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Pat Barker: Double Vision

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Pat Barker Double Vision

Double Vision: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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This gripping novel explores the effects of violence on the journalists and artists who have dedicated themselves to representing it. In the aftermath of September 11, reeling from the effects of reporting from New York City, two British journalists, a writer, Stephen Sharkey, and a photographer, Ben Frobisher, part ways. Stephen returns to England shattered; he divorces his duplicitous wife and quits his job. Ben follows the war on terror to Afghanistan and is killed. Stephen retreats to a cottage in the country to write a book about violence, and what he sees as the reporting journalist's or photographer's complicity in it. Ben's widow, Kate, a sculptor, lives nearby, and as she and Stephen learn about each other their world speedily shrinks, in pleasing but also disturbing ways. The sinister events that begin to take place in this small town, so far from the theaters of war Stephen has retreated from, will force him to act instinctively, violently, and to face his most painful revelations about himself.

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The physiotherapist came to see her, and then she started regular sessions in the physiotherapy room, where she stared in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors at the neckless creature she’d become. ‘Very good,’ the uniformed girls kept saying. ‘Very good.’ She hadn’t been spoken to in such jolly, patronizing tones since she was in nappies. She smiled, desperation simmering under the surface.

Back on the ward, she set off down the corridor clinging to the rail, forcing herself to keep walking, though each step sent twinges of pain up her spine. Now and then she met another patient, similarly handicapped, head on, and then they’d pause, assess the extent of each other’s disability, and decide, silently, which of them was better able to let go of the rail and stand unsupported while the other shuffled past. So much courage. So much decency. She was humbled by it.

But then it was back to the ward. Her room overlooked a courtyard where even evergreen plants, deprived of light, sickened and died.

‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ she said, when Alec Braithewaite, the local vicar and also a friend, came to see her.

He took a step backwards, raising his hands, pretending to be knocked over by her urgency. ‘Good morning, Kate.’

She sighed, accepting the reproof. ‘Good morning, Alec.’

‘How are you?’

‘Going mad.’

He came and sat beside the bed. ‘Nobody likes hospitals. The main thing is to get better.’

‘The “main thing” is the Christ.’

He smiled. ‘I’m pleased to hear you say so.’

‘You know what I mean, Alec. My Christ.’

‘Can you lift your arm?’

She tried, as she tried a hundred times a day. ‘No.’

‘When does it have to be finished?’

‘May. In time for Founders’ and Benefactors’ Day.’

‘That’s not too bad.’

‘Alec, it’s a massive figure. It’s barely enough time if I were all right.’

‘Can’t you negotiate another date?’

‘I’ve never missed a deadline in my life.’

She sat brooding, her chin sunk into the padded collar. She looked broken, Alec thought, as he’d never seen her before, not even in the first weeks after Ben’s death. ‘Then you’re going to need help.’

‘I don’t want an assistant.’

‘Other sculptors use them, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

He leaned forward. ‘So what don’t you like about them?’

‘Where to start? For one thing, they’re always art students, and they keep on asking questions. “Why did you do that? Why didn’t you do the other?” And even if they don’t ask, you can hear them thinking it. Nine times out of ten it just turns into a tutorial. I know it sounds terribly ungenerous, and I do — I do actually like teaching, but I don’t want to do it when I’m working.’

‘Does it have to be an art student?’

‘It’s the obvious pot to dip into.’

He shrugged. ‘Depends what you want.’

‘All I want is somebody strong enough to lift, who isn’t… too interested in what I’m doing.’

‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Bit of bored beefcake?’

She refused to rise to him. ‘Doesn’t have to be a man. I do all the lifting normally.’

‘Do you remember the lad who used to do the churchyard after we lost the sheep?’

A hazy memory of a young man wielding a scythe in the long grass between the headstones. ‘Vaguely.’

‘He’s very reliable, and he builds patios and walls and things like that, so he must be fairly good with his hands. And I shouldn’t think he’s got a lot of work on at the moment. I know he was hoping to get a job in the timber yard, but I think that fell through. They’re very quiet at the moment. Shall I see if he’s available?’

‘That’s not a bad idea, actually. What’s his name?’

‘Peter Wingrave. I’ll give him a ring, shall I?’

He looked down at her, noticing the lines of tension around her eyes and mouth. What he thought she needed at this moment was faith, but he couldn’t say that. She’d come to church once or twice after Ben’s funeral, but only to show her appreciation of a difficult job well done. A youngish man, a violent death. It’s not easy in such circumstances to know what to say, particularly to a congregation of atheists and agnostics up from London on cheap day-returns. Kate made no secret of her lack of belief. He did wonder what she’d be able to make of this commission, but then he thought that the risen Christ was, among many other things, a half-naked man in his early thirties, and Kate did male nudes very well indeed.

‘How’s Justine?’ Kate asked, making an effort to set her own problems aside.

Alec’s face brightened, as it always did at any mention of his daughter. ‘Much better.’

Justine had been due to go to Cambridge last October, but in September had gone down with glandular fever and had to ask for her place to be deferred for a year. She’d been at a loose end ever since, mooching round the house, lonely and depressed. Alec had been quite worried about her, but now, he said, she’d got herself a little job as an au pair, twenty hours a week, and that gave her some pocket-money, and, even more important, a framework for the day. ‘The Sharkeys. You know them? Their little boy.’

‘Oh, yes. Adam, isn’t it?’

‘Anyway,’ he said, hearing the rattle of cutlery in the corridor outside, ‘I think I’d better be off and leave you to your lunch.’ He bent to kiss her, and she grasped his hand. ‘I’ll have a word with Peter as soon as I can.’

The doors swinging shut behind him let in a smell of hot gravy and custard. She never felt hungry, though when food was put in front of her she ate it all. She knew she had to build up her strength. As she ate, she thought about Alec, who was an odd person to find in charge of a rural parish. He’d written several books on ethical issues raised by modern genetics and by developments in reproductive medicine, including one on therapeutic cloning that Robert Sharkey described as the most level-headed discussion of the topic he’d encountered. And he did a lot of work with released prisoners, battered wives, drug addicts, even converting part of his own house to give them somewhere to stay. No, he was a good man, though she didn’t personally see that his goodness had much to do with his religion. And he had another claim on her affection: Ben had always liked him.

After the pudding — apple crumble indistinguishable from cement — she heaved herself out of the chair and started again on the long walk to the top of the corridor.

Winter sunshine streaming in through the tall windows created a grainy shadow that almost seemed to mock her efforts as she edged and shuffled along. Her walking was getting better, but she’d gladly have crawled around on her bum for the rest of her days if only she’d been able to raise her right arm above her head.

At night she lies awake, worrying about the Christ, her fingers aching for the scarred handle of her mallet, as her body aches for Ben, a cold hollow inside. She tucks her knees up to her chin, consciously foetal, but the position puts too much pressure on her back and she has to straighten out again and lie on her back like an effigy. She remembers going into the church at Chillingham with Ben, turning the corner into a side chapel, finding Lord and Lady Grey together on their slab. Holding hands? Side by side, anyway, in a silence that still, after five centuries, feels companionable. And that extraordinary domestic detail: the fireplace in the wall opposite their tomb. As once there must have been a fireplace in their bedroom. Firelight on sweaty bodies, the first time they made love, firelight on the cold alabaster of their effigies. And then her mind drifts to Ben’s grave in the churchyard here, backed by a low stone wall, dry blond grasses waving in the field beyond. And again she stretches out her legs, hears the rattle of the trolley bringing tea, and realizes that at some point in all this, surely, she must have slept.

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