Читать книгу Fitting In - Colin Thompson - Страница 45

while the women did the washing-up. The clock ticked on the mantelpiece. It chimed on the hour. War had faded into the past and all was well in the world.

I went back up to my room and sat on my wonderful bed. Tigger was already there, curled up, purring softly to himself. He opened his eyes and stared at me, and then went back to sleep while I hid in a book or drew pictures, unless it was Friday, which was bath night – hot water with Dettol, which my grandfather got in gallon cans, filled the water with white clouds.

Whatever was the matter with me – measles (British and German versions), mumps, whooping cough, scarlet fever or the flu (I worked my way through all of them) – my mother made me drink orange juice, glasses and glasses of it to wash the germs out of my body.

Apparently germs were terrified of orange juice.

I enjoyed being ill, not seriously ill, just unwell enough for my grandmother to say I looked poorly and stop my mother sending me to school.

For several years I had the perfect childhood illness. As far as anyone ever discovered, there was nothing at all wrong with me except my temperature was a degree and a half higher than it was supposed to be. It was brilliant. I was taken to all sorts of specialists and had all sorts of tests and was diagnosed with There’s absolutely nothing at all wrong with him except his temperature is one and a half degrees higher than it should be Syndrome.

It was enough to keep me off school for days or even weeks every time I told Nana I didn’t feel well. My mother feebly protested that I was fine, but Nana was in charge and her word was law.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like school, I did. I was a good boy and always near the top of the class, always well behaved and showered with praise. It was just that being on my own at home in bed was better. I could lie in bed surrounded by my favourite toys and spend the whole day away in my land of daydreams. Sparrows chattered outside the window, pigeons sat in the gutter and talked softly to each other. Downstairs I could hear the murmur of my grandmother and mother talking in the kitchen. The milkman would come rattling glass bottles at the front door and four houses away their dog barked at him.

Theoretically ill and half-asleep in a twilight world between day and night, safe in my bed, I could let the sounds of the world drift through my head while I sailed away to places where there was no loneliness. Nana used to brings me biscuits and sweets and let Tigger back in.