Observations placeholder

OVER THE BRIDGE

Later in the afternoon Father and Jack appeared, and when the moving-men and the charwoman had gone, the family worked on arranging the furniture, laying oilcloth, hanging curtains, unpacking crockery; tasks that forbade daydreaming or any other departure from the task in hand.

I found, however, as I was to find for years to come, until the hallucination vanished, that I was aided in these physical and mechanical jobs by my ability to rise from the ground, flitting from point to point like a worker-bee, half-consciously enjoying the privileged faculty as I flew. It did not occur to me to remark that nobody showed surprise at my unusual means of passing from pillar to post. The process was so patently valid that I was not concerned to think it could be questioned.

The advantage was that my lack of muscle and physical staying power were amply compensated by this birdlike gift.

I could not move swiftly through the air; the progress was stately rather than adroit, but it was also unerring; I rose as I wished, by a mere pressure of will-power, visually commanding the pull of earth, and I alighted where I wished, cool and precise, wise with what I had seen from my bee's-eye view while in flight.

This added power secured me from much distress, the doubts, the shyness that would otherwise have accompanied a boy whose poor health prevented him from a physical equality with his fellow-mortals.