Gerald Durrell - Fillets of Plaice

“Have yer tried sticking something up yer nose?” asked the driver, suddenly struck by this powerful thought.

I explained that my right nostril had had so much rammed up it that it closely resembled a municipal rubbish dump. At the hospital, I explained, they intended to cauterise.

“That’s what they used to do in the old days, isn’t it?” asked the driver with considerable interest.

“How do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

“Well, they’d hang, draw and cauterise yous, wouldn’t they?”

“No, no. That was something quite different,” I said, adding, “I hope.”

We arrived at the hospital after driving up a ramp that had a notice saying (I could have sworn to this) “No Protestants” but which later proved to read “No Pedestrians”. I attributed this misreading to my close association with the Irish throughout the evening.

We bustled inside and found it free of drugged hippies, meths drinkers and little boys with tin potties jammed on their heads. In fact, the out-patients was deserted except for the duty nurse. She ushered us into a sort of tabernacle and laid me tenderly on a species of operating table.

“The doctor will be with you in a minute,” she said with reverence in her voice, as though announcing the Second Coming. Presently, what appeared to be a fourteen-year-old boy clan in a white coat made his appearance.

“Good evening, sir. Good evening,” he said heartily, rubbing his hands together, obviously practising for Harley Street. “You have a nosebleed, I understand, sir.”

Seeing that my beard and moustache were stiff with congealed blood and that it was still dribbling from my right nostril and that my clothing was plentifully bespattered with gore, I did not feel that this was a particularly brilliant and perceptive diagnosis.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” said the doctor, producing two pairs of forceps, “we’ll just have a look at the damage, shall we, sir?”

He spread the nostril as wide as a bushman’s with one pair of forceps and with the other proceeded to pull out several feet of bloodstained bandage.

“Ah, yes,” he said intelligently, peering into the gory cavity thus revealed, “you appear to have something more up there, sir.”

“They pushed everything they could find up there,” I said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you found a brace of staff nurses and a matron or two lolling about in the labyrinthine passages of my sinus.”

The doctor laughed nervously and removed a slab of cotton wool from my nostril.

“Ah,” he said, peering up the nostril with a small torch. “Yes, I see. I have found the bleeding spot. As a matter of fact, you have got one or two large veins up there, sir, which would be well worth keeping an eye on.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I wondered how you kept an eye on a vein that was lurking in the dimmer recesses of the nose.

“Now,” said the doctor, “a little cocaine to, you know, kill it, as it were.”

He seized something like a scent spray and squirted cocaine up my nose.

“That’s it,” he went on chattily. “Now, Nurse, if I can have the cautery stick? That’s it. Now, this won’t hurt, sir.”

Curiously enough, it did not hurt.

“That’s it,” said the doctor again, standing back with the air of a conjurer who has just successfully performed a particularly complicated trick.

“You mean that’s all?” I asked in astonishment.

“Yes,” said the doctor, peering up the nose with his torch, “that’s all. It shouldn’t give you any more trouble sir.”

“I really am most grateful,” I said, vacating the operating table with alacrity.

Pimmie and I made our way out to where the taxi was waiting.

“My, that was quick,” said the driver admiringly. “I quite thought yer’d be in there an hour or a couple.”

“No, they made a very quick job of it,” I said, taking deep, unrestrained and joyful breaths through my nose.

The taxi rumbled down the ramp and into the street. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!” said Pimrnie suddenly and with considerable vehemence.

“What’s the matter?” asked the driver and I in unison, startled.

“We’ve been to the wrong hospital,” said Pimmie faintly.

“Wrong hospital? What do you mean?” I asked.

“Wrong hospital? No, that was the one you asked for,” said the driver aggrievedly.

“It wasn’t,” said Pimmie. “It said St Thomas’s on the side. We were supposed to go to the Waterloo.”

“But it’s by the bridge. You said by the bridge,” the driver pointed out. “Look, there’s the bridge.”

He gave the impression that life was quite difficult enough without the added complication of somebody shifting all the London hospitals around.

“I don’t care where it is,” said Pimmie, “it’s the wrong hospital. It’s not the Waterloo.”

“Does it matter?” I asked. “After all, they did the job.”

“Yes, but I’d alerted the Waterloo,” Pinimie explained. “The night staff were expecting us.”

“Come to think of it,” said the driver thoughtfully, “Waterloo does sound a little bit like St Thomas’s, if you follow me, especially if yer driving a cab.”

There did not seem to be a really adequate reply to this.

We returned to Abbotsford and while I sat drinking gallons of lukewarm tea, Pimmie went to phone the Waterloo hospital and explain the confusion.

“I told them it was your fault,” she said triumphantly on her return. “I said you were a bit nutty and we put yer in a taxi and yer’d given the taxi driver the wrong hospital.”

“Thanks very much,” I said.

That night and the following day passed uneventfully except that another patient endeavoured to sell me a fake Louis Quinze dining-table in the reception hall and another one insisted on practising Morse code on my door. However, these were minor irritations and my nose behaved beautifully.

When Pimmie came on night duty that evening she fixed me with a basilisk stare.

“Well,” she enquired, “have yer had any more trouble with yer nose?”

“Not a thing,” I said with pride, and the words were hardly out of my mouth when my nose started to bleed again.

“Dear God! Why d’yer have to wait until I come on duty?” inquired Pimmie. “Why can’t yer give the day nurses a treat?”

“It’s your beauty, Pimmie,” I said. “It sends my blood pressure up and starts my nose bleeding.”

“Whereabouts in Ireland did yer say yer came from?” enquired Pimmie, busy stuffing an adrenalin-soaked bandage up my nose.

“ Gomorrah, on the borders of Sodom,” I said promptly.

“I don’t believe yer,” said Pimmie, “although ye’ve got enough blarney for five ordinary Irishmen.”

But her ministrations with the bandage were of no avail. The nose continued to drip like a tap with a faulty washer. Eventually Pimmie gave up exhausted and went to phone Dr Grubbins for further instructions.

“Dr Grubbins says yer to go to the Waterloo Hospital,” she said on her return, “and he says will yer try and get the right hospital this time.”

“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.

“No,” said Pimmie.

“But, why not?” I protested.

“I don’t know the hell,” said Pimmie. “But yer going in a staff car with a driver.”

The staff car driver was determined to take his passenger’s mind off his troubles.

“Nasty thing, nosebleeds,” he said chattily. “We used to get a lot of them when I played rugger, but I’m getting too old for that now.”

“Too old for nosebleeds?” I inquired.

“No, no. For rugger, I mean,” said the driver. “Do you play at all yourself, sir?”