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

He wasn't bemoaning his fate, but I felt sorry for him anyway. I settled myself on a dusty settee, looked
out of the window down across his garden of brambles to the sea's horizon. A great curved
millpond—for the time being. "Didn't you have any savings?" I could have bitten my tongue off the
moment I'd said it, for that was to imply he hadn't done very well for himself.

Cups rattled in the kitchen. "Savings? Lad, when I was a young 'un I had three things: my lamp, my
helmet, and a pack of cards. If it wasn't pitch-'n-toss with weighted pennies on the beach banks, it was
three-card brag in the back room of the pub. Oh, I was a game gambler, right enough, but a bad one. In
my blood, like my Old Man before me. My mother never did see a penny; nor did my wife, I'm ashamed
to say, before we moved out here—God bless her! Savings? That's a laugh. But out here there's no
bookie's runner, and you'd be damned hard put to find a card school in Easingham these days! What the
Hell," he shrugged as he stuck his head back into the room, "it was a life…"

We sipped our coffee. After a while I said, "Have you been on your own very long? I mean… your
wife?"

"Lily-Anne?" he glanced at me, blinked, and suddenly there was a peculiar expression on his face. "On
my own, you say…" He straightened his shoulders, took a deep breath. "Well, Iam on my own in a way,
and in a way I'm not. I have Ben—or would have if he'd get done with what he's doing and come
home—and Lily-Anne's not all that far away. In fact, sometimes I suspect she's sort of watching over me,
keeping me company, so to speak. You know, when I'm feeling especially lonely."

"Oh?"

"Well," he shrugged again. "I mean sheis here, now isn't she." It was a statement, not a question.

"Here?" I was starting to have my doubts about Garth Bentham.

"I had her buried here," he nodded, which explained what he'd said and produced a certain sensation of
relief in me. "There was a Methodist church here once over, with its own burying ground. The church
went a donkey's years ago, of course, but the old graveyard was still here when Lily-Anne died."

"Was?" Our conversation was getting one-sided.

"Well, it still is—but right on the edge, so to speak. It wasn't so bad then, though, and so I got
permission to have a service done here, and down she went where I could go and see her. I still do go to
see her, of course, now and then. But in another year or two… the sea…" He shrugged again. "Time and
the tides, they wait for no man."

We finished our coffee. I was going to have to be on my way soon, and suddenly I didn't like the idea of
leaving him. Already I could feel the loneliness creeping in. Perhaps he sensed my restlessness or
something. Certainly I could see that he didn't want me to go just yet. In any case, he said:

"Maybe you'd like to walk down with me past the old timber yard, visit her grave. Oh, it's safe enough,
you don't have to worry. We may even come across old Ben down there. He sometimes visits her, too."

"Ah, well I'm not too sure about that," I answered. "The time, you know." But by the time we got down
the path to the gate I was asking: "How far is the churchyard, anyway?" Who could tell, maybe I'd find
some long-lost Lanes in there! "Are there any old markers left standing?"