TWO
It turns out that my ankle is broken in more places than a Foreign Secretary’s promises and they keep me in hospital for three days. I have a private room, which surprises me at first until I find out that it is courtesy of a certain Dr. Dunbar—small world, isn’t it? I make a few inquiries and it seems that this party has taken his wife and kids on a camping holiday to the South of France, so he isn’t around to be thanked. You could knock me down with a feather—or half a brick, if you had one handy. So Cupid Lea strikes again! What a carve-up! Why wasn’t I in the marriage guidance business? I might not be able to do myself any good, but I was obviously the kiss of death to the permissive society.
One of the advantages of a private room, apart from the fact that the other buggers couldn’t nosh your fruit, was that it gave you an uninterrupted crack at the nurses, and some were little darlings. I’ve always been kinky about black stockings and Florence Nightingale, and with one pert red-head the very presence of her thermometer under my tongue was enough to raise the bedclothes a couple of inches. There is nothing more randy-making than lying in bed with sod-all else to do but fiddle about under the bedclothes and by the end of my time, the nurses had to come into the room in pairs and my arm had grown half a foot grabbing at them. It didn’t do me any good, although I did corner the red head in the linen cupboard on my last morning and pin her against a pile of pillow cases with my crutch (the one you prop under your arm). I had just got one hand into that delicious no-man’s-land between stocking top and knickers (I hate tights) when Sister came in looking like a scraped beetroot and I had to say goodbye quickly. All very sad but life is full of little might-have-beens.
Eight weeks later it was time to take the plaster off and I was bloody grateful because every berk in the neighbourhood had used it as a scribbling pad to demonstrate his pathetic sense of humour. Word of my escapade had got around and there were a lot of cracks about ‘Batman’ and ‘Peter Pan’ which I found pretty childish.
I hate going to the Doctor because the waiting room smells of sick people and most of the magazines are older than I am. It is cold and badly lit and the stuffed owl in a glass case looks as if you’d only have to give it a nudge for all its feathers to fall out. Everybody seems healthy enough but I have a nasty feeling that underneath the clothes their bodies are erupting in a series of disgusting sores covering limbs held together by sellotape. Behind the serving hatch a parched slag of about 182 dispenses pills and indifference. In such an atmosphere I wonder why the N.H.S. doesn’t dispense a do-it-yourself knotting kit and have done with it.
When I get in to his surgery, Doctor Murdoch attacks my plaster as if gutting a fish that has done him a personal injury. From the look of him one would guess that he had just returned from a meths drinkers’ stag party. The sight of my ankle causes his prim lips to contract into walnuts and I can sympathise with him. The object we are both staring at looks like a swollen inner tube painted the colour of a gangrenous sunset.
“What do you do?” he barks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you’re a ballroom dancer, you’d better get down to the labour exchange.”
“It’s going to be alright, isn’t it?” I whine. I mean, what with heart transplants and artificial kidneys you expect them to be able to mend a bloody broken ankle, don’t you?
“You’ll be able to walk on it, but I won’t make any promises about the next Olympic Games,” says Murdoch who must be a laugh riot at his medical school reunions.
“I’m a window cleaner,” I pipe.
“You were,” says Murdoch. “That ankle has been very badly broken. You can’t risk any antics on it. I’m amazed we’ve got it together as well as we have.” I’m speechless for a moment. All those windows, all those birds. I could weep just thinking about it. What are they going to do without me? What am I going to do without them?
Added to that, there is the money.
“Are you positive?” I gulp.
“Absolutely. Of course, you don’t have to take my advice but you’d be a damn fool to get on a ladder again.”
So there I am, redundant at 22. Lots of blokes would envy me but there is a crazy streak of ambition in the Leas and I’m too patriotic to go on National Assistance—at least for a few years yet. What am I going to do?
Broken-hearted, I manage to get pissed and return to the family home. As I have already indicated relations with Dad have been strained since Sid’s departure and my accident has not drawn forth the sympathy one could expect from a father figure. I suspect that this may be due to some of the rumours that have been circulating. “Look Mother,” he sings out as I come through the door. “It’s the Birdman of Alcatraz!”
This is really witty for Dad and besides confirming my suspicions is an unkind allusion to a few months I once spent at reform school.
“Shutup, you miserable old git!” I say.
“Don’t raise your voice to me, sonny,” says Dad, “otherwise I’ll start asking you when you first began to clean windows in the all-together. Got a nudist camp on the rounds, I suppose?”
Dad and Doctor Murdoch would make a wonderful comedy team, and I’m wondering what Hughie Green’s telephone number is when Mum chips in.
“Do leave him alone, Dad, he’s told you enough times what happened.”
“Oh, yes, Mother. I know all that. He was stretched out on the roof, wasn’t he, having a little sunbathe. Then this bloke opens a window, dislodges the ladder. Timmy grabs at it, slips, loses his balance and does a swallow dive into the street. Sounds very likely, doesn’t it?”
“I really can’t be bothered—” I begin.
“I suppose that bird got a black eye when you landed on top of her?”
“I wonder what your excuse is going to be, Dad?”
“Don’t adopt that tone with me, Sonny Jim. I could still teach you a few lessons if it came to the pinch.”
“Well, prove it, or shut up.”
I mean it, too. Every few weeks or it is probably days now, Dad and I are squaring up to each other and sooner or later I am going to dot the stupid old bugger one. Nothing happens this time because mum throws a tantrum and sister Rosie arrives with little Jason.
“I can’t stand it, I can’t stand it,” Mum is wailing when little dribble jaws shoves his jam-stained mug round the door and her mood changes faster than a bloke finding that the large lump in the middle of his new cement path is his mother-in-law.
“Hello darling,” she coos. “Who’s come to see his Grand-mummy, then? Ooh, and what a nasty runny nose we’ve got. Doesn’t naughty mummy give you your lovely cod liver oil, then?”
Honestly, Rosie must feel like belting her sometimes. She still exists in a world of cod liver oil, cascara and milk of magnesia. Open your bowels and live might be her motto.
Mum and Rosie go rabbiting on and little Jason rubs his filthy fingers all over the moquette. Just like old times. I haven’t had a chance to tell anyone about my problem, and nobody would be interested, anyway.
“How are the lessons going, dear?” says Mum.
“Oh,
