Отрывок из книги
Elizabeth Mackintosh
Published by Good Press, 2021
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‘Ah, yes. I forgot your passion for faces. The Borgias had wonderful faces. I should think they would provide a little mystery or two for you to dabble in if you looked them up. Or there was Perkin Warbeck, of course. Imposture is always fascinating. Was he or wasn’t he. A lovely game. The balance can never come down wholly on one side or the other. You push it over and up it comes again, like one of those weighted toys.’
The door opened and Mrs Tinker’s homely face appeared in the aperture surmounted by her still more homely and historic hat. Mrs Tinker had worn the same hat since first she began to ‘do’ for Grant, and he could not imagine her in any other. That she did possess another one he knew, because it went with something that she referred to as ‘me blue’. Her ‘blue’ was an occasional affair, in both senses, and never appeared at 19 Tenby Court. It was worn with a ritualistic awareness, and having been worn it was used in the event as a yardstick by which to judge the proceedings. (‘Did you enjoy it, Tink? What was it like?’ ‘Not worth putting on me blue for.’) She had worn it to Princess Elizabeth’s wedding, and to various other royal functions, and had indeed figured in it for two flashing seconds in a newsreel shot of the Duchess of Kent cutting a ribbon, but to Grant it was a mere report; a criterion of the social worth of an occasion. A thing was or was not worth putting on ‘me blue’ for.
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