"Christopher Priest - The Glamour" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

The young man stepped forward and presented his forearm for Grey to lean
on while he took the sticks away. With one hand he unbuttoned the front of the
coat, then put his big hands under Grey's armpits, holding his weight, letting
his patient remove the coat himself. Grey found it a slow, painful process,
trying to twist his shoulder blades to get out of the sleeve without
compressing his neck or back muscles. It was impossible to do, of course, even
with Dave's help, and by the time the coat was off he was unable to conceal
the pain.
"All right, Richard, let's get you into the chair." Dave twisted him
around, almost carrying him in the air, and lowered him into the seat.
"I hate this, Dave. I can't stand being weak."
"You're getting better every day."
"Ever since I've been here you've been putting me in and out of this
damned chair."
"There was a time you couldn't get out of bed."
"I don't remember that."
Dave glanced away, up the path. "You don't have to."
"How long have I been here?" Grey asked.
"Three or four months. Probably four now."
There was a silence of memory inside him, a period irretrievably lost.
All his conscious memories were of this garden, these paths, this view, this
pain, the endless rain and misted sea. It all blended in his mind, each day
indistinguishable from the others by its sameness, but there was that lost
period behind him too. He knew there had been the bedridden weeks, the
sedatives and painkillers, the operations. Somehow he had lived through all
that, and somehow he had been signed off, dispatched to convalescence, another
bed from which he could not get out by himself. But whenever he tried to think
back to beyond that, something in his memory turned away, slipped from his
grasp. There was just the garden, the sessions of therapy, Dave and the other
nurses.
He had accepted that those memories would not now return, that to try to
dwell on them only hindered his recovery.
"Actually, I came down about something," Dave said. "You've got some
visitors this morning."
"Send them away."
"You might want to meet one of them. She's a girl, and pretty too . . ."
"I don't care," Grey said. "Are they from the newspaper?"
"I think so. I've seen the man before."
"Then tell them I'm with the physiotherapist."
"I think they'll probably wait for you."
"Can't you do something, Dave? You know how I feel about them."
"Nobody's going to force you to see them, but I think you should at
least find out what they want."
"I've nothing to tell them, nothing to say."
"They might have some news for you. Have you thought of that?"
"You always say that."
While they had been speaking, Dave had leaned down on the handgrips and
swung the chair around. Now he stood, pushing gently on the grips, rocking the
chair up and down.
"Anyway," Grey said, "what news could they have? The only thing I don't