Free Cedilla by Adam Mars-Jones

thinking that maybe I’m all right the way I am now.’ I was being partly truthful. There’s nothing like having a sore new hip that has to be coaxed into the slightest movement to make you fall in love with the good old fixed one. Rigid, dependable, everything a hip should be. ‘The physios have been super, and I can do such a lot more now than I ever could. I can’t help feeling that there are other patients who have much more to gain from the operation than I do.’
    Ansell wasn’t fooled for a moment. ‘And I don’t suppose this is about the pain, is it? The pain that I said you wouldn’t have, and turned out to be so severe?’
    I didn’t have the strength of character to deny it outright, so I just put my head on one side by a few degrees and raised my eyebrows, as if I was considering something that had never occurred to me before.
    ‘Next time at least you’ll know what you’re in for. And I couldn’t in all conscience encourage you to stop now. You’ve had half the pain already, but you haven’t had more than a tenth of the mobility that we can give you with two good hips.’
Hip honeymoon
    I gave it a good thinking-over. The new hip worked extremely well. The increase in my ability to live up to my biped pretensions was tremendous. But I wasn’t convinced that a second operation would bring about a second transformation. It seemed to suit my gait to have one hip fixed and the other mobile. Would I really be able to manage without a stick after a second operation? Somehow I couldn’t imagine a future of walking without aids of any kind, and a stick was a relatively discreet accessory. It could be tucked tidily away when it wasn’t needed. I was having a hip honeymoon now, certainly, but it wouldn’t last for ever. Sooner or later I’d just have to get on with things, but would a second operation really bring me the life I dreamed of?
    I tried to visualise my walking style with two mobile hips. Perhaps my body would go bendy in the middle, if I didn’t have the muscle strength to brace myself and hold myself steady in the proper posture. Then I’d be sorry that I’d said yes to the second operation.
    After all, who was the one who knew most about the management of this body? I was so sure it was me, when apparently it was the ones who walked around with all their parts well-formed and smoothly functioning. They knew more about the subject than I could ever hope to. I rehearsed my objections to Mum, who said I must take it up with Dr Ansell. Ansell just said, ‘We can’t have you going through life without being able to walk correctly!’ So overall the argument of ‘it just isn’t on’ won the day, despite not being an argument. I voiced my worry about ‘going all bendy in the middle’ and was told that although that might be the case for a few days, my muscles would soon strengthen up and I’d wonder at my silly doubts. I still wasn’t convinced and asked, ‘What if I really can’t manage? Can’t I at least try life with one hip and see how I get on? I feel so well set up …’
    Dr Ansell had the grace to consult Mr Arden on this point. The message relayed back from him was that if I really didn’t get on with a mobile right hip, he could do another operation to set things permanently, ‘at any angle you want’.
    Somehow I knew that the right hip wouldn’t be such a success, and I told Ansell so. ‘Don’t be silly, John,’ she said. ‘What makes you think you know better than the surgeon? You’re always saying he did a good job on the left hip.’ Once the burning spiders had gone to sleep, that is.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just feel it in my bones.’ Then Ansell looked at me with a very strange expression, as if after all this time she still didn’t know what to make of me.
    Anyway, that was me dished and dashed. In all honesty I couldn’t go against the doctor who’d done so much for me. I had to bite the bullet. One day soon I would have to go to sleep in