Doctor On The Boil (5 page)

Sir Lancelot left the surgical block and paced, deep in thought, down the long main corridor of the old building towards the hall. As he reached the front door he became aware of a dark uniform blocking his path. Looking up, he saw Harry the porter.

‘Might I have a word with you, sir?’

Sir Lancelot grunted.

Harry gave a nervous jerk of the head towards his cubicle. ‘In private, like?’

‘Are you suggesting I squeeze with you into that rabbit-hutch?’

Harry produced from inside his jacket a thick bundle of five-pound notes. ‘It’s about that little bet you mentioned yesterday, sir. The one what I put on for you at Kempton Park the very day of your retirement. I’m very sorry, sir, that I overlooked sending on your winnings.’

‘Overlooked! Do you expect me to believe it was merely something which slipped what you care to call your mind? Rubbish, man. You’re as crooked as an aberrant appendix. You’ve never overlooked the chance to swindle someone out of a ha’penny in your life. You’d con the rawest new student to buy a load of old instruments you’d probably pinched anyway, and you’d pawn the Chairman of Governors’ overcoat if you thought you could get away with it. God knows what a scoundrel like you is doing in the employment of a respectable institution like St Swithin’s. Personally, I wouldn’t trust you to punch the tickets on a travelling Chinese brothel–’

Sir Lancelot stopped. He raised his hand to his eyes. The reference to the East exploded a bomb in his mind.

‘My dear good man,’ he continued gently. ‘I was wrong, very wrong to get so cross. We all have our faults. What are yours, compared with the majestic tide of life and death, which sweeps away all traces of us from the sands of time? Pray, keep the money.’

Harry stared at him, half of his brain wondering if Sir Lancelot had gone mad, the other half trying to make out what the catch was.

‘It is mere paper, of no importance.’ Sir Lancelot pushed the man’s hand aside. ‘Put it to some good use. How little to pay for the pleasure your cheerful face has given me, every morning I arrived in the hospital, sticking from that hole thing in your cubicle. Good-bye, Harry. May you prosper. And
do
get out of that stupid habit of always backing the second favourite.’

As he turned away, pausing in the doorway to find his handkerchief and give a cough, he heard a female voice call his name.

‘Why, it’s the matron–’ He came back to the hall, giving a brave smile, ‘And what can I do for you?’

‘I’m so glad I caught you. It’s about Nurse Smallbones.’ Sir Lancelot frowned in puzzlement. ‘You may remember, when you arrived in the hospital yesterday you seemed to find her skirt too short.’

‘I most certainly did,’ he said warmly. ‘If our young ladies walk the streets of London off-duty displaying their erotogenic zones by the acre, that is perfectly all right by me. But when they’re in St Swithin’s they’re nurses,
not
the star turns of striptease establishments.’

‘I do hope Nurse Smallbones will meet with your approval now.’ The girl was standing sheepishly behind her. ‘She has lengthened her skirt right down to her ankles.’

‘Exactly.’ He nodded briskly. ‘The nurses wore dresses like that in my young days, and I really saw no necessity to change them. The patients in our wards want – for once in their ruddy lives – to savour the tenderness of womanhood, not the sexiness. No female would ever wear a skirt above her calves out East–’

He stopped. He covered his eyes again. ‘My dear girl,’ he continued weakly to Nurse Smallbones. ‘Please wear your dress any length you fancy. Serve the patients’ dinners stark naked if the idea possesses you. Though I fear you would find our antiquated wards somewhat on the chilly side. What does it matter if your clothes reach to your malleoli or your symphysis pubis? It is fashion, mere triviality, we spend our brief lives foolishly obsessed with such things. Back to your duties, Nurse Smallbones. And bless you, my child.’

‘Are you feeling all right, Lancelot?’ asked Tottie Sinclair in a puzzled voice.

‘Yes. That’s the saddest part of it.’ Sir Lancelot bravely jutted his bearded chin. ‘I have but six months left.’

‘No!’

‘The dean has just made the diagnosis. A physician of his calibre can hardly be imagined to make any mistake.’

‘But…but what is it?’

‘An obscure Asian disease. The name would mean nothing to you. But it has wiped out whole cities in China – though of course, Mao Tse-tung and his lot keep it a dead secret.’

Tottie took a lace-edged handkerchief from the pocket of her uniform to dab the corner of her eye. ‘Oh, Lancelot! But you’re so young.’ She paused. ‘To me, at any rate.’

‘Tottie, will you have dinner with me tomorrow? Just for old times sake?’

‘Of course I will. How could I refuse you anything?’

‘I’ll pick you up here at seven. Or round the corner? You might prefer that, as more discreet.’

‘I think it would be best.’

‘I shall try to make it as cheerful an occasion as possible,’ he told her gallantly. ‘That girl’s long skirt, by the way. She meant it as a joke, I suppose?’ Tottie smiled and nodded. ‘I thought as much. Well, let the youngsters get some innocent fun out of me, while they can.’

Sir Lancelot hurried down the front steps and climbed into his Rolls, which stood neatly across the white letters saying NO PARKING. He accelerated briskly across the courtyard to turn out of the main gate. Unfortunately, a small old car, which seemed to be held together mainly by strips of surgical sticking-plaster, happened at that moment to be turning into it. There was a crash, and the small car seemed to disintegrate into a heap of spare parts.

Sir Lancelot climbed out furiously. ‘You idiot! You cretin! Do you realize that you might easily have scratched my coachwork?’

‘Didn’t you hear my ruddy horn?’ replied Terry Summerbee indignantly.

‘Don’t argue with
me
, boy! I
always
have right of way through that gateway. I know you, don’t I?’ Sir Lancelot eyed him more keenly. ‘You’re one of the students. Let me say that if you operate the way you drive, you’ll solve the world’s population problem in no time.’

‘I am not going to be bullied by anyone – sir,’ Terry told him stoutly. ‘It was your fault, and you know it.’

‘How
dare
you. There was enough distance from here to China–’

Sir Lancelot stopped. He shaded his eyes. ‘Dear boy, you are right. Quite right. I apologize. Doubly so. My breach of the Highway Code was exceeded only by my breach of good manners.’

Terry gave a surprised smile.

‘Where were you going? A maternity case? Some errand of mercy, as the newspapers say?’

‘Actually, I was going to pick up a bird – meet a young lady, sir.’

The surgeon invited with a grand sweep of his arm, ‘Take my car.’

‘Yours, sir?’

‘For the evening. I’m sure you will handle it safely, and it will be much easier to drive than your own contraption. Don’t thank me, dear boy.’ Sir Lancelot patted his shoulder. ‘Where were you intending to take this ornithological specimen?’

‘I thought a Wimpy Bar, sir.’

The surgeon felt in his pocket for a notebook. He scribbled a few words, and handed the page to Terry. ‘Take that to the Crécy Hotel. Ask for the manager. Enjoy yourself tonight at my expense. Life is too short for penny-pinching. I would recommend the grill in preference to the restaurant. Order the chicken
à la kiev
, which I know to be particularly good, but avoid the claret, which has always been unsound. Now I must hop on a bus.’

‘Well,’ murmured Terry to himself, climbing into the Rolls. ‘I suppose one should never look a gift horse in the mouth – or any other transport.’

As he drew up near the hospital steps the clock on the dashboard said precisely six. An open sports car came noisily to a stop beside him. Terry recognized with annoyance the driver as Grimsdyke. The man seemed to be haunting him. He pressed the button to lower the electric window, and said politely, ‘Good evening.’

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Grimsdyke crossly. ‘In
that?
’

‘Waiting for a friend.’

‘Oh? Well, so am I.’

‘Good. We can keep each other company until they show up.’

‘Now look here, young Summerbee. It is not they. It is she. I happen to be waiting for Stella Gray from X-ray. I have reason to suspect that your eye is on the same target. I advise you to take that four wheeled mausoleum and clear out.’

‘Why should I?’ Terry demanded. ‘She specifically promised this evening to me.’

‘Did she indeed? Well, now we can see, can’t we?’ He opened the door of his sports car invitingly as Stella came hurrying down the steps. ‘Here we are, my dear. Punctual to the minute.’

‘Evening, Stella,’ smiled Terry.

Mouth open, she stared from one to the other. ‘Hi, lover man,’ she said at last.

‘
Which
lover man?’ demanded Grimsdyke.

‘I… I don’t know, lover men. Why, Terry, of course.’ She moved towards the Rolls. ‘Yes, Terry. He asked me first.’

‘Don’t be bloody, Stella–’ began Grimsdyke angrily.

Her eyes flashed. ‘And don’t talk to me in that sort of way, lover man, you pig. Let’s go, Terry.’

Grimsdyke angrily slammed his car door. She climbed into the Rolls. ‘Is this
yours
, lover?’ she asked, leaning back as Terry started the engine.

‘But of course.’ He smiled. ‘I always believe in paying for quality. Don’t you?’

They started to move away. In the mirror, he noticed with satisfaction Grimsdyke glaring at them behind his steering-wheel.

Still assessing Terry, Stella asked, ‘Where are we going, anyway?’

Crécy Hotel suit you?’

‘But that’s a fabulous place! Since it was rebuilt, everyone goes there – TV tycoons, royals, the lot.’

‘I thought you might care for it. I’ll have a word with the manager, to be sure of the sort of service that…well, that we expect.’

She ran her fingers lightly across the polished wood of the dashboard. ‘We must see more of each other. Much more, lover boy.’

Terry drove through the main gates of St Swithin’s in a mood of such elation that he smiled contemptuously at the wreck of his own car, which until a few minutes earlier had been dearer to him than any of his other – admittedly limited – personal possessions. But as the Rolls purred through the unsightly streets which the hospital so devotedly served, leaving behind the charmless area of north London for the haunts of largely decorous pleasure in the West End, he began to have second thoughts about the expedition. By the time he reached the Crécy Hotel, the seeds of doubt had grown inside him as quickly as a Japanese water-flower, and blossomed hideously into panic.

If Sir Lancelot had inexplicably decided to press upon him free meals and transport, that was the surgeon’s affair. From Terry’s knowledge of the man, drawn from the hospital’s legends, it might be just another of his famous eccentricities. But he himself had been stupid not to tell Stella the truth at once. It was only the unexpected competition of Grimsdyke which had stimulated the deception as automatically as a reflex. He wondered nervously if he could continue carrying it off. He was unfamiliar with the insides of Mayfair hotels, or of any hotels at all, apart from the long-suffering inns which accommodated the St Swithin’s rugger tours. But Stella, he supposed glumly, idled away most of her off-duty time in such places.

As he drove, he chatted in a preoccupied way, the words of confession more than once forming on his lips. Then he decided to go through with it. He had both an admirable determination and a refusal to be daunted by any person or event whatsoever – qualities so necessary for the survival of the medical student. Besides, he realized as he parked the Rolls, it was too late now to admit everything without risking Stella’s fury. And anyway, he concluded, it might all turn out to be a bit of a giggle.

‘I’ll contact the manager,’ he said, as they entered the lobby.

‘And I must go to the ladies’.’

Sir Lancelot’s name at the reception desk quickly brought Luigi from his office. Terry handed him the scribbled note.

‘So you are a friend of Sir Lancelot, sir?’ Luigi bowed. ‘He often sent his distinguished medical colleagues to dine in the old days, before we were rebuilt. I’m delighted that we are still in favour with him, sir. I’m afraid he has not been too comfortable with us so far. For such an old and valued guest, I shall of course arrange for you to have a good table in the restaurant.’

‘I think the grill would be preferable.’

‘Between you and me, sir, you are quite right.’ Luigi seemed impressed. ‘Would you care to take your drinks first in the Starlight Bar? The view over London is delightful.’

‘I suppose the drinks can go on the dinner bill?’ Terry asked quickly.

‘If you wish, sir.’

‘Oh! And – er, you can put the tips on it, too.’

‘That will be done, sir.’

‘Do you happen to know a Miss Stella Gray? I expect she often comes here.’

Luigi frowned. ‘I can’t recall the name at the moment, sir. But of course we have so many distinguished people passing through our doors.’

Leaving the ladies’, Stella couldn’t resist slipping into a telephone-box. She dialled a number, and said breathlessly, ‘Mum – guess where I am? In the new Crécy.’

‘What are you doing there?’ her mother asked sharply.

‘This boy I told you about – he took me.’

‘What? The medical student?’

She dropped her voice. ‘But Mum, he’s loaded. A Rolls, the lot.’

‘Now don’t you get into trouble–’

‘Oh, Mum! You know me. Caution to the core.’

‘So you won’t want any supper when you get in?’

‘Not now. Though I must say, these students usually leave you half-starved.’

Tossing her blonde hair over her shoulders, she went to rejoin Terry. Her father though not a millionaire was a hard-working chemical engineer, and like all girls she enjoyed romancing.

In the rooftop bar Terry ordered martinis, a drink he had not sampled before. It delighted him to notice that Stella, despite her struggle to hide it, appeared agreeably impressed with everything. He would have liked to have poured out with the drinks the sensuous feelings which were fermenting inside him, but he felt it prudent to establish himself first as a sophisticated man of the world, someone she could afford to take notice of. Besides, he reflected as a waiter handed him a large menu, he was really dead scared of her.

‘Shall we order up here? We’ll eat in the grill. The food’s better than in the restaurant.’

‘That’s what everyone says, lover boy.’

‘The chicken
à la kiev
is always particularly good,’ he murmured, running his eye down the page with a refreshing disregard for the prices. ‘Though I fancy we’d best avoid drinking the claret, which is known all over London to be unsound.’

He felt her grow closer to him on the wall-seat they shared. ‘You’ve been around, lover, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, a little…’

She gave a gasp. ‘Over there – isn’t that Godfri? You know, the most absolutely “in” photographer in London?’

Terry looked up. A young man with shoulder length hair in a bottle-green velvet suit festooned with coloured beads rose laughing from a table across the room. ‘He’s coming this way. Would you like to meet him?’

Stella’s eyes widened. ‘You know him?’

‘No, but I’m sure the manager will introduce us,’ he suggested, as Luigi himself approached to announce their table was ready.

‘Of course I shall present you to Mr Godfri,’ the manager agreed. ‘He will be pleased to meet a distinguished doctor. He likes meeting distinguished people in all walks of life.’

The photographer stopped, smiled, made a few affable remarks, then looking at Stella asked, ‘But you and I – we’ve met, haven’t we? At that exhibition of my work last week.’

Stella fluttered her long eyelashes. ‘I never imagined you’d noticed me.’

‘Of course I did. I only looked in for a minute, and there you were staring at my picture of the meths drinkers, quite enraptured. I never forget a face, you see.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve a photographic memory. Why did you go to the exhibition? Curiosity? Or real interest?’

‘But I’m a professional photographer, too.’

Godfri frowned. ‘I don’t seem to have heard–’

‘That is, an X-ray photographer,’ Stella said quickly. ‘I take pictures of bones, chests, skulls and things. At St Swithin’s Hospital.’

‘Now that’s perfectly fascinating, because I happen to be experimenting with X-ray portraiture myself. Showing the inside of people, not the dreary old outside on view to everyone. It’s a bit of a gimmick, of course,’ he added disarmingly. ‘But you know what the trade’s like, love, you have to keep one jump ahead of the competition. The trouble seems to be a load of old health regulations. I can’t just buy an X-ray camera and start in my own studio. It seems I’d sterilize half London if I did.’

‘If I can be of any help–’ Stella began.

‘Yes, I think you can–’

‘Perhaps the three of us can meet another day?’ said Terry quickly. He had grown increasingly uneasy during the conversation, and was trying to console himself that Godfri, being a photographer, was probably as queer as some of his pictures.

‘That would be super,’ agreed Stella.

‘Fine,’ said Godfri. ‘Next Wednesday. All right?’

‘Next Wednesday,’ nodded Terry. ‘No!’ he added suddenly. The others stared at him. ‘I’m afraid I can’t come here again. I mean, I can’t come next Wednesday.’

‘I expect we’ll run into one another some time.’ Godfri smiled and gave a little wave. ‘Now must rush to a party. See you.’

‘Why can’t you come on Wednesday?’ demanded Stella.

‘I – er…’ He searched miserably for an excuse. It occurred to him for a second Sir Lancelot might be persuaded to repeat the arrangement, but he decided against it. ‘The class exam,’ he remembered. ‘It’s on Monday week. I’ve got to work for it.’

‘Oh, what a bore.’

‘It is. But in medicine, work comes before play, you know.’

‘Let’s have some food,’ she said petulantly. ‘I’m famished.’

Terry’s evening went steadily downhill. She ate, he noticed, like one of the starving African children which Godfri photographed so artistically. Her conversation grew stilted. She even forgot to call him ‘lover boy’. He cursed himself for making Luigi stop the photographer – and purely through his own big-headedness, he decided. It was only when he was walking with Stella through the lobby and said, ‘I’ll fetch the Rolls,’ that she seemed to cheer up.

‘Yes, do get it. I’d quite forgotten we came in a Rolls, lover man.’

As Terry turned towards the door, Grimsdyke came in.

‘Are you tailing me, or something?’ the student demanded angrily.

‘Good evening, Summerbee. Good evening, Stella,’ Grimsdyke said stiffly. ‘Forgive me for not pausing to chat. But I am already late for my dinner, which I take here every night. And doubtless you will be anxious to return Sir Lancelot Spratt’s car before he notices you’ve pinched it.’

‘Sir Lancelot Spratt?’ exclaimed Stella. ‘What, you mean that noisy fat old man with the beard who came down to have his chest X-rayed?’

‘Yes. The number of that particular wagon is imprinted in my memory, since it invariably seemed to bring trouble.’

‘I did
not
steal it,’ Terry protested furiously. ‘Sir Lancelot happened to lend it to me.’

‘A likely story! To one of the students?’ Grimsdyke gave a contemptuous guffaw. ‘Well, I shall leave you to sort it out. Knowing Sir Lancelot, by now its absence is familiar to every policeman in London.’

‘What have you let me in for, you stupid nit?’ Stella demanded hotly of Terry.

‘Honestly, Stella, I’ve done nothing–’

Grimsdyke gave him a fatherly pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll only nick you for driving away without permission, and I don’t suppose there’s more than three months attached to that.’

He walked briskly away, the sound of argument a beautiful tune in his ears.

Grimsdyke delayed his dinner to call first at the Picardy suite. The sitting-room door was opened by Ted, in his dark glasses.

‘And how’s the patient?’

‘Still in bed, Doctor, like you said. But better in spirits.’

‘Good. I noticed you gave it to the papers as influenza.’

‘We’ve got to preserve the image, haven’t we?’ Ted nodded towards the closed bedroom door. ‘I wish you’d talk to him, Doctor. About…well, overdoing things. He gets crazy about young girls, you know.’

‘I’d say that was a particularly healthy trait.’

‘Oh, I suppose it’s all right, as long as they’re over the age of consent. Not that it’s easy to tell these times. And you can hardly ask to see their birth certificates at the crucial moment, can you? Funny, isn’t it,’ he mused. ‘One day it’s criminal, the next day it’s fun. But Eric’s not as young as he was, you know. We’ve got to keep his age dark, naturally, because of his image. He looks fine on the screen, when he’s made-up and lit properly. His little trouble is imagining he’s the same when everything’s for real. He’ll kill himself one day,’ Ted ended gloomily.

‘You mean, you want me to give him a fatherly talk – to keep off the birds?’

‘Well…not quite so many, and not quite so young. They’re active, those little chicks.’

‘You have a point,’ Grimsdyke agreed. ‘Though it’s a lovely way to go.’ He pulled his moustache thoughtfully. ‘All right, I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’ Ted beamed gratefully.

‘By the way, if you’d like to mention my name in those newspaper reports, I’ve no objection. So long as I can tell the General Medical Council you did it without my permission.’

Eric Cavendish was sitting up in bed in orange pyjamas, wearing his toupee and dark glasses. ‘And how are we this evening?’ Grimsdyke asked, shutting the bedroom door behind him.

‘I guess I’ll live.’ The actor grinned. ‘That girl you sent to massage my back – she was terrific. I never thought I could enjoy myself so much in bed with a woman, doing nothing but lie on my face and let her stick thumbs into my spine.’

Grimsdyke sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Talking of women–’

‘I know.’ The actor threw aside the magazine he was reading. ‘Ted wants me to take vows of chastity.’

‘No. But he feels if you paced yourself more carefully you’d get more mileage out of the dollies in the end. I’ve had more than one case in this hotel,’ Grimsdyke added morbidly, ‘of the girl having to crawl out from underneath when the gent’s snuffed it. Very embarrassing.’

‘Oh, no! Now you’re trying to scare me.’

Grimsdyke shook his head sapiently. ‘I’m not. Just think how the blood pressure goes up – the respiration rate, the pulse, the lot. Imagine the arteries taking the strain. Why, it’s worse than running for a bus.’

‘Okay, okay, Doc. I’ll ease up on the dollies for a while. But that’s a negative approach, if you’ll pardon me. Look at it this way – if your automobile can’t make it up and down hills any more, what do you do? Take it to a garage. Not leave off driving. Can’t you give me something, Doc? Some pill or something?’

Grimsdyke eyed the bottles and cartons on the bedside table. ‘I don’t believe there’re any you aren’t taking already.’

‘What I need, Doc, is not stagnation but–’ He made a flourish with his arms. ‘Rejuvenation!’

Grimsdyke looked doubtful. ‘If you got yourself rejuvenated you’d be snatching little girls from their push-chairs.’

‘I’ll make a new rule. No girl more than ten years younger than I am.’

‘No grannie would be safe – I mean, well, it can be done, of course. But it would take time.’

‘What’s that, compared with the pleasures of a lifetime?’

‘And money.’

‘Speak to Ted.’

‘All right–’ Grimsdyke moved up the bed and lowered his voice. ‘I do happen to know of somewhere–’

Eric Cavendish swung back the bedclothes. ‘Great. When do we go?’

‘Patience, patience! I’ll have to speak to the medical superintendent first. Luckily, he happens to be a friend of mine.’

‘What’s the place called?’

‘Dr de Hoot’s Analeptic Clinic,’ Grimsdyke told him. ‘A pleasant spot, actually. It’s in the middle of Kent. Extensive views, own farm produce, gravel soil, and main drainage.’