The Doctor Is Sick (9 page)

‘That was a long time ago.'

‘When I was a young girl,' said Sheila, ‘I always believed that artists starved.
La vie de Bobème.'

‘Plenty of stuffing goes on in the first two acts of the opera,' said Edwin.

‘Oh, yes,' said Sheila, ‘that reminds me. Les and Carmen are coming to see you again this evening. I, of course, can't make it. Carmen is coming to apologise.'

‘No,' said Edwin violently. ‘I'm very ill. I can't have visitors. Please tell them that.'

‘We shan't be seeing them, shall we, Nigel? So you'll just have to put up with it. Les has a queer life really, doesn't he?'

‘I should think so,' said Edwin.

‘Yes. He works in one of the Covent Garden pubs early in the morning, and at night he works in the opera house. That seems to me to be right – unification in terms of place, or something. And for the rest of the time he has Carmen. You must get him to tell you about some of the things she does sometime.'

‘Come on,' said Nigel. ‘We ought to eat.'

‘Yes,' said Sheila. ‘She's very quaint. They did
Samson and Delilah
and she went to see it and a couple of days later they had a bit of a row, and he woke up in the middle of the night to find her standing with the scissors over the bed——'

Nigel was looking, suddenly very intently, at Edwin. ‘I don't know about your brain,' he said, thoughts of food apparently temporarily forgotten, ‘whether it's worthwhile saving that. But as far as heads go, it's a good head. It's a better head,' he continued, with the artist's impartiality, ‘than hers. I wouldn't mind doing it. I think I'd rather do your head than hers, though she, of course, from my point of view, has by far the more interesting body. And, of course, soon you'll have no hair.'

‘There's a long way to go yet,' said Edwin. ‘My family is not a family that goes bald early.'

‘No, no,' said Nigel. ‘If they're going to operate on your brain they'll have to shave all your hair off. I think that I should like to have a go at it then. It would make a very nice and rather original study. A painting, I think. The tropical brown of the face and a sort of nacreous pink -I should like to try that.'

Edwin was pale, aghast. ‘You know,' he said, ‘I just hadn't realised. I just didn't think of that at all.'

‘Never mind,' said Sheila. ‘It will grow again, very quickly. And it will be just the opposite of Samson, won't it?'

‘What do you mean?' asked Edwin.

‘Think it over, darling. Look,' she said to Nigel, who had taken out a small drawing-pad and was sketching preliminary studies of Edwin. ‘You put this idea of food into my head. Let's go and eat.'

‘All right,' said Nigel. ‘And let's not forget to collect the laundry.' He was a kind young man beneath the veneer of artist. He took up in his arms a bundle of socks, underwear, pyjamas from the bedside locker, with a faint
ça pue
wrinkling of his snub nose. And off they went to collect the dirty shirt from the outside locker used for outside clothes and suitcases. Sheila peered in again gaily when they had done this, waving the shirt, blew a kiss which also embraced R. Dickie and the sneerer, smiled brilliantly, lovingly, and sardonically at Edwin, then left.

‘Quite a card, your missis,' said R. Dickie later.

Just before dinner Edwin told the ward sister that he wasn't feeling well enough for visitors and could he please have screens put round his bed. This was done, and in the process of straightening his bedclothes the negro orderly found the preliminary sketch that Nigel had discarded. It showed, thought Edwin, little talent.

‘Dyin', is he, that one?' one of R. Dickie's visitors was heard to ask in a loud whisper palpitant with excitement.

‘Naw,' whispered R. Dickie back, ‘not him. I think his missis upset him a bit, that's all. If it is his missis, that is.' A softer susurrus of speculation ensued.

CHAPTER TEN

‘This, my little friend, is clearing the deck for activity.' The negro orderly, shedding light from every facet of his skin, his glasses splintering with light, giggled at the daring of the image and began to fiddle with his tray of instruments. He had an apprentice standing by him, a morose tall Italian who had just joined the service, and to him he explained what the instruments were.

‘Scissors.'

‘Si.'

‘Clippers.'

‘Si, si.'

‘Electric razor.'

‘Si, si, capito.'

Sheila had had, apparently, no time for a letter, much less a visit, but she had sent a telegram:
BEST OF LUCK WILL BE THINKING OF YOU LOVE
. He had in the past received such messages at commercial hotels in strange towns, on the eve of an interview for a new job. Now he was going to travel to the ultimate bourn of thingness from which return was possible. A pilgrimage, but he was to be turbaned before Mecca was sighted. The negro began his work. Humming nonchalantly he pulled on rubber gloves. Then he said: ‘Scissors.' Scissors were handed to him. Whorls of hair began to fall. Edwin said:

‘What's your name?' The negro said:

‘Please be so good as not to be distracting.' But, as more and more swathes drifted down, he relented and said: ‘If
you must know, my name is Mr Southey.
Mister,'
he emphasised, as if to disparage Edwin's own title, ‘like Mr Begbie, eminent specialist.'

The rapid autumn continued, the deciduous down-drift of brown bunches and wheels. ‘Very bad dandruff,' said the specialist. ‘That way you lose your hair.' The Italian watched every detail of the operation closely, nodding frequently to show that, despite the language barrier, he understood perfectly what was being done. Edwin began to feel cool, light and lamb-like. ‘Clippers,' said Mr Southey.

Here was a new and voluptuous sensation, a curious abandon as total nakedness drew nearer. Hair was coming down as a whole Koran of Arabic letters mingled with a Pitman manual. In broad mowing strokes Mr Southey drove his purring instrument over a hill which, for thirty-eight years, had hidden its contours from the air. Aware of achievement, he sang. In mid-strophe he said:

‘Razor.'

Now came the final stages of depilation. The Italian's mouth was half-open and he panted a little. The razor maintained its irritable buzz, the negro's song grew more exultant. Soon the song tailed off for the business of pausing to stand back to scrutinise – an odd buzz here, a short whirring passage there – and at last the sculpture was completed.

‘That looks good, really fine.'

‘Bello,'
the Italian agreed.

‘You wait,' said Mr Southey, ‘and I bring you a mirror.'

‘No, no,' said Edwin. ‘No, no, no.' His fearful fingers roamed over his scalp, palpating, sliding. ‘For God's sake cover it up.'

‘Everybody,' said Mr Southey, ‘appreciates a little bit of appreciation. That's nothing to ask. You have a look in a mirror.'

‘You heard me,' said Edwin. ‘I don't want to see it, I don't want to know anything about it. Just cover it up.'

‘Ingratitude,' said the negro. He brought a woollen cap that fitted snugly. Then Edwin risked a look in his shaving mirror. He saw little Edwin in his pram – the little Edwin of a photograph his mother had had framed for the front room – but little Edwin with sharp mistrustful eyes, a jowl, and a day's growth of beard. He clattered the mirror back on to the locker-top and lay still in bed. The Italian swept away a whole barber-shop-floor-load of hair; the negro wheeled off the bed-screens. Edwin now felt himself at last a full member of this prone club of pilgrims.

The staff-nurse came round to say: ‘Do you sleep sound enough?' She spoke in the comfortable voice of Manchester.

‘Enough,' said Edwin.

‘Eh, you don't sound too convinced. We'd better be on the safe side. Tomorrow morning we want you to be nice and muzzy, half-dead, if you see what I mean.' She emptied a generous helping of tablets out of her bottle. Edwin sluiced them down.

He was soon asleep. His dreams were polychrome, stereoscopic. Three big dogs couched in the wood he was walking through turned out to be the folds of a python. He smiled in his dream: that was meant to be sex. He dropped down well after well after well. At the bottom of one well he encountered the expected: large crawling insects, an animated drawing out of an 1860
Punch
, a severed marble head out of a film by Cocteau which
repeated monotonously the word
habituel
. He was sitting on Brighton sands, surrounded by smiling people, and was desperately trying to hide his bare feet. At the bottom of the final well there was only darkness, no more images.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Edwin awoke with mechanical suddenness, with no hint of a margin between dead sleep and complete wakefulness. He even sat up, fully aware of where he was, what he was there for. He had no idea of the time, but it was full night, with brilliant plenilunar light washing London. He awoke with a very clear intention, feverishly sharp, of an acuity undoubtedly, he saw, induced by the large dose of sleeping drug: that nobody should cut his head open, that there should be no excision of any tumour, that he should live – however briefly – and die – however soon – as he was, whether sick or well. He felt wonderfully well, as a matter of fact.

Death, anyway, was in the hospital: you could hear it snoring in the ward. Life was outside. He must leave at once. For if he returned to sleep his intention might be blunted by morning drowsiness; there would be too many to fight; they would pump a deader sleep into his buttock before he knew where he was and have burly men wheel him off to the theatre. Then it would be too late. It had to be now.

Enclosed by her frail walls of bed-screens, the night sister sat at her desk with its dim light. She was, he knew, an American girl over on a year's exchange. From Missouri or somewhere.

How bloody stupid he had been to trust Dr Railton and everyone else. To them he was already a thing, could not be less of a thing if he died under the anaesthetic:
regrettable: Dr Spindrift has changed into a mere chunk of morphology.

The bed creaked as he got out of it. He felt his head: the woollen cap was still there: the woollen cap was going to look a bit bloody stupid in the world outside. Never mind. There were hats, wigs, weren't there? The sister's ears were sharp. She peeked out, then walked softly and swiftly towards him.

‘You all right? You want something?' She was a pretty girl with a becoming uniform, a film sister. Her voice was rich.

‘I just want to go to the——'

‘Oh. Sure you wouldn't rather I brought you a bedpan?' That hated word for a clumsy intractable thing took on tones of irony in her accent. It was a word you never heard in American films. The two vowels retracted and prolonged: badepairn.

‘No,' said Edwin. ‘I'd rather–I'm not all that incapable, you know.'

‘Okay. Put on your dressing-gown.' The moon shone full on her prettiness. It was an honour to be bossed by her, a film goddess. And now she was going to get into trouble. Edwin felt sorry for her, but not all that sorry. ‘And don't be too long,' she said.

‘It may be,' said Edwin, ‘rather a long job, if you know what I mean.' He paused on the brink of fake clinical details. ‘Something I ate,' he said.

‘Okay, okay.' She went back to her sequestered light. Edwin, tremulous with excitement, padded rapidly out. Opening a steel door of the lockers in the corridor opposite the bathrooms, he suddenly realised how much this last week had stripped him of possessions: watch, underclothes,
hair. No socks, no shirt, he realised: at Nigel's flat, to be washed by a Hungarian. He was going to be cold: no overcoat, no raincoat; both shed before going to Burma. In great haste he carried tie, jacket, trousers to one of the bathrooms. And this time he must not forget his shoes. He put everything on over his pyjamas. The striped, rather grubby, pyjama top did not look much like a shirt. He frowned at it in the mirror. He wound the tie under the collar and knotted it. From the shoulders up he looked, to say the least, eccentric. The inside of his shoes struck his bare feet coldly and he shuddered. He paused. Should he steal? The lockers, despite their name, were not locked. There were other clothes available – shirts, perhaps overcoats. And then he thought: no. To commit a crime, however minor, would be playing into their hands. Such petty thefts would be attributed to kleptomania, part of the complex syndrome – a very sick man, not at all responsible for his actions.

He had very little money (he would count it later) and nothing he could pawn or sell. His overnight case, he had noticed, had been taken from his locker; reasonably enough, of course, for Sheila and Nigel had had to carry the laundry off in something. In the inner pocket of his jacket he found private papers, put there undoubtedly when the case had been turned into a laundry bag, and he felt the folded parchment of his doctor's diploma. Why the hell had he brought that home with him? There must, he thought, be some reason. But now was no time for wondering what it was. First he had to get out.

Thankful for rubber soles he stole fearfully to the heavy swing-doors shared by both the male and female wards. (But that duality itself was called a ward, Philpotts Ward;
was each unit then a sub-ward or demi-ward or something?) He made, he was sure, no sound that could be significant to the unsuspicious. On the landing outside the doors he found the macabre light of a blue bulb. Here was no window for the moon to enter. The blue dimness saw him down the first flight of stairs, and then the blue light was found again on the lower landing, and so all the way down. He was quickly on ground-level. Here his real troubles must begin. The corridors were shadowy, and shadows imparted to the busts of the great dead a factitious life – leers, winks, smiles of false complicity. His final corridor flowed into the vestibule, and there the night porter stood, not at all drowsy, spelling out notices on the notice-board. It was not conceivable that Edwin could get past him. Nor was there any guarantee that the outer door would be unlocked. Edwin saw the time on the vestibule clock – four-forty – and automatically he tried to set his watch. Bloody 'Ippo. He cowered in the corridor shadows, wondering.