The Hippopotamus

by Stephen Fry

  Any moment? Christ the young are extraordinary. I would have had to lie there for half an hour just to warm myself up.

  “Yes . . . yes . . . yes . . . yes!” David’s voice rose into song. But sud­denly, with a violence more powerful than that of the thunder rolling in the distance, a deep voice bellowed from out of the darkness be­hind them.

  “NO!! NO!! LET HER GO!!”

  Four things happened at once.

  Ted Wallace fell forward into the bramble bush in surprise and tore his wrist on the brambles.

  David howled in agony.

  Clare tore her face from David’s lap, a stream of crimson and cream bubbling in her mouth.

  Simon crashed through the bushes and hurled himself into the clearing, his face white with rage.

  I pulled myself free of the thorns and watched as Clara staggered forwards into Simon’s arms, gagging and sobbing. David sat up and stared down at the torn and bleeding mess in his lap. His magic pecker seemed, luckily for him, to be in one piece, but Clara’s lower teeth had scraped a gash along the underside and peeled back a curl of flesh.

  Simon, one hand holding Clara’s head against his shoulder, looked across at his brother. His shoulders heaved and his tongue flicked across his lips as he searched for words. The rain streamed down be­tween them and the wild electric smell of freshly soaked forest rose from the floor.

  At last Simon found utterance.

  “Physicist . . .” he shouted, “. . . heal thyself.”

  Poor old Simon, illiterate as ever.

  He turned and spoke in Clara’s ear, as the approaching thunder shook the copse.

  “We can’t have you going into the house looking like this. Come on, I’ll take you to Jarrold’s cottage. You can clean up there.”

  Clara clung to him as they left the clearing. The front of her dress was soaked and stained with rainwater, blood, semen and lumps of freshly vomited treacle-pie.

  “You can’t leave me like this!” Davey shouted after them. “Simon! Come back!”

  They disappeared into the wood. David rocked himself backwards and forwards, the rain flattening the hair against his scalp.

  There sat a child, I supposed, much in need of a godfather. Sigh­ing, I took a handkerchief from my pocket and stood up. He watched my approach silently, quivering like a snared rabbit. His breath caught the upper register of his vocal cords as he inhaled with huge gasps.

  “You saw?” he managed to say.

  “Don’t talk,” I said. “Not a bloody word. Can you stand?”

  He took my arm and struggled upwards, wincing like the very dickens. Poor fucker.

  CHAPTER 8

  When Gordon Fell was knighted in 1987 he threw a celebration binge afterwards at the Savoy. Not the Dominion Club of course, as it should have been, but the Savoy. Well, no matter. During the party he described to us the ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Gordie hadn’t been the only man there that morning to be knighted, naturally. The Queen contrives to process dozens of candidates in one hit. They are disposed, it would seem, in rows of chairs, as at a lecture, while a band of the Guards plays anus-contractingly inap­propriate tunes like “A Spoonful of Sugar” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in the background. Gordon was due to kneel and be dubbed next in line after the self-important fool sitting beside him. This pompous little pip-squeak had wriggled his way into the chairman­ship of some large charity or another and was now coming to collect what he regarded as his due reward.

  The figure had introduced himself with pride and whispered, after Gordon had told him his name, “And what do you do, then? The dip­lomatic, is it?”

  “I’m a painter,” Gordie said.

  “Really?” said the fellow. “Not one of those awful moderns, I hope.”

  “Oh no,” said Gordon. “Of course I’m not a modern painter. I was born in the sixteenth fucking century, wasn’t I? I’m an Old Master, me.”

  Not quite Buck House language perhaps, but justifiable under the circumstances. The chap turned his shoulder on Gordie, disgusted that he could be sharing an honour with such an animal. Gordon pointedly scratched his groin and yawned.

  Anyway, the turn came for the charity weasel to kneel and be ser­viced. It so fell out that his investiture into the Knights Commander of the Crawling Toads, or whatever order it was that he was in line for, took place unaccompanied by melody, the band being engaged in taking the sheet music of “Consider Yourself ” off their stands and re­placing it with “Born Free.” Her Maj’s sword tapped the man’s shoul­ders in hushed silence and he rose to an upright position with becoming dignity, bowing his head with a crisp snap that would have shamed an equerry. As he did so his nervous, uptight and excitable system delivered itself of an astoundingly sustained and quite startlingly loud fart. The monarch stepped backwards, which was all part of the programme as it happened, but which seemed to everyone pre­sent to be an involuntary reaction to the man’s violent rip. The ex­pression on his face as he trailed miserably down the aisle was one of deepest woe. Every person in the room stared at him or, worse, waited until he was level with them and then averted their eyes. Gor­don, passing him in the aisle as he made his own way to the steps of the throne, murmured in a growl audible to all, “Don’t worry, old boy. She’ll be used to it. Keeps plenty of dogs and horses, don’t forget.”

  The lips of the Queen, according to Gordie, were seen to curve into a smile at this and she detained him in conversation for longer than anyone else. When he returned to his seat next to the still-scarlet farter, Sir Gordon rasped out, in time with the band which was now operative again, “Bo-orn free, a-free as the WIND BLOWS.”

  Being the vindictive sod he is, Gordie didn’t stop there, naturally. In the mêlée of press that gathered outside the palace and especially around him, he was asked how the occasion had gone.

  “That man over there,” Gordon said, pointing at the chap, who was standing with his wife and only a photographer from a local Hampshire newspaper to bolster his self-esteem, “let out the most extraordinary fart, virtually in the sovereign’s face. Quite astonishing. Some kind of anarchist, I suppose.”

  The pack flew to the spot like flies to a cow-pat and the pathetic creature was last seen streaking down the Mall, his silk topper bounc­ing on the pavement behind him. He lost his hat, his reputation and in all probability his wife in one Gordon Fell swoop. Never insult a painter. Not worth it.

  I had always reckoned that this man’s experiences counted as the most embarrassing a human being could undergo. I had not known, however, what God had in store for me that stormy Norfolk after­noon.

  I walked a wincing David to the edge of the west drive as the rain streamed down upon us. Slow progress: he was bent forward, the handkerchief pressed to his groin, and capable only of shuffling geri­atric steps. We got there in the end and I told him to shelter under a tree until I returned. Back at the house the first person I bumped into was Rebecca.

  “Ted, for heaven’s sake!” she hooted. “You look as if you’ve just emerged from a swamp.”

  “Don’t have time to talk, Rebecca,” I said. “Can you save a life and lend me your car?”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain later. Bloody urgent. Please.”

  She shrugged. “Help yourself, darling. It’s round the back.”

  “Bless you. And, Rebecca? Another boon. Simon will be returning to the house in the next half-hour or so. I wonder if you could give him this note?”

  I grabbed a sheet of house writing-paper, scribbled a message for Simon and sealed it in an envelope.

  “Dark, dark mysteries,” said Rebecca.

  “Terribly important, old carrot. You won’t forget? Promise?”

  She promised.

  “And the car-keys?”

  “Under the visor.”

  I hadn’t driven since the army, and even then sparin
gly. In those days you passed your test by going to the adjutant and signing a piece of paper which entitled you to command any vehicle from a motor-bicycle to a three-ton lorry. I didn’t doubt I would manage, however. When I considered the number of dickwits who seemed capable of perfectly competent driving, Simon for example, I couldn’t believe that it would be beyond me.

  Rebecca’s Mercedes was under cover in the garage behind the sta­ble yard, a convertible with the blasted roof down. Electric roof at that. After fiddling hopelessly with the ignition key for five min­utes—fucking thing wouldn’t even turn—I hared off to find Tubby. He got the car started and roof up, quick as pigshit.

  I contrived, with great discomfort, to fit my belly under the steering-wheel only to encounter my first problem.

  “The fucking thing’s only got two pedals!” I yelled.

  “That’s automatic,” said Tubby.

  He wasted ten valuable minutes in painstakingly explaining the workings and I edged out of the garage and headed for the west drive as fast as I could. I reached it without actual collision on the way, but it was a near thing, the edge of the park being liberally furnished with stone Portland vases and quaint rustic benches. I could barely see: the rain was still coursing down and I hadn’t the faintest idea where the windscreen-wiper switch could possibly be hidden.

  I slewed to a halt at the end of the drive, churning up mud as the car skidded on to the grass of the park itself.

  Davey was lying under a cedar, motionless.

  Fuck, I thought. He’s been struck by lightning. Should never have told him to shelter under a tree.

  It was not as bad as that. He had fainted, but not, I decided, from loss of blood. The handkerchief was stained, but not swamped. I bent down and tried to lift him. Not a heavy boy, but too much for me. Matters would not be helped by discs slipping and joints locking up.

  “Davey!” I called in his ear. “Wake up. Wake up, Davey, wake up.”

  His eyes flickered open and he stared at me.

  “Come on, boy. You’ve got to try and stand. I’ve got us a car and we’re going to a hospital. Get you put right.”

  He tried to get to his feet too quickly, as though there had been nothing wrong with him. The pain caught up with him sharply and he fell against me with a whimper. From that half-standing position I was able at least to drag him to the car and push, lever and pack him into the passenger seat.

  “Oh, Uncle Ted,” he kept saying. “Uncle Ted, Uncle Ted.”

  “Sh! I’ve got to concentrate on this fucking car.”

  “On the string common,” he woozed like a drunkard.

  “What?”

  “On the . . . steering . . . column. The windscreen-wipers. There.”

  The wipers helped, but it was still a nightmare drive. The road threw up the most tremendous mist of water and some deep memory inside me kept prompting my left foot to attempt a clutch manoeuvre when I wanted to slow down. The only pedal for it to meet was the brake, on which it would stamp with great force, causing us to aqua­plane on the spray to the hooting terror of the traffic.

  David seemed to be amused by my oaths and grunts and remained alert enough to direct me to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

  It was only as we slid to a stop outside the doors of the casualty entrance that a true realisation of the fraught nature of this call im­pressed itself upon me. Michael would expect me to manage this without involving him or his family in any publicity. I turned to David.

  “Whatever I say by way of explanation, Davey, you must remem­ber and repeat. Do you understand?”

  He looked at me dumbly.

  “What?”

  “I will explain who you are and how you came by this accident. You will not diverge from my explanation by one syllable. Do you understand? We don’t want Clara dragged into this. Nor your parents if we can help it.”

  “What are you going to say?”

  “I don’t fucking know yet, love, do I? Oh, now what?”

  A knuckle was being rapped against the glass on my side of the car by a man in a bright-yellow plastic waistcoat. Unable to find a way to wind down the window, I opened the door, pushing the man off balance and into a puddle. I heaved myself out of the car and went to his aid.

  “I’m terribly sorry . . . terribly sorry. Oh dear, oh God. You’re all wet.”

  “You can’t park here,” he said, ignoring this frippery incidental. “Ambulances only.”

  “This is an emergency,” I said. “Besides, I don’t know how to park. If I left the car here, you wouldn’t be kind enough to put it some­where for me, would you?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  I went around the bonnet and helped Davey out of the car.

  “’Ere!” the fellow shouted. “I’m not going to . . .” He caught sight of the crimson hankie pressed to the fork of David’s jeans and the words of recrimination died on his lips. “You’d best hurry in,” he said. “The car’ll be round the back. You can pick the keys up from my booth.”

  One is always hearing a great deal of liberal waffle about the terri­ble state of the National Health Service. Waiting lists, cuts, low morale: you can’t help but soak up the thrust of the moronic yapping we have to put up with every day from the professionally disen­chanted and humourlessly self-righteous wankers of the left. Even a sceptical old reactionary like me is, willy-nilly, influenced by this kind of talk into imagining that all NHS institutions are crowded with desperately sick patients lying about in the corridors on straw palliasses waiting for the health authority’s one overworked, under-rested teenage doctor to come and tell them to pull themselves to­gether.

  Not a bit of it. Not a bloody bit of it. It may be that the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital is an exception—East Anglia, it must be ad­mitted, cannot be described as an area of massive inner-city tension; one supposes the average medical emergency involves bumpkins bit­ten by coypus or tourists overdosed on flapjacks and churches. I ex­pected, none the less, to find at least a measure of squalor and overworked hysteria. But when Davey and I walked in through the automatic electrically operated doors and reported to the reception desk I felt less like a soldier dragging his wounded comrade into the filthy Crimean field-hospital of popular left-wing imagination and more like Richard Burton checking in to a five-star hotel in Gstaad with a tipsy Elizabeth Taylor on his arm.

  “Oh dear oh dear,” clucked the little granny behind the desk. “Someone’s been in the wars, haven’t they?”

  “This young fellow has met with an accident,” I said with a hearty wink. “Usual thing, you know. Caught the old man in his zipper, poor sod.”

  “Whoops!” she said. “I’d better have your names then.”

  “Ah, Edward Lennox.”

  Davey’s eyebrows rose.

  “And your son’s name?”

  “David,” I said. “His name is David.”

  “Do you have David’s National Insurance card with you, by any chance?”

  “Oh lor, came straight out without thinking of it, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s all right, dear. You can fill in a form later. Meanwhile, if you wouldn’t mind taking a seat, a doctor will be out to see you as soon as possible.”

  “Got that?” I hissed to David as we sat down. “David Lennox. Ac­cident while peeing.”

  He nodded. He was very pale, his hair was still damp and his lower lip oozed blood from where he had been gnawing at it in pain.

  He sat there not speaking, just staring blankly at the clock on the wall.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said, interpreting his silence as fear. “They’ll know what to do. Probably happens every day.”

  “The thing is . . .” said David.

  “Yes?”

  “These jeans. They are 501’s.”

  “501’s? I don’t understand.”

  A nurse was wa
lking towards us, radiating welcome, confidence and disinfectant.

  “David Lennox?”

  “The thing about 501’s,” whispered David urgently into my ear as he stood, “is that they have a button-fly, not a zip.”

  He was led away and I sat there punching my thigh with an angry fist.

  Bloody American fashion. Fuck it. Fuck them all. Button-fly? Who ever heard of such a thing? Button-flies were for demob suits and old wedding trousers. Button-fly? Buggering fuckety-cunt, this was going to be just wonderful. Button-fly. Absurd.

  After twenty minutes of this lonely fury, a tall white-coated woman with steel-grey hair gathered in a vicious bun strode towards me, a dangerous light in her cold blue eyes.

  “Mr. Lennox?”

  “Yup, that’s me.”

  “Dr. Fraser. I wonder if I might have a word with you?”

  “Yes, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. How’s Davey doing?”

  “This way, please. I have a small office.”

  I followed obediently, beguiling the time on our short walk by making amusing observations on the weather and the state of the traffic, just like a real grown-up daddy.

  Dr. Fraser—Margaret Fraser if the identity tag attached to her coat was to be believed—closed the door of the office behind her and pointed to a seat.

  “Mr. Lennox,” she said as I sat down, “I wonder if you would be good enough to tell me the nature of your relationship with David?”

  “Well,” I said breezily, “some days good, some days bad. You know what adolescents are like.”

  “That’s not quite what I mean, Mr. Lennox,” she said, going round to sit behind the desk. “You are the boy’s father, is that correct?”

  “For my sins.”

  “Perhaps you can explain, then,” she unclipped a biro from her breast pocket, “why David should say to me: ‘The pain got worse in the car, partly because Uncle Ted is such a terrible driver.’ Those were his words, Mr. Lennox. ‘Uncle Ted.’”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Now why should a son call his father ‘Uncle,’ I wonder?”