The Doctor Is Sick (29 page)

‘I don't understand this,' said Edwin. ‘Why should he talk to you about that? Damn it, he's my boss, not yours. How did you meet him, anyway?'

‘He wrote to me,' said Sheila simply. ‘Care of the Farnworth Hotel. They had to know where I was staying, remember. Next of kin.'

‘But you were thrown out of the Farnworth,' said Edwin.

‘I,' said Sheila, ‘have never been thrown out of anywhere in my life. Except once from that church in Italy. For not wearing a hat. True, I'm no longer at the Farn-worth, but my leaving was quite amicable. I called there occasionally for letters. Dear me, I seem to have played rather a horrid part in your fantasy.' She lit a cigarette, nearly placed it in Edwin's mouth, then thought better of it. Smoking it herself, she presented another to Edwin in the way of acquaintances rather than lovers, striking a match for him.

‘Come on then,' said Edwin impatiently. ‘What did Chasper tell you?'

‘He's sending you a formal letter, but not just yet. He asked me to break it gently to you that you're not going back to Burma, that your contract is being terminated under the provisions of Clause 18. There, I've broken it gently.'

‘Very gently,' said Edwin, ‘as gently as a whip on a kettle-mobster's back. But I expected this.'

‘You did?'

‘When Chasper saw me in that public lavatory I knew it was the end.'

‘That,' said Sheila, ‘suitably edited, might make a nice
News of the World
headline. Clause 18, however, seems to have nothing to do with lavatories. Apparently you've been invalided out.'

‘I see,' said Edwin. ‘They haven't given me much of a chance to recover, have they? Invalided out, indeed. Are you sure Clause 18 isn't concerned with misconduct?'

‘Invalided out,' said Sheila. ‘That's what's happened to you. But they're giving you a couple of months' sick pay. Apparently they don't think it safe to send people back to the tropics when they've had the sort of thing you've had. Misconduct, you say? You wouldn't know what misconduct is, my dear Edwin. Bilabial fricatives don't commit misconduct.'

‘In a sense they do,' said Edwin eagerly. ‘I mean, take the sort of phonemic confusion we get out in Burma. Bilabial fricatives instead of semi-vowels. It was different in certain historical phases of British English, of course. There there was no imposition of alien phonemic habits on——'

‘Exactly,' said Sheila.
‘Exactly.'

‘Oh,' said Edwin. ‘Yes.' And then: ‘Two months' sick pay. After that what do we do?'

‘I don't know what you're going to do,' said Sheila. ‘I personally am returning to Burma.'

Edwin stared at her open-mouthed for a count of five. His cigarette burned slowly towards his fingers. ‘I don't understand,' he said. ‘What sort of a job? But you've no qualifications.'

‘Oh, yes,' said Sheila, ‘I have qualifications. Jeff Fairlove seems to think so, anyway.' Edwin's open mouth counted seven. He said:

‘But you can't marry Fairlove. I won't let you, I won't give you a divorce.'

‘There's no particular hurry about a divorce,' said Sheila. ‘You'll let me have one sooner or later, I know you will. You don't care enough about hanging on to me. You only really care about bilabial fricatives and semi-vowels and all that rubbish.'

‘And how much do you care about Fairlove?' The coal of the cigarette had reached the scarf-skin of his fingers. ‘Blast,' he said, and ash scattered all over the sheet.

‘I care enough,' said Sheila. ‘And I also care about Burma. I like the climate. I like the people. I also like the prospect of not having to be unfaithful any more. Sleeping with a bilabial fricative isn't all that rewarding, you know.'

‘Will you,' said Edwin, near tears, ‘shut up about bilabial fricatives? You're not being fair to me, you're cruel. I'm still not very well, you know. You just don't care, you never have cared.'

‘Oh, yes,' said Sheila, ‘I did care. Until the bilabial fricatives got in the way. Sorry. The semi-vowels, then. The faucal plosives. The retroflex what-have-yous. Life governed by Verner's Law and Grimm's Law. You see, I know all the jargon. Now I have to learn the jargon of a teak-wallah, I suppose. But I shouldn't imagine he'll bring teak to bed with him.'

‘You used to say,' said Edwin slowly, ‘that there was only one kind of infidelity. Just not wanting to be with the person you're supposed to love. You said there was nothing worse than that.'

‘Oh, all our ideas change,' said Sheila. ‘But I'd still say that was substantially what I believe. But when a person ceases to be a person what do you do then? I don't regard myself as having any obligation of love to a bundle of phonemes or whatever you call them. A bundle of bilabial fricatives is just a
thing
, isn't it? You can't love a thing.'

‘You may be right', said Edwin. ‘It's queer, but yesterday,
I'd
quite made up my mind to leave
you
. Because it seemed you'd deserted me. Because of that ghastly physical shock which showed me you didn't care a damn about me. I suppose I deserve this, in a way. But I'd made up my mind to change, or try to change. These last few days brought me out of touch with words as words. And it seemed that coming into contact with life made me into a liar, a thief, a whoremaster, a cheat, a man on the run. But you say that these last few days never happened. So that I'm still the same. So there we are. But it was you I was searching for these last few days. I was looking everywhere for you. It doesn't really matter, does it, whether that really happened or not? Even just dreaming about looking for you argues love, doesn't it? And I do love you, I'm quite sure of that. And I could change.'

Sheila sadly shook her dark head. ‘I don't think it would be right for you to change. You're a kind of machine, and the world needs machines. You're like an X-ray machine, or one of those electrocephalo gadgets you were moaning about. You have a use. But I don't need a machine. Not to live with and go to bed with, anyway.'

‘We've all got to do something in the world,' said Edwin. ‘We've all got to earn a living. My bilabial fricatives and minimal pairs bought you jade ornaments
and bottles of gin.' He spoke gently. ‘It just happened, unfortunately, that my way of earning a living was one that I enjoyed. Apparently it's sacrilege for a married man to be too happy in his work. I shan't commit that sin again.'

‘It's the only sin you've ever committed,' said Sheila, not unkindly. ‘But it happened, as far as I was concerned, to be the unforgivable sin.'

‘It won't happen again,' said Edwin. There was a pause. ‘So now you'll have a chance to be properly faithful. No more casuistry about marriage being divisible into the physical and the spiritual and never the twain need meet. Perhaps this Fairlove wouldn't be so forbearing as I've been, anyway. Perhaps he wouldn't like you to go off occasionally with other men. If,' said Edwin, ‘you fornicated with people like Fairlove when married to me, who will you fornicate with when married to Fairlove?'

‘You don't know Jeff all that well, do you?' said Sheila. ‘He's a jealous sort of man, which is rather refreshing.'

‘Oh, woman, woman,' said Edwin. ‘How would he like a friendly letter from me, a sad but forgiving husband thinking it only his duty to warn his successor about his wife's promiscuity when he, the husband, lay, or should have been lying, on a bed of sickness?'

‘What exactly do you mean?'

‘That he caught his wife and a person unknown in the act. That the shock nearly killed him.'

‘That,' said Sheila, ‘is just plain stupid. That would be just lies and mischief. That would be ridiculous.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't dream of doing it,' said Edwin. ‘I couldn't spare the time. I've got to get down to this article on the bilabial fricative in lower-class nineteenth-century
London English. But I wonder more and more whether I did really imagine these last few days.'

‘I'll come and see you again soon,' said Sheila, rising and smoothing her skirt. ‘There are several things to arrange. Your books and clothes and things in Moulmein. That's one of the reasons why I'm able to go back. They're willing to pay a single air fare to Burma to settle matters out there. There's the car, too, and the servants. I'll be back again, oh, why not tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow. And I'm glad you're looking better.'

‘Perhaps,' said Edwin, ‘you'll have changed your mind by tomorrow night. Because I can, if you think it all that important, become a changed man. Less of a
thing.'

‘I don't think so,' said Sheila. ‘I'm pretty sure I don't think so. Anyway, England's so cold, isn't it? I envy you, lying in that nice warm bed. And I have to go out and brave the cold, cold autumn night.' She shuddered comically and left the ward. Edwin heard her heels on the stone staircase, quick and nervous. Then they entered a zone of silence, the carpeting of the vestibule, and that was the end of her. But she had left her handbag on the bedside table. Edwin nearly shouted after her, but it was too late. He tried to beckon a nurse, but the nurse was not willing to be beckoned. Oh, well, never mind. She could collect it tomorrow. She could come back and collect it tonight. Edwin wondered whether to open it and examine her private letters, inhaling the faint residua of scent and powder that would give a nostalgic smoky hint of her dying presence. But, unfastening the clip and inserting the tip of his nose into the mouth, he merely satisfied himself that his olfactory sense was back to normal; he did not want to handle anything of hers any longer, he decided.
The ward still hummed with the subdued chat of patients and their visitors. He was drowsy. He turned on his side, extinguished all thoughts and feelings – the lights and fires of his lonely house – and sought sleep. It came very quickly. More slowly it ebbed.

‘I forgot my bag,' said Sheila. ‘I hope I haven't disturbed you. It's early for sleep, isn't it? There are still visitors here. Look, this man gave me a message, a man with vine leaves round his head. He wants you to see him as soon as you can. Can you remember that? I'm sorry the message is so vague, but he said his future plans were a bit vague, that was the trouble. I can't remember his name, but he had vine leaves round his head. All right, sleep if you want to. I've done my duty. Now you can dream about your beloved bilabial fricatives. Brrrr, it's so cold outside.'

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Edwin awoke with mechanical suddenness, with no hint of a margin between sleeping and waking. He felt well, rested, cured, sickened by the thought of so much sickness snoring around him. The night sister was reading in her improvised tent of bed screens; a thin beam from a lamp threw a moving golden guinea on her page. The worn silver tosheroon in the sky glowed over a city richer than the sun. The city and the land and all the world were there waiting, full of ripe fruit for the picking. He would not stay here a minute longer. He palpated his chin and cheeks, which were smooth enough. He regretted the turban, but not for long. He would organise things differently this time.

He crept out of bed so softly and slowly – smoothly as the tongue gliding from one phonemic area to another -that the keen-eared sister could not possibly hear. She turned her page, and there was the golden guinea waiting for her, a coin that would never be spent. Edwin stole crouched to the end of the ward, only two beds away from his own bed. Not his own bed any longer, though, a bed he would never see again. He was going to seek again the Great Bed of Ware of the world, a bed lively with wriggling toes and hopping fleas.

He breathed deeply when he reached the bathroom where, for a moment, he rested. The moon illuminated the steel lockers clearly. Where his own clothes were – unless they had been taken away and hidden – he did not know,
nor was there time to look. He plucked what was nearest to hand and most suitable. The slight squeak of locker-doors was – and tonight all things would conspire to help him -drowned by a passing lorry, itself followed by a high-powered car, itself followed by a motor-cycle. Edwin chose a good suit that seemed about his size, a pair of socks without holes, underwear that was clean, shirt, tie, a fancy waistcoat, shoes that said clearly on the moonlit sole his own large eight medium fitting, a trilby hat that, to his satisfaction, fitted well. There seemed to be no money to steal. Never mind. That would soon come his way. Finally he remembered that he was now committed for long to the cold of England, so he took a reasonably good Melton overcoat of a subdued blue.

He locked himself in the bathroom and dressed at leisure. When he had finished he looked, he thought, well. Under the hat the bandages barely showed. The shirt was expensive, glossy, with a collar that sat perfectly. These ill-speaking artisans of the ward had both taste and money, thought Edwin. Handkerchiefs; he had forgotten handkerchiefs. He took a random dozen from the lockers – six for show, six for blow – and, last theft of all from his anonymous ward mates, added gentlemanly tone to his outfit with a walking-stick of which, in this place of dodderers, there was a fine selection. Then, fully armed, warm, smart, he walked quietly to the stairhead and openly down the stairs to the vestibule. This new ward was nearer the outside world than that other of R. Dickie and the rest. The night porter dozed at his desk. He was not the one that Edwin remembered from before. He awoke, startled, at the spectacle of a gentleman with upright carriage and twirling stick, checking his wrist-watch
by the vestibule clock, finding the vestibule clock five minutes slow, sighing, just come off duty.

‘Sorry, sir,” said the porter, ‘I'm new on here. What name would it be, sir?'

‘Dr Edwin Spindrift,' said Dr Edwin Spindrift.

‘Thank you, sir. Sorry, sir. I'll just open up for you, sir. Good night, sir, or good morning as it should rightly be.' He opened the front massy door and presented Edwin to the freedom of London night, smelling of autumn and oil and distant fires. Or morning, as it should rightly be. Edwin strode off in the direction of the great London thoroughfare which glowed beyond the square and the side-streets. He was off to find Mr Thanatos, who might, of course, be anywhere. There was no hurry, of course. Plenty of time for plenty of piquant adventures. And then Mr Thanatos, vine-leaf-crowned.