دانلود رمان انگلیسی “سالن تازه کار هالووی”

Vivvy Holloway spent the war in a convent, pretending that she wanted to become a nun. That was what a lot of people thought. Actually, I left St. Theresa’s eight years to the day after the start of the war, to return to Holloway Hall which would, I thought, be better than the convent. I waited alone in the vestibule of St. Theresa’s. My sister, Freda, had let me know in a letter that she would send a limousine from the Basilica to pick me up, one of the Black Packards, much like the one in which I’d been driven there eight years before. The Basilica was not yet a Vatican-certified basilica, but my oldest brother, Maynard, a cardinal in Rome who was widely known by the nickname I’d given him, Maynardinal the Cardinal, and whom I had yet to meet, had been advocating for it with Popes Pius XI and XII for a decade, and it was called the Basilica because we believed its promotion from cathedral was inevitable, we being the Holloways whose example other Catholics followed to the letter. Eight years, one year more than it took to become a priest, but I had made no progress at all toward becoming a nun. I had made history as the first aspirant ever to arrive at the convent in a limousine, and as the first failed aspirant to leave the convent for good in one. When the Black Packard, the Basilicar, as I called each one of the fleet of limos, pulled up into the driveway, a young priest got out and, without a word, opened the rear passenger door for me, closed it when I climbed in, then put my one suitcase in the trunk. “Holloway Hall,” I said when the driver got back in. “And step on it, Basil. There’s a fiver in it for you if you beat the rain.” My mother, whom I called Herself, and non-Holloways called Queen Bea, had often told me not to call all the limo drivers Basil. “If you must refer to them collectively, call them Father,” she said, but they were so young I could never bring myself to do it. This Basil faintly smiled but remained silent. The smile encouraged me. I sat directly behind him so that he couldn’t see me in the rear-view mirror. I had seven veils, one for each day of the week. Each of the seven was a different colour and made from different fabric: red, yellow, pink, lavender, black, green and white/gossamer, silk, muslin, tulle, organdie, batiste and gauze. I wondered which of my two nicknames Basil knew me by, Little Vivvy Holloway, or Salome Holloway. The first dated from my preteens, the second from not long before I left home for the convent. “What family are you from?” I asked. Silence. He didn’t look like he belonged to one of the Big Three. He was not a Holy Holloway, not a Divine Ryan and not one of Eric’s Clerics. “This will be something to tell your Basilica buddies, Basil, especially the ones who’ve never set eyes on me.” My heart pounded as we drove down the convent driveway that was flanked by dogberry trees so heavily laden that their branches brushed the windshield.