Doctor On The Boil (6 page)

Four o’clock the following afternoon, which was a Friday, found Sir Lancelot Spratt leaning on the westward parapet of newly-built London Bridge, gazing soulfully downstream across the Pool. The only ships alongside the wharves were small, nondescript domestic-looking vessels with the names of unpronounceable Baltic ports painted on their sterns, washing flapping from the afterdeck and scruffy-looking sailors loafing on the rails. But the lower Thames always stirred Sir Lancelot powerfully. Perhaps the sea was in his blood, he wondered. After all, his younger brother was the captain of a liner, which he commanded in much the same spirit as he had run his own operating theatre.

As he watched, the twin bascules of Tower Bridge rose slowly into the air. They looked more enticing than the arms of any woman. The water below his feet was the oily threshold of seven oceans, and there was nothing – absolutely nothing at all – between himself and far-off seas where the sun burnt its way across an empty sky before setting in an explosion of magenta, where dolphins trundled beside the ship’s bows and flying-fish skipped across the ripples thicker than the cabbage-whites in his garden at midsummer, and where there was an island or two with palm-trees and various trouble-free horticultural products, where a man could lie in the sun with his head cradled in the lap of a dusky girl, who smiled and stroked his brow and never even once disagreed with his opinions.

‘That’s the way to end your days,’ Sir Lancelot said out loud. He felt for his handkerchief and coughed. ‘Curse this Asian bug! There’s lots more of the world I should like to see. Well, I suppose I might have got myself run over by a taxi years ago, or stabbed by some dissatisfied patient with my own scalpel. That’s the only way to look at it.’

Giving a last envious glance to the seagulls squawking and wheeling overhead, he stepped firmly towards the north shore of the Thames and the City of London.

He passed through Billingsgate fish market, skirted the Monument and went into a tall block of offices in Eastcheap.

‘Spratt for Wormsley,’ he told the girl at the desk.

On the eighth floor, Mr Wormsley came to meet him in person.

‘Good afternoon, Sir Lancelot. What a great pleasure, if an unexpected one. Splendid day, is it not? Just look through the window, how the sun glints upon the Monument.’

Sir Lancelot grunted. ‘Erected by Sir Christopher Wren, in 1677. Two hundred and two feet high, the exact distance from the spot in Pudding Lane where the Great Fire broke out. An inscription on the foot originally describing London’s arsonist as His Holiness in Rome was erased by King James the Second, put back by William and Mary, and finally obliterated by William the Fourth. Which just proves that the interpretation of history, like the interpretation of dreams, is a highly treacherous business.’

Mr Wormsley gave a nervous laugh. He was a young, pale, jumpy man in a smart blue suit, shirt with broad stripes, and a hard white collar. ‘It’s refreshing to meet someone who appreciates the unfolding of events in our world.’

‘From which most of your clients are making energetic and complicated preparations to depart,’ observed Sir Lancelot. ‘As you specialize in the avoidance of estate duty. Shall we go into your office?’

As they sat on each side of a desk in the small, plain room, Sir Lancelot continued, ‘Of course, I had your father as my accountant for years. But I expect you know all the tricks.’

Mr Wormsley looked pained. ‘Not
tricks
, Sir Lancelot. All is perfectly legal. We do not countenance tax
evasion
.’

‘I am past caring what you call it. I am going to die.’

‘So am I. So are we all.’

‘Yes, but not in six months, I hope,’ he said testily.

‘Oh! Sir Lancelot, I’m terribly sorry–’

‘Look here, Wormsley, I’ve made a fair pile and I don’t feel inclined to leave it all to provide National Health teeth and glasses for lots of people I’ve never met and probably wouldn’t care to. I have never complained about paying taxes – that is like complaining about the twentieth century. The rabble used to burn down the nobs’ houses and hang them from the lamp-posts. Now the nobs buy ’em off with pensions and free education and suchlike, a simple arrangement and much more comfortable all round.’

Mr Wormsley looked worried. ‘Have you any relatives?’

‘Only a brother, who’s well off. Made it all from smuggling, I fancy. The wife’s dead, of course.’

‘You haven’t thought of marrying again?’

‘Good God, man, between the wedding and the funeral there wouldn’t be time for the honeymoon.’

‘But it might help from the tax angle.’ The accountant tapped a pencil against his teeth. ‘In the good old days all sorts of loopholes were open to us. Insurance policies–’ He gave a little laugh. ‘You’d be amazed, the number of times I’ve been called on the heels of your profession, to insure a life which is already departing from its body. “Death-bed jobs”, we call them. Some of those experiences were really funny–’

‘Quite,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘At least I have come to you before I am a corpse emitting horrible odours and accountancy problems. Pray suggest something.’

Mr Wormsley scratched his cheek slowly with the end of the pencil. ‘Agricultural land is out, of course. Forests aren’t much good. I can only suggest taking up permanent residence abroad. As permanent as your circumstances allow, naturally.’

‘Where?’

‘The Bahamas? Bermuda? Though they have a water shortage and a racial problem. The Isle of Man is convenient, but inclined to be rheumaticky, and all those motor-cycle races must be rather noisy. Curaçao is remote, but has Dutch drains. Perhaps the Channel Isles. Are you fond of tomatoes?’

Sir Lancelot stroked his beard in silence. ‘You are familiar with Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World
, doubtless? The punishment for crimes against the social order was banishment to some small island. I suppose it is now a crime to be rich. Well, it’s amusing to think of ageing millionaires making for their tax-havens, like ailing elephants crashing through the jungle to secret graveyards. I’d like to end it all sitting in the sun, but I’m afraid I’m not in that class. Surgery doesn’t pay like stockbroking. My first wish is to leave a fairly substantial sum to my hospital, St Swithin’s.’

‘I suppose we could do that as a gift
inter vivos,
’ Mr Wormsley calculated, mentioning another tool of his trade. ‘If you could manage to live for seven years.’

‘I tell you, I can only manage to live for six months,’ Sir Lancelot said crossly.

‘Yes, yes… Though perhaps we should execute a deed of gift at once, just in case you manage to get a – er, extension.’

‘All right. I had in mind fifty thou. To go to…’ His mouth became a firm line. ‘To go to my former student, Professor Bingham, for such surgical research as he cares to perform. Get the necessary papers typed, and send them round to my hotel. Now I must be off. I have an important dinner engagement.’

On his way back to the Crécy, Sir Lancelot stopped his taxi in Bond Street to make two purchases before the shops closed. He laid both unopened on the dressing-table while he bathed and changed into a dark suit. Then he unwrapped the first small package, opened a leather box, and turned over a diamond clasp in his long, sensitive fingers.

‘Cost a pretty penny,’ he muttered. ‘But what’s the point holding on to hard cash any more?’

The second parcel he opened with more hesitation. He stood for some moments looking doubtfully at the fancy bottle labelled THE EXCITING NEW TOILETRY FOR MEN.

‘Got to start some time, I suppose,’ he grunted, removing the cap and dabbing the liquid liberally over his beard.

He was waiting in the hotel lobby as Tottie Sinclair came through the doors, her eyes wearing a look of valiantly suppressed pathos. He took her hand in both of his. ‘My dear, we must forget my unhappy condition tonight. I insist on that. After all, things might possibly be worse – I could be in pain, or bedridden. As it happens, I intend thoroughly to enjoy the evening. I only hope that you shall, too.’

‘Oh, Lancelot! You are so brave.’

‘I have no alternative, except to shoot myself. And that hardly seems worth the trouble, does it?’

She sniffed. ‘Do they allow dogs in the hotel?’

‘Most decidedly not.’

‘Strange. I’m allergic to dogs, I’m afraid. There seem to be a big smelly one about somewhere.’ She sniffed again. ‘An Airedale bitch, I’d have said, on heat.’

‘Shall we have drinks at the dinner table?’ asked Sir Lancelot, wiping his beard vigorously with his handkerchief. ‘The manager has reserved a secluded one in the grill-room.’

They enjoyed a splendid meal. Sir Lancelot ordered chicken
à la kiev
and champagne. They soon forgot the sad reason which had prompted him to make the invitation and her to accept it. Over the brandy he produced the jewel-case from his pocket and handed it across the table.

‘A little keepsake,’ he explained.

She gasped as she opened it. ‘But Lancelot, this is something far, far lovelier than anyone has given me in all my life.’

‘Glad you like it.’

‘Of course I do! I adore diamonds – but of course, as a nurse I’ve never been able even remotely to afford them. It must have–’ She bit her lip. ‘I know I shouldn’t say so, but it must have cost you a fortune.’

‘What does money mean to me now?’

She dropped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I had quite forgotten.’

‘Tottie,’ suggested Sir Lancelot, ‘how about coming away with me for a week?’

She stared at him blankly.

‘Now,’ he continued. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘But…but Lancelot, what would people say?’

He gave a knowing smile. ‘What would people know? We were rather experts, as I recall, at the now dead art of amorous discretion.’

‘I…I…no, it’s impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Well…I couldn’t get leave.’

‘Details, details,’ murmured Sir Lancelot.

‘It wouldn’t be
right
.’

‘Must our age group have all the morality while the young have all the fun? That strikes me as a most unfair arrangement.’

‘I mean, people in our position. You a consultant surgeon at St Swithin’s. Myself in charge of the nurses.’ She hesitated. ‘Where did you have in mind?’ she asked faintly.

‘Le Touquet. You know, just across the Channel from Dover. Rather chilly at this time of year, but never crowded before in the
quatorze
. I’m rather fond of the place. It’s old-fashioned, but it’s instant France – garlic,
escargots
, yards of bread and all.’

‘Where…where could we stay discreetly?’ she continued hesitantly.

‘I know a quiet little hotel where we’d hardly be noticed. Not that I’ve been there for ages – the staff wouldn’t know me now. There’s some very adequate restaurants, we can have a flutter in the casino, even go dancing.’ He gave a soft laugh. ‘Haven’t danced for years. If you remember, I was quite handy with the old rumba.’

‘No, Lancelot,’ she said quietly.

He took her hand on the tablecloth. ‘Tottie, I loved you back in those old times – round Coronation year. I love you now.’

She dropped her eyes again, quite girlishly, he thought.

‘Let me tell you something – were I to live and not to die, as is so regrettably the case, I should most certainly ask you to marry me. In those happier circumstances, would you have accepted?’

There was a silence. She nodded assent.

‘We’re getting frightfully gloomy about all this,’ announced Sir Lancelot more cheerfully. ‘Come on, Tottie. If we find we’ve made a mistake, Le Touquet has an excellent golf course.’

She smiled. ‘I shouldn’t bother to bring any clubs.’

The dean always believed in a good breakfast. At home he was generally downstairs first, rubbing his hands and smiling as he sat down to his cornflakes, thinking happily of the busy day ahead of him at the bedside and at the committee-table. But a week later – the Friday morning – he had dozed again after the alarm rang, and entered the sunlit dining-room to find his wife, his son George, and his daughter Muriel already at table. The three of them diagnosed with a quick, resigned glance at his pursed lips and lined brow that the delay had put him in a bad temper.

He took his chair, greeting them with a grunt. His wife wisely became engrossed in her
Guardian
. George and Muriel ate silently, staring straight ahead. The dean started munching his cornflakes rapidly, like a rabbit in a meadow. He reached for the first envelope of his morning mail, laid neatly on his carefully-folded
Times
by Miss MacNish.

‘What’s all this?’ he exclaimed irately. ‘Has someone gone mad? They regret they are unable to use my television script, though it shows promise and they thank me for submitting it?
I
haven’t written any television scripts? Have I?’ he demanded perplexedly, eyes flashing behind his large glasses as he looked again at the envelope. The letter shook in his hand. ‘It’s addressed to you, George. Good God, boy. What do you imagine you’re doing? Have you actually been writing stupid nonsense for the idiot box? When every moment of your day must be devoted to your studies, especially with a feeble mentality like yours.’ The dean tossed the letter at him angrily, ‘Let there be no more of this idiocy.’

George’s eyes glowed as he reverently picked up the sheet of paper. ‘But they said it showed promise.’

‘That is the phrase used, I recall, in school reports when other comment would be dispiriting or libelous. Besides, anyone can write such things.’ He gave an airy wave of his hand. ‘I could myself, if only I had the time.’

The
au pair
girl appeared with his bacon and eggs under a metal cover.

‘Inga, will you please ask Miss MacNish to spare a moment?’

‘Very well, Doctor.’

The dean looked round sharply, noticing his son following intently the girl’s movements as she left the room. ‘I am glad you have not abandoned the study of anatomy,’ he said dryly. ‘To make up for the time you’ve wasted in useless scribbling, tonight I shall devote some of my own – which is considerably more valuable – to put you right through the alimentary system.’

‘But Dad,’ George protested. ‘Tonight’s the party in Ken Kerrberry’s flat. You know, to fix the arrangements for Rag Week.’

The dean hesitated. However much he enjoyed bedevilling the students academically, he was a good St Swithin’s man. He liked to see the hospital make a good display at Rag Week, and laughed as heartily as any at the various outrages committed on unfortunate citizens who happened to be passing. ‘Very well, very well,’ he agreed shortly. ‘I’m glad we still hold decent healthy rags in the hospital, with none of this damn nonsense of political protest, which ought to be abolished by law.
You’re
not going to the party, I take it?’ he added to Muriel.

‘Oh, no, Daddy.’

‘You’ll stay at home to work?’

‘Yes, Daddy.’

‘Very sensible.’

Muriel was tall, like her mother, and not bad-looking. But at the age when her friends gaily turned themselves into walking aphrodisiacs, she was given to plain hair-styles and dull dresses, striking the medical school as sadly dowdy and old-fashioned. She was a quiet, inhibited girl, any personality growing in the shade of the dean’s inclining to be stunted. His glance now betrayed fatherly concern. Recently, she really had been rather peculiar, he thought. Until a day or so ago she had been lively and talkative, more than he had ever known her. Now she mooned about the house like a pools winner who’d forgotten to post his coupon. It was most odd.

The dean’s thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of his housekeeper.

‘Ah, Miss MacNish. As you know, Sir Lancelot will be with us on Monday for a – er, limited period.’

She gave a deep sigh. ‘And how is the poor man?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him all week. He’s busy with solicitors and suchlike. I wanted to say that you may give him my electric blanket.’ The dean paused. ‘Well, anyway, my old electric blanket.’

‘But Doctor,’ she said with concern. ‘You know that one’s faulty–’

‘He’ll have to take the risk of electrocuting himself,’ said the dean briskly. ‘After all, in his state it wouldn’t really make much odds – I mean, that would be just too bad.’

Muriel rose. ‘I shall be late for my pharmacology lecture.’

As George and the housekeeper followed her from the room the dean continued to his wife, ‘Miss MacNish will have to go. We really can’t afford the expense of both her and Inga.’

‘Why not? You put Miss MacNish on your income-tax returns as your secretary.’ The dean gave a grunt. ‘That’s a habit you’ll have to grow out of, my dear, once you get your knighthood.’

‘I don’t like the way George ogles Inga.’ The dean changed the subject. ‘Sex mad, young people today. Our generation knew the meaning of self-control. And what’s the matter with Muriel? I’m wondering if she’s developed TB or something. Or perhaps she should see a psychiatrist?’

‘Oh, she’s in love.’

‘What!’ the dean was amazed. ‘Muriel? It doesn’t seem possible.’ He glared at a slice of toast. ‘Anyway, I didn’t think youngsters fell in love these days. They just get at one another, uttering animal cries. Such a pity that flirtation has joined the other dead arts,’ he added reflectively. ‘You and I, now – we had real fun. Dances and theatres and boxes of chocolates, all that sort of thing.’

Josephine folded her morning paper with a deliberate action. ‘While we were courting, yes. Since when have you taken me to the theatre? Or to a dance? Or thought of buying me a box of chocolates?’

‘But my dear, chocolates only mean calories, we would look quite ridiculous trying those modern dances, and the theatre is degenerate.’ He suddenly seemed abashed. ‘I hope I’m a good husband to you? I certainly try to be.’

‘Yes, excellent. In many ways.’

‘So there’s room for improvement? Very well, tell me. I shall try to do better.’

‘Do you think me attractive?’

‘Of course I do. You dress very well, and go to a most expensive hairdresser.’

‘I mean sexually, not decoratively.’

The dean looked uneasy. ‘Is this the sort of thing we have to discuss at breakfast?’

‘Well, it’s more interesting than the medical committee, which is our usual topic of conversation.’

‘Yes, I do. Why should you ask?’

‘As you keep telling your students, you may be strong on the theory, Lionel darling, but you seem to be skimping the practical.’

‘But these days I’ve always so much on my mind–’ He stood up, with a resolved look. ‘My dear Josephine, I shall certainly remember to do something about it. Yes, definitely. Tonight. Now I’m already late for an appointment at the Ministry. Tonight, tonight, quite definitely tonight. Without fail. Er…if it does happen to slip my memory, you will remind me, won’t you?’

He kissed her lightly on the top of her head and left hurriedly.

As he drove his Jaguar to the Ministry in Whitehall, George and Muriel went by tube to St Swithin’s and separated for their different classes. But the dean’s daughter did not make for the pharmacology lecture-room. She waited until George was out of sight, turned, hurried out of the hospital, strode quickly down the main road, rounded the corner into a dingy side-street, and made for a small shop with a steamy front-window daubed in whitewash TEAS, EGG AND CHIPS.

The café‚ was empty. She sat at a stained table and asked the man behind the counter for a cup of tea. She kept it in front of her untasted, tapping her foot agitatedly on the floor. She looked at her large wristwatch. She decided she shouldn’t have come. It was stupid, a waste of time. She grew more and more angry, and was on the point of leaving when the door opened and Terry Summerbee came in.

‘Hello, love,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

He ordered a cup of tea for himself and sat down. Muriel said nothing.

‘What’s up?’

‘You know what’s up.’

Terry assumed a look of innocence. ‘Should I?’

‘That girl.’

‘Which girl?’

‘In X-ray.’

‘Oh, that girl!’ He smiled. ‘Look, love, I can explain absolutely everything about her–’

‘That won’t be necessary. I know everything about it already. It’s all round the hospital. You must be a dimwit, imagining you can pick up a female at the front door in a Rolls-Royce without anyone noticing. I just couldn’t believe it at first. Now I know it’s true. You not only drove her off in a Rolls, but you took her to dinner at the Crécy Hotel.’ Muriel’s lips trembled. ‘And you only take me to fish bars.’

‘Where did you get all that from?’ he asked, looking alarmed.

‘Dr Grimsdyke told the whole story on a ward-round.’ She produced her handkerchief and started to sniff. ‘Everyone laughed their insides out.’

‘Look, Muriel, love, this bird Stella isn’t even talking to me any more.’

He laid his hand on hers. She snatched it away. ‘I don’t want you to touch me again, Terry, ever. I don’t want you even to look at me, though I suppose you’ll have to in the hospital.’ She added in a crushed voice, ‘And you said you loved me.’

‘But I did! I do. That business of Stella was just an aside, an aberration–’

‘It’s been difficult enough for me already, hasn’t it? Going steady with you these few months.’

He paused. ‘Perhaps that’s the point. All this hole-and-corner business. It’s making me nervous. I feel like something out of a spy film, only meeting you in places like this.’

‘You know we can’t see each other openly in the hospital,’ she protested impatiently. ‘If my father got to know about it–’

‘I can’t see what the fuss is about.’ He was starting to grow annoyed himself. ‘Why should your father object to me? I’m clean. I don’t smoke pot. I haven’t got a black grandmother. I don’t know how to play any noisy instruments. I haven’t been arrested even once.’

‘You know what father’s like. He thinks I should keep my mind on my work till I qualify.’

Terry stirred his cup of tea. ‘Look, love,’ he said at last. ‘That business with the X-ray girl is over and done with. I promise you. I assure you. I’m sorry. Painfully sorry. Can’t I ask you to forgive me? And start all over again where we left off? I didn’t know my own feelings. I only did it for…well, for a change, I suppose. Like all the boys. Even the ones who are engaged. Even some of the ones who are married.’

‘Good. Now I know exactly how you’d behave if we
had
got married.’

‘No, I didn’t mean that!’

She stood up. ‘My brother’s been invited to Ken Kerrberry’s party tonight. I’m going to ask him to take me along.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Yes, I thought that would get you. Ken knows a pretty groovy crowd, doesn’t he? People from outside the hospital, who wouldn’t cause a lot of complications in the way of making dates. Now I must be off. I have already missed one lecture this morning because of you. And you certainly aren’t worth another.’