Boracic Lint

by Martin Bryce

painful, but my feet did feel heaps better almost immediately. I was given a short talk about personal hygiene, dressing wounds and so on, which I thought was a bit impertinent. I was then handed a large canister of pills for the dry rot; they looked more suitable for a horse than a human being and I was told that they could have unpleasant side effects, but in my case they were the only answer. When I asked what the side effects were, I was told not to worry because I would find out if, and when, they struck.

  ‘Have you somewhere to stay?’ the nurse asked. I told her that I lived in Mafeking Avenue. The doctors looked at each other, puzzled.

  ‘I didn’t know there was a hostel in Mafeking Avenue,’ one said to the other.

  ‘It’s my lodgings,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I pay rent to a northerner with dry rot.’

  As I left the hospital I saw the nurse talking to two policemen who were on duty by the door. One of them took out a notebook, moistened the end of his biro with his tongue and made some notes. They followed me to the Indian takeaway where I bought tandoori sausages and rice with a serve of pappadums. They watched as I climbed into the ancient cab and went home.

  H was waiting up. ‘Bit late,’ he complained, ‘it is Sunday, you know.’

  ‘I know it’s bloody Sunday, Mr H, it’s been bloody Sunday all day,’ I replied wearily.

  ‘There’s no need to take on so.’

  ‘Mr H, I’ve just had major surgery,’ I explained as I climbed the stairs.

  ‘I thought you were going for lunch, that’s what you said,’ he remarked suspiciously.

  ‘I changed my mind, nothing like a spot of amputation to take your mind off the hunger pains,’ I replied as I closed my bedroom door.

  I took the pills and went straight to bed. A stomach upset in the middle of the night was probably the first sign of the side effects of the drug taking hold of me.

  I haven’t changed my mind about Sundays.

  SCENE 8

  I woke feeling absolutely dreadful. I was feeling sicker than ever and having spent half the night dashing to the bathroom I was also very tired. I had the beginnings of a cold and it felt like it was going to be a bad one. More likely flu. I considered not going to work, but, as we say in the business, ‘the show must go on’. I couldn’t disappoint the children and I needed the money.

  Why courage then! What cannot be avoided

  ‘Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.

  Had to get up to call Goldman anyway.

  I put my queasiness down to hunger and thought I’d go to the Black Cat for breakfast. I took more of the dry rot pills. My face in the mirror was not a pretty sight – sunken eyes ringed by shadows, pale cheeks and pallid lips, runny nose, straggly hair. And my shoulders were hunched. This was more than fatigue, starvation and disease, it was a complete physical breakdown. I coughed weakly, then sneezed violently several times before summoning up every last ounce of energy. I shaved, treated the wounds, dressed, picked up my belongings and Cloudesley and stumbled downstairs shivering violently.

  H was collecting the paper from the doormat. ‘You look awful,’ he remarked. It was the nicest thing he had ever said to me. ‘It’s all them late nights and fast living,’ he advised.

  ‘No,’ I responded nasally, ‘it’s disease and drugs.’ He got the wrong end of the stick, but I was beyond caring.

  ‘You’ll stoop to anything, won’t you?

  ‘I’m not capable of anything else at the moment,’ I replied, ‘it’s all I can do to stay upright.’

  He slammed the door behind me. There was a tomblike finality about it.

  The trudge to the Black Cat seemed to take forever as I tallied every inch. It was as though that worst of nightmares, that one in which no matter how hard you try to get away from an unspeakable terror, it draws you inexorably back towards itself, had come true. And although my ankle was feeling better I couldn’t seem to prevent myself from dragging my right foot behind me. My shoulders hunched more and more with each step. Children crossed the street to avoid me, cats leaped impossibly high walls, their fur bristling, dogs barked savagely at me. I needed a bell, yes, a bell, a bell!

  ‘Whata numba was it?’ Sr Corsini asked when he saw me.

  ‘What number was what?’ I asked in return. My voice was crackly and distorted.

  ‘Da bus whata hita you,’ he said laughing in a deep operatic baritone. I wondered if it was an Italian joke. I couldn’t remember if they had buses in Italy.

  ‘Do I look that bad?’ I asked after I had ordered the special mixed breakfast.

  ‘Si, si!’ He said with an Italian shrug of the shoulders. ‘I didn’t know anyone coulda looka so bad and still be breathing.’ He handed me a mug of hot, sweet tea. ‘Data one isa ona da house,’ he said. How kind, I thought. ‘Ita looka like it coulda be you last anyway.’ That deep operatic laugh again.

  Breakfast arrived – a deep fried lamb chop, a burst sausage, a reconstituted ham steak, bacon, egg, fried bread, slice of black pudding, tinned mushrooms and tinned tomatoes. Two slices of bread and marge on a separate plate.

  ‘Enjoy,’ he said as he stood and smiled at me, wiping his hands on his grubby white apron.

  I watched, with horrified fascination, the globules of fat mingling with the juices of the tinned goods to make a delicate, ever-changing mosaic on the cracked plate. I did not feel at all well. I managed one of the tomatoes and dipped a slice of bread into the egg yolk which burst surprisingly violently, sending a gout of yellow across mummy’s Arran sweater. I drank the tea and left hurriedly ignoring Sr Corsini’s protestations that I hadn’t finished. If the English dig their graves with their teeth, the Italians do it with frying pans.

  I bought a box of Kleenex and a newspaper from Mr Patel’s corner store before boarding the tube with a feeling of dread. In an effort to take my mind off things digestive I decided to concentrate on the crossword in the paper.

  Down

  1 A replacement for a bit of unease when mixed up on a Greek galley before a small ocean. (6) Naus... Oh!

  Across

  5 An overfed child forcibly ejects part of a Roman feasting suite. (6) Vom... Jesus!

  12 Less than George with partial discomfort. (8) Disgor... Oh shit!

  I turned to the obituaries.

  Miraculously, I clocked in on time. I dashed straight to the gents. Sitting there, my stomach cramping, I vowed to take no more of the dry rot pills. I then went straight to the First Aid room. I described my symptoms to the sympathetic nurse from the instore pharmacy and she diagnosed a spot of food poisoning. I said it wasn’t possible as I hadn’t eaten anything, then I remembered the tandoori sausages. She gave me a dose of something that actually tasted quite pleasant and reassured me that it would work very quickly. With new found confidence I went to the public phone to call Goldman.

  ‘My boy!’ he yelled down the phone. ‘Where’ve you been, my life? Have I got a part for you! How’ve you been keeping? No, never mind.’

  ‘I’m very ill, as a matter of fact,’ I replied morosely.

  ‘Terrific! Terrific! I like it!’ He had never listened to anybody and was now too old to learn how to. ‘Good news, son,’ he continued, ‘there’s a part for you in Wick.’

  ‘Where the hell’s Wick?’ I asked.

  ‘Who cares? It’s a part.’

  ‘Look, Mr Goldman…’

  ‘Knew you’d be pleased,’ he gushed. ‘Rehearsals start the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Look, Mr Goldman…’

  ‘It’s a terrific part, right up your street. No lines to learn, no marks to remember.’

  ‘Mr Goldman, please…’

  ‘You want to know what it is, right?’

  ‘NO!’

  ‘Terrific, terrific! You’re playing the back end of a pantomime horse.’

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Crisis of confidence, eh? You’ll be terrific, take it from me. The audience will
love you. Trust me.’

  ‘I’m ill, Mr Goldman, very, very ill. For a start I’ve got a stinking cold…’

  ‘So where’s the problem? It’s not a speaking part. Could be worse, could be Delhi belly.’

  ‘I was just getting to that.’

  ‘Sounds like the back end of a horse is made for you, then! Get it?’ He laughed his big wheezing laugh. ‘No, but seriously, you’re only on for a couple of minutes at a time. Now there’s a train leaves this evening. You’ll have to make several changes – Carlisle, Glasgow, Edinburgh and a couple more – Brora sound familiar? Can’t remember, doesn’t matter. You’ll have to buy your own ticket, couldn’t get expenses…’

  ‘STOP! You don’t understand. Apart from being at death’s door, I’m also working.’

  There was then a brief, but significant silence from the other end of the line, followed, I could swear, by the sound of a light switch. ‘What d’you mean, ‘working’? What about my forty percent? I hope you’re not trying to pull a fast one on old Solly Goldman, everybody’s friend.’

  I explained about Harridges and about helping out the drama group. ‘Frankly,’ I declared, ‘the thought of playing the back end of a horse for three weeks in Wick appals me.’ I began to feel the urge again. ‘I have to go.’

  I was detained while he told me he’d been working his bagels off trying to get me a part and that I was an ungrateful little shmuck who would be lucky to work again. He was going broke having to deal with people like me all the time.

  ‘LOOK!’ I screamed. ‘I’ve GOT to go. It’s really very, very urgent. I’ll call you later.’ I was told not to bother.

  Despite the extra make-up I did not look benignly Santaish, more like something ghastly out of a Wagnerian opera. I was falling asleep on the throne when my first visitor rolled up. He was a clean, neat and studious-looking boy.

  ‘Father!’ he shouted back down the Grotto. ‘He doesn’t look too well. Actually he looks sort of, well, evil.’

  ‘He who walketh in the way of the Lord shall fear no… Oh my God!’ the Vicar said as he and his wife rounded the corner to join their son. I tried to smile. ‘But you are ill, my son,’ he said.

  ‘It’s nothing really, I…’

  ‘No, you should be at home in bed,’ he insisted kindly.

  ‘It’s a long way to Lapland,’ I said, giving him the wink. ‘And now I’m here I can’t let the children down, can I?’ I held out my arms to welcome the boy to my magic world. The Vicar and his wife both grabbed their son.

  ‘You must keep away from him, Simon,’ his mother said. ‘You know you have weak sinuses.’ Then she turned to me and asked why the store couldn’t have found a replacement for me until I was better.

  ‘A replacement for Father Christmas?’ I protested in my jolliest, mucus clogged voice. ‘Ho, ho, ho, but there is only one Father Christmas,’ I said, trying to indicate that the boy was listening.

  ‘Oh, yes, I see,’ the Vicar said smiling. ‘You mustn’t worry about Simon. I’ve given him special instruction on the pagan aspects of Christmas and how we Christians have always tolerated the lesser evils to bring the greater flock into the fold. He knows that you are just a man, like myself, but playing one of the old gods so that it will be easier for the less fortunate to hear Christ’s message. As John Donne once preached, As he that fears God fears nothing else, so, he that sees God sees everything else. Very wise, don’t you think?’

  ‘We know a lot about paganism, don’t we, Simon?’ his mother simpered, laying a hand on his shoulder. They stood there looking like the smug know-alls that they were.

  ‘Perhaps Simon could suggest a couple of spells then,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘One for the trots, one for the toes and one more for the cold,’ I sang nasally.

  All religions are ancient monuments to superstition,

  Ignorance, ferocity; and modern religions are only

  Ancient follies rejuvenated.

  The one thing the Admiral