Doctor In The Swim (14 page)

By lunchtime everyone in the camp was becoming pretty excited at the prospect of seeing Basil Beauchamp. I was even feeling pretty excited myself. Which was odd, as I’d never been excited at the prospect of seeing Basil, even when we shared digs and he’d just got a part, which held out hope of his repaying my small advances.

I hadn’t noticed Squiffy at lunch, which was odd as well, because I’d never known him miss his fish and chips. Feeling that he had decided to start his new life with a fast, or even with luck that he’d decided to chuck himself off the pier after all, I dismissed the chap from mind and went to join the mob waiting for Basil’s car to appear through the camp gate.

Actually, it was Lucy’s little Aston Martin which appeared. With an escort of back-slappers, she drove slowly through the girls who were trying to kiss the windscreen towards the Dubarry Ballroom, Basil stepped out and gave his famous smile, everyone started screaming, photo bulbs flashed, a couple of girls fainted at the front, and he was whisked towards the stage door at the back.

Lucy was left sitting behind the steering wheel. Nobody seemed to take any notice of her at all.

‘Lucy, old girl,’ I cried, making my way through the mob, which was chanting for Basil to come out and kiss it.

‘Why, Gaston!’ Her face brightened as she wound down the window. ‘Enjoying your holiday?’

‘Holiday? Good lord, it’s no holiday. Hard working stuff, you know, child welfare. Infectious diseases to treat, and so on.’

‘I’m sorry you had to leave Town so suddenly.’

‘So was I. But I had to help out a professional chum. We doctors, you know. Got to stick together. How was Lord’s?’

‘Oh, fine. Basil cancelled an engagement and took me.’

‘And Glyndebourne?’

‘Oh, fine. Basil took me there, too.’

She switched off her engine.

‘Of course,’ I added through the window, ‘it’s not only the opera, it’s the lovely surroundings.’

‘The surroundings? Oh, I didn’t really see much of the surroundings. Since Basil’s new film has been released, you never see much of anything at all when you’re with him. Except a sea of admiring faces, all looking exactly alike except for the expense of their make-up.’

The mob started chanting, ‘Basil!’ over and over again, as though the chap were doing something really useful, like converting tries at Twickenham.

‘It’s tough luck on these posh actors,’ I observed. ‘No private life. Fans everywhere. Recognized at once, whether it’s
L’Ecu de France
or the local. Jolly hard on Basil having to put up with it.’

‘I think Basil puts up with it perfectly splendidly,’ said Lucy briefly. ‘Where’s my brother?’

‘I don’t know. He announced his intention of taking a swim from the pier.’

‘Who? George? But he won’t even take a bath unless the water’s boiling.’

‘The sea air seems to have made a bit of a change in him. Shall we go in and grab some seats for the show? It looks like being a full house.’

We found Squiffy already sitting in the front row beside the little stage, which was all flags and flowers and with a special curtain at the back on a silken rope for Basil to pull.

‘What ho, Lucy,’ he greeted his sister cheerfully. ‘I was just bagging three nice gangway seats. Don’t you think I’ve caught the sun?’

‘Your nose is peeling rather disgustingly, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Let’s make ourselves comfy. You don’t see the finals of a national beauty contest every day of the week, do you?’

‘You seem to have perked up a good bit,’ I remarked, as he settled down between Lucy and myself.

‘You can’t stay long in the dumps at a jolly place like this, Grim.’

‘You mean you got your cash back from Whitherspoon?’

‘Of course not,’ grinned Squiffy. ‘A bet’s a bet, isn’t it ?’

There was a fanfare over the tannoy, and to the accompaniment of general mania Basil took the stage.

‘Mums and dads, boys and girls,’ started our film star. ‘I hope you’re as pleased to see me as I am to see you.’

Cries of ‘Yes!’ ‘You betcher!’ and ‘Ain’t he lovely close to?’

‘We actors,’ continued Basil, who somehow managed to orate while keeping a fixed grin on his face, ‘have many duties to our public. I don’t shirk them, boys and girls. I love them. Because I love my public.’

This brought such a din from the audience I hardly noticed the Camp Commandant tapping my shoulder.

‘Mr Beauchamp is better, then?’ he asked, looking worried.

‘Better?’

‘I got your message, Doctor. To say he’d suddenly been taken ill and to hold up the contest for half an hour.’

‘My message–’

‘I love you all,’ Basil went on. ‘That’s why I’m so delighted to be with you this beautiful afternoon in this simply delicious camp at this charming resort of Whortleton. Now I’m not going to waste any more of my time – any more of your time – before judging the finals of this exciting beauty contest. I only hope, mums and dads and boys and girls, that when I pull this cord to reveal the lovely ladies, you won’t completely forget me while blinded by the breath-taking beauty.’

Basil tugged the silken rope. He certainly revealed a dozen girls in their swimsuits striking provocative postures. But instead of the official beauties they were our maladjusted teenagers.

‘What the devil–’ choked Basil.

The audience was sandbagged into a mystified silence.

‘Fixture cancelled,’ hissed Squiffy, digging me in the ribs. ‘See? I get my money back.’

But I couldn’t cotton on to this before Lucy started to laugh.

‘Lucy!’ snapped Basil over the hyacinths. ‘I demand to know who is making a fool of me.’

I gave a bit of a guffaw myself. Squiffy giggled. And laughter being more infectious than cholera, in a shake the whole hall was roaring its head off.

‘Who is responsible for these monstrosities?’ demanded Basil angrily.

The girls just stood grinning, thinking it all no end of a prank. Basil tugged the silken rope and found it operated only in one direction. I sat wiping my eyes. Though I saw the poor chap’s point. Any actor would rather be smeared with treacle and eaten alive by giant ants than made to look ridiculous in public.

‘Get these girls away from here!’ Basil stamped his foot. ‘Is there no one in the entire beastly place responsible for them?’

‘Yes, young man,’ said Dame Hilda, advancing down the gangway with Anemone. ‘I am.’

I jumped up. ‘Good lord, Dame Hilda! What on earth are you doing down here?’

‘Doing here? But you sent a telegram last night saying all my girls were seriously ill in hospital.’

‘Oh, did I?’

‘’E’s bin cruel to us,’ shouted the girl with acne, pointing in my direction. ‘Proper cruel. ’E ought to be inside, ’e ought.’

‘What exactly is going on, if you please?’ demanded Dame Hilda, mounting the stage.

‘Do you know who I am?’ asked Basil furiously.

‘I do not, young man, nor do I care. I only wish to discover who is responsible for submitting my girls to this ghastly exhibition.’

‘’E locked us up,’ screamed another girl with strabismus.

‘On bleedin’ bread and water,’ added Lady Chatterley.

‘For God’s sake let down the curtain, somebody,’ appealed Basil.

‘Dr Grimsdyke,’ commanded Dame Hilda, unabashed after all that telly at being watched by a couple of hundred startled campers. ‘Come here instantly.’

I looked round wildly for support. There was only Squiffy, and from the look on his face he seemed to have switched off his brain at the mains.

‘Gaston, darling,’ said Lucy loudly. ‘Who on earth is this peculiar woman? Do you actually know her?’

‘How dare you!’ snapped Dame Hilda, going pink. ‘That happens to be the man who is going to marry my daughter.’

Lucy gasped. ‘Gaston! You never told me.’

‘Oh, sorry, Lucy.’ I felt a bit conspicuous, in front of all those people, with the edge of my soul showing. ‘It sort of slipped my memory, I suppose.’

‘Play the National Anthem,’ called Basil despairingly. ‘Sound the fire alarm.’

‘Who might you be, young woman?’ snapped Dame Hilda again.

‘Don’t you “young woman” me,’ Lucy snapped back, jumping to her feet. ‘I happen to have been a particularly close friend of Gaston’s practically all my life.’

‘Gaston!’ Dame Hilda gave the glare which set delinquents back on their stiletto heels. ‘Have you the temerity to conduct another affair behind my back?’

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ announced Basil, mopping himself with a silk handkerchief. ‘That, I’m afraid, concludes our little performance for this afternoon–’

‘You have besmirched the honour of my daughter!’

‘Oh, have I, Dame Hilda?’ Then something happened. I suddenly felt Lucy slip her hand into mine. ‘I have not besmirched your daughter’s ruddy honour,’ I went on, throwing out the chest a bit. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve only kissed her when you’ve been looking on to see fair play.’

‘Have you taken leave of your senses, man? You will come back to Yorkshire with me at once.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘Yes, you will. Don’t you argue with me.’

‘I’ll jolly well argue with anyone I feel like.’

‘I am absolutely sick and tired of this,’ said someone in the background.

With a bit of a shock I saw it was Anemone.

‘Anemone! Have you taken leave of your wits, too?’

‘On the contrary, Mummy, I have just returned to them. I have been goaded absolutely beyond measure by you and Gaston and everyone else who’s been running my life these past two years.’

I stared at my fiancée. I’d never seen her looking like it before. She was all flowing blonde hair, flashing blue eyes, and jutting little chin. The fact was the poor girl had come to the end of her psychological count-down.

‘Anemone my girl! Stop it at once, I say.’

‘It must have been horrifyingly obvious to absolutely everyone between here and Yorkshire,’ Anemone went on, ‘except you, of course, Mummy, that Gaston and I haven’t the slightest desire to marry each other. He thinks I’m simply dreary, and personally I think he’s no end of a drip.’

I didn’t care much for the drip bit, but I suddenly felt myself warming to the conversation.

‘Anemone, you will do as I say at once.’

‘I am not, Mummy, one of your delinquents. I have done as you said all my life, Mummy. If I did as you said now, Mummy, and married a man who interests me about as much as the racing tips in the daily papers, whose conversation entertains me about as much as a Saturday night comedian on the Light Programme, whose moral stature I respect about as much as a second-hand car salesman’s, and whose earning capacity strikes me as rather inferior to a well-trained village idiot – if I did, I should be damned now and for ever.’

‘I intend, my girl, to give you a thorough talking to–’

‘If you wish, Mummy, you may tear me limb from limb. You may submit me to any sort of mental or moral torture you happen to feel inclined. But as for marrying that man gorping at us over the potted plants, I would let you burn me alive first.’

The audience broke into a round of applause.

‘Young lady!’ Basil clutched her. ‘Can you sing?’

Anemone looked rather taken aback, but said, ‘Yes, I’ve been told I have quite a nice voice.’

‘Such fire! Such presence! Such looks! Such dignity, such diction! Ladies and gentlemen–’ Basil drew Anemone towards the footlights. ‘This afternoon is the proudest in my life. After months of searching among amateur dramatic societies and provincial repertories up and down the country, I have at last found her. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the young unknown who will – subject, of course, to audition, contract, and my commission as her personal agent – have the honour of playing opposite myself in the forthcoming production of Shaw’s immortal play
Saint Joan
, shortly opening in London as a musical under the title of
My Fair Lady of Orleans
.’

This brought terrific cheers from the audience, who were beginning to feel the whole afternoon much better than the pierrots. I hardly noticed the Camp Commandant come up again to announce in an even more worried voice, ‘Doctor, the police have come for your friend.’

‘That’s him,’ shouted a youth with a moustache and large glasses, hurrying down the aisle with a couple of Whortleton coppers. ‘That’s the blighter. Not content with trying to sneak my girl, he’s betraying the secrets of his country, that’s what. Traitor! Turncoat! Renegade! Rat!’

‘Here, I say,’ protested Squiffy. ‘You’ve got it wrong. I’m not the traitor. You are, dash it.’

‘Tried to seduce my Noreen, you did.’

Squiffy stared. ‘Look, comrade, I can explain everything–’

‘Comrade! Called me comrade, did you? That proves it, doesn’t it, officer? Me, a pillar of the Young Conservatives.’

‘I think you’d better come along to the station, sir,’ invited the leading rozzer.

Squiffy started arguing with the policemen. Dame Hilda started arguing with Basil. And everyone in the hall suddenly seemed to start arguing with each other.

‘Retarded,’ said Lucy in my ear.

‘Eh?’

‘Retarded. I have all my life been trying to hit on the right word to describe my brother. At last I have it.’ She looked round calmly. ‘Gaston, dear, my car is outside. Shall we go?’

‘Go? But how about Basil?’

‘Basil?’ said Lucy simply. ‘Why, Basil can walk.’

The sun was stretching out the Welsh hills, and the shadows had started putting up the shutters for the day across the tumbling waters of the River Usk. It was approaching that magic moment on a summer’s evening when the flies hatch from the water like smoke and big fish plop with befitting dignity in sun-forsaken pools, when fishermen throw out their chests and raise their rods and thank heaven for allowing its creatures such a beautiful world to dwell in, before trying to remove as many fish as possible from it before supper.

‘Poor Gaston,’ murmured Lucy, dropping into third as her Aston rounded a corner.

‘Mostly my fault, I suppose,’ I admitted. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve been a bit of a mutt.’

‘Yes, you have rather, haven’t you?’ Lucy agreed cheerfully. ‘But you possess such a sweet nature, Gaston.’

‘Oh, come–’

‘You’ll always do anything for anybody. You let people push you around quite unthinkingly, like a revolving door.’

‘Oh, tut–’

‘That cousin of yours, for instance.’ I’d told Lucy the whole story during the cross-country journey. ‘You ought to stand up to him, Gaston. Stamp on his toes and spit in his eye.’

‘Difficult to spit in the eye of a chap who once gave you six of the best, just because he’d found you with a pot of strawberry jam under the bedclothes.’

‘What a pity, Gaston,’ Lucy continued, ‘you had no one at your side to support you against these people.’

‘It was, I suppose.’

‘Someone with strength of character.’

‘True enough.’

‘And with a mind of their own.’

‘Exactly.’

We turned another corner.

‘Aren’t we getting near the place?’ asked Lucy.

I glanced at the river running beside the road.

‘I can’t see the old boy anywhere.’

‘You’re sure he won’t mind? I mean, our just arriving like this?’

‘Since I got him out of clink in New York I don’t think he’d mind if I arrived at midnight with a travelling circus. Besides, he’s got bags of room. He usually runs a business men’s clinic, but that’s on hols at the moment.’

Lucy sighed.

‘After this afternoon, if I don’t have a week lying low and completely away from it all, I shall go as mad as my brother.’

‘I’m a bit worried about old George,’ I confessed. ‘After all, we did rather leave him in the clutches of the law.’

‘If they lock him up, Father will unlock him when he gets home next week. Though I shouldn’t think any self-respecting jail would put up with George as long as that.’

‘Here’s the house,’ I announced, as Sir Lancelot’s front gates came in sight.

I was a bit surprised to find the gates shut, with barbed wire along the top and a large red notice saying KEEP OUT.

‘The old boy may have sold up, I suppose,’ I suggested, feeling pretty mystified as I left the car to investigate.

The gates being unlocked, I swung them open for Lucy to drive inside. I was about to climb in again, when Sir Lancelot himself bobbed up among the shrubbery.

‘Good evening, Grimsdyke,’ he said, very genially. ‘An unexpected pleasure, is it not?’

‘Oh, good evening, sir.’ I stood staring at him.

‘Is this a social call? Or do you intend to stay?’

‘Well, I – er, I was rather thinking of asking you to put us up for a few days, sir. But then I didn’t quite foresee–’

‘You have a companion? Come out, young lady. I shall not eat you. Indeed, I remember you. I never forget a face or an abdomen. I once advised, at considerable expense to your family, that your father should have his stomach removed and you your tonsils. I believe nothing came of either suggestion.’

‘Good evening, Sir Lancelot. No it didn’t, I’m afraid,’ replied Lucy calmly.

‘A waste of money, you see.’ Sir Lancelot sniffed a rose he happened to be carrying. ‘I am at last realizing the laughable unimportance of money and the outward trappings of this world. A beautiful evening, is it not?’

‘Perhaps you may find it a trifle chilly, sir?’ I suggested.

‘Not quite yet. A little later perhaps.’ Sir Lancelot paused to listen to the birds. ‘Charming. Just like your earlier visit, Grimsdyke.’

It was, except that this time Sir Lancelot had no clothes on.

‘A return to Nature, Grimsdyke. There is nothing like it for physical and mental health. I hit upon the idea while seeing my wife off for a Scandinavian holiday earlier this week. I fancy she will feel perfectly at home when she returns. Of course my sunshine clinic is hardly yet under way, but I am sure we shall see many well-known bodies here before the snows of next winter. You two may, of course, stay as long as you like as my guests.’

‘I think, sir, that we’d better be getting on–’

‘As this is a clinic and not a camp, I separate the sexes during the day. We dress for dinner.’

‘The arrangement suits us perfectly, Sir Lancelot,’ said Lucy. ‘We’ve no luggage anyway.’

‘Very good, my dear. Perhaps you would proceed in the other direction and report to the Matron? Grimsdyke, you will come with me. We can still enjoy a pleasant game of basket ball with the others before dusk.’

‘Look here, Lucy – I mean, you’re not really serious – ?’

‘Of course I am, Gaston. I always try anything once. Besides, what have I got to worry about, with my figure?’

‘Come along, Grimsdyke.’

‘Lucy–’

‘Yes, Gaston?’

I swallowed. ‘Lucy, there’s something I’ve simply got to tell you.’

‘Yes, Gaston?’

‘That bee. On your neck. It was one of the sort which don’t sting.’

‘I know, Gaston. I looked it up in the bee book. But I never let it make the slightest difference to us.’

‘Come, Grimsdyke! Make haste.’

I wandered towards the shrubbery, removing my sports jacket.

I turned back. ‘Lucy–’

‘Yes, Gaston?’

‘Lucy, I haven’t got much of a job.’

‘I’ll persuade Daddy to give you one. Running his Medical Foundation, for instance.’

‘But your Father hasn’t got a Medical Foundation.’

‘I’ll persuade him to found one. It’d be very much easier than persuading him to put money into Basil’s beastly musical.’

‘If you please, Grimsdyke,’ commanded Sir Lancelot,

I took off my tie. ‘Coming, sir.’

I reached the cover of the bushes.

‘Lucy,’ I called. ‘Will you marry me?’

‘Of course, darling,’ Lucy called back.

‘The psychology of clothing,’ observed Sir Lancelot, with another sniff at his rose, ‘which has been thoroughly investigated by Krafft-Ebbing, presents several highly interesting psychiatric hypotheses. It is, of course, bound up with the taboo-complex, ingrained in all of us from the moment our maternity nurse puts on our first pair of baby’s nappies. In this manner we first become conditioned to certain areas automatically creating a sense of shame and anxiety…’

I stumbled happily into the sunset, removing my trousers.