The Doctor Is Sick

by Anthony Burgess

  'Ah?'

  'Excuse me, I've just come out of the hospital round the corner, that explains my curious get-up, is Mrs Spindrift in, please?'

  'Meesseess----?'

  'Spindrift. Rather a curious name, I know, but it is actually a name, believe me, it's my name too.'

  'Here is staying nobody of such name. There was staying, but not now no longer.'

  'Would you mind telling me when she left?'

  'Yesterday, day before, who knows? Here today, gone tomorrow is rule of hotels. Excuse, fish is burning.'

  'But did she leave no message, no address?'

  There was a scream from the kitchen. 'I tell you,' said the old man, 'fish is burning. I go now, I know no more.' And he closed the door, nodding. Edwin stood on the steps, frightened, hesitating. This he had not expected. But the Farnworth Hotel had not yet finished with him. The grey-haired sleep-walking woman came, opened the door and said: 'What name?' She was evidently English.

  'Spindrift.'

  'Yes. A good name for a washing-machine, I thought when she wrote it in the book.' There was nothing somnambulist about her voice: it was commercial and bitter. 'But that's not the only reason why I'm not likely to forget it in a hurry. I wouldn't have her any longer, and you can tell her from me that it's no good her trying to come back under another name, because I shall know who she is. A man in the room with her, indeed, and her poor husband a sick man in hospital. And if you're another of these men after her, I'm very happy to tell you that she's gone and I don't know where you'll find her. The things that go on.' The fish in the kitchen hissed loudly. 'So there.' And she closed the door.

  Edwin stood for a short while in dismay. He would, of course, find her sooner or later, but it had been Sheila as a dispenser of cash or Sheila a hat-and-shirt-buyer that he had needed at once. And socks also. A bit of a Daily Window cartoon had worked its way out of his right shoe. The frame showed a generic tashed and sideboarded gangster with a striped shirt which Edwin envied. He was leering knowingly and saying in small capitals: 'I don't handle no dough, brother. You'll have to see the big boss for that.' 'You rat, Louie,' began the next frame.

  That was not only a good idea but the only idea. The International Council for University Development had large funds. Its London offices were in Mayfair and full of marble and svelte secretaries. It could afford a bob or two. It was a pity it was such a long walk, though.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The question was whether to buy a box of matches or a threepenny tube ticket. Edwin felt pretty sure that it was not nowadays possible to find matches that cost less than twopence a box. Three halfpence, he was absolutely sure, could buy nothing except perhaps a cube of meat extract. It was better to walk all the way and be one's own Prometheus: to stop strangers and ask them for a light would be embarrassing and smell of real vagrancy. At the tobacco kiosk at the end of the street Edwin drew out his threepence halfpenny, put twopence on to the counter, apologised for his appearance, and came away with a box of fire. One always felt better for having an element in one's pocket.

  He was already tired by the time he got to Tottenham Court Road. The traffic confused him and made him sweat - as good as a pullover. Oxford Street, Bond Street, an anonymous right turn, Berkeley Square. Bandbox Mayfair was all about him. In pyjamas and nightcap through brightest Mayfair. He watched with envy a man entering Trumper's.

  The London office of the International Council for University Development was in Queen Street. Edwin hesitated outside, adjusting his cap, tightening the knot of his tie, smoothing his pyjama collar. The portals, a naked sculptural group above them emblematic of the Tutorial System, were designed to intimidate. The doors were all glass and hence appeared to be ever-open; this again must be emblematic of something. In the vestibule was a bronze bust on a marble pedestal: Sir George Marple, great University Developer, a Sandow of higher education. Marple: marble. A pity they weren't cognate. The face of Sir George was veined, hard and insensible. High up on the wall that faced the entrance was the motto of the organisation: SIC VOS NON VOBIS - subtly verbless, ambiguous, crafty, typical. A porter came up to Edwin. 'Have you ever thought about what that means?' said Edwin.

  'What, sir? That, sir? No, sir.' He was a decent asthmatic old man.

  'It probably means: "thus you work, but not for yourselves". I wonder who the "you" refers to.'

  'Who was it you wanted to see, sir?' The old man, Edwin knew, had taken his measure. They must get a lot like that here: walking advertisements of the virtues of the higher learning slovenly inarticulate pedants who had to be kept to the point. There were none about at the moment, Edwin noticed: the hall was warm with dark-skinned men flitting to and fro, high-voiced and able. Obviously able.

  'I rather wanted to see Mr Chasper.'

  'Mr Chasper, sir. And what name shall I say?'

  'Dr Spindrift.'

  'Oh, I see, sir.' The porter nodded and backed away slowly. 'Very good, sir.' He smiled kindly, backing to his glass box. 'I'll just give his secretary a ring, sir.' In his box he began, on the telephone, a longer speech than seemed necessary. Edwin wandered the hall, looking at recent publications of the Council - expensive free monographs and reviews of new architecture. They could certainly afford a hand-out of a couple of bob or so.

  'What was the name?' A patrician voice, a blonde secretary of frightening smartness - tailored in black, her legs a Vogue stocking advertisement.

  'The name is,' said Edwin, 'Spindrift. Dr Edwin Spindrift.'

  'Oh. And what did you want to see Mr Chasper about?' Edwin prepared a lecture on the idiomatic uses of the preterite. Its title should be: 'The Past Tense as a Lethal Weapon'.

  'I still want to see him, if that's possible. I've been allowed out of hospital for the purpose of seeing him. That explains,' said Edwin, 'my rather curious get-up.'

  'Oh.' said the secretary. 'I suppose you'd better come this way.' Which probably meant: 'I can't afford to be seen here talking to you any longer.' She led him down corridors and finally to a door which Edwin well remembered. Outside the door was a hat-rack with the curly-brimmed coke of Mr Chasper. A big-headed man. 'If you'd just wait here,' said the secretary. She went inside. After three minutes Chasper himself came to the door, loud-voiced and with a hearty handshake. 'Spindrift,' he said, 'Spindrift, Spindrift. The most poetical name in the whole department. Do come in, my dear fellow,' He was darkly handsome, as smart as his secretary, a Blue of some kind. Sitting at his desk, hands joined, he glowed muscularly at Edwin and said, with a falling intonation:

  'Yes.'

  'I've just come out of hospital, as you can see.' said Edwin. 'I wanted to have a word with you about money.'

  'I take it the operation went off all right?' said Chasper.

  'I suppose we'll be getting the report through shortly. It'll be up to our man, Dr Chase, to give you the all-clear for going back, you know. And how,' said Chasper,' is Mrs Spindrift?'

  'She's all right, I think,' said Edwin. 'What I really need at the moment is some money.'

  'Hm. You were paid, weren't you?' Chasper frowned humorously. 'Two months' salary in advance. The bursar sent us a copy of the voucher. That means you're not due for any more salary until, let me see, yes, the end of November. That's quite some time off. I suppose,' he said mellifluously, 'you've found it pretty expensive living here. Or your wife has.' He smiled, as to say: 'Women are extravagant, aren't they? Mine too, old boy. I know.'

  'Well,' said Edwin, 'to be honest, the whole trouble is that my wife has gone off for a little holiday and taken all the money with her, and I can't get in touch with her very easily. It's more a question of the odd quid or so, you see, to keep me going until she gets back.'

  'But they're looking after you in the hospital, aren't they?' said Chasper. 'I mean, it's unusual to want extra messing and so forth, isn't it, in a hospital? And people bring you things, don't they? That reminds me,' said Chasper. 'I haven't been in to see you, have I? I must come and bring you some grapes or someth
ing. You like grapes, I take it?' He scribbled on his memo pad.

  'If I could draw,' said Edwin, 'a couple of quid to keep me going. If you could give me a chit for the treasurer. To be taken off November's salary. That's all. A couple of quid. Pounds,' he translated, so that Chasper would thoroughly understand.

  'I'll bring you some cigarettes as well,' said Chasper. 'I'm glad to see you looking so much better.'

  'Better than what?' asked Edwin. 'Look, about this couple of quid. Pounds. One pound----'

  'Oh, better than I expected you to look after all that probing about in the old grey matter. I suppose the hair doesn't take too long to grow?'

  The secretary appeared. 'Professor Hodges to see you, Mr Chasper. He's a bit early for his appointment.'

  'Show him in.' said Chasper. 'It's been delightful to see you again, Spindrift. I'll drop in during visiting hours. I should have done it before, but you know how busy we get here. My regards to Mrs Spindrift.'

  On the wall was a map. Edwin stared at it open-mouthed. 'Zenobia,' he said. 'There's no such place as Zenobia.' A keen-eyed natty man came in, Professor Hodges. 'Look here,' said Edwin, 'what's all this about Zenobia? Whose leg are you trying to pull?'

  'If you'd bring the file, Mrs Woolland,' said Chasper. The secretary went into an inner room. Edwin was left to see himself out. 'Good-bye, Spindrift,' said Chasper. 'Try and get plenty of rest.'

  Outside Chasper's office there was now not only Chasper's hat but also Professor Hodges's. The professor's hat was very small. Chasper's hat was a little too big. It rested on Edwin's ears. The name on the band was of a reputable hatter. It could be returned, exchanged. That was the next job. Pawned? It wouldn't fetch much. Edwin went into the reading-room. Frowning Indians were reading Punch and the New Statesman. No Brute Beauty here. Edwin wrapped Chasper's coke in a copy of The Times. There was a rather handsome volume on Caribbean birds on the mantelpiece. That would fetch a little, though not perhaps enough for a shirt. Pardon me,' said a sudden negro. 'That book is mine.'

  Edwin came to with a shock. Stealing, eh? Real degeneracy. But it was all Chasper's fault. The mean bastard. Still, he couldn't very well sell this hat or exchange it. He would borrow it, that was all. Give it back when he got some money. The Times? Edwin decided to use one double sheet only for wrapping paper. That would come to about a penny. He left three halfpence, which was really generous, he thought. Now he was (lovely word) skint.

  'Did you get what you wanted, sir?' asked the kind asthmatic porter, as Edwin walked out with his parcel. Edwin smiled.

  The thing to do now was to walk back to the hospital region, to the Anchor perhaps, now - so a public clock told him - open. Sheila might possibly come in, though he somehow doubted it. His intuitions were working rather well these days, probably a consequence of his disease. But that was the best place to hang around. Somebody would know where she was; she might have given somebody a note to be taken into hospital to him.

  Off Great Russell Street he saw a man in a cap carrying sandwich-boards. He shambled despondently along a grey street, under a grey sky. The fore-board said: MARVEL NOT, MY BRETHREN, IF THE WORLD HATE YOU. 1 St John 3. On the rear-board was written: THE FOOLISH BODY HATH SAID IN HIS HEART: THERE IS NO GOD. Psalm 53. ''Ippo,' said Edwin.

  'Eh? What?' 'Ippo stared, lined and grimy, his upper lip sunk in where the wedge of teeth was missing. 'What you want?' he said.

  'You know,' said Edwin, 'bloody well what I want. I want my bloody watch.' He held his hand out.

  'Don't know who you are,' said 'Ippo. 'Never seen you before in me bleedin' life.'

  'Shove-ha'penny. Hospital. Watch.' A passer-by took this as an imperative. He stopped for an instant. 'A right bloody pair we must look,' thought Edwin. 'Ippo's voice began to rise in the bazaar whine of the Cockney.

  'Never seen your bleedin' watch. Never even knew you had a bleedin' watch. Gettin' on to me.' He made Oriental gestures. 'Do a charitable bleedin' turn and that's what you get. I won't be got at,' he said, 'by the likes of you nor nobody.' He tried to collect a small crowd. 'Him here reckons I stole his bleedin' watch. Never seen his bleedin' watch. Never even knew he had one.' His biblical texts made him an object of sympathy.

  'Shame,' said a woman in out-of-date tweeds, already genteelly tipsy. 'They ought to be kept in their own country. Foreigners doing our own people out of jobs.'

  A man in overcoat and spectacles said: 'If you say that he stole your watch you ought to prove it. You ought to take him to the station and charge him in the proper way.'

  'I don't want trouble.' said Edwin. 'All I want is my watch or the cash equivalent thereof.'

  'They come here,' said a man carrying a wad of the midday edition, 'learning our language. Too soft with them the government is, way I see it.'

  'Sayin' I've pinched his bleedin' watch,' whined 'Ippo. 'What right has he got to go round sayin' that? I've done him no harm nor nobody. Tryin' to earn a honest livin'goin' round with these 'ere boards and he comes up and tries to get on to me. A bleedin' shame.'

  'That's right,' said the tipsy tweedy woman, 'It's a free country, or was until these foreigners started pouring in. You can see them,' she said to a small chubby woman who had joined the group, 'living off the immoral earnings of white women. There's nothing lower than that.'

  'Just goin' round advertisin',' said 'Ippo, 'as you can see from what's written here. Advertisin' some decent caffy I think it is where they wouldn't have Johnsons like him comin' in. You can see I'm only tryin' to earn a respectable livin' keepin' a wife and seven kids.' The whine rose higher.

  Edwin did not like the imputation, initiated by the tweedy woman, completed by 'Ippo, that he was a ponce. Moreover the fact of 'Ippo's illiteracy had dawned on the small crowd and made him a further object of sympathy. Edwin's intuition sparked up. He said to 'Ippo:

  'I know all about you. You did a tray on the moor.'

  Startled, 'Ippo waved his arms higher. 'It wasn't a tray,' he whined, 'it was only a stretch. And that's over and done with. I swear to Almighty God that I've gone straight. I'm not goin' to stay here and let him insult me. I'm gettin' out of his way,' he told his sympathisers. 'Gettin' on to me like that.' He prepared to shamble off, hoisting his boards.

  'You have the police on to him,' said the tweedy woman. Dead on his cue, a policeman appeared at the far end of the street, looking. 'I think,' said the tweedy woman, 'we'd better not cause an obstruction.' Universal guilt, thought Edwin as, shamefaced, the tiny crowd broke up. The state's substitute for original sin. 'Ippo went off faster than any. But the man with the midday editions dropped, in his haste, a copy of the Star. An autumn gust caught this and plastered a sheet of it on to 'Ippo's back-board. THE FOOLISH BODY HATH SAID IN HIS HEART was momentarily covered up, and 'Ippo proclaimed atheism to the London street. To him, however, it would be all one.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  'Me and Carmen,' said Les, 'were to come in and see you tonight and give you this. But, seeing as you're here, I can give it you now.' He handed Edwin a note in an open envelope. It said:

  'Darling. Am not staying in Farnworth now as too expensive. Don't yet know where but will write. So glad operation is over. Will come and see you when you are really better. Love. S.'

  'Well,' said Les, 'they got everything over very quickly, didn't they? Wonderful what they can do nowadays.'

  'Have you no idea where she's gone to?' asked Edwin. 'Didn't she say?'

  'She was in here last night,' said Les, 'with this painter. I got the idea she was going over Earl's Court way. I can't be sure, of course.'

  'I just haven't got a penny,' said Edwin. 'I've got nothing except this blasted hat.' This, in its Times wrapping, rested on the bar.

  'You wouldn't get much for it,' said Les. 'Couple of bob perhaps. Money's always a problem. I've got Carmen out working now. A hamburger bar,' he added.

  Les was, decided Edwin, a far nicer man than Chasper. Les had already stood two pints of light ale mixed with bitter. The people here in
the public bar of the Anchor seemed all very nice people. The landlord and landlady seemed very nice, too. Very sympathetic.

  'It's no good worrying too far into the future,' said Les. 'That's what you've got to learn. If you worry as far as the next drink, that's far enough. We could,' he said, 'if you like----' He belched and converted the belch into the opening of Siegfried's Trauermarsch. 'Marvellous,' said Les, 'that is. Carrying old Siegfried to the funeral pyre. Weighs a bloody ton. This one we've got now, Hans Wahnfreud, he slips each of the ones who carry him half a bar. So they can drink his health. A lovely fellow. What I was going to say was that, if we're worried about where the next drink's coming from, why don't we challenge those two over there to shove-ha'penny? When we win and they say what are you going to have, don't just say a half of mild. Say a gold watch or a vera lynn. They can afford it.'

  'And if we lose?' asked Edwin.

  'We won't lose,' said Les. His confidence was very large. He called over to two drinkers, one bloated, the other craftily thin. They sat on a bench by the great opaque window of the public bar, their pints behind them on the window-ledge. 'Larry,' called Les, 'Fred. Him and me will take you on.' He chinked the five coins in his hand. 'You Albert,' said Les, 'you take chalk.' Albert was an exbantam who had retired punch-drunk. He shook himself like a dog, sat down beside the shove-ha'penny board and waited, panting.

  Les and Edwin won the toss.Les shot his three coins straight into the Scotchman, all three clean in the middle of the bed.Albert chalked the bed full.Larry got three out of his five, untidily. Edwin felt a sudden games-player's joy. Les was right: the end of this game was the only end worth worrying about. Edwin shot two into the top bed, one in a middle bed. The other two went on lines, 'Good,' said Les, quite loudly, 'we've got 'em,' Fred, with a stylish spinning style, got four in, but nothing near the top. Les placed all five. The top bed was full now. 'Lovely, lovely.' said Les. Larry went for the top two beds, placed three coins there. Edwin sent up four which sat on the lines. His fifth slid them clean into beds. 'Beautiful,' said Les, smacking his lips.