Bücher online kostenlos Kostenlos Online Lesen
Capital

Capital

Titel: Capital Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: John Lanchester
Vom Netzwerk:
was no longer there. Petunia Howe was dead.
    It was frightening and wrong to see her mother’s eyes still open. The nurse, as if she realised – but then she probably did, she had done this many times before, you had to remember that this happened all the time – the nurse reached out and closed them. Strange, Mary had seen that gesture in films, it always looked hard to believe, as if the eyes had little levers in them so you could pull them down just like that, with the palm of your hand, but it must be true because that was just what the nurse had done. Maybe they taught you how to do it. The nurse put her hand on Mary’s shoulder; the first time she had touched her. She didn’t say anything, and nor did Mary, who more than anything else in the world, at this moment, wanted a cigarette. After a minute or two she got up and went downstairs, taking the packet of Marlboro Lights out of her cardigan pocket and opening the garden door. She thought: my poor old mum. Thank God. My poor old dad. One of them suddenly, one of them slowly, the first hard on the survivors, the second hard on everybody. Poor me, she thought also. Orphan Mary. Mary Mary quite contrary look at her parents go. If you had been a better daughter they would still be alive, a voice told her, as another voice immediately contradicted it: rubbish!
    I suppose this is what they call denial, thought Mary. Except it didn’t seem to her that she was denying anything; what she mainly felt was numb. Anaesthetised. She must call Alan. She finished the first cigarette then did something she hardly ever did and lit another from the stub.
    If Mary had been looking outside herself, there still would have been just enough light to see the garden, which had kept growing and growing, untrimmed and unattended to, all through the spring. Now the hollyhocks and delphiniums were flowering, and the lupins had started to bloom. The clematis at the back wall had stretched into the neighbours’ gardens on both sides, and reached over the wall into the flats which fronted onto Mackell Road. The unkempt patch of lawn was a deep, chaotic green. The garden was sheltered, and when the plants were in bloom their perfume hung in the air; today that smell, always more vivid at dusk, was also sharply green. Even through the cigarette smoke, Mary could detect the spearmint that had spread all through the left-hand flower bed like the weed it was. It was a time of day, a time of the year, that Petunia had loved. The honeysuckle which grew around the door had spread, and one or two tendrils of the plant had reached around the window into the kitchen itself. It was as if the garden Petunia had loved was trying to reach towards her, into the home where she had lived and died, as she set out on her final journey.

58
     
     
    ‘I have to do another poo!’ said Joshua. Matya wasn’t sure whether to sigh or laugh, so did a little bit of both. They were in the sitting room downstairs, with the loo mercifully close. It was raining, so they were having an indoors day, though if the weather improved Matya had promised that they would go to the pond on the other side of the Common and feed the ducks. On the way, they would discuss superpowers, an interest Josh had now caught from his older brother: which were their favourite powers, which one they would have if they could only have one, which one they would have if they could make up a new one, and which superhero was best. Joshua’s current favourite was Batman because he liked his cave.
    ‘OK,’ said Matya. She took his hand and steered him towards the toilet. Joshua preferred to go to the toilet on his own, but did not like the door to be closed – it made him feel lonely. He also liked to carry on a conversation while he was in there because he liked the feeling of having company.
    ‘It’s runny,’ said Joshua.
    ‘Poor darling, do you have diarrhoea?’ said Matya.
    ‘No it’s not that runny. It’s poo sauce,’ said Joshua. He had been exposed to over-frank discussions of his own toilet habits, and since they were of great and legitimate interest to him, had acquired a complete confidence that anything which happened to him in the lavatory could and should be gone into in detail, with whoever he was talking to. Poo sauce was a term, invented by him and found very useful at 51 Pepys Road, for a stool which was neither liquid nor firm.
    ‘Oh well, that’s not so bad,’ said Matya. ‘Do you need me to wipe your

Weitere Kostenlose Bücher