"R. A. MacAvoy - Black Dragon 2 - Twisting the Rope" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

extending past the opposite wrists), waiting for her reply.
Martha frowned, eyes unfocused. A moment later she snorted in most unladylike manner. "Regretting it? I am
not. Not a bit of it. I knew there would be moments—that there would be sparks—with a group of musicians
as able and as different as we are. People don't do good work if they don't care about things—sometimes the
silliest things— and there's no musician like a traditional musician for having untraditional opinions. What
counts is the music we've made."
She rose from the bed. Her wraparound skirt with tiny sailboats on it was not straight. There was a flat spot at
the side of her head where her newly bobbed and waved hair had touched the headboard. But her blue eyes
caught the window light like circles of sky and everyone in the room listened when she spoke, even Marty,
her granddaughter.
"And I got what I wanted there, all right. We've made our little bit of magic. In Chicago we caught fire, and
then, last night, in San Francisco "—she scratched her head, a small smile softening her mouth—"we were
up to… past our own limits."
An answering smile came from Elen Evans. She felt her shoulders sink down and realized just how tense she
had been, until now. She met Long's eyes and wondered if he understood the overwhelming importance of the
thing Martha had just said. To people like herself, and Elen, and even St. Ives, who simply had to play this
music, whether people wanted to hear it or not…
Long was different. He was not a musician. Certainly he had no Celtic background, to spark his interest in the
history of it. One never knew why, with Long, for his face showed nothing. That was an advantage, she
guessed, in a road manager. Maybe it was easier for a Chinese, or Indonesian or… What was he, anyway?
Besides dotty over Martha. Elen Evans put her face against the box of her triple harp to hide her grin.
"For some of us the limits are easy to find!" It was Pádraig again, and the words were bitter. Before Elen
could move from behind her harp to answer him, he was out of the room and gone.
She followed, scooping up her big net bag and drop ping the piano-tuning wrench into it. The bag swung and
struck against the dresser with a sound of cracking wood. She cursed the thing with a calm and placid curse
as the door closed behind her.
"Oh, dear," said Martha, sitting down hard in the other wicker chair. Long met her eye. "We haven't heard the
last of this," she said. "From St. Ives, I mean."
"I'm not having any fun yet," Marty announced, coming back to Mayland Long's lap. "I just thought I'd tell you,
Daddo. In case."
Martha gave a rather brittle laugh and threw the Kleenex box across the room.
The ocean was divided; as far as a hundred yards out from the Santa Cruz pier it was a warm jade color,
while from an abrupt line at that distance it ran a cold, uncompromising blue. The tide came in in great soft
rolls, with no white showing. Mayland Long and Martha Macnamara sat together on a bench at the end of the
pier. Small breezes blew around them, some scented with flowers and some with fish. Marty stood leaning
over a fenced opening through the floor of the pier, whence came the barking of seals. She wore yellow
trousers, a white T-shirt, and plastic sunglasses edged in white and yellow daisies. Long's index finger was
locked in her belt loop to keep her from falling in. That black hand was glittering with scales, for he had been
helping the little girl feed the seals. No one, not even Marty, had spoken for five minutes.
Martha let her attention drift with the tide from the blank western horizon to the bright Ferris wheel on the
boardwalk, and on to the point lighthouse. She was thinking about Mendocino, where she had lived for the
last four years, and wondering why one could get most achingly homesick in a place very like one's home.
And why did a person go out on the road again, when she didn't need the money, and was old enough to
know where she wanted to be? She turned to Long expectantly, as though she had asked the question
aloud.
But he was not following her thoughts at all. Instead the dark head was drooped forward, eyes closed. His
nose was obviously very sore and his skin tight over the bones of his face: so little flesh.
Martha caught her lower lip in her teeth, for she suddenly noticed the gray hair at his temples. Had she
known he was going gray? Dear God, to have him beside her every day and not to notice. No, surely she had
noticed, on some level. It was just that she was so tired today. Things didn't look right.