Читать онлайн «The Golden Child»

Автор Пенелопа Фицджеральд

Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Dedication

About the Author

First Mariner Books edition 1999

First published in Great Britain by Colin Duckworth, 1977

Reprinted by arrangement with Flamingo, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-395-95619-9

eISBN 978-0-547-52481-8

v2. 0115

For Desmond

The enormous building waited as though braced to defend itself, standing back resolutely from its great courtyard under a frozen January sky, colourless, cloudless, leafless and pigeonless. The courtyard was entirely filled with people. A restrained noise rose from them, like the grinding of the sea at slack water. They made slight surges forward, then back, but always gaining an inch.

Inside the building the Deputy Director, Security, reviewed the disposition of his forces. The duties that led to congratulation and overtime had always in the past been strictly allocated by seniority, as some of the older ones were still, for the hundredth time, pointing out, grumbling that they were not to the fore. ‘This is a time when we may need force,’ the DD(S) replied patiently. ‘Experience, too, of course,’ he added conciliatingly. The huge bronze clock in the atrium, at which he glanced, had the peculiarity of waiting and then jumping forwards a whole minute; and this peculiarity made it impossible not to say, Three minutes to go, two minutes to go. ‘Three minutes to go,’ said DD(S). ‘We are all quite clear, I take it. Slight accidents, fainting, trampling under foot—the emergency First Aid posts are indicated in your orders for the day; complaints, show sympathy; disorder, contain; increased disorder, communicate directly with my office; wild disorder, the police, to be avoided if possible.

Crash barriers to be kept in place at all entries at sill times. No lingering. ’

‘Sir William doesn’t approve of that,’ said a resolutely doleful voice.

‘I fail to account for your presence here, Jones. You have already been drafted, and your place, as usual, is in Stores. The real danger point is the approach to the tomb,’ he added in a louder voice; ‘that’s been agreed, both with you and higher up. ’ The bronze hand jumped the last minute, both inside and on the public face outside the building, and with the august movement of a natural disaster the wave of human beings lapped up the steps and entered the hall. The first public day of the Museum’s winter exhibition of the Golden Child had begun.

It was the dreaded Primary Schools day. The courtyards had been partitioned by the darkly gleaming posters announcing the Exhibition. On each poster was a pale representation, in the style of Maurice Denis, of the Golden Child and the Ball of Golden Twine, with much fancy lettering, and a promise of reduced prices of admission for the very old and the very young. The moving files wound, like a barbarian horde, among these golden posters: five or six thousand children, mostly dressed in blue cotton trousers once thought suitable only for oppressed Chinese peasants, and little plastic jackets; half unconscious with cold, having long since eaten the sandwiches which were intended for several hours later, more or less under the control of numbed teachers, insistent, single-minded, determined to see and to have seen. Like pilgrims of a former day, they were earning their salvation by reaching the end of a journey.