The Doctor Is Sick by Anthony Burgess Page B

uncombed sluts reached out for milk bottles, a man or two walked out looking ashamed and unshaven. But the Farnworth was not squalid. It was wanly respectable and had flowers in boxes. Edwin walked up and down outside, peering shyly into the breakfast room. Sheila was not yet there, but it was still early. He noticed a young man in a pullover make a sandwich of his fried egg; an Indian girl ate dry cornflakes with her fingers; there was a man wholooked Iranian wearing his hat at table. A typical cheap London hotel.
    Breakfasters went and new ones took over their milk jugs. A grey-haired woman served – her spectacles blind, her mouth open, her soul withdrawn from her actions. Edwin waited. Soon a couple came down with a naughty child who would eat no breakfast. This child came to the window, pointed at Edwin’s cap and began to cry for it. Edwin hurried down the street and inspected a wall of posters. An ersatz gravy shouted its virtues through the medium of a vast mixed grill, sausages three feet long, tomato slices like bicycle wheels, perpetually cooling in the London air. A model who looked not unlike that EEG bitch smoked a new cigarette called KOOLKAT. There was a sauce named MUSTAVIT, an imbecile husband spattering it on his plate, a rosy housewife telling the street: ‘My hubby says he must have it.’
    Edwin went back to the breakfast-room window. That child was now, apparently, kicking on the floor. Among the eyes that looked down frankly or were decently averted, Sheila’s were not to be seen. It was time to be bold and inquire. He went up the steps and rang the bell. After an interval a fierce old man with white locks drooping from a middle parting, dirty-aproned, a fish-slice in his hand, came and said with no warmth:
    â€˜Ah?’
    â€˜Excuse me, I’ve just come out of the hospital round the corner, that explains my curious get-up, is Mrs Spindrift in, please?’
    â€˜Meesseess——?’
    â€˜Spindrift. Rather a curious name, I know, but it is actually a name, believe me, it’s my name too.’
    â€˜Here is staying nobody of such name. There was staying, but not now no longer.’
    â€˜Would you mind telling me when she left?’
    â€˜Yesterday, day before, who knows? Here today, gone tomorrow is rule of hotels. Excuse, fish is burning.’
    â€˜But did she leave no message, no address?’
    There was a scream from the kitchen. ‘I tell you,’ said the old man, ‘fish is burning. I go now, I know no more.’ And he closed the door, nodding. Edwin stood on the steps, frightened, hesitating. This he had not expected. But the Farnworth Hotel had not yet finished with him. The grey-haired sleep-walking woman came, opened the door and said: ‘What name?’ She was evidently English.
    â€˜Spindrift.’
    â€˜Yes. A good name for a washing-machine, I thought when she wrote it in the book.’ There was nothing somnambulist about her voice: it was commercial and bitter. ‘But that’s not the only reason why I’m not likely to forget it in a hurry. I wouldn’t have her any longer, and you can tell her from me that it’s no good her trying to come back under another name, because I shall know who she is. A man in the room with her, indeed, and her poor husband a sick man in hospital. And if you’re another of these men after her, I’m very happy to tell you that she’s gone and I don’t know where you’ll find her. The things that go on.’ The fish in the kitchen hissed loudly. ‘So there.’ And she closed the door.
    Edwin stood for a short while in dismay. He would, of course, find her sooner or later, but it had been Sheila as a dispenser of cash or Sheila a hat-and-shirt-buyer that he had needed at once. And socks also. A bit of a Daily Window cartoon had worked its way out of his right shoe.The frame showed a generic tashed and sideboarded gangster with a striped shirt