Doctor On Toast

Doctor on Toast

First published in 1961

© Richard Gordon; House of Stratus 1961-2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Richard Gordon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

Richard Gordon
, real name Dr. Gordon Stanley Ostlere, was born in England on 15 September 1921. He is best-known for his hilarious ‘Doctor’ books. Himself a qualified doctor, he worked as an anaesthetist at the famous St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (where he was also a medical student) and later as a ship’s surgeon, before leaving medical practice in 1952 to take up writing full time. Many of his books are based on his own true experiences in the medical profession and are all told with the wry wit and candid humour that have become his hallmark.

In all, there are eighteen titles in the
Doctor
Series, with further comic writings in another seven volumes, including
‘Great Medical Disasters’
and
‘Great Medical Mysteries’
, plus more serious works concerning the lives of medical practitioners.

He has also published several technical books under his own name, mainly concerned with anaesthetics for both students and patients. Additionally, he has written on gardening, fishing and cricket and was also a regular contributor to
Punch
magazine. His
‘Private Lives’
series, taking in
Dr. Crippen, Jack the Ripper
and
Florence Nightingale
, has been widely acclaimed.

The enormous success of
Doctor in the House
, first published in the 1950’s, startled its author. It was written whilst he was a surgeon aboard a cargo ship, prior to a spell as an academic anaesthetist at Oxford. His only previous literary experience had been confined to work as an assistant editor of the
British Medical Journal
. There was, perhaps, a foretaste of things to come whilst working on the
Journal
as the then editor, finding Gordon somewhat jokey, put him in charge of the obituaries!

The film of
Doctor in the House
uniquely recovered its production costs whilst still showing at the cinema in London’s West End where it had been premiered. This endeared him to the powerful Rank Organisation who made eight films altogether of his works, which were followed by a then record-breaking TV series, and further stage productions.

Richard Gordon’s books have been translated into twenty languages.

He married a doctor and they had four children, two of whom became house surgeons. He now lives in London.

‘Dr Grimsdyke,’ announced our pretty little receptionist, ‘there’s a man behaving very strangely in the waiting-room.’

‘Oh, really?’ I glanced from the racing page of the morning paper. ‘What’s he doing? Laughing over the back numbers of
Punch
?’

‘No, he’s all alone, standing in front of the mirror making faces.’

‘Good Lord!’ I looked alarmed. ‘Not likely to become violent, I hope?’

It was a beastly foggy December afternoon, when you could imagine Jack the Ripper still lurking in the London shadows or Holmes and Watson rattling by in a hansom to Baker Street. There were only ten of those shopping days left until Christmas, the stores were sprinkled with Santas and the pubs festooned with paper chains and the good wishes of the management, and I’d just moved into Park Lane as locum tenens to Dr Erasmus Potter-Phipps.

‘Dear boy, I’m absolutely desperate for a holiday,’ he’d explained when we met a few days before in the locker room at Sunningdale. ‘The practice is really becoming too much for me.’

He idly flicked a driver.

‘You know how one’s female patients do so tend to fall in love with one? It’s perfectly harmless, of course. One needn’t fall in love with
them
, and it does their nerves the power of good. But this young actress I’ve been treating for mental prostration – you may have noticed in the papers? – has a husband with a positive persecution mania. It’s all terribly tiresome, particularly as I imagined the fellow was climbing the Himalayas. So inconsiderate of him to arrive home without cabling first. The shock quite put the poor dear’s case back several weeks.’

He inspected the head of his putter.

‘Loath as I am to suspend treatment, I thought I might take a little holiday abroad. A few weeks’ ski-ing does one the world of good at this time of the year. But the trouble is finding a suitable locum. You realise, dear boy, that I have a rather special sort of practice?’

I nodded. Razzy Potter-Phipps had in his time diagnosed half
Debrett
.

‘All the young men are perfectly impossible these days. The hospitals don’t seem to teach them anything but medicine. Why, the last locum I had performed a most embarrassing examination on a duchess. But if you happened yourself to be footloose and fancy free professionally…? ’

‘Rely on me, old lad,’ I’d agreed at once.

I’d a soft spot for Razzy, who’d often obliged with useful jobs, loans or racing tips in the past. Besides, Christmas was coming, and finding the Grimsdyke coffers unseasonably low.

‘Dear boy, I’m eternally grateful. Do move into my flat and draw anything you want from the petty cash. We can settle the details over a decent dinner when I get back in the New Year. So undignified, don’t you think, for gentlemen to discuss money in public?’

But I’d hardly been in Potter-Phipps’ Mayfair apartments long enough to discover which instrument cupboard he kept the sherry in when this maniac appeared. I glanced round the consulting room, which resembled a cross between the Messel suite at the Dorchester and Constance Spry’s showrooms, and felt it would never do having people running berserk in it.

‘What’s the patient look like?’ I asked the little receptionist.

‘Oh, perfectly respectable otherwise, Doctor. He’s about your age, very well dressed.’ She smiled. ‘Quite tall, dark and handsome, in fact.’

‘And making faces in mirrors…?’

A slumbering memory gently creaked the bed of my subconscious.

‘He doesn’t happen to have side-whiskers, suede boots, a red carnation and an Old Harrovian tie?’ I added quickly.

‘How very odd, Doctor! But certainly the side-whiskers and carnation–’

I gave a laugh. ‘Kindly show Mr Basil Beauchamp inside.’

I hadn’t seen Basil Beauchamp – pronounced Beecham – since the days I shared the same digs as a medical student, when I remembered he was always broke and the landlady had to send her daughter to her auntie’s. But anyone who’d ever had the misfortune to live across the same landing could easily diagnose the mirror antics as his normal behaviour – the poor fellow’s trouble was being an actor, and like all actors he somehow could never switch himself off. Very difficult it had been in the evenings, too, trying to learn up all that stuff for the examinations with Othello carrying on in the bedroom next door. And even when I lent him a bob for his gas meter to get a little peace, the next week he was generally Henry V, who, of course, is even noisier.

‘Great heavens!’ Basil himself appeared in the consulting room doorway, looking as usual like a combined effort by Savile Row and the Burlington Arcade. ‘It’s Gaston Grimsdyke!’

‘What ho, old lad,’ I greeted him. ‘It seems a long time since we used to pinch each other’s bathwater.’

He stood staring at me, like Macbeth when Banquo came to dinner.

‘But – but what on earth are
you
doing here? Where’s Dr Potter-Phipps?’

‘Enjoying a well earned Christmas holiday at St Moritz,’ I explained. ‘I’m obliging as his locum tenens.’

‘What? You mean you actually became a qualified doctor in the end?’ He gave a loud laugh. ‘Well, well! How extraordinary.’

I felt slightly nettled at this remark, but remembering that actors have a peculiar sense of humour waved him to a chair affably enough.

‘How about you, Basil?’ I offered Potter-Phipps’ silver cigarette-box. ‘Abandoned those big dreams of fame and fortune on the boards?’

Come to think of it, I hadn’t even heard of the chap since he had a frightful row with the gas-man over the shillings and suddenly left the digs, when all the time I’d been looking forward to seeing his name up in lights and getting free tickets for the London theatres.

‘Of course I haven’t given up the stage.’ It was Basil’s turn to be annoyed. ‘Why, I’m turning down unsuitable parts every week.’

‘Oh, sorry–’

‘Not to mention opening in a new show immediately after Christmas.’

‘Then rely on me to come along and clap you to the echo,’ I told him, still thinking of those free seats.

‘It – er, isn’t in the West End, of course.’ Basil shifted slightly. ‘You’ve heard of Blackport-under-Tyne? Busy little place up north. Actually, it’s pantomime. I’m the Demon King.’

‘Pantomime?’

It seemed odd that the chap who could get halfway through
Coriolanus
in his bath on Sunday mornings should go scouring the country being demon kings.

‘Yes, all very jolly and seasonable, you know. A chappie I met in a King’s Road pub recommended Potter-Phipps,’ he went on, changing the subject, ‘though I must say I didn’t expect anything quite so grand.’ Basil stared round the consulting room. ‘I suppose all your patients must be frightfully wealthy?’

‘Not after they’ve paid the bills.’

‘Well, it certainly does the heart good, dear chappie,’ he continued, expanding rather, ‘to meet you again in such prosperous surroundings.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. I think Razzy only gave me the job because he thought I’d go nicely with his furniture.’

‘Ah! You were always so modest.’

‘Come, come–’

‘Yes, so modest. And so generous.’

He flicked ash over the Chippendale consulting desk.

‘The dear old digs!’ Basil blew a chain of smoke rings. ‘We were great pals in those happy days, weren’t we, Grim? Do you remember how I lent you my dress suit? And came down to let you in when you threw stones at my window?’

I agreed politely, though pretty sure I was the one with the dress suit. And as Basil slept like a churchyard, anyway, you wouldn’t have got him down by throwing a brick at his window.

‘In respect for this old friendship of ours,’ he continued, ‘I shall now be perfectly frank with you.’

‘Oh, yes?’

Basil hesitated. ‘Dear chappie, when I mentioned just then I was turning down parts every week, I was exaggerating rather. In fact, since we last met the parts I’ve been offered have kept up a steady average – between damn few and damn all. Believe me, Grim,’ he added sombrely, ‘I used to think the poor starving actor was just a comic character you met in books. Now I can assure you I know better.’

‘I say, what tough luck.’

I felt genuinely sorry for the chap, particularly remembering how he used to angle for a second helping of pudding and swipe all the marmalade.

‘Why else,’ Basil demanded, jumping up and starting to pace Potter-Phipps’ peach-coloured carpet, ‘do you imagine I would descend to buffooning before a bunch of bilious brats? In a theatre whose usual entertainment consists in the disrobing of gangs of superannuated barmaids? Sheer necessity, dear chappie, that’s why! Though mind you,’ he added warmly, ‘one still has one’s professional pride. I’m going to play this Demon King as he’s never been played before. You’ve heard of “The Method”? One
lives
one’s part, day and night, awake and asleep. I’ve been feeling positively satanic for weeks.’

‘Well, you’ve scared the life out of our receptionist for a start,’ I consoled him.

‘Meanwhile, of course, one must live.’ He helped himself to another cigarette. ‘One isn’t paid by this stinking management for rehearsals. So I was wondering, on the strength of our long-standing chumminess, if you could advance me some small sum – say a hundred pounds…?’

I gave a laugh.

‘Basil, you idiot! Don’t you see I’m only the locum here? The understudy,’ I explained, as he was standing with his mouth open. ‘All I get is a modest salary when Razzy Potter-Phipps gets fed up jumping off Swiss mountains. As a matter of fact,’ I added, ‘you looked so jolly smart when you showed up, and what with all my Christmas shopping to do, I’d half a mind to touch
you
for a bit yourself.’

‘Me? Good God!’

He fell into his chair, looking shocked.

‘But cheer up,’ I went on, after a pause. ‘You’re always reading in the papers of stars being discovered overnight. And I bet all those posh actors with titles in London were demon kings themselves once. Or mere broker’s men, if it comes to that.’

But Basil said nothing. He just sat shaking his head, looking as forlorn as a burnt-out firework.

‘Alas, dear chappie,’ he managed to say at last. ‘Success is never as simple as that. It all comes back to this beastly business of money. If only I could afford to live at the right address! To be seen in the right places, to take the right people out to lunch at the right restaurants… About my talent, of course, there is no doubt.’

‘Of course not.’ Knowing how he could expand on this topic, I added quickly, ‘But what’s the trouble that brings you here today?’

‘I was almost forgetting.’ Basil roused himself. ‘I should like a complete physical examination, please. Can you oblige?’

‘Naturally. But to what object? Life insurance? Emigration? Being a demon king all day wearing you out?’

‘Neither.’ He gave a little sniff at his carnation. ‘I am going to be married.’

‘Married? Congratulations.’

‘I read somewhere that a medical examination was advisable in those contemplating matrimony, so here I am.’

I remembered he was also a shocking hypochondriac, always sneaking into my room to catch something new from Conybeare’s
Medicine
.

‘Though I suppose matrimony is about the most damn stupid thing I possibly
could
contemplate,’ Basil continued gloomily. ‘My entire worldly goods fitting comfortably into a couple of suitcases under the bed in my digs. You were perfectly right just now, Grim – I should have turned in the stage years ago for some nice steady lucrative job, like selling encyclopaedias at the door. But you know how it goes. No true actor ever gives his final performance until it’s accompanied by flowers and slow music. Meanwhile, my hand has been accepted by the sweetest and most delightful person in the whole world – Ophelia O’Brien. You know her, of course.’

‘I don’t think I’ve had the honour–’

‘She’s the girl in the detergent advertisements on the sides of all the buses.’

‘Ah, yes. The one with the snow-white whatsits.’

‘But dear chappie, you shall meet her.’ Basil suddenly brightened up. ‘She’s coming round in ten minutes to collect me.’

‘In that case you’d better go behind the screen in the corner and take your shirt off,’ I directed. ‘And by the way, you needn’t bother about the bill. You can have this one on the house.’

‘How terribly good of you–’

‘Regard it as a wedding present,’ I told him.

I wasn’t over-enthusiastic about meeting Basil’s prospective missus. I’ve known a few models in my time, and though they look pretty smashing showing off tartan jodhpurs or whatever in
Vogue
, they generally turn out to be skinny girls with loud voices who keep borrowing fourpence off you to telephone their agents. It was therefore a nice surprise a few minutes later to be shaking hands with the most beautiful little blonde I had ever seen in my life.