The Curate's Leg

Apart from my breakfast egg being slightly undercooked, the morning passed without serious incident, and nothing else untoward occurred until around that time of the shift traditionally set aside for the afternoon nap, at which point the course of subsequent events diverged quite significantly from the usual mind-numbing tedium which characterises life in Ambulanceland, where it is generally held that while no two days are ever exactly alike, none, paradoxically, is distinguishable from another, merging as they do, to quote the Master, ‘like myriad portions of bodily waste into an amorphous agglomeration of malodorous futility’.

Far be it from me to question the teachings of the Prophet, but to every rule there are exceptions, and the occasional shift inevitably is destined to remain as firmly lodged in the memory as that hastily gobbled pickled onion in the windpipe of the late Mr. Hapless Choker, and in common with the tragic unfolding of that unfortunate gentleman’s demise, the story of the curate’s leg begins with nothing more sinister than a momentary lapse of concentration.

It was through a combination of the complacency and lassitude engendered by a hearty repast that Albert and I had neglected to monitor the wireless traffic with our customary vigilance and had allowed ourselves to be outmanoeuvred by those wily imps up at Clapham Ambulance Control, and much to the amusement of our colleagues had suffered the humiliating indignity of copping an urgent transfer from Bedlington Ward before the process of digestion had barely got under way.

And thus, instead of exercising our ancient and once inalienable right to restore the tissues in peaceful repose by the hearth in the messroom, we found ourselves en route to the Hospice of the Holy Cross, having been charged to deliver one Fr. Cornelius Shillelagh, erstwhile curate of the parish of St. Benedict, into the palliative care of the pale and bespectacled Little Sisters of the Baby Jesus, under whose auspices he was due to spend his few remaining days on earth as the unspeakable and untreatable malignancy within his cranium gnawed quietly away at his mortal existence.

Considering his circumstances, one might have expected his spirits to be of the low variety, his thoughts burdened with the sorrowful regret of the condemned man ascending the steps to the gallows, maintaining with stoical fortitude a grave and dignified silence between the noose and the trap, and all that sort of thing. Yet Fr. Shillelagh was about as grave and dignified as a six-year-old ADHD-er on his first trip to the seaside and insisted on assailing my tender sensibilities with a relentless bombardment of such monumental derangement that I felt the will to live dissolving like a castle of sand beneath an incoming tide.

“To be sure now, son,” he was saying, pointing an arthritic finger at a block of luxury apartments across the river. “Y’know Oi reckon Oi could boi meself wonnadem noo flats over dare wit dis ol’ leg here, so Oi could now.” He laughed in manic tribute to Aloysius Alzheimer and tapped the whatsit bone, the one below the knee, then raised his foot a few inches into the air and wiggled it about a bit.

I smiled weakly and said nothing, having learned from the bitter experience of many a long year that humouring the insane requires considerably less effort than trying to reason with them, and catching Albert’s keen, calculating eye in the mirror, I raised my own to heaven, glanced at my watch, and resigned myself to sacrificing twenty precious minutes of the fleeting transience we call life to the company of this latest character in the cast of drunkards, lunatics and imbeciles that seem to take it in turns to infest our trolley bed.

“Ah now,” he rambled on. “Oi betcha tink gold is precious. Am Oi roight now or amn’t Oi? Well o’ course Oi am and so it is, roight enough, ah yes. But now Oi’ll tell yer someting mebbe yer didn’t know.” I could barely withstand the suspense. “Now platn’m, son, now dare’s a ting orlroight.” Having vouchsafed this flawless pearl of arcane wisdom, he winked conspiratorially and tapped the side of his nose.

I stifled a yawn and closed my eyes, overcome suddenly by a profound weariness, as though drugged by the unrelieved madness of his monologue, and as I drifted towards the blessed release of sleep I heard another voice and at first I thought I was dreaming.

“Priority. Clapham One to Pink Base. Blue call. Elderly male suspended. St Bernard’s, fifteen minutes.”

Had I missed something? I wondered.

I opened my eyes and confirmed that the patient was conscious and breathing, and that familiar blend of relief and disappointment washed over me, but what arrested my attention was the sight of Albert Harness climbing through from the cab with a most determined and purposeful gleam in his eye and, ominously, heading in my direction with a clinical waste bag in his hand.

“Albert,” I gasped, gripped by a sudden and fearful premonition. “What on earth—”

“Hold him steady, lad,” he commanded in a tone which brooked no argument, and without pausing for thought I sprang obediently to my feet and sat on the old man’s knees, grasping his wrists and pinning his arms across his chest in strict accordance with current guidelines. He struggled gamely for a minute or two, bucking and squirming with remarkable enthusiasm, thrashing his head vigorously from side to side and cursing us both to the fires of hell employing the sort of language I for one consider quite inappropriate for a man under Holy Orders.

Spirited though it was, his resistance inevitably proved futile and his strength gradually ebbed until finally, after a bit of twitching, he became quite still and mercifully silent. Albert counted slowly to a hundred, then released his grip on the old boy’s neck, removed the yellow bag from over his head and lowered the back of the bed.

“Do your stuff, old cock,” he said, winking charismatically, then clambered forward into the driver’s seat.

Swiftly abandoning the impossible task of trying to remember the finer points of this season’s cardiac arrest protocol, I reverted to the tried and tested method of attaching the defibrillator pads firmly to the patient’s chest, shoving a plastic pipe down his throat, scattering some miscellaneous items of equipment about the floor, then settling down to have a stab at the crossword until the gates of St. Bernard’s hove into view, whereupon I ruffled my hair a bit, dabbed a few drops of water about my brow, affected an air of professional concern, and leapt into action.

An hour or two later, having ticked some boxes and tidied the back of the van, we were sitting side by side in calm, companionable silence, savouring the tea-and-tobacco tranquillity of private contemplation, but beneath that snug, sleepy feeling of euphoric melancholia, which invariably follows the act of resuscitation, an insistent curiosity was nagging away at me.

“So then . . .”

“Did you not hear what he said?”

“Well, Albert, I recall a long stream of gibberish and a deep river of claptrap flowing into a boundless ocean of codswallop, if that’s what you mean.”

“Very poetic, son. But were you actually listening? Because if you—”

“Listening! To a patient!” I snorted with derision, thinking of the great Ebenezer Vein turning in his grave and looked askance at my crewmate as though he’d taken leave of his senses.

By way of reply, Albert reached down and produced from beneath his seat a folder of medical records bearing the name of the late Fr. Shillelagh. He opened it, flicked through the pages and passed it to me, jabbing a forefinger at some crude diagrams, which looked to me like nothing so much as the early work of a toddler with special needs, and some indecipherable scribble, which looked to me like nothing so much as the handwriting of a doctor.

I looked up from the page and across at Albert, then down at the page and again at Albert, and for a fleeting moment I thought I perceived a faint beam of enlightenment upon the barren landscape of my consciousness, like the grey glow of dawn upon a dim and distant horizon. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone, and I was engulfed once more by the familiar and comforting darkness of ignorance.

Albert sighed wearily as though addressing a Category 'A' chump, and then he explained all and everything became clear, and he proceeded to outline a plan of such breathtaking audacity that I was left stunned and speechless yet again by the incorrigible venality of that gargantuan intellect.

We met in the shadows at midnight and made our way with due stealth and caution to the windowless brick building that sits at the back of the hospital. Albert looked furtively about, then stooped to examine the lock on the door before producing a leather wallet containing a set of curious instruments. After some deliberation he selected two of them and inserted them into the keyhole. His eyes narrowed with great intelligence and his features adopted the smugly confident aspect of a master craftsman about to demonstrate a simple procedure for the edification of a gormless apprentice. He fiddled about for a minute or two, working the tools carefully this way and that, gently pushing, delicately probing, twisting and turning with expert precision, listening closely all the while, until at last he stood upright again, sweating and cursing with frustration.

I tried to suppress an involuntary chuckle but, alas, without great success.

“Here, son,” he hissed, passing me the picks, his face tight-lipped and quivering, his eyes dark and vengeful and burning with the unleavened wrath of an Old Testament psychopath. “You have a go.”

I looked down at the objects in my hand and shrugged, then raised my right foot into the air, took careful aim, and sent the heel of my boot crashing against the lock with all the style and finesse of PC Hobbs returning home late at night from the Princess Margaret to discover he’s lost his house keys.

The jamb shattered and the heavy wooden door flew open with such force that it tore itself from its hinges, and the still silence of the night was rent asunder by the cracking, splintering sounds of apocalyptic destruction, as though the very fabric of the universe were being torn apart around us, and wave upon wave of pure noise reverberated through the air like a barrage of heavy artillery echoing across a Balkan valley.

There are times in a man’s life when Prudence lays a restraining hand upon the shoulder and counsels calm consideration, urging him to pause for a few moments of sober reflection, to undertake a thorough and comprehensive assessment of the situation and weigh carefully the drawbacks and the benefits of all available options before reaching through a process of logical analysis and scientific evaluation a sound decision as to the course of action most appropriate to the circumstances.

And then again, there are times when Prudence just yells, “Leg it!”

Without pausing to draw breath, we legged it, fleeing for the cover of some bushes, where we threw ourselves to the ground and burrowed beneath the branches of a large rhododendron, panting and perspiring, waiting for someone to raise the alarm. And as I lay there, trembling with trepidation, the hard, desiccated earth beneath me seemed redolent not of a sadly neglected shrubbery in the grounds of a public hospital, but of an unmarked pauper’s grave round the back of a lunatic asylum, and my imagination was beset by dark and terrible forebodings as I envisaged the unholy trinity of unemployment, poverty and madness stepping forth to embrace me at the prison gates.

With little choice but to cower and wait, we cowered and waited, and for a while nothing happened. And then, after another while, nothing happened again. And when nothing had happened several times in quick succession, the novelty of nothing happening began to pall. My breathing gradually slowed, the pounding in my chest subsided, and my thoughts turned tentatively from images of white vans full of large coppers with slavering dogs and searchlights to the somewhat less terrifying reality of Blind Billy and Tipsy Tom, the St. Bernard’s night security force, and with a growing sense of ease I pictured them as I knew them best, surrounded by empty beer cans and discarded chip wrappers and slumped without discernible signs of awareness in a couple of greasy armchairs by a paraffin heater in a shed.

“Trap number six,” called Albert, closing the guest book and turning his attention to the array of shiny instruments in a glass-fronted steel cabinet, stroking his chin in a sinisterly discerning manner, and licking his lips like a priest in a playground.

The ambient fragrance of formaldehyde gave way to the familiar yellow stench of hospital sheets dampened by nameless fluids as I opened the door of the refrigerator and slid out the tray. With a flick of the wrist I threw aside the shroud with a dramatic flourish, unveiling the mortal remains of Fr. Shillelagh, and was struck by exactly the same feelings of bewildered disbelief and furious outrage one might experience upon exiting the public library to discover one's bicycle has been stolen.

In a kind of horrified panic I turned to Albert, who was advancing towards me with a large saw in his hand, his eyes shining with something akin to lust, his lips drawn back grotesquely with the unalloyed rapture of imminent gratification.

And then his eyes came to rest upon the cause of my agitation. Beside the lower portion of Fr. Shillelagh’s right leg was not, as might be expected, the lower portion of Fr. Shillelagh’s left leg, but mere empty space abutted at one end by a stump, against which there rested a brown envelope addressed to "Albert Harness Esq, c/o The Clapham Ambulance." He snatched it up and tore it open, his face darkening to a deep shade of purple as he read the note. His eyes bulged from their sockets and I feared he might explode.

And then he threw back his head and produced from the fathomless darkness of his personal innards the most fearsome and almighty bellow, and it brought to mind the curious image of a bull that, having made an unsuccessful attempt to leap a fence in order to get acquainted with the winsome heifer in the adjoining field, finds its testicles ensnared by electrified barbed wire.

My egg the following morning was cooked to perfection, as were the several rashers, the assortment of sausages, the tomatoes, the mushrooms and the fried slice. Seasoned with a little salt and pepper, and garnished with a generous blob of brown sauce and a smidgen of English mustard, it was surely as fine a breakfast as ever was served in the history of Public Health Service catering.

I took a sheet of paper from my pocket and propped it against a sauce bottle.

Dear Albert, (I read for the thousandth time)
The mortuary will be closed tomorrow morning as I shall be engaged upon an appointment with a Mr Jack Barclay of Berkeley Square, Mayfair, W1, regarding the purchase of a new motor car. I trust this arrangement will not inconvenience you unduly.
Yours,
Bill Bones.

Beset by an almost unbearable sadness, I laid down the knife and fork and pushed my food aside untouched, surrendering to an overwhelming urge to close my eyes and rest my head in my hands. In all my years on the ambulances I had never known such a thing, but I seemed entirely to have lost my appetite.