Hugh Little

Opening my fist I found a crumpled piece of paper in my hand. "Oh yes, my exam results," I thought. I had been on the verge of throwing them away. I had started to think of something else and had forgotten all about them. "What shall I do?" I wondered. I was aware that I hadn't always been a good student - my work-rate hadn't always been the best. "I owe it to myself to do something with them."

"Take them to Hugh Little." That was the instruction that had been in my mind. Where had it come from? "Take them to Hugh Little." Yes, that was it - that was what I would do. I straightened out the piece of paper. But - who was Hugh Little? I knew the instruction, I had the name in my head. But I couldn't quite place him. Hugh Little. He was someone who had belonged in my life at a particular time. Surely he was part of the same movement I had been in back in the day. But no, he had moved on, definitely. Hugh Little had gone to work for himself, that was it. Or? "Yes, I'll take them to Hugh Little." But why? What was so special about Hugh Little that I had to take my exam results to him? My examination... Was he a doctor? Was he perhaps a specialist? My mind was unclear now. Perhaps he was a psychiatrist. "Am I in need of treatment?" I looked down at the paper but another thought came into my head. "Hugh Little needs to study the test results. Is he a scientist?" It seemed to me most likely Hugh Little was an expert in some field that had a bearing on my results. A great heaviness came over my head - an oppressive darkness. "Hugh Little!" I called out, "I'm on my way!"

II

Hugh Little sat in his car. The key was in the ignition but he hadn't switched it on yet. Or rather he hadn't switched it on again because it must have been on before for him to get there. There was a rainbow coming down which ended exactly over - no, in - Hugh Little's car. He thought to himself with pleasure what a good thing it was that rainbows didn't move - they always stayed with you. Outside the flowers were singing. They sang colors - red, yellow, purple, blue. Hugh had never heard anything so beautiful but he was struck by the fact that each flower only knew one song whereas the rainbow had a grasp of everything. Although it was daytime the stars were out. No, they were in. The stars came right down into Hugh's car, with their points of light. That was funny because Hugh could not remember opening the sun-roof. He thought he saw a very narrow line stretching out ahead of him. It was razor thin. So thin that when you looked at it from particular sides it wasn't there. The car was sitting over the line - or perhaps the line went through it. "The equator," thought Hugh Little.

He looked into the rear-view mirror. There was a terrible, dark abyss behind him, heavy and oppressive. Had he come that way? Suddenly Hugh Little felt something in his hand. He opened his fist. It was a piece of paper. "Ah, the exam results!" he thought. He straightened the paper and looked closely at what was written there. He furrowed his brow like a doctor. He pursed his lips like a psychiatrist. He puzzled like a scientist. It was always difficult to assign the right meaning to a result. Hugh Little's car became a part of the rainbow and the stars and the singing flowers. The more he thought the more a part of them it became. Could these results be right? His mind span. Grades, qualifications, degrees. "That's what they do in the north," he thought, "not here." Hugh Little's sense of space and time began to change. His own mind began to change. Or was that his head? The world outside was Hugh Little's head. Everything was so vast and uncomplicated. Was this what he had driven all that way for? Or had he driven? The exam results proved nothing except that Hugh Little was a universe inside himself. He was positively huge. Hugh Little was huge. He was all that he was ever meant to be. He switched the engine on. Hugh Little passed on round the equator with the rainbow and the stars and singing flowers inside him.