(2003) Overtaken Read Online Free PDF Page B

amazingly
adroit, ;pinning and catching the unwieldy objects with effortless ease then
sending them flying back up into the dome of the tent. As he created each bird
Valery tucked it under his arm till he had quite a flock there. Also during all
the juggling and the balloon folding the rest of the cast had come on,
slithering along the ground clad in skin-tight, multicoloured outfits with
their faces painted, possibly to resemble lizards — it was hard to tell.
    Now
that he had a lot of birds Valery released one into the air and when it got
about ten feet high, without missing a beat, the girl shot it down with a nail,
causing the lizards to emit a low moan and to writhe about; another bird went
up to meet the same fate as the first. Each time the girl nailed a balloon bird
the lizards would wriggle around in simulated agony and plead with her to stop
her destruction of rubber bird life but she carried on, doing a little dance of
rejection while still tossing the nail guns about. I was familiar with those
nail guns myself and reckoned the girl had them set on hair trigger, for though
I didn’t think anybody else noticed quite a few of the nails went flying off
into the darkness, and finally I was certain I saw a lizard take one in the
thigh, though fair play to the fellow he kept on dancing and didn’t flinch for
a second. Another reptile pulled the nail out quickly and a dark stain began to
spread under his costume. After the show we left our cars parked where they
were’ and walked down to the dark beach. We were going to eat at a restaurant
which was on a boat anchored out in Southport Bay . The
restaurant was called the Gravy Boat and it was reached by a World War Two
amphibious landing craft which was waiting for us on the sands, its diesel eng
. chuntering blackly to itself. We climbed a ladder into the open back of the
olive-green wheeled boat.
    ‘To me
the birds represented hope, which was destroyed by the West’s failure to act in Bosnia ,’ said. Kate as the machine
sped across the sands and plunged into the black waters of the Irish Sea .
    On the
way back Colin said, ‘My prawns were a bit tough.’
    When we
got back to the car park it was 1 a.m. ; my car in the moonlight looked low and sinister, like some kind of
half-glimpsed sea monster. We all said goodbye and the others drove off. I was
just about to get into my vehicle when I saw the girl from the cirKuss who was
leaning against a sea-rusted balustrade sucking on a cigarette in a continental
fashion.
    ‘Nice
karr,’ she said to me in a friendly manner, the previous frostiness seemingly
having melted. ‘I not seen before, what is?’
    ‘TVR
Cerbera,’ I replied, then pointed out to the bay. ‘You see that next town up
the coast, where the lights are twinkling?’
    ‘Yah.’
    ‘That’s Blackpool , that’s where they
make these TVRs.’
    ‘ Blackpool , is that where you come from?’
    ‘No,
I’m from Liverpool — that’s the
other way,’ and I pointed. ‘East.’
    ‘Oh
yah, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, dey are from Liverpool .’
    ‘Well, Birkenhead actually, but yeah that’s close.
So where do you come from?’ I noticed that for some reason I was talking in my
own voice and not imitating her accent. ‘Luzhney,’ she replied immediately.
    ‘Right,’
I said. ‘And where would that be exactly?’
    ‘Ermm,’
she said, thinking hard, ‘is near Lake Lucik , on de
eastern side by da big boatyard.’
     ‘Right,’
I said again.
    Then
there was a long pause until she said, ‘Maybe one day you take me for drive in
your nice karr.’
    ‘Erm,
yes, one day yes, maybe I will one day, yes I will maybe,’ I said, hurriedly
unlocking and wriggling into the driver’s seat.
    ‘Well,
goodnight,’ I called as I closed the door and started up the big clattery
straight six.
    ‘Goodnight,
funny man,’ I heard back through the imperfectly fitting canvas roof.
    As soon
as the hands-free was connected I told Siggi about it. She said,