Patrick Ness - The Crash of Hennington

THE CRASH OF HENNINGTON

Patrick Ness

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by Flamingo 2003

First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 2003

Copyright © Patrick Ness 2003

Patrick Ness asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Photograph of Patrick Ness © Steve Double

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Source ISBN: 9780007292028

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2011 ISBN: 9780007390342

Version: 2017-01-03

‘Souls have complexions, too: what will suit one will not suit another.’

GEORGE ELIOT Middlemarch

For Marc Nowell

And in memory of my remarkable great aunt, Ingeborg Utheim 1915–1999

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue. In.

Part I. Welcome to Hennington.

1. The Solari.

2. A Confluence of Nudity.

3. The Crash on the Hill.

4. Luther in Limbo.

5. Maggerty.

6. The Mayor’s Office and its Discontents.

7. Father and Daughter.

8. Mathematica.

9. Hospitality.

10. The Crash at the Bridge.

11. Orthopediae.

12. The Melting Sanctuary.

13. Maggerty Eats.

14. Peter on the Move.

15. An Offer.

16. Why Archie Banyon Feels the Way He Does About Women.

17. ‘The Tale of Rufus and Rhonda'.

18. Mingle, Mingle.

19. Duty Calling.

20. In the Hours Before Morning.

21. The Crash Before Dawn.

Part II. There Are No Ends, Only Changes.

22. Marmalade Leviathan.

23. Comfort for the Uncomfortable.

24. Closing the Deal.

25. Maggerty in the City.

26. What Do You Want?

27. ‘Cleave’ Has Two Meanings.

28. Digitalis.

29. The Crash at the Pond.

30. It Always Comes Out Somewhere.

31. A Basic Question.

32. Opening the Deal.

33. Unsentimental Journey.

34. A Shot Across the Bows?

35. The Story of Cora, Jon, and Albert, as told to Eugene by Jon.

36. Max and Talon Discuss the Ramifications of the Weight of Cultural Pressures and Also Buy a Dog.

37. What Happened Between Luther and Archie.

38. Maggerty on the Move.

39. The Frustrating Aspects of Prophecy.

Part III. All Bets May or May Not Be Final.

40. Considering Variables.

41. The Lonely Hunter.

42. Refuge for the Weary.

43. Max Has The Same Conversation.

44. The Crash and The Injured Calf.

45. Class Reunion.

46. He What?

47. In Which Much News Is Confirmed.

48. Jarvis’ Sermon About the Brandon Beach Massacre.

49. An Unexpected Intransigence.

50. A Tentatively Happy Bleakness.

51. Post-Coital Powwow.

52. A Casualty.

53. Fallout.

54. Max and Talon and The Emu.

55. Sometimes It’s Just Sorrow.

56. And What of Eugene?

57. Fever Dream.

58. A Most Delicious Proposal.

Part IV. Commodities.

59. The Foster Downs.

60. How to Serve Man.

61. Ambushed.

62. Maggerty in Purgatory.

63. The Reasons Why We Do Things.

64. Rest.

65. I’m Begging You.

66. Young Man’s Fancy.

67. Old(er) Man’s (and Woman’s) Fancy.

68. The Prodigal.

69. Want.

70. The Worm, Aching to Turn.

71. Paradise Interrupted.

72. The Swinging Gates of Opportunity.

73. A Rush and a Push and the Day is Ours.

74. Banyon Enterprises.

75. Listen.

76. An End and a Beginning.

Part V. Hopeful Campaigns.

77. The Furniture Cave.

78. Letter To The Editor.

79. The Inevitable Disappointment By Those We Love.

80. How Things Add Up.

81. The Smell of Blood.

82. The Hard Bit.

83. Re-linking.

84. Triumph of the Will.

85. Getting to the Bottom.

86. The Debate.

87. Old Love.

88. The Immobile Journey.

89. The Schism, Arriving on Schedule.

90. Cracking Skulls.

91. An Invisible Threat, Real Nonetheless.

92. Not the Highest Bid, but the Earliest.

93. What We Wish For.

94. A Cold Dish.

95. Unprecedented Measures.

96. The Living River.

Part VI. Election Day.

97. One Up, One Down.

98. The Faces in the Distance.

99. Thrust, Parry, Feint, Touch.

100. The Message to the Light Wind.

101. In the Last Quiet Hours.

102. The Journey of Faith.

103. The View From Here.

104. War It Is, Then.

105. A Kindness.

106. Three.

107. Father and Son.

108. A Lover’s Hand, A Lover’s Breath.

109. Outside City Hall.

110. An Albert and Cora.

111. The Field of Battle.

112. The Messenger.

113. Who Are You?

114. Lair.

115. To The Faithful Departing.

116. Ashes, Ashes.

117. Out.

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

She smelled dawn even before the sun looked over the horizon. A low mist clung to the sleeping bodies surrounding her at intervals across the lea. Breath clouded up from her great nose in increasing puffs as wakefulness filled her body. She raised her head and glanced around the sloping green of the meadow.

The first one awake. Usual and expected. The way it should be and was.

She turned her head to the sunrise coursing down from the hilltop. A low flood of light illuminated the mist and cast the dozing members of the herd as gray, rocky islands in a sea of white. She breathed in as the morning reached her lips and, leaning back to gather the proper force of weight, hoisted herself to her feet.

Time to move into the daybreak.

The front lobby of the Solari was made entirely of marble, even the sunlight. Any hotel guest – say, this one here, with the inappropriate clothes and the reminiscing smile – standing at the entrance to the second most opulent and expensive hotel in Hennington could see in detail the shiny yet persistently flat white-flecked black marble that made up the sprawling floor, though he would be hard pressed to find a seam, the expense apparently having been poured into the material’s quality rather than its beauty. Given that the outside of the Solari was as shiny and edged as a precisely folded piece of foil, it might be surprising to this particular visitor, though perhaps not, that the interior, with its deep black expanses peppered with spots and streaks of white, could be so ominous and still. A blanket of the universe wrapped up as a present, perhaps.