"Mary Stewart - Airs Above The Ground" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

"Only that if you had children of your own you wouldn't be so gay and glib."

"If I had children I hope I'd have the sense not to put fences round them." That I still spoke sharply was
not entirely due to exasperation with Carmel; the trend of this futile conversation was, minute by minute,
reminding me of the fences that only a short while ago I had been trying to put round Lewis. I added:
"Besides, Timothy isn't a child, he's- what?-seventeen? I think it's you who don't understand, Carmel.
Boys grow up."

"If they didn't grow away so. My baby son, it seems only yesterday-"
"When does his father want him to go?"

"Whenever he likes. And of course he's wild to go." She added, with a spite that sounded suddenly,
shockingly genuine: "As a matter of fact I don't mind him going. I just don't want him to feel he owes it to
Graham."

I counted ten and then said mildly: "Then send him off straight away, and let him think he owes it to you."

"I might, if I thought-" She checked herself, with a quick look I couldn't read. She was fiddling rather
consciously again with the bosom of her dress, not her heart this time, but what lay more or less directly
over it, the very beautiful sapphire and diamond brooch that had been one of Graham Lacy's guilt
offerings to her. Then she spoke in quite a different tone: "As a matter of fact, Vanessa, I'm sure you're
right. I ought to let him go. One ought to make oneself realize that one's babies grow up and that one's
own feelings hardly matter. After all, they have their lives to live."

I waited. It was coming now, if I was any judge of the signs.

"Vanessa?"

"Yes?"

She pricked her finger on the brooch, said a word which one never imagines that one's mother's
generation ever knew, blotted the bead of blood on her table napkin, and met my eyes again, this time
with a steely determination which didn't quite match the suppliant's voice she used. "I did wonder if you
could help me."

"I? But how?"

"I really do agree with all you've said, and as a matter of fact it would suit me quite well to have Timmy
away for a little while just now, and I really would like to let him go but, you see, Timmy is such a young
seventeen, and he's never been away from home before, except to a school camp, and that's different,
isn't it? And I can't go with him myself, because it would be quite impossible . . . meeting Graham ... I
don't mean I wouldn't willingly sacrifice myself for him, but he was really quite rude when I suggested it,
and if he did go off with Graham, then I'd be on my own, and I hate foreign countries, they're so
uncomfortable, besides not speaking English, and you can say what you like, I'm not going to let that
child go alone among foreigners. So then I thought of you."

I stared at her. "Now I really don't understand."

"Well, it's quite simple. I knew you'd been going on holiday with Lewis this month, and then he had to go
on business instead . . ." Being Carmel, she couldn't, even when she wanted a favour from me, quite