Читать книгу The Road to Nowhere - Maurice Walsh - Страница 6
I
ОглавлениеSOUTH by east the early June sun was slowly climbing the long shoulder of Slievemaol.
The bell-tent, brown and shabby and patched, cowering under the great sweep of hill, stood on the only level plot of ground on the south side of the bay, and that unique plot was not more than fifteen yards square. In front it shelved down to a tilted slab of basalt wherefrom a swimmer might dive into five fathoms of brisk sea-water; behind, it sloped, slowly at first and then ever more hurriedly, into the craggy breast of Slievemaol, whose bald head looked steeply down from eighteen hundred feet. As far as the eye might see, all down the long winding south side of the bay, that insignificant brown cone of canvas was the only evidence of man and his handiworks. But on the north side, across a mile of water, where a wide green valley sloped gently back between the mountains, an ugly, red-brick, turreted mansion was mercifully screened by full-foliaged trees.
On the narrow level between tent and hillside a huge bacon-box rested on its side and was roughly fitted with shelves holding the nucleus of a camping outfit and several cartons of vegetarian dietary. Facing the shelves a slim, long-backed, bronzed young fellow sat cross-legged in the heather, and, with a table-spoon, ate a golden confection out of a glass jar. His plentiful black hair was still tousled and damp after his morning plunge, and his unbuttoned pyjama jacket showed a firm long neck and a muscular chest. He was using the spoon so deftly that it made no clink against the glass, and was wolfing the golden confection as hastily and criminally as a small boy in his mother’s preserve cupboard.
Back to back with this young cupboard-snatcher sat another man, just as long and as lean but many years older—long-chinned, long-nosed, with a humorous, sardonically-lined mouth, and grey-flecked dark hair receding on a white dome of brow. He was simply attired in flannel trousers and nothing more, and the long muscles rippled under his velvet, cream-tinted skin. He sat on his heels before a small but active fire of sticks, and, with a steel fork, carefully turned over three medium-sized sea-trout that sizzled odorously on a long-handled frying-pan. At the side of the fire a tin kettle, not quite as black as the pan, sent out small breaths of steam. He watched the trout intently for half a minute, then sat back on his heels, ran the fork handle through his hair, and lifted up a big baritone bellow with a modicum of tune:
I likes my grub, it pleases me
Better than love or amity:
Eggs-and-ham, bacon-liver,
An Easter lamb, trout of the river.
I dream of tart instead of Cupid;
A broken heart is very stupid—
Except the heart of sheep in gravy;
Give me that, and Heaven save ye!
‘That, Alistair MacIan, my American Highlandman, is the morning hymn of us Anglo-Saxons. All the same, who is going to demolish and devour this third white trout?’
Alistair MacIan swallowed hastily, ‘One’ll crowd my capacity this morning, Paddy Joe.’
‘Time we tried that vegetarian ham-and-egg on the shelf there. A nourishing food by all accounts?’
‘Hmn-hmn!’ agreed Alistair readily, and his mouth was so unmistakably full that Paddy Joe Long turned on him a slow but suspicious eye.
‘What’s choking you, tinker?’
‘Nothing,’ gulped the culprit.
‘You’re hiding something in front of you.’
‘An empty jar I found—just scraping the bottom of it.’ He held up the glass jar—and it was empty.
Paddy Joe emitted an anguished yell and started to his long length. He poised the iron fork dagger-wise over Alistair’s hunched shoulders and his chin jutted out like the ram of a battleship.
‘Yankee robber! King of thieves! Stealer of dead mice from blind kittens! Incontinent, bear-mouthed, sweet-toothed glutton! Oh high heaven! my last jar of nectaire honey that I was cherishing against hard times! On the prongs of this fork I will feed you with your own gizzard, you—you——’
‘ ’Ware trout!’ warned Alistair from under shielding arms. ‘Smell ’em!’
Paddy Joe turned hastily, grasped the long handle of the pan, and shook and tossed the trout with practised deftness. Then he sank back on his heels and laughed.
‘Well-oh-well! such is luck. Last night and the night before I toyed happily with the idea of getting outside that jar sort of unbeknownst—but what chance had I against an up-and-comer?’
‘Anticipation has its pleasures,’ philosophised Alistair, tossing the empty jar into the air and cleverly catching it, mouth down, on the iron spoon.
‘Ay! and may realisation torment you. “One will crowd my capacity,” says he. Not as much as a tail if I had any one——’
‘Here hastes one now,’ Alistair stopped him, ‘who grubbed early or went without.’
