The McCabe Girls Complete Collection

by Freya North

  ‘Hey ho and what’s your name? Is it Mildred? Or perhaps Millicent?’ Dr Pippity asked, shaking the hand of a small boy in Out-patients who she’d seen before up on the wards. Eczema. His skin looked so sore but she gauged in an instant that a level of physical contact would be right. So she shook and shook his hand, operating a hidden squeak in her pocket. ‘Dear, oh dear, would you listen to that! I’d say your elbow needs some grease!’

  ‘My name’s Tom,’ the child protested, having a giggle at his squeaky elbow, ‘not Mildew or Militant.’

  ‘Of course it is!’ Dr Pippity exclaimed, clasping her hand to her head and setting her nose alight in the process. She almost fell over, whilst rolling her eyes. ‘And Tom is a very fine name. My brain has run out of battery. Can you help start it again?’ She handed the boy her toy hammer and pointed to two positions on her forehead, much to his delight. ‘How old are you?’ she asked. ‘One hundred and thirty-two?’

  ‘No, I’m almost six years old,’ he said, as if to a simpleton. ‘I live in Swiss Cottage.’

  ‘In a swish cottage, hey!’ Dr Pippity gasped. ‘Is there room for me?’ The boy said he didn’t think so and the clown doctor pretended to cry, blowing her nose into an enormous polka-dot handkerchief.

  ‘Sorry,’ Tom shrugged.

  ‘Do you like Kylie Minogue?’ asked Dr Pippity, merry once more. Tom shrugged. ‘Britney Spears?’ The child dipped his head in a fairly noncommittal way.

  ‘I like Hermione,’ Tom offered, ‘from Harry Potter.’

  Dr Pippity scratched her head, looking perplexed.

  ‘Her-my-oh-knee,’ Tom elucidated.

  ‘Your knee? Her knee? What knee? Oh! Hermione! Well,’ said Dr Pippity, ‘I have a present for you, a lovely picture of Hermione on Harry’s Potty. For you to colour in.’

  Tom looked happy and expectant. Dr Pippity presented him with the picture. Tom stared at it and tried very hard not to look disappointed, and then not to smile. A grin triumphed over a pout. ‘It’s you!’

  Dr Pippity looked horrified. She looked from the picture to herself. ‘Good golly – you’re right!’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Tom, looking at the picture; he was secretly starting to like Dr Pippity just as much as Hermione. And certainly more than Kylie or Britney.

  ‘Ta-ta, ta-ra, toot-toot!’ sang Dr Pippity. ‘I must be on my way.’ And with a hop, skip and a jump, she left Out-patients for her ward rounds.

  ‘Look!’ Tom showed off the picture to his father who had returned to his son’s side with a cup of water from the vending machine. ‘You missed her – she’s funny! Last time, she made me a tortoise from a balloon. Is she a real doctor, Daddy?’

  ‘A real clown doctor,’ Zac replied, taking a nearby leaflet publicizing the Renee Foundation by whom Dr Pippity was trained and funded. ‘Have you seen her before, then?’

  Tom nodded. ‘A couple of times on the ward. And when Mummy brought me last time, that clown lady was here.’

  Zac nodded and kissed the top of Tom’s head. ‘Laughter is brilliant medicine.’ Out-patients now seemed dull and down without the clown.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘that’s what the nurses say, too. And it doesn’t sting like creams.’

  ‘If it stings today,’ Zac said, ‘you squeeze my hand and say any swear-word you like. Though you’re so brave I doubt whether you’ll need to.’ He could see Dr Pippity down the corridor by the main entrance, standing on one leg. Really quite a nice leg, actually. Despite the lurid tights and clumpy, bright orange DMs.

  ‘Can you buy me some new crayons,’ Tom asked, ‘after they’ve done me?’

  ‘Magic word?’ Zac prompted.

  ‘Please-please-please-thank-you.’

  ‘Have you heard of these hospital clowns?’ Zac is in Marylebone, eating Lebanese with friends. ‘I took Tom for his appointment today and there were a couple working. They’re amazing.’

  ‘There was that Robin Williams film a while back,’ said Will.

  ‘Patch Adams,’ his wife, Molly, filled in, ‘but he was actually a bona fide doctor.’

  ‘I picked up a leaflet,’ Zac said. ‘It’s a charity – they fund specially trained clowns to work in hospitals all over the world. It made a difference to Tom, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How is he?’ Molly asked.

  ‘So so,’ Zac said, but with a note of hope to his voice. ‘That’s the cruelty of eczema – when it fades, so does your memory of it; when it suddenly comes back with a vengeance, you have to deal with the physical and mental affliction anew. Tom seems to be coping this time around. He’s not being teased at school, thank God, but it breaks my heart, it really does.’ He looked to the middle distance. ‘He’s too young to have to be so brave.’

  They ate in contemplative silence awhile. ‘June?’ Molly asked.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Zac referred to the mother of his child, ‘getting married in – well – June!’

  ‘Same bloke?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Zac, ‘it’s cool – he’s great.’

  Molly picked spinach from her teeth. ‘You must meet my friend Juliana – you’d really get along. She’s gorgeous.’

  Zac replenished the wineglasses. ‘Sure,’ he said. His friends were always setting him up – not because they wanted to see him matched and hitched, not because they were remotely concerned about him being single in his mid-thirties; in fact, they didn’t do it for his sake or benefit at all. Zac was so universally liked, famous amongst his friends for being well-adjusted and fun to be with, that they introduced eligible women to benefit from his company. Zac, they felt, had such a heart that it couldn’t be broken.

  ‘Great,’ said Molly. ‘I’ll fix up drinks or something for the weekend. She’s over in London from South Africa for about six months on some project. Tall, very tall. She’s a babe.’

  Zac didn’t enquire further. He trusted his friends’ judgement. They always presented him with lovely women to play with. And what made the game such fun was that when it was inevitably over, there never seemed to be winners or losers. It seemed to him (and hitherto thankfully to them) that it was the taking part that was the point.

  ‘I hated clowns,’ Zac mused, ‘when I was young. They frightened the fuck out of me.’

  ‘Isn’t it a risk, then, putting them in hospitals with sick kids?’ asked Will, who had been far too engrossed in his lamb to participate in the conversation thus far.

  Zac thought back to St Bea’s. ‘I think the hospital clowns obviously tone down their make-up and slapstick and tricks. Their faces weren’t lurid at all – just a bit of white here and there, rosy cheeks, neat little red nose, funny pigtails.’

  ‘Weird job to choose, though, don’t you think?’ Molly pondered. ‘You know, literally making a clown of yourself every day. Having to look daft and behave like a fool.’

  Zac considered this. ‘I suppose,’ he shrugged, ‘but the one who spent time with Tom was bloody good. And, obviously, she could judge her success immediately so it must be pretty rewarding.’ He poked around the couscous with his fork for crunchy bits. ‘She didn’t look daft at all, really.’

  Quite beguiling, actually, if I think about it. Which I have been, for some bizarre reason I can’t fathom.

  Plates were cleared, puddings were chosen and the subject changed. Molly and Will were hiring a villa in Sardinia over the summer and did Zac want to join them at all? And then Will started talking about work and his nightmare boss. And Molly started telling Zac about Juliana.

  ‘She was young,’ Zac said, slightly absent-mindedly, ‘late twenties? Something like that. You could see how hard she was working; how she was tuning herself totally to the needs and quirks of each kid she sat with. She was great.’

  ‘Who? Juliana?’ Molly asked, very confused and a little drunk by now.

  ‘No, the clown,’ Zac said, ‘the one who treated Tom today.’

  ‘Clowns give me the creeps,’ said Will, asking for the bill.

  ‘I’ve never found them particularly f
unny,’ Molly said.

  ‘I found them pretty scary,’ Zac repeated, ‘when I was a boy.’

  Zac dreamt of Dr Pippity a couple of nights later, which he found odd, having not thought about her since the day at St Bea’s. The dream oddly disturbed him, though it was completely out of context – no Tom, no hospital. Dr Pippity had no make-up, no clothes defining her as a clown. In fact, she had no clothes on at all. She didn’t speak with a zany voice, she didn’t speak at all. But she did perform the most amazing trick on Zac. Her mouth, his balls. Zac awoke with a hard-on that required urgent attention. He went to his bathroom to clean up and caught sight of himself, sleep bleary, in the mirror.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he chastised himself, ‘I thought clowns scared me – they’re not supposed to seduce me!’

  I must need a shag or something. About time. Ah well, the luscious Juliana, considerately lined up for me by Molly.

  He couldn’t get back to sleep so he went through to the living-room, flicked on the television and lounged in his banana chair, zapping channels and settling on MTV. Soon enough, the vacuous pop tunes irritated him, though the volume was low. He went to the kitchen for a glass of water and was momentarily bemused by the sight of the fridge. Dr Pippity, meticulously coloured in by Tom with his new crayons, grinned back at him.

  He wanted to see her again. And he knew how simple that could be.

  ‘Billy’s party! I just phone and ask my sister-in-law for the entertainer’s number. Pretend it’s for Tom or one of his friends.’

  Momentarily, he was quite excited about how easy this would be but soon enough, this disconcerted him. So he turned his back on the picture and took his briefcase to the bedroom.

  Why on earth am I still thinking about her – let alone dreaming of her? She’s a bloody clown – she probably hides behind her make-up and is a total social imbecile underneath it. Or irritatingly zany. Or just plain weird.

  You liked her legs and can see that she’s pretty even in preposterous pigtails and pan stick.

  God, all she did was visit me in a wet dream and now I’m telling myself I want to see her again. I must be overdue a shag, that’s what it is.

  Zac fell asleep, sitting up in bed, the lights on, papers strewn all over the duvet.

  Zac met Molly’s friend Juliana. She was sexy in a sophisticated, cool way. Zac decided he could forgo a sense of humour for such seductive eye contact. However, before he called her, there was something he needed to qualify first. The next Thursday, Zac told June he’d take Tom to hospital for his creams. June was pleased – she could have her wedding-dress fitting in peace, she told him. The clowns were there, but this time both were male. They were great and lifted Tom’s spirits. It helped him enormously, his mind was taken away from his physical discomfort and he had a balloon in the shape of a parrot to take home. Though Zac knew all along that was the point – the clown doctors were not for his benefit but Tom’s, of course – he couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed not to see Dr Pippity.

  His disappointment did, however, make him feel a little foolish. He sat Tom down with a drink and a biscuit when they arrived back in Hampstead.

  ‘I’m just going to make a quick call,’ he told his son. Tom was happy to munch and sip.

  ‘Juliana? Hi there, this is Zac. We met at— Oh! Sure. I’m fine. Are you well? Great. I was wondering if you had plans tomorrow night? Shall we go out to play? Cool. Super.’

  The lovely Juliana. Why on earth I was disappointed not to see Clowngirl again, I don’t know. Hot date tomorrow – what could be better?

  SEVEN

  Zac has had no further dreams, wet or otherwise, featuring Pip. Which is just as well, really. Firstly, it wouldn’t have been fair on Juliana, who Zac has been seeing for a good few weeks now. Secondly, it would have made it just a little more awkward and loaded when, the next time they did meet, Pip was to run her fingers through his hair, fondling his ears in the process.

  Dr Pippity frequently ruffles the hair or tweaks the ears of patients’ parents and siblings. She’s been trained to. It’s part of her job. It serves a twofold purpose. It’s another way of eliciting laughter from the sick child, plus an important part of a clown doctor’s work is to treat the family of the patients because they’re often suffering, too. Clown doctors aim to lighten the load; to help diminish the burden carried by patients and their families in some small way, however temporarily. A minute spent grinning, laughing even, is a veritable tonic. It is also a minute when pain subsides and worry is sidetracked.

  However, Pip has never had her handling of a parent backfire. Sure, sometimes her jokes and tricks have fallen flat – the parent perhaps feels awkward or reluctant due to desperately concealed stress and worry. But the patient has always enjoyed the tomfoolery and Pip knows, and the parent knows, that that’s what matters. For Pip, though, to be hit on by the father of a patient, in front of the mother, too, is a situation wholly unexpected and for which she’s had no specific training.

  June, Tom’s mother, hadn’t intended to come to the hospital that day. She was up to her eyes preparing for her wedding that weekend and Zac had said he’d take Tom for his appointment.

  ‘It’s guilt,’ Zac had teased her gently, when she had phoned to say that she’d come to the hospital. ‘You running off on some glorious Caribbean honeymoon, leaving your son behind to fend for himself.’

  ‘Bastard!’ June had cursed in her defence, but fondly. ‘He’s not fending for himself, he’s staying with you!’

  Zac gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘Dicey,’ he warned, ‘leaving him with me – well, that’ll be fending for himself, all right.’

  ‘You are a sod,’ June laughed, ‘and anyway, you cad – it’s not as if you ever took me on a sumptuous honeymoon.’

  ‘Well,’ said Zac, ‘that’s because I never married you.’

  ‘Bastard in capital letters,’ June jested. ‘I’d’ve declined even if you had asked me on bended knee with a rose between your teeth and a fuck-off diamond ring. I’m late. We’ll see you in Out-patients at 3.00.’

  I didn’t ask her to marry me. It didn’t cross my mind. Or hers. And, if I had, she’d have said ‘no’ anyway and thought me insane. It wasn’t an issue. The only issue was to be good parents to a child born to two people who were strong friends and had been having good sex for quite a while.

  Zac, wouldn’t most people define the ultimate relationship to be one where friendship and good sex prevail?

  Now, yes. At my age now – yes. Though the two never seem to go hand in hand nowadays – not that I’m complaining. Juliana is fabulous in bed, but neither of us is pursuing this even for friendship, let alone intimacy. And lovely lovely Lisa – one of my closest friends but the thought of screwing her verges on incest. Or take Pru – the two occasions we’ve been to bed were pretty nondescript, yet we have a great laugh together, getting drunk, talking rubbish. So that’s why my life wants for nothing. I have great friends. And I have fantastic sex. But it’s horses for courses 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 bet
ween 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.