Читать книгу Boys on the Brain - Jean Ure, Stephen Lee, Jean Ure - Страница 10

(2nd Week)

Pilch rang last night. It was almost half-past eleven, so I thought it must be one of Mum’s friends. They are always ringing at these weird hours. They are a pretty weird bunch of people. Always shrieking and giggling. They don’t act their age at all. But Mum seems to think they are amusing.

Anyway, it wasn’t one of Mum’s friends. Harry came back from the hall and said, “There’s a fish on the phone.”

“A what?” said Mum.

Harry said, “A fish of some kind. It wants to speak to another fish.”

“Oh, you mean Pilch,” I said.

It was his idea of a joke. He knows perfectly well that we call each other Pilch. We have done for years. I remember the day we started doing it. It was when we were really young, like nine or ten, and we had this simply humungous row, and Pilch yelled, “You look like a stupid pilchard!” To which, with immense wit, I instantly retorted, “So do you… you… pilchard!” And we have called each other Pilch ever since.

Rather silly, really, but these things stick. I expect we will still call each other Pilch when we are middle-aged. Sometimes I forget that Pilch is really Charlie. Well, Charlotte, actually, but no one ever calls her that.

So anyway I charged out to the phone and said, “Why are you ringing me at this time of night?” I mean, it is practically unheard of. People simply do not do that sort of thing in Pilch’s house. Unlike Mum and Harry, who behave like teenagers, Pilch’s mum and dad go to bed at reasonable grown-up type hours. Pilch says they are always safely snoozing by eleven o’clock. That is what grown-ups ought to do. Not sit around playing loud music and keeping their children awake till after midnight.

“I wanted to tell you,” said Pilch. “I’ve found some more swear words for you. For Carlito. He could say… caramba.”

I said “What?”

“Caramba,” said Pilch.

I asked her what it meant and she said she didn’t know, but she thought it had to be swearing of some kind. She had just read it in a book.

“In Anna Karenina?” I said, somewhat surprised.

Pilch said, “Well - n-no. Not in Anna Karenina. I’m not actually reading that just at present.”

I said, “Why not?”

“I’ve read nearly a whole chapter!” said Pilch. “How much have you read?”

“More than you,” I said.

It’s true. I have now reached page 55! (It is still rather difficult, but I think maybe this is because the print is so small.)

When I went back to the kitchen, Mum and Harry were grappling with each other over by the cooker. They broke apart in a guilty fashion as I came in. I felt like saying, “Please don’t mind me. I realise that you are in the throes of sexual passion.”

Tasha Lansmann said today that she thinks Mrs Pritchard is having an affair with Mr Bunting. She said that she bumped into Mr Bunting coming out of the library, and that he looked decidedly shifty and was “adjusting his dress”. This is such a disgusting expression! All it means is fiddling with his flies. And it is probably quite untrue. He probably just had an itch in an embarrassing place. Tasha Lansmann sees sex everywhere. All the same, I shall look at Mrs Pritchard most carefully next time I go to the library. These things do happen.