"Masterton, Graham - The Devils of D-Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

'What do you mean, different?'

'I can't tell you.'

She started walking again, and this time she walked so quickly I had difficulty keeping up. I guess if you walk three miles to the cowsheds and back twice a day, your leg muscles get themselves built up pretty tough. By the time we'd reached the mossy stone gate where I'd turned my car round, I was wheezing for breath, and my throat was sore from the chill foggy air.

'This is my farm,' she said. 'I have to go in now.'

'You won't tell me any more?'

'There's nothing to tell. The tank has been there since the war. That's more than thirty years, isn't it? How could you hear voices in a tank after thirty years?'

'That's what I'm asking you,' I told her.

She turned her face away in profile. She had sad, curved lips; and with that straight aristocratic nose, she was almost beautiful. I said, 'Will you tell me your name?' She gave a small, fleeting smile. 'Madeleine Passerelle.

Et VOUS?'

'Dan, short for Daniel, McCook.'

The girl extended her hand, and we shook. 'I am pleased to have made your acquaintance,' she said. 'Now I must go.'

'Can I see you again? I'm up here again tomorrow. I have a map to finish.'

She shook her head.

'I'm not trying to pick you up,' I assured her. 'Maybe we could just go for a drink. Do you have a bar around here?'

I looked around at the cold soggy countryside, and the mournful cows gathering at the fence across the road.

'Well, maybe a small hotel?' I corrected myself.

Madeleine swung her pail of milk. 'I think I am too busy,' she said. 'And besides, my father needs a lot of care.'

'Who's the old woman?'

'Which old woman?'

'The old woman I saw at the stable door when I turned my car round. She had a white lace cap.'

'Oh . . . that's Eloise. She's lived at the farm all her life. She nursed my mother when she was sick. Now, there's someone to speak to if you're interested in stories about the tank. She believes in every superstition.'

I coughed in the cold twilight. 'Could I speak to her now?'

Madeleine said, 'Not tonight. Perhaps another day.'

She turned, and started to walk across the farmyard, but I caught up with her and grabbed the handle of her milking pail. 'Listen, how about tomorrow?' I asked her. 'I could come around noon. Could you spare a few minutes then?'

I was determined not to let her get away without making some kind of firm commitment. The tank and its ghosts were pretty interesting, but Madeleine Passerelle herself was even more so. You don't usually get much action when you're drawing up a military map of northern France, and a few glasses of wine and a tumble in the cowshed with the farmer's daughter, even in the deep midwinter, was a lot more appealing than silent and solitary meals in the brown garlic-smelling mausoleum that my hotel jocularly called its dining room.