Young Cold Crash

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-1-78864-026-8
Verlag: Cinnamon Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 242 Seiten

For archaeologist Maxine 'Max' Falkland, life in early-50s London is difficult enough as she tries to move on from the death of her brother, an RAF pilot shot down over Korea. But, when she meets John Knox things get more complicated, before they get outright dangerous. Flying her light plane to Scotland, Max overhears whispered arguments in Russian coming from the next-door room and sees lights across the moors that appear to answer flashes from the sea. Add the mysterious malfunction of her plane and she has a lot to confide when she encounters the enigmatic Richard Ash, a local landowner and recluse. But when Knox unexpectedly reappears and a dive goes disastrously wrong, Max must act fast as she finds herself in the middle of a Soviet military plot. An accomplished debut novel from a US voice writing in the UK, Cold Crash is fast-paced with enthralling characters and perfect detail.

Jennifer Young was born in a small textile town in North Carolina, USA, and moved to the UK in 2001. She has since completed a PhD, become the daughter-in-law of a Catholic priest, and gained British citizenship. Her degrees are from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Cardiff University and the University of Southampton. She is Head of Writing and Journalism at the University of Falmouth. Jennifer lives in Cornwall with her daughter.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Young, Jennifer

Leseproben

Chapter 1

Max touched the pad of her white-gloved thumb to her index finger. White. Six months of black, and now one day of white.

Tudor portraits with flat, serious faces lined the walls of the meeting room. Had wars been more straightforward in the Tudor period? Max specialised in Vikings, but surely the Tudors had called their wars wars, not police actions.

The President of the Society of Antiquaries cleared his throat. ‘And now the primary business of the meeting, a paper entitled “Viking Age Settlement Patterns in the North Sea Region: Cardigan, Newport and Fishguard”, given by fellow Professor Stephen Seaborn.’

As the lights dimmed and the slide projector whirred to life, Max fixed her gaze on the blur of Professor Seaborn’s glasses. She would not think of George. This related to her work, her professional life. She folded her hands precisely, as the first slide clunked into place. By the third, she dug in her handbag uselessly for paper as she disagreed with every statement Professor Seaborn made. How had he made professor with this pitiable level of interpretation of Viking artefacts? She shouldn’t have packed her bag for the theatre. Her father silently passed her a handkerchief, so she forced herself to sit still for the rest of the talk, knotting her fingers around the crisp linen.

The lecture ended, with coughs and rustlings, and the lights rose. Max shot her hand up, but the President called on every ungloved male hand rather than hers.

‘As we are running a bit late, I believe this should be the last question.’ He indicated an academic from Cambridge. That professor didn’t ask a question at all—he droned about his own work, neither Viking nor Welsh. The speaker got away with no challenges. She handed her father his handkerchief.

‘Sherry?’ her father asked. ‘What was your question?’

‘Questions.’ They stepped into the marbled entry hall from the formal meeting room. ‘Specifically about methodology, to begin with, and then his interpretation of...’

‘Max!’

They both turned, but the elderly gentleman bearing down on them clearly wanted her father. She let her hand slide from her father’s sleeve and crossed the brass lamp embedded in the floor. She threaded her way through fellows whose suits smelled of stale wool. Professor Seaborn eventually would make his way into the other room. George would tell her how boring the whole thing was and demand they leave to find alcohol other than sherry.

The books here languished behind glass doors. She hadn’t had the nerve to try them, but they must be locked. She had visited the library upstairs, to check a few things for her PhD, but tonight was the first meeting she’d attended. Observed. She did not take part. The Society did admit female fellows, but she was too young, too junior. The steward, resplendent in a blue and red coat, pointed out the sweet, medium and dry sherries, deepening from straw to dark honey in the small stemware. She stripped off her gloves and selected a glass of dry.

‘I believe you wanted to ask Professor Seaborn something, Miss…?’

‘Doctor,’ she corrected, almost before she registered the slow cadence of his Southern accent. The way the question didn’t lilt up as high as it would from a British man. ‘Max Falkland.’

‘John Knox.’ He picked up a glass, sweet. His lips pursed as he sipped.

She hid a smile. ‘Mister or doctor?’ His erect posture suggested he’d seen military service, but that encompassed the vast majority of men in their late twenties she met. The grey suit implied that his service had finished.

‘Mister.’

‘Are you a fellow?’ Beyond Mr Knox’s elbow, Max saw Professor Seaborn come into the room, surrounded by other fellows. ‘Mr Knox...’ She glanced back as he replaced his glass, his hands tan against the white tablecloth. Did she have to carry every bit of the conversation? If she could ease away from the table... but his fingers closed around a silver cigarette lighter. Thick fingers, with clean, broad fingernails.

‘He said you always had questions.’ A small smile cracked his serious face.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Maxine.’ Very few people called her Maxine, and only one would be here. Edward, her PhD supervisor, reached between them to pick up a medium sherry. ‘What did you want to ask? Seaborn could have been your external examiner, you know. Have you met him? Did your father bring you?’

‘Excuse me,’ Mr Knox said. His fingers brushed her arm so lightly she thought she imagined it, and then Mr John Knox was gone.

Edward did not fall into the unwashed archaeologist category. His suits were as neat as Mortimer Wheeler’s, and his reputation for far better manners with his female students had certainly been borne out across the three years of her PhD.

‘Now, have you sent out your thesis to publishers yet?’ Edward asked.

The crowd around her seemed entirely made up of men in their fifties or over, and not one stood as tall as Mr Knox.

‘Job applications?’

‘I don’t need a job. I need...’ She bowed her head, but fought to keep her shoulders straight. She could be looking down at the table, the crisp white cloth.

‘Everyone goes down a bit after they finish their PhD. And you have had a difficult time.’

‘No more than lots of people in the war.’ She blinked at the dampness that was not tears. ‘Do you know that man I was just speaking to?’

‘You need to do something. Apply for a job. Establish a routine.’

‘I wonder who he came with.’ Guests could attend a Society meeting only with an introduction from a fellow. And introductions were minuted. She’d written her own name in the book next to her father’s, her sloping M so similar to his. But the book had been taken into the meeting.

‘Maxine, you’ve been a very promising PhD student. Are you really just going to subside into your parents’ home and eventually marry some worthy man who won’t be able to talk to you properly?’

Max looked up. He’d never said so much about her. ‘I’m promising?’

‘That’s what you took away from that? Look, I’m sure it’s your duty to carry on the line or something, but you could have a real academic’s life. I’m going to Denmark for fieldwork next month. Victor Westfield may be there too—come with us. It’d do you good to get out of the library.’

‘I can’t carry on the line.’ The clap of Professor Seaborn’s hand landing on Edward’s shoulder obscured her voice. Max concentrated on the sherry pooled in the bottom point of her glass as Edward and Professor Seaborn exchanged pleasantries and compliments. A grey sleeve joggled into view behind Professor Seaborn, but the suit adorned a man who had to be nearly ninety.

‘Stephen, may I present Dr Falkland? Newly minted, no corrections,’ Edward said.

Max finally got to raise her issue with his methodology, but before she and Professor Seaborn could progress to a dispute over interpretation, someone tapped her arm. A definite tap, not a brush.

‘Your mother will be cross if we’re late for the curtain,’ her father said. ‘Hallo, Edward.’

‘You must be very proud, Lord Bartlemas.’ They both smiled, and for once, the smile went all the way to her father’s eyes. That hadn’t even happened when she came home after her successful viva.

‘Now, we must go.’ A coat hung over her father’s arm. He’d taken some other woman’s coat, and now he’d have to put it... but the champagne coloured coat was hers. Not the black one she’d worn all winter long. This grosgrain silk suited late spring, with its freshness of air. And her mother had insisted. Max forced her own polite smile, even for the man who knew nothing about interpreting Viking archaeology, and then she crossed the brass lamp again. Her father pulled the heavy wooden door open, and they stepped out into the cool evening air.

‘You disagreed with everything he said.’

‘I believe his name is his name. And the title wasn’t too bad.’ Her father held the pale coat out for her, and the fabric settled over her arms. ‘We could walk.’ Sitting in the meeting, sitting in the taxi, sitting in the theatre.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, we’ll be late.’

‘And Mother would fuss.’

She stayed silent as they walked over the paving stones of the courtyard of Burlington House and out onto Piccadilly. The lights of Fortnum and Mason blazed....