What the Butler Looted

by Joe Oughtnot

(A study. DOCTOR in a white coat sits writing at desk, a set of moveable screens behind him. WOMAN enters)

WOMAN:       Doctor, there’s a madman loose in the hospital grounds.

DOCTOR:      Have we met?

WOMAN:       Once. On our wedding night. It was not a great success. You mistook the vaginal lubricant for mouthwash and thenceforth whenever you tried to kiss me your face would slide off into the pillow. We have since corresponded solely by solicitor’s letter.

DOCTOR:      I’m glad you brought up my solicitor. God knows he’s made me sick often enough. I presume he is the madman to which you refer?

WOMAN:       No, this one is rather better-spoken and sports somewhat fewer tattoos on his buttocks.

DOCTOR:      Buttocks have long been a source of fascination for me. As a medical student I spent many a long hour probing deeply into their fundamental mysteries. How do you come to be on such intimate terms with those of this apparently colourful individual?

WOMAN:       He tried to assault me while I was administering an enema to my Borzoi in the Emmeline Pankhurst ward.

DOCTOR:      While finding his motive obscure I appreciate the symbolism. Was your equipment damaged?

WOMAN:       Fortunately I managed to succumb before any serious harm could come to it.

DOCTOR:      Your selfless efforts on behalf of the insurance company will not go unrewarded.

WOMAN:       Shall I ring for the police to apprehend the malefactor?

DOCTOR:      Yes, only make sure they come in uniform. If they started mingling with the patients in plain clothes we’d never get them sorted out.

WOMAN:       By the way, there’s a young woman outside.

DOCTOR:      Patient?

WOMAN:       No, in fact she’s getting quite restless. Seventeen times in the last five minutes, while casually glancing in her direction, I have observed her fiddling with her stocking tops. I would have plunged my head between her sardanapalian thighs had not the delights of Sappho been cruelly soured for me by a syphilis epidemic in the dorm of my convent school.

DOCTOR:      Send her in immediately.

(WOMAN exits)

            I am always on the lookout for an opportunity to turn my surgery from open house into Liberty Hall.

(He squirts a throat spray into his mouth. Enter GIRL)

GIRL:              Doctor, can you see me?

DOCTOR:      Of course I can see you. I only use this white stick for beating off my more importunate patients. Why are you limping?

GIRL:              It’s my leg. I can’t walk on it.

DOCTOR:      Lie down and I’ll have a go. Would you prefer me to wear hobnail boots?

GIRL:              I can’t afford private treatment! My life has been a catalogue of vicissitudes. My mother was a ticket tout for the Deptford Catfood Cannery’s Glee Club Sports and Social Circle. She raised twelve of us on an abandoned houseboat moored in the shadow of Big Ben. I have probably been disturbed in my sleep by more enormous dongs than any girl of similar IQ and bust measurement. As a child my only companion was a large plastic blow-up model of the Great Pyramid of Giza and I suspect my step-father of having been a close blood relative to Lassie.

DOCTOR:      Moved as I am by your story I’m afraid I shall be forced to throw you out on your perfectly formed arse unless you can answer one question with candour and an endearing lisp. Do you know what a Hippocratic Oath is?

GIRL:              No.

DOCTOR:      That is the correct answer. Take your clothes off.

GIRL:              It’s just my ankle.

DOCTOR:      Only the layman thinks maladies are localised. I prefer a more holistic approach.

GIRL:              But Doctor, I’m a virgin.

DOCTOR:      I’m a doctor, I can cure you.

(GIRL goes behind screen)

This could add another five pages to my autobiography. Now where’s that hypodermic of Polyfilla?

(He starts searching his desk drawers. GIRL’s dress appears over the top of the screen, followed by her head)

GIRL:              Doctor, will you be very long?

DOCTOR:      Just don’t expect the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I’m an old man.

            (GIRL disappears. DOCTOR finds the syringe.)

                        Ecce homo!

            (YOUTH enters)

YOUTH:         Doctor, you must help me.

DOCTOR:      ‘Must’ is a word you may never use to a queen or a doctor. As I, Tiresias-like, have been both in my time, I find your presumption deeply offensive.

YOUTH:         If you don’t listen to me I shall murder you in cold blood and scatter your ashes to the four winds from the roof of the gents’ public urinal in Omdurman Crescent, SW.

DOCTOR:      Your soddishness intrigues me. Pour yourself a glass of surgical spirit and continue.

YOUTH:         I am the disinherited scion of an obscure Bulgarian aristocratic family currently being sought by agents from the provisional wing of the North Thames Gas Board in connection with some misunderstanding relating to the recent malfunction of a water heating appliance, a blond trainee plumber with a rusty insulated monkey wrench, and a missing canister of heavy-duty axle grease.

DOCTOR:      Has the grease been misappropriated?

YOUTH:         No, but the plumber has alleged he was. I am fighting to clear my name and that of a small corgi of matchless pedigree innocently embroiled in the imbroglio.

DOCTOR:      As one who has had occasion to flee the wrath of the North Thames Gas Board in not dissimilar circumstances, I sympathise. Do you own a car?

YOUTH:         I do, although the vehicle in question I purchased mainly in order to employ the ergonomic flexibility of the back seat for purposes other than those for which it was expressly designed.

DOCTOR:      I have decided to help you. Put this on. (gives YOUTH his white coat)

YOUTH:         Doctor, how can I ever repay you?

DOCTOR:      I’ll meet you on the back seat of your car in ten minutes. (goes behind screen)

YOUTH:         My faith in the medical profession has been restored.

(enter WOMAN)

WOMAN:       The police will be here directly. You’re not my husband.

YOUTH:         You’re not my wife. How dare you speak to me in that tone?

WOMAN:       I recognise that voice. Do you have the word ‘mummy’ tattooed beneath the picture of a farrowing Norfolk Saddleback across your left buttock?

YOUTH:         It was a youthful indiscretion. I wanted to be a talking point at my local sauna and massage parlour where I work as a chucker-in.

WOMAN:       You tried to take advantage of me behind my back. Such typical masculine lack of consideration strongly tempts me to press charges.

YOUTH:         I am strongly tempted to rip your corsets off and stuff them up your sinuses.

WOMAN:       Don’t you lay a finger on me, young man. I am a former High Poobah of the Wallingford and District Macramé Coven.

YOUTH:         I shall make allowances for your age and social standing.

(WOMAN shrieks and dashes off, hotly pursued by YOUTH. DOCTOR emerges from behind screen, talking over his shoulder to GIRL)

DOCTOR:      Don’t move. You will recognize me on my return by my pair of deceptively sturdy rubber waders. (he finds a pair in his desk drawer) Eheu fugaces!

            (enter INSPECTOR)

INSPECTOR: I am a police inspector. I’m looking for a madman.

DOCTOR:      Takes one to know one. Do you have any preference as to religion or inside leg measurement?

INSPECTOR: Your wife telephoned to say one had escaped. We have reason to believe he is still in the vicinity as his car, rendered distinctive by the tigerskin leatherette upholstery of the ergonomically flexible back seat, has been discovered in the shadow of one of the gun turrets on the hospital perimeter. I hadn’t realised before how zealous hospital administrators are these days in their efforts to protect patients from outside interference.

DOCTOR:      Experience has shown that in most cases a .33 bullet can often prove more lastingly effective than a costly course of electric shock therapy. I hope to publish my findings in a lavishly illustrated coffee table book as soon as I can find a publisher with even fewer scruples on the subject of avarice than I.

INSPECTOR: Am I to understand that you practise euthanasia as a matter of policy?

DOCTOR:      I have been practising it for twenty years. I hope in time that practice will pay dividends and I can start calling myself a professional. In the meantime I would remind you this is a consulting room. What do you mean by coming in here fully dressed? Take your clothes off.

INSPECTOR: Are you attempting to bribe a member of Her Majesty’s finest?

DOCTOR:      Yes. I shall give you this dress if you agree to keep my nefarious activities under your toupée. (gives him GIRL’s dress)

INSPECTOR: Done. (putting on dress) I have always believed the modern bobby should be as flexible in his personal morality as he is bigoted in his treatment of foreigners.

DOCTOR:      I find your attitude refreshing if contemptible. Now if you will excuse me I have some unfinished gynaecology to attend to. (goes behind screen)

(WOMAN enters, dishevelled)

WOMAN:       At last, a fellow gender-member. You must help me. I have become the quarry in a desperate quest for sexual expansionism on the part of a relative stranger.

INSPECTOR: Is he mad?

WOMAN:       Yes, how did you know?

INSPECTOR: The fact that he should pursue a creature of such hideously homuncular aspect as yourself is proof enough of his mental imbalance.

WOMAN:       The heady disingenuousness of women’s private dialogue has been a source of comfort and solace all my life.

INSPECTOR: I shall save you. Come with me. We shall bathe together and rub each other’s toes in the warm waters. It is a mystical communion few men will ever understand.

WOMAN:       No trip to the launderette with a bulging bag of Y-fronts has ever filled me with such pleasurable anticipation.

(WOMAN and INSPECTOR exit. YOUTH enters)

YOUTH:         She deceived me by leading me up the garden path then slamming the greenhouse door in my face. I will take my revenge on the first person I see not wearing trousers.

DOCTOR:      (behind screen) Dammit, I can’t find overdrive on this pacemaker.

(YOUTH pulls down screen revealing GIRL on couch with DOCTOR lying on top of her, trousers round ankles)

YOUTH:         Stand up and take your punishment lying down like a man.

GIRL:              Look out, he’s got a gun!

            (DOCTOR levels hypodermic at YOUTH)

DOCTOR:      Drop that gun, you voyeuristic desperado.

YOUTH:         Stitch this, Jimmy.

            (YOUTH fires, hitting DOCTOR in the arm)

DOCTOR:      There goes my golf swing.

            (enter INSPECTOR)

INSPECTOR: I heard shooting. Who is responsible?

YOUTH:         I cannot tell a lie. This gun went off while I was cleaning it. Fortunately it was loaded with real bullets otherwise I might have wasted 26p on a blank.

INSPECTOR: The time has come for me to expose myself. (he struggles laboriously out of the dress. The others watch for some time)

DOCTOR:      Anti-climax is sadly overused in modern social intercourse.

INSPECTOR: (eventually) I am Inspector Rocker of the North Thames Gas Board.

YOUTH:         (camp) Get her.

INSPECTOR: (to YOUTH) I hereby arrest you for the misappropriation of a rusty insulated monkey wrench. Will you come quietly or shall I be forced to resort to grovelling entreaty?

YOUTH:         You’re a fair cop. I accept.

(enter WOMAN)

WOMAN:       You vile felon. You’re not a woman.

DOCTOR:      How did you find out?

WOMAN:       I quizzed him on Tupperware and he passed on seven questions out of ten. The limp you have inflicted on me will be the talking point of Sainsbury’s for weeks to come. No punishment is too severe. (she kicks the INSPECTOR in the balls)

INSPECTOR: Je ne regrette rien. (falls and dies)

(pink glow. Heavenly music)

DOCTOR:      Our story draws to its close. The good have ended badly and the bad have been no better than a bunch of bastards. Let us forget our differences, both ideological and sexual, and face the word androgynously.

(DOCTOR and YOUTH lift INSPECTOR’s body and slow march off, followed in procession by GIRL and WOMAN, weeping. One hundred and eighty-seven pink balloons fall gently from the flies and cover the stage. Or not)