Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party (13 page)

“Horse?” said Tubby. “Fatty bought a horse?”

“Yes,” said Betty. “It's a mighty strange story. Fatty bought a horse at the horse sale. I thought that was what you were talking about.”

Tubby took a sip of his beer. “So,” he said, a clear note of triumph in his voice. “There was a horse. You said–”

“I said nothing of the kind,” Fatty suddenly exploded. “You asked me whether I had gone to the horse sale to buy a horse. I said, if you remember right, that I had gone to the horse sale because Lord Balnerry had invited us to go with him. Isn't that right, Betty?”

“Betty wasn't in the room,” Tubby said quickly. “She can't say anything about what was said when she was out of the room. Remember President Nixon?”

“What about President Nixon?” snapped Fatty. “What's he got to do with it?”

Tubby snorted. “He said that he couldn't say what was said when he was out of the room. Remember? Same applies to Betty.”

“That's not what I meant,” retorted Fatty. “I said that
Betty will confirm that we went to the sales because we were invited by Lord Balnerry. We were his company, that's all. I said – and I'm obviously going to have to repeat it for the benefit of the hard of hearing – that I did not go to the sales to buy a horse. At no point did I say that I didn't end up buying a horse. That's all.”

Tubby appeared dissatisfied. “You implied that you hadn't bought a horse. You said something about not being interested in horses.”

“I'm not,” said Fatty, a note of exasperation in his voice. “I'm just not interested in horses. Period.”

“Then why did you go to the sales to buy a horse?” asked Tubby.

“I didn't go to buy a horse,” said Fatty.

“But you did buy one, didn't you? There was a horse, wasn't there? Isn't that what Betty's just said?”

“Of course there were horses at a horse sale,” Fatty said. “What do you expect? Chickens?”

Betty, who was standing above her guests, listening to the exchange, now sat down.

“Fatty's horse was a mistake,” she said quietly. “It was very embarrassing for us. In fact, I think we should talk about something different.”

She looked sharply at Tubby as she spoke, and their
guest dropped his eyes.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to criticise you, Fatty. Anybody could buy a horse by mistake.”

“Yes,” said Porky, who was also eager to bring the unfortunate argument to an end. “I heard of one guy who waved at the wrong moment at a car auction and bought a 1962 Cadillac. Cost him quite a bit.”

“Waved?” asked Tubby. “Pretty stupid thing to do at an auction!”

Fatty reached for a sandwich, avoiding Betty's eye.

Tubby laughed. “Imagine going to an auction and waving and then finding you'd bought something! Who could be so stupid?”

The following day, Fatty went to see his physician. He was still experiencing a degree of discomfort from the cracked rib, although it felt markedly better since his return. Betty, however, thought it would be wise to have it checked: the doctor who had seen him in Ireland, charming though he was, might not have known what he was doing. Fatty assured her that her doubts were surely misplaced, but agreed nonetheless to make an appointment to see Dr. Eustace Lafouche at his office near the university.

Dr. Lafouche had an interest in antiques and the two usually chatted about his latest acquisitions after the consultation was over. On this occasion, after Dr. Lafouche had said that the rib was nothing to worry about, they talked for a short time about a cabinet that the doctor had bought at a recent house sale in Little Rock. Fatty looked at the photograph that Dr. Lafouche had of the piece, and agreed the attribution that the doctor suggested. This pleased Dr. Lafouche, who grinned with pleasure. Then, after a moment, his expression changed.

“There's one other thing, Mr. O'Leary,” said Dr. Lafouche. “I've been meaning to talk to you about it for some time.”

Fatty smiled. “You've got another piece? Dubious provenance?”

Dr. Lafouche shook his head. “No. Nothing like that,” he said. “It's your health, actually. I'm a bit worried about your weight. I think we really should do something about it.”

Fatty sagged in his chair.

“Oh,” he said. Then, after a pause: “Oh that.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Lafouche, looking at a record sheet in front of him. “Your weight has been going up and up. This trip to Ireland probably didn't help much. One
always puts on weight on holiday. But you really should tackle it for the sake of your heart.”

“I see,” said Fatty. “You know, I don't feel overweight. I know I might look a bit on the stout side, but I feel quite good, you know.”

Dr. Lafouche sighed. “You may feel all right, but think about all the extra work your poor heart is doing. Thump, thump – all that weight to carry around. Thump, thump. Hearts are only human, you know. They feel it too.”

Fatty was silent. He looked at the doctor mutely. When would the dreaded word “diet” be uttered? Doctors always put you on a diet sooner or later, even an unfussy doctor like Lafouche, who liked to drink and buy antiques. Sooner or later their training got to them and they remembered that they were supposed to put everybody on a diet.

“I think the only way for you to tackle this is to go on a course,” said Dr. Lafouche. “There's a place not far out of town which has recently opened up. It's run by a Dr. Herb Meyer, a highly qualified gastro-intestinal-colonic-hepaticologist. He's very good, I believe. The clinic is residential. Nice grounds. You spend a week or two there and they turn things round. They–”

“You mean they starve you,” Fatty interjected.

Dr. Lafouche laughed. “There's no need to starve,” he countered. “All they do is change the way you think about food. They train you to eat more healthily. In fact, you'll probably find some of their menus pretty tasty. Those people can do things with lettuce–”

“I don't know,” said Fatty. “I've just been away, and now to go away again.”

“It's for your own good,” said Dr. Lafouche. “It's better going to the clinic than going off to the hospital for weeks and weeks.”

“It's a fat farm,” said Fatty, miserably. “That's what it is. You want to send me to a fat farm.”

“Well,” said Dr. Lafouche, “that's not a term I'd use. But they do a good job, whatever you call them.”

“Are you really insisting that I go?” asked Fatty quietly. “Doctor's orders?”

Dr. Lafouche pursed his lips. “I'm afraid so,” he said. “I really must recommend it most strongly. Why not give it a try? See if it helps.”

Fatty sat in silence. He had read in the paper about this new clinic, but had turned the page over quickly, in the way in which one does when confronted with pictures of train disasters or other scenes of human suffering. Now his ostrich-like attitude was catching up with him, and he
was to enter the clinic portals himself.
Oh!
he thought, and then
Oh!
again.

B
ETTY DROVE A PENSIVE
F
ATTY
to the Meyer Clinic. It was a pleasant day and the Ozarks were at their best: a limestone landscape of short distances and quiet valleys, but Fatty seemed impervious to the charms of his surroundings. He felt as one might feel on the way to root-canal treatment at the hands of a dentist whose supplies of dental anaesthetic had run out. He did not even recall giving final and unambiguous consent to the undertaking. Dr. Lafouche had telephoned and booked him in there and then, taking Fatty's silence as an indication of his willingness to undergo the treatment. And then it was too late: once the booking had been made, Fatty was committed. His American Express card number had been taken and to the not inconsiderable expense of the purchase of the horse had been added the outrageous cost of two weeks in the Meyer Clinic (immediately debited and completely non-refundable). This was nine thousand dollars, which would not include extras. No mention was made of bar bills, presumably, Fatty reflected, because there would be nothing to drink.

The clinic had sent him what they described as a “welcome pack,” which Fatty had browsed with a growing
sense of doom. On the front page there was a picture of Dr. Herb Meyer himself, a man in his early sixties with dark hair neatly parted down the middle and the eyes of a fanatic – or so Fatty thought. Here was a man who had clearly never enjoyed the pleasure of a generous T-bone steak, nor ploughed his way through a delicious plate of
tagliatelle
, liberally doused in melted butter and topped with genuine
Parmigiano Reggiano
. Here was a face which had never known the olfactory pleasures of a sizzling barbecue, accompanied by the tactile delights of a chilled can of high-calorie beer in one's hand. None of this in such a life! Instead, a life of lettuce and light salad dressing! Poor man, thought Fatty, for a moment even feeling a rush of sympathy for Dr. Meyer.

After the picture of Dr. Meyer, there followed photographs of the clinic's various rooms. Here was the games room in which two patients appeared to be playing a lacklustre game of table tennis. They held their paddles weakly, as one might after a few days of Dr. Meyer's regime, and Fatty noted the spare folds of skin about their necks, once filled, no doubt, by life-sustaining adipose deposits but now empty and quite
de trop
. Then there were pictures of the colonic irrigation room, with its threatening hoses and sluices, the counselling room – very
similar to the front room of a funeral parlour – complete with boxes of tissues to deal with the distress of being in the clinic, and finally a picture of the entire staff lined up in serried ranks behind Dr. Meyer, each one of them clad in white jackets of the sort popularly supposed to be worn by the attendants in psychiatric institutions.

“Oh, Betty,” groaned Fatty. “Why do I have to go to this place? What have I done to deserve this?”

“Eaten too much,” replied Betty, cheerfully.

Fatty was shocked by her levity, but the idea for a clever remark came to him and he quickly passed over his sense of betrayal.

“
Et tu
, Betty!” he said, pausing for her reaction to his erudite reference.

Betty looked blank. “Ate what too?”

“No, not ate, or eat, but
et
. The Latin word for
and
. I learned it at Notre Dame. And
tu
means
you
. You too! This is what Caesar said when he saw that his friend Brutus was one of the conspirators who stabbed him. He said,
Et tu, Brute!
That's what he said.”

“But what's that got to do with eating?” asked Betty. She thought that she understood Fatty – and generally she did – but on occasion he seemed to drift off into irrelevancies.

Now, slumped in the passenger seat of their car, while
Betty drove calmly along the quiet rural back road, Fatty moved from anxiety to resignation. If this had to happen, then he would let it happen. He would simply think about being elsewhere and imagine himself doing something else, the tactic he had adopted during his humiliating experience in the bath in Ireland. So, while Dr. Meyer tormented him with whatever indignities he was preparing for him, he would simply think about great meals he had had in the past. He would imagine the lettuce leaves to be slivers of wafer-thin Parma ham; he would close his eyes and imagine the carrots to be spears of asparagus dipped in butter. And anything they sought to do to him with hoses, or any saunas in which they caged him, would be but the imaginary buffeting of the elements on a restaurant-hike through France, one of those extraordinary organised tours which Fatty had read about in which the hikers made their way from restaurant to restaurant through the Normandy countryside. With this attitude, nothing could harm him, and he smiled as he reflected on the new armour in which he had clad himself.

“Thinking of something funny?” asked Betty.

“No,” said Fatty, still smiling. “Just thinking of how the last laugh is going to be on me. These people may think they're going to wear me down, but the O'Learys are
made of sterner stuff than that.”

“That's the spirit, Fatty,” said Betty. “That's the spirit that's made this country what it is.”

But when a sign for the clinic appeared at the side of the road, Fatty's brief elevation of mood was rapidly deflated and he shrank visibly back in his seat. Betty, noticing this, took one hand off the wheel and patted him gently on the knee.

“Don't worry, Fatty,” she said. “It's only two weeks, and then, when you come back, we can go out and have a lovely celebration dinner somewhere.”

In the clinic, abandoned by Betty, Fatty was shown to his room. He was pleasantly surprised by its comfort and by the view it afforded of the grounds, with their trees and lawns. In addition to the bed and wardrobe, there was a writing desk, an easy chair, and a small exercise bicycle. On the walls there were pictures designed to offend no tastes: a van Gogh hayfield, a picture of two lovers strolling arm in arm along what looked like the banks of the Seine, and an old state map.

Fatty had just finished unpacking his suitcase when there came a knock on the door and he found himself facing a nurse, a chart tucked under her arm.

“Mr. O'Leary,” she said, “I have come to weigh you in. Do you mind?”

She pointed to the set of scales next to the exercise bicycle. Fatty took a deep breath and nodded. Then, in his stockinged feet, he stepped gingerly onto the scales. He did not cast his eye downward, but looked up instead at the ceiling whence his help might come, but there was none – only the sharp intake of breath of the nurse as she read the figures and noted them on her chart.

“Well, Mr. O'Leary,” she said. “You can step off the scales now.”

They moved back into the bedroom, where the nurse extracted a large pair of callipers from a bag. Then, having asked Fatty to pull up his shirt to reveal his midriff, she opened the jaws of the callipers and pinched his flesh. Fatty winced, and closed his eyes; he had been in the clinic no more than fifteen minutes and the indignities had begun. So might the souls in Purgatory be inducted into their regime: their suffering so much less than those consigned to Hell – callipers, perhaps, rather than heated tongs, but suffering nonetheless.