Doctor in Clover (4 page)

‘From your appearance,’ started Miles, ‘you would seem to have finished some protracted party.’

‘If you must know,’ I replied, rather hurt, ‘I’ve had a nasty attack of epidemic parotitis. I’ve hardly got over it yet.’

‘I’m sorry.’

It being one of my principles always to confess my short-comings promptly, particularly if they’re likely to be discovered pretty quickly anyway, I’d telephoned Miles on arrival and invited myself to dinner. I now sat in his South Kensington drawing-room wondering how best to explain the retreat from Porterhampton.

‘And when are you returning to your practice?’ asked Miles.

I shifted on the sofa.

‘As a matter of fact, old lad, I’m not.’

‘What? Damn it! You’ve not been thrown out already?’

‘Thrown out?’ I looked offended. ‘I resigned, with the dignity of a high-principled Cabinet Minister.’

Miles fell silent. To fill the gap I reached for a magazine – one of the shiny ones which report the activities of all our best-bred young women and horses.

‘That’s what I need,’ I said, indicating a photograph of people with long drinks on a yacht at Cannes. ‘A few weeks in the sunshine to buck me up.’

Miles made a noise like a tearing sheet of canvas.

‘Damnation, Gaston! Are you mad? Are you fit for some institution? Here you are – out of work, penniless, a walking disgrace to your family if not to your entire profession, and you ramble about weeks in the sunshine. Really!’

I tossed the magazine aside with a sigh.

‘The trouble is, you’re perfectly right,’ I admitted. ‘I’m not the shining figure of the eager young doctor.’

‘You’re the shining figure of the shiftless young wastrel, and I don’t mind telling you. I seriously advise you to see a psychiatrist. He might at least be able to explain your highly unstable occupational history.’

‘The fact is, old lad, I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me that I don’t like medicine very much.’

Miles stared as though I were Cinderella telling the Fairy Godmother she didn’t care greatly for dancing.

‘At Porterhampton the dear old couple handed me every chance to settle down as a respectable family man and family doctor. But do I want to be the modern GP, signing certificates for all the uninteresting patients and hospital letters for all the interesting ones? No, I jolly well don’t. And neither do a lot of other chaps, judging by the correspondence in the
BMJ
. As I’ll never be a specialist in anything, and I couldn’t possibly sit in the Town Hall with a map of the local sewers doing public health, there isn’t much left. The trouble is, I’m temperamentally unsuited to my work.’

‘But think of all those years of study – wasted!’

‘They’re not wasted a bit,’ I argued. ‘Look at all the famous chaps who’ve benefited from a medical education – Leonardo da Vinci, John Keats, Chekhov, and so on. Not to mention Crippen.’

‘You must quite definitely see a psychiatrist. And meanwhile, how precisely are you going to earn your bread?’

‘Ah, yes. I agree, that’s the problem.’

Further discussion about my professional future was prevented by the appearance of Miles’ wife.

‘How charming you’re back so soon, Gaston,’ she greeted me. ‘We quite thought you’d gone to seek your fortune up North.’

‘I decided that opportunity taps less faintly in London, Connie.’

‘I’m so glad. Now we’ll see much more of you. What did you say, Miles, dear?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ muttered Miles.

I knew Connie pretty well. In fact, once I was in love with her.

This happened when I was a student and Miles had just qualified as Mr Sharper’s junior casualty house-surgeon, and pretty pleased with himself he felt about it, too. As I reflected during dinner that evening, Miles and I had never really hit it off at St Swithin’s, or even as kids. Miles was the one who didn’t get his boots dirty, always had his sums right, wasn’t sick at all the parties. and didn’t make a fuss about his tonsilectomy. At school he used to make me blow up his football and toast his crumpets. Then I followed him to St Swithin’s, and like everyone else started medicine by dissecting the dogfish, which has put me off fish suppers ever since. Miles was already well into the course, and by the time I got as far as the anatomy rooms kept buttonholing me in the corridors with fatherly advice.

‘If you spent a little more time dissecting and a little less writing all those stupid jokes for the students’ magazine,’ was his usual line, ‘you might show you were taking your career seriously.’

‘I thought the last one was rather funny. About the girl who said she suffered from claustrophobia because she had a terrible fear of confinement.’

‘Take it from me, Gaston, you’ll regret this frivolity one day. You stick to your anatomy. It’s the grammar of medicine.’

‘Personally.’ I disagreed, ‘I think they only fill medical students with anatomy like they used to fill kids with brimstone and treacle. The experience is obviously so unpleasant, everybody agrees it must be doing them good.’

‘I’m not at all certain it isn’t my duty to write to my father,’ he generally ended.

My own father having unfortunately perished in the RAMC, I was brought up under a Victorian system of guardians, with Dr Rudolph Grimsdyke as chief paymaster. Uncle Rudolph practising at the time out East, Miles was his nark on the spot, and I suppose he sneaked in the end because half-way through the course the old boy cut my allowance by half. I know that ever since
La Bohème
it’s been thought rather romantic for students to starve in garrets holding the tiny frozen hands of their girl-friends, but that sort of existence didn’t appeal to me at all. Particularly as all the girls I knew seemed to complain shockingly of the draughts even in comfortable cocktail bars.

Shortly after the onset of this financial anaemia Miles qualified, glittering with scholarships and prizes.

‘Gaston,’ he said, getting me into a corner of the St Swithin’s Casualty Department one winter afternoon, ‘I want a serious word with you.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I’d be much obliged if you’d try to embarrass me a little less now that I’m on the St Swithin’s junior staff. You must realize that I, at least, don’t wish the entire family to be made ridiculous throughout the hospital. It’s bad enough your always disappearing to the dog-races, but this habit of taking menial employment–’

‘My dear old lad, I assure you I don’t do it for fun. Anyway, it’s all your old man’s fault, being so tight-fisted. Surely you know by now I dislike work in any form whatever?

I was at the time restoring my enfeebled exchequer with such casual jobs as dish-washing in West End restaurants and bar-keeping in East End pubs, and had just finished a profitable though strictly limited run as Father Christmas in an Oxford Street store.

‘That’s not the point at all. Mr Sharper was certain he saw you the other day. He was extremely blunt to me about it this morning.’

‘Oh, really? I thought his keen surgical eye had pierced the whiskers. But I bet he only made a fuss because I told his beastly kids to ask for a complete set of electric trains and a couple of motor-cars.’

‘I do wish you’d take this seriously, Gaston!’

‘Let’s talk about it another time. I must be off now, I’m afraid. Otherwise I’ll be late for work.’

A few days after this argument I met Connie, by accident. All medical students dream of witnessing some really satisfactory road smash, then appearing on the scene to calm the panic-stricken bystanders with the magic words, ‘I am a doctor.’ I’ve done it myself three times. The first, the policeman told me to run home to mother. The second, I grabbed a tourniquet from some fumbling old boy and discovered he was the Professor of Surgery at St Asaph’s. Now, of course, I walk rapidly in the opposite direction and leave it to the ambulance boys, remembering Sir Lancelot Spratt’s resuscitation lecture – ‘When I chuck myself into the Thames in despair, ladies and gentlemen, I hope I’ll be given artificial respiration by a fit Boy Scout, and not some middle-aged medical practitioner who’s soon more out of breath than I am.’ But when one is young, one doesn’t consider such things. On this third occasion, as soon as I heard the scream of brakes and tinkling of glass, I leapt into the middle of Sloane Square and took sole charge.

In the next part of the dream, the injured party isn’t a poor young child or a dear old lady, but a beautiful girl having hysterics. And that’s exactly what I found. So I popped her in a taxi and drove her round to the casualty entrance at St Swithin’s, where Miles organized X-rays, diagnosed a Colles’ fracture. and signed an admission form for his ward.

‘Charming girl, too,’ I observed, as Connie was wheeled away.

‘Thank you, Gaston, for holding the X-rays.’

‘Always glad to help. I might pop up and see her later. Terribly important to follow-up cases, so they keep telling us.’

‘Mr Sharper allows only his own students in his wards, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, come. Can’t you stretch a point?’

‘A point, being defined as possessing position but not magnitude, is incapable of being stretched,’ said Miles.

All the same, I went up the next morning with a bunch of roses.

‘How terribly sweet!’ exclaimed Connie, looking beautiful despite the plaster and bandages. ‘And your assistant’s just called too, with the mimosa.’

‘Assistant?’

‘The doctor who helped you with the X-rays.’

‘Ah, yes. Useful chap.’

The staff in modern hospitals outnumbering the patients by about five to one, the inmates can be excused for confusing the ranks. I remembered there was once a frightful row when Sir Lancelot Spratt in a white coat was mistaken for the ward barber.

‘You’ll be out of here this afternoon,’ I went on, not bothering to start long explanations. ‘When time has healed all your wounds, would you care to come out for a bite of dinner?’

‘But I’d love to, Doctor!’

‘Jolly good. I’ll get your telephone number from the ward notes.’

Unfortunately, Connie turned out to be the daughter of a shockingly rich fellow from Lloyd’s, so I couldn’t buy her a pint of beer and show her the ducks in St James’s Park and pretend I’d given her an exciting evening. Also, I knew a determined chap like Miles wouldn’t easily give up. While I was sitting with her a few weeks later in the Savoy, hoping she wouldn’t feel like another drink, I remarked casually, ‘Seeing much of my cousin these days?’

‘As a matter of fact, yes. I’m going to the theatre with him tomorrow.’

‘It may be rather cheek of me to ask this, Connie, but I’d rather you didn’t mention me to him, if you wouldn’t mind.’

She looked surprised. ‘Why ever not?’

‘Just to save the poor chap’s feelings. These little family jealousies, you know. He feels it rather, being my underling at the hospital.’

‘How awfully considerate of you, Gaston. Naturally, I won’t say a word. But supposing he talks about you?’

‘He never does,’ I assured her. ‘Another Martini?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Connie.

I passed a couple of enjoyable months escorting Connie to all the more fashionable plays and restaurants, particularly as she still seemed to imagine that I was some wealthy young specialist, and I never seemed to find the chance to put her right. Then one afternoon Miles cornered me in the surgeons’ room.

‘I believe you’ve still been seeing Connie?’ he demanded.

I tossed my sterile gown into the students’ linen bin.

‘On and off, yes.’

‘I’d like you to know that I – I’m perfectly serious about her.’

This didn’t disturb me. Miles was perfectly serious about everything.

‘May the best man win, and all that, eh?’

‘Damn it, Gaston! I wish you wouldn’t regard this as some sort of sporting contest. I happen to love Connie deeply. I wish to make her my wife.’

‘Good Lord! Do you really?’

The notion of Miles making anyone his wife seemed as odd as palm trees growing on an iceberg.

‘And I’ll thank you not to trifle with her affections,’ he added.

‘You will, will you?’ I returned, feeling annoyed at his tone. ‘And how do you know I don’t want to make her Mrs Grimsdyke, too?’

‘You? You’re in no more position to marry than a fourth-form schoolboy.’

I felt the conversation was becoming embarrassing, and edged away. Besides, I had to be off to work again.

Entertaining Connie was making such inroads into my finances that I’d been obliged to find more regular employment. Fortunately, I’d met a chap called Pedro in a Shaftesbury Avenue pub, and after giving him some free advice about his duodenal ulcer and a good thing for Kempton Park, I was offered five evenings a week as a waiter in his Soho restaurant. Pedro was a fierce task-master, most of his relatives still chasing each other over Sicilian mountains with shotguns, and I had to clean all the soup off my best set of tails every night before going to bed, but the tips were good enough compensation for both.

Or they were until that particular evening, when Miles walked in with Connie.

‘Shall we sit over here?’ she said, advancing towards my corner. ‘I hate a table too near the door.’

I ducked quickly into the kitchen.

‘What the ’ell are you up to?’ demanded Pedro.

‘I – er, just wanted to adjust my sock suspenders.’

‘I don’t pay you to adjust your socks, mister. You get back in there. There’s customers just come in.’

I passed a hand across my forehead.

‘You know, Pedro, I don’t think I’m feeling very well tonight. A bit faint. I might be sick over the fish or something. If you don’t mind, I’ll just totter through the staff entrance and make home to bed.’

‘’Ow the ’ell you think I run my business one man short?’ Pedro picked up a carving knife. ‘You leave this restaurant only over your dead body, see mister? If you want to be sick, come out and be sick in the kitchen, like everybody else. You go to work.’

I edged back through the swing doors. I slipped my menu and table-napkin behind a bread basket, and prepared to dash for the pavement. I’d almost made the main entrance, when Connie glanced idly round and spotted me.

‘Why, it’s Gaston! Hello, there! You dining here, too?’