Doctor in Clover (11 page)

‘I do so hope the young lady is free,’ agreed Lord Nutbeam, when I arrived at his suite to explain the snags. ‘I’d planned such a splendid little evening. There will be champagne, of course, and a band to play South American dances. Have you heard of the rumba, Doctor? It does my hip tremendous good. I wanted fireworks as well, but Ethel seems most disinclined.’

I made a consoling remark about Guy Fawkes coming but once a year, and he gave a sigh and went on, ‘Don’t you think, Doctor, that people are becoming such spoilsports these days? Not Ethel, of course. The dear girl is most understanding. I wanted to buy a tank of those tiny fishes in the Aquarium and serve them frozen in the water-ice tomorrow night. It would have been such a capital lark. But the hotel management wouldn’t hear of it.’

I shot the old boy a glance. I’d wondered more than once since arriving at Monte Carlo whether his wife’s diagnosis of pre-senile dementia wasn’t correct. I supposed it was all right to make your medical adviser an apple-pie bed, and to stick a champagne bucket on his bedroom door to dowse him with ice-cold water on retiring. Or even to bust in with shouts of ‘Fire!’ when he’s enjoying an early night, and have him looking pretty stupid running into the hall in his pyjamas with everyone else in tails and tiaras moving off to the opera. All right when your adviser’s a chap like me, perhaps, but if Lord Nutbeam really had summoned the President of the Royal College of Physicians the little episodes might not have ended with such hearty laughter all round.

‘But we shall have a lot of fun,’ his Lordship went on. ‘I’m arranging for a life-size statue of Miss Madder in ice-cream, and we can eat her. Also, the delightful gentleman from South America has promised to let me conduct the band all evening if I want. I’m sure everything will be very jolly.’

By then I was as keen as old Nutbeam for Petunia to get clearance all round and come to the party. As Pet Bancroft she’d always been a very decent sort, whom you didn’t mind introducing to your friends when she wasn’t in her waiter-biting mood, but dancing round the room with Melody Madder I felt could make you seem no end of a chap. The odd thing was, though I hadn’t been keen on marrying Petunia Bancroft I wouldn’t at all have minded Melody Madder. I supposed Freud was right – if adult happiness comes from fulfilling the longings of childhood I’d always wanted to marry a film star, along with opening for England at Lord’s and beating the school record of twenty-four strawberry ices at a sitting. The only snag was not much liking the idea of getting into bed every night with a limited company.

I idled away the following day seeing some of the films, which were all about peasants and chaps in factories who took a gloomy view of life, then I put on my white dinner-jacket and wandered into Lord Nutbeam’s party. Sure enough, there was Petunia, bursting at the gussets with bewitchery.

‘Miss Madder.’ I bowed. ‘May I have the pleasure of this dance?’

‘Gaston, darling ! But I must introduce you to Sir Theodore first.’

I’d heard of the chief financial wizard of Union Jack Films, of course, generally making speeches after eight-course banquets saying how broke he was.

‘What’s he like?’ I asked.

‘Oh, perfectly easy and affable, As long as you’re used to dealing with the commissars in charge of Siberian salt mines.’

I found him sitting over a glass of orange juice, with the expression of an orang-outang suffering from some irritating skin disease.

‘Of course you know Quinny Finn?’

Of course, everyone knew Quintin Finn. You keep seeing him on the pictures, dressed in a duffel coat saying such things as Up Periscope, Bombs Gone, or Come On Chaps, Let’s Dodge It Through The Minefield. Actually, he was a little weedy fellow, who smelt of perfume.

‘And this is Adam Stringfellow.’

I’d always imagined film directors were noisy chaps with large cigars, but this was a tall, gloomy bird with a beard, resembling those portraits of Thomas Carlyle.

Everyone shook hands very civilly and I felt pretty pleased with myself, particularly with my old weakness for the theatre. I was wondering if Pet perhaps retained the passions of Porterhampton, when she interrupted my thoughts with:

‘I’d particularly like you to meet Mr Hosegood.’

Petunia indicated the fattest little man I’d seen outside the obesity clinic. He had a bald head, a moustache like a squashed beetle, and a waist which, like the Equator, was a purely imaginary line equidistant from the two poles.

‘My future husband,’ ended Petunia. ‘Shall we dance, Gaston?’

I almost staggered on to the floor. It was shock enough finding Petunia already engaged. But the prospect of such a decent sort of girl becoming shackled for life to this metabolic monstrosity struck me as not only tragic but outrageously wasteful.

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

‘Congratulations? What about?’

‘Your engagement.’

‘Oh, yes. Thanks. It’s supposed to be a secret. Studio publicity want to link me with Quinny Finn.’

‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ll send a set of coffee-spoons for the wedding.’

‘Thanks.’

We avoided Lord Nutbeam, chasing some Italian actress with a squeaker.

‘Gaston–’ began Petunia,

‘Yes?’

‘That’s exactly what I wanted to talk to you about yesterday. Jimmy Hosegood, I mean. I don’t want to marry him at all.’

‘You don’t?’ I looked relieved. ‘That’s simple, then. Just tell the chap.’

‘But Sir Theodore and Mum want me to.’

‘Well, tell them, then.’

‘You try telling them.’

I could see her point.

‘Gaston, I need your help. Terribly. Don’t you see, I’ve simply no one else in the world to turn to? How on earth can I get rid of Jimmy?’

I danced round in silence. It seemed a case of Good Old Grimsdyke again always tackling other people’s troubles, helping them to get out of engagements or into St Swithin’s.

‘This chap Hosegood’s in the film business?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s in gowns. He’s got lots of factories in Manchester somewhere. But he puts up the money for the films. You follow?’

‘But I don’t even know the fellow,’ I protested. ‘And you simply can’t go up to a perfect stranger and tell him his fiancée hates the sight of his face.’

‘Come down to our tent on the beach and have a get-together. I’m sure you’ll think of something absolutely brilliant, darling. You always do. Promise?’

But before I could make a reply, Mrs Bancroft was elbowing through the crowd.

‘Petunia – time for bed.’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘Here, I say!’ I exclaimed. ‘Dash it! It’s barely midnight.’

‘The only advice I require from you is on medical matters, young man. Up you go, Petunia. Don’t forget your skin-food on the dressing-table.’

‘No, Mum.’

‘Or to say good night to Sir Theodore.’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘And Adam Stringfellow.’

‘Yes, Mum. Good night, Gaston.’

They left me in the middle of the dance floor, feeling pretty cross. I’d been looking forward to a jolly little party with Britain’s biggest sex symbol, and here she was pushed off to bed like a schoolgirl on holiday. I stared round, wondering what to do with the rest of the evening. As I didn’t seem to know anybody, and Lord Nutbeam was starting to throw Charlotte Russe into the chandeliers, I thought I might as well go up to bed, too.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice behind me.

I turned to find a tall blonde with a long cigarette-holder and one of those charm bracelets which make women sound like passing goods trains whenever they reach for a drink.

‘You’re Dr Grimsdyke, aren’t you?’

‘Quite correct.’

‘Known Melody Madder long?’

‘Years and years,’ I returned pretty shortly. ‘Almost at school together, in fact.’

‘Really? How very interesting. Don’t you think it’s stuffy in here? Shall we go outside for a drink?’ She took my arm. ‘You can tell me the story of your life in the moonlight.’

‘I don’t really think you’d be very interested.’

‘But I’m sure I’ll be very interested indeed, Doctor.’ She made for the terrace. ‘Let’s sit in the orangery, where we’ll not be disturbed.’

I didn’t see Petunia for the next twenty-four hours, Lord Nutbeam being in such a state after the party we had to spend a quiet day motoring in the mountains. In the end, I’d passed a pleasant little evening with the blonde, who’s name turned out to be Dawn something and was one of those sympathetic listeners who make such good hospital almoners and barmaids. After a few glasses of champagne she’d got me telling her all my troubles, including Miles and trying to write a book, though I kept pretty quiet about Petunia and Jimmy Hosegood.

I’d already decided it was as dangerous to go mucking about gaily in people’s love affair’s as to go mucking about gaily in their abdomens, and to let poor old Pet manage this amorous Tweedledum herself. I supposed I could have told him she was married already with a couple of kids in Dr Barnardo’s. I could have said she ground her teeth all night in bed. I could have challenged him to a duel, when at least I’d have stood the best chance of scoring a hit. But these ideas all struck me as leading to unwanted complications.

It was a couple of mornings later when I wandered down to the beach to find Petunia, and discovered Hosegood in the tent alone, on a deck-chair that looked as unsafe as a birdcage under a steam-roller.

‘Nice day,’ he said, as I appeared. ‘Great stuff for toning up the system, a bit of sunshine.’

As he was fully dressed except for his boots and socks, I supposed he was drawing up the beneficial ultra-violet rays through his feet.

‘Mind if I sit down? I was looking for Miss Madder.’

‘Make yourself comfortable, lad. She was called on some photographing lark somewhere.’

He seemed very civil, so I took the next chair.

‘Enjoying all the fun of the Festival?’ I asked.

Hosegood sighed.

‘I’d be happier on the sands at Morecambe, I would, straight. I don’t hold with all this flummery-flannery myself, though there’s plenty as does. Not that I’m one to interfere with anybody’s enjoyment, as long as it’s decent.’

‘I expect you’re a pretty knowledgeable chap about films?’ I went on, trying to work up some sort of conversation.

‘Me? Don’t be daft, lad. I never go to the pictures, unless I can’t help it.’

He sat for some time staring at his bunions. There didn’t seem much else to talk about.

‘What’s your line of country?’ he asked.

‘I’m a doctor.’

‘You are, by gum?’ He almost rolled off the deck-chair. ‘Just the feller I’m looking for.’

‘Delighted to be of assistance,’ I said politely.

‘Tell me, Doctor – how can I get some of this blessed weight off?’

‘Losing weight is perfectly simple,’ I replied.

‘Is it?’ He brightened up a bit. ‘Then what do I do, Doctor?’

‘Eat less.’

‘But I don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive! Not fattening foods, at any rate. Nothing like – well, oysters, for instance.’

‘One dozen oysters.’ I disillusioned him, ‘have only the food value of a lightly-boiled egg.’

‘Go on? But I thought… I can be frank with you, of course, Doctor? Now that I’m getting married – Melody and me, y’know – and none of us are getting any younger, perhaps a few oysters…’

I disillusioned him about that one, too.

‘How about massage?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Isn’t that good for taking off weight?’

‘Excellent,’ I told him. ‘For the masseuse.’

Hosegood looked gloomily at the agreeable combination of blue sea and girls in bikinis frolicking in the sunshine. I recalled a dietetic lecture at St Swithin’s, when a professor resembling an articulated meat-skewer explained how he lived on a diet of crushed soya beans, while Sir Lancelot Spratt, who held that no gentleman ever dined off less than four courses, suffered violent trembling attacks and had to be taken out.

‘They say in the papers it’s dangerous to be fat,’ Hosegood added sombrely.

‘The commonest instruments of suicide,’ I agreed, ‘have rightly been described as a knife and fork.’

‘But I’ve led a good, clean life. There’s some I’ve seen in the club eating like steam shovels, and never putting on an ounce. I’ve only to look twice at the menu myself, and I’m letting out all my trousers again.’

‘One of the nastier jokes of Nature,’ I sympathized. ‘It’s all a matter of the appetite-regulating centre, nuzzling in the cranium between your pituitary gland and our sub-conscious fixations about Mother.

‘Then perhaps you can suggest some sort of diet, Doctor?’

‘As a matter of fact I can.’

Usually I prefer professional incognito in social surroundings, what with people keeping coming up and telling you all about their ruddy prolapsed kidneys, but old Hosegood struck me as a very decent sort, and even a good bridegroom for a girl preparing to risk getting stuck in the door of the church.

‘The St Swithin’s Hospital Diet,’ I explained, producing the card from my wallet. ‘All perfectly simple, as long as you remember to treat potatoes and puddings like deadly nightshade.’

‘No fish and chips?’

‘Nor alcohol.’

‘I’m rather fond of a drop of beer.’

‘So am I. That’s the bitter pill.’

But he didn’t seem in the mood for joking and pocketed the card in silence.

‘Thank you, Doctor. I’ll give it a go at lunch-time. I’m having a bite with Stringfellow in the Café de Paris. I suppose he wants to talk me into more brass for Melody’s picture.’

‘Talking of Miss Madder,’ I went on, ‘I certainly wouldn’t contemplate marriage until you’ve lost a couple of stone.’

He looked alarmed. ‘You really think so?’

‘Without a doubt. Most dangerous.’

This wasn’t strictly correct professionally, though I remembered a fat chap brought into St Swithin’s orthopaedic department on his honeymoon with a dislocated shoulder when the bed broke.

‘Besides,’ I went on, ‘there’s always the risk of–’

I was aware of Lady Nutbeam standing in front of us, looking flustered.

‘Doctor! There you are. I’ve been looking simply everywhere. We have to go back to England at once. This very afternoon.’