The Doctor Is Sick by Anthony Burgess

an artist , isn’t it?’ said Sheila. ‘All take and no give. Your promise about Edwin’s laundry.’
    â€˜Oh, that.’
    â€˜Nigel,’ said Sheila, ‘is a very lucky boy. There’s a Hungarian woman who comes every week and does his washing for him. That’s in exchange for English lessons.’
    â€˜What,’ asked Edwin, ‘does he know about giving English lessons?’
    â€˜He’s learning,’ said Sheila. ‘Learning by doing. And one thing he’s promised to do is to have all your dirty clothes washed. Where are they?’
    â€˜This,’ said Edwin, ‘is most kind.’ He was growing tired of always sounding like Mr Salteena, but what else could he say? ‘That locker’s stuffed with dirty pyjamas and towels and things, and there’s a shirt in the big locker outside.’
    â€˜Good,’ said Sheila. ‘We’re going straight to Nigel’s flat or studio, or whatever he calls it, and we can take those things with us.’
    â€˜We’d better go now,’ said Nigel. ‘I’ve had no lunch, remember.’
    â€˜But you had breakfast.’
    â€˜That was a long time ago.’
    â€˜When I was a young girl,’ said Sheila, ‘I always believed that artists starved. La vie de Bobème.’
    â€˜Plenty of stuffing goes on in the first two acts of the opera,’ said Edwin.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ said Sheila, ‘that reminds me. Les and Carmen are coming to see you again this evening. I, of course, can’t make it. Carmen is coming to apologise.’
    â€˜No,’ said Edwin violently. ‘I’m very ill. I can’t have visitors. Please tell them that.’
    â€˜We shan’t be seeing them, shall we, Nigel? So you’ll just have to put up with it. Les has a queer life really, doesn’t he?’
    â€˜I should think so,’ said Edwin.
    â€˜Yes. He works in one of the Covent Garden pubs early in the morning, and at night he works in the opera house. That seems to me to be right – unification in terms of place, or something. And for the rest of the time he has Carmen. You must get him to tell you about some of the things she does sometime.’
    â€˜Come on,’ said Nigel. ‘We ought to eat.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Sheila. ‘She’s very quaint. They did Samson and Delilah and she went to see it and a couple of days later they had a bit of a row, and he woke up in the middle of the night to find her standing with the scissors over the bed——’
    Nigel was looking, suddenly very intently, at Edwin. ‘I don’t know about your brain,’ he said, thoughts of food apparently temporarily forgotten, ‘whether it’s worthwhile saving that. But as far as heads go, it’s a good head. It’s a better head,’ he continued, with the artist’s impartiality, ‘than hers. I wouldn’t mind doing it. I think I’d rather do your head than hers, though she, of course, from my point of view, has by far the more interesting body. And, of course, soon you’ll have no hair.’
    â€˜There’s a long way to go yet,’ said Edwin. ‘My family is not a family that goes bald early.’
    â€˜No, no,’ said Nigel. ‘If they’re going to operate on your brain they’ll have to shave all your hair off. I think that I should like to have a go at it then. It would make a very nice and rather original study. A painting, I think. The tropical brown of the face and a sort of nacreous pink -I should like to try that.’
    Edwin was pale, aghast. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I just hadn’t realised. I just didn’t think of that at all.’
    â€˜Never mind,’ said Sheila. ‘It will grow again, very quickly. And it will be just the opposite of Samson, won’t it?’
    â€˜What do you mean?’ asked Edwin.
    â€˜Think it over, darling. Look,’ she