La's Orchestra Saves the World by Smith Alexander McCall

Author:Smith, Alexander McCall [Smith, Alexander McCall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, War, Music, Adult
ISBN: 9780307378668
Amazon: B002WE46UC
Goodreads: 8531026
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2008-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

LA LEANED HER BICYCLE against the wall and bent down to remove the cycle clips that she placed about her trouser legs. She wore trousers for her work on the farm; not the most glamorous of outfits, she said, but very practical: strong gaberdine trousers of worsted that she had brought with her from London. Straightening up, she saw a light in Henry Madder’s kitchen, a dark room that received little sun. Even so, Henry was not one to waste electricity, or anything for that matter, and La had imagined him at night, with no lights on, fumbling about in the dark. The light, then, was in honour of Feliks.

She approached the back door and knocked. “We’re in here,” Henry called out. “Come right in, La.” When La entered the room, she saw Henry standing near the range, holding the kettle, which he was about to put on the plate. At the table, half turned round to face her, sat a man wearing a leather jacket of the sort favoured by pilots; this one, though, was worn, the leather cracked about the shoulders and at the cuffs. La’s first thought was that it was too warm to be wearing that, but then she saw that he had a thin, collarless shirt underneath. And below that, dark trousers, of what looked to her like thin linen. When she entered, he sprang to his feet and stood facing her.

“Dabrowski,” he said, inclining his head. “Feliks Dabrowski.”

La moved forward. He had extended his hand towards her.

“This is my other assistant,” said Henry. “La Stone. The saviour of the hens.”

“I suspect that the hens would get by quite well without me,” said La.

Henry shook his head. He was very literal. “No, they wouldn’t.”

La glanced at Feliks. He looked younger than she had imagined; not as boyish as some of those pilots, but certainly younger than the thirty-four that Tim Honey had mentioned. Twenty-eight, perhaps. And he was definitely Slav; she could tell from the smoothness of the cheeks and the high cheekbones; it was a quite different look, an almost feminine beauty. His eyes: she wondered which one was the one that had been ruined. Would she be able to tell, or would she have to ask? It was potentially disconcerting, as it always was when one did not know which eye to look at. One might be gazing into the wrong eye, talking to that eye, so to speak, while all the time the other eye was watching one.

“The left eye,” said Henry, pushing the kettle onto the plate with his twisted hand. “Feliks was telling me. He lost the sight in his left eye in action.”

La dropped her gaze guiltily. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Feliks sat down now. “Thank you. I have become used to it. You can get by with one of most things. There are men at the base with one leg or one arm. They get by, too.”

His accent was certainly foreign, yet it was still clear enough and had a soft lilt to it, akin, La thought, to the way in which a Swede would speak English.

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