'Non-recog...bugger it, I did nothing of the sort. I came in here expecting to have my ears adjusted, not to be turned into something that'd frighten a fucking punk dalek into a fit. And why am I as bald as a coot?'
'We did a scalp transplant with another patient. He had alopecia totalis. It's taken very well.'
'And what have I got then, galloping fucking ringworm?'
'It'll save you having to brush your hair again.'
'And shave,' said Glodstone, 'Who did you swop my face with, some terminal leper?'
'That's called the Spitfire effect,' said the Sister. 'Lots of pilots who crashed in the Battle of Britain looked like that.'
'In that case I'd have thought the Messerschmidt effect would have been more appropriate,' said Glodstone. 'Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life with these pustules? There's one actually swelling on what's left of my nose.'
'They're just leeches. We use them for scavenging '
'Shit,' said Glodstone and had to be held down to prevent him from trying to dislodge the things.
'We'll have to give you a sedative if you don't behave like a good boy.'
'Madam,' said Glodstone, managing to rally some dignity under threat of the needle, 'I have had some considerable experience of boys and no sane one would allow his face to be used as a watering hole for scavenging leeches. I could get tetanus, or the from loss of blood.'
'Nonsense. We ensure they're all perfectly healthy and they're only cleaning up the scar tissue.'
'In that case they'll get bloody awful indigestion,' said Glodstone, 'they've got enough grub there for the Lord Mayor's banquet. And get that sod out of my left nostril. I can't with my hands in bandages. And what's that for?'
'Fingerprint removal,' said the Sister, and left Glodstone to contemplate a life without any physical means of identification. Even his closest friends wouldn't know him now. Or want to.
But at least the Countess had been delighted. 'Darling,' she said when she came to collect him, 'you look wonderful,'
'You've got fucking peculiar tastes is all I can say,' said Glodstone bitterly and was promptly rebuked for using filthy language.
'You were something hush-hush in the War and you'd rather not talk about it. That's the line you'll have to take,' she said, 'and from now on you're to call me Bobby.'
'But that's a boy's name,' said Glodstone, wondering if he was about to marry some sort of lesbian with a truly horrific lust for disfigured men. It was a wonder he hadn't had a sex-change operation.
'It's nice and thirtyish. Lots of girls were called Bobby then and it'll blend with the Peke.'
Glodstone shuddered. He loathed Pekes and it was clear he was no longer going to be allowed to call his life his own, let alone his face.
It had proved only too true. After a swift registry marriage at which he had had to declare himself to be Clarence Sopwith Hillary, a combination of names Glodstone found personally humiliating, unnecessarily provocative and, in the case of the last, in exceedingly bad taste, they had driven on in Bobby's dinky Mini ('We mustn't be thought to consider ourselves a cut above the neighbours, Clarence,' she told Glodstone, who knew damned well he was a hell of a lot of cuts just about everywhere else) to the bungalow in Bognor Regis. It had fulfilled his direst expectations. From its green-tiled roof to the petunias bordering the weedless lawn and the cubistic carpet in the drawing room, it represented everything he had most despised.
'But it's pure art-deco, Clarence. I mean it's us.'
'It may be you,' said Glodstone, 'but I'm damned if it's me. And can't you call me something
