With My Little Eye by Francis King Page B

perhaps?’
    ‘Mozart it is.’
    I lie listening to Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. I’ve heard it so often before, and now I’ve tired of its elegant, whimsical sweetness . It doesn’t in any way distract me from my panic. Sealed with me inside the tube an invisible wild beast is emitting weird grunts, whirrings, and burps. The noises seem to be part of me, the symptoms of some violent digestive upset. I begin to count the seconds – no, not so fast, too fast, slower, slower! – to distract myself.
    ‘Well, there you are! It wasn’t so bad, was it?’ Perhaps she says that to every patient that she imprisons in the tube. Perhaps she realised from the beginning how nervous I was.
    ‘It was even worse than I’d expected.’ I laugh. I want her to think that I’m joking. But I’m not.
    It is not the usual effervescent, sweet-natured black porter (from Ghana, I have by now learned) who fetches me but an elderly man with sagging jowls and cheeks, who hums tonelessly to himself as he pushes the creaking wheelchair down the long, strangely empty corridor.
    Suddenly he says, ‘I wonder what we can expect now?’
    I am puzzled. Is he referring to the result of the thallium scan that I’ve just endured? To my future health – or lack of it?
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Well, there may be other explosions. I’d not be surprised. That’s why we’re on red alert.’
    ‘Red alert? I don’t get you.’
    Suddenly galvanised out of his lethargy, he tells me the news. While I was imprisoned in my tube and that handsome, tall woman with the thin lips was monitoring its progress, three bombs had exploded in London. At any moment casualties might arrive.
    Even the most moribund people in the ward are excited. They are all now staring up at the individual television sets above their heads, from time to time swivelling round to make some comment to a neighbour.
    The red-faced, pot-bellied man whom I so much hate suddenly announces to everyone, ‘They were bloody fools ever to let them into this country. Enoch Powell was right. Rivers of blood. That’s what he said was coming. Too bloody right he was. We should boot the whole bloody lot of them back where they came from.’
    I pick up my copy of The Tales of Genji , already read twice, in an effort to escape from a fizzing excitement that is as little to my taste as a tumbler of gaseous root beer.
    As usual, Dr Szymanovski is already with me before my little eye has detected his approach. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask this of you. But you’ve just had your last test and so it’s not really essential for you to remain here. We can always bring you back in an ambulance when we want to monitor you.’ I am puzzled. What’s all this about? Then it comes to me. Why have I been so slow and obtuse? ‘We haven’t yet had to take in any casualties of the bombings. But we might have to – any moment now. The thing is we have to clear this ward – and some other wards. I’m sorry. Would you very much mind…?’
    So far from minding, I feel a surge of relief, as though I were a death row prisoner suddenly brought his reprieve.
    ‘Yes, that’s fine.’ And it is fine. ‘Shall I get up and dress now?’
    He nods. ‘The sooner, the better. But take your time. No immediate hurry.’
    I inch out of bed and open my locker for the clothes that have been getting more and more creased as the days have passed. I pull out a vest, and with it the trousers of my dark-blue suit fall out on to the floor. I stoop. Suddenly I feel giddy.My blood pressure must have suddenly slumped, a side effect of my battery of pills. I lie back on the bed, the vest in one hand.
    I twist my head round and look at the red-faced booby opposite. Dr Szymanovski is standing over him. I can’t hear everything that he is saying, but it must be similar to what he has said to me.
    Then I hear the booby all too clearly as he shouts in disgust, ‘Bloody hell! I’m bloody ill!’
    With a strange hyperaesthesia I can hear every