"Brian Lumley - Fruiting Bodies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

fancy a coffee?"

Before I could answer he put his fingers to his mouth and blew a piercing whistle, then paused and
waited, shook his head in puzzlement. "Ben," he explained. "My old dog. He's not been himself lately and
I don't like him to stray too far. He was out all night, was Ben. Still, it's summer, and there may have been
a bitch about…"

While he had talked I'd looked him over and decided that I liked him. He reminded me of my own
grandfather, what little I could remember of him. Grandad had been a miner in one of the colliery villages
farther north, retiring here to doze and dry up and die—only to find himself denied the choice. The sea's
incursion had put paid to that when it finally made the place untenable. I fancied this old lad had been a
miner, too. Certainly he bore the scars, thestigmata , of the miner: the dark, leathery skin with black
specks bedded in; the bad, bowed legs; the shortness of breath, making for short sentences. A generally
gritty appearance overall, though I'd no doubt he was clean as fresh-scrubbed.

"Coffee would be fine," I told him, holding out my hand. "Greg's my name—Greg Lane."

He took my hand, shook it warmly and nodded. "Garth Bentham," he said. And then he set off stiffly
back up the crumbling road some two or three houses, turning right into an overgrown garden through a
fancy wooden gate recently painted white. "I'd intended doing the whole place up," he said, as I followed
close behind. "Did the gate, part of the fence, ran out of paint!"

Before letting us into the dim interior of the house, he paused and whistled again for Ben, then worriedly
shook his head in something of concern. "After rats in the old timber yard again, I suppose. But God
knows I wish he'd stay out of there!"

And then we were inside the tiny cloakroom, where the sun filtered through fly-specked windows and
probed golden searchlights on a few fairly dilapidated furnishings and the brassy face of an old
grandfather clock that clucked like a mechanical hen. Dust motes drifted like tiny planets in a cosmos of
faery, eddying round my host where he guided me through a door and into his living-room. Where the
dust had settled on the occasional ledge, I noticed that it was tinged red, like rust.

"I cleaned the windows in here," Garth informed, "so's to see the sea. I like to know what it's up to!"

"Making sure it won't creep up on you," I nodded.

His eyes twinkled. "Nah, just joking," he said, tapping on the side of his blue-veined nose. "No, it'll be
ten or even twenty years before all this goes, but I don't have that long. Five if I'm lucky. I'm sixty-eight,
after all!"

Sixty-eight! Was that really to be as old as all that? But he was probably right: a lot of old-timers from
the mines didn't even lastthat long, not entirely mobile and coherent, anyway. "Retiring at sixty-five
doesn't leave a lot, does it?" I said. "Of time, I mean."

He went into his kitchen, called back: "Me, I've been here a ten-year. Didn't retire, quit! Stuff your
pension, I told 'em. I'd rather have my lungs, what's left of 'em. So I came here, got this place for a song,
take care of myself and my old dog, and no one to tip my hat to and no one to bother me. I get a letter
once a fortnight from my sister in Dunbar, and one of these days the postman will find me stretched out in
here and he'll think: 'Well, I needn't come out here anymore.'"