The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [207]
“But I don’t want to be put down. I told your assistant here, I’ve simply consented to come at all, because the Director of Drama cried so, and he’s rather a darling. I’ve not the smallest intention of letting you kill me.”
While she spoke, Dr. Beamish’s geniality froze. He looked at her with hatred, not speaking. Then he picked up the pink form. “Then this no longer applies?”
“No.”
“Then for State’s sake,” said Dr. Beamish, very angry, “what are you wasting my time for? I’ve got more than a hundred urgent cases waiting outside and you come in here to tell me that the Director of Drama is a darling. I know the Director of Drama. We live side by side in the same ghastly hostel. He’s a pest. And I’m going to write a report to the Ministry about this tomfoolery which will make him and the lunatic who thinks he can perform a Klugmann, come round to me begging for extermination. And then I’ll put them at the bottom of the queue. Get her out of here, Plastic, and let some sane people in.”
Miles led her into the public waiting room. “What an old beast,” she said. “What a perfect beast. I’ve never been spoken to like that before even in the ballet school. He seemed so nice at first.”
“It’s his professional feeling,” said Miles. “He was naturally put out at losing such an attractive patient.”
She smiled. Her beard was not so thick as quite to obscure her delicate ovoid of cheek and chin. She might have been peeping at him over ripe heads of barley.
Her smile started in her wide grey eyes. Her lips under her golden moustachios were unpainted, tactile. A line of pale down sprang below them and ran through the centre of the chin, spreading and thickening and growing richer in colour till it met the full flow of the whiskers, but leaving on either side, clear and tender, two symmetrical zones, naked and provocative. So might have smiled some carefree deacon in the colonnaded schools of fifth-century Alexandria and struck dumb the heresiarchs.
“I think your beard is beautiful.”
“Do you really? I can’t help liking it too. I can’t help liking anything about myself, can you?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“That’s not natural.”
Clamour at the outer door interrupted the talk. Like gulls round a lighthouse the impatient victims kept up an irregular flap and slap on the panels.
“We’re all ready, Plastic,” said a senior official. “What’s going on this morning?”
What was going on? Miles could not answer. Turbulent sea birds seemed to be dashing themselves against the light in his own heart.
“Don’t go,” he said to the girl. “Please, I shan’t be a minute.”
“Oh, I’ve nothing to take me away. My department all think I’m half dead by now.”
Miles opened the door and admitted an indignant half-dozen. He directed them to their chairs, to the registry. Then he went back to the girl who had turned away slightly from the crowd and drawn a scarf peasantwise round her head, hiding her beard.
“I still don’t quite like people staring,” she said.
“Our patients are far too busy with their own affairs to notice anyone else,” said Miles. “Besides you’d have been stared at all right if you’d stayed on in ballet.”
Miles adjusted the television but few eyes in the waiting-room glanced towards it; all were fixed on the registrar’s table and the doors beyond.
“Think of them all coming here,” said the bearded girl.
“We give them the best service we can,” said Miles.
“Yes, of course, I know you do. Please don’t think I was finding fault. I only meant, fancy wanting to die.”
“One or two have good reasons.”
“I suppose you would say that I had. Everyone has been trying to persuade me, since my operation. The medical officials were the worst. They’re afraid they may get into trouble for doing it wrong. And then the ballet people were almost as bad. They are so keen on Art that they say: ‘You were the best of your class. You can never dance again. How can life be worth living?’ What I try to explain is that it’s just because I could dance that I know life is worth living. That’s what Art means to me. Does that sound very silly?”
“It sounds unorthodox.”