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[Desert Eagle]

Вот тут запостили рассказ Колина Фёрта "Отдел пустяков", написанный ради сборника, собиравшего деньги на реализацию благотворительного проекта.
Конечно же, на английском читать его гораздо приятнее.

Помню, когда-то я говорила Правой половинке, что Колин сидит на АО3 и строчит фики по Хартвину. Под ником Galahard.

COLIN FIRTH: The Department of Nothing

Through a creepy forest she ran, young Emma in her white nightie; flapping and phantasmic in the gloom of an enchanted night-storm. For it was prophesied that the only way to lift the spell was for her to find the Night Garden and take the ring from the hand of the evil Lucien Lothair who ruled all Sardorf with an iron fist and a nasty climate. In order to do this she had to run through this forest, where darkness had stolen all colour---sucked it like a vampire does.
Something was chasing her. How could she know if she was running towards even greater danger? She couldn't, basically, so she just had to get on with it and run anyway and hope she was running in the right direction. On she strove, scraping her extremities on stumps of mighty oak and frowning yew---whereupon she came upon an ivied wall.....wildly she fought for passage---and lo! By luck or grace, she fell upon a door which gave way onto...
The Night Garden:
All moonlit and full of eerie beauty and tranquillity. Here the wind fell silent--and her pursuer seemed not to be around anymore. The garden seemed to belong to a great house or castle, now mainly forgotten. All around were crumbling walls and sundials, old statues, rose trees, terrible gargoyles and stone animals. What she didn't see were little real live devilish faces poking from behind the rocks. Then suddenly, standing right in front of her, there was a group of weird children. They were staring at her. One of them said, "Who are you?" And then, before anyone could answer, this big loud honking voice from somewhere else, suddenly shouted, "Henry!!!!" which is my name.......

And there wasn't any garden or children, just me sitting next to Grandma's bed, probably late for school, smelling Haddock---wishing Grandma's stories didn't have to be always interrupted. You see how annoying it is? It's more than annoying, it's irksome. In fact, it was twenty to nine and I was about five minutes away from quite a big detention if I didn't go damn sharpish. I still wanted Grandma to go on, but that's always when she gets strict and says, "No more talking, the session is closed."
Whenever I'm listening to a story I always turn her bedside clock away so I don't see the time. She says I'm not allowed to because I have to respect punctuality--but I always manage it. Clocks are definitely on the TTPUYL list. Things That Pants Up Your Life. Grown ups think they are fantastic---they love minutes and they add them up like they're made of pound coins or something. Our teacher Shitty McVittie (I didn't make up the shitty part, that's what everyone calls him)... if you're, like, a minute late it's like you've stolen a minute off him and so he'll steal an hour off you--after school. Even grandma says "chop, chop" all the time, in spite of being magic. It's strange, because the place where clocks most can't get you is in her stories. Even after she's told one it's like you go into a kind of slo-mo for ages.
So when I came out of Grandma's room I already knew I'd bethinking about the rest of the story until five o'clock, and I'd probably get in trouble for daydreaming. You always come out wit a load of new words and things you can carry in your head until next time--and school would be much worse without these things in your head...my head.
It can still make you go a bit mental to be torn viciously from a mysterious midnight garden to your mum shouting 'cause you didn't eat your haddock. So your life is made of half-finished stories and games that never actually get added up into a whole thing--unless it's your homework or your broccoli, then you can finish it all, however long it takes.
There's a name for all this: most people call it real life, but actually it's called the Department of Nothing. It's not just one department, but loads of mini departments. The broccoli and haddock and meat with vomity white bits get made in the Kitchen of Nothing. School is the Paper Department, where they have this special doom-paper so that anything you write on it is doomed. Then there's the Waiting Room of Nothing where you get told Not now, I'm busy, or You're not old enough yet and all that, and this is where all detentions come from. And then the Department of Vacuum Cleaner comes and sucks up all the second halves of stories and games, so you can never find them again. Grownups think they are the controllers, but they're not really, because it's the Clock Department who have all the actual power; marching grownups about like sergeant majors to one two, one two. Absolutely everyone lives here---unless they get to go to Grandma's room, which is the only way out of the Department----except nobody knows that, even though it's blatant. The trick is holding on to the magic to get you through the Department of Nothing. The luckiest thing is that stories come right at the beginning of the day.
Stories are the best things in my life. OK so...it goes, best things: Grandma's stories, Grandma, Tintin books, the crossword in The Chronicle, gobstoppers, weekends, and holidays. And days when Mr. McVittie's away. But the main best thing is usually Grandma.
Grandma doesn't live in the world anymore, because she has to live in her room. She can't do the stairs and her health isn't brilliant. She wishes she could get out, and I wish that too, but her room and the stories are better than any of the places she wants to get out to, and that's where I visit. all the time, even though she's strict and checks if I've washed my hands, and you have to ask her if you can sit down. Going to Grandma's room is like going to thousands of incredible different places. And sometimes when she's doing a story, I look at her hands, which I know are really old and kind of baggy but they make me think of places too. They've got paths that lead you where you don't know, like a map of mountains and rivers of countries you wish you could get to.
And when her teeth are out and in the glass they smile at you so weirdly that sometimes you think they are going to burst out laughing about something they know and you don't.
It's not like the woods at the bottom of our garden, 'cause when you go in them you think it's like this totally wicked place to explore and you can't see further because the bamboo is so thick, but then you always really quickly get to the fence of Mrs. Lowecroft's garden, or if you go the other way, you get the fence to Crossways Road, so the whole exploration turns into a total bin. But when you go to Grandma's room, it's like exploring with no fence at the end. Except for when Mum calls you. She makes her room seem bigger than the world outside, which what she wants to escape into, and I think it's sad that there's something back-to-front about it all. I want to escape to her room, and she wants to escape into The Department of Nothing.
Grandma tries to persuade Mum to let her go out - to church or something. That's what she talks about wanting to do, and she talks about it a lot. Mum always says she'll talk to Doctor Morgan and she'll see.. Grandma said she felt like Rapunzel, but who everyone's forgot about. She said, "My prince would get a bit of a nasty shock if he climbed the walls and saw me now, wouldn't he? He shouldn't have been so blessed long about it." She always says these kinds of things in a cheerful voice, but she only does her cheerful voice when she's not really cheerful. It's a Mary Poppins putting-a-brave-face-on sort of thing. When she's happy she always goes all strict and pretends not to be cheerful.
She's quite a back-to-front lady really.
Max--my older brother, who's not on my list of best things - says it's completely pants to go visiting your grandma all the time instead of having proper friends. He calls me the Prince of Pants and the only reason he hasn't told everyone at school is because he's too
embarrassed for everyone to know his brother's a bell-end. Well, he's fourteen and I found a picture of All Saints inside his Southampton fanzine, and he's got a mail order catalogue under his bed for girls' underwear, and he's only just stopped playing with Pokèmon cards and you can't get much pantser than that, and weirdest of all, I found two Barbie dolls in with his action men and I think he might be doing pretty pervy things to them.
He says stories are for poofs, but he's the one going on all the time about the evil shed. I've always been scared of the evil shed even if I don't know whether to believe him about it. The evil shed is the shed in our garden which no one uses, and Max says that at night the old bags of cement, which are in there, turn into bollock-eating midgets. They are exactly the right height to eat your bollocks and there's no escape. The boy who used to live in out house before us, Christopher Cresswell, was sitting down on the floor of the shed once, when a midget came up through a rotten floorboard and ate his entire bollocks, his nob and part of his bum, and now he has to wear special trousers. It's probably not true but I don't want to chance it and neither does Max--which is funny for someone who thinks stories are for poofs.
But Max isn't even close to the top of the list of things that pants up your life. He isn't even on it really. I don't care actually; he doesn't spoil things. TTPUYL have to be much worse than just irksome. The evil shed would be, but it's probably not true and anyway I can avoid it. TTPUYL have to be hard to avoid. Like clocks. Timetables. Shitty McVittie detention. Sarcasm. This is what Shitty McVittie uses and it makes me wish the cane was legal--'cause I'd much rather have the cane. Well, not really.
Then there's Uncle Toby. I don't even know if he's evil but he gives me the creeps, even though he used to be a vicar or dean or something, but that just makes him creepier. I think he stopped being a vicar when he got into trouble for walking down Mitford Road with his penis out. But I'm not sure about that; it might just be a rumour. He's my dad's brother, which means he's my grandma's son, and she doesn't like him either but she won't ever say why ... so maybe it's because of his penis ... I don't know. She's always telling me to watch for him.
And the scariest of all, even though I've never met him, is O'Hare--of Brothers O'Hare. He's the undertaker and it's not just 'cause he's the undertaker, I mean, I'm not so pathetic as to say oh oey! The undertaker! It's 'cause he's actually just scary and the undertaking parlour is scary as well. There used to be four Brothers O'Hare, but one's gone away, another one's simple, and one's dead except people say he's still there, as a ghostly partner. The back window of the parlour backs onto a railway line. Max says that old Mr. Hare was found hanging in that window. It's called the Darkling Window of Death. If you go down the High Street, you have to pass in front of O'Hare's, and often you see O'Hare watching you through net curtains, thinking of you in his clutches. I saw him driving the Daimler with the box in the back containing old Mr. Hesperson, and you could see he was thinking, "That's another one for my evil collection." He first came here to Walden Bridge in 1989, which is the year I was born, and I've always wished he hadn't, because it's as if he came here specially to wait for me. It's probably nonsense, like the shed, but nonsense is a lot scarier than sense.
When I got downstairs, Mum was doing where's my glasses,
which is where you feel guilty for standing still while Mum runs through different rooms banging drawers and things, with glasses on her head, going, "Where's my glasses?" and she's annoyed 'cause you're not as worked up as she is. She told me to get a move on 'cause I was late for school, and then wouldn't let me go because she had to tell me that she had to go to the Underwoods tonight, and dad had his movement 'cause it was Thursday.
Dad hates it when she calls it a movement. He says it's a society, not a movement. But it's always hard for my dad to argue very well because he's so boring. It comes from not expressing himself as a child. He even used to be a morris dancer but he's stopped that now, because a counsellor told him to have more self-respect. He lives mostly in the toilet when he's not at work. Since he joined the movement, my mum loses her temper and her glasses more than she used to. The movement go in the woods and do wolf business. It sounds slightly like the Cubs, except someone told me it's all naked—which I'm not sure it can be because they do it even in February. Mr. Bowyer from the Abbey National goes, and so does Wing Commander Devonish. I know they play drums and Mum says they sniff each other's bottoms. That's what I heard her saying when they were arguing. She said Dad hadn't kissed her in five years and yet he's sniffed the area branch manager's bottom, and he sniffs it every Thursday at seven o'clock, after the news. No one's supposed to mention it. When it was beginning about six months ago I answered the phone and someone said, "Can I speak to Romulus, son of Grey Dawn?" and I told them they had the wrong number. When I told Dad, he got angry and told me to ruddy well tell him next time, and I said how was I to know? which is answering back but Dad didn't send me to my room because he can't be bothered, usually.

Mum was still doing where's my glasses when Dad came down all ready for work. He didn't want to stop and talk——just like I didn't, so he said one of his quotes to get through the room and past everyone, like he who riseth late must trot all day, whatever that means. As he was going out the door, my mum tried to stop him to talk about the Underwoods and he did a fantastically huge bottom-cough, and my mum went postal. My dad said he was only expelling negative chi. Chi is another thing he's started going on about since the movement. I don't know quite what it means, but it seems definitely to be negative.

I did get detention. When I got there McVittie had started a biology lesson and he asked me if I wanted to take the class because I obviously knew so much about the subject and stuff. The thing is, at that exact same moment I was quite sure I saw a Devil Creature from Grandma's story sitting at my desk. I know you probably don't believe me, but there would be no point in my lying, seeing as I'm taking so much trouble to tell you all this anyway. He was only there for a second and then he was gone and McVittie was saying, "Look at me when I'm talking to you," and then he said, "Don't look at me like that."
He has a plastic skeleton called Frank, who he always asks what the punishments should be. He goes, "Let's ask Frank, shall we?" and then puts his ear to Frank's mouth. He says that Frank used to be a prurient and beastly schoolboy who was always late and got endless detentions and thus became a skeleton. Frank told him I had to stay for an hour after school. McVittie made me copy a chapter about femurs and humeri, while he said things like, "Does anything pass through that head of yours, eh? Does anything actually interest you?" and I said things like, "Don't know, sir." I thought about telling him that I still had to buy Grandma The Chronicle on the way home, and if I was late there might not be any left, and she was an old lady and she didn't have much to look forward to apart from The Chronicle. But how can you, when you're in the Department of Nothing, and McVittie's the Head of Department?

I got the paper, but I had to run like a bugger. I went up the drainpipe into Grandma's window. She hates me coming in that way, because it scares her, so I got quite a long and very boring telling off for it, and also for sitting down without asking, and for being late, and I told her why, so she bollocked me for that as well, and besides my hands were a state...You just have to wait for it to be over, and then you can start the crossword. This was a whole ten minutes, and then I realized I had dropped the paper coming up the drainpipe, so I got bollocked quickly for that.

"Who are you, O weird children?" said our intrepid heroine. Their answers were always mysterious. One little girl held in her arms a Devil Creature who was grinning at Emma. "Who looks after you?”
"Blind Jack."
"Who's Jack?" said Emma, by way of inquiry. But instead of answering, one of the children took her hand and said, "Come."
They lead her under vaulted arches, through herbaceous avenues of rosemary and borders until they came upon a little wooden door.
Through it they entered and found themselves in a magnificent hall, full of enchanted people dressed in garb...which is period costume...except it was from loads of different periods—a ball in mid-flow; a festival of reverberant colour. But that's not the point, the point is, that they were all completely still—like statues. All was uncannily quiet and dreamy and Emma was frightfully moved by this strange inert celebration.
"Who are they?" she enquired.
"We don't know them," said a weird boy.
"Where is Jack?" asked Emma.
"He'll come," they said.
Then Emma laid eyes on this really good-looking bloke—one of the still people—and fell instantly in love, right there. And before she had time to think: "Oh no, I’m in love with a still person," she started to feel sleepy—like something had taken hold of her. And the next thing she knew she was asleep on a giant throne-type thing in the Great Hall.

When I woke up, the first thing I saw was some teeth grinning at me like someone taking the micky. Then I saw that they were Grandma's teeth in their glass and I was still in her room, and then I realized that there was a great sound and fury coming from the landing and it was morning and I had slept all night in Grandma's chair.
The door was being banged in a where’s my glasses sort of way and Mum was going "Grandma, why is this door locked?" and, "What's going on? This is going too far!"
I came out and Mum was purple. Grandma told her to settle down, and I just made a run for it. Mum said, "Where do you think you're going?" And I said, "Be on time for school." I didn't brush my teeth or have breakfast, or anything.
Devil Creatures have skinny grey bodies, where you can see the bones—except for their tummies and their bums, which are fat, and they have no nobs and they always have a cheeky grin on their faces, with teeth like Grandma's dentures. I did quite a good one on the back of my spelling book—probably because I kept thinking I could see them. There was one under McVittie's chair. Lynne Lassin saw it and asked me what it was, so I told her...and it meant telling a bit of the story...and you know what? She thought it was very cool indeed. And when it came lunchtime she wanted to hear the rest. I didn't mind, because I sort of, in a way, don't mind Lynne Lassin.
I carried on the story on the school field by Mr. Hodkin's room. And Deborah Willis and Zena Whitechurch came and listened as well, which I quite liked, even though I don't like Zena Whitechurch. Roy Hattersley, the school's worst bully (who'll nut you if you say his whole name) loves Deborah Willis but she doesn’t love him, and he hates me 'cause I'm pants at football. And now she was listening to my story and looking at me like I'm Ricky Martin, which I didn't mind either.

I wasn't sure about telling Grandma about it all, because I thought maybe I should have asked her permission or something. But when I told her, she acted like she was about seven. She clapped her hands and kept asking me what they'd said, and if I'd remembered to put in the bit about the young prince, and how she wished she could have seen their faces.
I said, "Why don't I bring you to school so you can see them?" And she said, "You don't bring old ladies to school, Henry." She said I would take her stories out of here and that was wonderful, because that way I'd be taking her out of her room every day. She did this big smile and said, "I'm your muse!"

When Emma awoke, everyone in the room had moved. They were all still but in different positions, and some were facing her like they had been looking at her. She would have liked to see that young man again, but she was feeling not quite the thing and thought she'd better get the hell out. She had seen livelier parties, let's face it.
She found a door but it was locked and the children had gone.
Above the door was this inscription which said:

The fragrance pure doth pass this way but once a thousand year.
The sound of heart may soon depart and ne'er be found by fear.
Vagabonds who lose their way, shall lose it yet again.
And something, something die to dance, and so shall dance in vain
So touch the key and take the ring, but all must understand,
That if the heart but hesitate, the dog shall bite thy hand.

When she looked round for another door she saw that all the people had moved again, like musical statues.
Then she turned again, and right in front of her was the man she had fallen in love with. He was still, but in the courtly position of asking her to dance. He had a golden key glinting upon a chain round his neck and she thought, "if the heart but hesitate," and she took his hand...and as soon as she did it the whole room started to move, and a waltz struck up and they were all suddenly dancing. Whirling and whirling ever faster.
And then she realized that she was no longer dancing with the same bloke, but a very old man with white eyes, who you could see was blind.

Next parts: see the comments

@темы: Лицедеи, Мужики, Графомания, Страдающий визг назгула, Colin "my life is ruined because of him" Firth, Литература

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[Desert Eagle]

Продолжение банкета номер 1

The next day I had about fifteen people listening to the story. It was brilliant, but I started to get so many question that it got quite difficult to carry on, and new people kept coming and irksomely wanting to hear the beginning and some of the questions got too difficult without being able to ask Grandma. In the end, when Deborah Willis asked if Emma was scared of the blind man, I said, sort of without meaning to, “I’ll have to ask her about that." 'Cause if you haven't already guessed, Emma and Grandma are the same person.
That really shut everybody up—for about five seconds. Then it just all broke loose, with everyone saying different things. Some of them wanted to know where she was and why couldn’t they see her, and if Jack was real too. Finally, I told them all about Grandma, and now everyone wants to meet her, which gives me a bit of an arrangement problem, because, well, now I've told them that I can arrange it, and they all think I'm really cool. So I decided to bust Grandma out of her room. That way she can see people's faces at last when she tells a story and they can see she's real and
maybe see other things are real too—and the Department of Nothing might not be so nothing.

Emma stood in the Night Garden, the great hall and all its denizens had vanished—and before her stood once again the weird children, but now in their midst stood also the strange blind man. This was Jack. Were he and the fine prince she’d danced with really the same bloke? She wondered secretly?
He spoke to her at length in a golden mellifluous voice which made her feel all funny and told her that had been him who had been chasing her through the forest, but it was the only way to get her to the Garden so they could all be free from the curse of Lucien Lothair. The children were all doomed to wander lost in the Garden for an extremely long time and only Emma could break the spell. All the people in the great hall were stuck like that, too. What she had to do was climb the wall of the castle of Ballangree, which is only visible on Thursdays, and in its highest tower stood Lucien Lothair, who was frozen like a statue 'cause he had accidentally put a spell on himself. Then she had to get his ring. The trouble was that as soon as you took the ring off he would come back to life and you'd be buggered. And also he was said to be so ugly that people who had had the misfortune to glance at his face for even a second had to do weeks of therapy.
Why her? she asked. "Cause of the prophecy," they said.
Anyway, they waited till Thursday for the castle to become visible. When it came into view, it was quite the most terrible thing she’d ever seen. Very high with big black spooky windows―especially the high tower where waited for her the awful ugly Lucien Lothair.
One by one she hugged the children and she started to climb the tower by means of creeping vines.
Long they waited below. For long she spent up there doing goodness knows what.
Friday came and the castle disappeared and she still hadn't come down and now it was obvious something bad had happened, like she was trapped or something.

Grandma did escape, but I didn't bust her out. She bust herself out, by ambulance.
I noticed something funny was happening to her during where's my glasses on Monday morning. And then the next morning she didn't look that brilliant—and then after school she had her stroke. A totally new thing on the list of TTPUYL. The visit to the hospital was like a visit to the Nothing Department of the Department of Nothing...only more depressing—like a place where everyone's been in detention for about five hundred years; a waiting room you get put in before O'Hare comes for you. So the point of everything then is so you can end up coming here. It's why you grow up and try to be good...so you can be like these people—so you can end up in a dustbin like this. And then you're in O'Hare's box, and that's it.
I went with just Mum. And she was really quiet and actually nice—which I knew meant something had to be really wrong with Grandma. She had a kind of secret whispering-chat with the doctor in the corridor before we went in to see her—and when it came time I got shaky and went into the loo for ages.
Grandma was in a big lounge full of loonies. There was an old lady gargling with tea and an old bloke who kept going "Just like that, just like that."
Grandma’s head kept moving about like she had a crick in her neck and her face was fixed like she was surprised.
Mum said, "Give her your flowers, Henry." So I did.
It was ages before she said anything and then she said—and I remember it exactly—"How nice. They are so much nicer this way—on the inside without all that trouble...they ought to have more like that—I'm glad you gave them to me on the inside."
Mum squeezed my shoulder. Grandma asked if we wanted to meet her friends and that Mr. Hodges had come back from India specially, and she said he was an awfully nice man but his toes were too long, which troubled him terribly. My mum said, "Why don’t you rest?" And Grandma got annoyed then and started saying, "Rest of my life! Rest! Silly woman! Rest of my life!" I tried to give her the paper and Mum tried to stop me doing it but Grandma didn't take it anyway. She just smiled at me and said, "Lovely boy—they didn't believe I had a cousin..." and then she shouted out, "Come and meet my cousin Henry, who brings the paper!" and I tried to tell her that I was her grandson and that she had been ill but she was better now. She went quiet for a minute and said, "You have to be ill if you want to get better."

I bumped into Roy Hattersley by the school gate with loads of his mates, and then I saw Max was one of them. And it was blatant what must have happened 'cause Roy Hattersley started to say something about fairy stories, and Max must of done a snider and told him about Grandma to suck up to Roy Hattersley, and maybe too because he wanted to seem like he was too cool not to give a nob about Grandma. I don't know. But when Luke Burns (who's like a three foot feeb but hangs round with Hattersley so no one can ever get him) started doing loony faces I tired to hit him but I got nutted by Max. It really bloody hurt, in case you've never been nutted. It makes your face feel really far away from your brain. Everyone went, "Look, he's nearly crying!" which I wasn't, I was probably just red from being nutted. Then when I was still on the ground Roy Hattersley started doing the loony face and then Max nutted him, too, and said "Leave him alone!" It's always like that. Max can nut me but no one else can. Anyway then Roy Hattersley nutted Max and everyone went away, except Max, who came up and grabbed me by my ears and went, "Fucking pack it in, all this Grandma stuff, OK?" and you could tell he was nearly crying, too. Blatantly.

When I got in I saw Grandma's wheelchair in the hall. I ran upstairs calling her, but I could hear all these upset voices coming out of Grandma's room, with Mum going, "Not, now, Henry!" and Grandma like she was going to cry, going, "Leave me alone, you wicked girl!" I shouldn't have gone in, but I did. Grandma was standing, and Mum was trying to hold her up by the waist. Grandma didn't have any pants on...I saw her bum, which looked like a rhino's bum. I ran out again but I couldn't hide in my room ‘cause Max was there, so I went to the bathroom. Dad was just coming out, and he looked like maybe he was nearly crying, too. He just said, "Better out than in," and walked past. I locked myself
in and the whole bathroom smelled of negative Chi. A mixture of newspaper and number twos. I sprayed lemon zest and sat on the edge of the bath, but it still really stank. Mum knocked on the door and said I could go in and see Grandma but I said I was doing a poo and she went away.
I went in to see her ages later. I was a bit scared. I didn't know what it would be like trying to talk to her, but I really really wanted to know how the story ended. It was a bit creepy 'cause she was in bed and only her bedside light was on and I thought she was asleep, but when I got close to her she opened her eyes quickly like a vampire, and looked at me. I said "Bugger" really loudly and it's the only time I've ever said that in front of Grandma, and she didn't tell me off, which was even sadder than her sitting with loonies. I said, "I came to sit with you for a while, Grandma." And she said something which was nonsense but it made me feel weirdy anyway: she said, "That's another ring on your tree of shadows." I didn't know if it was a secret message, or what. Anyway it seemed very serious and it made me say what normally I would have been embarrassed to, which was, "I love you, Grandma," and she said, "Two more rings." And then she smiled this huge smile, which started out really nice but it kept getting bigger until I could see all her dentures and then I realized she wasn't smiling, she was poking out her teeth. She reached up and put them in the glass. This always means no more talking. No more talking. The session is at an end. Anyway it didn't look much like I was going to find out what happened with Lucien Lothair.
She closed her eyes, but her teeth carried on smiling in the glass.

The next day all the people who had listened to the stories, because I couldn't tell the rest, turned into piss-takers and started saying there was no such thing as my grandma and that the stories were pants anyway—and called me a fairy boy. All except for Lynne Lassin, who said she was my friend anyway. Lynne said maybe Lucien Lothair had put a spell on Grandma because she was giving away too many secrets. I said it's not a spell, it's just how old people always get. She said maybe it's always a spell.

[Desert Eagle]

Номер 2

What I reckon is: everyone's a loony. However normal anyone seems, deep down inside they're actually mental, every single person in the world and the whole of your life you have to learn not to seem mental to other people, who are all mental, too. Deep down you speak this different language—you talk in a loony language which doesn't talk in your voice, I don't know. Maybe it screams really loudly or something. I mean we're all born mental, aren't we? If you think how babies act—we really don't stop being like that. Everyone wants to scream loudly, and grab things without asking and break them, but it's not allowed, is it? So what you have to have is a kind of anti-mental translator-device, which translates all your mentalness into normal speech—and you've got to learn to use it, and it's got to be working properly—or you get found out for being a loony.
Like Grandma.
A funny thing happened when I went in to see her with the paper. She lay in bed hardly talking or if she did it was just nonsense. I still sat with her—'cause it's better than the Department of Nothing and anyway maybe she'll suddenly get better. I know she probably won't, but I decided to do the crossword out loud in case it gave her a clue about words and helped to repair her brain...and she gave me a clue while she was asleep! A crossword clue, I mean. It was really weird and you might not believe me but I really swear it's true! I was trying to do nine down which was nine letters, first letter L and I thought it was LUMINOUS but then her voice said, "It's LUDICROUS." I didn't see her lips move and she didn't open her eyes or anything. And when I spoke to her, she didn't reply. She seemed asleep. It might have been coincidence and she might have just been saying, "it's ludicrous," in her sleep because she thought of something ludicrous. But the thing is, it was ludicrous! That was the right answer!

When I got home the next day Mum and Dad were arguing about Grandma. Mum was saying that the old lady would exhaust us into the grave and outlive us all. I couldn’t hear what Dad said.
Grandma's room was getting really stinky now. It had always been a bit stinky but this was more toilety now—and it hadn't been irksome before but, it was now. When I went in, she suddenly sat up in bed and said, "Where am I?"
I said, "You're here in your room, Grandma," and then she grabbed my arm and said, "I'm over there. I'm over there." And she pointed to her photo on the wall—of her as a young girl (Emma, in other words), and I said, "Yes, that's right, that's you." And then she pointed to her dressing gown on the back of the door and said, "There, that's me—there I am." And her hand got tighter on me, which hurt. Then she started saying my name over and over again, like "Henry, Henry, Henry," like that, "Henry, Henry, Henry." I told her she was hurting me but she was shouting really loudly now. And she started saying nutty things again, like, "Put my voice under a walnut tree!!! Henry, Henry, Henry."
That's when Mum came rushing in already all red and worked up going, "Henry, what have you done?" Then I got free and ran to the door. It's funny 'cause then Mum's face changed and she went over and hugged Grandma quietly and calmed her down. She rocked her like she was two years old. When I came out I saw Dad had been standing at his door listening. He shut it when he saw me
Later, in my room, Mum did this speech, where she had this patient wise voice that she always uses for talking bollocks, where it's like, "When you're older you'll understand this is not bollocks.” She said Grandma needed me to let go of her. Like I had to say good-bye and it would be like permission for her to go. I said I could see what she was up to and that Mum and Dad and Max and everyone might want her dead but I wasn't going to help her conspiracy.
The next morning I heard Mum say to Grandma, "Are you finding it hard to let go?" and Grandma said, "Let go of what?" I don't know why they don't just get O'Hare in to measure her up and then hit her over the head with a frying pan.
That evening I fell asleep in Grandma's room and I dreamt that I was doing the crossword again while she was asleep and I heard that funny voice from Grandma. Then I realized in the dream that it wasn't Grandma at all but her dentures talking by themselves in the glass. They introduced themselves as "A fine set of molars, eight incisors, central and lateral, upper and lower, and four canines with a perfectly sound bite. How do you do?" And they had this really strong Scottish accent.
I asked them if they could finish Grandma's story and they said yes, but not yet. I said why not, and they said 'cause we hadn't got to the end. And I asked when they would tell me, and they said that would be up to me. Then I realized that this was more or less what Mum said about saying good-bye—and I got angry with the teeth and threatened to pour their water out.
I said, "Are you saying she’s definitely going to die?" and they said, "I don't know, I'm a set of teeth, not the Oracle of Bloody Delphi!"
I was about to leave, when they gave me this mysterious instruction. They said that if I wanted to hear the rest of the story I had to make sure that they weren't buried with Grandma, and if I kept them separate they'd finish the story—and that was a promise.

Next day I was in a really crap mood and decided no way was I going to see Grandma anymore because everyone was blatantly trying to trick me into making her die and it was like I was the only one who could do it. And anyway what was the point—I mean she couldn't even talk anymore except like the Mad Hatter.
I got into such a crap mood that it made me really brave, 'cause I didn’t care, so I did an amazing thing: Roy Hattersley told me to piss off by the terrapin huts and so I told him to eff himself and he grabbed me and told me to apologize and before he could nut me I knocked him down. And no one did anything—not one thing!
I felt like the most powerful person in the world, like Colossus, who can turn his flesh to steel, so when I got home I punched Max. But he punched me back, right in the eye.

I've had all these speeches from Mum about how she can’' cope anymore and if I'm not going to see Grandma then she has to go in a home. She’s the one who has to clean her and stuff—which means her bum.
I said I'd see her, and I knew I should have, but I still didn't.

It was another thing without any explanation. I just knew when it happened. I was on the railway line going to school, and it was a windy day, and a bit rainy, and I suddenly got the smell of Grandma's room in a gust of wind. I didn’t even think about it; I turned around and ran home. I remember now, I was shouting but can't remember what. But I was thinking how, because it had only just happened, you could go back in time, like rewind—'cause you wouldn't have to go back that far.
Mum must have just left 'cause the house was locked, so I went up the drainpipe into Grandma's room. She was looking like the cover of Goosebumps. Her eyes and her mouth were open and her skin was all stretched and her head was kind of back on the pillow. I stopped looking at her and ran out and right out of the house down to Stoney
Lane where the woods start. It was all slippery on the gravel from wet leaves and I kept falling over. It was only about nine o'clock, so I wasn’t going to bump into any naked bank managers or my dad in the woods. I got soaked going through the trees.
I could see Mrs. Bluck's cottage and I thought it's not fair that she's still alive. I suddenly got a strange idea that Mrs. Bluck didn't have blood in her veins but just tea. Then I didn't think for a long time. I tried to think, but instead I just kept seeing my classroom in my imagination—and I could hear a song by Westlife coming from somewhere—and then it was Teddy Bear’s Picnic and it made me laugh because I thought of Wing Commander Devonish and you really would get a big surprise. And then I cried. For ages.

I went home in the afternoon and I was really hungry. My mum knew that I knew when she saw me. She hugged me and I cried again.
She said, "She looked lovely—so peaceful. She had a beautiful calm smile."
I knew that was a lie for a start and it made me stop crying.
I said, "Can I see her?" and she said no 'cause she was gone and she didn't think it was appropriate at my age to see a dead person. This started me going quite postal. "Gone where?" I asked her.
"She's gone to O'Hare's, Henry. We're going to bury her on Tuesday."
I said, "Were her teeth in?" and Mum said, "What?"
This is where you'll think I'm mental—I had this thing where I knew the dream was important. After I'd cried by the Stoney Lane
I'd started to think, and I'd thought about the dream and how the teeth had said to rescue them from being buried with Grandma, how they said they'd tell me the end of the story. And I'd remembered too how Grandma had told me to put her voice under a walnut tree, and it all seemed like an important message that I'd buggered up. First I hadn't said goodbye to Grandma and she'd had to go without me, and now I'd let the teeth already go with her to O'Hare's. And there was only one way I could get them back now.

I stood for ages, not quite in front of O'Hare's but a bit to the side, and I knew I couldn't do it in a million years. What would I do, just go in there and say, "Oh, hi, Mr. O'Hare, can I have my grandma's teeth back?" The only other way was the Darkling Window of Death, and I wasn't exactly going to do that either.

[Desert Eagle]

Номер 3

The drainpipe was quite wobbly but I reckoned if I even thought about it, forget it. And anyway, she would be buried in two days and at least it was daylight and this way I wouldn't have to talk to O'Hare.
One of the panes was boarded up from the inside and it was quite easy to push open.
I don't remember much about going in 'cause I was so scared I could nearly have started laughing like the Riddler out of Batman. I remember thinking for a second that I was a total superhero. First I'd punched Roy Hattersley and now I'd climbed into the Darkling Window of Death...and then I felt number twos coming on. The room was empty and really spooksville. I must of gone out and down some stairs. I think I just followed myself. I don't know how long it took me but I obviously found the right room.
The coffin was open and I kept thinking of the music from Pet Rescue to stop myself from being scared, but then that started to sound creepy and then I’d get so scared that I almost wasn’t scared, if you know what I mean. I was probably a bit mental, to be honest. The room was quite darkish but I could see which end her face was. I just closed my eyes and put my hand right in her mouth.
Her teeth wouldn't come out. They were completely stuck. Then I opened my eyes and saw that it wasn't Grandma but Mrs. Wharburton who helps with Oxfam. I didn't even know she was dead.
I turned around and saw that, like a bell-end, I hadn't noticed that there was another coffin in the room.
This really was Grandma. And actually she did look peaceful and almost smiling. So maybe Mum wasn't lying. So why wasn't it "appropriate" to see her then? Anyway, I got the teeth quite easily and that’s when the door opened and O'Hare came in.

I don't know who screamed louder. This was like blatant pant-load hair-fall-out time. I might not of been able to scream if he hadn't of screamed. But he did...he screamed the place down. I'm surprised no one came. Actually someone did but only from upstairs.
He was still shaking in his office when he gave me a cup of tea.
I was sitting in this great big comfy leather armchair and he had made me put a blanket around me—I don't know why—and he said (and I think it was Irish, I'm not sure), "I bet you had to stick your courage through a stick pin to come in there, did you?" He was smiling.
He tried to give me a gobstopper out of his jar but they were all stuck together. "I hate how they get like that," he said. "Sorry."
Another old man came in and said, "Will you be needing anything more?'
O'Hare asked me if I wanted more tea, and I asked for some water, and the old man went out.
"That's Ned. He helps me out around here." I wondered if it was really the ghostly old Mr. O'Hare.
"I'll tell you what, you gave me the fright of my bloody life," he said. "It's not every day I hear knocking about back there. People don't break into places like this, not since Burke and Hare. No relation."
He kept asking how I was feeling and I kept saying fine and he said I was made of sterner stuff than him, then.
He asked me what it was all about—was it curiosity? And I said it was. He told me that where he comes from they wouldn't let a little lad run around trying to figure out what's being kept from him. Everyone gets to say good-bye and they have a kind of party and the dead person gets invited and you all get a last look, something to keep in here like a photo, and he tapped his head. "It's not the same here," he said. "Everyone had to creep around like it's a big dirty secret."
I told him about how Grandma told stories, and how she never got to the end of the last one. I told him loads of stuff, in fact. I don't know why, but it all just came out. I didn't tell him about the teeth though, in case he thought I was mental.
Grandma was going to be first up on Tuesday—to be buried, I mean—ten o'clock. Which meant the same limo deposits our lot and has to be back at nine-thirty for Mrs. Wharburton. The Wilcoxes are at twelve ("And you thought this was a quiet town?" he said). Mr. Craddock, he's three o'clock ("He wants a Mercedes-Benz, bless him"). Four shows on one day. That's what he called them—shows. He said he was just a stage manager and the mourners were the actors—temperamental. He told me to come and see him again sometime and not wait to be brought in a box. He'd have fresh gobstoppers.
It's strange but when I came out I felt better than I'd felt for absolutely ages.
I went straight home and filled up a glass of water and went to the bathroom and put the teeth in and waited. I waited for quite a long time.
But they didn't speak and by now I knew they wouldn't, and it had been a piss-take. The whole thing. A big racket. Doing what you're supposed to do, being rewarded for being brave...It's all bollocks to get you to do it. Like Mum's wise voice...That's why it's in all the stories, to hypnotize you into thinking you’ll get something out of it—like there’s a bargain. But there isn't a bargain. You pass tests, which in stories always end up with becoming king or Lord Mayor or your rescue a princess or find a pot of gold—but in the Department of Nothing you do it all and nothing happens. Your grandma dies and everything stays the same. And you never get to hear the end of the story. I knew we had a walnut tree, so I decided to bury them there. It's not 'cause I thought anything would happen. It was just 'cause...what else was I going to do with them? Put them back?

During the funeral I kept trying to think up an ending for the story. I still haven't managed to. I'm sure Emma will have got out of that tower, but bugger if I know how. Maybe she gets the ring and Lucien Lothair turns out to be a really nice bloke and gives her a cup of tea—and then she goes off happily ever after with Blind Jack who's not blind any more...'cause it's a story. Actually, you know what? Jack could rescue her, 'cause with being blind it wouldn't make any difference, the castle being invisible! That's not bad, is it? So maybe that's the ending.

I was thinking that if I told a story about my life, everyone would boo at the end.

So now it's back to the Department of Nothing. The house is calmer now. Dad's gone back to morris dancing instead of his movement and that calms Mum down a lot. Mrs. Foster reported the movement for moral turpitude and they all got arrested. I go and see O'Hare quite a lot now. He tells jokes. They're not that funny, but if you don't laugh it hurts his feelings. Going in there makes Roy Hattersley more scared of me. O'Hare told me I had one or two tales to tell myself now, and maybe I should try them out. So that's what I just did.
And the session is now closed.

Увы, это неполный отрывок из произведения, насколько мне известно.