22

After tea those who were dressing up were busy with their costumes.

Mr Allsop appeared in heavy black boots topped by red socks, black football shorts, a long green pullover with a polo neck and a very flat cap. The cap was geometrically level on his head and had been pressed to its thinnest and flattest. His white legs coming from the boots looked as though they were stretched upwards to his body rather than supporting his body. In his hand he carried a wooden spear, which had once been the staff of a large but cheap flag.

‘Ask me what I am,’ he said to Sam.

‘What the hell are you?’

‘A prehistoric Yorkshireman.’

Mr O’Brien was wearing the guardsman’s tunic and the policeman’s helmet, both of which were too big for him.

‘Mr O’Brien,’ explained Mr Allsop, ‘is a ceremonial Black-and-Tan.’

David, a powerful, good humoured man, with a hunch of shoulder and a strong, pugnacious head, was dressed as a woman. His large mouth was painted red, and the black he had put on his eyes added to their boldness. On his head was a yellow wig. The tresses were dry and without any likeness to human hair. His breasts were enormous and lumpy, bulging out in the red woollen dress that was strained across the shoulders and empty about the hips and buttocks. His legs were hard and muscled and blackened with hairs. I thought of a savage islander of the Pacific who had killed and eaten a lady missionary and then put on her clothes.

There was laughter as he thudded about on the floor of the ward.

Mr Allsop said, ‘You look ravishing, David.’

‘Chase me, sailor, I’m the last bus home!’ shouted David, and he swung round grinning, showing a breadth of shoulder and a strength of arm, a massive, cheerful obscenity.

‘I think I’ll walk,’ said Mr Allsop.

Others had done what they could to make costumes. Nothing seemed to fit. There were pieces of string holding things together.

A middle-aged man who was always very quiet was wearing the dress with red and yellow flowers that Jim had thrust at me the night before. He held a yellow wig in his hand. His head was bald. He smiled a gentle smile. I thought of middle-aged transvestites living their harmless lives. I imagined a Hindu gentleman wearing a sari and hoping that he would be a woman in his next existence. I pictured a successful Japanese business­man dressed as a geisha girl drinking tea behind paper blinds; a middle-aged German, who had once been a Hitler Youth, long-faced in an expensive blonde wig; an Italian gentleman sweating in a tight skirt; a worried American gentleman putting off painful high-heeled shoes as he sat writing to a mail order company for a rubber bosom. It was sad. They were all growing old and they would never be women.

Sam reviewed the costumes and approved: ‘A very good effort. I’ve never seen such a crew. A very good effort.’