy whim five years ago but, as he had pointed
out to Jackie, it could serve a dual purpose; food storage in case it was ever
needed, an ideal place for seed-sprouting and a few mushroom buckets. A potato
store, too. That way Jackie had not been so cynical about it, only begrudging
the money spent on filters and other items of equipment needed to combat
radiation in the atmosphere. All the same, he had constructed the shelter
subversively under this ploy, got his own way by cunning. There was no
incentive to build something which you hoped you would never have to use but
if it had an alternative purpose it wasn't so bad. The ironic part was that
Jackie wasn't here so that he could say, 'I told you so.'
Shelving on two walls, mostly stacked with durable foodstuffs from the health
food shop in Knighton. Coffee (decaffeinated), a selection of herb teas,
muesli bars, a variety of nuts, tubs of seeds for sprouting, dried vegetables.
Eating, for Jon, wasn't any different now from what it had been for years.
Jackie wouldn't have minded but Sylvia was yearning for a return to
convention. That might never happen, probably wouldn't, but he could not tell
her that because it would destroy that last tiny flicker of hope that kept her
going.
Eight years ago he had been just an ordinary clerk working in a Birmingham
office, nine to five, Mondays to Fridays, on a take-home of eighty a week. He
wasn't well, nothing that you could put your finger on, probably a combination
of junk food and boredom that inspired him to vegetate. It was Jackie who had
been the driving force behind him, had dragged him out of the rut. Earlier in
her life, before their marriage, she had been a vegetarian and she had
realised the necessity to find an avenue of escape from their conventional
existence. Reading and fantasising about 'the good life' was one thing; having
the courage to put it into practice was another.
The following spring she had persuaded him to dig up the upper-tier lawn of
their small semi-detached garden and plant it with vegetables. 'It's a
positive start,' she had said. 'Grass is no good unless you've got a goat or a
cow, and as local bye-laws prevent us from having either we must use the
ground constructively. Mowing lawns is just unconstructive work!'
The next spring the lower-tier lawn went the same way and Jon's enthusiasm
grew. Little by little she had 'enlightened' him; wholewheat bread instead of
white sliced, textured vegetable protein replacing the Sunday joint and just
as tasty. His health, his whole outlook, improved. The big step was looming up
but again he had needed her to give him a shove.
'We'll sell up, buy a smallholding and take our chance,' she told him one
evening.
'We don't have the money.' His resistance, his townie caution was only to be
expected.
'We will have,' she smiled, 'when we sell this place. Residential houses fetch
摘要：

PARTONESUMMERCHAPTERONEGRADUALLYTHEgirlcametotheconclusionthatshewasill.Itcouldnotbeanythingelse.Shepushedherwayacrossthepavement,stoodwithherbackagainstabrickwall,felttheroughsurfacescrapingherskinthroughherblouseandjeans.Thebrickworkseemedtomove,likeapieceofautomaticallyoperatedemerypaper.Up,down,...

展开>> 收起<<
Guy N. Smith - Throwback.pdf

共147页,预览30页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：147 页 大小：364.19KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-19

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 147
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注