The Doctor Is Sick (27 page)

‘Don't call me Jack.'

‘All right. Aristotle, Bottle-and-glass, Thanatos, Death, anything you like. Lend me a quid, will you? Two quid. A couple of nicker.' The right word had eluded him. For a kip for the night.'

‘My dear fellow.' Aristotle Thanatos came back a pace, leaving Mr Thalassa to drown. ‘You mean to say you're as badly off as that? I'm terribly sorry. It's my fault, I know, putting you in the embarrassing position of having to
ask
. I should have let you finish your story. I'd just no idea. But I'm an impatient man, you know, and always have been. My biggest fault, my friends tell me. Sit down again. I'll sit down too.' And they sat down.

‘Oh,' said Edwin, ‘let's not make a big thing of it. I mean, I've got money, or rather my wife's got it, somewhere. Wherever she is. It's only a question of having somewhere to sleep. Just for tonight, that's all.'

‘
Women
,' said Aristotle Thanatos, as bitterly as ever Harry Stone could say it. ‘I see, I see. She's gone off, eh? Just like that. Hm. In the old days it used to be the men who left the women stranded. But we've progressed. Well, you'd better spend the night with me. There are two beds in my room. And then tomorrow morning perhaps we can have a talk, work something out. Hm. I'm really terribly
sorry.' He gazed round the tipsy room scattered with vine leaves and drenched with wine. His face twitched, for the first time that evening, humorously. ‘Now,' he said, ‘is hardly the time for a serious talk. But I don't really think you ought to drink any more, either. You don't look at all well. The strain, I suppose.'

‘It has been rather a strain,' admitted Edwin. He trailed his left ring finger across his shut eyes in a conventional gesture of weariness. He felt muzzy; the wine probably.

‘You go to bed,' said Aristotle Thanatos. ‘My room's on this floor. Have a bath and a shave with my electric razor. Then go to bed. We'll have to be up early in the morning if we're going to discuss things, because I have to be at London Airport by ten-thirty. So you go to bed now. I can't leave this party yet, obviously. My room's Number Twelve. The door isn't locked. You go along now and get a decent night's sleep. Poor Spindrift,' he said sentimentally, tweezing Edwin's arm. ‘Nobody would have dreamed of calling you that at college,' he added. Edwin searched for some words in Modern Greek, but nothing would come. ‘Apothanein thelo,' he said instead, without intending to say it. Aristotle Thanatos laughed. ‘You go off now and sleep. You'll feel differently in the morning.'

Outside that healthily drunken room Edwin staggered a little. That wine. He met 'Ippo coming up from the toilet, buttoning behind the shield of his fore-board. ‘Bleedin' game,' he said. ‘You found your watch yet?' Edwin saw the room numbers dance as he walked the snow-soft corridor. But, without dancing of the eyes or any of the tones of fantasy, he quite definitely passed the two flat-chested daughters of Renate, giggling under their Eskimo hair-bells, holding hands, off to some assignment in some
room. Did everything together, did they? He squinted up at a number, saw twelve, opened the door, found it was the wrong room, very much the wrong room, the two occupants too preoccupied however to notice that he had opened the door of the wrong room. His lips were open, his tongue-point up to the alveolum, ready for ‘Sorry,' when his eyes were caught in snake-and-rabbit hypnosis by the sight of the act. The act itself. Complete with sound effects, the train just ready to arrive at the station. ‘Sheila,' said Edwin, his tongue-point retracting from alveolum to hard palate and himself, in one compartment of his shocked brain, conscious of the fact. It was Sheila all right, certainly Sheila, for, even in her transport, her head turned. ‘Wait,' panted the man, no man that Edwin had ever seen before, an unbearded man. ‘Let me finish, blast you.' ‘All the time in the world,' said Edwin quite coldly, coldly knowing that he was about to pass out – primrose, Jerusalem artichoke, causeway, penthouse – and then passing out cold.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

‘Tonight,' said Harry Stone, trouserless announcer, ‘to-bleedin'-night, vat is, ve perfesser 'ere follers ap 'is first sensational appearance on ve telly wiv anover demon-bleedin'-stration of bleedin' words. Last time, as ve ole world remembers – and telegrams 'ave been comin' in from China and Peru and over bleedin' foreign spots so vat nobody can't get abaht ve room for bleedin' telegrams – 'e said a word vat can't be repeated no more but now as ve official description of——' He consulted a typed handout. ‘——Of noun verb expletive wiv bleedin' phonemic structure of unvoiced bleedin' labiodental glidin' onter secondary cardinal vowel number six endin' wiv unvoiced velar bleedin' plosive. Now'e is goin' to demonstrate ve workin' of an homophone.' That rare aspirate of his blew like a gale through the world. ‘Ve perfesser.'

By a singular device Edwin's bald head first filled the monitor screen, inked with the primary cardinal vowel chart. He raised fluttering eyelids and then bled profusely from the nose. ‘Pardon, all,' he said. ‘A little unwell in the conk.' He winked. ‘We have in the studio tonight several homophones. This, for example.' He patted a carpenter's plane, said a secret word, and saw it jet off into the night, BOAC clear on its fuselage. ‘Or this,' he said. ‘Our little Spanish friend.' He lifted Carmen's skirt to disclose a well-filled stocking. ‘You very notty,' she said. ‘Oh blimey.' Her teeth champed the screen for two seconds. ‘This stocking,' said Edwin, ‘has a ladder in it. Now watch.'
And there was Charlie climbing the ladder to Valhalla, a spaghetti rope over his shoulder, Charlie complaining: ‘Very hard this is. Italian stuff.'

‘And here,' said Edwin, ‘is a little invention of my own -a ticking kettle, guaranteed to boil any amount of time and stop after only three weeks. Only one nicker. Eight tosheroons. Comes complete with tray on the moor, suitable for picnics.' Money came swirling out of the electricity meter, the jackpot. Edwin picked up a handful of shillings, each of which begged: ‘Whip me. Lay it on real hard. If you don't beat me I'll get the mob to beat
you
up.'

‘Wonders of philology,' said Edwin proudly. ‘Take this here dog, for instance.' He held up struggling Nigger, wearing a fish-head like a false nose. ‘This is really a Spade, you see. Give a dog a bad name. Call a spade a spade. All done by kindness.' He put docile Nigger down with a flat metal clank. ‘Wooden haft had a bark when it was on a tree. Dogs' affinity for trees. All ties up.' He looked up at the sky-ceiling to see Les walking on the grid. ‘World tree withers,' sang Les. ‘Gods gormless ghastly. Skylight in the gods, see? For flying Dutchmen.'

‘We turn now,' said Edwin, ‘from matters of homophones to the whole question of love, love being the hardest collocation of phonemes ever bored by questing squirrel.' Coral appeared, skirtless. ‘Bleedin' good pair we make,' said sad Harry Stone, trouserless. ‘Phoney homo,' sneered Coral corally. ‘Love, eh? Hardest whatever-it-was-he-said, eh? Hard, that's a good un.' ‘My wife Sheila will now demonstrate love,' said Edwin, ‘complete with seven sacred trances. Do not attempt to brighten your tellies, as much of this must be performed in darkness, being act of darkness. Begin. Commence. There, you see,
are words of same meaning but different origin, Anglo-Saxon and French respectively, showing incomparable richness of English. While the demonstration is proceeding, this possibly being somewhat boring for prolonged viewing, I will endeavour to entertain you with priceless philological curiosities. These are normally sold only in public lavatories under VD sign. Special Chasperian dispensation brings them to you, great viewing public, tonight.' Energetic noises of love rose in crescendo. ‘Crescendo, Italian loan-word, cognate with crescent as in moon and Mornington. Those noises in the background made by my wife and various persons unknown are, I think hardly susceptible to linguistic analysis. One has to draw the line somewhere.

‘Another point,' said Edwin, ‘that must be made before my time runs out. Time by courtesy of Kettle Mob, incidentally. It is hardly fair that I should be fastened to a bed, absolutely immobile like Odysseus and other Greeks, wine-dark, lashed to the mast to hear unharmable compulsive music of the Sirens. It is all right, I hear some of you shouting, keep your hair on, mister. Not mister, please. Doctor, if you don't mind. Here is my diploma.' He held out feebly a piece of lipsticked toilet-paper: TWISTER. ‘As for keeping my hair on, I should honestly like nothing better.' He smiled up at the camera on the ceiling. He raised a palsied hand to his head. To his profound astonishment hair was already sprouting, the wiry wool of a negro. In top hat and immaculate tails, twirling a silver-topped stick, Leo Stone danced on stage. He had enlarged his Semitic nose with cunning flesh-coloured wax. ‘All together now,' he cried:

‘A phoney pair of homophones,' said Edwin indignantly. ‘Air and air.' Aristotle Thanatos was leaning over him, his head a skull with an eagle's conk. He spoke modern Greek with a slight Turkish accent. His naked skull, by courtesy of the X-ray Department, slowly clothed itself in flesh. ‘Carry on,' said Edwin. ‘A little more.' But the flesh stopped at a stage of reasonable plumpness only. Edwin blinked at this. All images receded except that of a dressing-gowned man who was not Aristotle Thanatos, burbling his wet Greek over Edwin's bed however, like one whose neural ailment had affected the speech-centres. Edwin blinked a solid white ward into existence, but not the ward he had escaped from. He knew nobody there. Where was R. Dickie, where the sneerer, where the Punch-humped young man? Perhaps this was a different hospital. When one came to think of it, they would hardly be likely to take him back in that first one, not after behaviour they must have considered unpardonable. The Greek-speaker leaning over Edwin seemed mad and happy. He tottered off to the next bed, sociable though monoglot. Men lay in bed all the way along the ward, on both sides, some with dark glasses, most with bandaged heads, one with the dithering limbs of Parkinson's Disease. Edwin tenderly felt his own head. Something had grown there: immovable coils of crepe over a cotton-wool bed. He must have hurt himself hard when he passed out. And then Dr Railton
walked in, cheerful, wiping lips that had trumpeted.

‘How,' said Edwin fearfully, ‘did you get here?'

‘I work here,' said Dr Railton. ‘How do you feel now,
Doctor?'

‘I know,' said rueful Edwin. ‘You were quite right, really. I'm too irresponsible for that high title. But I can't disown it, can I? I can't disown what was conferred upon me, can I?'

‘Don't get so excited,' said Dr Railton. ‘And stop feeling guilty. Guilt is a big retarder of recovery.'

‘So you look at guilt clinically and not morally?' said Edwin. ‘But if you had to give a moral judgment on me what would you say?'

‘That doesn't enter into it,' said Dr Railton. ‘That doesn't come into the convenant between us. You rest now. Stop thinking.'

‘I'm sorry, anyway,' said Edwin.

‘If feeling sorry makes you also feel better,' said Dr Railton, ‘you go on feeling sorry.' He rose from the bed's edge. ‘I'll be in to see you later.'

‘Did you enjoy playing the trumpet last night?'

‘I always enjoy playing the trumpet,' said Dr Railton. ‘The trumpet to me is possibly like the study of words to you. But,' said Dr Railton, ‘I have a profession as well.' He smiled quite amiably and then left the ward.

CHAPTER THIRTY

A nurse came in to take his temperature and his pulse. She was a stout Irish body, potato-fed, plum-and-apple-cheeked. When the thermometer had been poked into its warm one-minute nest, Edwin tried a sly question or two, ‘Where am I?' he asked. She was of peasant stock that would brook no Saxon nonsense. She said:

‘Don't be asking stupid questions. You're in the postoperative ward.'

‘You mean they've operated on me? Already?'

‘Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies. And I'm taking your pulse, as you can see.'

‘What day is it?' asked Edwin. She recorded his pulse-rate in a book, extracted and read the thermometer. ‘All days are the same to them who work hard,' she said. She entered a blob on his temperature chart. ‘Except Sunday, and even then the work has to go on,' she said, daughter of a poor farmer.

‘Was there anything unusual on the television last night?' asked Edwin.

‘How should I be knowing? A lot of nonsense, to be sure. I've better things to do than to be watching a lot of nonsense on the television.'

‘I'm sure you have,' said gallant Edwin. ‘A pretty colleen like yourself.'

‘Don't be bold,' she said, and moved on to the next patient. But, standing there at her work, she cast a bold enough look back on Edwin.

Before dinner a Church of England clergyman came visiting. ‘I wonder if you'd mind answering a simple question,' said Edwin. ‘What day is it?'

‘Day? Day?' He was a silvery vague old man. ‘Well now.' He fumbled in an inner pocket and drew forth a diary whose entries seemed, to Edwin, remarkably few. ‘I don't suppose this would help much. One really wants to know the date, I suppose. From the date one could work out, with the help of this little book, precisely what day of the week it is. I suppose,' he said, ‘it's Wednesday or Thursday. ‘I'm not sure. But ‘I'm quite sure,' he smiled, ‘that today is a week-day.'

‘Thank you,' said Edwin. ‘And what time is it?'

‘Well,' said the clergyman, ‘I'm afraid ‘I'm always leaving my watch at home. But, ah, I see your watch, as I take it to be, is here on the bedside table. And that makes it, ah, nearly six.'