"Zero de conduit"

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When Derek displayed his medals under the glare of the bedside lamp I did not know what to say.
They were actually his dad’s medals, which he won in the war (2nd World War, that is). When I say ‘won’ I don’t mean the Victoria Cross or the George Cross – they were Campaign medals: the Africa Star was one – I can’t remember the others. But Derek was very proud of them, and he started to tell me about his dad.
They were never close. But now that he’s dead, Derek wishes that he had taken the time to get to know him better. Trouble was, him being away for five years – those formative years between Derek being five and ten – while he fought Hitler. (Why did they not give him a ‘Defeating Hitler’ medal?). Still, the vagaries of the military awards system are not really my responsibility – though practically everything else seems to be.
Derek says he thinks he was a bit of a disappointment to his dad, in his adolescence. He wasn’t one for football and rugged outdoor activities, Derek. If he had made up for it by being good at school, that would have helped. But he hated school. He ran away – twice. In the end they let him leave, before taking his exams (GCEs). He had a string of jobs before, going into the Air Force.
Later, much later, he went back to studying and eventually got a place at university. But even now, with a couple of degrees and diplomas and what not, Derek still feels some kind of failure by ducking out of school all those years ago.

I told him, forget it mate. I hated school too. Talk about ‘child abuse’ – I think school abuses children. The whole system. And as for some of the so-called teachers! I remember I used to stay for ‘school dinners’ and one day I found a big beetle in my salad. I called the teacher on duty and she took my plate away, later bringing it back and saying there was never any beetle there. But there was – not only me, but boys sitting on either side of me had seen it. But we just had to shut up. School! Don’t talk to me about school.

But to get back to Derek. I now know why he is in here: OCD – ‘Obsessional Compulsive Disorder’. That illness where you keep repeating things, like counting or touching things. Or, for some people it is forever washing their hands.
Derek keeps getting these ‘bad’ thoughts. Well sometimes they may not be really bad, but they are somehow ‘wrong’. And he can’t move on until he has got rid of the thought and replaced it by a more ‘acceptable’ thought. Sometimes it’s praying. He keeps saying these prayers in his head. But there again, if he has the ‘wrong’ thought whilst he is praying, he has to keep repeating the prayer until he can shift the thought and replace it by another one. Can you imagine how tiring, how fatiguing that must be? He’s on medication and also is having CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).
Freddie tells him that he thinks too much. ‘But how can I stop myself thinking?’ he asks. ‘ I keep thinking, how can I stop thinking? But that just involves more thinking.’

I thought about this for a moment. ‘That’s a bugger.’ I said.

Later, in the privacy of my room (I’ve got my own room back, by the way), I thought about Derek, and how alike we were in many ways: both hating school, for example. And yet so unalike in others.

But when I got into bed I started to think about Anastasia.