Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

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Mark Haddon, author of the international bestselling novel
and
, returns with a collection of unsparing short stories. In the prize-winning story "The Gun," a man's life is marked by a single afternoon and a rusty.45; in "The Island," a mythical princess is abandoned on an island in the midst of war; in "The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear," a cadre of sheltered artistocrats sets out to find adventure in a foreign land and finds the gravest dangers among themselves. These are but some of the men and women who fill this searingly imaginative and emotionally taut collection of short stories by Mark Haddon, that weaves through time and space to showcase the author's incredible versatility.
Yet the collection achieves a sum that is greater than its parts, proving itself a meditation not only on isolation and loneliness but also on the tenuous and unseen connections that link individuals to each other, often despite themselves. In its titular story, the narrator describes with fluid precision a catastrophe that will collectively define its victims as much as it will disperse them — and brilliantly lays bare the reader's appetite for spectacle alongside its characters'. Cut with lean prose and drawing inventively from history, myth, fairy tales, and, above all, the deep well of empathy that made his three novels so compelling,
reveals a previously unseen side of the celebrated author.

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The curtains in the Roberts’ house are closed, however, and there is no red van parked outside so they walk on towards the corner where the path narrows and turns into the trees. Slabs of dusty sunlight are neatly stacked at the same angle between the branches. The bubbling runs of a blackbird’s call. An empty pack of pork scratchings trodden into cracked and powdery earth. Luckily the junkies and lager drinkers don’t have a great deal of stamina and if you walk for ten minutes the litter thins out and if it weren’t for the smell of exhaust fumes you could imagine that the roar of traffic was a great cataract pouring into a ravine to your left.

They find a clearing that contains the last few broken branches of a den they built earlier in the summer where they drank Babycham and smoked six menthol cigarettes and were violently sick. Let’s do it here. Sean finds a log to use as a shooting gallery and Daniel is sent in search of targets. He climbs the boundary fence and roots around among the hawthorn bushes which line the hard shoulder, coming back with two empty beer bottles, a battered plastic oil can and a muddy teddy bear with both arms missing. He feels exhausted by the heat. He imagines standing on the lawn at home, squeezing the end of the hose with his thumb and making rainbows in the cold falling water. He arranges the objects at regular intervals along the log. He thinks about the child who once owned the teddy bear and regrets having picked it up but doesn’t say anything.

Sean raises the gun and moves his feet apart to brace himself. Daniel sees the pad of Sean’s forefinger flatten as he begins to squeeze the trigger. A deep, cathedral quiet. The traffic stops. The blackbird no longer sings. He can hear the shuttle of his own blood.

He is not aware of the shot itself, only the loose rattle of scattering birds. He sees Sean being thrown backwards as if a big animal has charged and struck him in the centre of his chest mid-leap. The oil can, the bottles and the bear are still standing.

Oh my God . Sean gets to his feet. Oh my God . He begins dancing. He has clearly never done anything this exciting in his life. Oh my God .

A military plane banks overhead. Daniel is both disappointed and relieved that he is not offered the second shot. Sean breathes deeply and theatrically. He braces himself again, wipes the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his T-shirt and raises the gun. This time the noise is breathtakingly loud. It seems obvious to Daniel that many, many people will have heard it.

What are you doing? It is the youngest Robert Hales.

They jump, both of them, but Sean recovers his composure quickest. What do you think we’re doing?

You’ve got a gun . Despite the heat, Robert is wearing a battered orange cagoule.

Duh.

Let me have a go.

Yeh, right , says Sean.

I want a go , says Robert. He steps forward. He is taller than Sean by a good six inches.

Just as he did in the bedroom, Sean lifts his arm until the gun is pointing directly at Robert’s face. No way, José.

Daniel realises that Sean may kill Robert. He is excited by this possibility. He will be a witness to a crime. People will respect him and feel sorry for him.

Robert doesn’t move. Five, maybe ten seconds. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . Daniel can’t tell if Robert is terrified or utterly unafraid. Finally he says, I’m going to kill you , not in the way kids say it to one another in the playground but in the way you say, I’m going to the shop . He walks away without looking back. Sean aims at him till he vanishes. The two of them listen to the fading crunch of twigs and dry leaves under his trainers. Spastic . Sean lets his arm slump. Bloody spastic . He walks up to the teddy bear and places the barrel in the centre of its forehead. Daniel thinks how similar they look, the bear and Robert, uninterested, staring straight ahead. But Sean can’t be bothered to waste another bullet. Shit . Robert’s appearance has made the adventure seem mundane. Sean throws the gun into the Gola bag. Let’s go.

They walk back through the woods, taking the long route that loops up the hill and comes out on the far side of the scrapyard, avoiding the Roberts’ house altogether. Gnats and dirty heat. Daniel has dog shit on his left shoe which he has not been able to scrape off completely.

His sister Helen was unexpectedly born breech The cord became trapped while - фото 80

His sister, Helen, was unexpectedly born breech. The cord became trapped while her head was coming out and she was deprived of oxygen. Daniel is not told about this until he is sixteen. He knows only that there is a light in her eyes which stutters briefly sometimes then comes back on. He knows only that she has trouble with numbers, counting objects, telling the time.

She will leave school at sixteen with no qualifications, living at home and working in a furniture warehouse, then in a greengrocer’s. She will change doctors and get better drugs. Ethosuximide. Valproic acid. The petit mal will stop. She will be easily confused but she will be plump and blonde and pretty and people will like her instinctively. She’ll meet Garry at a night club. Overweight, thirty-five, detached house, owner of a taxi firm, a big man in a small world. They will marry and it will take Daniel a long time to realise that this is a happy ending.

The noise is nothing more than a brief hiss followed by a clatter of foliage - фото 81

The noise is nothing more than a brief hiss followed by a clatter of foliage. Crossbow? Catapult? Then a second shot. It is the oddest thing, but Daniel will swear that he saw it before he heard it, before Sean felt it even. A pink stripe appears on the skin just above Sean’s elbow. He yelps and lifts his arm. Bastard .

They squat on the path, hearts hammering. Sean twists his arm to inspect the damage. There is no bleeding, just a red weal, as if he had leant against the rim of a hot pan. Robert must be somewhere farther down the hill. The hole in the windscreen, the hole in the driver’s body. But Daniel can see nothing without lifting his head above the undergrowth. The best plan would be to run away as fast as they can so that Robert is forced to aim between the trees at two moving targets, but Sean is taking the gun out of the bag. I’m going to get him .

Don’t be stupid.

And what’s your brilliant idea?

Another hiss, another clatter. They duck simultaneously. For a couple of seconds Sean looks frightened. Then he doesn’t. This way. He starts to commando-crawl through a gap in the brambles.

Daniel follows him only because he doesn’t want to be alone. Sean holds the gun in his hand as he crawls. Daniel thinks how easy it would be for him to pull the trigger accidentally. Cracked seed cases, dry leaves and curls of broken bark. They drag themselves between the gnarly trunks. Born and bred in a briar patch. He tries to pretend that they are in a film but he can’t do it.

They are moving in the wrong direction, away from the scrapyard. And this is Robert’s back garden. He will know every inch of the wood. Daniel scratches his cheek on a thorn and squeezes his eyes shut until the pain dies away so that he doesn’t cry out. He touches his face. Blood on his dirty fingers.

They find themselves under a low dome of branches just big enough for them to lie stretched out, a place where an animal might sleep, perhaps. Improbably, they hear the sound of an ice-cream van, far off.

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