Doctor in Love (13 page)

“Whom
The Times
hath joined together let no man put asunder,” said Dr Farquarson, as I proudly showed him the page.

“We’d have been top of the column, too,” I said, “if some blasted Honourable hadn’t been allowed to jump the queue as usual. Son of a Socialist peer into the bargain, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Well, it looks very fine. You know, it’s an odd thing, but I hardly glance at the Engagements column myself now. I did when I was a young fellow like you. Then my attention shifted to the Births, and now I suppose I look at the Deaths for my morning’s satisfaction. Surprising how you can tell a man’s age from the way he opens his newspaper, isn’t it? But it’ll make your friends sit up over their breakfast all right.”

He had hardly finished speaking when the telephone rang. It was Grimsdyke.

“My dear fellow!” he said in alarm. “You’ll have a hell of a job getting out of it now.”

“But I don’t want to get out of it.”

“What? You mean – you actually want to go through with it and marry the girl?”

“Of course I do. I’d do so tomorrow if it was considered decent.”

“But what on earth for?”

“Well, for one thing I’ll be able to get out of my digs. Also, I love her.”

“But are you crazy, old lad? You must be! Marriage is a much too serious business to be decided by the emotions. And have you ever actually been to a wedding? Just think of yourself in some beastly reception-rooms off the Brompton Road, with not enough to drink and all the aunts in their best mink tippets and everyone making frightful speeches about going down life’s path together and all your troubles being little ones. There’ll probably be beastly little boys in pink silk suits, too,” he said with added horror. “No, no, old lad. Think again. Get a job on a ship and stay out of the country for a couple of years. Remember there’s always that useful little escape paragraph underneath saying the fixture will not now take place.”

“I hope the reception won’t be too terrible,” I told him. “Because you’re going to have a leading part in it.”

“Me?”

“I want you to be best man, Grim, if you will.”

“My dear chap, I’d lose the ring and get the telegrams all mixed up.”

“Look,” I suggested. “Nikki’s coming out here tonight. If you’re free, drive up from Town and we’ll all have dinner together.”

After some persuasion he agreed, adding, “As a matter of fact, old lad, there’s a certain little scheme I’ve started that I’d like to tell you about. I’ll come down about seven. It’ll be a bit of a treat for uncle. I know the poor old chap’s dying to set eyes on me again.”

“My friend Grimsdyke,” I warned Nikki, as the 1930 sports car pulled up noisily outside the surgery, “is a rather unconventional character. He also has a fertile imagination. I mean, if he should start telling tales of things that used to happen when we were students together, they’ll be pure fabrications. A great chap for making up embarrassing stories about people, old Grimsdyke.” I gave a little laugh. “Not a word of truth in them from beginning to end.”

The doorbell rang loudly.

“Nikki,” I said, “this is Gaston Grimsdyke, known to one and all as Grim. Grim, this is Nikki.”

I had never seen Grimsdyke put out before. His was such a self-assured character that not even the shock of passing his final examinations had upset him. But Nikki seemed to throw him off his psychological balance. I believe that he really thought I had shackled myself to someone looking like a Russian long-distance runner, and he was flummoxed to find a neat little blonde beside me on the doorstep.

“But, my dear Richard…” he said, rapidly recovering his poise. “My dear Richard, my heartiest congratulations. Lots of long life and happiness to you both, and so on.” Taking Nikki’s hand he bowed low and kissed her knuckles loudly. “My dear fellow, I
do
congratulate you.”

“Well, Grim,” I said proudly, as nothing flatters a man more than impressing his philandering friends with his fiancée. “I hope you approve of the bride?”

“Approve? Good heavens, yes, my dear fellow! If I may say so, Nikki, I consider old Richard’s taste has improved immeasurably in his old age. When I think of some of those bits you used to go about with at St Swithin’s, Richard – I mean, damn it, when I think of…of…”

“Shall we go straight out to dinner?” suggested Nikki helpfully.

“Delighted.”

Grimsdyke bowed and kissed her hand again.

“If I may use the phrase,” said Grimsdyke, when the three of us were swallowing the Bull’s staunchly English coffee, “you’re a very lucky man, Richard.” He reached for Nikki’s hand on the tablecloth and patted it in a fatherly manner. “Nikki, may I say that you are quite the most beautiful and charming girl I’ve met since I once asked Vivien Leigh for her autograph.”

“Now isn’t that sweet of him, Richard?”

“And the thought that old Richard can send you out and make you work as well almost makes me wish I wasn’t a confirmed bachelor.”

“I’m really the lucky one,” Nikki told him. “Don’t forget Richard’s a confirmed bachelor, too.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, giving her hand another fond pat. “He won’t be able to go round looking at girls’ legs anymore.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I interrupted. I felt that Grimsdyke was turning the meal into a
tête-à-tête
. “He who has plucked the fairest rose in the garden can still admire the stalks of some of the others.”

But Grimsdyke took no notice, and continued staring into Nikki’s eyes. “I want you always to think of me as an old, old friend of the family,” he said.

“What’s this scheme of yours, Grim?” I said forcefully. I was now definitely uneasy. I remembered the time Grimsdyke had neatly charmed away from me a chorus girl from the Windmill, in whom I had already invested most of my quarter’s allowance. “The one you mentioned on the phone.”

“Ah, the scheme, old lad. Yes, of course. I’m a bit of a rolling stone down the avenues of medicine,” he explained to Nikki, still absent-mindedly holding her fingers. “Never will you see Grimsdyke as the dear old GP who’s brought half the district into the world and pushed the other half out of it. I’m an individualist, which is a dead loss these days when everyone gets pushed steadily up the NHS ladder, unless you fall off with a coronary on the way. Making a private ladder of your own is somewhat frowned on. Some outside job, like personal physician to an old millionaire with a fondness for travel and no relatives, would suit me down to the ground. Or doctor to some posh hotel – private suite, of course, and use of cellar. But those rackets have been buttoned up long ago. Now at last I’ve really found something that gives me freedom of action and limitless opportunity.”

“You’re going on an Antarctic expedition?” suggested Nikki.

“Good Lord, nothing
uncomfortable
. Do you remember, Richard, when I was Editor of the
St Swithin’s Hospital Gazette
?”

I nodded. This was a slim magazine which appeared in the hospital with the irregularity of fine days in April. The editorial duties were not trying, because its pages contained mostly rugger reports and lectures by the senior staff too dull to be published elsewhere. Grimsdyke took the job not through literary ambition, but because he had heard that the medical publishers trustingly sent a steady supply of free textbooks for review. These Grimsdyke appraised personally, before taking them to the second-hand medical bookseller’s round the corner and getting half-price. I remember that I once left my own new copy of Bailey and Love’s
Surgery
on the editorial desk while I went to a lecture, and returned to find the book already sold and the review on its way to the printers.

“And a very efficient Editor I was too, if I may say so,” Grimsdyke told Nikki, giving more fatherly pats to her forearm. “Do you remember my account of old Professor Worthington’s funeral, Richard? Real good stuff it was. Bags of dignity. It wasn’t my fault the damn fool printer put it under ‘Sports News’. Anyway, on the strength of such experience,” he went on proudly, “plus a bit of salesmanship, I managed to persuade the cove I met in the Fleet Street pub the other day actually to publish some of my stuff in his paper.”

“What about? If it’s racing tips you won’t last long.”

“No, no, old lad. I become forthwith ‘Our Harley Street Specialist’, ready to write about anything at the drop of a guinea from scabies to rabies and cardiology to calf’s foot jelly.”

“That sounds terribly grand,” said Nikki.

“But aren’t you going to find it a bit stiff? Writing like the combined Professors of Medicine, Surgery, and Obstetrics?”

“My dear old lad, don’t be silly. Do you suppose those characters in Fleet Street know the slightest thing of what they’re writing about? I just go down to the St Swithin’s library, take the librarian out for a beer, and curl up with the
British Encyclopædia of Medical Practice.
You pick a nice good morbid subject like hanging or hermaphrodites, and write it out as though you were describing the Cup Final. There you are. The public love it. My first article, as a matter of fact, appears tomorrow morning – a jolly little piece about how to commit suicide, and apparently it’s just the sort of stuff they want to buck their readers up over breakfast.” He looked at the clock. “Good God, I must be going! The paper will be on sale round the Fleet Street coffee-stalls in about an hour’s time, and professional that I now am, I’m still bursting to see what it looks like in print.”

“You’ll be my best man, then?” I asked, as we stood by our two cars outside the pub.

“My dear old lad, how could I refuse with such a charming girl as Nikki coming to the wedding?” He slipped his arm round her waist and squeezed her tightly. “Now in view of my official position in the proceedings, may I kiss the bride?” He did so, making quite a noise over it. “And you
are
charming, Nikki, my dear,” he told her, patting her cheek. “Much too good for old Richard. As an old friend of the family I shall now also claim the privilege of kissing you good night.”

“Here, steady on!” I said. I now wished that I’d asked Nikki’s brother to do the job instead.

Grimsdyke looked round in surprise. “But it’s all right, old man. The best man’s allowed to kiss the bride before the wedding.”

“But not too long before. Or too long after,” I added firmly.

We exchanged glances, and for a second we might have had another of our Hampden Cross rows. But Grimsdyke suddenly realized that he was not behaving like a doctor and a gentleman, and Nikki said tactfully, “Perhaps we’d all better be getting along.”

“Of course.” Grimsdyke put out his hand. “Sorry, old lad. Understandable enthusiasm. Anyway, Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere have probably been charging up and down Fleet Street looking for me with chequebooks for the last half-hour. I’ll just bid the happy couple good night and push off.”

“Your friend Grimsdyke may be a charming young man,” said Nikki, as we drove away. “But he’s as fresh as a new-laid egg.”

“He had me a bit worried,” I confessed. “I’ve seen him in action too many times in the past. He’d just got to the end of his opening manoeuvres.”

“Is that so? Well, I could hardly have slapped his face over the Welsh rarebit. But I will next time if you like, darling.”

“Oh, don’t slap my dear old friend Grimsdyke’s face,” I told her. “Just kick him hard on the kneecap instead.”

“I don’t really think he means it,” said Nikki charitably. “It’s just that he looks on life like an excited small boy climbing a big tree.”

“You know, I’ve often tried to analyse old Grim. And I think you’ve put your finger exactly on it.”

We drove in silence for a while, agreeably breaking the Highway Code by holding hands on the steering-wheel.

“That’s the best man fixed, anyway,” I said. “We’ve told the parents, bought the ring, put it in
The Times
, and fixed my holiday for the honeymoon. What else is there to do until they call the banns?”

“To start with,” said Nikki, “we must really look for somewhere to live.”

“I’m not going to
sell
you a house,” said Mr Slivers of Slivers and Sons, estate agents at Hampden Cross. He was a fat, red-faced, tweedy man with the cosy manner of a good GP. “Oh, no, Doctor. That’s not our policy at all. We’re going to let you buy one from us. There’s no salesmanship about this firm, Doctor. No pressure. We show you the residence and you make up your mind. If you don’t like it we won’t worry in the least, even though it means showing you every property in Hampden Cross. Cigarette?”

“Thank you.”

“What sort of residence did you have in mind?” he asked.

“A two-roomed flat with central heating,” I said.

“Something detached with at least two bedrooms and a garden for the washing,” said Nikki.

We looked at each other.

“Well now,” said Mr Slivers paternally. “I’m sure we can find a residence that will satisfy you both. Here are particulars of some most attractive properties, Doctor.” He handed me a sheaf of duplicated sheets. “Just ask for the keys. Our junior will be pleased to show you round at your convenience.”

There is nothing that brings home to a young man the full seriousness of marriage more than buying a house. I had begun that morning by paying a call on my family’s solicitors, Doubleday, Westmoreland, Berridge, and Horsepath in Chancery Lane. These names seemed now to be only window-dressing, the firm being run by a Mr Robbinson, whom I had known since I sat on his knee and listened to his gold watch while he patted me on the head and called me “the little legatee”. I therefore felt entitled to bounce into his office exclaiming, “Good morning, Mr Robbinson. I’ve got magnificent news – I’m going to be married.”

The natural boisterousness of a young man in love was augmented by a crisp January morning and the expectation of meeting Nikki for lunch, and tossing my hat on to a pile of pink-taped papers I continued, “Absolutely terrific, isn’t it? Such a wonderful feeling! The whole of life seems to be going past in Technicolor.”

Mr Robbinson sniffed. The solicitor was a skilled sniffer. When you said anything he doubted, he sniffed with his right nostril; if he disbelieved you, he sniffed with his left; if he thoroughly disapproved as well, he gave you both barrels. He was a tall, thin, white-haired, stooping man with a long nose, who wouldn’t have looked out of place standing on one leg in a pond in the zoo. His office, like that of all the best London solicitors, looked like an illustration from
Bleak House
, and he himself sat in a legal mortuary of black tin boxes marked with clients’ names and “Deceased” after them in lighter paint.

“A marriage, eh?” Mr Robbinson always addressed clients in a gloomy undertone directed towards his top waistcoat button.

“That’s the idea,” I continued brightly. “Saturday, February the first, two-thirty at the church. Of course, I’ve told Nikki – that’s my fiancée – all about you, and we’d both be tickled pink if you’d come along. But first of all we’re buying a house, and I’d like you to fiddle all the legal stuff for us.”

“You wish me to act for you?” asked Mr Robbinson, sniffing with both nostrils.

A cold draught seemed to rattle the parchment bones of his dead litigation.

“Yes, please,” I said.

Mr Robbinson drew a blank sheet of paper carefully towards him. “I think you are wise. House purchase has many pitfalls. If the original deeds are not in order you might easily find yourself evicted from the message without compensation.”

“Oh, really?”

“Then there is the inevitable heavy expenditure. You will, I take it, need a mortgage? And I trust you understand that after marriage the income of your wife is added to your own for tax purposes?”

“Yes,” I replied brightly. “I know that these days the Government are making it so much cheaper for people to live in sin.”

He gave me his three sniffs in succession. “I will attend to the alteration of your PAYE coding. When did you say was the date of your change in tax status?”

“February the first,” I said, in a subdued voice.

“Have you made a will?” he asked.

“Good Lord! Is it as bad as that? I mean, ought I to?”

“It would be wise. I will draw you a draft will this afternoon. You may have one drawn specifically in anticipation of your marriage, if you wish. Then it can be signed immediately after the ceremony.”

“I think it might be more agreeable all round if I just had an ordinary one to sign here, Mr Robbinson.”

“Very well. It would, of course, be more prudent to make provision in the will for your wife’s death as well as your own. Supposing that you were involved in a motor accident on your way back from the church? I will insert a clause stating that she must survive a month longer than you to inherit. Thus we would avoid double estate duty.” Mr Robbinson found little to amuse him in life, but he now gave a laryngitic laugh at the expense of the Inland Revenue. “Then there is the possibility of issue.”

“Issue? Oh, you mean…”

I saw myself telling Nikki that I was going to pin the nappies on the issue.

“And you will naturally have to make adequate arrangements for the death of the issue, too,” continued Mr Robbinson, warming to his work, “I would also advise you to take out a life policy for your wife’s widowhood. Then there will be the questions of house insurance and sickness benefit. The pitfalls,” he repeated, shaking his head, “are very, very many. And now as an old friend of the family, may I wish you every happiness?”

“The house agent was better than old Robbinson,” I told Nikki, as we left Mr Slivers’ office with the Junior, a lad of sixteen who seemed to have slipped through the fingers of the Lunacy Commissioners. “This morning I felt like a patient coming in for an operation and being told he’d make a jolly fine post mortem.”

“Poor Richard! You did rather look as though you’d seen your own ghost. I’m sure marriage can’t be quite as bad as that.”

“Well, we’ll soon find out, won’t we? Anyway, we can always cheer ourselves up reading our wills to each other across the fireplace.”

“If we have a fireplace.”

“That’s the point. Good Lord,” I said, as the Junior stopped outside a large, gloomy, overgrown, mildewy Victorian villa. “Is this the desirable period residence with many interesting features? It looks more like Borley Rectory in its heyday.”

In the next fortnight we saw a large number of residences, none of which, in disagreement with Mr Slivers, gave us any desire to live in them at all. All we gained was a campaigner’s knowledge of house agents’ tactics. We soon found that “A spacious residence” described something big enough to lodge a boarding school, and “a compact dwelling” meant that the front door opened directly into the parlour. “An easily run modern apartment” indicated that the owners had left behind their old refrigerator, and “property capable of improvement” was another way of saying the place was ready for the demolition squad. Anything described as “suitable for a gentleman” meant that it was criminally expensive, “very convenient for station” showed that it backed on to the railway lines, and “an unusual house of character” meant the local eyesore. We began to develop sore feet, frayed tempers, and an envy of the nomadic life.

“If we don’t find anything we like this afternoon,” I said, as we rested our tired legs with a pub lunch, “I’m going to give up the whole idea of a house. We’ll try for a furnished flat in some beastly block somewhere in London, and I’ll sleep on the surgery couch when I’m on duty.”

Nikki disagreed. “I want to start with a place of my own. I’ve lived among other people’s furniture far too long as it is.”

I caught her eye. Fortunately, perhaps, I was not so dazzled by love to see that Nikki could sometimes be a highly determined young woman. But knowing my own habits, I felt that this might not be a bad thing

“All right, darling,” I said. “We’ll carry on the search for Shangri-Là… My metatarsal arches are at your disposal until they collapse.”

“I know exactly what I really want,” Nikki went on. “A small whitewashed cottage tucked out of sight in a country lane with a garden and a thatched roof and a twisted chimney.”

“And I expect at best we’ll end up in a tasteful bijou residence convenient for shops and buses.” I sighed. “Come along, Nikki. The idiot boy will be waiting.”

The three of us drove in my car between the depressing brick rows on the main road leading away from London. After a mile or so, the Junior stopped staring vacantly through the window and indicated a side turning. Through one of the heartening paradoxes of the English countryside we suddenly found ourselves in a quiet lane winding between tall hedges, looking much the same as when Henry Ford was still playing with his bricks.

“This is it,” said the Junior.

We stopped at a gate in the hedge. Behind the gate was a garden. In the garden was a whitewashed cottage. The roof was tiled, admittedly, but there was a tall twisting chimney.

“I don’t
sell
houses,” Mr Slivers repeated, smiling benevolently. “I only want to help you to buy one.”

“The price
is
rather on the high side –”

He made a sympathetic gesture. “Alas, Doctor. We have to take our instructions from the vendor.”

“It needs several things doing to it,” said Nikki.

“There is scope for personal touches, certainly,” Mr Slivers agreed.

“Would you mind if we thought it over?” I asked.

“But of course, Doctor. Think it over at your leisure. As long as you like. Never let it be said that we rushed a client into purchasing a property he didn’t want.”

There was a knock on the door, and the Junior’s head appeared.

“Mr Slivers, the other people wants to know if they can see Floral Cottage at three?”

Nikki and I sat up.

“Other people?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr Slivers. “And it’s only been on the market since yesterday. Surprising, perhaps, but not with such a desirable rustic retreat. Yes, Herbert, three o’clock will do. Tell them to hurry, because Major Marston will be viewing it at four.”

“Major Marston!” I jumped to my feet. “You mean that terribly rich chap who owns the brewery?”

“That’s quite right, Doctor. I think he is intending to demolish the property and build a large garage. Yes, Herbert, tell the people –”

“One moment!” I felt myself shaking a little. “Do you think…is there any possibility… could you take just a hundred pounds less…?”

“I’m
sure
that can be arranged, Doctor,” said Mr Slivers at once, producing his pen. “Perhaps you’ll let me have a cheque for the deposit? Then you can look upon the property as your own.”