ranged along the mind-numbingly magnolia corridor, and divided from it by waist-to-ceiling windows with embedded wire graticules. Here and there a carpeted ledge supported a desiccated magazine rack or a succulent pot plant. The atmosphere was one Baz had come to expect; he’d been in many similar places. But what he’d never come to accept were the jerkily animate versions of Munch’s The Scream that thronged the corridor.
Of course, this was a sight that many others never even bothered to admit ; and which those who did managed to banish entirely, from the arrogant vantage of having read newspaper articles about effective combination therapy. If such stick-figure vistas existed anywhere any more – they thought – it was in Kinshasa or Kigali or some other sub-Saharan K-hole.
But in the Broderip Ward on that day in 1991, there were whole squadrons of young men with Bomber Command moustaches who had been targeted with the incendiary disease. Their radiator-grille ribcages and concentration-camp eyes telegraphed the dispatch that this was less a place for the mending of civilian injuries and quotidian wounds than a casualty station near the front line with Death. And if further confirmation were needed, it came in the form of the ongoing triage that accompanied these men. They clumped along on Scholl’s and Birkenstocks (natural footwear hardly alleviating their neuropathy), pulling their drips with them on wheeled stands. Their faces were studded with Kaposi’s sarcoma, and every third eye was patched. Some had the obscene, flesh-coloured, plastic plugs of Hickman lines clearly visible in their gaunt cleavages. Baz was compelled to slow down in order to negotiate these walking wounded, so, having had a lovely canter along Charlotte Street, he now entered Room 6 as if hobbled by the disease.
To find the same amazing squalor that was always associated with Henry Wotton. The familiar rankness infiltrated Baz’s nostrils, an acrid braiding of cigarette smoke, alcohol fumes and stale sweat. But this was underlain by hospital disinfectant, just as the overflowing ashtrays and stained glasses sat upon a hospital bed, a Formica-topped locker and a tray table rather than the mismatched pieces of furniture in the Chelsea house.
Still, there was a half-full bottle of Champagne and two red-wine empties; there were crumpled newspapers and cracked-spine books aplenty; and a silk scarf had been draped over an Anglepoise lamp, which was bent back so that it suffused boudoir light at the ceiling. Someone had also imported a trouser press, and draped over this were items of Wottonesque apparel: the Crombie, a suit jacket, a silk tie, a linen shirt with bloodied cuffs, and so forth. Without, on a tiny ledge snowed under by bird-shit, a pigeon stood on fungal feet coo-coughing in the eternal gloom of a light-well. In the top corner of the boxy room a television was wedged. It was on, the volume turned right down, and a female newsreader was whimpering about the collapse of the Soviet Union. In vases of coloured glass, expensive cut flowers were silently screaming as they smellily expired. Their demise served only to make the sickroom still more sickly.
Wotton himself was supine on the bed, Ray-Bans clamped across his eyes like the mask of a cartoon bandit. Perversely, Baz felt a reawakening of his thraldom, as, contemplating the waxy features, he was reassured to see that not only was Wotton not looking too bad, he was even looking better than Baz himself. ‘Henry?’ Even now he felt uneasy with the first name, as if he were employing slang with some dowager duchess.
Wotton undulated on the mattress and his dry tongue slitted open his thin mouth. ‘Ah, Baz,’ he croaked. ‘Like the poor, the pretentious are always with us. You never say goodbye, you only say au revoir and retire for a while to recoup your feigned seriousness.’ He undulated some more. ‘How are you, old friend?’ Baz found even this degree of warmth
Of course, this was a sight that many others never even bothered to admit ; and which those who did managed to banish entirely, from the arrogant vantage of having read newspaper articles about effective combination therapy. If such stick-figure vistas existed anywhere any more – they thought – it was in Kinshasa or Kigali or some other sub-Saharan K-hole.
But in the Broderip Ward on that day in 1991, there were whole squadrons of young men with Bomber Command moustaches who had been targeted with the incendiary disease. Their radiator-grille ribcages and concentration-camp eyes telegraphed the dispatch that this was less a place for the mending of civilian injuries and quotidian wounds than a casualty station near the front line with Death. And if further confirmation were needed, it came in the form of the ongoing triage that accompanied these men. They clumped along on Scholl’s and Birkenstocks (natural footwear hardly alleviating their neuropathy), pulling their drips with them on wheeled stands. Their faces were studded with Kaposi’s sarcoma, and every third eye was patched. Some had the obscene, flesh-coloured, plastic plugs of Hickman lines clearly visible in their gaunt cleavages. Baz was compelled to slow down in order to negotiate these walking wounded, so, having had a lovely canter along Charlotte Street, he now entered Room 6 as if hobbled by the disease.
To find the same amazing squalor that was always associated with Henry Wotton. The familiar rankness infiltrated Baz’s nostrils, an acrid braiding of cigarette smoke, alcohol fumes and stale sweat. But this was underlain by hospital disinfectant, just as the overflowing ashtrays and stained glasses sat upon a hospital bed, a Formica-topped locker and a tray table rather than the mismatched pieces of furniture in the Chelsea house.
Still, there was a half-full bottle of Champagne and two red-wine empties; there were crumpled newspapers and cracked-spine books aplenty; and a silk scarf had been draped over an Anglepoise lamp, which was bent back so that it suffused boudoir light at the ceiling. Someone had also imported a trouser press, and draped over this were items of Wottonesque apparel: the Crombie, a suit jacket, a silk tie, a linen shirt with bloodied cuffs, and so forth. Without, on a tiny ledge snowed under by bird-shit, a pigeon stood on fungal feet coo-coughing in the eternal gloom of a light-well. In the top corner of the boxy room a television was wedged. It was on, the volume turned right down, and a female newsreader was whimpering about the collapse of the Soviet Union. In vases of coloured glass, expensive cut flowers were silently screaming as they smellily expired. Their demise served only to make the sickroom still more sickly.
Wotton himself was supine on the bed, Ray-Bans clamped across his eyes like the mask of a cartoon bandit. Perversely, Baz felt a reawakening of his thraldom, as, contemplating the waxy features, he was reassured to see that not only was Wotton not looking too bad, he was even looking better than Baz himself. ‘Henry?’ Even now he felt uneasy with the first name, as if he were employing slang with some dowager duchess.
Wotton undulated on the mattress and his dry tongue slitted open his thin mouth. ‘Ah, Baz,’ he croaked. ‘Like the poor, the pretentious are always with us. You never say goodbye, you only say au revoir and retire for a while to recoup your feigned seriousness.’ He undulated some more. ‘How are you, old friend?’ Baz found even this degree of warmth
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