The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [210]
He looked hard at other girls as he passed them in the dim corridors of the Dome and they looked boldly back at him. Then one of them stopped him and said: “I’ve seen you before with Clara” and at the mention of her name all interest in the other girl ceased in pain. “I went to visit her yesterday.”
“Where?”
“In hospital, of course. Didn’t you know?”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“She won’t say. Nor will anyone else at the hospital. She’s top secret. If you ask me she’s been in an accident and there’s some politician involved. I can’t think of any other reason for all the fuss. She’s covered in bandages and gay as a lark.”
Next day, December 25th, was Santa Claus Day; no holiday in the department of Euthanasia, which was an essential service. At dusk Miles walked to the hospital, one of the unfinished edifices, all concrete and steel and glass in front and a jumble of huts behind. The hall porter was engrossed in the television, which was performing an old obscure folk play which past generations had performed on Santa Claus Day, and was now revived and revised as a matter of historical interest.
It was of professional interest to the porter for it dealt with maternity services before the days of Welfare. He gave the number of Clara’s room without glancing up from the strange spectacle of an ox and an ass, an old man with a lantern, and a young mother. “People here are always complaining,” he said. “They ought to realize what things were like before Progress.”
The corridors were loud with relayed music. Miles found the hut he sought. It was marked “Experimental Surgery. Health Officers Only.” He found the cubicle. He found Clara sleeping, the sheet pulled up to her eyes, her hair loose on the pillow. She had brought some of her property with her. An old shawl lay across the bed table. A painted fan stood against the television set. She awoke, her eyes full of frank welcome, and pulled the sheet higher, speaking through it.
“Darling, you shouldn’t have come. I was keeping it for a surprise.”
Miles sat by the bed and thought of nothing to say except: “How are you?”
“Wonderful. They’ve taken the bandages off today. They won’t let me have a looking glass yet but they say everything has been a tremendous success. I’m something very special, Miles—a new chapter in surgical progress.”
“But what has happened to you? Is it something to do with the baby?”
“Oh no. At least, it was. That was the first operation. But that’s all over now.”
“You mean our child?”
“Yes, that had to go. I should never have been able to dance afterwards. I told you all about it. That was why I had the Klugmann operation, don’t you remember?”
“But you gave up dancing.”
“That’s where they’ve been so clever. Didn’t I tell you about the sweet, clever new medical director? He’s cured all that.”
“Your dear beard.”
“Quite gone. An operation the new director invented himself. It’s going to be named after him or even perhaps after me. He’s so unselfish he wants to call it the Clara operation. He’s taken off all the skin and put on a wonderful new substance, a sort of synthetic rubber that takes grease-paint perfectly. He says the colour isn’t perfect but that it will never show on the stage. Look, feel it.”
She sat up in bed, joyful and proud.
Her eyes and brow were all that was left of the loved face. Below it something quite inhuman, a tight, slippery mask, salmon pink.
Miles stared. In the television screen by the bed further characters had appeared—Food Production Workers. They seemed to declare a sudden strike, left their sheep and ran off at the bidding of some kind of shop-steward in fantastic dress. The machine by the bedside broke into song, an old, forgotten ditty: “O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, O tidings of comfort and joy.”
Miles retched unobtrusively. The ghastly face regarded him with fondness and pride. At length the right words came to him; the trite, the traditional sentence uttered by countless lips of generations of baffled and impassioned Englishmen: “I think I shall go for a short walk.”
But first