Doctor In The Swim (2 page)

My trip to New York was a fringe benefit from ghost-writing Sir Lancelot Spratt’s autobiography, which under the title of
Fifty Years of Sport and Surgery
(he’d turned down my suggestion of
With Rod and Gun Down the Alimentary Canal
) had recently been published in London at fifty bob and sold briskly among his relatives. But the old boy was tickled enough seeing his name in print, and sent me a very civil invitation to celebrate the literary event with a week-end at his country house in Wales.

I was surprised at the summons to Wales, because all the time I was writing the book Sir Lancelot was grumbling he couldn’t afford to keep up a country place now he’d retired from the surgical staff of St Swithin’s, still with a wife and Government to support. And though Sir Lancelot himself was eager to spend the rest of his days up to the waist in freezing water outwitting fish, or causing nasty accidents to the local birds, Lady Spratt much preferred to get the provisions more conventionally by telephoning Harrods.

I was in for an even bigger surprise on the bright May afternoon I drove my 1930 Bentley along the banks of the River Usk, where it chortles and jostles among the Black Mountains as gaily as a bunch of kids getting out of school. I turned through Sir Lancelot’s front gates to see a middle-aged chap in shorts dashing down the long drive, with the surgeon himself in tweed knickerbockers and deer-stalking hat in close pursuit.

‘Stop that man!’ shouted Sir Lancelot. ‘Stop him, I say.’

Quickly deciding the chap in shorts had been interrupted rifling the cutlery, I jammed on the brakes, leapt from the car, and grabbed him as he was ducking into the shrubbery.

‘And so, Horsham,’ demanded Sir Lancelot, thundering up, ‘you have decided to discharge yourself, have you?’

The culprit, a weedy little fellow, all ears and kneecaps, could only stand and gasp.

‘You might have paid me the courtesy of mentioning the matter. I could have made the necessary arrangements and saved you the embarrassment of attempting to hitch-hike your way back to London in the garb of an under-dressed Boy Scout.’

‘I – I’m sorry, Sir Lancelot,’ the fugitive managed to wheeze. ‘I don’t know what came over me. Really I don’t. I just cut and ran, that’s all.’

Sir Lancelot stood stroking his beard. ‘I am inclined to suspect that you merely wished to avoid your afternoon’s treatment.’

‘I would like to remind you whom you are addressing,’ said the weedy chap, trying to draw himself up.

‘As far as I am concerned I am addressing a blood-pressure several points above normal and a physique several points below it, a muscular system exercised far too little and an alimentary system exercised far too much. Though if you would like me to telephone,’ he added generously, ‘I can have your Rolls and chauffeur dispatched at once and you will still be in time for a late supper at the Caprice. It is a matter of supreme indifference to myself whether you remain here or not. Particularly as fees paid in advance are not returnable.’

‘I shall not dine at the Caprice tonight,’ said the weedy chap with dignity, though salivating a good deal. ‘I shall stick it out, Sir Lancelot. I realize it is all for my own good.’

‘Excellent. Though if you break any more of the rules, Horsham, I fear I shall be obliged to invite you for a chat in my study after supper. Now kindly report to the Sergeant-major for your treatment at once.’

‘Who on earth was that, sir?’ I asked, feeling mystified as the defaulter padded off.

‘Good afternoon, Grimsdyke,’ Sir Lancelot greeted me affably. ‘Pleasant to see you again. That? Oh, that was Lord Horsham.’

‘Lord Horsham?’

‘Yes, Chairman of the City and Suburban Bank. Got nasty breath and fallen arches.’

This seemed even more mysterious. Though I couldn’t feel sorry for the chap any longer, his underlings on several occasions having totally failed to see the joke about my overdraft.

‘Perhaps you will give me a lift to my own front door?’ asked Sir Lancelot. ‘As you know,’ he explained, climbing into the car, ‘like most of the luckless possessors of the only houses in the country worth owning, I was recently faced with the prospect of an estate agent’s board decorating the front gate.’

I nodded. ‘I was going to suggest, sir, you got rather aristocratic and threw the place open at half-a-crown a go.’

‘I thought of that, but I didn’t much like the prospect of spotty children sucking lollipops all over my flower beds.’

‘Or wiping their fingers on the priceless heirlooms.’

‘Being a self-made man, I unfortunately possess no heirlooms except my father’s operating instruments. Though I have, over the years, collected in preservative spirit abdominal organs removed from many interesting and prominent people. I felt these would make an interesting exhibit, at a small extra charge. Not many people have the opportunity of inspecting a former Prime Minister’s kidney,’ he mused as we reached the porch. ‘But my wife was for some reason much against the idea. She has become very conservative in her ways lately.’

I felt this would have given the customers a change from all those portraits of the ancestors, but I didn’t see where it led to the weedy chap in the shrubbery.

‘Then I hit on the brilliant notion of turning my home into a rest clinic,’ Sir Lancelot added.

‘A rest clinic, sir?’

So far the place struck me as about as restful as the Glasshouse.

‘Yes, a clinic for overworked business executives. You read your papers, Grimsdyke? You must be aware that our modern businessman is as grossly overtaxed physically as fiscally. They keep gathering for deeply depressing lectures by eminent cardiologists, telling them how soon they’ll drop dead and to live on a diet of sunflower seeds and yoghurt. Perfectly disgusting.’

‘But surely it’s the great health problem of the age, sir?’ I swung my bag from the back seat.

‘It’s no problem at all,’ answered Sir Lancelot briefly. ‘They simply eat and drink too much, smoke like the borough incinerator, and get no exercise beyond winding up their alarm clocks before dropping into bed stuffed to the eyeballs with barbiturates. Here we try to restore the natural environment of the human animal. Come and inspect the afternoon treatment.’

Sir Lancelot led me through a gap in the shrubbery towards the lawn. A dozen more middle-aged chaps in running shorts were trotting briskly up and down, while a red-faced man in a tracksuit, resembling an international front-row forward who’d just been fouled in the scrum, stood and roared directions at them.

‘My patients,’ explained Sir Lancelot proudly, ‘include three stockbrokers, two ennobled brewers, and a couple of take-over bidders who developed a neurosis when they attempted to take over each other. See the little chap struggling to keep up? He’s one of the Income Tax Commissioners. I believe he gets bullied shockingly.’

The surgeon paused, while the patients started knees-bending at the double.

‘Observe the bald patient, whose shoulders would disgrace a bag of jelly-babies. That’s Arnold Quellsby, the dramatic critic on the Sunday papers. Chronic dyspepsia and melancholia. I was nearly obliged to expel him from the clinic when I discovered him guzzling fruit cake in his bedroom. Smuggled in a parcel of socks, by some famous actress who no doubt wishes to curry favour with him. However, I relented. The poor fellow is not yet nearly strong enough to face our contemporary drama. He has terrible rows with that television impresario next to him.’

I noticed a little fat fellow resembling a freshly poached red mullet.

‘I advised them to ask the Sergeant-major for the gloves and have it out in the gym after tea. Do them both the power of good. The moral treatment here is quite as important as the physical, I believe.’

A point was worrying me.

‘How on earth do you manage to make the patients stay?’ I asked.

Sir Lancelot laughed. ‘My dear feller, I simply charge them a hundred guineas a week. You’d be surprised what people will put up with, if only they have to pay enough for it. Though I do, of course,’ he added, ‘take the precaution of confiscating all their clothes and hiding them. We follow a perfectly simple regimen here,’ the surgeon continued as we stepped towards the house. ‘Up at six, bed at nine, starvation diet, cold baths, and readings from the classics in the evenings. It’s remarkable the change you can see in a managing director in a fortnight.’

I suppose I showed my sudden chilly feeling that the local rules might apply to visitors as well.

‘My guests naturally enjoy their roast duck and claret,’ the surgeon reassured me, ‘while my patients have
Bleak House
and cocoa next door. I fancy even your cousin Miles was impressed by my efforts here when he escaped from his surgical treadmill for some fishing last weekend. Do you see much of him in Town these days?’

‘Our treadmills are rather separated, sir.’

‘H’m. I fancy it was Miles who brought my work to the notice of Dr Lee Archbold during his recent visit to St Swithin’s. You know Archbold, of course?’

‘You mean the American cardiologist you keep seeing getting in and out of aeroplanes in
Life
?’

Sir Lancelot nodded. ‘In the United States they make an even bigger fuss about executives’ health, American business men enjoying the widespread admiration and affection reserved in this country only for dogs. Archbold has courteously asked me to New York as British delegate to the coming conference of the Wall Street Health Movement. The invitation is timely, as I feel inclined to close the clinic for a short holiday. Besides, my wife,’ Sir Lancelot explained after a pause, ‘is returning from a stay in Majorca, and I feel it would be best if she did not find it in full swing. I have a feeling that I overlooked mentioning its existence to her.’

He paused as the inmates trotted past us on the heels of the Sergeant-major, off for a healthy two-mile run.

‘I should be greatly obliged, Grimsdyke,’ he went on, ‘if you would agree to accompany me to New York as my assistant,’

I stared at him. ‘Who, sir? Me, me?’

‘There is always a plague of paper work at these affairs, and your ability with the pen would be useful.’

‘But I don’t know the first thing about executives’ health,’ I pointed out,

‘My dear feller, it is only necessary to tell them to skip lunch and walk to the station. If they wish us to travel three thousand miles to do so, that is entirely their affair. Your expenses would be paid, of course. First class.’

Naturally, I accepted on the spot. We Grimsdykes are always ready for a free ride anywhere, even if it’s only the Woolwich Ferry.

‘Excellent. I should moreover appreciate some company, never having been to New York before.’ Sir Lancelot hesitated at the front door. ‘I have, in fact, never been abroad before at all.’

This was another surprise. Sir Lancelot was the sort of man who gave the impression he had been everywhere except the top of Everest.

‘Indeed,’ he corrected himself, ‘I did as a young house surgeon take a day excursion to Boulogne. But something I ate disagreed with me so violently I have never felt inclined to leave our shores since. We start on Monday fortnight, for three weeks. Now I must just take my afternoon prowl through the bedrooms. I am not at all certain that wretch Quellsby isn’t harbouring a bar of milk chocolate.’

I should have twigged from the beginning that a trip with Sir Lancelot to New York would be likely to end in a frightful rumpus. Come to think of it, a trip with Sir Lancelot to Elysium would be likely to end in a frightful rumpus, too.

Before we left London Airport he’d lost his hat and his passport, he created on the plane because he couldn’t get a glass of hot milk and a digestive biscuit, then he swallowed a handful of barbiturates and snored in my ear all the flight. It took two stewardesses with the ice-bucket to wake him up as we landed at Idlewild Airport in New York, just as it was getting dark and Manhattan was putting on its evening diamonds. Dr Archbold himself was waiting to meet us, and turned out to be an amiable, quiet little cove in rimless glasses, looking exactly as he did on the cover of
Time
– heart specialists in America, of course, enjoying much the same status as movie stars and top baseball players.

‘Very decent of you, coming all this way to greet me, Archbold,’ began Sir Lancelot, still yawning.

‘Gee, it’s no bother at all.’ He led us towards his air-conditioned Cadillac. ‘I just flew in with my private jet from examining an oil man in Texas.’

In the car was Dr Archbold’s secretary, who had blue hair and looked as though she’d just been unwrapped from cellophane. The coloured chap at the wheel started driving towards New York, and I settled back while Dr Archbold very civilly pointed out the objects of interest on the way.

There’s an odd thing about New York. Even though you’ve never been further west before than Ilfracombe, as soon as you hit the place you suffer what the neurologists call the
déjà-vu
phenomenon – that old I-have-been-here-before feeling. You’re perfectly at home among the apparently topless towers and the apparently endless avenues, the advertisements in Times Square which shoot real smoke rings and real waterfalls in the direction of the passers-by, the cars the size of billiard tables, and the police sirens like banshees with some irritating skin complaint. It’s all just like the films, in fact. And that’s not to mention the hot dogs and Coca-cola, and the drug stores which stay open all day and all night and sell everything from brassieres to breakfast.

And there’s another thing about New York. It’s a terrific place, of course, but it seems to have got stuck sometime in a state of confusion which makes dear old London look like a rainy early closing day in Stow-on-the-Wold. As I should have spotted from the start, this left Sir Lancelot like some dear elderly gentleman trying to play croquet in an earthquake.

‘Pardon me,’ apologized Dr Archbold, a buzz sounding from his armrest as the car reached our hotel in the middle of Manhattan, where the traffic gets so jammed it looks as though they’ll have to send for men with crowbars to get it unstuck again. He picked up a telephone. ‘Dr Archbold here…yeah…well, I guess I can be right over, if I phone my office.’

‘I’ll get your office on the other line, Doctor,’ said the secretary, picking up a telephone from her own armrest.

‘Good gracious me,’ murmured Sir Lancelot.

Medicine, of course, is now fully mechanized in America, like pretty well everything else there except sex, and some people don’t put that past IBM in the near future.

‘It’s too bad,’ apologized Dr Archbold, putting down the instrument. ‘I guess I’m gonna be mighty inhospitable and leave you guys at your hotel. I’ve got to go right out and examine a banker in Boston. I’ll take the private helicopter,’ he added to the secretary.

Dr Archbold stepped back into the air-conditioned Cadillac. Sir Lancelot and I stepped into the express elevator, which shot up ninety-six storeys as though making for Venus and stopped like a butterfly alighting on a rose-petal.

‘I take a pot of China tea and a digestive biscuit at seven-thirty in the mornings,’ declared the surgeon to a youth in buttons bringing up our luggage.

‘Well, I guess there ain’t no law against it, Pop,’ replied the bellboy cheerfully. ‘For me, I take a Seven-Up and a cookie.’

‘The servitors here are pretty chummy, sir,’ I explained quickly while Sir Lancelot’s face went through the colours at the lower end of the spectrum. ‘It’s in the great tradition of American equality. Also, most of them earn about as much as a Harley Street surgeon at home.’

Sir Lancelot then carried on because the television set in his room was larger than the bed, and I was glad enough to get away from the old boy to my own apartment at the far end of the corridor. But I’d hardly time to unpack my toothbrush before the house telephone rang, with Sir Lancelot on the wire.

‘Grimsdyke, I do not want to cause unnecessary alarm, nor do I wish to precipitate panic among the guests, but I feel we should take some elementary precautions because the hotel is on fire.’

‘On fire, sir?’

‘I thought I made myself perfectly plain–’

‘Of course, sir.’ I gave a nervous glance in the direction of the street. ‘But where exactly happen to be the smoke and flames, and the other usual things, sir?’

‘The conflagration itself is still no doubt undiscovered. But the heat of the blaze has already reached the upper limits of human endurance.’

‘Perhaps I’d better come round, sir,’ I suggested quickly.

Sir Lancelot had turned on the air conditioner to maximum midwinter heat, while trying to make the thing emit the radio news bulletin. I reset the knobs for him, but either I mixed them up or Sir Lancelot couldn’t resist fiddling with the works, because when he called me back ten minutes later the room was so cold he was starting to ice up round the beard.

‘Grimsdyke, I think I could do with a drink,’ he announced, blowing on his hands.

‘Just the thing for restoring the body temperature, I’m sure, sir,’ I agreed.

Even the drink didn’t cheer him up. New York may be the brightest spot in the world, but all its bars are dim, guilty little places, staffed by superannuated warders from Alcatraz. I suppose it’s because New Yorkers never bred the prohibition business out of their constitutions. Not for your Madison Avenue chap a leisurely pint with a game of darts and a chat about the crops. He likes to slink in, sink one, and slink out again, regarding drinking as one of those necessary but rather distasteful regular activities, like paring down a painful corn.

‘Scotch whisky should never be consumed at a temperature lower than Scottish burn water,’ growled the surgeon, as the Alcatraz chap touched the button of a machine which started voiding ice-cubes like a frozen chicken in good form,

No New Yorker has tasted a drink in his life, of course, all refreshments being served cold enough immediately to paralyse the taste buds, and the dry martinis arriving at the temperature of liquid oxygen. After that, Sir Lancelot complained about the soft music they pipe everywhere, even in the Gents’, and ended up by demanding who this Mr Rheingold was, whose daughter seemed to be so popular.

I managed to get the old boy through dinner, in a restaurant with a menu the size of a newspaper which served baked potatoes the size of bolsters and steaks you couldn’t finish unless you’d just spent fourteen days adrift in an open boat,

‘Good gracious me,’ was all Sir Lancelot could murmur when the waiter asked if he’d like to finish off with Angel Food as his Mother made it, then he complained about the bill and the coffee and I began to see that nursing him through the complexities of New York life was going to be like driving a T-model Ford up and down Broadway.