A Bit of Earth by Rebecca Smith Page B

nobody there to raise a hand or even a word in protest. Minutes were taken and sent up to be ratified. A working party was formed of members of the Acquisitions, Developments and Maintenance Committee. Professor Swatridge (Modern History) was to chair it. The wheels began to turn.

Chapter 5
    Felixno longer remembered the phase he’d gone through when his globe had been new. Every bedtime, after his story, he’d begged his mum or dad, ‘Show me some things on the world.’
    He had really wanted to know, it hadn’t just been a way of making them stay, and keeping the light on for a few more minutes.
    â€˜Show me some things on the world!’
    â€˜Where do komodo dragons live?’ they’d ask. ‘Where do pangolins live?’ ‘Where do polar bears live? And penguins?’ Felix would point to the place and get it right every time.
    â€˜Tell me all the scary things that live in South America,’ he’d implore them.
    â€˜Where was Mummy born?’
    â€˜Where do we live?’
    â€˜Where does Uncle Jon live?’
    â€˜Where is the highest mountain in the world? And in Europe? And in Africa? South America? Scotland?’
    Felix knew all the answers.
    The game had turned into ‘Where shall we go tomorrow?’ They would spin the globe and Felix would close his eyes and point. They were usually going to end up in the ocean or in Indonesia.
    Now, a year since Susannah had died, they hardly ever went anywhere. Their whole world had shrunk to the botanical garden, Guy’s work, school and home. Their orbit was predictable and tiny. They shopped at the same shop and bought the same things week after week. They went nowhere. Once Felix was in bed Guy would work, or just sit in silence. He found that if he hummed on one note, almost constantly, it was comforting. He had never been much of a whistler. Felix picked up the humming habit too, so that they often couldn’t tell which one of them was doing it.
    Guy hardly ever fell asleep for the night in bed. He would doze off on the sofa, or at his desk, or on Felix’s floor. One night he fell asleep sitting on his own bedroom floor in front of the wardrobe with its looking-glass door. He startled himself back to wide awake. There he was, sitting alone in his room. With his muddy trousers and crazy needing-a-cut hair, he looked like an intruder, or someone on the run from an institution. Behind him in the mirror was the blue, green and white patchwork bedspread made by Elfie and Susannah when Susannah had been a girl. Guy never bothered to make the bed now – it was perpetually rumpled, the sheets were soft with dust mites – a disgrace to the quilt’s Scandinavian ancestry.
    He saw too that he’d spent the day with his shirt buttoned up wrong. Dear God. He exchanged his clothes for another, equally crumpled set, pyjamas that Susannah had boughthim, it seemed ten thousand years ago. He got into bed. Of course he couldn’t sleep.
    Here I am, he thought, alone in my room. He got up again and padded through to see Felix. He had his duvet right over his head. Guy pulled it back. Felix’s hair had been turned into hot damp feathers. Guy went back to bed with a glass of whisky. He turned on the World Service …
    What good, he thought, is sitting alone in my room? He smiled grimly as he remembered the school production of
Cabaret.
He had played his oboe in the band. The girl who’d played Sally Bowles had been fearsome and stunning, in character and on the stage and on the athletics field. Strange, he thought, that a combination of fishnet stockings and shorts, plus a waistcoat and a bow tie worn without a collar, could ever be considered alluring. What was the girl’s name? Oh yes, Sandra Johnson. A good all-rounder. Had she carried on being wholesome, but into amateur dramatics? Was she living in Berlin, or perhaps sharing some sordid rooms in Chelsea with a girlfriend known as