Doctor in Clover (6 page)

I arrived in the country on one of those April days when all the flowers look freshly painted and all the girls look beautiful. The English spring had arrived, as described in the poems and travel advertisements instead of the grey slushy thing we usually get.

I’d already spent a few week-ends at Long Wotton, and found it a friendly place where the inhabitants are all acquainted, if not, as I later suspected from the general feeble-mindedness, all actually related. Although I’m not much of a one for country pursuits – guns make such a frightful noise, fishing gives me a bad cold for weeks, and I regard horses as highly unroadworthy vehicles – it was pleasant to find myself respected locally as a learned chap, and not just the fellow who dishes out the chits for false teeth. Also, there was a very amiable young sub-postmistress, and I was looking forward to a few months quietly letting life go by and Avril Atkinson and Porterhampton fade into my subconscious.

After a week or so I was even becoming a little bored, with existence presenting no problems more complicated than keeping the uncle’s housekeeper happy, and she seemed very satisfied with the story of the bishop and the parrot. Then I returned one evening from repairing the effects of a pitchfork on some bumpkin’s left foot – a very pleasant consultation, with everyone touching their forelocks and asking if I could use a side of bacon – and found the old dear herself standing at the garden gate, looking distraught.

‘Doctor, Doctor!’ she called. ‘Something terrible’s happened.’

I was a bit alarmed the cream might have gone off. I was looking forward to my evening meal of fresh salmon followed by early strawberries, particularly as the old uncle had overlooked handing over the cellar keys in his hurry to be off, and I’d just found them – buried under the coal in the outhouse, of all places.

‘Doctor, you’re to go at once,’ she went on. ‘It’s very urgent. To Nutbeam Hall,’ she explained, when I asked where. ‘It’s his Lordship, there’s been a terrible accident.’

A bit of a tragedy, I felt. Fancy missing a dinner like that. But the Grimsdykes never shirk their professional duty, and pausing only to load the Bentley with sufficient splints and morphine to tackle a train crash, I sped up the road to Nutbeam Hall.

Everyone in Long Wotton knew Lord Nutbeam, of course, though I don’t mean they played darts with him every night in the local. In fact, most of the inhabitants had never seen him. The old boy was a bachelor, who lived in a rambling house apparently designed by Charles Addams, his younger brother’s missus doing such things as ordering the coal and paying the milkman. He appeared only occasionally when they gave him an airing in an old Daimler like a mechanized glasshouse, always with brother or wife as bodyguard.

This was the pair who received me in the hall, a long, dim place crammed with furniture and as stuffy as the inside of the family vault.

‘I’m the doctor,’ I announced.

‘But Dr Grimsdyke – ?’

‘Dr Rudolph Grimsdyke is enjoying a little well-earned holiday. I’m his locum and nephew, Dr Gaston Grimsdyke.’

I saw them exchange glances. The Hon. Percy Nutbeam was a fat chap with a complexion like an old whisky-vat, which I suppose he’d acquired at his brother’s expense. His wife was one of those sharp-faced little women with incisors like fangs, to whom I took an instant dislike.

‘Of course, I’m perfectly well qualified,’ I added, sensing they might not take kindly to anyone but the accredited family practitioner.

‘Naturally, naturally,’ agreed Percy Nutbeam, very sociably. ‘We don’t question that for a moment.’

‘I am sure you’ve had very extensive experience, Doctor,’ put in the wife.

‘Well, very varied, anyway. Look here,’ I told them, feeling rather awkward, ‘unless it’s a matter of saving life on the spot, if you’d rather call another practitioner – ‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Nutbeam briskly. ‘My husband and I have the utmost confidence in your handling his Lordship’s case. Haven’t we, Percy?’

‘Of course, Amanda.’

I must admit this made me feel pretty pleased. The old uncle’s full of homely advice about wool next to the skin and so on, but after all those years among the hookworm and beriberi he’s as out of date in medical practice as a Gladstone bag. I could see they were delighted at an up-to-date chap like myself with all the latest from hospital.

‘Then what’s the trouble?’ I asked.

‘We fear a broken hip, doctor,’ announced Amanda Nutbeam. ‘That’s serious, I believe?’

‘Could be. Very.’

‘Our aunt died after a broken hip,’ murmured Percy.

‘It all depends on the constitution of the patient,’ I told them, remembering my orthopaedic lectures.

‘Please let me impress upon you, Doctor,’ said Amanda, ‘that his Lordship is very delicate.’

‘Very delicate indeed,’ added her husband. ‘This way, Doctor, if you please.’

I went upstairs feeling pretty curious. I’d already decided it was the old story – poor old Lord Nutbeam was potty, and the family were making themselves thoroughly miserable keeping it quiet, instead of getting him decently certified and sending him baskets of fruit every Friday. I was therefore a bit startled when my clinical examination provided a couple of eye-openers.

In the first place, far from being dotty, Lord Nutbeam had an IQ in the professorial class.

‘I fell from the library ladder, Doctor,’ he explained from his bed. ‘Appropriately enough, as I was reaching for my first edition of
Religio Medici
. You are familiar with the work? Perhaps you have also read Dr William Harvey’s
De Motu Cordis
in the original Latin? I should much like to discuss it with a medical man.’

Not wishing to chat about all those books I’m going to read whenever I get a spare moment, I put my stethoscope in my ears. Then I got my second surprise. From the conversation downstairs I’d gathered Lord Nutbeam’s grip on life was as secure as on a wet conger eel, but I quickly discovered – fractures apart – he was as hale and hearty as I was.

‘I am very delicate, Doctor,’ he kept on insisting, though he looked a spry old boy with his little white moustache. ‘I neither smoke nor drink and live on soft foods. Ever since I had the fever at the age of twenty-one my dear brother and his wife have been devoted to my welfare.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘We’ll soon have this little matter cleared up, and you’ll he able to go on reading just where you left off.’

A few minutes later I again faced the ambulant members of the Nutbeam family in the hall, and announced in suitably sepulchral tones that his Lordship had indeed fractured the neck of the right femur.

‘Ha!’ muttered Percy Nutbeam, ‘Auntie!’

‘Then it
is
serious, Doctor?’

‘But please let me reassure you.’ I possibly gripped my lapels. ‘Once we get anyone as chirpy as Lord Nutbeam into hospital and the hands of a decent orthopaedic surgeon, we’ll have him on his feet again in no time. Meanwhile, I have administered a sedative and the fracture isn’t very painful. I guarantee he’ll stand up to everything wonderfully.’

I was then rather jolted to hear Amanda Nutbeam ask, ‘Doctor, don’t you think it would be far, far kinder just to do nothing?’

‘A very eminent specialist left our aunt to pass peacefully away,’ added Percy.

‘But dash it!’ I exclaimed. ‘How old was your aunt?’

‘Ninety-two.’

Lord Nutbeam was fifty, the age when most men are telling their secretaries they’re in the prime of life.

‘Look here, this is quite a different case–’

‘His Lordship is so delicate, life is merely a burden to him,’ persisted Amanda.

‘Been delicate for years, Doctor. Even in the nursery he was always being sick.’

‘Surely, Doctor, it would be a happy release?’

‘He will have no more troubles among the angels,’ ended Percy Nutbeam, looking at the chandelier.

Now, I may not be the most erudite of medical practitioners, but many years’ patronage of the sport of kings has left me pretty sharp at spotting something fishy. So I eyed this couple pretty sternly and said, ‘If I don’t get Lord Nutbeam into hospital this very night, it’ll be – why, gross professional misconduct, to say the least.’

‘You can hardly get him there without his consent,’ replied Amanda sharply.

She gave me a smile as unfriendly as one of Sir Lancelot Spratt’s laparotomy incisions.

‘And Lord Nutbeam would never consent to anything whatever without consulting us first,’ said Percy.

‘Now just a minute–’

‘You are very young, Doctor,’ Amanda continued. ‘I can assure you his Lordship would be much happier passing away peacefully in his own home, rather than being mutilated among strangers.’

‘Our aunt,’ added Percy, ‘was very contented right to the end.’

‘Here, I say–’

‘I think your consultation is over, Doctor. The butler will show you to the door.’

I was so furious I couldn’t enjoy my salmon. But I managed to cram down the strawberries and a bottle of the uncle’s
Liefraumilch
, then I paced the room and smoked a couple of his cigars. I looked up Watson-Jones’
Fractures and Joint Injuries
, and I found a copy of Hadfield’s
Law and Ethics for Doctors
, but though this is pretty hot on such things as Relations with the Clergy and Opening a Vein after Death, it’s a bit short on handling murderous relatives. I wondered what the devil to do. I thought of telephoning another doctor, but felt this would produce only an action for slander. Finally I decided (
a
) if old Nutbeam continued to lie flat on his back he would undoubtedly perish; (
b
) you can’t press-gang people into hospital; and (
c
) some pretty nasty questions were going to be asked at the inquest.

Apart from medical ethics, the thought of the beastly brother and wife itching to get their fingers on Lord Nutbeam’s cash and title fairly made my blood boil. Particularly as I now realized my welcome to Nutbeam Hall didn’t come from heartfelt appreciation of my clinical abilities, but because they thought I had more chance of knocking his Lordship off than my uncle had. After sitting down with a drop of the uncle’s special liqueur brandy, I made my decision. My only course, as a doctor and gentleman, was to return to Nutbeam Hall forthwith and give all concerned a jolly good piece of my mind.

Five minutes later I arrived again at the front gates, turning a few choice phrases over in my thoughts, when I noticed a ruddy great Rolls parked outside. I was wondering if the Nutbeams had simply preferred to by-pass me and summon a specialist off their own bat, when the front door opened to admit a severe-looking bird of consultoid aspect, wearing striped trousers and carrying a briefcase.

‘Good evening, sir,’ I said.

‘Good evening,’ he replied, got into his Rolls, and drove off.

I’d hardly time to sort this out when the door flew open again and Mrs Nutbeam fell on me like her long-lost baby.

‘Doctor, Doctor! Thank God you’ve come hack! You must get his Lordship into hospital at once.’

“This very instant,’ cried Percy, panting up behind.

‘With the very best specialist available.’

‘Regardless of expense.’

‘Everything humanly possible must be done for him.’

‘The telephone is just inside the hall, Doctor.’

‘Now just a minute.’ I found this rather confusing. ‘A couple of hours ago you told me–’

‘Please disregard whatever I said a couple of hours ago,’ returned Amanda Nutbeam, ‘I was too upset by my dear brother-in-law’s accident to think properly.’

‘We both were, Doctor. We were quite beside ourselves.’

Deciding there was no point in asking a lot of silly questions, I telephoned an eminent bone-basher in Gloucester who’d done a neat job on a patient who went through a threshing machine. Shortly afterwards I was gratified to see Lord Nutbeam departing tucked-up in an ambulance, particularly as the original Grimsdyke diagnosis had been confirmed.

Like any GP pushing his patient into hospital these days, I didn’t see his Lordship again for a fortnight. I was meanwhile kept agreeably busy remedying the rustics, and though the uncle didn’t even send a postcard, Miles telephoned a couple of times, but he was too concerned over Sir Lancelot’s car park to ask how I was getting on. Then one Saturday I decided to drive over to Gloucester to watch an afternoon’s cricket, and looked into the Jenner Memorial Hospital to see Lord Nutbeam during the tea interval.

I found his Lordship very perky in a private room with a Smith-Petersen pin holding his hip together, though we hadn’t much time for a quiet chat – modern orthopaedic wards are pretty active places, with all those nice girls from the physiotherapy department laying cool hands on fevered joints and making you kick your legs in the air as though you were about to turn out for the Arsenal. But the old boy seemed to be enjoying it all, and while a little red-headed staff nurse brushed his hair he started asking my views on the original works of Hippocrates.

‘You’ll soon be back among your books again,’ I said, not wishing to pursue the subject.

‘Indeed, Doctor, I believe my library is the only pleasure in my life. Except on Saturday nights, when I sometimes play the piano.’

I was reflecting that this sort of existence would have me stone dead in a fortnight when we were interrupted by the surgeon himself, a big, red-faced, jolly Irishman. Most orthopods are, when you come to think of it, just as ophthalmologists look like dyspeptic watchmakers and bladder surgeons resemble prosperous commercial travellers.

‘He’s all yours now, m’boy,’ said the surgeon, as we left the room together after examining the patient. ‘His rehabilitation will go much smoother at home, and this sister-in-law seems agreeable enough to nurse him. Anyway, I’m off on Monday for a month’s fishing in County Mayo. How is he for cash, by the by?’

‘According to village gossip, crammed with it.’

‘Is he now?’ The orthopod seemed to brighten at the prospect of having his fishing on Lord Nutbeam’s hip. ‘Odd sort of feller, don’t you think? I couldn’t see him saying “Boo” to a newly hatched gosling. I’ll be sending you the usual letter about treatment. Meanwhile, tell him to confine his reading to the bottom shelf.’

When a few mornings later they unloaded his Lordship at Nutbeam Hall and I pushed his new wheel-chair into the library, I felt pretty contented with myself. The whole episode had already increased my professional standing in Long Wotton no end. I’m far from saying the natives were hostile, but in the country they regard anyone who hasn’t lived among them for thirty years as a day tripper, and now there was plenty of glowing gossip to warm the ears of the old uncle on his return. If I could present him with a Lord Nutbeam skipping about the front lawn, he’d not only give fewer of those old-fashioned looks whenever I suggested enterprising lines of treatment, but painlessly disgorge my cash on the spot.

‘I am certainly glad my brother-in-law is back in his own home, Doctor,’ remarked Amanda Nutbeam. ‘It is only here, I think, that we really understand his best interests.’

‘So I’ve noticed,’ I told her. ‘And now for a few weeks of rest and quiet and nourishing food,’ I added confidently, ‘and his Lordship will be dancing the Highland Fling if he wants to.’

But I should have learned long ago that in the turf and therapeutics it’s disastrous to back a dead certainty.

For some reason, Lord Nutbeam didn’t want to get better. I’d imagined that once he was home he’d settle down to a nice long read, but instead he sat staring out of time window with cups of beef-tea getting cold at his elbow. Sometimes he picked up
The Anatomy of Melancholy
, but it didn’t seem to hold him. Sometimes he pushed himself to the piano, but he could manage only a few bars of
Valse Triste
. To cheer him up, I wheeled him round the garden telling funny stories, but he never seemed to see the point. ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ was the most I could get out of him.

His Lordship grew steadily feebler and feebler, while everything else in sight was burgeoning wildly in the sunshine. It wasn’t long before I began to grow alarmed about his condition. Modern medicine’s all very well, with antibiotics and heart-lung machines and so on, but once a chap’s decided he doesn’t want to live any more we’re not much better off than the witch-doctors in Central Africa. And my professional problems weren’t made easier by the other Nutbeams, who now the excitement had died down treated me like the man come to mend the drains. Far from his Lordship, they were terrible snobs – particularly the missus, whom everyone knew in the village was only a road-house remnant from Percy Nutbeam’s youth, anyway.

‘It would be much more convenient if you could make your daily visit earlier,’ she said, as I limped into Nutbeam Hall one evening after a heavy day’s practice among the pig-sties. ‘We are expecting Lord and Lady Farnborough for dinner any minute, and I should naturally prefer my guests not to be greeted in the hall by the doctor. Perhaps you would also have the goodness to change your shoes before coming to us, Dr Grimsdyke. I realize that you cannot avoid walking through the farmyards during the day, but–’

I must say, her attitude made me pretty annoyed. Particularly as I felt she wouldn’t have tried it with the old uncle, not with those old-fashioned looks of his. Then, a couple of days later, Lord Nutbeam went off his food and started looking like Socrates eyeing the hemlock.

‘We’re all bursting to see you back to normal again,’ I told him, hopefully writing a prescription for another tonic. ‘Here’s something which will have you chirping with the birds in no time.’

‘Thank you, Doctor. You are very kind. Indeed, everyone is very, very kind. Especially, of course, my dear brother and his wife.’ He listlessly turned a few pages of Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall
. ‘But I fear my accident had more effect than I imagined. I’ve hardly been out of Nutbeam Hall for many years, you know, on account of my delicate health. Meeting so many people in the hospital was something of a disturbance. You are doubtless familiar with the lines in Gray’s
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
–’

Feeling that churchyards were definitely out, I interrupted with the story about the parrot. But I don’t think he got that one either.

I left him in the library, wondering whether to assemble the family again and confess the old boy wasn’t living up to my prognosis. But I was stopped by Percy Nutbeam himself in the hall.

‘Could you spare time for a whisky and soda, Doctor?’

My professional duties being over for the day, I accepted.

‘I’m very worried about my brother’s condition,’ he declared, after a bit of chat about the weather and the crops.

‘And so am I,’ I told him,

‘I remember the case of our aunt so well. The collapse seemed to set in all at once. Like a pricked balloon. I suppose there’s not any danger of – er, is there?’

I nodded. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to say there is.’

The poor chap looked so concerned I felt I must have misjudged him all along.

‘Then how long, Doctor, would you give him – ?’

‘Might be a matter of only a week or two,’ I said gloomily.

‘Good God! Not before May the twenty-eighth?’

I looked puzzled, wondering if they’d arranged a picnic or something.

‘This is a very delicate business, Doctor.’ He poured himself another whisky. ‘But I must be frank with you, You remember Sir Kenneth Cowberry ?’

‘I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure

‘He was leaving as you returned, the night of the accident. He’s the head of Hoskins, Harrison, Cowberry, and Blackthorn. My brother’s accountants, you know. I thought we’d better send for him at once, in case there were any arrangements my brother might have wished–’

‘Quite,’ I said.

‘Lord Nutbeam naturally desires to leave my wife and myself his entire fortune. After all, we have devoted our lives to his welfare.’

‘Quite, quite.’

‘But it was only that evening we learned – my brother is oddly secretive about money matters – that he had in fact already made over his estate to me. In order to – er, escape death duties. You may have heard of other cases, Doctor? But under the rules of the Inland Revenue Department my brother must stay alive for five years after signing the document, or it doesn’t hold water. And those five years are up at midnight, May the twenty-eighth. So, Doctor, if you can keep him alive till then – I mean, I hope and trust he will have many happy years among us yet – you understand the position…?’

I didn’t think highly before of this pint-sized Lord and Lady Macbeth. Now I felt it would serve them damn well right if the Government carted off the lot, to pay, among other things, my National Health salary.

‘I understand the position very well,’ I replied, wishing I could produce one of the uncle’s looks.

I’d very much taken to old Nutbeam, and I was determined to keep him alive for the full three score and ten. But the situation was getting beyond a chap of my modest experience, and out in the country I hadn’t any of my chums to ask for advice. I wished the uncle would get fed up sitting on the beach at Montego Bay and come home. I even wished Miles would turn up for the week-end. I was wondering what to say next when I had another of those profitable inspirations of mine.

‘I think it would be wise,’ I announced, ‘to have another opinion. There might be some other condition I’ve overlooked. After all, doctors can make mistakes. Just like accountants.’

‘As many opinions as you wish, Dr Grimsdyke.’

‘There’s a man in Harley Street just right for this type of case. Though his private fees are rather high.’

‘That’s of no concern at all, I assure you.’

‘And, of course, he’ll charge a guinea a mile for the visit.’

Percy Nutbeam looked a bit concerned doing the mental arithmetic, but he agreed, ‘Nothing is too expensive with my brother’s life at stake.’

‘Plus his first-class fare and meals, naturally. He’s a general surgeon, but I guarantee he’s got the sharpest diagnostic nose in London. His name’s Sir Lancelot Spratt.’