Tornado Pratt by Paul Ableman

longing to have a son. This belief had gained strength that afternoon from my enthusiasm for the Lister kid who, I have to admit, was exactly the kind of son I would have desired if I had been on the look-out for sons. I comforted Nat but, while doing so, I turned the matter over in my mind and realized that Nat’s passionate outburst must have been building up for a long time. She admitted that she had been concerned for more than a year about her failure to conceive. Odd thing, Horace, but somehow it had never impinged upon me that she wasn’t conceiving. I knew we’d given up taking precautions a long time ago but, without considering it with any attention, I’d kind of felt that somehow Nat had contrived it that she wouldn’t get caught out. What I mean is, it had never for one moment occurred to me that there might be the slightest thing wrong with either of us. But now Nat pleaded:
    “Let’s consult a doctor, Tornado. Let’s find out if there’s anything the matter?”
    “Of course, there’s nothing the matter, my love. And you know something? I’m still not ready to welcome a child.”
    “But you’ll want one some day, won’t you, Tornado? Oh yes, you must have a son.”
    “There’ll be time enough—”
    “But there won’t! If there is something wrong—if my—my tubes are blocked, which I think is what goes wrong with tubes whatever they are—they might get—well, all cemented up if we don’t do something about it. Let’s go to a doctor, Titch.”
    “No—”
    “But—”
    “I said, no!”
    The ferocity in my voice took me by surprise, Horace, and later I tried to analyse why I had reacted so violently to Nat’s suggestion. It was true that I wasn’t desperate to have kids but it was also true that I wouldn’t have minded if she’d whispered to me one day that she was pregnant. So why did I snarl at her when she suggested we get checked out? That was it, Horace! Checked out! Me! Tornado Pratt! Or his lady-queen, my wife! Checked out, like a specimen, like an object! At the thought, a crimson cloud of rage boiled up around my head. Goddamm it, when I wanted babies, I would make babies. When I was ready to secure my lineage and succession, I would smite my lady with my staff and she would gush forth children. The idea of being helped by a doctor to found my own dynasty was humiliating. Firmly, but no longer ferociously, I amplified:
    “No doctors, Nat. When the time comes to have a baby, we’ll have a baby but we’re not going to any quack and I don’t want to hear another thing about it.”
    She saw that I meant it, Horace, and she never did raise the subject again but I could tell that she often brooded about her empty womb. Funny thing is, Horace, my lady was a true lady. She was the daughter of an English marquis and yet she was totally free of the electric pride that made me crackle with rage when brushed by some suggestion that seemed to demean me. She had no objections to being helped by doctors or indeed by anyone. Half a year or so later, I said to her, with a wry smile:
    “Okay, honey, I guess we’re not going to make it on our own. I’m talking about kids. See if you can get us the name of a good doctor.”
    And that, Horace, is how we came to encounter Dr Ezra Schumacher. He was a skinny Jew and when I first saw him, hemade me think of the joker in a pack of cards. He had a tremendous , angular nose, a face as thin as a trout’s and bulging eyes. I frowned at the thought of such a freak poking about in Nat’s secret innards. And I said to him:
    “Okay, Doc, before we start the tests I’d like to have your views.”
    “You would, huh?” asked Schumacher, goggling at me and chomping on gum. “Did you bring a chicken?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Haruspication.”
    “What?”
    “Reading the guts. You know, you kill the chicken, pull out the guts and then you can read the future from them. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
    He went on gazing at me, Horace,