Doctor at Large (6 page)

She left the cubbyhole, but repeated her demand to the patients who had been listening intently outside, inciting them to riot. I held my head in my hands. For five years at St Swithin’s I had probably ruined my health through overwork and deprived my parents of the last comforts of their declining years – for this. It would have been easier to face if I had eaten a nourishing breakfast.

‘Sit down,’ I said dully, hearing another patient enter. ‘Name, age, and occupation?’

‘Wilkins. Twenty-one. Trades union organizer.’ A youth in a tight blue suit sat down, still wearing his hat. ‘But I ain’t a patient. At least, not at the minute.’ He spoke softly and slowly, as though demanding my money and valuables in an alley on a dark night. ‘You’ve upset my mother you ’ave.’

‘If that lady outside is your mother, I’d be obliged if you’d kindly take her home.’

‘Under the Regulations for the Conduct and Control of the National Health Service,’ he continued, staring at the ceiling. ‘A patient what receives inefficient service from a doctor can state a case before the local Executive Council, who, if they shall decide the facts proved, shall deduct an appropriate fine from the doctor’s remuneration.’

I lost my temper. ‘Get out!’

‘Take it easy, Doc, take it easy,’ he continued in the same tone. ‘I’m not saying nothing against you – I’m only quoting regulations, see? It just happens that I know ’em.’

‘And I suppose you go round making a damn good thing out of it?’

Picking his front teeth with a matchstick, he continued, ‘I’d be careful what I was saying, if I was you, Doc. There’s a law of libel in the land, don’t forget. As a matter of fact, I’ve had five cases against doctors. Won every one. All fined. I’m worth near a thousand quid a year to the Executive Council, I’d say.’

‘Now look here, Mr Watkins–’

‘Wilkins.’

‘I don’t care who the bloody hell you are or what you intend to do, but if you don’t get out of here at once I’ll kick your ruddy coccyx so hard–’

‘Violence won’t get you nowhere,’ he said imperturbably. ‘I could lay a complaint before the General Medical Council in that case. That you was guilty of infamous conduct in a professional respect.’ He rose. ‘Don’t forget the name, Doc., Wilkins, You’ll be hearing more from me.’

When I got home Jasmine was laying the table for our midday dinner.

‘Hello,’ she said brightly. ‘You look like you’re a bear with a sore head, and no mistake.’

‘At the moment I’d make a pack of bears with sore heads look like a basket of puppies. Where’s Dr Hockett, Jasmine?’

‘The Doctor ain’t in yet. He had to go out to the Vicar.’ She laughed. ‘That’s the first time what you’ve called me Jasmine.’

I threw myself into a chair and picked up my
Pears’ Cyclopaedia
. After a while she went on, ‘Didn’t ’arf give you a start, didn’t it? Yesterday at tea.’ She giggled. ‘Didn’t know I was married to the Doctor, did you?’

‘If you must drag the incident up again, Mrs Hockett, I will tell you that I didn’t. And it did give me a start. Quite put me off my sardine.’

She laid out the last of the plates. ‘I’m not blaming you,’ she said amiably. ‘Fancy me being the wife of a doctor! Phew! I can’t get over it yet, sometimes.’ As I said nothing, she came nearer my chair. ‘Of course, he only married me to save the wages. Or mostly, I suppose. He’s a mean old devil, like you said. Still, I acted for the best.’

‘My dear Mrs Hockett–’

‘Call me Jasmine, ducks.’

‘I really cannot give opinions on your strictly domestic affairs. I have had an exhausting – in fact, excruciating – morning, and quite enough trouble for today, thank you.’

‘Do us a favour, duckie,’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Yes, go on. Be a sport.’ She came near enough to stand over me. ‘The Doctor’s given you the key of the drug cupboard, ain’t he?’

‘No.’

‘Yes he has – he always gives it to the assistant.’

‘And what of it?’

‘Be a gent and give us the lend of it a minute.’

‘I certainly will not.’ I turned to my Cyclopaedia again with finality.

‘Oh, go on! I’ll give it back. Dr Azziz let me have it.’

‘Well, Dr Gordon won’t.’

‘Fetch us a bit of nembutal from the cupboard, then. I love nembutal.’ She rubbed her stomach and rolled her eyes. ‘Lovely grub, it is. Sends you to sleep and makes you forget what a bloody old miser the Doctor is.’

‘That hardly seems the way for a woman to talk about her husband.’

Suddenly she made a grab for my waistcoat pocket. ‘Come on! Give it over!’

‘For God’s sake, woman – !’

‘Ooo! Let go! You’re hurting!’ she cried pleasurably.

‘Damnation! Can’t you control yourself?’

We struggled over the chair and fell on to the floor. Jasmine was a sturdy girl and obviously experienced in parlour fighting. I had managed to push her from above me with difficulty, when Dr Hockett came in.

I scrambled up. My collar had flown from its stud, my face was red, I was sweating and breathless. Hockett stood in his overcoat in the doorway with his hands behind him, staring at me in the usual way.

‘We – er – I had lost something on the floor,’ I explained.

He nodded.

‘Jasmine – Mrs Hockett, that is – was helping me find it.’

There was a long silence, while Jasmine smoothed down her clothes.

‘Time for dinner,’ Hockett said quietly. ‘My dear, it is surely not necessary to have the fire on at this hour of the morning? It is really remarkably warm for the time of year.’

None of us spoke during the meal, which was sausage and mash. When Jasmine had cleared away the dishes and left, Hockett said in his usual voice, ‘Surprising the number of doctors who have sinned, isn’t it?’

‘Sinned?’ I looked at him uncomfortably. ‘You mean – er, sexually?’

‘I mean who have committed murder.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I said faintly. ‘I suppose it is.’

‘There was Crippen – Palmer the Poisoner – Neil Cream in London. And many more. Do you remember the Ruxton case? He cut them up in the bath.’

‘I suppose it’s – sort of tempting to have all the stuff around. To go murdering people with.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Ah, well!’ I said. I stood up, clutching the table for support. ‘I must be getting along.’

‘Many murderers are never detected, Doctor,’ Hockett observed.

I ran to my room and wedged the bed behind the door.

The evening nevertheless passed the same way as the one before. Dr Hockett sat beside the faint-heated fire and read the
Express
; Jasmine knitted, and winked every time she caught my eye; I looked at the duck and read my
Cyclopaedia
.

We went to bed at ten, parting as amiably as any trio which has shared for supper the same cod fillet. I heard Dr Hockett turn the electricity off at the main. I felt for my torch beside me, and went to sleep.

The telephone rang at one-thirty. As it was my job to take all night calls I automatically climbed out of bed, crept downstairs, and answered it.

‘Fifteen Canal Place,’ a man’s voice said immediately. ‘And hurry up.’ The line went dead.

I pulled on my clothes, started up Haemorrhagic Hilda, looked for Canal Place on my new map, and bounced over the deserted tramlines into the night. After losing myself three or four times I found the address at the far end of a long, narrow, twisting street too cramped for Hilda to pass. I walked the rest of the way, and as it was raining again I knocked on the door with my new suit soaked through to the pyjamas underneath.

‘You’ve taken your time, I must say,’ said the man who opened the door.

I shone my torch in his face. ‘Wilkins!’

‘The very same.’

‘If this is some sort of joke–’ I began angrily.

‘Joke? I don’t play jokes, Doc. Some people say I ain’t got a sense of humour. It’s mother.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘She’s dying.’

‘She is, is she? Well, we’ll see.’

I found Mrs Wilkins in bed upstairs, suffering from the wind.

‘She wants to go into ’ospital,’ Mr Wilkins announced in a threatening voice.

‘No doubt she does. So do half the population of the country. She needs a large glass of hot water, that’s all.’

‘She wants to go into ’ospital,’ Mr Wilkins insisted.

‘Goodnight,’ I snapped, picking up my stethoscope.

‘’Ere!’ He grabbed my lapel. ‘You ’eard what I said – she ought to be in ’ospital.’

Mrs Wilkins belched loudly. ‘I’m dying!’ she cried.

‘Now look here. I don’t want to threaten you with bodily violence twice in a day, Mr Wilkins, but if you don’t take your hands off me this instant–’

He stared at me, tight-lipped. ‘All right. Have it your own way. I’m going to the Executive Council in the morning.’

‘Go to the bloody Town Council tonight, if you want to.’

‘And I’m going to the General Medical Council, too. You mark my words,’ he shouted after me as I made for the street. ‘Infamous conduct – professional respect!’

The words followed me as I ran through the rain, while his mother recovered sufficiently to stick her head out of the window and swear in a way that would certainly have been inadvisable for a dying woman.

By the time I left the car outside Dr Hockett’s house I was trembling with indignation. This was really too much. I had been treated worse than a man come to fix the drains. Already composing an outraged letter to the BMA, I opened the front door and flashed my torch along the hall. I found Jasmine standing at the bottom of the stairs in her nightie.

‘Good God!’

She giggled. ‘Hello, duckie. The Doctor’s out. He had to go to the Vicar.’

‘Get back to bed at once!’

‘Go on! You sound like my old dad.’ She came towards me, ‘I’ll go to bed,’ she whispered, ‘if you come too.’

I dropped the torch in fright. ‘Have you gone insane, woman? Are you crazy? What do you think I am? He’ll be back in a second.’

‘No he won’t, ducks. He’s only just gone.’ She grabbed me in the darkness. ‘Come on! Now’s our chance – don’t you want a bit of fun?’ Then she started kissing me, in the spirit of a boxer limbering up on the punching bag.

I managed to push her away and said desperately, ‘Let me go! Let me go! Haven’t I got enough to worry about as it is? Damn it – if you’ll only leave me alone and go back to bed I’ll – I’ll give you some nembutal.’

She hesitated. ‘You really will?’

‘Yes, I really will,’ I wiped my face with my handkerchief. ‘In fact,’ I went on breathlessly, ‘I wish I could give you the whole ruddy bottle. But only if you’ll go to bed at once and stay there like a good girl. Thus preventing both of us being cut up in the bath by tomorrow morning.’

She thought for a moment, weighing up the alternative delights of me and nembutal.

‘OK,’ she decided. ‘It’s a deal.’

‘Run along, then. I’ll get it from the surgery and bring it up.’

As she disappeared upstairs I opened the drug cupboard and nervously flashed my torch inside. It was filled with several hundred small bottles of samples, which rattled like Haemorrhagic Hilda going downhill as they began to tumble on to the floor all round me. I grabbed the nembutal bottle, pushed the others back, locked the cupboard, and made for the stairs.

On the landing I hesitated. Jasmine had gone back to her room. Her door was shut. Was I in honour bound to keep my side of the bargain? Perhaps I could sneak back to bed and barricade the door? She might come after me, but Hockett would be back before she could make much more trouble… I heard a creak inside the room: she was impatiently getting out of bed. Her bare footsteps crossed the floor. I grabbed the door handle and pulled.

‘’Ere!’ she called. ‘What’s the big idea?’

‘The idea is that you stay inside, my good woman.’

‘Oh, is it–’

Together we pulled at the handle, one on each side of the door. As I had the nembutal bottle in one hand, I had a struggle to keep it closed. I didn’t hear the front door shut, and as Hockett had returned to the house silently on his bicycle the first I knew of it was finding myself standing in the light of his torch.

‘Lord Almighty!’ I cried. Immediately it struck me how the situation would appear to him. ‘It’s all right,’ I said urgently. ‘Your wife couldn’t sleep. I was just going to fix her up with some of this.’

I waved the bottle in my hand. Then I saw it wasn’t nembutal, but Dr Farrer’s Famous Female Fertility Food.

‘Back so soon, Doctor?’ asked Mr Pycraft.

‘Yes. Dr Hockett and I had a difference of opinion about a difficult case.’

‘You did, did you, Doctor?’ Pycraft looked different from our last interview. He seemed twenty years younger, his sugary benevolence had hardened like the icing on a cheap wedding cake, his side-whiskers had receded, his spectacles had enlarged, his clothes were cleaner, and his hands were cured of their arthritis. ‘Well, now. Surely you won’t let a little thing like that come between you and your career? We have gone to great trouble providing you with a start, in a magnificent practice–’

‘Magnificent practice! The only thing magnificent about it is old Hockett’s minginess. Why don’t you give it to one of your medical missionaries? It would suit a chap who could live on a handful of rice a week and take the temptations of women in his stride.’

‘I hardly find it a cause for levity, Doctor.’

‘If you’d been working there for thirty-six hours like I have, you’d find it even less. I want another practice please, and damn quick.’

‘But, Doctor–’ He picked up a steel pen and slowly tapped his cheek with it. ‘I’m afraid we have no more on our books just at the moment. It’s a bad time for inexperienced young men like yourself. Your only course is to return to Dr Hockett immediately, apologize, and continue your career.’

I banged his desk. ‘I’d rather work tearing up the bloody road!’

‘As you well might, Doctor,’ he said calmly. ‘Under the agreement you signed with Wilson, Willowick, and Wellbeloved – which I have in the safe there – you agreed to pay us thirty-three and one-third per cent of your salary monthly for twelve months, or the equivalent amount should you through any reason leave your post beforehand. That comes to fourteen pounds
per
mensem
, which incidentally is payable in advance. We should like the first instalment now, Doctor, and if the rest is not forthcoming I assure you we shall have no hesitation in taking out a summons. Then there is the interest on the loan, of course. The publicity, Doctor – most undesirable, don’t you agree? Especially at the very beginning of a career. The General Medical Council take an extremely grave view–’

‘Oh, go to hell!’ I said. I strode from the office, slammed the door, and clattered down the stairs.

I stood in the street for a minute, breathing hard and wondering what the recent floods of adrenalin were doing to my arteries. Then I dived into the pub for a drink.

Over a pint, I assessed my position in the medical profession. I had a diploma, a car, a new suit shrunk in the service of Mrs Wilkins, no spare cash, a debt of a hundred pounds, and the legal obligation to pay one hundred and sixty-eight pounds in the next twelve months to Wilson, Willowick, and Wellbeloved. I wanted a job and money – and unless I was prepared to make Haemorrhagic Hilda my home I wanted them at once. I was gloomily turning over these problems when I thought of Grimsdyke: although I gravely doubted that he could pay back my ten pounds, it would be pleasant to look at someone who owed money to me.

The address on his card was in Ladbroke Grove, and I drew up Haemorrhagic Hilda a little later that morning before a row of tall frowsy houses by the gasworks. Grimsdyke’s apartments were in the basement. I rang a bell beside a blistered brown door under the area stairs, which after several minutes was gingerly opened.

‘Yes?’ said a woman’s voice.

‘I’d like to see Dr Grimsdyke, please.’

‘He’s gone away.’

‘I’m a particular friend of his. Tell him it’s Dr Gordon, and I’ve just had a row with Wilson, Willowick, and Wellbeloved.’

‘Just a minute.’

She shut the door, and returned a few seconds later to let me in. I saw that she was about nineteen, dressed in a dirty pink satin housecoat, and wore a rather vacant look. Inside the door was a small hall full of rubbish, and beyond that a large room with a window just below the ceiling. This contained a bed, a gas stove, a wash stand, and a table covered with dirty plates and empty Guinness bottles. Grimsdyke was in his pyjamas, with his hair dangling over his face.

‘I thought you’d gone up north, old lad,’ he said in surprise.

‘So I had. Now I’m back again.’

‘Forgive this squalor–’ He waved a hand round the room. ‘Fact is, I took these rooms – there’s a lot more at the back – to oblige some friends, rather messy people–’

‘I wondered if you could let me have my ten quid back?’

Grimsdyke sat on the edge of the bed suddenly. ‘Surely you can’t have spent the other ninety? In two days? That’s certainly some going! You must have had a hell of a good time.’

‘I bought a car.’

‘What, that ruddy great thing that’s blocking out the daylight? I thought the coal had arrived. A bit on the posh side, isn’t it?’

‘I felt a big car would be a good investment – to impress the patients.’

He nodded. ‘It’s the only way the blasted public chooses its doctors. Did I tell you about a pal of mine called Rushleigh? Good scout, he qualified right at the end of the war, when you couldn’t get cars for love, money, or blackmail. Unless you were a doctor, of course. So he filled in the forms, and got a nice new little family bus for about three hundred quid. He’d happened to pal up with a Free French bloke who’d been in the orthopaedic wards, and when this fellow went home with a couple of bone grafts Rushleigh got an invitation to stay at his place down at Nice, buckshee. So he set off in his car, but he’d only got as far as Rouen when it conked out. You know what cars were like after the war. He went to a French garage, where they mumbled a bit about spare parts and so forth, and told him it would take at least a month to get anything to patch it up. However, the British being considered good chaps in France at the time, they sportingly offered to lend him a very old aristocratic English car they had in the back, which hadn’t been used for seven years and then only for funerals.

‘Rushleigh proceeded towards the sunny south, feeling he was driving a greenhouse. But he got there all right, and a month later showed up at Rouen. This put the garage in a bit of a fix, because there were apparently no spare parts anywhere. So they suggested to Rushleigh they did a straight swap. They could fix up his little family bus some time or other, and such vehicles sold like
gateaux chauds
, Hot cakes, old lad.’

I sat down on the bed myself and asked, ‘Did he agree?’

‘You bet he did. He’d quite taken to the old hearse. One of the garage blokes’ brothers was in the Customs and Rushleigh wasn’t averse to a spot of fiddling, so off he went. When he was safely back in England he thought he’d send the thing up to the makers in Derbyshire somewhere and have her done up. A few days later he got a letter from the managing director asking him to come at once and enclosing first-class ticket with cheque for incidental expenses and loss of valuable time. Rushleigh went up there preparing to be led away by the police, but instead he was given a ruddy great lunch and asked what he’d sell the old conservatory for. Apparently this firm had a museum of all its old crocks, and the one he’d picked up in Rouen was the only model of its type ever made, for some millionaire or other in Cannes in 1927. Fortified by the directors’ brandy, Rushleigh said he didn’t see the point of selling, because where would he get another car to continue his life-saving work? “My dear sir,” said the managing director, “if you prefer, we should be delighted to give you one of our brand new Golden Sprites instead.” Rushleigh now drives round his practice in one of these, and the old devil’s worth an easy five thousand a year.’

‘How about my tenner?’ I said.

‘Would you like a cup of tea? Virginia will make some.’

Virginia was standing with one foot on the table painting her toenails.

‘No, thanks. I’ve just had a pint of beer.’

‘Is it as late as that? I must be getting a move on. I’ve a good many appointments in the City. So if you’ll excuse me–’

‘At the moment I face bankruptcy, disgrace, and starvation,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got any of that ten quid left, I’d regard it as an act of charity if you’d let me have it. I owe Lord knows how much to that agency–’

‘I can’t exactly give you the cash, old lad, because I haven’t got it. The market’s been very sluggish of late. But I will tell you what I’ll do – Would you like a job?’

‘As long as it isn’t like the one I got from Wilson and Willowick.’

‘This is
bona fide
and real McCoy. Have you heard of Dr Erasmus Potter-Phipps?’

I shook my head.

‘He’s about the most posh GP in England – high-class stuff, you know, none of this bob on the bottle and sawdust on the waiting-room floor.’

‘Where’s he hang out?’

‘Park Lane, of course.’

‘What’s his wife like?’

‘He isn’t married.’

I felt encouraged for the first time since driving out of range of Dr Hockett in the middle of the night. ‘The only fishy thing that strikes me is – I mean, I’ve the highest regard for your friendship and integrity, but why haven’t you grabbed it yourself?’

‘Long-term planning. I’ll tell you in confidence – don’t breathe it to a soul, particularly any one in the district – I’m leaving for the country. Big opening. I shall settle down scratching pigs with walking sticks–’

‘Is Miss Virginia coming too?’ She had taken no more notice of me and was leaning on the table among the plates plucking her eyebrows.

‘No. She’s psychologically unsuited for the country. I’ve found that out – I’ve been psychoanalysing her for the last few weeks. That’s why she’s here. You can’t psychoanalyse anyone competently if you’re not with them day and night. Jung and Adler, and all that. She’s got a jolly interesting little ego.’

‘I’m sure she has,’

Grimsdyke got up and felt in his jacket pocket. ‘Here’s the address. Give me half an hour and I’ll speak to him on the blower first.’

‘But how about references? A GP like that wouldn’t take an assistant out of the blue.’

‘Leave it to me,’ he said confidently. ‘It’s all part of the Grimsdyke service.’