Doctor in Clover (7 page)

‘Delightful air,’ declared Sir Lancelot.

I’d driven over to Greater Wotton Junction to meet him, and pretty nervous I felt about it, too. In my days as a student at St Swithin’s, Sir Lancelot and myself disagreed about everything from the way I tried to treat appendicitis to the way I tried to treat the nurses, and his last remark the day I proudly told him I’d qualified was that the Archbishop of Canterbury would presumably now have to make an addition to the Litany.

I bowed him from his carriage like royalty come to open the local fat stock show.

‘I hope you’ve no objection to travelling all this way, sir?’ I began, feeling that I’d sent for Rembrandt to paint the attic.

‘Objections? Why, boy? It is the duty of consultant surgeons and the fire brigade to give their services whenever and wherever they are needed. It is, moreover, extremely pleasant to escape from London on a summer morning, and I’m being handsomely paid for it. Don’t be so damned humble, Grimsdyke!’ He poked me in the epigastrium with his walking-stick. ‘A doctor must feel humble only towards his own abilities. Excellent roses, these. Apricot Queens, I believe? What sort of mulch d’you use?’

This remark was directed to the stationmaster, Greater Wotton being one of those junctions regarded as an exercise in landscape gardening interrupted by the occasional arrival of trains. Sir Lancelot then ignored me for ten minutes’ erudite discussion on the merits of horse and cow manure. Come to think of it, that sort of ability represents his genius. Most surgeons can talk only about the inside of their patients or the inside of their cars, but Sir Lancelot has informed views on everything from nuclear physics to newts.

‘I am presumably obliged to travel in that,’ he said, indicating my car. ‘Am I permitted a bite to eat before seeing the patient?’

‘I’ve arranged a modest meal, sir.’

Remembering that a high blood-sugar is conducive to mental tranquillity, I’d decided to give the old boy a jolly good lunch before getting down to business.

‘I rarely take wine at midday,’ Sir Lancelot observed later, mellowing over the roast lamb and a glass of the uncle’s Château Lafite, ‘but I must say Dr Rudolph Grimsdyke has excellent taste in it.’

I agreed, though I’d been a bit alarmed to notice the cellar had somehow got down to only a couple of bottles.

‘The only locums I did were in the East End of London, where in those days the doctors were as half-starved as the patients.’ Sir Lancelot gazed through the window, where the cuckoos were tuning up among the blossoms. ‘He seems to have found himself a very agreeable spot – botanically, ornithologically, and even meteorologically.’

‘But not anthropologically, sir,’ I said brightly, feeling it time to mention the Nutbeams,

‘According to the essayist Hazlitt,’ Sir Lancelot observed with a nod, ‘all country people hate each other. You will now kindly recapitulate the family history of your patient. You were not particularly explicit on the telephone.’

An hour later the pair of us were marching into Nutbeam Hall,

I think the Hon. Percy and his repulsive missus were staggered to find themselves faced with a chap in a frock coat and a wing collar, who glanced round as though he’d been sent to condemn the place by the local Medical Officer of Health.

‘We are delighted, Sir Lancelot,’ simpered Amanda Nutbeam, who of course thought doctors were all right as long as they had titles. ‘I am so pleased you accepted our invitation to take over his Lordship’s case.’

Sir Lancelot looked as though she were a junior probationer who’d dropped a bedpan in the middle of his weekly ward round,

‘Madam, I have
not
assumed clinical responsibility for Lord Nutbeam. His medical adviser remains Dr Gaston Grimsdyke, at whose invitation I stand here now.’

‘Oh! Of course, Sir Lancelot–’

‘That is normal professional procedure.’

These remarks put my morale up no end. Despite our differences in the past, Sir Lancelot wasn’t so much offering the olive branch as proffering ruddy great groves. But I should have realized that a chap like him would back me to the scalpel hilt, now that I was qualified and one of the boys.

‘We shall see the patient, if you please.’ The Nutbeams looked rather flustered. ‘And I should be glad if you would kindly provide me with a clean hand towel.’

I remembered Sir Lancelot always demanded a clean towel in uppish households, and in a tone inferring that it was a pretty stiff request.

‘Dr Grimsdyke will lead the way,’ he went on, as I stepped respectfully aside. ‘The patient’s doctor precedes the consultant into the sickroom. That is etiquette, and I should be the last to alter it.’

Our consultation was a great success. Sir Lancelot started by discussing ancient Chinese medicine for twenty minutes, then he examined the patient, had a chat about Byzantine architecture, and left his Lordship looking his brightest for weeks.

‘And you discovered the original fracture solely from the physical signs, Grimsdyke?’ he asked, as we left the room.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Congratulations. The difficulty in making such a diagnosis is matched only by the disaster of missing it.’

‘That’s – that’s very kind of you, sir.’

‘I believe in giving credit where credit is due. In your case it happens to he remarkably easy.’

I felt jolly pleased with myself, all the same. Though I’ve always maintained that orthopaedic surgery is only a branch of carpentry, and now I come to think of it I was rather hot stuff in the woodwork class at school.

The other two Nutbeams were waiting expectantly in the hall, but at the foot of the stairs Sir Lancelot simply picked up his hat.

‘Sir Lancelot – ?’

Percy looked as though this wasn’t much of a run for their money.

‘Yes, Mr Nutbeam ?’

‘Have you – er, anything to say about my brother?’

‘I shall have a consultation with my colleague here, who will inform you later. That is the normal procedure.’

‘But if you could hold out even a word of hope–’ exclaimed Amanda, I fancy glancing stealthily at the calendar.

‘I think my colleague will allow me to say that you will shortly see an improvement in his Lordship’s condition.’

‘Thank God for that,’ they cried together.

‘Now, if you please, Dr Grimsdyke, we shall return to your surgery.’ He pulled out that great gold watch of his. ‘We have really little time for discussion before the four o’clock train.’

Sir Lancelot didn’t mention the patient on our way back to the uncle’s cottage, being more interested in describing all the different methods of thatching. I had to wait till he was enjoying a cup of tea in the parlour, when he declared:

‘Apart from an uncomplicated healing fracture, there’s nothing whatever wrong with Lord Nutbeam. But there’s one thing he needs desperately – an interest in life. Believe me, it’s perfectly easy to be bored to death. What do you suggest?’

‘More books, sir?’

Sir Lancelot seemed to find this amusing.

‘From you, Grimsdyke, a remarkable answer. The advice about never judging others by yourself is one of the stupider of proverbs. If humanity didn’t show an astounding sameness, the practice of medicine would come to a dead stop.’

He spread a scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam.

‘I agree that after a lifetime playing the recluse, Lord Nutbeam’s expedition to hospital was something of a shock. With the appalling advance of specialization, hospitals have become quite overcrowded with staff – it is, of course, completely impossible to get any rest in them. Did you notice his nurses?’

‘As a matter of fact I did, sir. There was a staff nurse and–’

Sir Lancelot raised his hand. ‘It is quite enough answer, Grimsdyke, that you noticed them. No doubt Lord Nutbeam finds the amateur ministrations of his sister-in-law less agreeable. I shall send down a qualified nurse from a London bureau tomorrow. You will see to it that she isn’t overruled by the family.’

‘That might be a bit difficult, sir.’

‘Rubbish!’ He helped himself to a slice of fruit cake. ‘There’s only one way to handle difficult patients, difficult relatives, and difficult horses, and that’s by keeping on top. I hope my visit has clothed you with a little added authority. That’s often the only value of the consultant appearing on the scene at all.’

‘How about tonics, sir?’

‘To my mind there is only one effective tonic. I shall arrange for that to be sent from London also. I think I have time for another cup of tea, if you please. By the by,’ he went on, as I put down the pot. ‘You knew your cousin Miles was putting up for the consultant staff at St Swithin’s?’

‘He did mention it to me, sir.’

‘How’s he fancy his chances?’

‘I think he’s modest by nature, sir,’ I replied cagily.

‘H’m. I am only betraying an open secret by saying that Cambridge is being remarkably difficult in the selection committee. Obstinacy is such an extremely unpleasing characteristic.’ Sir Lancelot stroked his beard. ‘How are your relations with your cousin?’

‘We do rather move in different worlds, sir.’

‘I don’t know if you are sufficiently familiar to drop a hint that his chances at St Swithin’s would be considerably bettered if he were a little more disgustingly human. Otherwise he’s an exemplary candidate. His work has ability, his manner has confidence, and, what is more important, his wife has money. But whoever the committee elects, you have to live with the feller for the rest of your professional lifetime. And nothing is more trying than being yoked to a pillar of virtue, as you can find from the divorce courts any afternoon,’

‘I’m sure Miles is dedicated to his profession, sir,’ I remarked, taking the chance to slip in a good word for the chap.

‘Nothing,’ declared Sir Lancelot, ‘is quite so dangerous as the dedicated man.’ Shortly afterwards I drove him to the station. I no longer had any qualms about tackling the Nutbeams, even over the nurse.

‘A nurse? That will be rather tedious, Doctor,’ Amanda objected at once, ‘We had one in the house before, the time my husband had pneumonia. It really was most difficult. They feel quite entitled to have their meals at the same table, and even attempt to sit with one in the evenings.’

This annoyed me more, because I’m a great admirer of the nursing profession, or at least of some of it. Remembering Sir Lancelot’s advice, I said pretty stuffily, ‘If you don’t obey your doctor’s orders, there really isn’t much point in having one.’

‘I assure you I can put up with any inconvenience for the sake of my brother-in-law’s health,’ she returned. ‘I will instruct the housekeeper to prepare a room immediately.’

I myself wasn’t much looking forward to sharing the clinical management of Lord Nutbeam with a nurse, knowing how Sir Lancelot’s taste in them lay. His ward sisters at St Swithin’s were a couple of women who could have kept Atila the Hun in bed for a month on bread-and-milk, and I expected someone about six feet tall with a chin like a football boot, old enough to have spanked Lord Nutbeam as a baby and tough enough to try it now. It was therefore with some astonishment that I arrived at Nutbeam Hall the next evening to discover the most beautiful girl I’d seen in my life.

‘Good evening, Doctor,’ she greeted me. ‘I am Nurse Jones. I have given the patient his bath, and he is ready for you to see him now.’

I couldn’t do anything except stare and bless my luck. She was a dainty, demure creature, with a little bow thing under her chin. She looked like Snow-White, just growing out of her dwarfs. I was hopeful that our professional relationship would quickly ripen into something more promising, the sub-postmistress being all very well for country rambles but having the annoying habit of continually explaining how you counted postal orders.

‘Oh, jolly good,’ I said. ‘I hope you like it here in the country? Perhaps you’d care to see the local beauty spots one afternoon when you’re off duty?’

She gave a smile as gentle as the ripples on the village pond.

‘That is really most kind of you, Doctor, but I’m afraid I shan’t find much time to spare with such an important case.’

‘We’ll see, eh?’ Nothing brings a man and woman together like treating someone else’s illnesses. ‘Let’s go and inspect his Lordship.’

I found Lord Nutbeam sitting in bed sipping a glass of champagne.

‘Where on earth did that come from?’ I exclaimed.

‘But the note from Fortnum and Mason’s said you’d ordered it for me, Doctor.’

‘Oh, did I? Yes, of course I did. Bollinger, eh? Sir Lancelot’s favourite tipple. Jolly good tonic, don’t you find?’

‘I would never take alcohol except on doctor’s orders, of course. But I must say, it does make me feel extremely well. How much do you want me to drink of it, Doctor? I believe six dozen bottles arrived downstairs.’

I murmured something about a bottle a day keeping the doctor away, and invited myself to a drop.

‘How do you like your new nurse?’ I asked, as she disappeared to find a glass.

Lord Nutbeam thought for some moments.

‘She reminds me of a little Crabbe.’

‘She doesn’t walk sideways,’ I said, feeling this rather un-complimentary.

“Courteous though coy, and gentle though retired,”’ he quoted. ‘“The joy of youth and health her eyes display’d. And ease of heart her every look convey’d.”’

I felt that the case had taken a turn for the better.

Nurse Jones was a great success all round. In a couple of days she had old Nutbeam out of his wheel-chair tottering round sniffing the flowers. The next week she’d taken to driving him about the countryside of an afternoon in the Daimler. And, calling one lunch-time, I was surprised to see he’d gone off his usual diet of poached egg on pulverized spinach and was tucking into a steak the size of a bath-mat.

Even the Percy Nutbeams didn’t object to the new régime, partly because his Lordship was every day in every way getting better and better, and partly because of the way Nurse Jones handled the missus. Nurses are charming girls, though unfortunately inclined to be bossy, doubtless the effect of spending their formative years telling old men to get back into bed. But Nurse Jones was as sweet and gentle as Gee’s Linctus, and always took care to address Mrs Nutbeam like an Edwardian housemaid straight out of the orphanage.

‘The nurse at least knows her place,’ Amanda admitted to me one afternoon. ‘Which is a very welcome discovery in anyone these days. Though, of course, she could hardly expect to mix with people of our class. Not only was she trained at some extremely obscure hospital, but her father, I believe, is an engine driver.’

‘You mean in
loco parentis
?’ I suggested. But Amanda Nutbeam definitely had no sense of humour, either.

“All the same, I’m glad Sir Lancelot Spratt recommended her. She seems to be doing his Lordship the world of good.’

She was doing me the world of good, too. After passing the day sticking penicillin into rural posteriors, you can’t imagine how you look forward to half an hour with a civilized popsie in the evening.

‘Good evening, Nurse Jones,’ I would greet her at the bedroom door. ‘And how is his Lordship this evening?’

‘Very well, thank you, Doctor. He has taken his vitaminized milk and played
Clair de Lune
twice on the piano.’

‘And how are
you
, Nurse Jones?’

‘Very well, thank you, Doctor.’

‘Perhaps one afternoon you would like a spot of fresh air and a view of the beauty spots, Nurse Jones?’

‘Perhaps one afternoon, Doctor.’

After a week or two, I felt the time had come to put our acquaintance on a rather jollier footing.

Old Nutbeam had hobbled out of the room somewhere, and Nurse Jones had been listening very respectfully while I held forth on the osteopathology of uniting fractures, so I put my arm round her waist and kissed her.

The result was rather unexpected. I’d imagined that she’d drop her eyes and dissolve into grateful sobs on my waistcoat. Instead, she caught me a neat uppercut on the left ramus of the mandible.

I don’t know if many people have been clocked by nurses, but quite a lot of power they pack, after all those years shifting patients about with their bare hands. She hit me clean off my balance, right into the remains of his Lordship’s dinner. But I was even more startled at the appearance of little Nurse Jones herself. She looked as though she’d been charged with a powerful current of electricity. She was all eyes and teeth and fingernails.

‘You despicable young man!’ she hissed. ‘Do you take me for one of your hospital pick-ups? Keep your hands to yourself, and your manners to the saloon bar,’

‘I say, I’m most terribly sorry.’ I brushed off the remains of a fruit salad. ‘It was all meant in a perfectly friendly spirit. Like at Christmas.’

‘Oh, I know you young doctors!’ She looked as though she wanted to spit out something nasty. ‘Do you imagine I put up with five years’ hard labour in a hospital like a workhouse just for people like you to maul me about? Huh! I want more out of life than that. It’s bad enough drudging away night and day, without having to defend yourself against ham-fisted Romeos as soon as you’re left alone in the same room. You make me absolutely nauseated.’

Strong words, of course. But the Grimsdykes, I trust, are ever gentlemen, and sensitive to the first hint that their attentions might be unwelcome.

‘A thousand apologies,’ I told her, rather stiffly. ‘It’s all this hot weather we’re having. I can assure you, Nurse Jones, that the incident will not occur again.’

‘I can assure you, too,’ she said.

At that moment old Nutbeam pottered back, and she became her usual demure self once more.

For the next few days I didn’t know whether I was more confused than disappointed. After all, every houseman’s tried a bit of slap-and-tickle in the sluice-room, and the worst response is usually a few remarks about not being that sort of a girl and Sister might come back in a minute, anyway. But Nurse Jones could look as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth while comfortably able to digest red-hot nails. It was puzzling, and rather a shame. I’d been particularly looking forward to those beauty spots.

Arriving at Nutbeam Hall a few evenings later, I thought at first that Nurse Jones was in form again. Then I recognized the voices behind the drawing-room door.

‘For a man in your position behaving like that with one of the servants,’ Mrs Nutbeam was declaring, ‘is absolutely disgusting.’

‘My dear!’ bleated Percy. ‘She’s hardly a servant–’

‘Of course she’s a servant. I’ve had lady’s maids in the past who were twice as good as she is.’

‘But my dear–’

‘And in our own home, with your own brother lying ill in the next room. Really, Percy!’

‘My dear–’

‘You’ve always treated me atrociously, but this is too much. Far too much. Haven’t I enough on my mind at this moment?’

‘But, my dear, how was I to know she’d make such a fuss? I was only trying to hold her hand.’

‘And you have the effrontery to offer that as an excuse! If I had my way I’d bundle the little baggage out of the house in the next five minutes. It’s only that she’s kept your brother out of his grave that I tolerate her at all.’

‘Let me tell you, my dear, the scene won’t be repeated.’

‘And let me tell you, my dear, that if it is, I’ll break your neck.’

It was quite a consolation to find that Nurse Jones dished it out impartially to all comers.

Thereafter I paid fewer visits to Nutbeam Hall, his Lordship no longer needing my constant attentions, anyway. There wasn’t even much excitement for the Percy Nutbeams watching LSD-day approaching, as he quietly became haler and heartier every moment. Under the mellowing influence of the coming largesse the ghastly couple grew quite friendly towards me, and even asked me to a cocktail party with a lot of their friends, who looked as though they’d been delivered in horse-boxes,

At last the twenty-eighth of May dawned, another jolly Elysian summer day. In the afternoon I drove to Nutbeam Hall for my final visit.

I found Percy and his wife standing in the hall, looking as if they’d just checked off the winning line in their penny points.

‘Dr Grimsdyke,’ Percy said at once, ‘we both want to thank you for restoring my dear brother to us.’

‘It is a great comfort, Doctor, to have him with us today. And, of course, for many more years to come.’

‘If God spares him,’ added Percy, looking at the chandelier again.

‘To mark our appreciation,’ Amanda went on, ‘my husband and I would like you to accept this little gift. I hope it will remind you of one of your earliest successful cases.’

Whereupon Percy handed me a gold cigarette case, still in its box from Cartiers.

I stumbled out a few words of thanks, wondering how much it had set them back. Then I suggested I’d better make my
adieus
to the patient himself.

‘My brother’s out for his afternoon drive at the moment,’ Percy told me, ‘but of course he’s due home any minute.’

‘He never likes to be far from Nutbeam Hall,’ said Amanda.

‘Do wait, Doctor. Perhaps a cup of tea?’

At that moment we heard the Daimler in the drive, and as we opened the front door Lord Nutbeam got out with Nurse Jones. It was then I noticed something about him – possibly the look in his eye, like a chap reaching for his first pint at the end of a tough game of rugger – which made me slip the cigarette case into my pocket and prepare for trouble.

‘Percy…Amanda,’ began Lord Nutbeam, ‘allow me to introduce Lady Nutbeam.’

The two Honourables looked as though they’d been run through the middle by a red-hot cautery.

‘That’s impossible!’ cried Mrs Nutbeam.

‘Not impossible at all, my dear Amanda. Ethel and I were married half an hour ago in Gloucester Registry Office. Two very pleasant young men from the Waterworks Department were our witnesses.’

Percy Nutbeam gasped. ‘But the money!’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t any, Percy. Not for you, anyway. The deed is, of course, annulled by my marrying before the five years are up. You will inherit the title when I eventually perish, unless Ethel and I happen to have children…’

Mrs Nutbeam burst into tears.

‘But I doubt whether there will be much money left, because I intend to spend it. I realize now how I have wasted my life, because you two cleverly insisted on keeping me under your noses. I’m not at all delicate. Ethel tells me I’m as vigorous as any man of twenty. I knew I’d been missing something, ever since I was among all those nice young people in hospital.’

Lord Nutbeam smiled benignly all round.

‘Dear Doctor, do you recall I once mentioned Gray’s
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
? I was about to quote – “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” Charming poem. Well, I’m going to blush all over the place from now on. Ethel and I are off tomorrow for our honeymoon at Monte Carlo. You must come, Doctor, and visit me then when we’ve settled down. You probably prefer to stay here, Percy. And so you may, if you wish. Until we get back.’

‘Don’t forget the present, darling,’ said Lady Nutbeam, looking as unruffled as when she changed his Lordship’s pyjamas.

‘Ah, the present. It was you, Doctor, who brought dear Ethel and I together. So perhaps you will accept this little token of our lasting gratitude and affection?’

And he handed me a gold cigarette case, still in its box from Cartiers,