The Beautiful Indifference: Stories

Начало книги

Later, when I knew her better, Manda told me how she’d beaten two girls at once outside the Cranemakers Arms in Carlisle. She said all you had to do was keep hold of one, keep hold of one and keep hitting her. No matter what the other was doing to you, you kept that first one pinned, and you kept hammering her, so the free-handed bitch could see you were able to take a flailing and still have her mate at the same time. It’d get into the lass’s head then, Manda said, what it would be like when the mate got put down, and you went to batter her next without a silly dog on your back making you slow. Chances were you wouldn’t have to fight them both. And if you did, that second one would be so fleart from you being still upright after her best, undefended go, she’d forget any moves she knew.

Manda was fiercer than all of us. It had nothing to do with her size — it never does with girls, for the willowy tall ones are often gentle as you like. Manda was small — maybe five foot two. She wasn’t squat either, not pelvic, or thick with glands and brawn. It was in her eyes. She had eyes that got set off easily, like a dog chained up all its life and kicked about, prone to attack for no other provocation than it catches you looking its way. All you can do is pray the chain holds at the stake. And it was in her brain. She didn’t have a switch in there that stopped her from pulling back her fist, like the rest of us. That’s why we were all afraid of her. That’s why her name went before her — Manda Slessor — and if you heard it said in a room you felt ill at ease, you felt things shift out of the way for its coming into the conversation. Everyone knew she was hard. It was the first thing ever they knew about her. It was her pedigree.

Читать дальше →