The Light of Day - Brossura

Swift, Graham

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0679312463 ISBN 13: 9780679312468

Casa editrice: Vintage Canada, 2004

Riassunto

The Light of Day combines a powerful love story and a narrative of intense suspense into a brilliant and tender novel about what drives people to extremes of emotion. As in his Booker-winning novel Last Orders, Swift transforms ordinary lives through extraordinary storytelling.

This new novel from Graham Swift -- his first since the Booker Prize-winning Last Orders -- is the work of a master storyteller. The Light of Day is a luminous and gripping tale of love, murder and redemption.

George Webb is a divorced ex-policeman turned private investigator, a man whose prospects seemed in ruins not so long ago. Following the course of a single, dazzling day in George’s life, the novel illuminates not only his past but his now all-consuming relationship with a former client.

Intimate and intricate in its evocation of daily existence, The Light of Day achieves a singular intensity and almost unbearable suspense. Tender and humorous in its depiction of life’s surface, Swift explores the depths and extremities of what lies within us and how, for better or worse, it’s never too late to discover what they are.

Excerpt from The Light of Day
Two years ago and a little more. October still, but a day like today, blue and clear and crisp. Rita opened my door and said, “Mrs. Nash.”

I was already on my feet, buttoning my jacket. Most of them have no comparisons to go on -- it’s their first time. It must feel like coming to a doctor. They expected something shabbier, seedier, more shaming. The tidy atmosphere, Rita’s doing, surprises and reassures them. And the vase of flowers.

White chrysanthemums, I recall.

“Mrs. Nash, please have a seat.”

I could be some high-street solicitor. A fountain-pen in my fingers. Doctor, solicitor -- marriage guidance counsellor. You have to be a bit of all three.

The usual look of plucked-up courage, swallowed-back hesitation, of being somewhere they’d rather not be.

“My husband is seeing another woman.”


From the Hardcover edition.

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Informazioni sull?autore

Graham Swift was born in 1949 in London. He is the author of six previous novels and a short story collection. His work has been widely translated and has won prizes internationally, including the Booker Prize for Last Orders.


From the Hardcover edition.

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1

“Something’s come over you.” That’s what Rita said, over two years ago now, and now she knows it wasn’t just a thing of the moment.

Something happens. We cross a line, we open a door we never knew was there. It might never have happened, we might never have known. Most of life, maybe, is only time served.

Morning traffic in Wimbledon Broadway. Exhausts steaming. I turn the key in the street door, my own breath coming in clouds.

“Something’s come over you, George.”

But she knew even before I did. She’s not in this job for nothing, she can pick up a scent. And soon she’s going to leave me, any day now, I can tell. I can pick up a scent as well.

She’s here before me of course. When isn’t she? She doesn’t sleep these days, she says. “These days” have lasted years. Always awake with the dawn, so why not? Always something to be done. And I pitch up after her. Boss’s privilege. Though it’s not yet half-past eight, and last night I was out on a job till gone two. And today’s a special day.

As I reach the top of the stairs I hear the click and hiss of an already warm kettle being switched on. The computer in her little compartment (we call it the “reception area” but “area” ’s a generous word) is already up and running. It feels like she might have been here all night.

“Cold,” she says, with a shiver at the air I’ve brought in and a little nod to the outside world.

“But beautiful,” I say.

She’ll have been here before the sun hit the streets.

“Coffee or tea?” she says, ignoring my smile — and that word — as if insisting I’ll have had a rough start.

But I don’t have a sleep problem, not now. Though maybe I should. I grab it when I can, catnap, get by on little. An old trick of the trade. And Rita’s sleep problem, if she’s honest about it (and sometimes she is) isn’t really a sleep problem either.

“An empty bed, George, that’s all it is. If there was someone there . . .”

“Tea, I think, Reet. Nice and strong.”

She’s wearing the pale pink top, soft wool, above a charcoal skirt. Round her neck a simple silver chain. The small twinkly stud earrings, a waft of scent. She always gets herself up well, Rita. We have to meet the public, after all.

But the pale pink is like a flag, her favourite colour. A very pale pink — more like white with a blush. I’ve seen her wearing it many times. I’ve seen her wearing a fluffy bathrobe of the same soft pink colour, loosely tied, tits nuzzling inside. Bringing in morning tea.

I go into my office, leaving the door open. The sun is streaming through my first-floor window, the low, blinding sun of a cold November morning, the sun Rita never gets in her compartment, except through the frosted glass of my door.

She follows me in with the tea, and a mug for her- self, a bundle under her arm. There’s always this morn- ing conference — my office door open — even as I settle myself in, take off my coat, switch on my own computer, sit down. The sun’s warm through the glass, even if outside the air’s icy.

She puts down my tea, already sipping her own, eyeing me over the rim. She slips the bundle onto my desk, pulls round the other chair — the “client’s chair.” She steps through bars of bright light.

It’s like a marriage really. We’ve both thought it. It’s better than a lot of marriages (we know this). Rita — my assistant, my associate, my partner, or not-quite partner. Her job description has never exactly been set in stone. But I wouldn’t dream of calling her my receptionist (though she is that too) or even my secretary.

“Be an angel, Reet.”

“I am an angel, George.”

Where would I be without her?

But she’s going to leave me, I can tell. One morning like this one: she won’t bring in a mug of her own and she won’t put down the bundle of files, she’ll keep it hugged tight to her, a shield, and she won’t sit down. She’ll say “George” in a way that will make me have to look up, and after a bit I’ll have to say, “Sit down, Rita, for God’s sake,” and she’ll sit facing me like a client.

“It’s been good knowing you, George. It’s been good working with you, but . . .”

She knows what day it is. A Thursday, and Thursdays are special, but she knows the date, the day of the year. November twentieth. Two years — if you count it from that day. Two years and it hasn’t stopped. And if it hasn’t stopped, it will go on for the years to come, however many they’ll be. The time’s gone when she could say (as she did once), “How can you, George — with her?” Or when she could say, to herself: He must be mad, he must be off his head, but he’ll come round, it’ll stop, give it time. He’ll come slinking back. And meanwhile what better guarantee, what better safeguard, really — that woman being where she is?

I think she’s come to accept it — even to respect it. A fact, a feature. Mr. Webb is always “on an assignment” every alternate Thursday afternoon. I’ve even seen this look of sweet sad understanding in her eyes. That’s why I think she’s going to quit.

“Those are for Mrs. Lucas — this afternoon. Five forty-five. Earliest she can do.” A quick glance. “You’ll be back?”

We both know what’s in the envelope. Photographs. Photographs of a man and a woman in a hotel room. A little blurred but clear enough for recognition, at six-by- nine enlargement. “Surveillance equipment” is reliable these days. We have to get the film processed specially — a private contract — and Rita collects. A man and a woman doing things with each other. But this sort of stuff hardly raises an eyebrow or even gets that much of a look from Rita and me. It sits there, like the morning mail, between us.

Our stock-in-trade. Can you see who’s who? That’s the vital thing.

“Yes, I’ll be back by five-thirty.”

“And I’ll just say” — she doesn’t push the point too much — “you’ll be out of the office till then?”

“But I won’t leave before ten. I can take calls till then.”

“Okay.”

“It’s a beautiful day out there,” I say again. “Cold, but beautiful.”

Another sideways look, more lingering this time. She might be saying, You poor bloody idiot.

The eyes are tired, made up immaculately, but tired. The sunlight streaming in is like a warm bath, but it isn’t kind to the lines round her eyes. It catches a wisp of steam rising from her mug and puts a sparkle in her hair. She moves a bit closer to point out something. A silver bracelet at the end of the pink sleeve.

A long time now, since the last time. I’d asked her round to try some of my cooking (Rita may be an angel, but she’s a hopeless cook). I might even have spelt it out to her: a meal, that was all. But that’s the trouble with good cooking (if I say it myself). Not to mention red wine. It warms the heart, the cockles, as well as the stomach. Melts the resistance.

“Things on your mind, Reet?” The considerate boss.

“Not exactly, George. You?” She’d cupped her wineglass in both hands — her nails wine-red too. “It’s just not having anyone there. You know. Somebody by your side.”

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Vintage Canada
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0679312463
• ISBN 13: 9780679312468
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 336
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile