"Diana Wynne Jones - The Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

carefully studying the photo. The two people in it looked so happy.
Her mother had the same kind of fair good looks as Aunt Alice,
except that she seemed more human than Aunt Alice, less perfect.
She laughed, with her head thrown back and her veil flying, a
lopsided, almost guilty laugh at Hayley’s father. He laughed
proudly back, proud of Hayley’s mother, proud in himself. There
was pride in the set of his curly black head, in his gleaming dark
eyes and in the way his big brown hand clasped Hayley’s mother’s
white one. He was the one Hayley had her obstinately curly hair
and brown complexion from. But, since Hayley’s mother was so fair,
Hayley’s hair had come out a sort of whitish brown and her eyes big
and grey. She thought of herself as an exact mixture of both of
them and wished with all her strength that they were alive so that
she could know them.
Grandma and Grandad lived in a large house on the edge of
London, one of those houses that have a mass of dark shrubs back
and front and stained glass in most of the windows, so that it was
always rather dark. It had a kitchen part, where a cook and a maid
lived. Hayley only ever saw this part when the latest maid took her
for walks on the common and they came back in through the
kitchen. She was forbidden to go there at any other time in case she
disturbed the cook.
The rest of the large dark rooms were mostly devoted to
Grandad’s work. Hayley had no idea what Grandad’s work was,
except that it seemed to involve keeping up with the whole world.
One entire room was devoted to newspapers and magazines in
many languages—most of them the closely printed, learned
kind—and another room was full of maps: maps pinned to walls,
piled on shelves in stacks, or spread on sloping work benches ready
to be studied. The big globe in the middle of this room always
fascinated Hayley. The other rooms were crowded to the ceilings
with books and strewn with papers, telephones and radios of all
colours, except for the room in the basement that was full of
computers. The only downstairs room Hayley was officially allowed
into was the parlour—and then only if she washed first—where she
was allowed to sit in one of its stiff chairs to watch programmes on
television that Grandma thought were suitable. Hayley did not go
to school. Grandma gave her lessons upstairs in the
schoolroom—which was where Hayley had her meals too—and
those lessons were a trial to both of them. Just as Hayley’s
feathery, flyaway curls continually escaped from Grandma’s careful
combing and plaiting, so Hayley’s attempts to read, write, do sums
and paint pictures were always sliding away from the standards
Grandma thought correct. Grandma kept a heavy flat ruler on her
side of the table with which she rapped Hayley’s knuckles whenever
Hayley painted outside the lines in the painting book, or wrote
something that made her laugh, or got the answer in bags of cheese
instead of in money.
Hayley sighed a little as she sat in the Castle drawing room
beside the pretend cat. She had learnt very early on that she could