GB84

Начало книги

With the exception of those persons appearing as well-known personalities under their own names, albeit often in occult circumstance, all other characters are a fiction in a novel based upon a fact.

Electricity —

Harsh service station light. Friday 13 January, 1984 –

She puts a cigarette to her lips, a lighter to her cigarette.

A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate —

He waits.

She inhales, her eyes closed. She exhales, her eyes open.

He picks at the solid red sauce on the plastic ketchup bottle.

‘Early March,’ she says. ‘South Yorkshire.’

He rolls the solid red sauce into a soft bloody ball.

She stubs out the cigarette. She puts an envelope on the table.

He squashes the ball between his fingers and thumb –

Predicts the ruin of the State.

She stands up.

He shuts his eyes until she’s almost gone. The stink still here –

Power.

The dead brood under Britain. We whisper. Weecho.Theemanation of Giant Albion — Wake up, says Cath again. Wake up, Martin. I turn over. I look at her. They’re closing Cortonwood, she says. You’ll be out now. I sit up. I reach for my cigarettes. She moves packet out of my reach. I say, Pass them here. She throws them on bed. Expensive habit that, she says. Bloody Manvers. I don’t drive. Geoff Brine picks us up. I wouldn’t be here if he’d not rung — Click-click — Asked us if I wanted a lift into Thurcroft. Not way Cath’s been going on. But she’s gone into Sheffield to meet her mate. On way we stop for one in Rising Deer. Neither of us fancy Hotel. There’ll be enough talk later. They’ve begun by time we park up, get inside Welfare — We’ve fought sixty years to get these snap times, now they’re going to change them so coal will be coming up whole time — It’s packed. They put it to vote, show of hands. Three to one against. Let them sort it out themselves, says Geoff.

Читать дальше →