Doctor at Large (5 page)

The journey north was exciting, for neither the car – which I had christened ‘Haemorrhagic Hilda’ – nor I had been on the road for some time. Hilda was originally an expensive limousine, but now she was constructed of so many spare parts that I thought of her fondly as the bastard of some noble line. Her vertical windscreen, which opened horizontally across the middle, was colourful with rainbows and bright with stars; there was worm in the dashboard, where all the dials pointed to zero except the engine temperature, which was stuck at boiling; her furnishings had been replaced by a former owner, and now consisted of a pair of bucket seats from an old baby Austin perched on a fruit box in front, and an ordinary small domestic horsehair sofa in the back. Behind the sofa were pieces of sacking, some old gnawed bones, a yo-yo, and scraps of newspaper prophesying the fall of Ramsay MacDonald’s government. The front windows would not open, and the back windows would not shut. Birds had nested under the roof, and mice under the floorboards.

The mechanical part of Haemorrhagic Hilda aroused my clinician’s interest rather than my alarm. The engine produced more rales, sibili, and rhonchi than a ward of asthmatics, and the steering gear, which had a wheel fit for a London bus, was afflicted with a severe type of
locomotor ataxia
. The only pleasant surprise was the horn. This was a long silver trumpet creeping from the windscreen to coil comfortably over the bonnet and front mudguard, which on squeezing the rubber bulb sounded like feeding time in the seal pool. Hilda’s other surprisingly good point was her brakes, which I shortly had a chance of demonstrating.

Outside Stony Stratford a police car waved me to the roadside.

‘You the owner of this vehicle?’ the policeman demanded, taking my licence.

‘And proud of it,’ I said cheerfully.

‘I suppose you know there are regulations concerning the roadworthiness of motor vehicles?’ he said in the tone used by Customs officers asking you to open the other suitcase. ‘Is the vehicle equipped with an efficient braking system?’

‘Brakes? Absolutely wonderful, officer. She can pull up on a postage stamp.’

‘I am going to test the truth of your statement. Proceed along the highway at a reasonable speed. I will follow, and when I blow my horn apply your brakes.’

‘Right-ho,’ I said bravely.

I swung the engine, wondering what was going to happen: if the police decided to hound Hilda off the road, I would not only arrive late but lose the greater part of my working capital as well.

After I had travelled a few hundred yards my thoughts were interrupted by the urgent blast of a horn behind me. As I drove the brake pedal into the floorboards I realized that it was not the policeman, but a Bentley sweeping past our procession at eighty. There was a crash behind, and my windscreen fell on to the bonnet. As Haemorrhagic Hilda had been built in the same spirit as the Pyramids, she suffered only another dent in the rear mudguard; but the police car lay with its wheels turned out like flat feet, bleeding oil and water on to the roadway.

‘You’ll hear more about this,’ the policeman kept muttering, as I dressed the small cut on his nose. I gave him a lift to the next telephone box, and continued my journey in an unreasonably cheerful frame of mind.

I began to move down the psychological slope towards depression as I entered the district where I was to work. It was a small English industrial town, which like many others stood as a monument to its own Victorian prosperity. There were long solid rows of grimy houses, factories walled like prisons, and chapels looking like pubs or pubs looking like chapels on every corner. There was a Town Hall ringed by stout old gentlemen petrified as they rose to address the Board, the station was a smoky shrine to the Railway Age, the football ground was a mausoleum of past champions, and the streets had not yet echoed the death rattle of their trams. Only the main thoroughfare had been changed, and consisted of cinemas, multiple chemists, tailors, and cheap chainstores, looking exactly like anywhere else in the country.

Shortly it began to rain, though from the soggy ground and the depressed aspect of the pedestrians it appeared to have been raining there continuously for several years. I became gloomier as I searched for my address on the other side of the town, and finally drove into a long road of gently dilapidating Victorian villas behind caged gardens of small trees shivering in their seasonal nakedness. On the last door post I spotted a brass plate.

The front door was opened by a cheerful-looking young blonde in overalls, holding a broom.

‘Is Dr Hockett in?’ I asked, politely raising my hat. ‘I’m Dr Gordon.’

‘Well, fancy that, now! I said to the Doctor this morning, I said, “I’m sure he ain’t coming!”’ She grinned. ‘Silly, ain’t I?’

‘I was delayed on the road. I had to give medical attention in an accident.’

‘The Doctor ain’t in yet, but give us your bags, and I’ll show you up to your room.’

As she climbed the dark stairs with my two suitcases, the maid called over her shoulder, ‘You ain’t ’arf young.’

‘Well, I’m – I’m not exactly in the cradle, you know,’ I said, wondering whether to feel flattered.

‘Garn! I bet you ain’t any older than what I am. The Doctor’s had some real old fogeys, I can tell you. Old Dr Christmas was the last one – Cripes! He must have been ninety. Real old dodderer. Then there was Dr O’Higgins and Dr O’Rourke and Dr O’Toole – grandpas, they were. And before them there was Dr Solomons and Dr Azziz and Dr Wu–’

I was alarmed. ‘There’s been quite a number of assistants here?’

‘’Undreds and ’undreds of ’em.’

‘Oh.’

‘Here’s your room,’ she said brightly, opening a door at the top of the last flight of stairs. It was a bedroom the size of a cell, and furnished as sparsely. She dropped the cases and flicked briefly at the enamel washbasin with her duster. ‘Bit chilly this weather, but it’s comfy enough in summer.’

‘Home from home, I assure you,’ I murmured, looking round.

‘You can get a nice fug up if you keep the window shut. Dr Wu, now – he used to burn incense and things. You won’t be doing that, will you?’

‘Not very much.’

‘The light’s switched off at the main at eleven, you pays your own laundry, it’s extra if you’ve got a wireless, and you can have a bath on Saturday mornings,’ she went on cheerfully. ‘That’s the Doctor’s orders. He likes to keep an eye on the housekeeping.’

‘I should ruddy well think he does!’ This seemed too much to tolerate, even as a junior
locum
. ‘Far be it for me to judge a man in advance,’ I told her, ‘but I must say he seems a bit of a mean old devil.’

‘He can be a bit stingy sometimes, that’s straight. Likes to look after the pennies.’

I sat down on a bed as unresilient as a park bench, and contemplated the discouraging start to my career as a general practitioner. The blonde continued to grin at me from the doorway, and I wondered if she was waiting for a tip; but as I felt in my pocket she went on, ‘I must say, it is nice to see someone from London Town again. How’s the old place getting along?’

‘About the same I suppose. I thought you weren’t a local girl,’ I added.

‘Not me! I ain’t one of them provincials. ’Ow did you guess?’

I hesitated. ‘You have a sort of sophisticated air about you.’

‘Go on with you! I suppose you don’t know the old “Bag o’ Nails” in Ludgate Circus, do you? I used to be behind the bar there for a bit.’

‘What, old Harry Bennett’s pub? I know it very well. Often went there with a lot of chaps from Bart’s.’

Her face took a tender look. ‘Dear old Harry Bennett! After all these years! Funny you should know it, ain’t it? We’ll have a good old pijaw about it as soon as you’re settled in. It be just as good as a holiday to me.’

‘Have you been out here long?’

‘Near on four years. I’ve got an old mum, you know–’ A door slammed. ‘The Doctor!’ she gasped. ‘Cheery-bye,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll say you’ll be down in a minute.’

I found Dr Hockett in the gloomy living-room, where the table was laid for high tea. He was standing in a green tweed overcoat in front of the gas fire, which was unlit. He was a tall, stooping man of about fifty, with a thin lined face and a thick grey moustache. His hands were clasped behind him and his gaze was fixed on his toes; his only movement as I entered was turning his eyes sharply up and glaring at me beneath his eyebrows, which hung across his face like a tuft of steel wool.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ I said politely.

‘Good afternoon, Doctor. I had expected you a little earlier.’ He spoke in a soft monotone, as though saying his prayers. Taking one hand from behind his back he shook mine flaccidly and replaced it. ‘Remarkably warm for the time of year, isn’t it?’

‘Well, it strikes a little chilly up here after London.’

‘No, I don’t think it does,’ he went on. ‘I always wear wool next to the skin, Doctor. That is much more hygienic than filling the house with the fumes of combustible gases. If that is your car outside, you will have to leave it in the open overnight. There is only room in the garage for mine, and as it is no more than a few years old I don’t intend to expose the coachwork. I often do my nearer visits on bicycle – it is much more healthy to take exercise in the open air. You might like to follow my example, though as you’re paying your own petrol bills it’s entirely up to you. We could make an arrangement by which you had part use of the bicycle, and I would make the appropriate deduction from your salary.’

As I said nothing he continued muttering, ‘You’ve not been in general practice before, I believe? No, I thought not. The work here is hard, but the experience will be sufficient reward in itself.’

The door opened, and the blonde maid entered with a tray containing a large brown enamel teapot, a loaf of bread, a packet of margarine, and a small tin of sardines, half-empty.

‘It is much healthier for the alimentary tract not to be overloaded with a heavy meal at night,’ Dr Hockett continued, still looking at his feet. ‘I never take further food after this hour, but if you wish to buy yourself some biscuits or suchlike for later consumption, of course I have no objection. Shall we sit down?’

He took off his overcoat and sat at the head of the table. Seeing a third place, and suddenly remembering Grimsdyke’s warning, I broke the silence by asking, ‘Are you married, sir?’

He gave me another glance under his eyebrows.

‘I didn’t quite catch your remark, Doctor,’ he muttered. ‘I thought you said, “Are you married?”’ As the blonde took the third chair he went on, ‘Pour the doctor his tea first, my dear. Possibly he likes it weaker than we do. Will you take a sardine, Doctor? I see there are one and one-third each. What, nothing at all? Perhaps after the excitement of your journey you are not very hungry? Well, it is best in the circumstances not to overwork the metabolism.’

The shock of finding the Cockney blonde was Hockett’s wife did not lead to my losing much nourishment. Nothing followed the bread and sardines, Hockett maintaining that margarine was biochemically the superior of butter, and weak tea had a low caffeine content which prevented eventual nervous, alimentary, and moral degeneration. The wife, whose name I gathered was Jasmine, said little because she ate steadily through a pile of bread and margarine; but while Hockett was carefully mopping up the sardine oil with his bread I was horrified to see her wink at me.

As we rose from the table Hockett was struck by an afterthought. ‘You
didn’t
take sugar, did you, Doctor?’ he muttered.

‘It’s all right, I can do without it at a pinch.’

‘I’m so glad, Doctor. Extremely unhealthy, sugar. Pure carbohydrate. Surplus carbohydrate in the diet leads to obesity, and then what? We all know that obesity is a cause of arteriosclerosis, arteriosclerosis causes heart failure, and heart failure is fatal. Taking sugar in the tea is suicidal, Doctor.’

‘I want the fire on,’ Jasmine declared.

‘Do you, my dear? But it’s extremely warm. I find it warm enough, anyway. So does Dr Gordon. You feel warm, don’t you, Doctor? A remarkably mild winter we’re having.’

‘I’m frozen to the marrow, I am,’ Jasmine said. She clutched herself and shivered dramatically.

‘Very well, my dear,’ he said with an air of solemn generosity, as though reading her his will. ‘You shall have the fire. Doctor, do you happen to have a match on you?’

This conversation had taken place in the dark, as the daylight had been fading swiftly during the meal and neither of them had thought of turning on the light.

‘Very restful, the twilight,’ Hockett continued, stumbling over the furniture as he groped for the switch through the blackness. ‘Extremely valuable for restoring the sensitivity of the retina. We suffer from far too much light.’

He lit the fire, carefully turned it half down, sat in a chair beside it, and began reading the
Daily Express
steadily from the headlines to the printer’s name at the foot of the last sheet.

‘You may smoke, if you wish, Doctor,’ he said, looking up. ‘We ourselves do not–’

‘Liable to give fatal disease of the lung, you mean?’

‘Exactly. If you wish for something to read, there are some books on the table behind you. They were left in the waiting-room by patients, but I expect they are perfectly readable.’

I started on
Pears’ Cyclopaedia
. When I became tired of reading this, I stared for a while at a stuffed duck in a glass case opposite. Once I had seen enough of the duck, I took another dip into
Pears
. Jasmine sat between us knitting, and every time I looked at her she winked. Thus the evening passed.

At nine o’clock Jasmine yawned and said, ‘I’m off to get a bit of kip.’

‘Very wise of you, my dear. Early to bed and early to rise is a perfectly sound motto physiologically.’

‘Good night one and all,’ she said cheerfully, gathering her knitting. ‘Sleep tight, Dr Gordon.’

As soon as she had left the room Dr Hockett turned the fire out.

‘Sweltering in here, Doctor, isn’t it? Now that my wife has retired we can have a talk on professional matters. I don’t like to discuss such things in front of her. First of all, your duties. You will see the National Health patients twice a day at the surgery in Football Ground Road, and take all the night calls. I see the rest and the private patients, such as they are, in my consulting-room here. I don’t go out at night.’ He gave me another look under his eyebrows. ‘I don’t like leaving Jasmine alone. She is still very young.’

‘Quite understandable.’

There was a pause.

‘A very attractive woman, Jasmine,’ he added.

‘Most attractive, sir,’ I agreed politely. As he continued to stare at me in silence, I shifted in my chair and added, ‘I mean, in a sort of utterly platonic way, and all that, you know.’

After gazing at me for several more seconds he suddenly produced a key on a string from his waistcoat pocket. ‘This is the duplicate key of the drug cupboard in my surgery next door. There are only two keys in the house. Please see that the cupboard is always locked. I do not think it wise for Jasmine to have access to it.’ He handed me the key and went on, ‘Jasmine is in many ways somewhat childish. As we are to work closely together, Doctor, I think it best for me to confide in you now. It may come as a shock to you to hear that Jasmine was my daily maid before becoming my wife.’

‘No! Really?’

‘I had practised abroad for many years. Out East. I never married. Marriage somehow seemed always beyond my means. However, when I settled here – I nevertheless love Jasmine very deeply, Doctor,’ he continued, staring hard. ‘I would not like to see anyone harm a hair of her head.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ I said brightly. I was now feeling badly in need of a drink. ‘After all, you’re her husband and all that, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Doctor,’ he murmured. ‘I
am
her husband.’

He then rose, switched out the light, and suggested we went to bed.

Breakfast the next morning was tea and porridge. Dr Hockett didn’t believe in overloading the gastric absorption so early in the day.

The meal was begun in silence, because Hockett was attending to his morning mail. The general practitioner’s daily postbag is filled with advertisements from the pharmaceutical firms and boxes of free samples, which are passed by most of their recipients directly into the wastepaper basket. But Hockett carefully opened each one, smoothing the envelopes for future use and reading the shiny pages of advertisements from the coloured slogans at the top to the formulae in small type at the bottom.

‘Surely, sir, you don’t believe in all that rubbish?’ I asked. I felt I had been bullied long enough in the house, and I had slept sufficiently badly to have the courage of a bad temper. ‘At St Swithin’s we were taught to chuck advertisements away unopened.’

‘On the contrary, Doctor, I find I derive a great deal of medical information from them. One of the difficulties of a general practitioner is keeping up with the latest work. And all the medical journals are so infernally expensive.’

‘But look at the muck they send in free samples! No GP in his right mind would prescribe it. This, for instance–’ I picked up a large bottle of green liquid labelled DR FARRER’S FAMOUS FEMALE FERTILITY FOOD.

‘Careful, Doctor! Don’t drop it. As a matter of fact I keep all the samples. I have several hundred in the cupboard in my consulting-room. My private patients seem glad enough of them.’

‘You charge for them, I suppose, sir?’ I asked coldly.

‘Naturally,’ he replied without hesitation. ‘Patients do not appreciate what they do not pay for. That is surely recognized as one of the evils of the National Health Service? Now I really think you should be getting along, Doctor – your surgery is well over a mile away, and it is bad for the practice to arrive late.’

I drove Haemorrhagic Hilda through the rain towards Football Ground Road, trying to suppress my feelings. If I were to be a GP I was going to be a damn good one, despite Hockett, Jasmine, a bed as uncomfortable as the rack in the Tower, and the effects of incipient frostbite and starvation. This determination wavered when I saw the surgery itself: it was a shop front with the glass painted bright green and DR HOCKETT’S SURGERY written across it in red, like the window of a four-ale bar.

There was already a queue of patients on the pavement as I unlocked the door. Inside I found a single room filled with parish hall chairs, with a partitioned cubbyhole for the doctor in the corner. This cubbyhole was largely filled with filing cabinets, though there was an old examination couch, a small stained desk, a basin, a Bunsen burner, and an oil stove, which I immediately lit. I washed my hands, took out my fountain pen, put my head round the cubbyhole door, and said, ‘First patient, please.’

A fat mother accompanied by a fat adolescent schoolgirl rose from the first line of chairs, and advanced on me with the expression of purposeful dislike used by women when demanding to see the manager.

‘
Adiposa familians
,’ I said brightly, as they entered.

‘What’s that?’ the mother asked sharply.

‘A Latin expression. Medical terminology. You wouldn’t understand it.’ I waved them towards the two chairs jammed beside the desk, placed my fingertips together, and began, ‘Now, what’s the trouble?’

‘Where’s the doctor?’ the mother asked.

‘I am the doctor.’

‘No, the real doctor.’

‘I assure you I am a perfectly real doctor,’ I said calmly. ‘Surely you don’t want me to produce my diploma?’

‘You’re Hockett’s new boy, are you?’

‘I am Dr Hockett’s most recent assistant, certainly.’

She assessed me for some seconds.

‘Well, I can’t say I like the idea much of you meddling with our Eva,’ she declared. Eva was meanwhile staring at me malevolently, saying nothing, and picking her nose.

‘Either you want me as your daughter’s medical attendant or you don’t,’ I said emphatically. ‘If you don’t, you can take your National Health card elsewhere. I assure you I shall have no regrets about it whatever.’

‘It’s the chest,’ she said, nodding towards the girl.

‘What’s wrong with the chest?’

‘Cough, cough, cough all night long she does. Why, I never get a wink of sleep, I don’t sometimes,’ she added indignantly.

‘And how long have you had this cough, Eva?’ I asked, with my best professional smile.

She made no reply.

‘Very well,’ I said, picking up my stethoscope. ‘I’d better start by examining her, I suppose. Off with your things, now.’

‘What, you mean take all her clothes off her chest?’ the mother asked in horror.

‘I mean take all her clothes off her chest. Otherwise I shall not be able to make a diagnosis, we won’t be able to start treatment, Eva will get worse, and you won’t get any sleep.’

Eva said nothing as her mother peeled away several layers of cardigans, blouses, and vests. At last her chest was exposed. I laid my stethoscope over the heart, winked at her pleasantly, and said with a smile, ‘Big breaths.’

A look of interest at last illuminated the child’s face. She glanced at me and grinned. ‘Yeth,’ she said proudly, ‘and I’m only thixteen.’

The morning passed quickly. The patients came steadily to my cubbyhole, though every time I began to think of lunch and peeped outside there seemed to be as many waiting as ever. I was relieved to find that my work was reduced through most of them not needing a full diagnosis and treatment, but only a ‘Sustificate, Doctor.’ I signed several dozen of these, certifying that people were in a state to stop work, start work, go to the seaside, stay away from court, have a baby, draw their pension, drink free milk, and live apart from their relatives. I gained confidence with every signature, and was beginning to feel I had a flair for general practice when I came against the case of the cheerful old lady.

‘Hallo, Doctor,’ she began. ‘And how are you this fine morning?’

‘I’m extremely well,’ I said, delighted to have a pleasant patient. ‘I hope we’ll find that you are too.’

‘I’m not so dusty. Especially considering. Do you know how old I am, Doctor?’

‘Not a day over fifty, I’ll be bound.’

‘Go on with you, Doctor!’ She looked coy. ‘I’m seventy next birthday, that’s a fact.’

‘You certainly don’t look it,’ I told her briskly, feeling it was time to start the professional part of the interview. ‘And what’s the trouble?’

‘Trouble?’ She looked startled, as if I had asked her whether she wanted lean or streaky. ‘There ain’t no trouble, Doctor.’

‘Then why – forgive me if I ought to know – have you come to the doctor’s?’

‘To get another bottle of me medicine, of course.’

‘Ah, I see.’ I put my fingertips together again. ‘And what sort of medicine is this?’

‘The red medicine, Doctor.
You
know.’

‘I mean, what do you take it for?’

‘The wind,’ she answered at once.

‘You suffer from the – er, wind?’

‘Oh, no, Doctor!’ She was now humouring the teasing of a precocious child. ‘Haven’t had the wind for years, I haven’t.’

‘And how long have you had the medicine?’

‘Oh – let me see – I first ’ad it the year we went to the Isle of Wight – no, it couldn’t be that year, because our Ernie was alive then. It must have been the year after. Except it couldn’t have been, because we had our Geoff with us, and he’s been under the sod a good fifteen–’

‘Quite,’ I interrupted. I saw before me as clearly as the eyesight chart hanging from the wall the Ministry of Health circular on extravagant prescribing. ‘Well, I’m afraid you can’t have any more medicine. You’re as sound as a bell, really, and you don’t need it. Take a walk in the park every day instead. Good morning to you.’

At first she didn’t believe me. Then she said in a sad faint childish voice, ‘But I must ’ave me medicine, Doctor.’

‘You really don’t need it.’

‘But I always ’ave me medicine, Doctor – always. Three times a day regular after meals–’ Then she suddenly burst into tears.

‘Now please control yourself,’ I said anxiously. I began to wish I had taken the Hospital Secretary’s advice and chosen the Army. ‘It’s nothing to do with me. It’s simply a Ministry regulation. If it was up to me you could have a dozen bottles of medicine a day. But we doctors have to cut it down.’

‘I want me medicine!’ she cried.

‘Dash it! Do you wish to unbalance the Budget and ruin the country? Please be reasonable.’

Suddenly her grief became anger. Beating the desk with her umbrella she shouted, ‘I want me medicine! I know me rights! I’ve paid me National ’Ealth like everyone else!’

‘I will not stand for this,’ I said, wondering if there was anything in the Hippocratic Oath against losing your temper. ‘Kindly leave the surgery.’

‘You thief! You robber! That’s what you are! Taking all them shillings every week from poor folk like me what can’t afford it! I know what ’appens to them insurance stamps! I know! Lining the pockets of the doctors, that’s what! I wants me medicine!’