The Smile of a Ghost

Начало книги

ALL THE PEOPLE who’d told Mumford, It’s a new beginning.

All the beaming faces blurred by pint glasses frosted with froth, all the damp handshakes. Mumford mumbling, Ah, thanks… thank you… very nice… ’course I will… No, I won’t be going nowhere… yes… no… thank you.

Andy Mumford, who didn’t see the point of new beginnings – complete waste of half a lifetime’s experience. Andy Mumford who had just wanted to carry on.

The way this town had carried on: the oldest town he knew – or at least the one that looked oldest. Bent and sagging, and people loved it for that, and nobody looked up at the crooked gables and the worm-riddled beams and said, What this old place needs is A New Beginning.

Mumford felt a gassy fury inside, like in one of the first-ever pictures he could remember – in a children’s encyclopaedia, it was, and it showed the inside of a volcano close to eruption. How many years ago was that now – forty-four, forty-five? God almighty.

Читать дальше →