The Doctor Is Sick Read Online Free Page A

grey. He put on further health and sanity with his clothes, combed his hair sleek, lit a cigarette. But he still felt insufficiently armed. Money, of course, the lack of money. He had given the whole of his two months’ salary, paid in advance in Moulmein, converted now to five-pound notes, to his wife. His wallet was thin and his pockets, save for a few shillings, empty.
    Nobody commented, nobody seemed to notice as he passed the glass case of the ward office. The nurses in there were giggling about something which belonged to their world without uniform, world of frocks and dances. Out of the tail of the eye they saw, perhaps, the clothes of a visitor. Edwin shut the heavy outer ward doors behind him and began to run downstairs. In the corridor that led to the vestibule were busts of bearded medical giants, set high in niches, a plaque of commemoration he had no inclination to read. Nor time, for, behind him, he heard a singing negro voice, that of the grave giver of ice-cream.
    Bells for the departure of visitors rang. It was incredibly easy. He passed the porter’s desk jauntily, swinging his left arm. Outside, the main doors behind him, he was hit full inthe chest by autumn. The doggy wind leapt about him and nipped; leaves skirred along the pavement, the scrape of the ferrules of sticks; melancholy, that tetrasyllable, sat on a plinth in the middle of the square. English autumn, and the whistling tiny souls of the dead round the war memorial. Edwin shivered, walked across the square and down an alleyway – flats on one side, a cut-price chiromancer on the other. He crossed a street of Sunday autumn strollers, turned a corner and came straight to the heartening façade of a tube station. Tubes meant both normality and escape. He looked down at his feet and saw that he was still wearing bedroom slippers. He wondered whether to whimper to himself, but then saw, across the street on a corner, the pub called the Anchor. He crossed, uncertain. Next to the pub was a narrow alley which a truck tried vainly to enter. The truck roared, thrust and backed, chipping two walls, clanging a mudguard on a street-post. Edwin skirted the truck, found beyond the alley a mean restaurant. From it came that percussion of knives and forks he had heard beyond the bed-screens last night, but this was robuster. The eaters could be seen through the two smeared shop-windows. One of them was Charlie, eating spaghetti unhandily, rolling sauced bales on to his fork and patiently watching them collapse back to his plate. By him was a wall-eyed man in a beret, lunching off beans. Charlie, his mouth open for a new attempt, turned towards the window and saw Edwin. He kept his mouth open but now ignored the load on his fork. ‘In,’ he mouthed through the window, jerking head and free thumb inwards. Edwin, with gestures of regret, pointed downwards at his bedroom slippers. ‘Hardly right. People might think eccentric.’ Charlie pressed his brow tothe window, mouth still open, trying to look down. He saw no dog. He hesitated between eating the forkful and coming out to Edwin. His jaws pounced. Nodding triumph to the wall-eyed man and to Edwin, he chewed and swallowed; stray spaghetti-ends were drawn in, as if fascinated. Chewing, he came out to Edwin.
    â€˜You shouldn’t be here. You should be back there. Who said you could come out?’ he bullied. ‘You’re ill.’
    â€˜It’s my wife. Sheila. She didn’t come.’
    â€˜You have it out with her,’ said Charlie. ‘I wash my hands of the whole business. If you collapse now on the street I’m not taking any responsibility.’
    â€˜Where is she?’ asked Edwin.
    â€˜Where is she? How should I know where she is? I’m in there having a bite to eat with my mate. Spaghetti, as you can see. I’m not responsible. Now you get back to that hospital in double-quick time.’
    â€˜I must see her first.’ His feet were