victoria_vn: переводы

→The bar was full of smoke and noise and good-humoured banter.

→On a stretch of yellow sand on a beach of north Cornwall, just below Sawle cliffs, there lie the remains of a shipwreck.

→In December, 1898, a barquentine was wrecked on the Cornish coast near Falmouth. This is "the forgotten story" of some of the people who came unexpectedly to be passengers in the ship on her last voyage, of their loves and hates, and how a young boy is drawn irrevocably into the centre of a gripping drama.

→Something crooked and unclean and not to be thought of. But something which would have to be thought of. In the next few days and weeks it would take a larger and larger place in her life until there would be room for nothing else. Then, perhaps it would be in three months, perhaps six, the bubble of talk and trial and publicity would be pricked and she would be left to herself again, empty and neglected and alone. Alone but with a stigma of talk and rumour still clinging to her like cobwebs from a sewer. Wherever she went they would go, casting an unrelenting stain over her cleanness and her youth. ‘Oh, do you know who that is staying with you, Mrs So-and-So? Patricia Veal: you remember, the Falmouth poisoning case. No, she was only a step-daughter, but of course they were a peculiar family. I’ve heard it said-mm-mm-mm-mm …’

→‘So ’twas. So ’twas.’ The tough weather-beaten face twisted slightly and the jeyes glinted. ‘Precious to we. We always get a pound for every life we saave bi’ the rocket. They was safe enough where they were if the ship didn’t break up. Naturally the ship might’ve broke up, but we was anxious to get ’ em off whether or no. Tide was goin’ out fast. In another hour they’d ’ave been able to walk ashore.’ Blatchford exchanged a few words of farewell to a friend leaving the bar. Then he turned back to the reporter. ‘Now ’tis real nice to’ve seen you gentlemen, but you’ll be careful not to put that in your papers, won’t you. Folks might think it read straange. But I’m an honest man and you ast me an honest question. Sometimes things do work out straange round these shores, and it’s no fault of we as’ve lived ’ereabouts all our lives.’

→‘No, certainly; very good. But you said – mind you I’m only trying to clear the matter up – in speaking of the boy you say that he was saved later, much later, by a rescue party which boarded the ship, and you spoke as if it was only natural that he should be. I suppose that’s all right; but if as you said every minute was precious –’

→‘Nor was there. Nor was there.’

→In the cottage opposite the bespectacled reporter was busy taking notes and wondering how to describe Mr O’Brien’s accent. Just once or twice while he listened to the mate’s ready flow and contrasted its factual pungency with Mrs Veal’s windy hesitations there came to him a twinge of uneasiness, such as he sometimes had when he went to a racing meeting and on impulse put his money on another horse from the one he had all along intended backing: a sort of mental dyspepsia of second thoughts.

→Pat woke. She had been sleeping for some time, her head in the crook of his arm. She was not cold for the room was not cold, and he had drawn his overcoat across her. The lamp had almost gone out. A small, dying yellow bead of light barely lifted the heavy darkness away from them.

→He listened to it and wondered if she could hear the beating of his heart.

→It had needed hard thinking to put them in their place.

→Only during the last few days – for the first time for years – events, especially the news Anthony brought, had burst open some of the doors and left them want only swinging. She had hastened to press them to again, her etiolated mind recoiling at the touch of the cold air. She had fought then like a querulous invalid from whom the bedclothes had been pulled away, fought tooth and nail to cover and protect herself again. She had succeeded, but only by admitting the existence of disturbing facts inside the protective screen. Even now they were still there, and Perry had been insistent that they were of a nature which would not remain sterile but would grow and develop and have a fruition of their own.

→At this moment she lacked Perry, who had never imprisoned himself within such lofty seclusion and had therefore a more ready appreciation of the dangers of the outside world; she lacked Perry to insist that no repairs her egoism could effect were strong enough to stand before the impact of what was to come.

→The machinery of the law, however trumpery it may be to anyone concerned, as Madge was concerned, with the higher values of her own life, has an unwelcome appearance of reality while it is in motion – as Perry had never failed to appreciate – and deeper resources even than egoism are needed to reject the impression made by steel about a wrist or rope upon a throat.

→Anthony slept.

→In the last few days the rude world had broken into her privacy, upon her complacent day-dream. Doors had been shattered, but her patient, persistent, third-rate mind was already building them up again. They should be built stronger than ever before.

→As she dozed her over-clothed, flaccid body dropped into new and more indolent shapes, as if the cold Cornish sea had washed away some of its familiar contours, as if someone had shaken the yeast cake when it was rising. Her pinze-nez sat slightly awry, the lines of her mouth drew themselves out like slackening purse strings. When she awoke the facts would have adjusted themselves more closely to her liking. Until then she would sleep.

→That was why she had felt lonely and off her balance tonight. That was why she had said so much to the stupid staring reporter, talking in spite of herself, ventilating the stored complaints of a lifetime, justifying herself, pitying herself, inviting his commendation of her behaviour, using him in some degree as her confidant. It didn’t matter. No harm was done. He had taken nothing in. The mere fact of having been able to talk to a man and of feeling herself so greatly his mental superior had had a reassuring effect; that and the relief of having talked it all out had brought reassurance. Before the comforting warmth of the fire and the self-supporting glow of these reflections she began to doze.

→For her brain was like a dusty room which had had its doors all locked and barred, a room in which the air had grown stale and noxious for lack of contact with the outer air. Her egoism provided the bolts and keys, sealing up the smallest crack whereby there could be any contact between other people’s ethics and her own. Within this room her commonplace, rodent, dangerous personality had had its living and being, like a prisoner free within limits, building up its self-deceptions, concocting its own excuses, imagining its own triumphs, plotting its own satisfactions, growing large and fat and white like a slug under a stone.

→She was very tired. As she dozed she thought of her sister, a tall, comely girl who had had all the good looks of the family. Half dreaming and half waking, she thought of the strange way in which her sister had lost her good looks before she died; her cheeks had sunk and so much of her beautiful fair hair had come out; the family were renowned for their fair hair; her mother had retained it to the end. She thought of her mother, and how one year she had been essential to her well-being, the next superfluous, the next obnoxious, and the fourth she had not been at all; her death had been quite sudden. One, two, three, four, the years had peeled off like ripe plums falling from a tree; like flies falling from a flypaper.