"Michael Scott Rohan - Chase the Morning" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rohan Michael Scott)

more fun out of it - instead of stashing all my cash away in gilt-edge and
blue-chip and just a little under-the-counter gold?
I pulled off at the exit - the same, the usual exit, the fastest way home.
Home to what? The prospect of my flat loomed up at me, my neat, empty,
expensive little designer garret, warming up as the heating came on. The idea
of cooking dinner suddenly sickened me, the prospect of eating something
heated up from the freezer even more so; I changed gear sharply, signalled
only just in time that I was changing lanes. I was going to eat out; and not
in any of my usual places. I might regret it in the morning, but I was going
to find somewhere more exotic, even if it wasn't as well-scrubbed. Thinking of
the docks had started me on that tack; I remembered there'd been lots of crazy
little places there, when I'd last passed through - and lord, how long ago was
that? I'd been in my teens; it might have been ten years ago, even. And that
was just on a bus, looking out on my way to somewhere else. I'd been a child
when last I'd trodden those pavements, the times when my father had taken me
down to see the ships unloading. I'd loved the ships; but the docks themselves
had always seemed rather sad to me, with weeds growing up between the worn
flagstones and the crane rails rusting. Even then they'd been dying. I
remembered dimly that there'd been attempts recently to tart up parts of them
for tourism, as somewhere picturesque; but how, or with what success, escaped
me.
Why had I never been back? There'd been no time, not with the job, not
with the social life and the sport, all the other excitements and ambitions.
Things that got me somewhere. I hadn't actually set out to bury my taste for
useless mooching about, but I'd had to let it slip away. Like a lot of other
things. There was no choice, really, if I wanted to keep on the ball, to get
ahead. And yet those trips to the docks, the sight of all those cases and
containers with their mysterious foreign labels - they'd sparked off something
in me, hadn't they?
Not exactly steered me into my career; I'd thought that choice out very
carefully, back at college. But they'd added something extra, a touch of
living colour other likely jobs didn't quite have. That hadn't lasted, of
course. You wouldn't expect it to survive the rigours of routine, the dry
daily round of forms and bills and credits. I hadn't missed it much. Other
satisfactions had taken its place, more realistic ones. But thinking about the
docks just now, when I was feeling a bit adventurous, a bit rebellious, had
woken a queer, nagging sort of regret. Maybe that was what had really sparked
off this craving to go and eat there - the urge to rediscover the original
excitement, the inspiration, of what I was doing. I did feel rather empty
without it - hollow, almost.
I frowned. That brought back a less comfortable memory, something Jacquie had
thrown at me years ago, in those last sullen rows. Typical; one of those daft
images she was always coming up with, something about the delicate Singapore
painted eggs on her mantelpiece. How they'd drained the yolk to make the paint
... 'You'd be good at that! You should take it up! Suck out the heart to paint
up the shell! All nice an' bright on the outside, never mind it's empty
inside! Never mind it won't hatch! Appearances, they're what you're so fond of
-'
I snorted. I shouldn't have expected her to see things the way they were.
But all the same ... The turn-off wasn't far, just at the bottom of the hill