скачать книгу бесплатно
Peculiar Ground
Lucy Hughes-Hallett
‘One of the best novels of the year so far’ The TimesA SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR‘Unlike anything I’ve read. Haunting and huge, and funny and sensuous. It’s wonderful’ Tessa Hadley‘I just enjoyed it so very much’ Philip PullmanIt is the 17th century and a wall is being built around a great house. Wychwood is an enclosed world, its ornamental lakes and majestic avenues planned by Mr Norris, landscape-maker. A world where everyone has something to hide after decades of civil war, where dissidents shelter in the forest, lovers linger in secret gardens, and migrants, fleeing the plague, are turned away from the gate.Three centuries later, another wall goes up overnight, dividing Berlin, while at Wychwood, over one hot, languorous weekend, erotic entanglements are shadowed by news of historic change. A little girl, Nell, observes all.Nell grows up and Wychwood is invaded. There is a pop festival by the lake, a TV crew in the dining room and a Great Storm brewing. As the Berlin wall comes down, a fatwa signals a different ideological faultline and a refugee seeks safety in Wychwood.From the multi-award-winning author of The Pike comes a breathtakingly ambitious, beautiful and timely novel about game keepers and witches, agitators and aristocrats, about young love and the pathos of aging, and about how those who wall others out risk finding themselves walled in.
(#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)
Copyright (#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)
4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.4thEstate.co.uk (http://www.4thEstate.co.uk)
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2017
Copyright 2017 © Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Lucy Hughes-Hallett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover images © plainpicture/Melanie Haberkorn
Cover design by Heike Schüssler
Map drawn by John Gilkes
‘Don’t Fence Me In’ (from Hollywood Canteen), words and music by Cole Porter © 1944 (Renewed) WB MUSIC CORPS. All rights reserved. Used by Permission of ALFRED MUSIC.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008126544
Ebook Edition © May 2017 ISBN: 9780008126537
Version: 2018-01-16
Dedication (#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)
For my brothers,
James and Thomas,
with love
Epigraph (#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)
We are a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground;
A little spot enclosed by grace
Out of the world’s wide wilderness.
ISAAC WATTS
Contents
Cover (#u03789958-48c1-58eb-bdbe-e0bbf3a795e5)
Title Page (#ua417a75c-75b9-5d22-8250-e43498fd976d)
Copyright (#u62558696-1ab3-5c79-951b-b469eb571f7c)
Dedication (#ucc868b76-4f42-5b6c-85d7-ca0597d57ef0)
Epigraph (#u195c2b43-cdfb-55f1-8251-3f92cef91a65)
Dramatis Personae (#ua8c9b23f-0475-50b5-9dc6-5ad4b879b357)
Map (#u6e5c9ccd-1dca-5b95-840e-b02127e74ae7)
1663 (#u3f9629f2-1f32-5fb1-b85e-da8ca9344ecb)
1961 (#u8d6e2dcd-ab6f-5e23-91ef-b8e0ba47d57a)
Friday (#u557e10b0-bd2f-50d3-bfb2-8a51da28d36a)
Saturday (#ucf4856e2-a080-52b8-9651-12842748bd65)
Sunday (#litres_trial_promo)
1973 (#litres_trial_promo)
June (#litres_trial_promo)
July (#litres_trial_promo)
August (#litres_trial_promo)
1989 (#litres_trial_promo)
September (#litres_trial_promo)
October (#litres_trial_promo)
November (#litres_trial_promo)
1665 (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Dramatis Personae (#udec14449-5df4-591d-8085-fde11b8d3813)
1663–1665
John Norris – landscape-maker
Arthur Fortescue, the Earl of Woldingham
The Countess of Woldingham, his wife
Their children – Charles Fortescue, Arthur Fortescue and a little girl
Sir Humphrey de Boinville, brother to Lady Woldingham
Lady Harriet Rivers, Lord Woldingham’s sister
Cecily Rivers, her daughter
Edward
Pastor Rivers – brother to Lady Harriet’s late husband
Another pastor
Robert Rose – architect and comptroller
Meg Leafield
George Goodyear – head forester
Armstrong – ranger
Green – head gardener
Slatter – farm overseer
Underhill – major-domo
Lane – steward
Richardson – apothecary
Lupin, a pug-dog
1961–1989
Living at Wood Manor
Hugo Lane – land agent
Chloe Lane – his wife
Nell – their daughter, aged eight in 1961
Dickie – their son, aged five in 1961
Heather – nanny
Mrs Ferry – cook
Wully, a yellow Labrador, and later his great-nephew, another Wully
Living at Wychwood
Christopher Rossiter – proprietor
Lil Rossiter – his wife
Fergus – their son
Flossie/Flora – Christopher’s niece, aged eighteen in 1961
Underhill – butler
Mrs Duggary – cook
Lupin, a pug-dog, and later another Lupin, also a pug-dog
Grampus, a black Labrador
Visitors
Antony Briggs – art-dealer
Nicholas Fletcher – journalist
