Inner Circle

by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

  ‘Oh, nothing, dad. How is your wallet keeping?’

  ‘Ah! the wallet. Fine, fine. Use it for fivers. Good present.’

  ‘How many cigars do you smoke in a day?’ This sounded chummy and grown-up.

  ‘Cigars? Never touch them, my boy, unless they’re given away.’

  ‘Who gave these away?’

  ‘A lady-friend, Patrick. She got the date of my birthday wrong, poor dear. Never refuse presents, I always say. Would you like a couple of quid?’

  ‘My birthday is in September, don’t you remember, dad?’ Patrick smiled at what he’d just said. Remember September, that’s funny.

  ‘Ho-ho,’ Augustus came loud and clear on a smoke wave. ‘You might need a pound to give your lady patho if she gets a bit impossible. You know women. . . .’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Always follow Augustus’s quid principle, my boy. Ah—’ a smoke pause, ‘have I ever told you, Patrick, about my rifle when I was in the army?’

  ‘Did you shoot lots of people?’

  ‘No. You haven’t heard about the rifle, then. Ho-ho-ho! my dear boy, you must be the last man in London who hasn’t heard that story. I’d better light another present and stretch my weary legs.’ Augustus did both, asked Patrick to move nearer to the armchair, and with a splendid reclining gesture, began his tale from the depth of the cushion:

  ‘When those fools couldn’t do without me, they called me up. Ah! you know what that is, Patrick. Joining the army. Barracks, uniforms, sergeants, things like that. And rifles too, of course, ho-ho-ho! I nearly forgot the horrid beast. Well, there I was snoring away on my army bed, when the sergeant came in and said “Private Flaherty so-and-so, you haven’t cleaned your so-and-so rifle?” I turned my back to the sergeant and told him to go to hell. He didn’t, Patrick my boy, he was exceedingly rude to your dad. And the other so-and-so chaps jumped off their beds and started polishing their so-and-so rifles, just to show how they cared about them. I pulled a quid out of my pocket, put it on the bed by my side and said straight into the brute’s so-and-so moustache: “My good man, would you do me a favour, and clean my rifle for a quid—” The sergeant’s moustache nearly fell off from surprise. But he took the money all right, polished the old rifle like a brass kettle, and two days later your dad was singled out on a parade for his devotion to duty. Do you know, my boy, I never cleaned that so-and-so thing until the end of the war.

  Sergeants changed, the fronts changed, but my quid principle remained the same. Come to think of it, I could have bought ten new rifles with all that money I spent on keeping one free of rust.’

  ‘Have you still got it with you, father?’

  ‘Good heavens, what a thought! No, Patrick, the army doesn’t get rid of rifles that way. The government sells them for scrap.’

  ‘Do you want me to buy a rifle as a present for Miss patho?’

  ‘Patrick, you didn’t get the point of my story.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘No. Whenever people start being a nuisance, try to charm them with a quid. Just put it down and see what happens. It never fails, the Augustan law.’

  ‘Well then, I’ll give my lady doctor a pound and ask her why she hasn’t got a husband.’

  ‘Yes, my son . . .’ Patrick’s father stretched his mouth in a wide yawn. ‘Yes, you do that, and she’s sure to say plenty. Now run to Dolly-mum like a good girl. I’m dead tired. I’ve never been so tired since my army days.’

  Patrick didn’t hurry with the quid. Miss patho, Sindra by name, which was like Sandra, only Indian, and Patrick couldn’t help getting it wrong, the beautiful lady doctor behaved well, even though she liked hearing dirty words. Patrick concentrated on the kissable line of down just above her dark red lips, it made the mouth look larger, especially when she was listening and scribbling on her pad. Some hours were less kissable than others because Patrick had to watch his own pad, and draw, draw, draw, whatever came to his head. Apparently things jumped into his head, without waiting long outside; just like cats, Sindra said, leaping up all of a sudden.

  Patrick wanted to please his beautiful lady doctor. She seemed to like the way he always started each drawing with a pair of ears. So he made them bigger and bigger, and after ten sessions or so he drew nothing but big grumpy asses, with ears like leaves growing upwards, sideways and into one another. Sindra frowned at the progress of monstrous asses, not that she disapproved of them, she disapproved of nothing; but Patrick knew that frown as well as the kissable shadow over the upper lip. Sandra the Sindra expected another leap from those things outside his head.

  Finally, Patrick guessed what she wanted. With a splendid swoop of his pencil he outlined a gigantic penis under the donkey’s tummy. The pencil went a bit too far, so that the thing began to trail on the ground which Patrick had indicated with a thick, wavy line.

  He stopped and licked his pencil, then his upper lip.

  ‘Are you sure it is finished, Patrickr Sindra said in her dark Indian voice, almost as cuddly as that of Dolly-mum. What more did she want? Patrick gave her a sheepish look.

  ‘What is that thing down below, tell me, please?’ Yes, he would please her in a minute or two, but what she really liked first was a bit of teasing.

  ‘A rifle, Sandra. When they call you up, you know. . . .’

  ‘A rifle?’ Oh, how beautifully astonished she could appear, if she was in the mood to play with him. Her black eyes were better than those leaping cats she spoke of: they leapt through the eyelashes without even brushing their ends.

  ‘Yes, it’s all there, in the picture.’

  ‘I can see it is, Patrick. But why should your donkey carry a rifle?’

  ‘Well, it needs cleaning, the rifle I mean—and eh . . . eh . . . I know! the sergeant ass does the cleaning ever so often.’

  ‘Very good, Patrick, very interesting.’ Sindra’s eyes were no longer suspended in a continuous leap; they followed her hand on the pad. Patrick was sometimes angry with her for writing so fast but not now. The teasing had to last a minute more.

  ‘The rifle gets terribly rusty inside, because they pee through the muzzle.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Oh, people, soldiers, and those men with big hats who ride on top of donkeys.’

  ‘And the donkey, Patrick, doesn’t he want to pee? Or do something else with his big-big rifle?’

  Patrick had his charming smile ready for this moment in their drawing game.

  After the smile he threw at her the whole vocabulary of filth that he had been storing up for her dainty ears. He was now a dirty ass, trailing his thing in the mud and kicking right and left. Oh, how beautifully pleased she looked, the shadow over the lip darker for her attentive silence.

  ‘Was it again Patrick Saint Ginger?’ The lady doctor meant the whispering voice which was passing the words to Patrick.

  ‘Not really, Doctor.’ When questions went over the same old ground, he showed his boredom by calling her doctor. And he knew well that it upset Sindra. ‘You may remember, Doctor, that ginger Patrick is the one who leads Boris astray.’

  ‘Patrick, you needn’t be so formal. And Patrick the Ginger is, of course, you, as much as Boris.’

  Patrick nodded and waited for the pen to tick something off on the paper. He would let Miss patho have it her own way. Besides, why should he care about the spotty Ginger whether real or imaginary. Why should he care about anything. He heard from behind the desk:

  ‘Your second mummy and your father—’ Sindra could sound like some puky miss from a nursery school. So he did manage to put her out-’they both will take you to the Zoo. Next Saturday, I think.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You love animals, don’t you?’

  ‘Ah !—that.’ Patrick imitated his father.

  ‘And you should have more walks in the park.’

  ‘To see the trees, Doctor.’

  ‘And why not? You said you were interested in trees.’

  ‘Ah—’ Patrick began to t
wirl a nylon string in his watchstrap.

  ‘Do you want to go home now?’

  ‘I might as well.’ Slowly he took a pound out of his plastic wallet and placed it in front of Sindra. ‘Have a quid like a good girl.’

  3

  Patrick was suffering from a spell of good memory. He remembered everything he said to Sindra, his own lady doctor, and what Sindra the beautiful told him in her dark Indian voice. Instead of jumping into his head, and then down onto his pencil, things stayed inside and shouted their silly names. Rifle, rifle, rifle, cock, cock, cock, bus, bus, thirty-one, thirty-one, ass, fart, fart ass-hundreds of them, reminding Patrick who they were, what they were, why they did what they said they did; why who what, what who why. Patrick couldn’t sleep because they crawled all over his pillow and under the pillow, horrid, itchy whywhats, hooting little whywhoos.

  On his way to Sindra’s cuddly voice, Patrick tried his best not to hear and remember what people said passing him by. Even fat women with prams overtook him.

  He became a slow walker, a real slowcoach with a paunch, as Dolly-mum called him twice in the park; but she didn’t guess that it was because of his ears. They weighed such a lot, whatting and whoing, each one heavier than all those donkey flappers he had been drawing for Sandra the Sindra. She wanted him to rest on arrival, and to please her he would lie on a sofa near the window, under a velvet curtain which was sometimes hemmed with fraying light.

  One morning after a long chat about Dolly-mum he fell asleep, and then felt a kiss on his forehead. He didn’t open his eyes, expecting another. Dolly-mum often added a quick smack after her goodnight kiss. No, there was no more to come. Perhaps he only dreamt, or remembered a kiss from some other dream, for things, sudden as cats, jumped in his sleep.

  Patrick saw Sindra bending over him, armed with pad and pen, the shadow along her upper lip curved towards him.

  ‘Had a dream, my child’!’ She called him her child. Why not, hissed a whywhat from a secret crack in the sofa. She could be your third mummy, couldn’t she! Or a second, as it is now, provided you got rid of one of the others. Which one, think, said the same wriggling whywhat.

  ‘No, Sindra, I think I just thought.’

  ‘What did you think, darling?’ Did she say darling? No, he was still dreaming.

  Oh, no he wasn’t.

  ‘I thought of you, darling,’ Patrick whispered.

  ‘Very good, Patrick, very interesting.’ But she didn’t want to know what he thought, she didn’t ask any whywhat to crawl out. And no darling dropped from the kissable down over her mouth.

  ‘Why haven’t you got yourself a husband’!’ Patrick said from the sofa.

  ‘Would you like me to have a husband?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not really, Patrick?’

  ‘Because you are nice. Too nice and much too beautiful for any donkey rifle.’

  ‘I am happy that you think so. As it is, I don’t wish to marry yet. Do you understand this, Patrick! I don’t wish to have a husband lying in my bed.’

  ‘They pee an awful lot, don’t they, the husbands?’

  He heard vague noises in the long oval tunnel of his memory: a chamber-pot, chipped off at one side, being filled under a yawning shadow; and a slick zip opening over a wet bowl, that thing dangling, a spray, a slick glide upwards; more noises, more shadows; who were they—fathers! husbands!—all in that tunnel!

  ‘May I go home now?’

  ‘Yes, you may. Want to spend a penny first! It’s in the corridor, on the right, Patrick.’

  ‘I know. And I don’t want to. I spent a quid, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you gave me a quid. It was sweet of you. I’ll never give it to anyone else.’

  Patrick got up, his knees feeling bruised and swollen around the bone. He rubbed them until they looked very red. Then he flashed one of his charming smiles.

  ‘Do they hurt you, Patrick?’

  ‘What, the knees! Not at all.’

  ‘Now, run along, and be careful when crossing streets. Promise me, darling!’

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  Patrick climbed over the wall between Dolly-mum’s back garden and that other big, posh garden. He was neither on speaking nor on barking terms with the poodle Nicky. A shorn mop of a coward, nothing more. The rheumatic lady hadn’t been on cooing terms with Patrick since that scene inside the closed Underground station. He was never asked to take Nicky for a walk. Just as well. Now no barking was expected from the other garden and no barking came.

  Patrick slid down and sat on a kitchen stool which Dolly-mum kept outside in case the sun was warm enough for peeling potatoes in the back garden. The glass door had ugly pockmarks after a spluttering rain the previous night, Patrick’s ears were getting warm, then hot along the edges: nipped by words, cold, icy words, which the human draught had blown from inside the house.

  ‘I don’t see why a backward child should be treated like an adult. Psychiatry! it’s ridiculous to psycho-analyse children.’

  The voice was high-pitched, foreign, but never groping for words. It had so many of them already, chilled inside the mouth, that they came out like ice-cubes on a tray.

  Patrick could have repeated them all exactly as they reached him: each meaning defrosted his memory. He was afraid to peer in.

  Then another foreign voice took over. It sounded thicker and chewed the sentences before bubbling them out:

  ‘I am afraid I don’t agree with you, Vera. Modern treatment can do wonders. In the States, for instance, retarded young people with I.Q.s below fifty can be trained to do a job useful to society. In my hospital, and it wasn’t the best I assure you, a little mongoloid made extraordinary progress after only three years of hospitalization.’

  ‘What is a mongoloid, Doctor Whitestones?’ Dolly-mum asked. But she was not allowed to hear an explanation. The first foreign voice, the one which had a quick supply of ice-cubes in the mouth, rushed in at once:

  ‘He’s nothing of the sort! My child a mongoloid? Impossible. It’s entirely your fault, Augustus, for giving him such an appalling education. Why didn’t you send Patrick to the Lycée Français as I advised and implored you to do? It was the only school possible for a boy of his cosmopolitan background.’

  ‘Cosmo-what?’ Patrick’s father bellowed from somewhere far in the house. ‘I didn’t want him to be brought up as a Bulgar. He was born an Englishman. In England, not in Macedonia. So there. I won’t say a word more.’

  ‘You will, when I take you to your English court,’ the foreign woman replied.

  Patrick knew it was his mother, but Boris under his skin itched with jealousy, so he preferred to play it safe. It was perhaps more polite to call her a foreign lady than a woman. His father did that, when he decided to say one word, then ten, then twenty.

  Patrick counted them on a silent adding machine inside his spellbound memory.

  ‘Shut up, woman! If there is any justice left in this country, they’ll deport you to Bulgaria. And your Bulgars will lock you up as a female phantom of the Opera.’

  After Augustus the father had spoken, words came in piles on top of one another.

  Both mummies were now talking; the first, however, had the last word. To which the doctor replied:

  ‘Vera, it couldn’t possibly have been P.K.U. Okay, I’ll spell out phenylketonuria, if you wish, but tell me why are you so aggressive about German measles? In the first months of pregnancy they could, I repeat they could, cause mental retardation. Vera, you mustn’t deny the validity of a medical term just because it has the word German in it.

  What, Vera? Do I love them? You’re being aggressive again.’

  A man with thick glasses loomed against the glass door. His eyes bulged out, his short grey hair stood up. This was beyond any doubt Doctor Patho himself. Patrick crouched behind the kitchen stool, though it was utterly useless. How could anyone hide from glasses like these?

  Patrick trembled for Sindra. Doctor Patho was going to marry her. He had
come all the way from America to lie in her bed under his powerful black-rimmed spectacles.

  By day he would be occupying the sofa, a lavatory chain attached to his right leg. No room for Patrick, no room for anybody. Even Sandra, the beautiful Indian Sindra, would be squashed against the wall when behind her desk, and against the wall when in bed.

  Suddenly, Dolly-mum trotted into the garden and cried out at the sight of Patrick:

  ‘Oh, it’s you! Blow your nose, dear, and come in to say hello to your mum. What a surprise, isn’t it!’ She herself looked sick with surprise.

  Through the open door Patrick saw a slim, well-dressed lady who had blue hair and a cat with blue eyes, perched like a parrot on her shoulder. A thin leash hung from the cat’s collar, as far as his mother’s ankle. For a moment which seemed to last very long, Patrick completely forgot about Doctor Patho.

  Two days later was Saturday, sunny for autumn and almost warm, the right time to go to the Zoo, especially as it happened to be a sort of delayed birthday for Patrick, who was born on the thirtieth of September. Seven hours more and it would have been October, just think of that. And now it was October, simply because his first mummy couldn’t make the thirtieth. She had to sing in Toronto on the twenty-fifth, in Detroit my dear on the twenty-eighth, then Doctor Whitestones kindly arranged a visit to a world-famous oculist in Chicago at three-thirty on the twenty-ninth, and of course, my dear, the flight was postponed, I spent the night at New York Airport. Jets have become so unreliable recently. No, I really couldn’t get here in time for his birthday. Such a sweet darling.

  Talking to Dolly-mum, she called him Patrick. As soon as she turned to him, Patrick became Boris, and Vera played with his name adding bits to it, which sounded funny. She had also a funny way of talking to Prince, the Siamese cat, but she wouldn’t take him to the Zoo. Prince was allergic to parrots, she said, and wherever you went to the Zoo, to any zoological garden, Vera pronounced it jarden, you always saw or heard parrots, and one was enough to make Prince sick. Maybe parrots, too, made Patrick’s father ill, because he said he couldn’t possibly face the Zoo. But he had given Dolly the money for a taxi one way, for the tickets and the seventy-four bus to come back. It was, in fact, a present from his dad; the second mummy provided tea in her blue pot on return.