manchet bread and the clatter of billhooks, and what Louisa notices mostly is the absence of a café where she might sit in the warm with a cappuccinoand a magazine and rid herself of the image of Melissa naked and broken in a ditch.
Alex walks the battlements of the Great Tower, which sits at the center of its own moat and is connected to the main fortifications by a drawbridge . A little single-engine plane is flying overhead sounding like a lawn mower. He thinks about that flight last year in the Piper Cherokee with Josh’s uncle, being frightened during takeoff, then feeling smug about not being frightened anymore, then enjoying it, then being rather bored because basically there wasn’t much to do apart from sit in a cramped seat watching clouds. He glances down into the big stone box of the castle’s main hall and sees Louisa pacing. Now that Melissa has gone he is beginning to realize how fit she is. She’s nearly fifty, which makes it sound pervy if you say it out loud, but she’s in really good nick and he keeps imagining her taking off that cream roll-neck jumper. Big tits. All that hair.
But Dominic is listening to Joe Pass. “Stella by Starlight” from the first Virtuoso album. BbMa7 … Em7b5 … A7 … Those incredible runs, just ragged enough to make them feel human. Ever since they arrived at the castle he has been experiencing a disturbing sense of déjà vu for which he is unable to account, having never been to Wales before, until he remembers Robert Plant’s swordfight in The Song Remains the Same . It was filmed here, wasn’t it. He’d owned a Welsh farm during his Dungeons and Dragons phase. “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” and so forth. But there’s no one here with whom he can share this satisfying pop-trivia nugget.
Benjy can’t really concentrate on the castle because a weird ginger-haired boy is trying to befriend him. We’re from Devon … Have you seen Pirates of the Caribbean … ? My dad’s got a quad bike . He has a dolphin T-shirt and no eyebrows to speak of. Benjy wants to be left alone because if you concentrate and no one disturbs you the knights stand up from their stone tombs and a cornfield of spears rises beyond the moat.
Do you like football?
He still hasn’t quite got the politics of the playground, that low-gradescuffle over space and status. He expects more logic, better tactics. He’s spent too much time with his older siblings. He knows quite a bit about homosexuality and communism and income tax, and with Pavel it’s easy because they both like making potions and Lego massacre tableaux, but if Wayne Goodrich calls him a spaz …
That’s my dad , says the ginger-haired boy, turning briefly, over there .
Benjy runs.
The problem with Jennifer … Richard paused. He had never talked seriously about her with anyone except Louisa. She didn’t really care about other human beings. I’m not talking about the way she treated me. You make your bed and you have to lie in it. But friends, patients . The image of that girl in her wheelchair passed briefly through the headlights of his mind.
Dominic was transfixed by Richard wrestling with difficult ideas in real time. Why did you get married?
We were both ambitious, both somewhat unsentimental, neither of us wanted children. In the circumstances I think that was wise. She would have made a dreadful mother. I’m not sure I would have made the perfect father, but in my darker moments I feel a good deal of regret .
Dominic wondered if he could tell Richard about Amy, but he didn’t know whether clinical detachment would win out over fraternal loyalty.
Plus , Richard laughed, she was a very determined woman who was used to getting what she wanted .
Dominic had met Jennifer only twice, she had no small talk and she watched the children the way a snake might watch a cat. Yet if she had given him her undivided attention? If she had wanted him …? Benjy appeared out of nowhere and tugged at his sleeve. Can we go
Alex walks the battlements of the Great Tower, which sits at the center of its own moat and is connected to the main fortifications by a drawbridge . A little single-engine plane is flying overhead sounding like a lawn mower. He thinks about that flight last year in the Piper Cherokee with Josh’s uncle, being frightened during takeoff, then feeling smug about not being frightened anymore, then enjoying it, then being rather bored because basically there wasn’t much to do apart from sit in a cramped seat watching clouds. He glances down into the big stone box of the castle’s main hall and sees Louisa pacing. Now that Melissa has gone he is beginning to realize how fit she is. She’s nearly fifty, which makes it sound pervy if you say it out loud, but she’s in really good nick and he keeps imagining her taking off that cream roll-neck jumper. Big tits. All that hair.
But Dominic is listening to Joe Pass. “Stella by Starlight” from the first Virtuoso album. BbMa7 … Em7b5 … A7 … Those incredible runs, just ragged enough to make them feel human. Ever since they arrived at the castle he has been experiencing a disturbing sense of déjà vu for which he is unable to account, having never been to Wales before, until he remembers Robert Plant’s swordfight in The Song Remains the Same . It was filmed here, wasn’t it. He’d owned a Welsh farm during his Dungeons and Dragons phase. “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp” and so forth. But there’s no one here with whom he can share this satisfying pop-trivia nugget.
Benjy can’t really concentrate on the castle because a weird ginger-haired boy is trying to befriend him. We’re from Devon … Have you seen Pirates of the Caribbean … ? My dad’s got a quad bike . He has a dolphin T-shirt and no eyebrows to speak of. Benjy wants to be left alone because if you concentrate and no one disturbs you the knights stand up from their stone tombs and a cornfield of spears rises beyond the moat.
Do you like football?
He still hasn’t quite got the politics of the playground, that low-gradescuffle over space and status. He expects more logic, better tactics. He’s spent too much time with his older siblings. He knows quite a bit about homosexuality and communism and income tax, and with Pavel it’s easy because they both like making potions and Lego massacre tableaux, but if Wayne Goodrich calls him a spaz …
That’s my dad , says the ginger-haired boy, turning briefly, over there .
Benjy runs.
The problem with Jennifer … Richard paused. He had never talked seriously about her with anyone except Louisa. She didn’t really care about other human beings. I’m not talking about the way she treated me. You make your bed and you have to lie in it. But friends, patients . The image of that girl in her wheelchair passed briefly through the headlights of his mind.
Dominic was transfixed by Richard wrestling with difficult ideas in real time. Why did you get married?
We were both ambitious, both somewhat unsentimental, neither of us wanted children. In the circumstances I think that was wise. She would have made a dreadful mother. I’m not sure I would have made the perfect father, but in my darker moments I feel a good deal of regret .
Dominic wondered if he could tell Richard about Amy, but he didn’t know whether clinical detachment would win out over fraternal loyalty.
Plus , Richard laughed, she was a very determined woman who was used to getting what she wanted .
Dominic had met Jennifer only twice, she had no small talk and she watched the children the way a snake might watch a cat. Yet if she had given him her undivided attention? If she had wanted him …? Benjy appeared out of nowhere and tugged at his sleeve. Can we go
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