Doctor In The Swim (8 page)

‘My life,’ announced Miles, while shaving the next morning, ‘will never be the same again.’

‘Well, your face is going to be rather different for a bit, to start with,’ I told him.

Miles squinted into the mirror at his features, which were undergoing alterations.

‘It is indeed unfortunate I have incurred a periorbital haematoma of such proportions,’ he admitted. ‘Though should anyone question me on the causation of the injury, I am glad to say I have already invented a highly ingenious excuse.’

‘I was thinking of a bit of steak for dinner,’ I intimated. ‘If you like, you can take yours externally instead.’

I’d hardly heard my cousin let himself in and fall over the camp bed. Those flights across the Atlantic at a hundred miles a martini are all very well, but they leave you pretty exhausted afterwards, particularly when you have to reset yourself from New York time to the British Summer sort. I suppose I should have been a decent chap and stayed in the night-club to pacify the sinister-looking birds in dinner jackets who always advance purposefully from the shadows on such occasions. Or I might have waited up with my cheque book in case he wanted bailing out, particularly as I’d already established the drill for such occasions. But my only feeling on reaching home was the pretty base one of being damn lucky to have first go at the divan.

‘I must say, I don’t quite grasp the clinical history of your injuries,’ I told Miles, starting to boil a couple of eggs. ‘That ruddy great bump on your occiput I know was Connie with the champagne. Did she follow up with the mixed bag of contusions and cuts on the mandibular region?’

‘The minor traumata,’ said Miles calmly, lathering between them, ‘were inflicted by the person who has deposed myself from the throne of Connie’s affections.’

‘Oh yes?’ I up-ended the egg-timer.

My cousin described at length how some dark, smooth chap, returning from the telephone to find his partner flailing the air with champagne bottles, crossed the dance floor and knocked Miles among the
hors d’oeuvres
with no questions asked.

‘Fortunately, I recovered myself.’ He gave a chilly smile through the soap. ‘I was able to disable Connie’s gigolo with a blow in the epigastric region.’

‘But Miles, you chump! How do you know it wasn’t one of Connie’s relatives, or some old friend of the family?’

‘I know Connie’s relatives very well. They all stay with us frequently for considerable periods. And Connie would never make friends I did not approve of.’ Miles gave a little laugh. ‘Now she is free to make acquaintances as undesirable as she may wish, as I have resolved that a divorce is inevitable.’

‘Look here,’ I insisted, loading the toaster, ‘even with a shocking hangover you can’t seriously think of divorcing Connie?’

‘I had decided on it even before the management of that place escorted me in such an undignified manner to the garbage lift. I fancy I have flshbones and potato skins attached to my waistcoat still.’

‘Think what an idiot you’ll look standing up in Court, when the judge says, “What grounds?” and you say, “She socked me on the noggin with my bottle of Bollinger, m’lud.” A fat lot of sympathy you’ll get for that.’

‘You overlook the Other Man.’

‘Dash it! I bet that was absolutely above board, knowing Connie as I do. I mean, knowing all you’ve told me about Connie.’

‘I like my eggs lightly boiled,’ said Miles sitting down.

My cousin was a silent eater, who demolished his breakfast as steadily as he got through everything that confronted him during the rest of the day. It was only when he’d wiped the remains of the marmalade from his little bristly moustache he announced, ‘That was three hundred and fifty calories. If you imagine, Gaston, that I shall petition for a divorce from Connie on the grounds of cruelty, you are mistaken.’

‘I suppose you can get one for desertion. But some lawyer cove once told me you have to keep it up for three solid years,’ I returned, quickly working out that meant eighteen months for me on the camp bed.

‘I propose to obtain a divorce on the grounds of my marital infidelity.’

I looked at my cousin – sitting across my draughtsboard-sized table bashing his empty eggshell with a spoon – in a new light.

‘Miles, you old dog! All these years you’ve been keeping to yourself some piece of private poppet–’

‘How dare you, Gaston! It is simply that – in spite of Connie’s outrageous behaviour – I intend to act like a gentleman. I gather from the newspapers one can arrange such things.’

‘Look here, old lad – don’t you think you should have a word with your solicitor?’

‘I should prefer to keep out of the hands of my solicitor. Also, he happens to be Connie’s brother. No, my dear Gaston. I intend to leave the organization of the whole matter to you.’

‘To me? But dash it, what the devil do I know about divorces?’

‘A great deal, I should imagine, as you move freely in the
demi-monde
where such events are not only commonplace but customary. The entire affair must be completed before the end of my holiday, as I should be far too busy at St Swithin’s to attend to it. And you will observe the greatest discretion. Doctors do not make popular divorcees, and vice versa. In particular, it must not reach the ears of Mr Zeus Odysseus – you know, the wealthy Greek gentleman.’

I nodded. ‘Everyone who can read the papers knows Mr Odysseus.’

‘Dame Hilda was privileged to meet him while attending the International Delinquency Congress in Athens, and left him agreeably disposed towards donating a considerable sum for an institution here to study juvenile delinquency. Of which I, naturally, should be the director. Mr Odysseus is shortly arriving here to approve the plans. It is a scheme dear to Dame Hilda’s heart, and – strictly between ourselves – even the heart of the Prime Minister.’ Miles finished his coffee. ‘You may see me a life peer yet, Gaston, eh? Ha, ha!’

‘Ha, ha,’ I said.

‘I should not like Mr Odysseus to think my private life nurtured any scandal.’

‘I shouldn’t think a divorce one way or another would worry the chap much,’ I told him. ‘I forget whether over the years he’s accumulated more missuses or millions.’

‘I must now step down to Lloyds, as I have already heard a rumour that his yacht had been sighted approaching the cliffs of Dover. You might let me know this evening, Gaston, exactly what I am obliged to do in order to act like a gentleman. Where is my spare pair of dark glasses?’

Miles froze. A terrific knocking sounded on the front door,

‘Not someone from the night-club…’

‘Oh, it’s probably only the postman, with the usual armful of free samples from the drug firms.’

On the mat was Sir Lancelot.

‘Good morning, Grimsdyke. I hope I – Good God, what’s he doing here?’ he asked, staring at Miles.

Miles gave a weak grin. ‘I had dropped in to discuss some professional matters with Gaston.’

‘Not this hour of the day?’

‘Over a working breakfast, sir,’ I rallied round.

‘H’m. Who gave you that ruddy great black eye?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Miles, quickly donning his glasses, ‘I happened to be going upstairs in the dark and ran into a door.’

‘Yes,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘and the housemaid’s baby came from a gooseberry bush. Who caught him one Grimsdyke? A dissatisfied patient or a dissatisfied husband?’

Miles gave another grin, picked up his hat, and murmuring something about an urgent case bolted downstairs.

‘I am totally at a loss to understand what is going on,’ declared Sir Lancelot. ‘However, it is no concern of mine. As I was spending the night at my Harley Street flat I called to discover how the New York conference ended.’

‘I’ve got most of the report here, sir. Didn’t have time to finish it yesterday, I’m afraid. Rather a full day.’

‘My dear feller, there is no urgency. I fear I have shut down my clinic. My wife,’ he explained, stroking his beard, ‘raised certain objections, I cannot understand why. However, as I must maintain some form of activity to keep my house and my fishing rights, I intend to re-open it as a centre for maladjusted teenagers.’

‘Teenagers, sir?’

‘Yes. They’re all the rage these days. When I was young, of course, teenagers hadn’t been invented and juveniles were regarded as being maladjusted as a matter of course. In my view, all adolescents should be given a thoroughly beastly time of it, in order to leave them something to look forward to when they grow up.’

‘Quite, sir. Cup of coffee, sir?’

‘I have breakfasted, thank you. I’m afraid my views have already caused me to cross swords with Dame Hilda Parkhouse, one of my wife’s rather ghastly friends–’

‘Yes, sir. I’m engaged to her daughter, sir,’

‘And so you are. So you are.’

‘What’s the joke, sir?’ I asked, observing him grinning broadly.

‘I’m afraid you wouldn’t see it, Grimsdyke. No, you obviously wouldn’t see it. You noticed my letter on juvenile delinquency in
The Times
this morning?’

‘I’m afraid Miles hogged
The Times
. He left his at home, sir,’ I added quickly.

‘You sleep in two beds, I see, Grimsdyke?’

‘Yes, sir. I get rather restless. I like to slip into a nice cool one half-way through the night.’

‘H’m.’

‘And – er, by the way, sir, perhaps you wouldn’t mention to Dame Hilda that I was with you in New York?’

‘H’m.’

‘I wanted to break it to her myself as a surprise, sir.’

Sir Lancelot gave a sigh. ‘I must be looking old. Nobody even bothers to deceive me properly any more. Very well, Grimsdyke. Post the report to Wales. And I’d recommend cold compresses for that eye.’

Sir Lancelot left, I shovelled up the remains of the eggs, feeling that Miles was an idiot. Not that it would disqualify him from the House of Lords, I supposed, judging by some of the speeches they make there from time to time. Miles had no more intention of divorcing Connie, I told myself as I licked the marmalade spoon, than of resigning from the staff of St Swithin’s. And being such a self-centred bird he regarded both as much the same procedure.

Poor old Miles! I tossed out the toast crumbs for the birds. Such an intellectual force with his surgery and sociology, now just as infantile as any other narked husband. Driving cars and matrimony, I reflected – there’s nothing like either for reducing us all to the same common denominator.

But I hadn’t time to ponder more about my cousin’s domestic problems, because I had to be off to work.

It was good to hear the doorman greet me as I arrived, ‘Nice morning, Dr Grimsdyke. Glad to see you with us again.’

‘Good morning, Harry,’ I returned affably. ‘Everything pottering along all right without me?’

‘I think they managed somehow, Doctor. But I’ve an urgent message waiting.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Will you go straight upstairs, sir? They don’t want to start the big heart operation unless you’re there.’

‘H’m. Do they actually want me to perform it?’

‘I fancy they only want you on the spot to give advice, sir,’

‘Very well, Harry. Anything good for today’s card at Kempton Park?’

‘I wouldn’t like to trust myself today, Doctor.’

I must say, it felt fine to be back, particularly as summer was right on the job again and providing a sparkling sunny June morning, with the mercury already shooting up like the hollyhocks. I marched briskly down the long main corridor, swapping hellos with the porters and the chaps who pushed the trolleys and the pretty secretaries and the girls who brought round the tea, I was even whistling a bit as I reached the staff lift and ran into the Chief’s secretary herself.

‘Why, hello. Dr Grimsdyke. Good trip to New York?’

‘Very instructive, thank you.’

‘I think the Chief would like you to drop in before leaving, Doctor.’

I frowned. ‘Nothing wrong, I hope?’

‘Oh, no, Dr Grimsdyke. Quite the reverse. He was absolutely satisfied with the big brain operation you did before going away.’

‘Glad I came up to scratch. Great inspiration, the Chief, of course,’ I added, lobbing the compliment back.

The secretary turned over her notebook. ‘You’ve got the big grafting operation next week, Dr Grimsdyke. Will you require the artificial kidney?’

I nodded. ‘Definitely the artificial kidney.’

‘I’ll arrange for it. The Chief wants to know if he can leave working it to you?’

‘Entirely,’ I told her.

She smiled. ‘He’ll be delighted to hear that, Doctor.’

I smiled back, pressed the button, and went up.

Pushing open the door at the top, I found myself in the familiar operating theatre, with the big shadowless lamp, the shiny table, the same little nurses scurrying among the dressing bins, and the same registrar and houseman, already scrubbed up and waiting.

‘Hello, Dr Grimsdyke,’ said everyone. ‘Good to see you back.’

‘What ho, all,’ I returned.

‘I’m just about to start one of those hole-in-the-heart operations,’ announced the surgeon through his mask, ‘I wonder if you’d mind giving me a bit of advice?’

‘Yes, certainly, old lad, What do you want to know?’

‘Well – what sort of incision do I make, for a start?’

‘Oh, from here to here,’ I explained, crossing to the patient. ‘Just make a ruddy great slit.’

‘A ruddy great slit will do, eh?’

‘Yes, and the houseman will be ready with clips and so on, to stop the haemorrhage.’

‘Thanks,’ nodded the surgeon. ‘Darling,’ he asked the theatre sister, ‘have you got all the right instruments?’

‘There’s not much point in starting now,’ objected the registrar. ‘It’s almost time for the tea to come up.’

‘I could certainly do with a nice cup of char,’ agreed the surgeon.

‘So could I,’ said the patient, getting off the operating table.

‘There’s a break for a commercial here, anyway,’ added the theatre sister.

‘Rehearse again in fifteen minutes,’ called the producer through the intercom. ‘Thanks for putting us right, Dr Grimsdyke.’

I must say, it was a job which kept you on your toes. One mistake in the operating theatre, and you heard about it for weeks. Gone are the times when a chap could remove an appendix with half a pair of obstetrical forceps and the thing you use for looking at eardrums, The surgeon today has only to choose the wrong strength of catgut and people start writing indignant letters before you can say Whatnot Washes Whiter. Hence my job as technical adviser to
Ambulance Entrance
, which as everyone knows pretty well brings the entire nation to a standstill from seven to half-past on Wednesday evenings. Though how anyone can relax after a heavy day by putting up his feet in the parlour and watching people pulling out socking great tumours among torrents of blood, is totally beyond me.

‘I’ll show them how to give the anaesthetic and put on the bandages after the tea break,’ I explained to the producer. ‘I must just nip down to see someone in the dressing-rooms.’

I made my way across the television studio floor, cluttered with those book-lined studies where chaps hold forth about the political situation, and which are really only bits of painted cardboard. Then I cut through the big studio next door, where they were rehearsing the big
Spectacular
which pretty well brings the entire nation to a standstill from eight-thirty to nine on Saturdays.

‘Why, there’s the Doctor,’ said a voice, as I picked my way among the girls in ostrich feathers drinking tea. ‘Hello, Doctor! How goes it?’

‘Why, hello, Gertrude,’ I returned, ‘How’s the old back?’

‘Not so dusty, thank you, duckie. I do get a twinge from time to time, of course. Anno domini, I suppose. None of us are getting any younger, are we? Though we all try to pretend we are in this business. Did you hear the bad news?’

‘Bad news? I’m afraid I’ve been away.’

‘They’re dropping our act from the show.’

‘Oh, no!’ I sympathized. ‘Why, it’s like dropping the three witches from
Macbeth
. I mean, parts of the same importance–’

‘Joan and Cissy are out phoning our agent this very moment. I expect something will turn up.’

‘Yes, I’m sure it will,’ I consoled her, ‘with a brilliant act like yours. You wait till people write in, the very first Saturday you’re not among those present in the sitting-room.’

‘If it hadn’t been for you, Doctor, we wouldn’t have been in the show as long as this. And that’s a fact.’

‘Oh, come,’ I said. ‘Come, come.’

The great thing about my job on television – apart from having to work only once a week – was all the rather jolly actors and actresses I met. Gertie Piggott was one of the Three Jellybone Sisters, who did contortions, and I’d been called urgently from supervising a big amputation operation next door when she got stuck one night with the back of her head touching her heels. I’d earned the undying gratitude of all three by unsticking her, particularly as it was the end of the performance and they’d have had no end of trouble getting her home in the bus.

I couldn’t sympathize more with the poor dear about getting the sack, because I noticed Evan Crippen making his way towards me among the Television Tappers.

Everyone, of course, knows Evan Crippen. Occasionally he comes across someone who doesn’t, and he takes on a look of mixed horror and pity, like some broadminded missionary coming across the chaps eating their grandmother. Evan Crippen is one of our top telly interviewers, as much a product of the age as deep-frozen fish and the hydrogen bomb. Those famous programmes of his, you may remember, used to end up with admirals shaking at the knees, famous actors in tears, judges white in the face, and Cabinet ministers carried out on stretchers.

‘Hello, there, Doctor,’ Evan drawled. A smile crossed his thin features, with their well-known expression of a conscientious sanitary inspector on holiday in southern Europe. ‘Did you see my programme last week?’

‘I was away in New York, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, rotten luck. I believe you know this fellow Sir Lancelot Spratt?’ he asked, coming straight to business.

I nodded.

‘I see from the papers he’s climbing on the delinquency bandwagon. If I could get him and Dame Hilda Parkhouse together on
This Evening
, it might make quite an interview, don’t you think?’

I felt myself it would be like a couple of mastodons jumping the lights at the crossroads, but I only nodded again.

‘Dame Hilda’s keen, if you can persuade the old boy.’

‘I’ll have a try, if you like,’ I promised half-heartedly.

‘Thanks, Doctor. Must rush off, I’m afraid. Got to look up some dirt on a field-marshal.’

I rushed off, too. I didn’t much care for exposing Sir Lancelot to Evan Crippen and those quiet questions of his, like a good dentist going steadily through a mouthful of teeth. But, I reflected, Dame Hilda was my impending mother-in-law, and better men than Sir Lancelot were nightly airing their views and baring their souls across everybody’s hearthrug. I couldn’t ponder on this more deeply at the time, because I’d reached the door with MR BASIL BEAUCHAMP on it.

A girl’s scream rang through the woodwork, followed by a gasp of, ‘Kill me tomorrow! Let me live tonight.’

I didn’t know quite what to do, but I thought I’d better knock.

‘Come in,’ said Basil,

The actor was reclining on a couch in a pink silk dressing-gown, surrounded by vases of roses and smoking a cigar. In an armchair beside all the sticks of greasepaint and telegrams from his admirers sat Lucy Squiffington.

‘Why, Gaston darling!’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘We meet again!’

‘Ah, dear chappie,’ said Basil, eyeing me like an unfavourable notice in the Sunday papers.

‘Perhaps I intrude?’

‘Not a bit,’ smiled Lucy. ‘Basil was taking me through the death scene in
Othello
. Isn’t it wonderful, he’s teaching me to act? We’d half-finished
Anthony and Cleopatra
in the drawing-room before I went off to New York.’

‘Lucy has become utterly passionate about the theatre. Ever since we first met at the Actors’ Orphanage Ball.’

‘And once Daddy gets home, I’m sure I can persuade him to finance Basil’s wonderful new production of
Saint Joan
.’

‘As a musical,’ added Basil, As far as I remembered Lucy could never persuade him to finance even a second ice cream, but I said nothing.

‘I’m so thrilled, Gaston. Basil says if I stick to my lessons I might even get the big part.’

‘I want someone absolutely sweet and saintlike,’ mentioned Basil. ‘And it’s remarkable how few of our leading ladies are. Just the occasion, I feel, for someone absolutely unknown,’

‘Basil, I–’

‘Let me tell you my ideas for the production, dear chappie.’ Like all actors, Basil rather ignored the cues once talking about himself. ‘I intend to start with myself on the stage – all by myself – and I shall then deliver a speech to myself–’

‘Basil,’ I interrupted firmly. ‘I’m only here for a little advice. But if you like I’ll come back after class.’

‘Advice?’ Basil looked as though I had let down the curtain on him. ‘Some production problem in that grisly little show of yours?’

‘No.’ I glanced at Lucy. ‘It’s rather on the delicate side. Though, as a matter of fact,’ I added, remembering New York, ‘Lucy might be able to help. It’s about a divorce.’

‘Gaston! On the plane you never told me you were married.’

‘It’s for a friend.’

Basil blew a jet of cigar smoke. ‘Never, never, dear chappie, let yourself become involved in the matrimonial affairs of others. It’s much less dangerous to stop a decent cosh fight any day.’

‘I rather promised. And as you’ve recently had a bit of rehearsing in that sort of show–’

‘I think my dear wife just goes down to Las Vegas, where you get them from a slot machine,’ he said doubtfully.

‘I mean a good old-fashioned English divorce?’

Basil absently sniffed a rose. ‘I believe, dear chappie, one makes a start with a firm of private detectives.’

‘My friend rather wishes to avoid detectives. He wants a sort of do-it-yourself divorce.’

‘I don’t blame him,’ Lucy agreed, lighting a cigarette. ‘Private detectives are utterly ghastly.’

‘Unfrocked solicitors’ clerks with no sense of humour who suck peppermints,’ Basil agreed. ‘My dear wife set them on me once.’

‘It’s all perfectly simple,’ said Lucy firmly. ‘You take a girl to the seaside and you’re discovered in a compromising position by the waiter, when he brings up the breakfast next morning.’

‘You mean that’s enough to rev up the machinery of the law?’

‘But of course, dear. Lots of my friends strangled with the bonds of matrimony have tried it. You can’t imagine the new hats I’ve had to buy going to Court. It’s the combination of seaside, waiters, and breakfast,’ Lucy insisted. ‘Then the poor dear judge knows where he is. He’s probably had a perfectly horrid morning judging whether to hand out decrees, with everyone telling the most frightful fibs. But once he hears the old familiar story he perks up as though he was actually sniffing the ozone. Why, I’ve heard it dozens of times – “I brought up the coffee and the kippers,” says the waiter, “and there they were, in a compromising position.” “Decree nisi,” says the judge. It’s as simple as renewing your driving licence.’

‘Personally, I should hate to do anything compromising so early in the morning,’ murmured Basil, ‘particularly before I’d had my kippers.’

‘That’s all very well,’ I pointed out, ‘but it takes two to make a compromise.’

‘Naturally, no chappie likes inflicting all those waiters and kippers on his future wife,’ said Basil briefly, now eyeing me like late-comers in the stalls halfway through the first act.

‘But a divorce without a co-respondent,’ Lucy pointed out, ‘is like a fashionable wedding without a bride.’

‘I mean, my friend hasn’t got a co-respondent. He doesn’t seem to know any women apart from his wife, and I don’t suppose she would do at all. That’s why, old lad,’ I added towards the film star, ‘I wondered if you happened to know some actress who chanced to be out of work at the moment and might take the part?’

Basil raised his eyebrows.

‘All perfectly respectable, of course,’ I went on hastily. ‘My friend would do the compromising with the utmost decorum.’

‘I think,’ said Basil, getting up, ‘this conversation had better be continued outside.’

‘Yes, I think so, too,’ smiled Lucy. ‘Bye-bye, Gaston. Do come round for a drink soon, won’t you? I’d simply love to hear the next act of that divorce.’

‘Thanks Lucy,’ I smiled back. ‘I’ve got to keep a professional eye on old George, haven’t I?’