Pratt of the Argus by David Nobbs

Author:David Nobbs
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448183357
Publisher: Random House

14 In Love

Droplets of dew hung on every leaf and every blade of grass. Thin grey clouds scudded across a leaden sky.

Ginny looked dreadful. Her face was blotchy. Her eyes were red and runny. She gave her nose a blow so gargantuan that he wanted to pretend he wasn’t with her.

He put an affectionate hand on her muscular right arm.

‘What’s happened?’ he said. ‘Why have you been crying?’

‘I haven’t been crying,’ she said. I’ve got a cold.’

‘How’s Gordon?’

‘He’s got a cold.’

The doomed tram groaned as it descended into the dim, sulphorous valley. How mean the streets looked. The traffic came to a complete halt outside Fison and Oldsworthy’s – the place for screws. Ginny sneezed like a Bofors gun. They crawled past the Popular Café, whose emptiness daily belied its name. On the right was a large bomb-site. Why did English towns never look finished?

The news-room was yellow, brown and grey. Yellow light on a grey morning. Yellow-brown fingers of chain-smokers putting yellowing paper into grey typewriters. Grey hair, yellow teeth and a brown jacket as Terry Skipton ordered him laryngitically to number three magistrates’ court. He had a cold. Ted and Helen asked him, nasally, about his holiday. They had matching colds. Everyone had colds, in this disgusting northern land.

And yet … it was a magic land. For did it not contain Anna Matheson?

The statue of Sir Herbert Rustwick in Town Hall Square was coated in pigeon droppings. The absurdly large Doric pillars of the court house were black with grime.

A milkman had sold watered milk. A motorist had struck a police car after failing to look left. A displaced Pole had stolen back the seventy pounds he’d lost at poker. It was a morning of small defeats and petty betrayals.

He’d lost touch with world events while he’d been at camp and in Italy. After lunch he went to the newspaper’s library, on the ground floor, behind the huge small-ads department, and read the back numbers.

Egypt had expelled Britons. Britain had expelled Egyptians. A mission to Cairo, led by the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Menzies, had ended in deadlock. The plans of Mr Dulles, US Secretary of State, for an Anna users association – no, concentrate. A canal users association – had been described by the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Gaitskell, as so weak that a better name would be the Cape Users Association. In Cyprus, Eoka terrorists had resumed their activities. There’d been violence in Tennessee, Kentucky and Texas as black pupils were escorted to schools that had previously been all-white. Anna had broken the world water speed record at Lake Mead, Nevada. Not Anna! Donald Campbell. Russia had withdrawn from an athletics match against Britain after Anna Ponomareva – Nina Ponomareva – a discus thrower, had been charged with stealing five hats, worth £1 12s. 11d., from C & A Modes. Sir William Penney, director of the Anna Bomb Tests – Atom Bomb Tests – at Maralinga, had announced that, due to bad weather, Britain’s sixth atomic weapon might have to be exploded on a Sunday.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.