Читать книгу The Sleeping Sword - Michael Morpurgo - Страница 10

WHEN I CAME TO, I KNEW AT ONCE I WAS IN hospital. Nowhere else sounds or smells like a hospital. At first I thought that I was back visiting Gran in hospital in Truro, but then I realised that it was me lying there on a bed, not Gran. I couldn’t see where I was because there was a bandage round my eyes. I could feel it. In fact, most of my head seemed to be swathed in bandages. Someone was holding my hand and telling me not to worry, not to move. It was my mother. I wasn’t worried, but I was hurting. My whole head was heavy with pain.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘You’re fine, Bundle. You’re in hospital. You had an accident.’

‘What happened?’ I asked again.

‘You went in off the quay. But the water was too low. Your head hit a stone. You were lucky, Bundle. It could have been a lot worse.’ It felt bad enough to me.

‘You need water to dive into, Bun, you silly chump. Didn’t you know that?’ My father was there too, and his voice sounded strange, as if he’d been crying. Now I was worried. ‘Created quite a stir, you did,’ he went on. ‘Anna dragged you out of the sea, and gave you mouth-to-mouth. You’d have drowned else, and the boys went for help. We had the air ambulance in and they flew us straight here to Truro.’

‘You’ve broken your arm, and you’ve had a bit of an operation on your head,’ my mother was saying, ‘so you’ll have to stay in here for a few days. You sleep now.’

She didn’t have to tell me. I was already drifting away. I was in and out of sleep for days and nights, nearly a week they told me afterwards. My mother always seemed to be there when I woke up. Doctors and nurses came, to ask questions mostly and occasionally to examine my head. These were the only times the bandage came off – not that it made any difference, because my whole face was still so swollen that I couldn’t even open my eyes to see.

The doctors always seemed very pleased with me. I was making a good recovery. I wasn’t to worry they said. The swelling would go down in time and I’d be going home soon. I had visitors every day and my mother would always tell them the same thing, that I had had a very lucky escape, that I’d be fine.

I woke up one afternoon and heard my mother saying much the same thing, again. ‘He’ll be fine. But if it hadn’t been for you, Anna, there’d have been no lucky escape at all, and that’s the truth of it.’ Anna was there! In the room! She’d come to visit me. Oh God, how I wished I could see her.

‘And you two boys,’ my mother went on, sounding a bit weepy – it could only be Liam and Dan – ‘going for help like you did. You were wonderful, all of you, truly wonderful.’

I didn’t know what to say to any of them. I was overjoyed they were there, but somehow I couldn’t say it. Why is it that the most important things are so difficult to say? As it was I just pretended I was asleep under my bandages, and listened.

‘He’s sleeping now,’ my mother was saying. ‘But the doctors are sure he’ll be fine. Like I said, he’s lucky to be alive. You stay with him for a while, will you? I need to see the staff nurse. I shan’t be a moment.’ And I heard her go out.

For some moments no one spoke. Then Dan whispered, ‘With all those bandages, he looks like a mummy or something. Not a mummy mummy – an Egyptian tomb mummy, the haunting kind. You know what I mean.’ At that, I curled my hands into claws and then rose up, howling horribly. The giggling that followed was infectious. In the end all four of us were quite helpless with it. It made my head hurt, but I didn’t mind. I was just so happy, so relieved to be back with them.

‘I’ll come and see you again, Bun,’ Anna said as she left. ‘As often as I can.’

I cried behind my bandages when they left, but out of joy, not sadness. Anna had come to see me, and she’d be back. I’d be out of hospital and home in just a week, a couple at the most, that’s what they’d told me. Everything would be back to normal.