Doctor at Large (16 page)

‘If you’re looking for the lady,’ said the waiter, ‘she’s gone out for a walk with the Major.’

Nurse Macpherson and I said little on the journey home. When we were nearing the zoo again she began to laugh.

‘I don’t really see there’s anything very funny in it,’ I told her sourly. ‘I’ve been extremely unwell all the time, I’ve got a roaring temperature, and how did I know what the bloody place was like?’

‘I’m not blaming you about the hotel. I was just thinking what a laugh the girls will get in the Nurses’ Home.’

‘You wouldn’t tell them?’ I asked anxiously.

‘Why not? A nurse’s life is a dull one. It can always do with brightening up.’

‘If you breathe a word about this to your friends,’ I said savagely, ‘I’ll spill it all round the Residency.’

She laughed again. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘I damn well would.’

But I knew she was right.

Nurse Plumtree never spoke to me again. Two weeks later Nurse Macpherson became engaged to Bingham.

‘It was hard luck, old lad,’ Grimsdyke said sympathetically. ‘Still, it might have been worse. There was one fellow I knew who took a girl away for a weekend to Torquay. Best hotel, no expense spared and so on. They’d just got to their room and he’d opened the windows to have a breath of sea air, when what do you think he saw? Her whole bloody family arriving for their summer holidays at the front door, Ma, Pa, and several small sisters and brothers. Phew!’

We were sitting in his room some time later. I stared gloomily at my drink in his toothglass; my throat was better, but my pride would wear its scars for a lifetime.

‘My trouble,’ I said solemnly, ‘is women.’

‘Come, come, Richard! A less flighty citizen than you would be hard to discover. Disregarding the pocket harem you were running until this disaster, I’ve never thought of you as one of nature’s bottom-pinchers.’

‘I don’t go chasing women right and left, I admit. But ever since I qualified I seem to keep getting involved with them just the same. First it was the shocking female married to Hockett. Then there was that smooth piece of goods in Park Lane. Next Plumtree. Then that frightful nympho Macpherson.’

‘Personally, I’m all for getting in the clutches of unscrupulous women now and then,’ Grimsdyke said cheerfully. ‘Rather fun.’

‘But it was never like this when we were students!’

‘You underestimate the fatal allure of a medical qualification, old lad. In a quiet way, it’s about ten times as powerful as any uniform.’

‘You think so?’

‘Sure of it. Look at all these chaps that get hauled in front of the GMC. Why do you suppose every textbook starts by telling you to have a nurse handy when examining any female from nine to ninety? Then look at the medical profession as a whole. A more pug-ugly collection of badly-dressed social misfits would be difficult to find.’

‘True,’ I admitted.

‘Allure, old lad. Remember it. Have another drink.’

‘The unpleasant truth,’ I said, ‘is that I’ve shirked the responsibility of my ambitions. I’m not saying I’ve been a good-time Charlie, but now it’s a year since I qualified and I haven’t gone far towards becoming a surgeon.’

‘You’ve learnt a lot about men and women, as opposed to male and female patients, though.’

‘Unfortunately that cuts no ice with the Fellowship examiners. There’s no easy way out. I’ll have to buckle down to the books again.’

‘How about a job?’

I sighed. My appointment at St Swithin’s had only another week to run. ‘I’ll have to start on those beastly interviews again, I suppose. This time, I’ll address the committee “Dear Sir or Madam.”’

The next few days were sad ones. I would be sorry to lose the companionship of the Residency, and to leave at last the hospital that had been the centre of my life for seven years. But there was no alternative: under the hospital rules I had to make way for the junior men just qualified, and I could never gain promotion to become a registrar like Hatrick without my Fellowship. I could only say goodbye to St Swithin’s as cheerfully as possible, turn again to the back pages of the
BMJ
, and mark the date of the next reunion dinner in my diary.

Then hope appeared, outlandishly embodied in the Professor of Surgery.

I had gone to his laboratory behind the surgical block to fetch the notes of one of our patients, when he unexpectedly appeared from his office.

‘Gordon!’

‘Sir?’

‘Will you step inside a minute?’

Licking my lips nervously, I followed him into his tiny room, which was filled with ungainly physiological apparatus, pickled things in pots, piles of textbooks, journals in several languages, and the forbidding photographs of his predecessors in the Chair.

‘Sit down,’ he commanded.

I gingerly took the edge of a packing case marked RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL, while he sat in his swivel chair and pulled his white coat tightly round him. I wondered what was coming. I had carefully avoided the Professor since my return, but every time I caught his eye I had felt him mentally signing my Certificate of Lunacy.

‘I had lunch with my friend Mr Justice Hopcroft today,’ he began.

I said nothing.

‘We recalled that incident when you were my Casualty HS.’

‘I had hoped, sir, he might have forgotten it.’

‘On the contrary, we laughed about it heartily. Most amusing in retrospect. Hopcroft has a lively sense of humour, you know. Some of his remarks when passing sentence have caused many a chuckle in the Bar.’

‘I’m sure they have, sir.’

There was silence, while the Professor stared hard at a pair of kidneys mounted in a glass jar.

‘I was perhaps rather hasty with you, Gordon,’ he confessed.

‘It’s kind of you to say so, sir.’

‘Unfair, even.’

‘Not at all, sir.’ The interview was developing more comfortably than I had imagined. ‘I deserved it,’ I added indulgently.

‘I might say it has worried me somewhat since. If one’s judgement once becomes clouded by one’s emotion there’s no telling where it will end.’

There was another silence.

‘Bingham,’ said the Professor.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘A friend of yours?’

‘Hardly a close one, sir.’

‘I will confess, Gordon – in confidence – that Bingham has been something of a disappointment to me. The young man has ability, I’m not denying it. But I sometimes have a little difficulty in the operating theatre deciding which of us is the Professor of Surgery.’

‘Quite so, sir,’ I said.

‘I gather he is not one of the most popular members of the Residency?’

‘Not the most popular, sir.’

‘A job on the Unit here has come up unexpectedly,’ the Professor went on. ‘The resident pathologist – Shiradee – has had to return to Bombay. It’s a fairly leisurely job, which would give a man plenty of time to work for his Fellowship. Some minor research would be expected, of course. The appointment will be made with the others at the Committee on Wednesday evening – naturally it’s my duty to support Bingham for the job. But I can’t answer for the rest of the Committee. And in the present state of my relations with Bingham I assure you it would not take a great deal to make me change my mind. In short, Gordon, if you agree, I’d like to make up for my somewhat high-handed treatment of you earlier in your career by at least offering you a chance of the job. Will you apply on the usual form?’

I was so excited that I was almost unable to sleep for the rest of the week. In the operating theatre, where I now approached the table with the confidence of Robert Liston in his prime, I began fumbling so badly that Hatrick declared wearily that I was again in love.

Every time I saw Bingham approaching I avoided him: indeed, I had hardly spoken to him at all since his engagement, apart from stumbling out my congratulations with the rest. But on the evening before the meeting I was forced to seek his company. I was sitting in my room after dinner writing up my case notes, when I became aware of an unpleasant smell. As I sniffed, it grew stronger. From a whiff of the Southend mudflats it rapidly turned into the odour of a faulty sewage farm, and within a few minutes it appeared that some large animal was decomposing in the room next door. Holding my handkerchief over my nose, I banged on Bingham’s door.

‘Come in!’

Bingham was in his shirt-sleeves, boiling something in a glass beaker over a spirit lamp.

‘Good God, man!’ I exclaimed. ‘What the devil are you cooking?’

‘What, this? Oh, it’s manure, old chap,’ he said calmly.

‘Manure!’

‘Yes, old chap. Ordinary horse manure. You see, the Prof.’s very interested in the enzymes present in the manure of different animals. Pure research, you know. I’ve studied it a bit, and it might easily throw a good bit of light on the old human guts. Interesting, eh?’ He blew out the lamp. ‘I’ve collected specimens of all sorts of animal manure,’ he continued proudly, picking up a row of small test tubes. ‘This one’s dog, that’s cat, that’s pigeon, and the end one’s ferret. I just caught the horse when I saw a carter’s van stop outside casualty.’

‘And what, may I ask, is all this in aid of, Bingham?’

‘If you can keep a secret, old chap, I’ll tell you. Fact is, I’ve put in for the path. Job on the Unit. Knowing the Prof.’s interested in this line of research, I had a go at it. I’ve had one or two interesting ideas which I’ve put to him already, as a matter of fact.’

‘And you think you’ll get this job do you?’

‘Don’t want to boast, old chap,’ said Bingham, rubbing his hands, ‘but I fancy my chances a bit. It happens that the Prof. of Bacteriology and a few of the consultant surgeons have heard of this research I’m doing off my own bat, and it seems to have impressed them. As for the Prof., he’s tickled pink. For some reason he particularly wanted to study the elephant’s manure, and was talking about cabling to Africa, when I said, “What’s wrong with the zoo?” I’ve asked them to send a specimen round to him.’ He sat down on his bed, and pulled out his pipe. ‘By the way, old chap,’ he continued, with a sheepish grin. ‘Best man win, and all that?’

‘Eh?’

He nudged me. ‘Know what I mean, old chap, don’t you? Don’t worry, I’m as broadminded as the next. About Nan. You were a bit sweet on her yourself, eh? When she went on nights, I mean. You couldn’t blind me to it. Still, no hard feelings. Only one of us could be chosen, couldn’t he, old chap? I hope the fact that you didn’t make any headway doesn’t prevent our shaking hands?’

‘It certainly doesn’t,’ I said, shaking.

‘She tells me you tried to kiss her once,’ he added, nudging me again. ‘But no ill will, old chap.’

‘One of us, Bingham, is a very, very lucky man,’ I told him, laying a hand on his shoulder.

‘Very decent of you, old chap.’

‘Not a bit,’ I said. ‘Old chap.’

The next twenty-four hours were worrying. Knowing Bingham’s ability to worm his way into the estimation of his seniors, I was increasingly despondent about my chances of stealing the pathology job from under his nose. As the morning of Wednesday passed I felt that I was again waiting for the result of an examination, with the recollection of having made one certain boner in the middle of the fourth question.

‘It’s no good worrying,’ Grimsdyke said, as we sat in my room before supper. ‘The old boys will gather for the meeting in about an hour’s time, and you’ll either be in or you won’t. And anyone with half an eye can tell that Bingham’s a first-class tapeworm.’

‘But he’s a damn clever tapeworm,’ I insisted. ‘Look how he bamboozled the Prof. in the first place. Now he’s playing mother’s little helpmeet over this research business. Oh, blast Bingham!’ I said with sudden bad temper. ‘He did me out of the first job, and now he’ll dish me with this one. I wouldn’t mind if he was a decent human being, but of all the nasty, grovelling, slimy–’ The telephone began ringing in the room next door. As it continued, I yelled, ‘And now I have to answer his bloody phone for him!’

When I came back I was grinning.

‘I think I’m going to get that job,’ I told Grimsdyke.

‘You do? And why?’

‘That was the Prof. The zoo have sent him his specimen of elephant’s manure all right. Seven tons of it. They’ve unloaded it in his front garden.’

I was appointed Resident Pathologist to the Surgical Professorial Unit, and at the same meeting Grimsdyke was promoted to Senior Resident Anaesthetist.

‘Very gratifying,’ he said, as we strolled contentedly into the Residency after the pubs had shut that night. ‘Very, very gratifying. Virtue triumphant, vice confounded and all that.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘I just can’t believe it! It means we’ve got another whole year to enjoy the hospitality of dear old St Swithin’s. We will grow old together, old lad. But I didn’t know you were putting in for the anaesthetics job. You never told me.’

‘Didn’t I?’ He screwed in his monocle. ‘Must have forgotten to mention it. The fact is – and far be it from a Grimsdyke to express any liking for the toil that earns his daily bread – but I’m getting quite interested in doing dopes. Also – I fancy myself – I’m getting the hang of it right and left. Did you notice that endotracheal tube I passed this morning? Very pretty.’

‘You’re as bad as Bingham,’ I said laughing.

‘Ah, Bingham! I might add that, in case my sterling qualities as an anaesthetist were overlooked at tonight’s meeting, yesterday I handed that old trout’s cheque for ten thousand quid to the senior anaesthetist to buy himself some research. I fancied that might strengthen the old boy’s determination if voices were raised against me.’

‘You’re
worse
than Bingham!’

I found Bingham in his room, starting to pack.

‘Well, old chap,’ he said, trying to look pleasant, ‘you got the better of me this time, eh?’

‘I’m afraid so, Bingham. No ill will, I hope?’

‘Oh, no. Not a bit, old chap. We’ve always been chums, haven’t we? Besides, I have something which you can never have.’

Deciding that he was referring to Nurse Macpherson, I said, ‘Too true.’

‘I think I’ll have a go at general practice,’ Bingham went on. ‘Just for a spell, of course, before I get my Fellowship. Does a chap good.’

‘Have you anywhere in mind?’

‘Not exactly,’ he continued, folding his trousers. ‘But there’s a jolly smart agency I’m going to tomorrow called Wilson, Willowick, and Wellbeloved. They’ll fix me up.’

‘Yes, they’ll fix you up, all right.’

‘There’s just one thing,’ he continued. He grinned sheepishly. ‘Fact is, not getting this job’s a blessing in disguise. In GP I can afford to get married a bit earlier, and – well, Nan and I will probably be man and wife by the end of next week. It’s jolly good, and I’m jolly pleased, of course, but it’s a bit of a rush. Hasn’t given me time to arrange anything. Thing is, old chap, where’s a good and fairly inexpensive place to spend the – ah, honeymoon? Do you know of anywhere?’

‘The Judge’s Arms,’ I said immediately. ‘It’s a hotel on the way north. Very romantic.’

‘Thanks, old chap. I’ll remember that.’

‘There’s just one thing. I’d make a surprise of it – keep it quiet where you’re going until you actually arrive. A chum of mine did, and claims it gives you something to talk about in the painful journey from the reception.’