"Freda Warrington - A Taste of Blood Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Warrington Freda)

vessels, a glass-fronted cupboard crammed with bottles, tubing,
Dewar flasks, a wooden filing cabinet pilled high with books. More
books were stacked untidily on shelves alongside bits of discarded
apparatus. Beneath, on a desk that was scattered with papers, the
only objects that had been placed with any care were three framed
photographs.
Karl paused to study them. One, the caption informed him, was of a
scientific conference before the War; there was George Neville in
an illustrious group that included Rutherford, Thomson, the Curies,
Einstein. Another was of the Neville children, three small girls and
a fair-haired boy who already had the look of an officer. The third
showed a lovely Edwardian woman with a toddler on her knee, both
clear-skinned and wide-eyed, fixed forever in shades of grey.
Across the corner of the frame hung a crucifix apparently made of
tightly-woven hair.
"It's dreadfully untidy in here, Father," said Madeleine. "How can
you work in this mess?"
"I know exactly where everything is."
Henry looked up from his work. "Oh no, this is what happens when
Charlotte isn't here." He seemed shy, a touch Bovine, the rays of his
intelligence focussed on too narrow a field. "She keeps us in order.
We really can't cope without her."


file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Freda%20Warrington%20-%20A%20Taste%20of%20Blood%20Wine.html (62 of 711)28-12-2006 21:38:58
A Taste


Karl had seen Charlotte briefly at the party where he had met
Madeleine; a fleeting gazelle who had caught his attention briefly
but made no real impression on him. He said, "I trust she's not
unwell."
"Got the blasted flu, so I packed her off to her aunt's house in
Hertfordshire to convalesce," said Dr Neville. "That's if it is the flu."
"Oh?"
"Well, her aunt insisted on dragging her around London all spring,
but she's a quiet girl, hates all that nonsense. It was bound to make
her ill. I shouldn't have allowed it. Anyway, Charlotte is the
academic one. Fleur and Madeleine aren't that way inclined at all,
are you, m'dear? Nor my son David, too much the outdoor type. No,
Charlotte's indispensable." He indicated the photograph of mother
and baby. "That's her with my late wife Annette. Grown up to be the
image of her mother, my brains and Annette's looks."
There was a faint shifting of the air. Karl looked round to find that
Madeleine had gone.
"Oh, don't mind her," George Neville said off-handedly, apparently
construing nothing from her departure. "Henry, light the Bunsen and
put some water on to boil, there's a good chap."
"Right-o, Professor." Henry went obediently to the sink, filled a
metal beaker and placed it on the tripod over a blue jet of flame.