Doctor On Toast (13 page)

‘Morality is, after all, merely a matter of geographical latitude,’ declared Sir Lancelot Spratt airily. ‘What passes in polite society in Bali would never do in Berkeley Square.’

‘Um, ah,’ said the Bishop.

Miles had lit the boiler and cleaned him up a bit, and the four of us were taking a glass of sherry in the drawing-room while Lady Spratt installed the new maid upstairs.

‘The unfortunate British public has been much exposed to moralists.’ Sir Lancelot stood stroking his beard before the fireplace. ‘Indeed, the population has hardly been allowed to pursue its natural instincts in peace since the arrival of Oliver Cromwell. No wonder our clinics are cluttered with the diseases of mass repression.’

Miles seemed to be fidgeting rather.

‘I should have thought as a nation we were proud of our respectability, Lancelot.’

‘And so we are, like our draughts and beastly trains and horrible climate and filthy cooking. At heart we are, of course, a shocking collection of masochists.’

‘By the way, sir,’ I intruded, ‘now the domestic situation is under control, I expect you’d like me to clear off?’

Miles and the Bishop looked more cheerful at this, but Sir Lancelot replied:

‘Certainly not. I invited you to dinner, and to dinner you stay. Not that I would deceive you our guest is a second Dr Johnson. Treating his varicose veins last year gave me an opportunity to break the ice, and I found myself paddling in some very cold water underneath.’

He helped us to more sherry.

‘Grimsdyke and myself will anyway retire after dinner to discuss my memoirs,’ he added to the others. ‘How’s the book coming along, my boy?’

‘Almost finished, sir. I’m rather looking forward to rounding it all off with a jolly good trial scene, like
The Brothers Karamazov
.’

‘Then you will be pleased to hear you haven’t long to wait. In the confusion I quite overlooked telling you that Beckwith informs me the affair is down for hearing next Monday.’

‘I can only hope, Lancelot, that truth will prevail,’ observed the Bishop cagily.

‘My dear good fellow, the facts of the case are perfectly indisputable. Even before a meddlesome crank like Mr Justice Fishwick–’

I looked up. ‘Fishwick?’

‘It is perhaps unfortunate that my trial should appear on his list. But Fishwick is nevertheless a member of an intelligent profession, like ourselves,’ Sir Lancelot conceded, ‘and I have no doubt whatever that he will find himself obliged to stop the proceedings before my brother has even been put to the trouble of opening his mouth.’

There was a ring at the doorbell.

‘That can hardly be our distinguished guest so soon.’ Sir Lancelot frowned at his watch. ‘Grimsdyke, be a good fellow and answer it.’

On the step I found the police sergeant who’d brought the news from the Zoo, with a rather nice little blonde in a red coat.

‘Good evening, sir.’ He seemed very civil. ‘I wonder if I might have a word with Sir Lancelot Spratt?’

I took another look at the girl, wondering whom she’d been feeding to the carnivores. Murmuring something about Sir Lancelot sparing a few moments, I led the sergeant into the drawing-room and left her in the hall.

‘Why, it’s Sergeant Griffin again.’ Sir Lancelot greeted him warmly. ‘How’s the old rupture?’

‘Very nicely, thank you, sir.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it. Glass of sherry?’

‘No, thank you, Sir Lancelot.’

‘I believe you’ve met the Bishop of Wincanton?’ His brother-in-law was at the time trying to dodge behind the azalea.

‘You’ve come about the security arrangements, I suppose, officer?’ suggested Miles.

The sergeant raised his eyebrows. ‘Security arrangements, sir?’

Miles looked faintly uneasy.

‘Perhaps,’ he added hopefully, ‘it’s simply that my car is causing an obstruction outside?’

‘No, it’s about your girl, sir.’

‘My girl?’ asked Sir Lancelot.

‘The young lady you was to meet off the train from Paris.’

‘I hope she is in every way quite respectable,’ interrupted the Bishop quickly.

‘She seems a very respectable young person indeed, sir. She was lost, that’s all. The Railway Police sent her from Victoria, and I’ve brought her round.’

‘But that’s absolutely ridiculous!’ Miles gave a laugh. ‘Because the girl in question is already in–’

‘Quite, Sergeant, quite,’ Sir Lancelot broke in. ‘Thank you very much. The young lady is outside? Excellent. We were wondering what had happened to her. Sorry you’ve been put to such trouble.’

‘Nothing’s too much trouble for you, Sir Lancelot. As a matter of fact, I was rather wanting to have a word about my operation–’

‘Another time, Sergeant, another time.’

‘It’s only that I have a sort of tickling feeling in the scar.’ The policeman seemed inclined for a chat. ‘I was wondering if you could take a quick look at it for me?’

‘Call tomorrow and I shall be delighted.’

‘It’s more of a cross between a tickling and an itching sensation–’

‘So this is the young lady?’ Sir Lancelot hustled him through the door.
‘Enchanté
,
mademoiselle
. My dear,’ he added, as Lady Spratt appeared on the stairs. ‘Here is our new maid from Paris. Kindly show her to the second spare room.’

‘Lancelot, have you completely taken leave of your–’

‘This is the
new maid
,’ repeated Sir Lancelot forcefully. ‘Upstairs, please,
s’il vous plait
, pronto.’

‘Look here–’ started Miles, looking as confused as the girl while she was led away. ‘I don’t at all understand–’

‘I most sincerely trust nothing untoward–’ murmured the Bishop.

‘You want to be on your way, no doubt, Sergeant,’ Sir Lancelot interrupted both of them. ‘It was extremely helpful of you to call.’

‘I was wondering, sir, if you would do us the honour of attending our next social evening?’

‘I should be delighted. I expect you are now extremely busy–’

‘Old tyme dancing, you know. With a buffet and extension till midnight.’

‘It sounds extremely charming. I shall certainly attend.’

‘As it happens, I’ve a book of tickets on me.’

‘I’ll take the lot.’ Sir Lancelot edged him on to the front step. ‘My cheque will reach you in the morning.’

‘But there’s over a hundred tickets there, Sir Lancelot!’

‘I have a very large number of friends,’ Sir Lancelot pushed him through the door. ‘Now gentlemen–’ He faced the three of us. ‘The question is – Who the devil have we already installed upstairs?’

‘But she
must
be your maid.’ Miles looked annoyed. ‘She certainly said she was. Besides, she was carrying that magazine on the table.’

‘Which happens to be
L’Illustration
.’

‘So it is,’ said Miles in surprise.

‘It is highly unfortunate we should be involved in any complications,’ muttered the Bishop.

‘I’m sure it can be perfectly easily cleared up,’ Miles protested. ‘She was certainly a most decent person. Wasn’t she, Gaston?’

‘Well, you’d better go and break it to her that she’s due for a change of address,’ Sir Lancelot told him.

‘But where to?’ I interrupted.

‘That is for your cousin Miles to find out.’

‘I think you’re all making far too much of a perfectly excusable mistake,’ returned Miles shortly.

Sir Lancelot became impatient.

‘We can settle all that at our leisure. Instead of standing there wasting time, go upstairs and find out exactly where the poor woman belongs.’

Miles hesitated.

‘Perhaps Gaston would like to ask her–’

‘No I jolly well wouldn’t! Anyway, you told me you were the expert on French.’

‘It might be politic to clear up the little matter at once,’ urged the Bishop.

‘Damn it, Miles!’ exploded Sir Lancelot. ‘You can at least try and find out what she does for a living.’

But this turned out to be unnecessary, because Miles had hardly got a foot on the stairs before the girl appeared herself.

‘Horror!’ exclaimed the Bishop.

A bit of a change had come over our middle-aged dear from Victoria Station. In the first place, she was made up as brightly as the lights of Piccadilly. In the second, she’d got on a red wig about a foot high. In the third, she was wearing only a large pink fan.

‘Good gracious me,’ remarked Sir Lancelot Spratt.

She gave a nice smile from the landing.

‘’Ullo, boys. We start the show, yes?’

‘But – but this is impossible!’ cried Miles.

‘’Ow nice I find your English clubs.’ She undulated downstairs. ‘So correct.
Très anglais
.’ She patted the Bishop on the cheek. ‘I am shocking, eh?’

‘Horror upon horror,’ muttered the Bishop.

‘Miles!’ Sir Lancelot gave a roar of laughter. ‘You know what you are? A blasted
procureur
.’

I hadn’t seen the poor chap in such a state since the headmaster found he was keeping white mice in the dormitory.

‘Do something!’ he burst out. ‘Do something at once! Lancelot – Gaston – you must get that woman away from here–’

‘You found her,’ Sir Lancelot told him briefly. ‘You lose her again.’

‘Gaston!’ Miles grabbed my arm. ‘You’re my cousin… you must help, you understand? I implore you. My whole career–’

The girl winked at Sir Lancelot. ‘You want to come an’ see me after the show?’

‘The extreme kindness of your invitation, madam, quite shames my inescapable refusal.’

She picked the Bishop’s official topper from the hat stand, and put it on like Marlene Dietrich in
The Blue Angel
.

‘I feel faint,’ cried the Bishop, falling into a chair. ‘A family weakness, Charles.’ Sir Lancelot seemed to be enjoying himself like young Bartholomew on Christmas morning. ‘You know where to find the brandy.’

‘My God!’ gasped Miles. ‘If this got in the papers–’

‘Papers!’ The Bishop fluttered his handkerchief. ‘I must leave. I must leave at once–’

‘Yes, I think the country would be much kinder to your constitution,’ Sir Lancelot agreed calmly. ‘I shall call you personally at six–’

The girl threw aside her fan, and stood wearing only the Bishop’s hat like a sort of muff.

‘What on earth’s the matter with you, Charles?’ demanded Sir Lancelot. ‘Really! It’s only a healthy naked human female.’

‘I shall leave this very night–’

‘There is an excellent late train. And my car is always at your disposal for the station.’

The girl started to get a bit playful with the hat.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ announced the Bishop.

‘But surely, Charles, you are not going to miss your dinner?’

‘Dinner!’ Miles jumped. ‘He’ll be arriving in twenty minutes!’

‘Look here–’ I was becoming rather worried myself. ‘We’d really better do something, and pretty smartly.’

My cousin and I may have suffered our little disagreements in the past, but I felt that bringing them up now would be like complaining the bedclothes were damp because the ship was sinking. Personally, I’m rather fond of a bit of cabaret with my dinner, but I could see that under present circumstances it would never have done for old Miles at all. As the Bishop was looking as though he’d come off the operating table after a total gastrectomy, Sir Lancelot was stroking his beard in perplexity, and Miles seemed on the point of hysteria, I thought it was time to take sole charge.

‘It’s perfectly simple,’ I suggested. ‘The girl’s probably been booked for a show at some Soho club. All we’ve got to do is get her there, and look jolly quick about it. Apart from anything else, I expect they’re playing the overture over and over again waiting for her.’

‘Where do you think you are,
madame
?’ Miles burst out. ‘
Où croyez-vous que vous êtes
?’

She looked surprised behind the hat. ‘
Mais c’est
Willie’s Club,
n’est-ce pas
?’

‘Willie’s Club!’ muttered Miles.

‘Dear old Willie’s Club?’ I exclaimed. ‘But I’m a member. Willie and I were great pals in the days when I was one of the lads at St Swithin’s. You go downstairs in Frith Street and there’s a barman who’s done Lord knows how many years in–’

‘But damn it, Gaston!’ exploded Miles. ‘You can’t appear with a half-naked woman like that! It would be bound to leak out to the press.’

‘You’ve a good bit to learn about immorality yet, old lad,’ I grinned. ‘How much lolly have you got on you?’

‘Money? About twenty pounds.’

‘Let’s have a bit of a whip-round then. May I borrow your Rolls, sir?’

‘I shall accompany you,’ said Sir Lancelot at once. ‘Thank heavens somebody in your family has a little sense. Miles, fetch my Ulster for the lady. You will kindly tell our distinguished guest that I have been called to an urgent case. It is fortunate that our profession always provides a foolproof excuse. Come,
madame
. Let us now retrace our
faux pas
.’

‘I am going to die,’ groaned the Bishop.

‘Really, Charles, that is most inconsiderate of you. Just think of the trouble all of us have taken over your dinner.’

‘Miles hasn’t been to the hospital today,’ announced his wife Connie when I called at their house the following evening. ‘The poor dear isn’t at all himself. It’s the strain of overwork on the Commission.’

I felt slightly put out, having planned to make myself comfortable and drink his whisky and soda until he arrived. Instead, I found my cousin in his shirt-sleeves pacing up and down among his Morality papers, looking like a prophet of doom in search of a pulpit.

‘Hello, old lad,’ I greeted him. ‘How did the little dinner go?’

Miles groaned.

‘It was like some horrible, horrible hallucination… That dreadful woman!’

‘Clementine turned out to be quite a jolly sort in the end. We got to know her pretty well by the time we’d carted her across London.’

‘What happened?’ he asked gloomily.

‘Everything went as smoothly as one of Sir Lancelot’s appendicectomies. Even though I hadn’t been in Willie’s for years, at least I knew the drill for all irregularities on the premises, from trying to tickle the hostesses to trying to flog a machine-gun.’

‘Bribery?’ murmured Miles dully.

‘Cash certainly changed hands. Ruddy great wads of it, in fact, from Sir Lancelot’s wallet.’

My cousin fell silent.

‘You might at least have returned and told us things were straightened out,’ he said at last. ‘The suspense was perfectly terrible.’

‘It was Sir Lancelot’s fault. He insisted on seeing the show.’

‘He must have thought it thoroughly disgusting.’

‘He seemed to find it rather amusing. Not to mention diagnosing a genu varum, two epigastric hernias, and several cases of diffuse mammary hypertrophy.’

‘Sir Lancelot is perfectly incorrigible.’

‘He helped save your bacon, old lad,’ I reminded him. ‘The whole country might have enjoyed the smell of it frying for breakfast this morning.’

He looked up. ‘I suppose there is nothing in the press?’ I shook my head. ‘I’ve been through every paper in the public library. Though, of course, there’s always Sunday and the
News of the World
.’

Miles groaned again.

‘But don’t worry, I’m sure there’s no harm done. Clementine got a terrific reception from the customers at Willie’s, by the way. Though personally I think she was rather better with the hat.’

‘I am, of course, enormously indebted to you, Gaston,’ Miles admitted.

‘Don’t mention it,’ I returned lightly. ‘After all, same flesh and blood, and all that.’

‘My whole career now lies at the mercy of your discretion.’

‘Good Lord, you don’t suppose I’d sneak, do you?’ I looked shocked. ‘Dash it, I didn’t even do that at school when you pinched my special seed-cake.’

‘I am sorry about the seed-cake, Gaston. Deeply sorry.’

‘I’m quite prepared to forget it,’ I told him, very decently.

‘Would you care for a whisky and soda? Do help yourself. Take as much as you like.’ As I accepted the invitation, he went on, ‘We have admittedly had our differences in the past–’

‘Clash of temperaments. Very stimulating to any family. Look at the Lears.’

Miles fiddled with a page of his Report.

‘I must confess, Gaston, that over the years I have automatically come to look upon you as a fool.’

‘The gay exterior is deceiving.’

‘But the way you took charge of an extremely dangerous and complicated situation last night suddenly opened my eyes to your true abilities.’

‘Oh, come! Once faced with the bare facts–’ I gave a laugh. ‘Rather funny, that.’

‘How often have I secretly envied your sense of humour!’

‘Tut, now,’ I consoled the chap. ‘You used to tell some jolly funny jokes yourself at the school concert.’

‘You have the stuff in you of the Scarlet Pimpernel, Gaston. You are no mere theorist like myself and – may I say? – my colleagues on the Royal Commission. No. You are a man of action. At last I see it. And it has helped me to make my decision about the funds I hold in trust for you.’

‘Funny, I was just coming to that,’ I told him, preparing to put the screws on. ‘If you’ll just give me the cheque, I won’t keep you any longer from your work.’

Miles stroked his little bristly moustache.

‘When you first started this novel writing business I rather objected. I felt that the notoriously lax life of an author would be completely demoralising for you.’

‘Quite.’

It is, of course, well known to the British public that authors lounge about all day with their collars off while everyone else has to work.

‘To be frank, I was not particularly concerned over your loss to medicine.’

‘I think that’s a matter of general agreement.’

‘But now I have changed my mind.’

‘If you’ll just write out that cheque–’

‘Don’t you realise? Don’t you see?’ Miles gripped my sleeve. ‘In this modern age you are exactly the sort of man our profession needs.’

‘That didn’t seem the view of all those examiners I got quite chummy with over the years.’

‘But that’s precisely the point, Gaston. What’s wrong with medicine today?’

‘Not enough pay–’

‘We are all far too theoretical. We need practical men. Men like yourself. Men to penetrate the undeveloped ends of the earth, and blaze a trail of sanitation.’

‘Here, hold on!’ I exclaimed, a bit alarmed. ‘I wouldn’t be any use at that sort of lark at all. You know how I come up all over from mosquitoes.’

‘Fortunately there are no mosquitoes in the area I have in mind. An international health team is shortly starting work on the shores of Greenland–’

‘Greenland? Now look here, Miles, stop horsing about and make out that cheque–’

‘I propose to finance you for a six months’ refresher course in New York, after which I can easily arrange through my connections with World Health Organisation your appointment to a five years’ tour in Greenland.’

‘If you simply want to get me out of the way for a bit,’ I interrupted, ‘it would be much easier to slip me the cash and let me clear off to Paris.’

‘I assure you that’s not the idea at all.’

‘Last time you shoved me up the ruddy Amazon. This time you want to keep me on ice. I wish you’d make up your mind.’

‘But Gaston! Don’t you realise what I am offering you? The chance to become a second Dr Livingstone. A Schweitzer of the snows.’

‘Just let me have the cash on the nail. Apart from anything else, the rent for my basement is shockingly overdue.’

Miles looked pained. ‘Surely you are not contemplating refusal?’

‘Yes, I jolly well am. I’ve got a novel to finish.’

‘But damnation! You don’t seriously intend to fritter away your life turning out stupid books–’

‘My dear good idiot! Once you start you can’t stop – it’s a sort of ineradicable infection. Anyway,’ I added, now pretty narked, ‘if somebody’s got to go charging down glaciers with a syringe, why not you? You’d be a ruddy sight more use than sitting in London trying to explain why people shouldn’t play football on Sundays.’

‘I don’t think you are being particularly grateful, Gaston.’

‘Let’s cut out all the fuss and simply hand over the cheque–’

Miles folded his arms. ‘That is out of the question.’

‘I like that! Who’s being grateful now?’

‘I have made an extremely generous offer.’

‘It would be, if I were a homesick Eskimo.’

‘Consider how much you could enjoy yourself in New York first.’

‘Yes, thinking gaily of the future among all those ice cubes.’

‘Don’t you understand? Professionally speaking, I am trying to save your soul – What are you doing with that telephone?’

‘Ringing up every number in Fleet Street to let a particularly nasty-looking cat out of the bag.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ said Miles quietly. I paused.

Of course, the chap had me there. Miles may have been a fool. He may have cheerfully left me to starve in basements. He may have given me a rotten time over those cricket boots. He may even have pinched my last bit of seed-cake. But there are certain things a chap doesn’t do.

I replaced the receiver.

‘You accept my offer?’ asked Miles.

‘No.’

He sighed. ‘I must say I am sincerely sorry. You are leaving so soon?’

I didn’t even finish my whisky.