The Doctor Is Sick (24 page)

When they had run a block they stopped, winded, and
there they found Leo waiting for them, his breath just about coming back. ‘Vat,' said Harry Stone, ‘was bleedin' lacky. Teds against Yids and Spades against Yids and nah Spades against Teds. Poor bleedin' Yids,' he said. ‘Ve ole world's been against vem ever since vey started. Ve Egyptians and ve Babylonians and ve Philistines and nah vis bleedin' lot.' Harry Stone held out his arms like a Hollywood prophet. ‘What 'arm,' he asked Mount Sinai, ‘ 'ave we done to vese bastards? When are ve Yids goin' to be bleedin' delivered from ve 'ouse of tribulation? ‘Ow bleedin' long is it goin' to be?' The dog Nigger grew skittish, meeting Leo Stone again, barked and begged to be chased. Leo Stone called:

‘Nigger! Nigger! Silly bastard!' Dead on cue a negro appeared in a cap, swaying, throwing the breath of rum before him like flower petals. ‘Man,' he said, ‘you got no right to say what you said just then.' A
corps de ballet
of negroes was, Edwin was sure, about to appear in the wings. Edwin said:

‘He was calling his dog. He bought this dog for a pound or quid or nicker. Hence the name, Nicker. When he utters the name he shows a slight tendency to voice the velar plosive and this makes for a certain phonemic ambiguity. He meant no harm. He did not even say what you thought he said.'

The negro was rummily unconvinced. In the near distance the groans and thuds of inter-racial battle continued. ‘I don't like all them long words,' said the negro to Edwin, speaking as through a lamp-chimney. ‘If I'm not educated whose fault is that? There was no education in them slave ships, man. Who sent us out there in them slave ships?'

‘Oh, come on,' said Harry Stone. ‘On our bleedin' way. All ve sins of ve bleedin' world bein' brought up just when we're on our way to a nice bleedin' innocent bald-‘ead competition.' But the dog Nigger seemed to have been pursuing thoughts of a similar nature to this man's whose colour he shared. Dogs persecuted, dogs kept down, dogs chained in kennels. He lightly jumped at Edwin, caught Edwin's trouser tear in his teeth, and pulled. The trouser leg at once became a sort of slit skirt. ‘Nigger, you bastard,' called Edwin as the dog raced off, a waving pennant in his jaws. ‘There you go again, man,' said the rum-flavoured West Indian. ‘You just asking for trouble.' And he lurched off, singing a sad slave song of the sixteenth century.

‘Vat's what 'appens,' said Harry Stone, ‘when you concentrate on one fing to ve detriment of anover. You bleedin' bad dog, Nigger,' he parenthesised mildly. ‘We'll 'ave to knock off somebody's strides when we get vere. Can't 'ave you marchin' rahnd wiv all vat leg show-in‘. Indecent, apart from anyfink else. What a bleedin' evenin' vis is turnin' aht to be.'

A few more blocks and a right turn, and there, at the end of the street, was a shining cinema called the PANTHEON. They yearned towards it as to the light of their own hearthstone. Above the cinema entrance was a huge portrait of a bald actor with sensual lips and the sardonic eyes of a Mongol, presumably the prototype of all the vying hairless of this evening. ‘Take off vat wig now,' said Harry Stone, ‘to show vat you're a bonified competitor.' Edwin doffed the curls and thrust them for safe-keeping inside his shirt; thence a curl or two peeped out in a hint of virility. TONIGHT, yelled a floodlit
streamer, MAMMOTH CONTEST. BALD ADONIS OF GREATER LONDON. WHO? ‘Only one answer to vat,' said Harry Stone confidently. They made their way, Edwin's heart pounding with misgiving, towards the stage door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

On his second day in the army Edwin had attended a sort of spiritual parade at which the C.S.M. had said: ‘C. of E. this side, R.C. that side, fancy buggers in the middle.' A fat man in a phosphorescent dinner-jacket now conducted the same kind of segregation behind the cinema screen, and Edwin found himself a member of a suspicious-eyed male herd. It was not possible to see very much of these other competitors, because the screen was gigantically preoccupied with a cosmically panting struggle in a dark cellar. Speech, too, was impossible because of the Brob-dingnagian stereophonic nightmare of the music. When colossal horses finally earthquaked over a sunlit plain, Edwin was able to appraise his rivals. They were not impressive: many looked as if baldness came naturally to them, part of the syndrome of decay; there was a bald boy of about ten who could make his scalp-skin creep, horribly. During a long silent interlude of huge kissing, a thin artisan-type of about Edwin's own age said:

‘Right lark this is.'

‘Yes.'

‘Not right, really, the way I see it. But somebody's got to do it, I suppose.'

‘That's right.'

‘My missis'd go mad if she found out. It's the other one, see, that made me do it.' The vast osculation suddenly unleashed a flood of thundering horse-monsters, and Edwin was able to hear no more. The man in the dinner-jacket, glowing like a high herring in the dark, came round fussily
with number-cards, mouthing silently against the noise. Edwin hung a big black 8 from round his neck. Then in a pride of trombones that was louder than any dream of Berlioz, the film came to its end and lights came up. Harry Stone appeared in underpants, thin-legged but, surprisingly, wearing sock-suspenders. He handed a crumpled bundle to Edwin, saying:

‘You'll 'ave to take my strides. No bleedin' good, I've looked everywhere, but I can't find one solitary pair to knock off. 'Urry up and change into vem.'

An old-time jazz band had started playing, greeted with much applause. Harry Stone performed a brief hairy-legged cakewalk, his eyes sad and grim. Nigger could be heard barking in the distance, presumably locked up in some lavatory. The trousers, Edwin found, were too short: a lot of sock was visible. Still, they would have to do. The jazz band, having given each instrument a virtuoso chorus, now crashed into its shipwreck climax with every man for himself. Teenage screams laced the applause. Harry Stone went back to his twin, and Edwin watched from the wings the turn that followed. A sloppy young man was greeted with ecstasy. He sang of teenage love, how that and that alone was the real thing, and how life ended at twenty. He treated the microphone as a very thin teenage girl and, after bestowing various caresses upon it, he threw it to the floor and lay on the long rod of the stand, kiss-singing into the mouthpiece while his body made perceptible rutting movements. The girls' screams became orgiastic, orgasmatic. An austere age, thought Edwin, an age of economy. The opulence of
Tristan
had once been required to produce a like effect in an older generation, though a tactile effect only.

The fat phosphorescent man went on to the stage to announce that all performers tonight were strictly amateur, but some of these amateurs – who knew? – might well become professionals. The next turn, however, was, he said, one that had once been professional, a long time ago, and he was to be given a big hand accordingly. The teenagers howled, left in the air in mid-orgasm, and greeted Leo Stone as if they would like to crucify him. ‘Listen to vat bleedin' lot,' said Harry Stone's voice in Edwin's ear. But Leo Stone grinned, a Semite who had wandered through the buffeting world, and said that he was sorry he was late, but he'd just got blocked in the passage, that a funny thing happened to him on the way to the theatre tonight, he'd met old Abie Goldstein on the way to the synagogue with little Izzie, and old Abie said he was going to get his heir cut, that he's been out with many girls in his time, even a nun, yes a nun, she'd have nun of this and nun of that, would you believe it? He prattled on, and there was little laughter. He sang his song, which the pianist accompanied from memory and clumsily, and few joined in the chorus. Finally he said he would like to do a little monologue called ‘Laugh And The World Laughs With You, Snore And You Sleep Alone'. ‘Wrote vat 'imself, 'e did,' said Harry Stone with twin's pride.

‘Life's a funny thing, my friends. It brings both joy and tears;

A fact that I've discovered as I've travelled down the years.

Life's an April day, my friends, where sun is mixed with rain–

A laugh or two, a joke or two, a little grief and pain.'

At this point Nigger appeared on the stage. ‘Owwwww,' squealed Harry Stone, strangling his voice with clenched teeth. ‘Oo ve bleedin' 'ell let 'im aht?' Nigger recognised his master and approached him with every sign of joy. ‘Bugger off,' Leo Stone could be seen saying from the corner of his mouth. The unkind audience now laughed, but Leo Stone's wit was quick. He picked up Nigger, improvising slowly and loudly:

‘And so through life we travel on to reach our journey's end,

But life would be just nothing if we did not have a friend,

A friend, my friends, a little friend, as on through life we jog.

A girl's best friend's her mother, but a man's best

friend's his dog.'

He bowed himself off to a ragged chord from the band, clutching Nigger who now, with dog's perverseness, was struggling to get away. The audience booed and cheered ironically. Edwin was angry.

‘And now,' said the phosphorus-man, ‘another newcomer, who has not brought his dog with him: Lennie Bloggs from Bermondsey, who will sing for you “A Teenager's Heart”.' There were fresh screams of abandonment. Edwin was angrier. But Leo Stone said:

‘That's all right, really. I've been seen, that's the main thing. They've got television cameras out there. I've been inside millions of homes tonight, that's what you've got to remember. There'll be offers of contracts galore before the week's out, you just wait and see.'

After Lennie Bloggs had been screamed off, the main event of the evening was announced. ‘The Bald Add Honest of Greater London,' said the compère. ‘This competition has been organised by Megalopolitan Pictures Incorporated in connection with their film sensation
Spindrift
featuring Feodor Mintoff, bald-headed heartthrob of the silver screen, on general release next Monday.'

‘What is this?' said Edwin. ‘What's going on? How did my name get into it?'

‘You get in vere and win,' said Harry Stone. ‘Ve name's neiver 'ere nor vere. A cohen sidence, vat's all. You play your cards right and you'll win.'

‘But,' said Edwin, ‘I thought you said that had all been fixed. I thought you said it had all been arranged.'

‘As good as,' said Harry Stone. ‘Look at vem over yobs takin' part. Vey don't stand an earfly compared wiv you. You're ‘andsome, you are. Look at vat 'ead. You 'ave confidence in vat 'ead and you'll win. Go on, now. Vey're all marchin' on.' And he gave Edwin a push stagewards.

‘Twisters,' said Edwin, ‘a pair of twisters. I'm not going on.'

‘You're on, boy,' said Harry Stone. ‘Bester lack.'

Edwin found himself in a circle of baldheads, marching round the stage as at prison-yard exercise. The audience cheered. Television cameras were trained on them and, on a small monitor screen, Edwin saw himself in miniature trudging round and round looking angrily out at several million viewers. In the orchestra pit the jazz band was slowly surfacing on a hydraulic platform, playing an old music hall song called ‘Hair, hair, hair, he's got none on his noddle'. The leading trumpeter looked suspiciously like Dr Railton. On stage, on a rostrum with a table and mark-sheets,
sat three silly beauties of television fame. An even sillier man with a floppy evening tie ran on, acknowledging the cheers of the audience with extravagant waves. ‘Sorry I'm late,' he said, speaking somewhat adenoidally, ‘but I just got blocked in the passage.' The audience roared. ‘I've just been out with a girl,' he said. ‘She was a nun. Yes, a nun. She'd have nun of this and nun of that and nun of the other.' The audience collapsed. ‘Some lovely bonces here tonight,' he said. ‘Real skating-rinks for flies. Look at that,' he said, slapping Edwin's like a bottom. The audience nearly died. ‘Now,' he said, ‘march round, you lot. Here,' he said, ‘we have three lovely pieces of homework who are going to judge – Ermine Elderley, Desiree Singe and Chloe Emsworth. First of all, we eliminate the duds. Right, girls? Write down the numbers that don't stand a chance. March, slaves, march. Music, maestro.' And he lashed the competitors with a whip of air, the while the band played and the audience cried its glee. Round and round shambled the bald. ‘Stop!' yelled the flop-tied man. The silly pretty judges giggled and presented their consensus. ‘Fall out the following,' he cried, in a mock sergeant-major's woof that had the audience helpless. ‘For'y. Firty-free. Twenny-six. Noin'een. Twelf. Foive.' Off went the eliminated, hairless to no avail. ‘And,' yelled the flop-tied man, ‘WE SHAKE THE BAG. Too many still in,' he said, sad. ‘A lot of zombies. March, clots, march. Lefrye lefrye lefrye.' He whipped the shambling circle again, the drummer adding the synchronised crack of a rim-shot. The audience wiped streaming eyes. At the next elimination the flop-tied man dismissed two little ducks, legs eleven, doctor's chum, Downing Street, Kelly's eye, and various others. Edwin was still in. ‘It's in
ve bleedin' bag,' called Harry Stone from the wings.

The final elimination left Edwin and four others still circling on the stage. Now it was to be a matter of placing in bald merit order. The flop-tied man raced around as if ready to expire with excitement. The audience was ready to expire with joy. ‘Here it is,' he cried. ‘It's coming up now.' The melodic instruments ceased playing and only a drum rolled in slow crescendo. ‘I can't see,' said the man, tottering round with a paper before his twitching eyes. ‘Sure and it's a terrible thing for Oi'm bloind intoirely.' The audience micturated in mirth. ‘Now,' he said in a cavalry officer's voice, ‘it has all come cleah. And the winner is the winner is the winner is Numbahhhhh EIGHT.' In his excitement Harry Stone ran on to the stage and into the camera sights, trouserless. He ran off again. The band played ‘Why was he born so beautiful?' with zest and some accuracy. Edwin was led downstage, linked by the flop-tie man.