Doctor in Love (8 page)

“It usually comes second post,” I explained. I was surprised at this eagerness to get his hands on the weekly medical press.

“Oh, does it? Be a good lad and put it aside for me, will you?”

The
Medical Observer
happened to arrive just as I was starting my rounds. I tore open the wrapper wondering what item was likely to have interested Grimsdyke so keenly. I found it in the correspondence columns.

“To the Editor,

“Dear Sir,

“We feel we should bring to your notice our remarkable success treating osteoarthritis with massive weekly injections of Vitamin B. In a series of two thousand cases seen in our practice we have obtained lasting relief with this treatment in no less than ninety-eight per cent of patients. The effectiveness of this therapy in our hands leads us to bring it to the notice of your readers, and we should be interested if others have achieved comparable results. Yours, etc
.”

The letter was signed:

“
Richard Gordon,

G S F Grimsdyke,

4 Monks Walk,

Hampden Cross, Herts.”

“My dear fellow, don’t work up so much steam about it,” Grimsdyke said, when I waved the
Medical Observer
in his face. “Of course I wrote it.”

“But it’s advertising!” I said in horror.

“And damn good advertising, too.”

“But what the hell! It’s unethical.”

“Oh, come off it, Richard. Surely you don’t believe the old idea that doctors never beat the drum? Why, that’s how half Harley Street keeps going. I admit they don’t put cards in their windows like the Egyptians saying, ‘Dr Bloggings Good For Everything Especially Diarrhoea.’ They write to the medical journals pointing out such things in a helpful way. It soon gets to the ears of the general public.” He sat down in the surgery chair and put his feet on the desk. “Why, the world will be hobbling a path to our door in a week’s time. Just think of it! We’re made, old man.”

“I’m damn well going to write to the Editor and tell him it’s a forgery.”

“Steady on, old lad! No need to get excited.”

“I’ve never come across such a piece of flagrant dishonesty”

“Dishonesty? That’s not dishonesty, that’s good business.”

“In your mind they seem to be one and the same thing.”

He rose to his feet. “Are you making reflections on my morals, old man?”

“Yes, I am. You’re nothing but a dyed-in-the-wool inconsiderate rogue.”

“Oh, I am, am I? Well you’re nothing but a stick-in-the-mud old maid.”

On this note the two doctors separated to attend to their patients.

Grimsdyke and I did not speak for some days after that. We communicated only by notes passed between our consulting-rooms by Miss Wildewinde:

“Dr Grimsdyke presents his compliments to Dr Gordon, and will he refresh Dr Grimsdyke’s memory as to the dose of
Tinct. Belladonnae
?”

“Dr Gordon presents his compliments to Dr Grimsdyke. It’s five to thirty minims, and what have you done with the auroscope?”

“Dr Grimsdyke hasn’t got the bloody auroscope.”

“Dr Gordon also wants the multivite tablets back, if you please.”

“Dr Grimsdyke has finished the bottle.”

“My God, what are you treating in there? A horse?” My worries were increased through the commotion of changing digs. It had seemed reasonable for Grimsdyke to move into his uncle’s flat, and as two new regulars had arrived at the Crypt and Mr Tuppy had started to tell his stories about doctors all over again I had to go.

Feeling that I could not face another boarding-house, I looked down the Personal column of the local newspaper until I saw an advertisement saying: “Lady of Refinement shares her lovely home with a few similar as donating guests. Write Miss Ashworth, ‘The Lodge’, Alderman’s Lane.” I decided that “The Lodge” would at least offer a fresh experience. Although my years at St Swithin’s had brought me across all types of landlady from the frankly hypochondriacal to the frankly sexy, medical students don’t usually get within sniffing distance of Ladies of Refinement.

“The Lodge” turned out to be a neat villa with a faint air of antiseptic discipline about it, like a military convalescent home. The hall had a polished parquet floor on which a footstep would have stood out as startlingly as Man Friday’s, there was a hat-stand starkly bare of hats, a brass gong between a pair of brass bowls, pink-and-green leaded windows, and a fleet of galleons sailing boisterously across the wallpaper. There were also two pokerwork notices saying “Good Doggies Wipe Their Paws” and “Who Left The Lights On? Naughty!”

Miss Ashworth turned out to be a small thin middle-aged woman in glasses, who wore sandals and a dress like those issued to the inmates of mental hospitals.

“You’ll be so comfortable here, I’m sure,” she said, fussing me into a small room overlooking the back garden. “But you
will
be careful of the ornaments, won’t you?” She indicated the pieces of glossy china which covered almost every horizontal surface above floor-level. “They all have such
very
deep sentimental attachments for me.”

I assured her that I would be most careful.

Looking me full in the face she said, “You remind me so much of a dear,
dear
departed friend. Supper is at six-thirty.” She then softly closed the door and disappeared.

The other refined people turned out to be a disgruntled bank manager called Walters, a thin woman in a sweater who spent all her meals intently reading the
Manchester Guardian
, a serious-looking young man with dirty collars and furunculosis, and more old ladies. We all wished each other good morning or good evening, then sat through our meals in an atmosphere of depressed silence, as though waiting for something nasty to happen.

“Sorry to see you’ve ended up here,” said Mr Walters morosely when we were left alone after supper, which had consisted of sloppy things in thick china bowls.

“Oh, it doesn’t seem too bad,” I said, to cheer myself up. Digs are the curse of higher education. I had been living in one sort or another since I was eighteen, and I was now so sick of other people’s houses that even rooms in St James’s Palace wouldn’t have excited me. “Been here long?”

“Three years. And I’d move tomorrow if I could raise the energy. Not that there’d be much point. I’m a bachelor, you know, and I’ve lived in pretty well every lodgings in Hampden Cross by now. I suppose I shall just go on here until I drop dead. Then I’ll be able to join one of Miss Ashworth’s parties.” I looked puzzled, so he continued. “Didn’t you know that Miss A. communicates with her dead guests nightly? It’s sometimes quite difficult in this house to tell who are the living inhabitants and who the defunct ones. No, no, my lad,” he said, shaking his head gloomily. “You take my advice. Don’t unpack.”

It was perhaps these disturbing remarks which led to my absently knocking over a small group of china cats in my bedroom. Hoping that one ornament the less wouldn’t he noticed, 1 carefully collected the fragments and hid them in my suitcase. I was just getting into bed when I carelessly pushed a china seal off the edge of the mantelpiece, and this too I gathered guiltily and hid in my case. Three days later I wondered if my subconscious antagonism to lodgings was being transferred to the ornaments, because I had disposed of a china rooster, a little girl holding out her pinafore, and a dog with big eyes and its lead in its mouth. Miss Ashworth’s maid didn’t seem to notice, but I was aware that my luggage was steadily being filled with pieces of jagged porcelain.

The hostility between Grimsdyke and myself naturally softened as the days passed. I think that we were both looking for a chance to put out our hands and admit we’d been bloody fools. I had in fact decided to seek him out and suggest we sank our quarrel in a pint of bitter, when I arrived back in the surgery one evening and found our narrow hall filled with steel and red plastic furniture.

“What the devil’s all this?” I demanded of the man waiting with the invoice. “It looks as though we were going to start a cocktail bar.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, sir. The other doctor gave instructions to deliver today.”

“Oh, he did, did he? Well, my instructions are to take the lot away again. And what are you doing, may I ask?” I demanded of a solemn-looking man in dungarees screwing something on the broom cupboard door. “PATHOLOGICAL LABORATORY’? What on earth’s the meaning of this?”

Beside him were two other notices, saying ELECTRO-CARDIOGRAPH ROOM and PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. One reading X-RAY DEPARTMENT was already fixed to the door of our downstairs lavatory. “Take them off immediately,” I ordered.

“Can’t do that.”

“Can’t? Why not?”

“I’ve got my orders from the other doctor.”

Before the argument could blossom, we were interrupted by the appearance of Dr Rogers through the open front door. Dr Rogers was a fat man who always seemed to be breathless and perspiring, summer or winter, sitting or running. He was the senior practitioner in Hampden Cross, and though growing into the pomposity almost unavoidable from a lifetime of telling people to eat less and go to bed earlier, he was a friendly professional neighbour. He now seemed in a more heated state than usual.

“Ah, Doctor!” he began, wiping his bald head with his handkerchief. “Just a word…if you’ll permit…awkward time, I’m sure.”

“Well I
was
going to take surgery, Dr Rogers.”

“Matter of some importance.”

I showed him into the empty consulting-room and closed the door.

After looking at me with rising embarrassment for some seconds he announced, “Went to the cinema last night.”

This seemed a thin excuse for interrupting my evening’s work, but I said politely, “A good film I hope?”

“Oh, passable, passable. Can’t remember what it was about now. Never can these days. Generally go to sleep. My daughter tells me about them afterwards.”

There was another silence.

“Well, Dr Rogers,” I said. “I’m certainly glad to hear you had a pleasant evening. Now I’m afraid that I have to get on with the surgery–”

“A medical man’s got to be on call,” he announced. “Any hour of the day or night. It’s only right.”

I agreed.

“Wouldn’t be doing his duty to his patients otherwise.”

I agreed with this too.

“But…well… Professional dignity, and so on. Eh? Quite inadvertent really, I’m sure. I’m not saying anything. Very pleased to see you in Hampden Cross. But obviously gossip starts among the others. Advertising, you know. Grave charge.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow–”

“Trying to make myself clear. In the pictures. ‘Dr Gordon Urgently Wanted’ flashed on the screen.”

“What! But that’s impossible!”

“Afraid so, Doctor. Right in the middle of the big picture. Ah! Remember now – about an American fellow and another American fellow and some sort of girl.”

“But it must have been a mistake,” I said. “I wasn’t even on duty last night.”

“Mistake, Doctor? Couldn’t be. Was on every cinema in the district. Not only that, Doctor, it’s been appearing every night of the week. And, so I am to believe, at every separate performance.”

I managed to show him out without seizing a scalpel from the suture tray and searching for Grimsdyke. I ran into Miss Wildewinde coming downstairs, carrying a suitcase.

“Miss Wildewinde! Where are you going?”

“Well may you ask!” she said furiously.

“You don’t mean – you’re leaving us?”

“That’s natural enough, surely? As I have been discharged.”

“But…but you can’t! Miss Wildewinde, you can’t possibly,” I implored, gripping her arm on the doorstep. “It was Grimsdyke, wasn’t it? Yes, of course it was! He’s gone mad, Miss Wildewinde. Mad as a hatter. Insane. Certifiable. He’s got no right to, whatever–”

“Take your hands off me, Dr Gordon, if you please. I don’t know anything about Dr Grimsdyke’s mental state. All I know is that he gave me a month’s notice this morning. And to think! All the years I’d been here with Dr McBurney.”

“But Miss Wildewinde! I withdraw it, absolutely and immediately–”

“I wouldn’t stay in this practice another second!”

“I’ll double your salary,” I said desperately.

“I wouldn’t even stay in the same district as Dr Grimsdyke, sane or insane, if you paid me a king’s ransom. Goodbye, Dr Gordon. A man will be calling for my trunks.”

“Oh, she’s gone already, has she?” asked Grimsdyke calmly, as soon as I tackled him. “All the better.”

“What the devil do you mean by it?” I demanded, banging the consulting-room desk. “I’ve never heard of such mean and miserable behaviour.”

He looked offended. “Don’t get so shiny, old man. It’s all for our own good. Why do you think people travel by airlines?”

“I can’t see what that’s got to do in the slightest–”

“Because all the airline advertisements show a blonde hotsie welcoming them up their gangway. Simple psychology. And that’s what we want,” he went on lightly. “Get a smasher for a receptionist, and trade’ll double overnight. As a matter of fact, I was rather looking forward to interviewing a few to-morrow afternoon. And how do you like the new furniture? It’s the American idea. In the States a doctor’s surgery really looks like one – all white paint and white trousers and you could do a gastrectomy on the floor. Impresses the patients no end. And of course the patients like to think you’ve got all the latest gadgets. Hence the door labels. Good idea, don’t you think?
Excreta tauri cerebrum vincit
– Bull Baffles Brains.”

“If I’d had the slightest idea you’d be behaving in this criminally irresponsible manner–”

“You don’t appreciate what I’m doing for you, old lad,” he said in a hurt tone. “Why, for the last couple of weeks I’ve had your name on the screen twice nightly in every flick house in town. Not my idea, of course,” he added modestly. “Remember Ben Allen and Bob Sawyer in
Pickwick
? They did it by being called out of church. I just brought the technique up to date.”

I sat down heavily on the consulting-room desk. There didn’t seem to be anything to say to Grimsdyke. I still faintly believed that he had the best intentions; but his ideas on the legal limitations of salesmanship, if applied to merchandise instead of medicine, would long ago have landed him at the Old Bailey.

“Wouldn’t you like a holiday?” I suggested quietly.

“That’s very decent of you, old lad, but I’ve only just come. Anyway, uncle will be back as soon as they’ve whipped his disk out.”

“Couldn’t you just clear off? I’d willingly stand your fare back to Ireland.”

“That’s hardly the way to talk to a friend, if I may say so, old lad.”

“I was not aware that you were one.”

“Oh, I see. That’s your attitude, is it?”

“It certainly is. And all I can say, Grimsdyke, is that the sooner you realize it the better.”

“A fine expression of gratitude!” he said indignantly, “If you’re trying to tell me I’m not wanted–”

“I can assure you that you’re not.”

“I shan’t bother you with the trouble of my company any longer. I might tell you, Gordon, that my uncle shall hear of this as soon as I get to Town. If you want to ruin his practice, it’s not entirely your affair.”

Half an hour later Grimsdyke had followed Miss Wildewinde to London.

He left a difficult life behind him. Apart from repairing his ethical sabotage and soothing down Buckingham Palace Motors and the furniture shop, I had to run the practice single-handed without anyone to sort out the National Health cards, the telephone calls, or the patients from the waiting-room. I also had a disturbing note from my father saying, ‘Got an extraordinary letter from a fellow called Bill Porson I’ve hardly seen for years. Are you going to marry his daughter Cynthia? Is she the same one as last time? Are you behaving like a gentleman?” In “The Lodge” I started hiding a bottle of gin in my wardrobe, and I broke a china pixie, two shepherdesses, and an idiotic-looking horse. I felt that I was going rapidly downhill, psychologically and professionally.