Doctor in Clover (2 page)

Until then Porterhampton was just another entry in my football pools, but a fortnight later I found myself driving past the Town Hall on a morning as crisp as an icicle, and pretty solemn I felt about it, too.

While lunching with Miles, I’d been putting an optimistic face on a pretty desperate situation, which is another of the useful things you learn from studying medicine. I didn’t really like the prospect of being a respectable provincial doctor. In fact I didn’t really like the prospect of being a doctor at all.

I was a
médecin malgré lui
. I’d taken up the profession because nobody in the family ever had the originality to think of anything else, and anyway all my uncles and cousins seemed to have a pleasant time of it, with large cars and everyone listening to their opinions at cocktail parties. But with medicine and marriage, the earlier you go in for either the riskier the project becomes. Quite a different chap emerges at the end of the course from the apple-cheeked lad with big ideas who went in. It’s great fun at first, of course, being casualty houseman in a clean white coat with all the nurses saying ‘Good morning, doctor,’ even if the job does consist mostly of inspecting unpleasant things brought along in little white enamel bowls. It’s a bit of a shock finding afterwards that you’ve got to make a living at it, though I suspect a good many housemen feel the same and keep pretty quiet. The public doesn’t much care for entrusting their lives to doctors who don’t love their profession, even though they entrust them every day to bus drivers and no one expects a bus driver to love his bus.

But as I couldn’t go exploring like Dr Livingstone, become a Prime Minister of France like Dr Clemenceau, or play cricket like Dr W G Grace, I had to find a steady job like everyone else. And what of these Wattles? I wondered, as I drove past the Porterhampton fish market. They might at that moment be hopping about like a small boy waiting for the postman on his birthday. Or they might be plotting to kick me about like a medical tweeny. Fortunately for my low psychological state, I was soon reassured over my conditions of work.

I found the Wattles’ house somewhere on the far outskirts, in a road of roomy Victorian villas apparently reserved for prosperous turbine-makers. As I drew up in the 1930 Bentley, the motherly Mrs Wattle herself appeared at the gate.

‘Dear Dr Grimsdyke!’ she greeted me. ‘We’re so delighted you’ve decided to bury yourself in our rather sleepy little town.’

‘Charming place, I’m sure.’

‘Mr Palethorpe spoke so highly of you, you know. I’m awfully glad he persuaded you to come. But you must be tired after your long drive. I’ll show you to your room, and there’s a nice lunch ready as soon as my husband gets in from his rounds.’

I slipped off my overcoat.

‘Dear, dear! No buttons on your shirt, Doctor! You must let me have it tonight. And any socks and things that need darning, just leave them on the kitchen table.’

My room ran a bit to chintz and water-colours of St Ives, but seemed very cosy. There was a bookcase full of detective stories, a desk, and a large double bed already airing with a hot-water bottle like an old-fashioned ginger-beer jar. Going downstairs after tidying up, I found roast beef and Yorkshire on the table, with apple pie and Stilton waiting on the sideboard.

‘I’m sure you’d care for a bottle of beer today,’ cooed Mrs Wattle. ‘Mr Palethorpe said you took the occasional glass.’

I’d met Dr Wattle himself only for a brief interview in London, and he was a little pink, perspiring chap with a bald head, resembling a freshly-boiled egg.

‘Delighted to see you, my dear doctor.’ He shook hands warmly. ‘We may call you Gaston, may we? I hope you’ll be very happy with us. Is that your car outside? Very dashing of you to drive an old open tourer. But do take my wife’s Morris when it’s raining, won’t you? Would you care for an advance of salary? We’ll sort out your duties later. If you ever want time off for anything, don’t hesitate to ask.’

‘Your chair’s over here, Gaston. Sure you’re not in a draught?’

‘I hope you’ll find my wife’s cooking to your taste.’

‘The roast beef’s not overdone?’

‘Anything special you fancy to eat, do please let us know.’

‘Horseradish?’ asked Mrs Wattle.

Later we had crumpets for tea and finnan haddock for supper, and in the evening we all three sat round the fire making light conversation.

‘Mr Palethorpe revealed you had quite a roguish wit,’ said Mrs Wattle, playfully shaking her finger.

So I told them the story about the bishop and the parrot, though of course altering the anatomical details a bit.

‘How pleasant to hear a young voice in the house,’ murmured her husband.

‘We’ve
so
missed company in the evenings!’

‘Ever since the dog died,’ agreed Dr Wattle.

After years of living on tins of baked beans and packets of potato crisps, and mending my own socks by pulling a purse string suture round the hiatus, it did my physiology no end of good to have regular meals and all the buttons on my shirts. There wasn’t even much work to do, old Wattle himself handling all the posher patients and leaving me with a succession of kids in the usual epidemic of mumps. After surgery and supper we all three gathered for the evening in the sitting-room. Sometimes we watched the telly. Sometimes we played three-handed whist. Sometimes they asked me to tell the story of the bishop and the parrot all over again. I was glad to see the Wattles had quite a sense of humour.

But even the Prodigal Son, once they’d used up all the fatted calf, must have hankered to waste just a bit more of his substance on riotous living. As the local amenities ran largely to municipal parks and museums, and so on, and as I couldn’t go to any of the pubs because I was a respectable GP, or to any of the pictures because I’d seen them all months ago in the West End, I longed for one final glimpse of the lively lights of London.

‘Dr Wattle,’ I announced one morning, when I’d been enjoying three square meals a day for several weeks. ‘I wonder whether you’d mind if I popped down to Town this Saturday? I’ve just remembered I’ve got some laundry to collect.’

‘My dear boy! Go whenever and wherever you wish.’

‘That’s jolly civil of you. Awfully annoying, and all that, but I’d better make the trip.’

The following Saturday evening found me once again in the genial glow of Piccadilly Circus, breathing the carcinogenic hydrocarbons and watching the neon sunrise as the lights came on.

I don’t think there’s any sensation to compare with arriving in London after a spell of exile, even if it’s only your summer holidays. I felt I’d never seen anything so beautiful as the submarine glow of the misty street-lamps, heard anything as cheerful as the nightly torrent ebbing towards the suburbs, nor smelt any perfume so sweet as the reek of a London Transport omnibus. But I couldn’t waste time admiring the scenery, and went to a telephone box, looked through my little black book, then rang up Petunia Bancroft.

Petunia was a little brunette and an actress. I’ve had a weakness for the stage ever since I was a medical student and nearly eloped with a young woman who was sawn in two twice nightly by a Palladium conjurer, until I discovered that she was in fact a pair of young women, and I’d picked the half with the shocking varicose veins. Petunia had been a chum of mine for many years, though unfortunately her ideas of entertainment rather exceeded her theatrical standing – usually she just walked on the stage and announced dinner was ready, but after the show she knocked back champagne like the great leading ladies when the stuff was five bob a bottle. Also, she had a rather hysterical personality, and was likely to throw the dessert about and bite the head waiter. But after a month in Porterhampton, Petunia seemed just what I needed.

‘Darling, I’d love to meet you’, she agreed. ‘Don’t come to the show, it’s lousy and closing any minute, anyway. See you at the stage door after ten.’

The London streets were as deserted as Porterhampton on a Sunday afternoon by the time I took Petunia home to Balham – like most glamorous hotsies these days, she lived quietly with Mum and did the washing-up before catching the bus to the theatre. We’d had a pleasant little evening, what with supper and a night-club, and even if it did demolish Dr Wattle’s advance of salary I was feeling like a sailor after ninety days at sea.

‘Lovely time, darling,’ said Petunia at the garden gate. ‘When are you coming to live in London again?’

‘One day, perhaps. When I retire.’

‘When you retire! But darling, I won’t ever recognize you then.’

‘I’ll have a chiming clock under my arm,’ I told her. ‘Night-night.’

The next morning I made my way back to the provinces for good, having wrapped all the Sunday newspapers in a large brown-paper parcel which I labelled THE EVERCLEEN LAUNDRY WASHES WHITER.

This little jaunt of mine was a mistake.

One taste of Metropolitan delights had ruined my appetite for Porterhampton for good. I’d tried really hard to fool myself I could merge with the local landscape. Now I realized I couldn’t be comfortable anywhere in the world outside Harrods’ free delivery area. I faced endless evenings watching the television and talking to the Wattles, and that night the prospect of both made me feel rather sickly over supper. But I had to stay in the place until the St Swithin’s committee had shaken my cousin by the hand and told him where to hang his umbrella, and anyway the dear old couple were so terribly decent I’d never have forgiven myself for hurting their feelings over it.

‘Dr Wattle,’ I began, when we were alone after the meal. ‘I don’t know if I’ve told you before, but I’ve decided to work for a higher medical degree. I hope you’ll not think me rude if I go to my room in the evenings and open the books?’

He laid a hand on my arm.

‘I am delighted, dear boy. Delighted that – unlike so many young men these days, inside and out of our profession – you should take a serious view of your work.’

There was a catch in his voice.

‘We are all mortal, Gaston,’ he went on. ‘In another few years I may no longer be here–’

‘Oh, come, come! The prime of life–’

‘And I should like you to be well qualified when you eventually take over this practice. My wife and I have become very attached to you these few short weeks. As you know, we have no children of our own. As a young man I suffered a severe attack of mumps–’

‘Jolly hard luck,’ I sympathized.

The mump virus, of course, can wreck your endocrine glands if you’re unlucky enough to get the full-blown complications.

‘If all goes well,’ he ended, ‘I hope you will inherit more from me than merely my work. I will detain you no longer from your studies.

The rest of the week I sat in my room reading detective stories, and pretty beastly I felt about it, too.

Then one morning Mrs Wattle stopped me outside the surgery door.

‘Gaston, my husband and I had a little chat about you last night.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘We fear that you must find it rather dull in Porterhampton.’

‘Not at all,’ I replied, wondering if some revelling turbine-maker had spotted me in that night-club. ‘There’s always something happening,’ I told her. ‘The Assizes last week, the anti-litter campaign this.’

‘I mean socially. Why, you never met any young people at all.’

It hadn’t occurred to me that in Porterhampton there were any.

‘So next Saturday evening I’ve arranged a little party for you. I do hope you can spare the time from your studies?’

Naturally, I said I should be delighted, though spending the rest of the week steeling myself for the sort of celebration to make a curate’s birthday look like a night out in Tangier. When Saturday came I put on my best suit and waited for the guests among the claret cup and sandwiches, determined to make the evening a success for the dear old couple’s sake. I would be heartily chummy all round, and ask the local lads intelligent questions about how you made turbines.

‘Here’s the first arrival,’ announced Mrs Wattle. ‘Miss Carmichael.’

She introduced a short girl in a pink dress.

‘And here come Miss Symes and Miss Patcham.’

I shook hands politely.

‘With Miss Hodder and Miss Atkinson walking up the drive. That’s everyone,’ she explained. ‘Gaston, do tell us your terribly amusing story about the clergyman and the parrot.’

It struck me as an odd gathering. But old Wattle handed out the drinks while I sat on the sofa and entertained the girls, and after a bit I quite warmed to it. I told them the other one about the old lady and the bus driver, and a few more that I hadn’t picked up from the boys at St Swithin’s, and they all laughed very prettily and asked me what it was like being a doctor. I was quite sorry when eventually midnight struck, and everyone seemed to think it time to close down.

‘I’m sure Gaston would drop you at your homes in his remarkable car,’ suggested Mrs Wattle.

With a good deal of giggling, I discarded girls at various respectable front doors in the district, until I was finally left with only one in the seat beside me.

‘I’m afraid I live right on the other side of the town, Gaston.’

‘The farther it is, the more I’m delighted,’ I replied politely.

She was the Miss Atkinson, a little blonde who’d given the parrot story an encore.

‘Quite an enchanting evening,’ I murmured.

‘But you were so terribly amusing! I always thought medicos such stodgy old things, even the young ones.’

I gave a little laugh.

‘We doctors are only human, you know.’

‘I’m so glad,’ she said.

After leaving her at another respectable door, I hurried home for some sleep. Nothing takes it out of you quite so much as telling a lot of funny stories.

‘I know you’ll be pleased,’ announced Mrs Wattle a few mornings later. ‘I’ve asked little Avril Atkinson to supper.’

‘Very pleased indeed,’ I told her courteously.

The fact is, I’d have been pleased whoever they’d asked, even my cousin. By then I’d discovered the dear old Wattles were incapable of conversation about anything except happenings in Porterhampton, which if you hadn’t lived in the place for thirty years was like trying to enjoy a play after arriving in the second interval. It did me no end of good to hear another voice at table, even if they did make me tell the story of the ruddy parrot from the beginning.

After the meal I announced that my studies could slide for another evening, and politely joined the company in the sitting-room. Then Dr Wattle suddenly remembered he had a patient to see, and Ma Wattle had the washing-up to do, leaving Avril and me on the sofa alone.

‘How about the television?’ I suggested, Avril’s conversation being almost as strait-jacketed as the Wattles’.

‘Oh, let’s. It’s my favourite programme tonight.’

I switched on the set, turned down the lights, and when we’d watched a few parlour games and chaps pretending to get fierce with each other over the political situation, I very civilly drove her home.

‘Do you like classical music, Gaston?’ asked Mrs Wattle a few mornings later.

‘I’m not adverse to a basinful of Beethoven from time to time,’ I admitted.

‘I’m so pleased. I’ve got a ticket for our little amateur orchestra next Friday in the Town Hall. Would you care to go?’

I was glad of an excuse to go out in the evening, now being rather bored with all those stories about chaps killing other chaps by highly complicated means. As I sat down among the potted municipal palms, I found Avril in the next seat.

‘Quite a coincidence,’ I remarked.

She smiled.

‘You have such a sense of humour, Gaston. Wasn’t it nice of Mrs Wattle to give us the tickets?’

‘Oh, yes, quite.’

The dear old thing seemed to be getting forgetful, which I put down to the normal hormonal changes in a woman of her age.

The next few days were brightened by excitement over the great event in professional circles at Porterhampton, the annual medical dinner. As the Wattles seemed to find this a combination of the Chelsea Arts Ball and the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, to please the dear old couple I agreed to put on a dinner jacket and accompany them, though personally nothing depresses me quite so much as a lot of other doctors. I had just eased into my chair in the ballroom of the Commercial Hotel, when I realized that I was once more sitting next to Avril Atkinson.

‘So nice of Dr Wattle to have invited me,’ she began. ‘Are you going to make a speech with your terribly funny stories?’

‘Not for me, I’m afraid. Though the fat chap with the microphone has a wad of papers in his pocket the size of an auctioneer’s catalogue. Remarkable, isn’t it, how men find so much to say after dinner when their wives haven’t had a word out of them for years over breakfast?’

She giggled. ‘Gaston, you’re terribly witty.’

‘Just wait till you’ve heard the fat chap.’

The guest on my other side having nothing to talk about except the progress of his patients and his putting, I passed the meal chatting lightly to Avril and when the floods of oratory had subsided took her home in my car.

‘You simply must come in and meet daddy,’ she invited.

Her father was a decent old boy, who gave me a whisky and soda and seemed intelligently interested in the National Health Service – rates of pay, prospects of promotion for young practitioners, and so on. I put him right on a few points, and went home with the pleasant feeling that I’d done my social duty by the dear old Wattles pretty thoroughly.

I suppose I’m a trusting sort of soul. Strangers at race meetings sell me useless tips at a quid a go. Motorists miss me by inches on zebra crossings. I cash dud cheques for fellows I meet in pubs. Small boys have me in knots on April the first. But it was probably the soporific effect of life in Porterhampton which delayed tumbling to my plight until the morning I was called to treat the girl with the pink dress from my party for mumps.

‘When’s it to be announced?’ asked this Miss Carmichael, as I removed the thermometer from her mouth.

‘What announced?’

‘Don’t play the innocent, Doctor. Everyone in Porterhampton has known about it for weeks. Your engagement to Avril Atkinson, of course.’

‘Avril Atkinson!’

I picked up the bits of shattered thermometer from the floor.

‘But dash it, that’s ridiculous! I hardly know the girl.’

‘Now, now! You’re always being seen together, at concerts and dinners and things. As for the time she went to the Wattles’ for supper – phew! She told me all about it. Sitting alone all evening on the sofa in the dark.’

I drove straight home and confronted Ma Wattle.

‘So Dame Rumour hath been at work,’ she said coyly. ‘I am delighted, Gaston, for your sake. You see, my husband and I felt we were selfish monopolizing your cheery company. Now you’re settling down here, it’s only right and proper you should take unto yourself a wife. Unlike us, your later years will be comforted with sons and daughters, whom we shall look upon almost as our own grandchildren. I’m afraid I’ve rather been playing the matchmaker. But I’m so glad you chose Avril. Such a jolly girl! The pair of you are ideally suited.’

I had nothing to say. I went to my room. I paced up and down and glared at St Ives. I sat on the double bed and bit my nails. I wished I’d taken the advice of the Dean at St Swithin’s and made my career in the Prison Medical Service.

I certainly didn’t want to pass the rest of my life in Porterhampton, even if old Wattle bequeathed me the Town Hall as well. I certainly didn’t want to marry Avril Atkinson, who’d probably make me tell the story of the parrot every morning over breakfast. Now I couldn’t see how to avoid either. I’ve often read in psychology books about the acute anxiety state, but I never really understood it until then. Then I had one of those masterly ideas that sometimes come before the bell rings at the end of examinations.

‘Mrs Wattle – Dr Wattle.’ I appeared downstairs to find both of them in the sitting-room. ‘I have something very painful to confess.’

They looked alarmed.

‘I am already married.’

I felt this was the simplest way out. It was beyond me to tell the dear old couple that their own idea of my spouse was as ridiculous as picking the Matron of St Swithin’s. With a bit of luck they’d kick me out on the spot, and possibly use up Avril on my replacement.

‘My wife works in London. She is a nurse. A night nurse. I couldn’t reveal her before, because…because the position which I have the honour to hold was advertised for a single man. I needed the work.’

I sounded so pathetic, I felt quite sorry for myself.

‘If you will give me a few minutes to pack,’ I ended solemnly, ‘I shall remove my unworthy self from your lives for ever.’

‘How unreasonable I’ve been!’ cried Mrs Wattle, and burst into tears.

‘We’ve deliberately set asunder two who have been joined together,’ added Dr Wattle, beating his bald head.

‘You must ask your wife to come at once, Gaston.’

‘I’ll double your salary.’

‘We’ll give you the run of the house till you find a place of your own.’

‘All this might be rather inconvenient,’ I interjected quickly. ‘My wife’s working every night. Important private case.’

‘Then bring her for the day,’ insisted Mrs Wattle. ‘How about lunch on Saturday?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Dr Wattle, ‘We shall be terribly upset if you don’t.’

I felt the script had somehow got out of hand. Perhaps it might have been easier simply to have married Avril.