And so he sits on, in the windowless room with its lights and buttons and reels of frozen speech out of which can be evoked people and places and a version of a man’s life. Gilbert Strong continues to present an account that is as honest and as dishonest as anything he ever wrote or said and the producer interrupts once to say again that the balance is good but that the programme is perhaps too fragmentary now, are we skipping about too much, what do you think? And Mark, not really paying attention, shakes his head and says no, he thinks it will work like this. And the producer, at last, glances again at the clock and says, that’s it, that’s our lot, I’m afraid. Anyway, I’m quite pleased with it, except for one or two loose ends … And so they part, the producer to his office somewhere and Mark into the street, leaving locked away there Hermione and the Major and the rest of them. And, now, himself.
PENGUIN CLASSICS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published by William Heinemann 1984
Published in Penguin Books 1985
Published in Penguin Classics 2011
Copyright © Penelope Lively, 1984
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover: Detail of self portrait by Primo Conti, 1900-88 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy / The Bridgeman Art Library). By kind permission of Maria Gloria Conti Bicocchi and Maria Novella Conti Del Signore.
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
ISBN: 978-0-14-196884-1
Penelope Lively, According to Mark
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends