Fillets of Plaice

5 A Question of Degrees

THE family doctor shook his head mote in sorrow than in anger.

“Strain,” he repeated. “Over-work and over-worry. What you need is three weeks in Abbotsford.”

“You mean the loony bin?” I asked.

“It isn’t a loony bin. It’s a highly respectable nursing home that specialises in nervous complaints,” he said severely.

“In other words a loony bin,” I said.

“I thought that you would have known better,” said the family doctor sadly.

“A loose generic term,” I said. “Is it that sprawling Strawberry Hill Gothic edifice that looks like Dracula’s castle — the thing straight out of Hollywood — on the way to Surbiton?”

“Yes, that’s the place.”

“Well, I don’t suppose that will be so bad,” I said judiciously. “I can nip up to town to see my friends and the odd show...”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” the family doctor interrupted firmly. “Complete rest and quiet is what you need.”

“Couldn’t I have a going-in party?” I pleaded.

“A going-in party?”

“Well, debs have their coming-out parties. Why can’t I have a going-in party? Just a select band of friends to wish me God Speed on my way to the padded cell.”

The family doctor winced and sighed.

“You will probably have it even if I tell you not to,” he said in a resigned manner, so I suppose you can.”

The party was a small one held in an excellent curry restaurant in Soho. It was during the course of the evening that I felt something trickling down my chin and, on wiping my mouth with my napkin, I was surprised to see it stained with blood. It was obvious that my nose was bleeding. Fortunately, both the lighting and the décor of the restaurant lent themselves well to this manifestation and I managed to staunch the flow without any untoward comment. I was not so lucky on the following day.

It was a week before Christmas and it was therefore necessary for me — on my way to Abbotsford — to deviate from my route slightly so as to call in at the Kings Road to deliver an almost life-sized Teddy bear who squatted regally in a transparent plastic bag and wore nothing except a handsome maroon-coloured tie.

I got out of the taxi, clasping the bear round its ample middle, rang the front door bell, and my nose started to bleed copiously. It was well-nigh impossible, I discovered, to hold the bear under one arm while staunching the flow of blood with the other, so I put the bear between my legs, thus freeing my hands.

“What are you doing?” inquired my wife from the interior of the taxi.

“By dose is bleeding again,” I said through my blood-stained handkerchief.

With the bear between my legs and the blood streaming down my face, I presented an arresting sight even by Kings Road standards. A small crowd collected.

“Give the bear to the sweet-shop next door and ask them to give it to Peter,” my wife hissed. “You can’t stand there like that.”

The crowd had hitherto been silent, digesting this slightly macabre spectacle. Now a new woman joined them and gaped upon the mystery.

“Wot’s ’appening?” she inquired of the world in general.

“ ’E was bit by ’is Teddy bear,” said a man and the crowd laughed uproariously at the joke.

I dived into the sanctuary of the sweet shop, deposited the Teddy bear and then rushed panting out to the taxi.

“You shouldn’t rush about so,” said my wife as the taxi got under way. “You’re supposed to take it easy.”

“How can I dake it easy?” I inquired aggrievedly, “when by bloody dose is bleeding and I’m holding a sodding great Deddy bear?”

“Just lie back and relax,” said my wife soothingly.

Relax, I thought, yes, that was it, relax. I would have three glorious weeks to relax in, being ministered unto by kindly nurses, only having to make momentous decisions like what I would have for lunch or the exact temperature of my bath water. Relax, that was it. Complete peace and quiet. So, with this thought firmly in my mind, I entered Abbotsford.

I had little time to register anything (except that the furniture and décor of my room were best Seaside Boarding House, circa 1920, and that the nurses were remarkably pretty) before I was wrapped in a golden cocoon of drugs and remained thus, sleeping and twitching in this delectable hibernation for twenty-four hours. Then I awoke, bright and brisk as a squirrel, and surveyed my new world. My first impression of the nurses had not, I decided, been erroneous. They were all in their individual ways remarkably attractive. It was rather like being looked after by the entrants for a Miss World competition.

Of the day staff there was Lorraine, the Swedish blonde, whose eyes changed colour like a fiord in the sun; Zena, half English and half German, who had orange hair and completely circular and perpetually astonished blue eyes; and Nelly, a charmer from Basutoland, carved out of fine milk chocolate and with a little round nose like a brown button mushroom. Then there was the night staff. Breeda, short, blonde as honey and motherly, and, without doubt the most attractive of them all, Pimmie (a nickname derived from God knows what source), who was tall, slender and elf-like, with enormous greeny-hazel eyes the colour of a trout stream in spring. They were young and cheerful and went about their work with all the gaiety and eagerness to please of a litter of puppies. Their gambollings were presided over by two Sisters, both French, whose combined accents would have made Maurice Chevalier sound as though he had been brought up at Oxford and had worked for the BBC for a number of years. These were the Sisters Louise and Renée. and their blunt French practicality in action was a pleasure to watch and to listen to.

It was on the second day, still slightly drugged, that, partly from desire and partly from a need for new scenery, I made my way down the corridor to the lavatory. Here I squatted, thinking deep thoughts, when suddenly my attention was attracted to a large blob of blood on the floor. Hallo, I thought to myself, with the rapid perception of the semi-drugged, someone’s cut themselves... been bleeding. Shaving, no doubt. But, shaving here? In the lavatory? Surely not. At that moment another blob of blood joined the first one on the floor and I suddenly realised that my nose was bleeding again. By the time I had grasped this, my nose was in full flood. Clasping several yards of lavatory paper to my face, I sped back to my room and rang the bell frantically. My nose was now bleeding so fast that a paper handkerchief applied to it became sodden and useless almost immediately.

In answer to my cri de coeur the door opened and chocolate-brown Nelly appeared, dad in an overcoat. She was obviously just going off duty.

“Lord, man,” said Nelly, gazing round-eyed at the bloody apparition. “Lord, yo’ is bleeding.”

“I had come to the same conclusion,” I said. “Can you stop it for me, Nelly dear?”

“Wait now... don’ yo’ move,” Nelly commanded, and rushed off down the corridor. Presently she reappeared looking distinctly distraught.

“I can’ fin’ dem, I can’ fin’ dem,” she said, almost wringing her hands in despair.

“What can’t you find?”

“De keys, de keys,” wailed Nelly.

Presumably the keys for some cupboard containing medicament for the rapid coagulation of blood, I thought.

“Never mind,” I said soothingly, “can’t we use something else?”

“No, no,” said Nelly, “de keys is best for putting down yo’ back.” My hopes for the future of European medicine in Africa suffered a severe blow at this remark.

Lorraine and Zena, attracted by the noise, appeared in the doorway.

“You’re bleeding,” said Zena in astonishment.

“Yes,” I said.

“I can’ fin’ de keys, Zena. Have yo’ seen dem, Lorraine?”

“Keys? No,” said Lorraine. “I haven’t seen any keys. What keys?”

“To put down his back,” said Nelly.

“Don’t you burn feathers beneath the nose?” asked Lorraine. “No, no, dat’s for fainting,” said Nelly, the expert on modem medicine.

“How about sacrificing a black cock in a chalk circle?” I asked, beginning to enjoy the situation.

“You’d never get that on National Health,” said Zena judiciously and with perfect seriousness.

At that moment Breeda and Pimmie arrived to take over the night shift. Pimmie took in the situation with one searchlight-like glance from her huge, liquid eyes.

“On to the bed wit yer,” she said to me. “On to the bed and lie as flat as yer can.”

“But... I...” I began to protest.

“Stop yer blarney and on to the bed wit yer. Breeda, go and get me some one-inch gauze bandage and some adrenalin. Quickly now.”

I lay down obediently and immediately discovered that the blood that had been running out of my nose now ran down the back of my throat and threatened to asphyxiate me. I sat up hurriedly.

“I told yer to lie down,” said Pimmie ominously.

“Pimmie, dear, I can’t. I’ll choke on my own blood.”

I explained. Pimmie flicked a couple of pillows behind my head with practised ease.

“There now, is that better?” she inquired.

“Yes,” I said.

Breeda had returned with a dish containing the things Pimmie had asked for. The bed was now bestrewn with blood-stained paper handkerchiefs and there were five nurses clustered round my recumbent form.

“Kiss me, Hardy,” I implored, holding out my arms to Pimmie.

“Quit yer blathering,” she said severely, “and let me get this up yer nose.”

With great deftness she proceeded to plug my right nostril with a yard or so of bandage soaked in adrenalin as neatly and as impersonally as though she was stuffmg a chicken. Then she pinched the bridge of my nose firmly between finger and thumb, at the same time applying ice to my temples. I now had trickles of blood and water soaking into my pyjamas, but very soon the blood burst through the bandage and fell in great gouts on the sheets and pillow cases. Pimmie replaced the bandage with a fresh one. The bed and the room now looked like a cross between an abattoir and the front parlour of the Marquis de Sade after an evening’s soirée. Several bandages later, the blood was still flowing merrily. By this time all the nurses, with the exception of Pimmie and Breeda, had departed.

“It’s no good,” said Pinimie, frowning ferociously, “I’ll just have to tell the doctor. Lie still now. Breeda, see that he lies still.”

She left the room.

“I hope she hasn’t gone to get Dr Grubbins,” I said uneasily. “Charming though he is, I lack confidence in him as a doctor.”

“I hope for your sake she hasn’t gone to fetch him,” said Breeda placidly.

“Why?” I inquired, alarmed.

“Well,” said Breeda, “he’s not a good doctor at all. Honestly, if I had a patient who was ever so ill, I wouldn’t call him in. He’d kill them off for sure.”

“That was rather the impression I gained,” I admitted. “He had a certain je ne sais quoi about him that led me to suppose that he had not as yet passed the stage of pouring boiling pitch over the stump.”

“Ignorant,” said Breeda gloomily. “He thinks pasteurisation is something you do to the meadows that cows feed in.”

“And that Lister is something a boat does when it’s badly loaded?” I inquired, entering into the spirit of the game. “Or does he merely think that he was a famous composer?”

“Both, probably,” said Breeda, “and he thinks that Harvey is someone who invented sherry.”

“And that angina is a double-barrelled name for a girl?”

“Yes, and take penicillin,” said Breeda.

“You mean that emporium that specialises in writing materials?”

“The very same. Well, one day...”

But what Breeda was about to vouchsafe will never be known, for at that moment Pimmie re-entered the room.

“Up yer get,” she said to me. “Dr Grubbins says yer to go to the Waterloo Hospital and have yer nose cauterised.”

“Dear God,” I said. “Just as I feared. A red-hot poker to be shoved up my right nostril.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Pimmie, getting me my coat, “they’ll use a cauterising stick.”

“A stick? A flaming brand? I was supposed to come here for peace and quiet?”

“Yer can’t have peace and quiet until we stop yer nosebleed,” said Pimmie practically. “Here, get this coat on. I’m coming wit yer. Doctor’s instructions.”

“And the only worthwhile instructions he’s given since leaving medical school,” I said warmly. “How are we to get there?”

“Taxi,” said Pimmie succinctly. “It’s waiting.”

The driver, we soon discovered, was an Irishman. He was a tiny, carunculated man who looked like a walnut with legs.

“Where will yer be going?” he asked.

“ Waterloo Hospital,” said Pimmie clearly.

“ Waterloo Waterloo...” mused the driver. “And where would that be?”

“ Westminster Bridge,” said Pimmie.

“Of course it is, of course it is,” said the driver, slapping his forehead. “I’ll have you there in a couple of jiffs.”

We bundled into the car and wrapped ourselves in a blanket, for the night was bitterly cold. We progressed some way in silence.

“And I was going to wash me hair to-night,” said Pimmie suddenly and reproachfully.

“I’m very sorry,” I said contritely.

“Ah, don’t give it a thought,” said Pimmie, adding somewhat mysteriously, “I can sit on it.”

“Can you?” I asked, imagining that this was some up-to-date method of cleansing hair.

“Yes,” said Pimmie with satisfaction. “It’s that long. I was offered seventy pounds for it recently.”

“But you wouldn’t look half so attractive bald,” I pointed out.

“That’s what I thought,” said Pimmie, and we relapsed into silence again.

The cab stopped at some traffic lights and the driver craned round to examine his fares. The blue and white street lighting lent a weird pallor to my bloodstained face.

“Are you all right in the back there, now?” asked the driver anxiously. “It’s an awful lot of blood yer dribbling about in the back there. You wouldn’t want to stop for a lie down, would yer?”

I looked at the rain-lashed, freezing pavements. “No, I don’t think so, thank you,” I said.

“Have yer tried sticking something up yer nose?” asked the driver, suddenly struck by this powerful thought.

I explained that my right nostril had had so much rammed up it that it closely resembled a municipal rubbish dump. At the hospital, I explained, they intended to cauterise.

“That’s what they used to do in the old days, isn’t it?” asked the driver with considerable interest.

“How do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“Well, they’d hang, draw and cauterise yous, wouldn’t they?”

“No, no. That was something quite different,” I said, adding, “I hope.”

We arrived at the hospital after driving up a ramp that had a notice saying (I could have sworn to this) “No Protestants” but which later proved to read “No Pedestrians”. I attributed this misreading to my close association with the Irish throughout the evening.

We bustled inside and found it free of drugged hippies, meths drinkers and little boys with tin potties jammed on their heads. In fact, the out-patients was deserted except for the duty nurse. She ushered us into a sort of tabernacle and laid me tenderly on a species of operating table.

“The doctor will be with you in a minute,” she said with reverence in her voice, as though announcing the Second Coming. Presently, what appeared to be a fourteen-year-old boy clan in a white coat made his appearance.

“Good evening, sir. Good evening,” he said heartily, rubbing his hands together, obviously practising for Harley Street. “You have a nosebleed, I understand, sir.”

Seeing that my beard and moustache were stiff with congealed blood and that it was still dribbling from my right nostril and that my clothing was plentifully bespattered with gore, I did not feel that this was a particularly brilliant and perceptive diagnosis.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” said the doctor, producing two pairs of forceps, “we’ll just have a look at the damage, shall we, sir?”

He spread the nostril as wide as a bushman’s with one pair of forceps and with the other proceeded to pull out several feet of bloodstained bandage.

“Ah, yes,” he said intelligently, peering into the gory cavity thus revealed, “you appear to have something more up there, sir.”

“They pushed everything they could find up there,” I said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you found a brace of staff nurses and a matron or two lolling about in the labyrinthine passages of my sinus.”

The doctor laughed nervously and removed a slab of cotton wool from my nostril.

“Ah,” he said, peering up the nostril with a small torch. “Yes, I see. I have found the bleeding spot. As a matter of fact, you have got one or two large veins up there, sir, which would be well worth keeping an eye on.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I wondered how you kept an eye on a vein that was lurking in the dimmer recesses of the nose.

“Now,” said the doctor, “a little cocaine to, you know, kill it, as it were.”

He seized something like a scent spray and squirted cocaine up my nose.

“That’s it,” he went on chattily. “Now, Nurse, if I can have the cautery stick? That’s it. Now, this won’t hurt, sir.”

Curiously enough, it did not hurt.

“That’s it,” said the doctor again, standing back with the air of a conjurer who has just successfully performed a particularly complicated trick.

“You mean that’s all?” I asked in astonishment.

“Yes,” said the doctor, peering up the nose with his torch, “that’s all. It shouldn’t give you any more trouble sir.”

“I really am most grateful,” I said, vacating the operating table with alacrity.

Pimmie and I made our way out to where the taxi was waiting.

“My, that was quick,” said the driver admiringly. “I quite thought yer’d be in there an hour or a couple.”

“No, they made a very quick job of it,” I said, taking deep, unrestrained and joyful breaths through my nose.

The taxi rumbled down the ramp and into the street. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!” said Pimrnie suddenly and with considerable vehemence.

“What’s the matter?” asked the driver and I in unison, startled.

“We’ve been to the wrong hospital,” said Pimmie faintly.

“Wrong hospital? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Wrong hospital? No, that was the one you asked for,” said the driver aggrievedly.

“It wasn’t,” said Pimmie. “It said St Thomas’s on the side. We were supposed to go to the Waterloo.”

“But it’s by the bridge. You said by the bridge,” the driver pointed out. “Look, there’s the bridge.”

He gave the impression that life was quite difficult enough without the added complication of somebody shifting all the London hospitals around.

“I don’t care where it is,” said Pimmie, “it’s the wrong hospital. It’s not the Waterloo.”

“Does it matter?” I asked. “After all, they did the job.”

“Yes, but I’d alerted the Waterloo,” Pinimie explained. “The night staff were expecting us.”

“Come to think of it,” said the driver thoughtfully, “Waterloo does sound a little bit like St Thomas’s, if you follow me, especially if yer driving a cab.”

There did not seem to be a really adequate reply to this.

We returned to Abbotsford and while I sat drinking gallons of lukewarm tea, Pimmie went to phone the Waterloo hospital and explain the confusion.

“I told them it was your fault,” she said triumphantly on her return. “I said you were a bit nutty and we put yer in a taxi and yer’d given the taxi driver the wrong hospital.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

That night and the following day passed uneventfully except that another patient endeavoured to sell me a fake Louis Quinze dining-table in the reception hall and another one insisted on practising Morse code on my door. However, these were minor irritations and my nose behaved beautifully.

When Pimmie came on night duty that evening she fixed me with a basilisk stare.

“Well,” she enquired, “have yer had any more trouble with yer nose?”

“Not a thing,” I said with pride, and the words were hardly out of my mouth when my nose started to bleed again.

“Dear God! Why d’yer have to wait until I come on duty?” inquired Pimmie. “Why can’t yer give the day nurses a treat?”

“It’s your beauty, Pimmie,” I said. “It sends my blood pressure up and starts my nose bleeding.”

“Whereabouts in Ireland did yer say yer came from?” enquired Pimmie, busy stuffing an adrenalin-soaked bandage up my nose.

“ Gomorrah, on the borders of Sodom,” I said promptly.

“I don’t believe yer,” said Pimmie, “although ye’ve got enough blarney for five ordinary Irishmen.”

But her ministrations with the bandage were of no avail. The nose continued to drip like a tap with a faulty washer. Eventually Pimmie gave up exhausted and went to phone Dr Grubbins for further instructions.

“Dr Grubbins says yer to go to the Waterloo Hospital,” she said on her return, “and he says will yer try and get the right hospital this time.”

“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.

“No,” said Pimmie.

“But, why not?” I protested.

“I don’t know the hell,” said Pimmie. “But yer going in a staff car with a driver.”

The staff car driver was determined to take his passenger’s mind off his troubles.

“Nasty thing, nosebleeds,” he said chattily. “We used to get a lot of them when I played rugger, but I’m getting too old for that now.”

“Too old for nosebleeds?” I inquired.

“No, no. For rugger, I mean,” said the driver. “Do you play at all yourself, sir?”

“No,” I said. “I dislike all organised ball games except one.”

“And which one is that, sir?” asked the driver with interest. It was obvious that he could hold forth in the same boring manner about any game that had ever been invented. He must be silenced at all costs.

“Sex,” I said brutally, and we travelled the rest of the way in silence.

At the hospital a pleasant night sister led me into a ward which at first sight appeared to be deserted. Then I saw in a remote bed an old man coughing and trembling his way along the brink of the grave and, at a table some six feet away from and east of my bed, a family group of father, mother, daughter and son playing Monopoly. I listened to their conversation in a desultory manner as I got ready for bed.

“Are you sure it won’t ’urt, Mum?” asked the boy, shaking the dice vigorously.

“Corse it won’t, dear,” said the mother. “You ’erd what the doctor said.”

“Corse it won’t,” echoed the father. “It’s only your tonsils and your hadenoids. ’Tisn’t as though it was a big job, like.”

“Corse, it’s only a small operation,” said the mother. “You won’t feel anything at all.”

“I want to buy Piccadilly,” said the girl shrilly.

“You’ve seen ’em on the telly, ’aven’t you?” asked the father. “They don’t feel a thing. Even when it’s big things like taking the ’art out.”

“ ’Enry!” said the mother quellingly.

“Piccadilly, Piccadilly. I want Piccadilly,” said the little girl.

“But it’s afterwards,” said the boy. “It’s afterwards, when I come round, like. Then it’ll ’urt, I expect.”

“Na,” said his father. “Na, corse it won’t. They’ll ’ave you under sedition.”

“What’s that?” asked the boy.

“Drugs and things, dear,” said his mother soothingly. “Onest, you won’t feel a thing. Come on, it’s your turn.”

Poor little devil, I thought. Scared as hell, and the sight of me all covered with congealed blood can’t possibly do his morale any good. Never mind, I’ll have a few words with him afterwards when I’m cleaned up.

At that moment the nurse arrived.

“The doctor’s coming up to do your nose now,” she said, drawing the curtains round the bed.

“Ah,” I said pleasedly. “Is he going to cauterise it again?”

“I don’t expect so,” said the nurse. “Dr Veraswami likes plugging.”

Plugging, I thought, what a beautiful word. It summed up the plumbers’ art so succinctly. I plug, thou pluggest, he plugs, I thought. We pluggey, you pluggest, they plug. I stuff, thou stuffest, he stuffs...

But my thoughts on the English verbs were interrupted by the arrival of Dr Veraswami, who was a dark fawn colour and surveyed the world through enormous pebble spectacles. His hands, I noticed with satisfaction, were as slender as a girl’s, each long finger being very little thicker than the average cigarette. The sort of hands that were so delicate they reminded you of butterflies. Slim, elegant, fluttering and incapable of hurt. A healer’s hands. Dr Veraswami examined my nose, giving tiny falsetto grunts to indicate alarm at what he found.

“Ve vill have to plug the nose,” he said at last, smiling down at me.

“Help yourself,” I said hospitably. “Anything to stop it bleeding.”

“Nurse, you vill kindly get the things,” said the doctor, “then ye can begin.”

The nurse trotted off and the doctor stood at the end of the bed and waited.

“Which part of India are you from?” I asked conversationally.

“I am not coming from India. I am from Ceylon,” said the doctor.

Black mark, I thought, I must be careful.

“It’s a beautiful country, Ceylon,” I said heartily.

“Do you know it?” inquired the doctor.

“Well, not exactly. I once spent a week in Trincomalee. But I wouldn’t call that knowing Ceylon,” I said. “But I believe it’s very beautiful.”

The doctor, thus encouraged, went off like a travel poster.

“Very beautiful. On the coast ve have the coast with many palm trees, sandy beaches and sea breezes. Plenty of things to shoot. Then ye have the foothills, banana plantations and so forth. Very rich, very verdant. Plenty of things to shoot. Then there is the mountains. Very high, very green, many cool breezes. Views, of the most stupendous imagination. Plenty of things to shoot.

“It sounds wonderful,” I said uncertainly.

I was spared further eulogies on Ceylon by the reappearance of the nurse bearing the necessary accoutrements for the nose-plugging operation.

“Now, Nurse,” said the doctor busily, “vill you just hold the gentleman’s head steady. That’s it.”

He seized on the end of what appeared to be a bandage some three miles long with the end of a pair of sharply pointed forceps with very long blades. Then he strapped a light to his head and advanced upon me. The nurse’s grip on my skull tightened perceptibly. I wondered why. After all, Pimmie had plugged my nose with bandage and it had not hurt. The doctor plunged the forceps holding the bandage into my nostril and the pointed ends came to rest somewhere, it appeared, at the base of my skull, having penetrated my sinus, and left a searing trail of pain behind them. So severe was the pain that it paralysed my vocal cords so that I could not even utter a protest. The doctor removed the forceps and gathered up a foot or so of the bandage. This he plugged into the nostril and rammed it home with all the dedication of a duellist making sure that his pistol is primed. As he was packing the bandage home, his enthusiasm occasionally got the better of him and the pointed forceps would cut a groove in the delicate skin of the sinus. It now felt as thought the nostril was being packed with red-hot coals. Although my vocal cords had now returned to normal, I was prevented from voicing a protest for another reason. The Monopoly party had fallen silent and were listening avidly to the faint sounds that were coming from the curtain—shrouded bed. If, as my reason dictated, I uttered screams of pain, kicked Veraswami in the crotch and then burst from behind the curtains trailing yards of bandage in a wild bid to obtain freedom, this could only undermine the morale of the small boy now nervously awaiting his own operation. I would just have to put up with it. The nurse, in order to hold my head steady, had it clasped in a vice-like grip. So firmly was she holding it that her thumbs made two circular bruises over my eyebrows which did not fade for some days.

Veraswami continued to pack foot after foot of bandage into the offending nostril, pecking away at his task with the eagerness of a blackbird worming on an early morning lawn. When we reached what appeared to be the half-way mark, I, rather hoarsely, asked for a brief cessation in hostilities.

“Is it hurting?” asked Veraswami with what could have been academic interest but sounded more like relish.

“Yes,” I said.

The whole right-hand side of my skull, face and neck throbbed and ached as though it had been pounded with a sledge hammer and I felt that an egg dropped into my sinus would fry to a turn.

“Ve have to be cruel to be kind,” explained Veraswami, obviously delighted that his command over the English language had allowed him to use this well-worn maxim. The rest of the bandage (eleven feet of it, I discovered later) was packed in and then firmly wedged into place by Veraswami’s thumbs, which had ceased to be ethereal and butterfly-like. I had read of tears spurting from people’s eyes either from pain or grief and had always considered this to be poetic licence. I now learned differently. Under the ministration of Veraswami’s thumbs the tears of pain spurted from my screwed-up eyes like machine-gun bullets. Veraswami gave the bandage a final prod to make sure and then stood back with a satisfied smile.

“There,” he said. “That should fix it.”

I lifted my savagely aching head off the pillow and surveyed Veraswami.

“Has anyone ever suggested to you, Doctor, that you gave up trying to heal the sick and took up taxidermy?” I asked.

“No, no one,” said Dr Veraswami, puzzled.

I eased myself off the bed and started putting on my clothes.

“Well, I should try it,” I said. “In taxidermy you get no complaints from your patients.”

Veraswami had watched me dressing with increasing alarm. “But, vere are you going?” he asked. “You can’t leave. Not now. Supposing your nose started the bleeding again, I vould be left vith the can.”

“Take your forceps to a quiet corner and sit on them,” I advised tiredly. “I’m going back to Abbotsford.”

I found a taxi and drove back in it, thinking evil thoughts about the medical profession in general and Dr Veraswami in particular. I remembered that even in the 1920s if you took a short course in medicine in France, you were not allowed to practise medicine there but your papers were marked “Suitable for the Orient”. I wondered whether this was the Orient’s revenge.

Then I remembered the story, probably apocryphal, about the Indian who wanted above all else to get his BSc. He sat exams year after year and failed. At last, in desperation, the authorites suggested that he gave up trying to get a degree and turned his talents elsewhere. So he became an adviser on how to obtain the BSc, and to prove his worth he had cards printed which read “Mr Ram Sing, BSc (failed)”. Obviously, I thought, nursing my aching head, Veraswami (whose Christian name was probably Chipati) was what was known in the profession as Chipati Veraswami, MD (failed).

I arrived back at Abbotsford and Pimmie took a swift look at me.

“Did they fix it?” she asked.

“Don’t touch me,” I said. “They butchered me and I’m one gigantic exposed nerve ending. Offer me euthanasia and I’ll be your friend for life.”

“Into bed wit yer,” said Pimmie. “I’ll be back in a moment.” Tiredly, I removed my clothing and flopped into bed. Anything, even death, I thought, would be preferable to the pain I was now experiencing. I remembered, somewhat wryly, that I had come to Abbotsford for peace and quiet.

Pimmie entered the room with a hypodermic.

“Give me yer behind,” she commanded. “Morphine. Doctor’s orders.”

She administered the drug deftly and then peered at my face with great earnestness. I was not a prepossessing sight. My right eye was swollen and half closed, my nostril spread wide like a boxer’s by the preponderance of bandage, my beard and moustache an unlovely filigree of matted blood. She drew in her breath sharply and frowned.

“Sure and if I had them here I’d give them a bit of me mind,” she said with sudden savagery.

“It’s sweet of you to care,” I said drowsily. “I didn’t know you worried about me.”

Pimmie drew herself up sharply.

“Worry about you?” she asked witheringly. “I’m not worried about you. It’s all the extra work they’ve given me. That’s what worries me. You go to sleep now and stop yer blarney.”

She went to the door.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said, “and don’t let me find you awake.”

Chipati Veraswami, I thought, soothed on a cushion of morphia, MD (failed). Pimmie could teach him a thing or two. She passed.