Read Online The Elderbrook Brothers by Gerald Bullet - Free Book Online Page B

a good boy and a clever one. Her approval made him feel safe with her.
    Dr Pearce he did not know at all. His small ailments hitherto had never carried him as far as the school doctor, who but for his neat black coat and starched linen would have looked more like a retired prizefighter. He had a bald round head and small pig-eyes. To the irreverent children he was known, in fact, as Piggy Pearce. The only hair on his face was a pair of ferocious black eyebrows which—so the absurd story ran—he affixed to himself every Monday morning with glue. Luckily he was a good doctor, or good enough. His odd appearance did not repel Felix: it only added another touch of strangeness to his already strange situation. After examining the patient, a process which involved much tapping and prodding and asking of questions, Dr Pearce said ‘M’yes … I see’ in a tone of thoughtful satisfaction, picked up his littleblack bag, and departed. At his next visit he was more communicative. Sister was in attendance as usual, smiling benignly. Their kindly conspiratorial air was designed to suggest that Felix was in for a great treat. The boy was not deceived, but he did not care and was not frightened. Thinking things over in the night he had decided that he was probably going to die, but the thought was a largely empty one, the words had no meaning, and he still wanted nothing except his mother and to be rid of pain: in his fancy the two things went together. And, as if they could read his thoughts, it was just that that Dr Pearce and Sister were now promising him.
    â€˜See here,’ said the Doctor, ‘I’ve got some scent on my handkerchief. If you’re a good boy, Felix, I’ll give you a sniff of it, see? And I’ll tell you what: your mummy’s coming to see you. This very day, if you’re a good boy.’
    Felix did not at all like the scent on Dr Pearce’s handkerchief, but before he could say so the doctor had vanished and the sparkle of the snow changed to golden flowers in a green field. Felix was not at all surprised to find himself in this field, which nearly but not quite reminded him of something he had known in another life or another dream. He knew he was in a dream, but that knowledge did not in the least diminish its reality: he neither remembered what had happened before nor wondered what was to come, even though a kind of serene expectancy, a sense of looking for something or someone, kept him gently moving on. It seemed that only one thing was wanting to make this place the heaven it so nearly was; and in the moment of so thinking the want was fulfilled and forgotten, for now there was a stream winding its way through the meadow, and Felix, knee-deep in grass, was bending over the live, clear, magnifying water, enjoying the shapes and varying browns of the pebbles below, seeing without intrusion all the secrets of that lovely water-world. He felt, without handling them, the hard cool shining smoothness of those pebbles, enamelled in their everlasting wash; his ductile consciousness darted with silver fishes in and out of hidden crannies, to and from theshadow of rocky shelters and floating weed; seeing a worm, embedded and at ease, he knew the luxury of mud. Above him spread the green boughs of a willow, filled with flirting fluttering life, and as soon as he remembered the birds they began singing. Then he became suddenly afraid, began saying to himself, with desperate self-reassurance, what a good job it was that Jerry Cockle wasn’t with him; and at once, prompt to his cue, the destroyer appeared, Jerry Cockle himself. Big bland eyes, dark tousled head, lithe young body full of animal spirits, there he was, the other side of the stream, delighted to have found his friend Felix again. You couldn’t help liking Jerry: that was just the trouble. Because you liked him, because there was a sort of love between you, you could do nothing but hate him when he did the