CHAPTER 4. THE UPRISING OF A FEELING.

February 4, 1988.

“If they had a conscience and were capable of blushing, they should undoubtedly be blushing right now!”

“We have always shown more sympathy for them than they have for us!”

“This is true madness! This is a true outrage!”

“Why should the families of Portsmouth sailors starve?!”

“First, a Briton gives up his jobs to the people of the Third World, and what's next..?! Perhaps he'll have to give up his right to live in the space of foggy Albion to them too?!”

“We demand justice! We demand the protection of our violated rights!”

“Enough with the layoffs! Enough with the cuts! Enough of the insults to the British people!”

It was exactly these kinds of shouts that were currently heard next to the man who was called Barry Gardner. Was he a participant in this strike of Portsmouth sailors? Absolutely not—and this was by no means because he was in no way connected with the truly numerous brotherhood of British sailors, but because he was absolutely indifferent to all the events currently taking place around him: Barry Gardner was only following the path he had predetermined for himself, and accordingly, heading towards the goals his mind had set. The fact that he encountered the aforementioned crowd of sailors on his way was, without a doubt, nothing more and nothing less than a whim of chance.

Hurriedly overcoming those living obstacles that were currently and truly raging with exceptional swiftness exactly where this twenty-five-year-old man needed to pass, Barry Gardner, suddenly finding himself inside this crowd, suddenly felt himself to be one of its integral components. This feeling was extremely repugnant to the aforementioned man, and so he sought to get out as quickly as possible from that windfall that was now so fiercely burning.

But why was he indifferent to this sailors' strike? Is it possible for one or another dissatisfaction of one or another people not to awaken any feelings in the heart of a true person—be they positive or negative? Perhaps it was because at those moments all his thoughts, as well as all his feelings, were entirely dedicated to a subject, in his opinion, more important—the creation of the image of the very girl who was to be the main heroine of his next prosaic poem, “The Wind of Time,” so eagerly awaited by all the exclusively enlightened and therefore few Portsmouth readers? Yes, exactly! At this hour, he was thinking only about Christina Scott—about the exceptionally lovely, but therefore by no means depraved, young Manchester lady whose heart had quite self-willedly chosen as her beloved an extremely poor, homely thirty-year-old gardener, whose only happiness in life was the ownership, disposal, and use of the very skill that, in turn, allowed him to very successfully create truly exceptional artistic paintings.

“Christina…” the twenty-five-year-old writer whispered faintly in his mind, who had a few moments earlier left the confines of the aforementioned crowd of massively indignant Portsmouth sailors—“Christina…”

Another moment, and he suddenly felt a certain, indescribably subtle, female hand intentionally touch his exceptionally freedom-loving being. Barry Gardner quickly turned around—he saw an indescribably lovely woman in front of him, who was dressed in a coat the color of a Mazandaran fruit.

“Christina!” he exclaimed with extraordinary loudness, he who had, just a little while ago, truly not wished to pronounce this name out loud, as if he were afraid of its natural sound—“Hello, Christina!”

“Hello, Barry!” the twenty-three-year-old woman said with great joy, in whose voice at that hour nothing more and nothing less than notes of truly significant excitement continuously slipped through—“How happy I am to see you! Are you... are you also participating in the strike?”

“No…” Barry Gardner said with indescribable embarrassment, unable to take his gaze away from her truly amazing loveliness for even a moment: she was wonderfully charming… wonderfully charming, just as she was then, when she so suddenly, without the slightest explanation, stopped answering his heartfelt letters… just as she was then, when her heart chose another object of love and, accordingly, adoration.