The silent world of Nicholas Quinn Read Online Free PDF

curious: Morris dancing, Victorian lamp-posts, irises, steam-locomotives
    and Roman coins; and when he had come down from Cambridge with a brilliant first,
    and when he had walked directly into a senior mathematics post in a prestigious
    public school, life had seemed to promise a career of distinguished and enviable
    achievement. But he had lacked ambition, even then; and at the age of thirty-nine he
    had drifted into his present position for no other reason than the vague conviction that
    he had been in one rut for so long that he might as well try to climb out and fall as
    gently as possible into another. There remained but few joys in his life, and the chief of these was travel. Though his six weeks annual holiday allowed him less time than he
    would have wished, at least his fairly handsome salary allowed him to venture far
    afield, and only the previous summer he had managed a fortnight in Moscow. As well
    as deputizing for Bartlett, he looked after Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry; and
    since no one else in the office (not even Monica Height, the linguist) was his equal in
    the unlikelier languages, he did his best to cope with Welsh and Russian as well.
    Towards his colleagues he appeared supremely indifferent; even towards Monica his
    attitude seemed that of a mildly tolerant husband towards his mother-in-law. For their
    part, the rest of the staff accepted him for what he was: intellectually superior to them all; administratively more than competent; socially a nonentity. Only one another
    person in Oxford was aware of a different side to his nature . . .
    At twenty past three Bartlett rang extension five.
    'Is that you, Quinn?'
    'Hullo?'
    'Come along to my office a minute, will you?'
    'I'm sorry. I can't hear you very well.'
    'It's Bartlett here.' He almost shouted it into the phone.
    'Oh, sorry. Look, I can't quite hear you, Dr. Bartlett. I'll come along to your office right away.'
    'That's what I asked you to do!'
    'Pardon?'
    Bartlett put the phone down and sighed heavily. He'd have to stop ringing the man;
    and so would everybody else.
    Quinn knocked and entered.
    'Sit down,1 Quinn, and let me put you in the picture. When you were at your meeting
    yesterday, I gave the others some details of our little, er, jamboree next week.'
    Quinn could follow the words fairly easily. 'With the oil sheiks, you mean, sir?'
    'Yes. It's going to be an important meeting. I want you to realize that. The Syndicate
    has only just broken even these last few years, and—well, but for these links of ours
    with some of the new oil states, we'd soon be bankrupt, like as not, and that's the truth of the matter. Now, we've been in touch with our schools out there, and one of the
    things they'd like us to think about is a new History syllabus. O-level only for a start.
    You know the sort of thing: Suez Canal, Lawrence of Arabia, colonialism, er, cultural
    heritage, development of resources. That sort of thing. Hell of a sight more relevant
    than Elizabeth the First, eh?'
    Quinn nodded vaguely.

    'The point is this. I want you to have a think about it before next week. Draft out a few ideas. Nothing too detailed. Just the outlines. And let me have 'em.'
    'I'll try, sir. Could you just say one thing again, though? Better than "a list of
    metaphors", did you say?'
    'Elizabeth the First, man! Elizabeth the First!'
    'Oh yes. Sorry.' Quinn smiled weakly and left the room deeply embarrassed. He
    wished Bartlett would occasionally try to move his lips a little more.
    When Quinn had gone, the Secretary half-closed his eyes, drew back his mouth as
    though he had swallowed a cupful of vinegar, and bared his teeth. He thought of
    Roope once more. Roope! What a bloody fool that man had been!

CHAPTER THREE
    THROUGHOUT THE MONTH of October the health of the pound sterling was a topic of
    universal, if melancholy, interest. Its effective devaluation against the dollar and
    against other European currencies was solemnly reported (to two points of