Inner Circle (11 page)

Augustus consulted his panel doctor, met Dolly-mum twice, gave the doctor a tinkle, and off they went, Dolly and Patrick to a big hospital. In the waiting-room Patrick saw a boy, older than himself, who was trying to push his whole hand deep into his mouth, the saliva dribbling down his spotty chin. He didn’t like the sight and told Dolly-mum about it, and she was nice, as always, giving him toffees to suck.

‘It’s a good place this. Famous in London and in the world too, I suppose, London being such a big and important town. And you know what, Patrick, your first mum was here when she delivered you. In a private room, of course. They told you at your school about babies and bees, didn’t they!’ Patrick nodded solemnly. ‘Well, they always rush these things nowadays.’

The boy opposite Patrick still couldn’t swallow his right hand.

Now he was considering his left for size. Patrick felt sick and thought of himself as a baby in a private hospital cot. Then Dolly-mum said something about the maternity ward and he asked where the loo was. On leaving the lavatory, Patrick followed the signs up the stairs, down the stairs, left, right, straight, until he found himself in a large waiting room full of big-bellied ladies who were sitting with their legs apart, too heavy to get up in a hurry. So he gave them all a friendly smile, took a blue chalk out of his pocket and started from the right corner where the wall looked very white.

‘Ffuk Venezia,’ he wrote in large letters, then his spelling went wild, and two nurses had to hold his hand to get the chalk out.

2

‘And how is your Mrs. patho?’

‘She’s a Miss, father, and she still likes listening to rude words.’

‘Ah! Why hasn’t she got a husband?’

‘I’ll ask her. She comes from South Africa and is very Indian. Beautiful.’

‘Are you sure, my boy, you’ve got it right?’

‘Positive, yes, father.’ And Patrick laughed. He could just imagine his daddy in a white robe, his head even balder at the top, and a wad of banknotes dangling from a cord instead of beads.

‘Ho-ho-ho.’ Like Boris, Patrick’s father was always ready to share a joke, whether he understood it or not. This time, however, he bulged his watery eyes and asked: ‘What’s so funny? Am I kicking the wrong ball, or something?’

Patrick saw two balls at once, and remembered what the patho Miss said. No, he wouldn’t snort or titter. Balls, so what?

It was strange to watch his father in an armchair. He didn’t quite seem his usual recumbent self, though he had a cushion under his head and kept closing his eyes.

Augustus puffed at a cigar, and this alone made him distant, playing a hide-and-seek game in the midst of all that cloudy smell.

‘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 twirl 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.’