in my book. I’d rather have an enviable stable of different steeds and a choice of, er, mount, than only the one horse, just the one all-rounder.
You’re talking a string of spirited fillies versus just the one old nag?
No. I’m not. That makes me sound a cynic and a cad and I’m neither. June and I were young and impetuous and full of those ideologies that, in your twenties, you formulate and think are the answer to life itself. We had an on-off relationship for a long time. She actually fell pregnant during a time we weren’t officially seeing each other. It was a casual one-nighter, like we were prone to have in those days. But our philosophy – then as now – was that we could be awesome parents and great friends and simply not live together as Man and Wife, or Girlfriend and Boyfriend, or He and She, full stop.
And it works?
You ask Tom. Just you ask him.
Out-patients. June and Zac sat with Tom, looking like a very normal family. Except for the fact that the topic of conversation between the three of them was June’s imminent wedding.
‘Mum is worried in case I drop the ring,’ Tom said, looking to his father for camaraderie and perhaps one of his inimitable one-liners.
‘We’ll sellotape it to your hand,’ Zac said, ‘and I’ll carry a couple of spares in my pocket. In fact, we’ll do a swap, Tom. You give me the real ones – I’ll give you cheap imitations. Your mother won’t know the difference – and I doubt Rob-Dad would realize, him having more money than sense, your second dad.’
‘I’ll be sure to tell him you said so,’ June chided with a chuckle.
‘So’ll I,’ Tom said, with glee. Zac, though, had already teased Rob along these lines in the pub recently and Rob had quite ably sparred back.
‘Anyway,’ Zac continued, ‘you and I will flog the jewels at the pawn shop in Camden and we’ll bugger off to the Caribbean on the proceeds. Which hotel did you say you’re staying in?’
‘Daddy said “bugger”,’ Tom remarked.
‘The Jalousie in St Lucia,’ said June, ‘and don’t swear in front of the children.’
‘But you said “shit” this morning, Mummy,’ Tom said artlessly, ‘when you dropped that glass.’
‘I said “shoot”,’ June fibbed feebly. Tom was about to protest when a commotion caught their attention.
‘Look, Tom!’ said his father.
‘The clowns are here!’ said his mother.
Dr Pippity recognized the little boy with the eczema though she couldn’t remember his name. She’d seen him upstairs and down. Up and down. It was good to see him in Out-patients again. She remembered seeing him on the ward once, swathed in dressings and looking like a mummy. Eye contact, on that occasion, had really been all she could use. So, in Out-patients, it really was a pleasure for her to use what she referred to as her Princess Diana approach – to touch and hold what others’ prejudices would recoil from. She did ‘round and round the garden’ for Tom, and the ‘tickle you under there’ part produced a Harry Potter keyring from behind his neck that he was most chuffed to be allowed to keep. Pip had bought a job lot from a dodgy stall at Camden Lock – unlicensed merchandise about which she had no qualms, confident that most children wouldn’t notice the lack of a surreptitiously stamped TM.
‘Are you still in love with Hermione?’ Dr Pippity asked the boy, because though she couldn’t remember his name, she did recall that he wasn’t into Kylie. That Britney wasn’t his kind of girl.
‘Sort of,’ Tom said, because it was the truth – he quite likes Natalie Portman now, too.
‘Does that mean I have to wait for you to marry me?’ Dr Pippity pouted. Tom looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Well, I can wait for about, hmmm, twelve and a quarter minutes,’ Dr Pippity continued, taking out a huge toy clock from her pocket. Tom laughed. As did his mother. As did his father. She’d seen him before, too. Probably right here in Out-patients or perhaps upstairs on the wards. The boy’s father was looking at her almost imploringly. She misread his gaze. She thought perhaps he needed treatment by the clown doctor.
So she ran her fingers through his hair.
Pip ran her fingers through Zac’s hair.
She’s running her fingers through my hair.
‘Yuck! Yuckkity yuck!’ she declared whilst Tom laughed, June giggled and Zac was showered with the paper bits from a hole-punch. ‘I don’t think Head & Shoulders will get rid of that dandruff. That’s terrible. Have you come to see the doctors? On account of that horrid dandruff? Are you here for a head and shoulders transplant?’
‘No,’ Tom interjected, a little seriously, ‘it’s me. We’re here for me. For my eczema. Not my daddy.’
‘Well, I think I can fix your daddy’s Dandruff Disaster,’ said Dr Pippity, producing an oversized pair of green plastic scissors the size of gardening shears. She hummed and sang and worked the toy all over the father’s head whilst his son and the mother grinned. ‘Oops!’ Dr Pippity declared. ‘I have cut off his ear.’ She held a hand over Zac’s left ear and made a theatrical display of searching high and low. Balancing the scissors precariously on his head, she produced a large, false ear from her pocket. ‘Ear you are, dear,’ she said, ‘ear you go, ear’s another one.’ Her jokes were so corny that the adults had to laugh and to Tom, not quite six, her puns were extraordinarily brilliant and the cause of much mirth.
Undivided attention for just five minutes seemed to have a value lasting much longer – but soon enough, Dr Pippity was on her rounds, with her scissors and her hole-punch clippings and her spirits and her skill. Tom remained animated right up until he was called. June went with him. Zac stayed in the waiting area. And when Dr Pippity yodelled a heartfelt goodbye to everyone, that she was off on her rounds, Zac followed at a discreet distance.
What Zac didn’t know – how could he – was that when clowns are in slap and motley, they are locked into their clown personae until the moment of make-up remover and cotton wool. It’s not dressing up. It’s not acting. It’s a dignified art and profession. It’s a very serious business. Who would ever accuse Superman of being Clark Kent in fancy dress? Clowns never drop their guise. Not even when they are on their own. And so it was Dr Pippity, not Pip McCabe, who was alone in the small washroom the clown doctors use to sterilize their props, wash their hands with antiseptic and compose themselves between ward rounds. Though the door was open, she was unaware of having an audience. Zac loitered out in the corridor, glimpsing her now and then as she larked about with the bin, treading on the pedal so that the lid opened and shut like a mouth – and a very good conversationalist it made, too.
‘Excuse me,’ Zac said, when she emerged. ‘I just wanted to say “thanks”.’
Momentarily, Dr Pippity couldn’t quite place him – her mind was on the cancer ward she was about to visit. Then she caught sight of a few stray hole-punch pieces. ‘That’s okey-dokey,’ she said, in her clown voice.
‘I saw you at my nephew’s party,’ Zac said, wanting to keep her there for a moment, wanting her to be herself, wanting her to himself; not wanting to follow her towards the ward. ‘Billy?’
‘Dr Pippity doesn’t do parties,’ she said, needing to be on her way and slightly disconcerted by this man’s attentions. Weren’t his wife and child downstairs?
‘In Holloway? A couple of months ago,’ Zac persisted. ‘You gave me your card, not Dr Pippity, the other one. Mad Molly or someone. I had a headache.’
‘That’ll be the dandruff,’ Dr Pippity jested, inwardly slightly insulted that Merry Martha could be thought of as Mad Molly.
I knew a Mad Molly once – she was barking mad and pretty unpleasant.
‘I lost your card. Can I