you see it? You ought to be drummed out of the medical council or whatever it is that they do for malpractice.”
“Mumps are very difficult to diagnose in the … er … early stages,” said Theodore, “until the swellings appear.”
“Typical of the medical profession,” said Larry bitterly. “They can’t even spot a disease until the patient is twice life-size. It’s a scandal.”
“As long as it doesn’t affect your … um … you know … um … your … er … lower quarters,” said Theodore thoughtfully, “you should be all right in a few days.”
“Lower quarters?” Larry asked, mystified. “What lower quarters?”
“Well, er … you know … mumps causes swelling of the glands,” explained Theodore, “and so if it travels down the body and affects the glands in your … um … lower quarters, it can be very painful indeed.”
“You mean I’ll swell up and start looking like a bull elephant?” asked Larry in horror.
“Mmm, er … yes,” said Theodore, finding he could not better this description.
“It’s a plot to make me sterile!” shouted Larry. “You and your bloody tincture of bat’s blood! You’re jealous of my virility.”
To say that Larry was a bad patient would be putting it mildly. He had an enormous hand-bell by the bed which he rang incessantly for attention, and Mother had to examine his nether regions about twenty times a day to assure him that he was not in any way affected. When it was discovered that it was Leonora’s baby that had given him mumps, he threatened to excommunicate it.
“I’m its godfather,” he said. “Why can’t I excommunicate the ungrateful little bastard?”
By the fourth day we were all beginning to feel the strain, and then Captain Creech appeared to see Larry. Captain Creech, a retired mariner of lecherous habits, was mother’s bête noire. His determined pursuit of anything female, and Mother in particular, in spite of his seventy-odd years, was a constant source of annoyance to her, as were the captain’s completely uninhibited behavior and one-track mind.
“Ahoy!” he shouted, staggering into the bedroom, his lopsided jaw waggling, his wispy beard and hair standing on end, his rheumy eyes watering. “Ahoy, there! Bring out your dead!”
Mother, who was just examining Larry for the fourth time that day, straightened up and glared at him.
“Do you mind, Captain?” she said coldly. “This is supposed to be a sickroom, not a bar parlor.”
“Got you in the bedroom at last!” said Creech, beaming, taking no notice of Mother’s expression. “Now, if the boy moves over; we can have a little cuddle.”
“I’m far too busy to cuddle, thank you,” said Mother frostily.
“Well, well,” said the captain, seating himself on the bed, “what’s this namby-pamby mumps thing you’ve got, huh, boy? Child stuff! If you want to be ill, be ill properly, like a man. Why, when I was your age, nothing but a dose of clap would have done for me.”
“Captain, I would be glad if you would not reminisce in front of Gerry,” said Mother firmly.
“It hasn’t affected the old manhood, has it?” asked the captain with concern. “Terrible when it gets you in the crutch. Can ruin a man’s sex life, mumps in the crutch.”
“Larry is perfectly all right, thank you,” said Mother with dignity.
“Talking of crutches,” said the captain, “have you heard about the young Hindu virgin from Kutch? Who kept two tame snakes in her crutch? She said when they wriggle, it’s a bit of a giggle, but my boyfriends don’t like my crutch much. Ha ha ha!”
“Really, Captain!” said Mother, outraged. “I do wish you wouldn’t recite poetry in front of Gerry.”
“Got your mail. I was passing the post office,” the captain went on, oblivious of Mother’s strictures, pulling it out of his pocket and tossing it onto the bed. “My, they’ve got a nice little bit serving in there now. She’d win a prize for the best marrows in any horticultural show.”
But Larry was not listening; he had extracted a postcard from the mail Captain Creech had brought and, having read it, he started to laugh uproariously.
“What is it, dear?” asked Mother.
“A postcard from the count,” said Larry, wiping his eyes.
“Oh, him,” sniffed Mother, “well, I don’t want to know about him.”
“Oh, yes, you will,” said Larry. “It’s worth being ill just to be able to get this. I’m starting to feel better already.”
He picked up the postcard and read it out to us. The count had obviously got someone to write the card for him, and the person’s command of English was fragile but inventive.
“I have reeching Rome,” it began. “I am in clinic inflicted by disease called moops. Have inflicted all over. I finding I cannot arrange myself. I have no hunger and impossible I am sitting. Beware yourself the moops. Count Rossignol.”
“Poor man,” said Mother without conviction when we had all stopped laughing, “we shouldn’t really laugh.”
“No,” said Larry. “I’m going to write and ask him if Greek moops are inferior in virulence to French moops.”
An habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
ISAIAH 34:13
SPRING, IN ITS SEASON, came like a fever; it was as though the island shifted and turned uneasily in the warm, wet bed of winter and then, suddenly and vibrantly, was fully awake, stirring with life under a sky as blue as a hyacinth bud into which a sun would rise, wrapped in mist as fragile and as delicately yellow as a silkworm’s newly completed cocoon. For me, spring was one of the best times, for all the animal life of the island was astir and the air was full of hope. Maybe today I would catch the biggest terrapin I had ever seen or fathom the mystery of how a baby tortoise, emerging from its egg as crushed and wrinkled as a walnut, would, within an hour, have swelled to twice its size and have smoothed out most of its wrinkles in consequence. The whole island was a-bustle and ringing with sound. I would awake early, breakfast hurriedly under the tangerine trees already fragrant with the warmth of the early sun, gather my nets and collecting boxes, whistle for Roger, Widdle and Puke, and set off to explore my kingdom.
Up in the hills, in the miniature forests of heather and broom, where the sun-warmed rocks were embossed with strange lichens like ancient seals, the tortoises would be emerging from their winter sleep, pushing aside the earth that they had slept under and jerking slowly out into the sun, blinking and gulping. They would
