Read Online The Doctor Is Sick by Anthony Burgess - Free Book Online

Edwin. Carmen now spoke. She showed a smiling mess of decay, gum recession and metal, and said:
    â€˜Blimey, you ’ear? ’E spik lak good man. Why you not spik lak ’im? You bloody zis fackin’ zat all time. Señora , ’e say. Bloody ole bag an fackin’ ’oor, you say. Why you not be good man? No money you give one day, two, sree. One day I go. Blimey, yes, get good man. Lak ’im I get.’
    â€˜She’s a bit narked about not being really married,’ said Les evenly. ‘I’ve told her I can’t, not in this country. Got one in Gateshead. Good thing, in some ways, to have one somewhere else. Keeps them on their toes.’
    Carmen had picked up one of the nude magazines. ‘Notty,’ she said, giving Edwin a carious leer. ‘You very notty.’ And she performed a brisk sequence of thrust and recoil, giggling.
    â€˜Stop that now,’ said Les. ‘You don’t seem to learn. This is England, not North Africa. We’re civilised here. A child of nature,’ he said to Edwin, ‘that’s her trouble.’
    â€˜Blimey, I not do dutty sing when I do zat.’
    â€˜No, we know you meant nothing rude, but there’s times and places, you see, lass. At the moment we’re here in this hospital visiting this gentleman whose wife we know and who you say you like. You savvy that?’
    â€˜Who wife? ’Im wife? ’E got wife?’
    â€˜Yes, yes, the one that bought you the double gin when you did that sort of fandango the other day. The one whose hair you combed.’
    â€˜Oh, ’er? Black ’air, but not very match. I got moreblack ’air, I not lak ’er too match. She bloody ole bag too. She dance wiz Grik man.’
    â€˜Never mind who she danced with,’ said Les, ‘because that’s her affair. And don’t let’s have any of this calling other women whores and bags just because you’re jealous.’ He rasped nastily at her. ‘I didn’t bring you here to meet a respectable and educated gentleman in order that you could insult him to his face. We’re visiting the sick,’ he explained. ‘A corporal work of mercy, as they say.’
    â€˜Oor and bag you call me, yes. Blimey, I ’ear. When I get you ’ome I mek enough ’ell, yes. Oh blimey.’
    â€˜I did not call you a whore and a bag,’ said Les, patiently but loudly. ‘I said that that’s what you’re not to call other women, especially this gentleman’s wife. She is a lady, which is more than what you are.’
    â€˜You call me not leddy? Oh blimey, I show you now.’ She made for Les, but he, with an easy arm, an arm used to knocking down Valhalla and draining the Rhine, grasped her wrist. ‘You stop zat now,’ she cried in pain. ‘Oh blimey.’
    â€˜All right, then, you behave a bit better. Sorry about all this,’ he said to Edwin. ‘I can’t take her anywhere, as you can see.’ Edwin observed that the ward was much interested in this pseudo-marital quarrel. He tried to dissociate himself from it by moving down farther in the bed, but the bed itself had become, appropriately, the battlefield. Carmen tried to bite. Les said:
    â€˜Biting, eh? Biting and scratching like a little puss-cat, eh? We’ll soon stop that, won’t we, my little passionflower?’
    â€˜ Yo me voy cagar ——’
    â€˜And we won’t have any of those rude Spanish words,either. This gentleman knows what they mean, being educated, and I’ve got a bloody good idea, though I’m ignorant. Ignorant, that’s what you think I am, don’t you, my little black beauty?’ He turned her wrist like a tourniquet.
    â€˜Oh blimey, you bloody fackin’ ’oor.’
    â€˜That very rude word might just about apply, but the last one will not, my African mountain-blossom. So I’ll thank you to keep your dainty bloody dirty little