Gerald Durrell - Fillets of Plaice

“No,” I said. “I dislike all organised ball games except one.”

“And which one is that, sir?” asked the driver with interest. It was obvious that he could hold forth in the same boring manner about any game that had ever been invented. He must be silenced at all costs.

“Sex,” I said brutally, and we travelled the rest of the way in silence.

At the hospital a pleasant night sister led me into a ward which at first sight appeared to be deserted. Then I saw in a remote bed an old man coughing and trembling his way along the brink of the grave and, at a table some six feet away from and east of my bed, a family group of father, mother, daughter and son playing Monopoly. I listened to their conversation in a desultory manner as I got ready for bed.

“Are you sure it won’t ’urt, Mum?” asked the boy, shaking the dice vigorously.

“Corse it won’t, dear,” said the mother. “You ’erd what the doctor said.”

“Corse it won’t,” echoed the father. “It’s only your tonsils and your hadenoids. ’Tisn’t as though it was a big job, like.”

“Corse, it’s only a small operation,” said the mother. “You won’t feel anything at all.”

“I want to buy Piccadilly,” said the girl shrilly.

“You’ve seen ’em on the telly, ’aven’t you?” asked the father. “They don’t feel a thing. Even when it’s big things like taking the ’art out.”

“ ’Enry!” said the mother quellingly.

“Piccadilly, Piccadilly. I want Piccadilly,” said the little girl.

“But it’s afterwards ,” said the boy. “It’s afterwards , when I come round, like. Then it’ll ’urt, I expect.”

“Na,” said his father. “Na, corse it won’t. They’ll ’ave you under sedition.”

“What’s that?” asked the boy.

“Drugs and things, dear,” said his mother soothingly. “Onest, you won’t feel a thing. Come on, it’s your turn.”

Poor little devil, I thought. Scared as hell, and the sight of me all covered with congealed blood can’t possibly do his morale any good. Never mind, I’ll have a few words with him afterwards when I’m cleaned up.

At that moment the nurse arrived.

“The doctor’s coming up to do your nose now,” she said, drawing the curtains round the bed.

“Ah,” I said pleasedly. “Is he going to cauterise it again?”

“I don’t expect so,” said the nurse. “Dr Veraswami likes plugging.”

Plugging, I thought, what a beautiful word. It summed up the plumbers’ art so succinctly. I plug, thou pluggest, he plugs, I thought. We pluggey, you pluggest, they plug. I stuff, thou stuffest, he stuffs...

But my thoughts on the English verbs were interrupted by the arrival of Dr Veraswami, who was a dark fawn colour and surveyed the world through enormous pebble spectacles. His hands, I noticed with satisfaction, were as slender as a girl’s, each long finger being very little thicker than the average cigarette. The sort of hands that were so delicate they reminded you of butterflies. Slim, elegant, fluttering and incapable of hurt. A healer’s hands. Dr Veraswami examined my nose, giving tiny falsetto grunts to indicate alarm at what he found.

“Ve vill have to plug the nose,” he said at last, smiling down at me.

“Help yourself,” I said hospitably. “Anything to stop it bleeding.”

“Nurse, you vill kindly get the things,” said the doctor, “then ye can begin.”

The nurse trotted off and the doctor stood at the end of the bed and waited.

“Which part of India are you from?” I asked conversationally.

“I am not coming from India. I am from Ceylon,” said the doctor.

Black mark, I thought, I must be careful.

“It’s a beautiful country, Ceylon,” I said heartily.

“Do you know it?” inquired the doctor.

“Well, not exactly. I once spent a week in Trincomalee. But I wouldn’t call that knowing Ceylon,” I said. “But I believe it’s very beautiful.”

The doctor, thus encouraged, went off like a travel poster.

“Very beautiful. On the coast ve have the coast with many palm trees, sandy beaches and sea breezes. Plenty of things to shoot. Then ye have the foothills, banana plantations and so forth. Very rich, very verdant. Plenty of things to shoot. Then there is the mountains. Very high, very green, many cool breezes. Views, of the most stupendous imagination. Plenty of things to shoot.

“It sounds wonderful,” I said uncertainly.

I was spared further eulogies on Ceylon by the reappearance of the nurse bearing the necessary accoutrements for the nose-plugging operation.

“Now, Nurse,” said the doctor busily, “vill you just hold the gentleman’s head steady. That’s it.”

He seized on the end of what appeared to be a bandage some three miles long with the end of a pair of sharply pointed forceps with very long blades. Then he strapped a light to his head and advanced upon me. The nurse’s grip on my skull tightened perceptibly. I wondered why. After all, Pimmie had plugged my nose with bandage and it had not hurt. The doctor plunged the forceps holding the bandage into my nostril and the pointed ends came to rest somewhere, it appeared, at the base of my skull, having penetrated my sinus, and left a searing trail of pain behind them. So severe was the pain that it paralysed my vocal cords so that I could not even utter a protest. The doctor removed the forceps and gathered up a foot or so of the bandage. This he plugged into the nostril and rammed it home with all the dedication of a duellist making sure that his pistol is primed. As he was packing the bandage home, his enthusiasm occasionally got the better of him and the pointed forceps would cut a groove in the delicate skin of the sinus. It now felt as thought the nostril was being packed with red-hot coals. Although my vocal cords had now returned to normal, I was prevented from voicing a protest for another reason. The Monopoly party had fallen silent and were listening avidly to the faint sounds that were coming from the curtain—shrouded bed. If, as my reason dictated, I uttered screams of pain, kicked Veraswami in the crotch and then burst from behind the curtains trailing yards of bandage in a wild bid to obtain freedom, this could only undermine the morale of the small boy now nervously awaiting his own operation. I would just have to put up with it. The nurse, in order to hold my head steady, had it clasped in a vice-like grip. So firmly was she holding it that her thumbs made two circular bruises over my eyebrows which did not fade for some days.

Veraswami continued to pack foot after foot of bandage into the offending nostril, pecking away at his task with the eagerness of a blackbird worming on an early morning lawn. When we reached what appeared to be the half-way mark, I, rather hoarsely, asked for a brief cessation in hostilities.

“Is it hurting?” asked Veraswami with what could have been academic interest but sounded more like relish.

“Yes,” I said.

The whole right-hand side of my skull, face and neck throbbed and ached as though it had been pounded with a sledge hammer and I felt that an egg dropped into my sinus would fry to a turn.

“Ve have to be cruel to be kind,” explained Veraswami, obviously delighted that his command over the English language had allowed him to use this well-worn maxim. The rest of the bandage (eleven feet of it, I discovered later) was packed in and then firmly wedged into place by Veraswami’s thumbs, which had ceased to be ethereal and butterfly-like. I had read of tears spurting from people’s eyes either from pain or grief and had always considered this to be poetic licence. I now learned differently. Under the ministration of Veraswami’s thumbs the tears of pain spurted from my screwed-up eyes like machine-gun bullets. Veraswami gave the bandage a final prod to make sure and then stood back with a satisfied smile.