ENGLISH NIGHTMARE
365
"Yes," sa:id the joints doctor. "He was always a bit-er ..."
"Touchy?" I suggested.
"Yes," said the joints doctor. "Wasn't he?"
I said:
"He was, rather."
I passed on to the shameful parts doctor. I had to turn my
head to one side to cough. That made it seem curiously polite. I
touched my toes, and the shameful parts doctor coughed in his turn.
"All right," he said.
The chairman gave
e~ch
man a last general inspection and
filled up his card. I sat in a little cubicle to wait my turn. I was
able to inspect the Roumanian a little more closely and to watch
other people going round. At any given moment, there were only
two
or perhaps three men completely naked. This fact allowed
them to retain a certain individuality. However cursorily studied,
they were not just so much meat. It pleased me to see the toughest
men unable to stand on one leg, much less to go up on their toes on
one leg. Also, I seemed to be one of the only two men who didn't
have ugly little paunches. One man's paunch stuck out like a small,
bracketed ledge and turned him into a marsupial.
The chairman who had also been the joints doctor asked how
much exercise I took and whether I felt well in myself. .
He filled up my card and said:
"What did you say the title of your last book was? I must
set
it."
He took down the title and gave me my card. I was marked
Grade One. This pleased me. I dressed and went round to the mili–
tary
officer, who was sitting in a little box quite apart from all the
doctors ·and clerks. He was quite different in temperament, too.
The doctors were tall, gentle creatures of a rather fluttering, inef–
fectual charm. The military officer was squat and bald, a horrid
little man in a bow tie. He asked me whether I had ever belonged
to
the territorials, what languages I spoke besides French .and
whether I had any hobbies-"apart from your writing, of course."
I went off to the tube station and took a train back to Kilburn
Park. I was very pleased indeed to be Grade One and made the
11111e joke to everybody I met during the evening-namely, that I
wu
a perfect specimen of British manhood and that they were
