Читать книгу A Pure Clear Light - Madeleine John St. - Страница 7

Simon was not beset by brooding questions about spiritual growth – the Holy Ghost, it appears, was content to leave him to his own devices – but he had reached a point of vague disquiet with the givens, that was a fact. Simon had meant originally to become the Jean Renoir de nos jours, but actually he directed television plays and not especially meritorious ones at that. He was gritty and impatient and competent and personable and always had plenty of work; there was never time to sit down quietly and write the script of another Grande Illusion. He had a family to care for after all, Flora’s income notwithstanding: and that was earmarked for the school fees, anyway. So Simon just got on with it – and it wasn’t such a bad old life; there were lots worse. Flora was looking a bit seedy these days, but you had to expect that. The children were pretty, and clever: they argued a lot – you had to expect that, too – but he could tell from the manner of their arguing that they had sharp wits, so their futures in this jungle of a world seemed (as far as they could be) secure.

He nevertheless believed that one of these days, soon, he would find a window in the schedule, and would fly through it into a warm well-lighted place in which that script (a production certainty) could and would be written; or at any rate, started.

It was just six months or so after Flora had noted – and then forgotten – the times of the Sunday and weekday masses that something resembling a window seemed to appear in the wall around Simon, in that he found he would not after all be able to accompany Flora and the offspring to the gîte in the Périgord which they had taken with some friends of theirs – the Hunters, and their two sons – during the summer holidays. It had been intended that he would join them for a fortnight of the scheduled month but this was now impossible: a job which ought to have been finished in time had had to be deferred, and Simon was therefore, as he explained to Flora, ‘Fucked.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Flora, rather relieved at the thought of being away from him for a bit. ‘Poor Simon.’

‘Yeah,’ said Simon. He was in fact thinking that, with no family around him to distract his attention and commandeer his time, he might be able, at last, to sit down and get to work on that script. The longer one left these things the better they potentially became, but it really was time to get cracking, because he wasn’t getting any younger.