Doctor at Large (12 page)

The second disturbance to my romance with Nurse Plumtree was the dinner at home.

‘Mummy and Daddy are very sweet really,’ she said as I drove Haemorrhagic Hilda down to Mitcham.

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘Forgive Daddy if he’s a little crotchety sometimes. He’s been rather like that since he retired from the Army. And Mummy’s arthritis sometimes upsets her in weather like this. But I’m sure you’ll like them very much. Just be yourself,’ she advised me.

The Plumtrees lived in a small house called ‘Blenheim’ that stood in a neat garden containing a row of yews shaped into horses’ heads, with a miniature brass cannon by the steps and a notice on the door saying CIVIL DEFENCE – CHIEF WARDEN. She rang the bell, which had the effect of a bomb going off in a zoo. Immediately there was an outburst of barking, caterwauling, and human shouting from inside, and I waited nervously on the mat wondering if it was a pair of lions who were scratching hungrily for me inside the door.

‘I do love animals so,’ Nurse Plumtree said.

The door burst open, and two Great Danes sprang at me, put their paws on my shoulders and began licking my face.

‘Alexander! Montgomery!’ cried someone inside. ‘Mind what you’re doing to the Doctor.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Nurse Plumtree calmly. ‘They’re only puppies.’

The dogs were pulled off, I staggered through the hall, and found myself in a sitting-room decorated with long photographs of regimental groups, a pair of crossed swords, a tiger-skin rug, and several ceremonial helmets under glass domes like forced rhubarb. The room seemed to be filled with human beings and animals. There were dogs in the corners, cats on the cushions, birds in the windows, and a tank of fish over the fireplace; scattered among them were a thin, stooping man with a white moustache, a fat dark woman in a purple dress, and a young man and a girl, who both looked strongly like Nurse Plumtree.

‘My dear, dear, Doctor,’ said the Colonel, advancing with outstretched hand. ‘How very pleased we are to see you! Edna has told us so much about you. May I introduce Edna’s mother?’

As I shook hands she said warmly, ‘Edna’s told me so much about you, too.’

The young man held out his hand and said, ‘Hel-lo. Name’s Ian. I’m at the BBC. Sweet of you to come, old thing. This is Joan. We’re Edna’s brother and sister, and we’ve heard so much about you it isn’t true.’

Joan said, ‘Smashing you could come. Always hearing about you.’

I began to feel annoyed. I had expected the evening to be a quiet dinner, and it had been turned into a gathering of the clan.

‘Naughty Cromwell,’ Joan said, picking up a wirehaired terrier which had sprung from the hearth rug to start biting my ankles. ‘Naughty, naughty Cromwell! Did oo want to eat the Doctor, then?’ She buried her nose in the struggling dog’s neck. ‘Don’t you think he’s got a lovely face?’

‘He’s getting married tomorrow,’ Ian explained. ‘Which makes him rather excited.’

‘Now let’s have a cocktail, Doctor,’ said the Colonel, rubbing his hands. He smiled at me. ‘Or I’d better call you Richard, hadn’t I?’

‘If you like, sir, of course.’

For some reason this made everyone roar with laughter.

Before long I could not help mellowing in the warmth of my reception. I had come prepared for suspicious tolerance at best, and now Edna Plumtree’s father was treating me like the man bringing the winnings from Littlewoods. Even conversation at dinner was easier than I had feared, because the Plumtree family, like many others, believed that the only way to make a doctor feel at home was to narrate their ailments since childhood in a richness of clinical detail more suitable for the operating table than the dining-table. First Colonel Plumtree described the pelvic wound he had suffered at Dunkirk, starting with a short sketch of the military situation leading up to it and finishing with an account of the croquet lawn of his convalescent hospital in Torquay. Mrs Plumtree took up the surgical saga by relating all the events occurring both outside and inside her from the moment of entering hospital for a cholecystectomy. Joan Plumtree was bursting to begin the story of the carbuncle she had as a child which had to be squeezed of pus every morning, when Ian put his head in his hands and groaned, ‘
Not
your beastly boils again, Joan darling,
please
!’

They all looked at him in surprise.

‘But Richard’s a doctor,’ Joan said.

‘I know.’ Ian shakily reached for his glass. ‘But I’m not. It makes me go all over and over inside. If you don’t stop I’ll throw up, really I will!’

The family stared at the brother like passengers on a businessman’s train watching a parson come aboard in the middle of a good story.

‘I can’t even stand
talking
about blood,’ Ian went on to me… ‘It’s one of my things. I’ve got all sorts of things. I’ve got a thing about heights, and a thing about being trapped in the Underground and it filling up with water and everyone being drowned, and a thing about suffocating when I’m asleep. In fact, I’m all things. It all started when I had a nasty experience in a beastly prep school in Broadstairs–’ He went on to give a full history of his neurosis, and those of several of his friends in Broadcasting House.

For most of the meal Nurse Plumtree had remained silent. But as the sweet arrived the family ran out of clinical material, and kept the conversation going by asking her to repeat once more the story of the morning she put Mr Cambridge in his place, or the day she settled the Matron’s hash in front of the whole hospital. It was soon clear that Colonel and Mrs Plumtree believed their daughter dominated the nursing staff at St Swithin’s, in the same fond way that the parents of the spottiest fourth-form dunce imagine their child is the school’s sparking-plug. I noticed that they afforded me similar status in the surgical department, and began asking my opinion on medical matters of the day. So far nothing had been expected of me beyond sympathetic ‘Umms’ and ‘Really’s’ at long intervals, but the Colonel had provided a good bottle of Burgundy and I was feeling in the mood to let myself expand a little. After addressing them for some time like the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, I ended by giving a stitch-by-stitch description of removing a kidney, which brought Ian’s face into his hands again but left me confident that I had been an overwhelming success with the rest of the family.

‘Well,’ said Colonel Plumtree as I finished, ‘that was most interesting, Richard. Absolutely fascinating. And now, I expect the ladies would like to retire.’

The three women left us, followed by Ian, who murmured that he wanted to lie down. Colonel Plumtree brought a decanter of port from the sideboard and said genially, ‘This is a drop I’ve been saving. It’s from the old Regiment. I think you’ll like it, my boy.’

‘That’s very good of you, sir. But I hope you haven’t decanted it specially for me?’

‘Not a bit, Richard, not a bit. Special occasion, special port, eh? Cigar?’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Feeling that a medical qualification was worth the hard work if it could occasion such handsome treatment in a staff nurse’s home, I lit my cigar and settled myself at the head of the table close to the Colonel.

‘You haven’t known Edna long really, have you?’ he asked.

‘No, not very long. I only started on her ward a few months ago.’

‘That doesn’t seem to matter,’ he said and roared with laughter.

To be polite I laughed, too.

‘Tell me something about your career,’ he went on. ‘By all accounts you’re a rather brilliant young man.’

‘Oh, not really, you know,’ I said, feeling flattered. ‘There’s nothing much to tell. I got qualified, did a spell in general practice, and now I’m at St Swithin’s again. My ambition is to be a surgeon, of course.’

‘Capital!’

He poured me some more port.

‘If you’ll forgive a more personal question,’ Colonel Plumtree continued. ‘About – ah, how much are you making at the moment?’

‘I don’t mind telling you at all.’ I enjoyed giving inside information about the National Health Service. ‘All we poor housemen get is about three hundred a year, when they’ve knocked off the board and lodging. But, of course, it soon goes up. In another four years or so I should be well inside the four-figure bracket.’

He nodded thoughtfully over his cigar. ‘That’s pretty reasonable, on the whole.’

‘Not too bad at all, I’d say.’

‘But you’ll probably find yourself a bit short of cash at the moment, eh? After all, you’ve got to pay for the ring.’

‘The ring?’

What on earth was he talking about? I had said nothing about amateur boxing? The circus, perhaps? Opera? Or bookmakers?

He nudged me. ‘Her mother insisted on diamonds,’ he chuckled.

The room spun round. The port boiled in my mouth. The cigar shot from my fingers like a torpedo.

‘Steady on, old chap, steady on!’ The Colonel patted me heartily on the back. ‘Something go down the wrong way?’

It was almost a minute before I managed to speak. ‘The port – perhaps a little strong–’

‘Of course, my boy. Mustn’t have you choke to death just now, eh? Ha, ha! Come along in and join the family.’

I followed father into the sitting-room, looking like Ian having one of his things.

The rest of the evening passed in a sickly blur, as though I were recovering from a bad anaesthetic. Joan said she hoped we’d be jolly good pals, and Ian thought I’d like to meet his interesting chum Lionel at the BBC. Father showed us his photographs from the war, and mother kept pressing my hand, murmuring ‘I’m so glad,’ and bursting into tears. As soon as I dared I pleaded a headache, lack of sleep, and early duty. There were disappointed cries, and I bought my freedom with false pledges of returning for Sunday tea to meet the aunts and dining next week at Daddy’s club.

We drove away in silence. ‘Poor Richard,’ said Edna, wrapping my muffler tenderly round me. ‘Daddy’s regimental port
is
rather strong. But don’t worry – you made an awfully good impression on the family. It really was time they knew about
us
, wasn’t it?’

I burst into Grimsdyke’s room as soon as I reached the hospital.

‘Good God, what’s the matter?’ he asked in alarm. He jumped from his bed, where he was lying in his crimson silk dressing-gown. ‘Been frightened by the ghost of a blighted patient, or something?’

‘A drink!’ I fell into his armchair. ‘At once!’

‘Coming up right away. You look so bloody awful you make me want one, too.’

He threw aside the novel he was reading and brought a bottle of gin from the commode thoughtfully provided by St Swithin’s. After we had both drunk deeply from his toothglasses he screwed his monocle into his eye and said, ‘Now tell the doctor all.’

I gave him the story of my tragic evening, and he roared with laughter.

‘I can’t see anything funny in it,’ I said crossly. ‘Damn it all, I treat this girl with perfectly normal good manners and affability, and what happens? Before I know what’s happening I’m surrounded by her bloody family patting me on the back and saying how nice it will be to have grandchildren. What the devil can she have been telling them all this time? She must think like a story in a woman’s magazine.’

‘I’ll admit you’re in a bit of a fix,’ Grimsdyke said cheerfully.

‘Bit of a fix! I know that without your help. The question is, what the hell can I do about it?’

Grimsdyke took a long drink. ‘I should think the easiest way out is to go ahead and marry the girl.’

‘Marry her? Marry her? Are you mad too, man? Apart from anything else, have you seen her family? I wouldn’t share the same railway carriage with that bunch, let alone marry into them.’

‘Have another drink,’ Grimsdyke said.

‘Thanks. I will.’

‘Let’s suppose you did marry Nurse Plumtree,’ he continued in a reflective tone, lying down again. ‘The worst part’s over of course – being inspected by the family. Think yourself lucky. Many fellows have gone down to the old folks busting with love, and found themselves kicked into the rhododendrons before the fruit and coffee came round. You were a great success.’

I grunted.

‘Then, as Father observed, you’d need a ring. Terribly expensive, engagement rings. The thing the best man loses in church is a brassy job worth a couple of quid, but the one you choose together in Mappin and Webb’s is a sort of down payment on delivery of goods. You’ll have to put it in
The Times
of course – you pay for that too – which will load your post for weeks afterwards with advertisements for photographers, florists, and contraceptives. All your bachelor chums will slap you on the back and tell you what a lucky chap you are, clearly implying what lucky chaps
they
are. They stand you drinks, I admit, but you don’t get much chance for drinking because you spend all your spare time sitting on the edge of the sofa in her front parlour discussing the wedding. By now you may have decided that you don’t want to marry the girl after all–’

‘Must you go on?’ I demanded. ‘This isn’t a bit funny.’

‘… but that won’t do you the slightest good, because once you’ve set time terrible machinery of marriage in motion you stand as much chance as a crate of eggs under a pile-driver. You’ll soon discover that marriage is nothing to do with the fusion of two souls, but an excuse for women to buy lots of expensive clothes. The bride is decked out to ride in triumph round the social circus, to the delight of her relations, the relief of her married friends, and the gratifying jealousy of those still single. You, of course, will be the horse. But I anticipate rather, because for several months you’ll be forced to listen politely to exhaustive discussions about whether the bridesmaids should wear Juliet caps and if the bride can go to the altar in her usual undies. Incidentally the bridesmaids themselves – whom you’ll later have to reward handsomely – will apparently be recruited from a home for female morons, while your own best man will be as socially acceptable to the bride, mother, and steering committee of aunts as Jack the Ripper. Your last loophole of escape is meanwhile blocked by a landslide of saucepans, teaspoons, egg cups, gravy ladles, toasting forks, and hand-embroidered tea cosies, for all of which you will have to write a letter extending over at least one page beginning, “Dear Uncle Augustus and Aunt Beatrice. Thank you a thousand times for your delightful contribution to our new little home.”’

Grimsdyke took another drink, and staring at the ceiling continued: ‘Brightly dawns your wedding day. You have a terrible hangover as you climb into the outfit you’ve hired from Moss Bros. and you still can’t find your collar when the best man arrives to collect you. He generally tries to cheer you up with a few funny jokes. The last thing you want to do in the world is get married, but before you know what’s happening you’re in church with your eyes on the level of the clergyman’s boots. The reception afterwards will be upstairs in a tea shop, there won’t be nearly enough to drink and everyone will make speeches – some of the uncles twice – several of the aunts will be in tears, and only the waiters will at all be mellowed by alcohol. Then the “going-away” – frightfully pagan and primitive really, old shoes and tin cans on the back of the car in the middle of the High Street on a Saturday afternoon. This brings me to the honeymoon. There you are, arriving at St Ives in a snowstorm in your best clothes, trying to pretend you’ve been married for years and feeling that everyone is looking at you as though you were performing one of those
expositions
in the back streets of Marseilles. However, I will skip all that. I next see you and Edna Plumtree-that-was strolling from your villa on a Sunday morning with the pram and two – possibly three? – walking along beside–’

I smashed his glass on the floor and walked out.

The next morning was my most miserable since the final examinations. The newspapers seemed concerned only with actions for breach of promise, judges’ remarks about broken homes, and advertisements for cheap wedding rings. I could hardly eat any breakfast and hurried across the quadrangle to the surgical block feeling that every nurse in the hospital was pointing her finger at me and giggling. As I scrambled into my operating trousers I wondered if Nurse Plumtree had already spread the news around the Nurses’ Home or was waiting for the Matron’s blessing and a ring.

In the operating theatre it was one of those mornings. The Sister was in a bad temper, the catgut broke, the artery forceps slipped, the transfusion needles came adrift, the scissors were blunt, the swabs were lost. My own assistance was so clumsy that even mild Mr Cambridge was moved to murmur, ‘My dear Mr Er – er, couldn’t you do something more helpful to the patient than gaze at his umbilicus?’

Hatrick screwed up his eyes as he grinned and said through his mask, ‘He must be in love, sir.’

I almost wept into the wound.

As I grasped my retractor through the long surgical morning I glanced at Grimsdyke, who was sitting smugly at my right elbow, and wondered if he was perhaps right. Should I give in and marry Nurse Plumtree? After all, I was past the facile flirtations of a penniless medical student, and almost every morning
The Times
proclaimed the virtuous love of one of my classmates. Nurse Plumtree would at least never be a nagger or a gossip, she was a tolerably good cook, and genuinely anxious to look after me. As the years rolled by I might be able to tolerate her brother and sister, while thankfully her parents could not live for ever.

Lunch was later, colder, and soggier than usual. Afterwards I made an excuse about discussing the next anaesthetic and managed to have a word with Grimsdyke alone.

‘Sorry I was rather unsympathetic last night,’ he said cheerfully in the anaesthetic room, gripping the chin of a freshly unconscious patient. ‘But your cosy little evening
chez
Plumtree sounded so bloody funny I couldn’t spoil the joke.’

‘I think I may take your advice after all,’ I announced.

‘What? Marry the woman? But you’re not even in love with her, are you?’

I shrugged my shoulders, and started fiddling with an ampoule of pentothal. ‘What’s love?’ I said. ‘It merely means that a certain system of genes in my chromosomes is about to be placed in relationship to an arrangement of genes in hers. To this biological end certain endocrine cells in her and myself pour out secretions that produce our secondary sex characteristics, such as the full bosom and rounded hips of Nurse Plumtree and the deep voice and hair on the chest of myself. I don’t see that there’s any more to it–’

‘What disgusting nonsense! Anyway, you can’t possibly marry a nurse. They make your life a horror of purgatives.’

‘Then what the devil
am
I to do?’ I asked him anxiously. ‘So far you’ve been as useless as a letter box on a tombstone.’

‘The answer’s simple, old lad. Have a bash at another woman. Hadn’t you thought of it before?’

They wheeled the patient into the theatre then, but I finished the operating list in a happier frame of mind. In the emotional stress of the last two days I had forgotten Nurse Macpherson, and it cheered me to think that I could choose the primrose path to escape.