moments mocked through my mind and a silent scream of anguish startled me.
In dubious control of myself, a little later, I marched into the gloomy saloon for another pint. Hope that doesn’t happen very often. Could do without too much of that!
I swung into Repton Street and immediately braked to the side of the road. Issuing from the iron gates of the nursery school farther down the slope, face uplifted in easy confidence, came my little boy hand in hand with Kemal. I slid the lever into gear and then back into neutral. Instead of offering them a lift, I waited and then edged guiltily around the corner and roared away in a different direction.
— He’s like me. He just sits and smokes and watches me iron. He’s exactly like I was, with you.
I called at the flat sometimes. I watched Kemal sitting and smoking hashish and watching you iron. For a nineteen-year-old he had a pretty bloated habit. The drug had small obvious effect on him. While he smoked and you ironed, the portable radio he had brought with him ejected endless pop songs. A faintly speculative look crossed his face and he turned to me:
— Bill, how many kind cigarette there are?
I attempted to satisfy him, during our meetings that summer, as to the precise richness of our isles in makes of car, brands of cigarette, distillers of whisky, manufacturers of lighters—his fascination with our culture was nothing if not naive.
They summoned me to the knife.
— You will visit me?
— Of course I will.
— I mean—alone? Without Kemal?
But visiting times brought the pair of them. He was a friendly lad, medium bright and with a ready laugh but I longed to have you alone. The registrar danced in clad in a green smock. Screens were pulled round the groaning young man.
— Where does it hurt? Where? What?
Groans remained the only distinct response to the registrar’s quest for diagnostic data.
— It hurts all over? Well—in your arms ? Look I realize it hurts but I must find out where!
A nurse spooned soup into the wispy remnant of a man. When the fluid accumulated beyond a certain point in the ruined stomach a mild spasm hurled it all out again. The tiny Cockney was starving to death.
Plum-coloured liquid mounted in bottles attached to looped rubber tubes emerging from the penes of prostate cases.
The young man, no longer groaning, was restored to the ward. The capable registrar had correctly operated for acute appendicitis.
I was shunted down for surgery. Stunning eclipse of anaesthesia. Slow, muddled waking and your face wavering above me. Violent pain. I rolled and fidgeted through the hours until the promised morphia at bedtime.
— I say—em—nurse—
— Yes, yes! Sister’s just coming up to give you your injection.
Half-doubled we hobbled about the ward to keep sluggish blood from congealing. Even blasé nurses occasionally laughed at our grave, surrealist gyrations. One of them checked herself.
— No really, I shouldn’t! I made Mr. Pointing laugh and he burst his wound.
— He— what !
— Had to go down to the theatre to be stitched up again.
The registrar reached my bed. He was crisply handsome in the traditional English way. I asked Dr. Seligman about him later.
— Saintly man. Should be a consultant but he won’t be. Never thinks about himself.
The registrar studied my chart. Then, as he recalled me from the session with the consultant, his face brightened.
— It was indirect, by the way.
— Oh? But the consultant—
— Yes, but not in the way your doctor thought. You see it—oh it’s too technical to explain. But it was an indirect hernia of a special kind—actually, first one we’ve ever had here.
He noted the faint reserve with which I received this news.
— Oh you needn’t worry. The repair’s the same.
His life momentarily cheered by his encounter with my unconventional hernia the registrar passed on to the next bed.
9
— How’s your car going, Brian?
— All right.
Brian laughed. His
In dubious control of myself, a little later, I marched into the gloomy saloon for another pint. Hope that doesn’t happen very often. Could do without too much of that!
I swung into Repton Street and immediately braked to the side of the road. Issuing from the iron gates of the nursery school farther down the slope, face uplifted in easy confidence, came my little boy hand in hand with Kemal. I slid the lever into gear and then back into neutral. Instead of offering them a lift, I waited and then edged guiltily around the corner and roared away in a different direction.
— He’s like me. He just sits and smokes and watches me iron. He’s exactly like I was, with you.
I called at the flat sometimes. I watched Kemal sitting and smoking hashish and watching you iron. For a nineteen-year-old he had a pretty bloated habit. The drug had small obvious effect on him. While he smoked and you ironed, the portable radio he had brought with him ejected endless pop songs. A faintly speculative look crossed his face and he turned to me:
— Bill, how many kind cigarette there are?
I attempted to satisfy him, during our meetings that summer, as to the precise richness of our isles in makes of car, brands of cigarette, distillers of whisky, manufacturers of lighters—his fascination with our culture was nothing if not naive.
They summoned me to the knife.
— You will visit me?
— Of course I will.
— I mean—alone? Without Kemal?
But visiting times brought the pair of them. He was a friendly lad, medium bright and with a ready laugh but I longed to have you alone. The registrar danced in clad in a green smock. Screens were pulled round the groaning young man.
— Where does it hurt? Where? What?
Groans remained the only distinct response to the registrar’s quest for diagnostic data.
— It hurts all over? Well—in your arms ? Look I realize it hurts but I must find out where!
A nurse spooned soup into the wispy remnant of a man. When the fluid accumulated beyond a certain point in the ruined stomach a mild spasm hurled it all out again. The tiny Cockney was starving to death.
Plum-coloured liquid mounted in bottles attached to looped rubber tubes emerging from the penes of prostate cases.
The young man, no longer groaning, was restored to the ward. The capable registrar had correctly operated for acute appendicitis.
I was shunted down for surgery. Stunning eclipse of anaesthesia. Slow, muddled waking and your face wavering above me. Violent pain. I rolled and fidgeted through the hours until the promised morphia at bedtime.
— I say—em—nurse—
— Yes, yes! Sister’s just coming up to give you your injection.
Half-doubled we hobbled about the ward to keep sluggish blood from congealing. Even blasé nurses occasionally laughed at our grave, surrealist gyrations. One of them checked herself.
— No really, I shouldn’t! I made Mr. Pointing laugh and he burst his wound.
— He— what !
— Had to go down to the theatre to be stitched up again.
The registrar reached my bed. He was crisply handsome in the traditional English way. I asked Dr. Seligman about him later.
— Saintly man. Should be a consultant but he won’t be. Never thinks about himself.
The registrar studied my chart. Then, as he recalled me from the session with the consultant, his face brightened.
— It was indirect, by the way.
— Oh? But the consultant—
— Yes, but not in the way your doctor thought. You see it—oh it’s too technical to explain. But it was an indirect hernia of a special kind—actually, first one we’ve ever had here.
He noted the faint reserve with which I received this news.
— Oh you needn’t worry. The repair’s the same.
His life momentarily cheered by his encounter with my unconventional hernia the registrar passed on to the next bed.
9
— How’s your car going, Brian?
— All right.
Brian laughed. His
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