‘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