The Doctor Is Sick (15 page)

‘Him and me,' said Ernie with dignity to Bob, ‘have just got out of bed. You can see that, just by looking. Only he's been in bed longer because his pyjamas is dirtier than mine.' He put his arm round Edwin and said: ‘If you're a pal of old Ernie's you'll never look back. I'll take you to my mum's house and if I say you're Ernie's pal she'll be your pal, too.'

‘Why,' asked Edwin, ‘won't she speak to you?' Ernie broke away, hurt. He whined:

‘You shouldn't have said that, you shouldn't have reminded me.' He was, Edwin calculated, at least forty-five. Edwin suddenly remembered something A. S. Neill had once told him: the delinquent child stealing watches in order to open them up, to find out, symbolically, where babies came from. The Kettle as Mother – a good title for something. He said:

‘Do you love watches?'

Ernie grew serious and tried to control his face. ‘A good watch I love,' he said. ‘A real good piece of Swiss workmanship with a lot of jewels and something like a real movement. But this crap,' he said, ‘is something to get off your hands, that's all.' He dug into his raincoat pocket and produced a ticking handful. ‘You can have,' he said,
forgetting what he had previously said, ‘any one of these for three nicker. Because you said you'd be Ernie's pal.' The Gorbals man, horrible to look on, came up and breathed, squinting, on the kettles.

‘I haven't got three nicker,' said Edwin, ‘nor one nicker, nor half a bar, nor a tosheroon, nor,' he added, ‘a solitary single clod. I can't buy anything.'

The men of the Kettle Mob looked at him with sly interest, weighing, appraising. Bob gripped him by the pyjama-jacket and dragged him a little way off. ‘Do you,' he said, his voice trembling, ‘want to make a bit, eh? I'm loaded. I've got two whole smoked salmons in the car. I've got a bottle of
French
champagne. I've got this inside pocket stuffed with crispies. You come back with me,' he said, breathing hotly on to Edwin, ‘and you see what I'll give you, you see what I'll do for you, if only you——' But the Alsatian, owned by the blonde with the bulldog face, had launched itself on Nigger, though in play. Nigger yelped, and the Alsatian made a noise like blowing across the lip of a big bottle. ‘Dogs,' cried Bob, drawing his raglan about him, tiptoeing like one avoiding incoming waves. ‘I don't like dogs.' The dogs were around him, a small raging sea of brown and black, capped with the white foam of teeth, and Bob vented little womanish screams. He kicked, but his toecap connected with nothing. Harry Stone said:

‘Don't you kick vat bleedin' dog. I don't want no trouble in 'ere, but don't you kick vat bleedin' dog.'

‘Call them off, then. Flaming great brutes.' This time his toe caught the Alsatian's rump, a well-fed rump that felt nothing. But the bulldog blonde abused Bob with woman's foulness, to which man's obscenity is as baby-talk. The
saturnine and the Glaswegian mobster looked ugly, ready for trouble. Then the sentry fell down the cellar-stairs and yelled:

‘They're comin'! They're at the end of the street! Put them drinks away quick!'

‘Chairs! Chairs!' cried Harry Stone. ‘Get vem chairs lined up!'

Nobody in that cellar was as yet incapable. There was a rapid downing of spirits, a pocketing and hand-bagging of sticky empty glasses. The kettle-mobsters were stupid, they had to be pushed and brutally organised. Gin bottles, whisky bottles were hurled by Leo Stone at the bar to Les by the juke-box. Les caught them with ‘alley oop' and hid them under the billiards cloth. The Alsatian cried dismally as it was dragged by its collar to its place in class. Nigger crawled on his belly through the flap-opening of the bar. Harry Stone fanned at the cigarette smoke furiously, using a copy of the
Ladies' Directory
. ‘Right, Perfesser,' he panted. ‘You do your stuff.'

‘We consider now,' said Edwin, finding it hard to focus, ‘what is known to philologists as folk etymology. I will write those words on the blackboard.' A piece of tailor's chalk was thrown at him. He failed to catch it, stooped and scooped it up from the floor. He felt faint and wondered why this should be somehow appropriate. He held on to the bar-counter an instant, then felt better. Somebody had scrawled a rude word on the child's blackboard. He rubbed this off with his sleeve. Then he wrote, clearly and carefully, FOLK ETYMOLOGY.

‘Etymology,' said Edwin, ‘is concerned with the origin of words, the true origin, that is, the Greek
etymos
meaning “true”. By folk etymology we mean the attempt made by
the unlearned to absorb a foreign or unusual word into colloquial speech by changing what is exotic in the word into something more familiar-looking. The unlearned thus try to convince themselves that what is really foreign is not foreign at all: they
explain
the foreign element
away
by imagining it to be cognate with something already well-known. There are various stock examples of folk etymology. Let us take, for instance, the word
penthouse.'
As he wrote this on the blackboard the booted quadruped could be heard again. As he turned to face his audience he saw all their eyes blearily turn upwards to the ceiling. The four heavy feet spondeed to the head of the cellar-stairs.
‘Penthouse,'
said Edwin, ‘contains a familiar element –
bouse
. But the original form was
pentice
, derived from the French
appentis
, itself derived from the Latin
appendicium
, which means “something added on, an appendage”. The
-ice
ending was changed to
house
, so that the word should look more familiar.'

The feet clomped down steadily. Again on the threshold stood the heavy two in mufti-uniform, imaginary-chin-strap-chewing. ‘In the same way,' said Edwin, ‘the Middle English
primerole
was rejected in favour of
primrose
, because the second element of the word already existed in its own right as a flower-name.' The junior policeman laboriously copied in his notebook FOLK ETYMOLOGY, PENTHOUSE, PRIMROSE. Suspicious, this, suggesting call-girls. ‘And,' said Edwin, ‘we mustn't, of course, forget
Jerusalem Artichoke
. The
Jerusalem
is a folk-corruption of the Italian
girasole
, which means “turning towards the sun”. The plant is, in fact, of the same genus as the common sunflower.' He paused. At this point something should happen, something important.
‘And there is also
causeway
, which is the Old French
caucie
, derived from the Latin
calx
, meaning chalk. Meaning chalk,' he repeated, ‘meaning chalk.'

‘Right,' said the sergeant. ‘I think we've had about enough of this. We've been on to the L.C.C. and they say they've heard nothing about a class of this kind being run. I thought it was fishy.'

‘Oh, shut up,' said Edwin. He sank neatly to the ground into sheer restful blackness. He came to to find faces bending over him, not delicate brown Burmese but hard London white. ‘Let us praise while we can,' he quoted, ‘the vertical man.' Then he passed out again.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Edwins consciousness flickered on and off. He was carried up the stairs by the two policemen, the serge of whose suits had a smell of rain-wet mushrooms. There were voices and people pushing. He was laid on the door-step and saw, to his surprise, that the pavement was rain-wet. Then they were talking about where to and how, cars, ambulances, hospital. Edwin came fully awake at that last word, feeling much better than he had felt since his escape, as if some deep process of healing had been accomplished while he was off his guard. The two policemen were considering using Bob's car, Bob was moving from its back to its front a big box from which a toffee-golden French loaf protruded, eyes were away an instant, Harry Stone was just coming down the passage to the street door. Edwin quietly and swiftly rose and raced round the corner. ‘What ve bleedin' 'ell 'ave you done wiv 'im?' wailed Harry Stone, his voice approaching. Edwin found an alleyway. ‘ 'E was your bleedin' responsibility, woznee?' DAN LOVES BRENDA SHERRIFF said a chalk
graffito
. A chalk man was hanging from a chalk gallows. Chalk, chalk, calx. There were dustbins in the alleyway. Edwin hid behind one, crouching very low. ‘Maybe,' said the voice of Harry Stone, ‘ 'e's 'idin' be'ind one of vem dustbins.' Edwin shot up and ran. At the end of the alleyway the street sounded with newspaper calls, people were going home from work, the blue of the Underground sign shone. The alleyway had a left turn – more dustbins and
graffiti
– and down this Edwin ran, arriving back on the street he had left, but this time opposite the Anchor. ‘Oi!' he heard, and ‘Come back 'ere, you bleedin' fool!' The lights of the Anchor were on but the doors not yet open. The alleyway to the left of the Anchor led, Edwin saw, to the disordered yard of a timber company. He hesitated, found himself closely followed by Harry Stone in duplicate, but more closely still by a lorry. This had just turned from the street of crowds and newspapers and now proposed to enter the yard. ‘Arf a minute,' yelled Harry Stone to the driver. ‘All right, mate,' said the driver. ‘I've been this way before.' And he negotiated, with dislodging of bricks and torturing of mudguards, the alleyway entrance. Then he found himself stuck. Edwin was now protected from his pursuers for a space. He tried the saloon-bar door, but it was still shut. The lorry was finding more success: amid shouts from Edwin's hunters, the fall of masonry and the clang of metal, it was straightening up, was almost ready to enter cleanly. Edwin ran into the timber yard and looked around desperately. To his left a circular saw, planks, raw logs, an overalled workman with cap and Woodbine. ‘Yes, mate?' he said to Edwin. Edwin looked right: a wooden hut as office, a light within showing clips of curling bills hung on the walls, an elderly man sitting at a table laboriously extracting an upper denture, then looking at it seriously, then fitting it back in again with a head-shake of resignation. To the right of this office was a yard-wall, low enough to scale. Edwin ran to it, fitted his toe into a shallow jagged hole, and heard the workman say: ‘You can't do that, mate, not here you can't.' Edwin raised himself by his hands, kneed the wall-top, found an overgrown garden on the other side, then swung himself over.
He rested a second or two against the wall. Ahead was a house of four storeys and a basement, one of a row. Dusk had almost become dark. He stumbled through rank grass and bindweed, nearly fell over an unaccountable coil of barbed wire, clinked several bottles together like a glockenspiel solo, then came to an open back door, a scullery with a very bright light bulb. A pale young man with very oily black hair was leaning over the sink, wearing a woman's apron with frills. He was peeling onions under water but blinded with crying. Edwin stole across the scullery, through a dark kitchen, into a hallway. From a room to the left of the hallway a voice called: ‘Is that you, Mr Dollimore?' Edwin passed a card showing times of church services, another with the legend SINNERS OF THE STREETS(X), a map of London, a wall telephone, opened the front door on which a card – HOUSE FULL – was hanging from a tin-tack.

The street was far from empty – the tube station had just released a liftful of passengers – but nobody seemed to be looking particularly for an escaped patient in woolly cap and pyjamas and – Edwin saw clearly in the street lamp – a very long tear in his trouser leg. He felt in his right trouser pocket and found only twopence. That German bitch had spent the change from his pound on doppel gins. Where was Sheila? Edwin felt the fear and self-pity of the lost traveller who feels night not as a cloak but as hands waiting to strangle. And now across the street was a uniformed policeman who paused in his patrol to look at Edwin. Edwin walked sharply towards the Underground station, entered its hall, which was sharp with light and the clink of pennies, then followed ticket-holders towards the lift. Opposite the lift was a rank of telephone-boxes. One
of these was empty.

Edwin entered, saw on either hand silent talkers fishily gobbling into mouth-pieces, made sure that his glass door was tightly shut, then paused to think. Automatically he pressed Button B, but its mechanism gave a dry barren click, and, turning an instant, he saw a queue already beginning to form – a middle-aged woman, a rabbity man behind her. This was strange. There was nobody waiting outside the other boxes. What was that rabbity man after? Edwin picked up the telephone, dialled – remembering his James Joyce – EDEnville oooo, and asked for Adam. He gave nobody a chance to speak. ‘You,' he said, ‘got me into this. If you hadn't existed I wouldn't exist. How is the apple-woman your wife? How are your incestuous sons? Give my hate to everybody back there.' The dialling-tone purred away. Edwin asked to be put through to various other Biblical characters. The middle-aged woman rapped on the glass with her dog-head umbrella-handle. Edwin saw this, saw the rabbity man snatch her handbag and run, saw the woman's instant of surprise, saw her cry and stagger off, brandishing her umbrella, then saw that the head of the queue was now Bob, mad-eyed kettle-mobster, ready to wait long.

Edwin said a few words successively to Ezra, Habbakuk, Elijah, Jeremiah and Isaiah, then felt weak, hungry and tired. Bob banged hard on the glass. Edwin opened up. ‘Yes?' he said.

‘You'd better come with me. I've got the car outside.'

‘I don't want to come with you.'

‘You better had. It's either me or the law.'

‘What's the law got to do with it?'

‘The law thinks you're crackers. I know you're not
crackers. I think you're kinky, just like I am. You'd better come with me.'

‘Why, what do you want? What are you going to do?'

‘I've got two whole smoked salmons in the car. Cost a nicker each. I don't think that's too dear, on the whole.'