"Paul J. McAuley - Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mcauley Paul J)

less confirming Marjory Beaumont's confabulation, and Tolley ordered
references to the history of Steeple Heyston as well. It had been
mentioned in the Domesday Book, but had seemingly declined in
population
ever since, a process Tolley's ancestors had speeded up by shrewd use
of
the enclosure acts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the
middle of the nineteenth century, Steeple Heyston was no more than a
hamlet dependent upon a small paper mill; then there had been the fire
Gerald Beaumont had mentioned, the beginning of the end. The last
cottage
had been demolished after the Second World War, although the church was
still occasionally used.
Tolley pocketed his notes and joined the press of laden shoppers slowly
swirling past long lines waiting for double-decked buses. Street
performers strummed guitars or juggled in shop doorways; at the Carfax
crossroads, a Salvation Army band was playing carols beneath a huge
plastic Santa Claus strung high in the cold air.
Tolley found a McDonald's and hungrily devoured a cheeseburger with all
the trimmings, washed it down with a milkshake. Looking through the
 plate-glass window toward the tower of Christ Church, poised like a
spaceship beyond the town hall, he thought: The hell with all the
mystery;
I'm on vacation, right? He spent the next couple of hours checking off
the
minor colleges he'd missed the first time around, and only reluctantly
fought his way through the crowds to the photographic shop.
When the assistant handed him the envelope, he opened it straight-away.
There were the shots he had taken at Stratford-upon-Avon, and the few
of
Oxford he had taken before leaving for Steeple Heyston, but that was
all.
He asked, "What about the others?"
The assistant, a teenager with streaks bleached into her hair,
shrugged.
Tolley looked in the envelope, found a strip of milky film, asked her
what
the problem was. She didn't know, and didn't seem to care. He waved the
ruined film, protested, "It looks like you've made some kind of
mistake."
"I dunno, it's all done by computers and stuff. Maybe your camera's
broke."
"Let me speak to your manager, if you won't help me."
"She won't be in until the day after tomorrow. It's Christmas, see."
"Not really," Tolley said, but this wasn't the first time he'd come
across
such wilful unhelpfulness in England. He paid and left to look for
lunch.
Anger always made him hungry.