The Summer of Sir Lancelot

by Gordon, Richard

  Miss Morgan-Griffiths pursed her lips. ‘On the same stretch of road, too, Mr Evans.‘

  ‘Six months‘ disqualification, I think, Miss Morgan-Griffiths?‘

  ‘A year I‘d say myself, Mr Evans.‘

  ‘Damnation, Evans,‘ Sir Lancelot burst out, ‘surely you must preserve some sense of proportion? This man is a most careful and considerate driver — ‘

  ‘But that‘s not evidence, Sir Lancelot, not evidence-‘

  ‘Damn the evidence!‘ Sir Lancelot thumped the desk. ‘You can‘t take Millichap‘s licence away.‘

  ‘Why not, pray?‘ demanded Miss Morgan-Griffiths.

  ‘Because how the hell would I get home from court?‘ Sir Lancelot explained crossly. ‘Not with a back like this.‘

  ‘We have our duty,‘ she declared, with a sharp wag of the trifle.

  Sir Lancelot eyed her like a trout who‘d refused his fly. ‘In that case I wish to make a special plea on behalf of the accused.‘

  ‘But, Sir Lancelot!‘ Mr Evans put a hand over his eyes, hoping heaven wouldn‘t overhear that one. ‘You can‘t defend the prisoner, man! Not from the Bench.‘

  ‘I‘m not on the blasted Bench. In spirit I‘m down there in the well of the court trying to inject some reasonable advocacy into the proceedings. Do you realize, Evans, you will be depriving this man not only of his licence but his livelihood? I assure you I cannot possibly afford to employ both Millichap and another chauffeur. He has a wife and children, Miss Morgan-Griffiths,‘ Sir Lancelot continued, with the air of Marshall Hall warming up at the Old Bailey. ‘Moreover, the poor fellow would be utterly lost in any employment but mine. He will go on the dole and even drift into a life of crime, causing misery to his family and eating great holes in the rates. You may he precipitating a ghastly human tragedy. Not something I‘d care to go to bed with on my conscience, Evans.‘

  ‘Well — ‘ faltered Mr Evans, who suffered badly from insomnia already. Millichap cleared his throat.

  ‘Your Worships, I happened to overhear the plea for leniency made on my behalf by Sir Lancelot, it was very moving, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart. But I could have saved him the trouble. In the past twelvemonth I‘ve got fair browned off driving all over the countryside on his little errands, and I‘ve been wanting an excuse to turn in this chauffeuring lark all winter. So I have today entered employment as gillie to a local gentleman, Mr Charles Chadwick — ‘

  ‘What!‘ Sir Lancelot quivered. ‘How dare you! You renegade! You turncoat! You rat! I‘ve employed you now for twenty years — ‘

  ‘But this has nothing whatever to do with the case!‘ cried Mr Evans, fluttering his handkerchief

  ‘How the devil can you — Evans, I do wish you‘d take something for that blasted cold - how the devil can you bring yourself to work for that blood-blister Chadwick?‘

  ‘Very simple reason, sir. Twice the wages.‘

  Sir Lancelot banged the desk, shaking the lion and unicorn overhead. ‘Have you no speck of loyalty, man?‘ he roared.

  ‘No, sir. Not after the miserable pay you‘ve been getting away with all these years. Half a mind to report it to the TUC, I have.‘

  ‘Really, really!‘ complained Mr Evans, glancing nervously not only at heaven but the reporter from the Brecknock Bugle as well.

  ‘Ye gods, what is the world coming to?‘ concluded Sir Lancelot, thumping the desk again and rattling the glass on the water jug, the windows, and Miss Morgan-Griffiths‘ teeth.

  ‘Next case, next case,‘ demanded Mr Evans hurriedly. ‘Twenty pounds, six months‘ disqualification.‘

  ‘Timothy Aldous Tolly,‘ announced the Clerk.

  Sir Lancelot paused. He looked up. He stroked his beard. His expression changed.

  ‘Well, well,‘ he said.

  His tone would have gone unnoticed only in Robespierre at his nastiest.

  ‘Well, well,‘ he repeated. ‘Timothy Aldous Tolly, eh?‘ He adjusted his glasses and Millichap was blotted from his mind by even blacker fogs of infamy. He squared his shoulders like a man settling down to a good dinner. ‘Proceed,‘ he directed.

  Tim stood in the dock feeling as confused as Alice during similar proceedings in Wonderland. This fellow Spratt, like the eye of God, seemed to be everywhere. While driving at twenty-eight mph to court his head had buzzed with ideas to ingratiate himself with the old man, from setting fire to his house and dragging him out of the flames — after, of course, rescuing Euphemia first - to writing respectfully for reprints of his latest papers in Gut. Now, he reflected, as Police Constable Howells recited the familiar story of wickedness, there would be rather more leeway to make up.

  ‘Disgusting,‘ pronounced Sir Lancelot. ‘Here are you, a registered medical practitioner, into whose hands unmerciful Providence has delivered the lives of this community, and you go hurtling about the countryside as though there were gross unemployment among coroners.‘

  ‘I think I can explain, sir — Your Worship.‘

  ‘Please do,‘ invited Sir Lancelot promptly.

  ‘I was on my way to a maternity case.‘

  ‘That does put rather a different light on it,‘ conceded Miss Morgan-Griffiths.

  ‘Rubbish. The good doctor sees he‘s given plenty of warning. Damn it, madam, the thing doesn‘t come out like a Polaris missile. Five pounds, licence endorsed,‘ Sir Lancelot ended briskly, ‘and I sincerely trust, young man, I shall not be seeing you here again. Next case.‘

  Timothy Aldous Tolly,‘ sang up the Clerk‘s voice.

  ‘No, we‘ve just had him.‘

  ‘Timothy Aldous Tolly,‘ repeated the Clerk.

  ‘Good grief,‘ muttered Sir Lancelot, ‘the man‘s a confirmed criminal.‘ It w as Police Constable Rees who took up the tale of lawlessness.

  ‘I do wish people would realize that parking their cars for hall an hour in the middle of the High Street on a busy Saturday morning is just as antisocial as laying sleepers across railway lines, and on occasion equally dangerous,‘ pronounced Sir Lancelot. ‘The country is paved with official car parks, but the younger generation seems totally incapable of walking more than twenty yards at a stretch. No wonder everyone‘s arteries resemble the stems of clay pipes.‘

  ‘I think I can explain, Your Worship,‘ Tim tried again.

  ‘Please do.‘

  ‘I had my bag with me. I was calling on a bed-ridden patient to administer an injection of intravenous iron.‘

  ‘Ah, an errand of mercy,‘ observed Mr Evans, with another glance in the direction of the Recording Angel.

  ‘Nonsense. If you take half an hour to get a needle into a vein, young man, you ought to be struck from the medical Register. As it is, I shall merely fine you forty shillings. Next case.‘

  ‘Timothy Aldous Tolly,‘ continued the Clerk.

  Trespassing, I see,‘ murmured Mr Evans, eyeing his list.

  ‘Had‘ Sir Lancelot rubbed his hands. ‘Now we‘re getting somewhere!‘ The case was in fact viewed by Sir Lancelot with strict impartiality, the prosecutor being a bad-tempered local farmer whom he disliked almost as much as he did Dr Tolly. He listened to the evidence in silence, but the black thoughts which had retired to the edge of his mind came scudding back thickly across his consciousness.

  ‘One moment — ‘ Sir Lancelot held up a hand. ‘Let us recapitulate. It appears, Tolly, you were encountered by the landowner on four separate occasions beside, if you please, a board announcing “Trespassers Will be Prosecuted”. You were making your way across his fields at quarter to seven in the morning?‘

  ‘Yes, Your Worship,‘ agreed Tim meekly.

  ‘An hour, Tolly, when you might consider yourself unlucky to meet anyone?‘

  ‘I - I suppose so, Your Worship.‘

  ‘Do you know where that path leads to, Tolly? To one spot, Witches‘ Pool. It brings me to suspect you were about to embark on the very much more serious crime of poaching.‘

  ‘Of course I wasn‘t.‘ Tim bit his lip. ‘I didn‘t even have a f
ishing-rod, did I?‘

  ‘Naturally,‘ rounded Sir Lancelot, like one of those tedious lawyers who always win on the telly, ‘you hid it under the hawthorn bush, as have several generations of local poachers.‘

  ‘But I don‘t even own a rod!‘ Tim burst out. ‘And as a matter of fact I think fishing is a pretty stupid pastime altogether, Your Worship.‘

  ‘Oh?‘ Sir Lancelot‘s beard jutted at him like the firing squad getting down to business. ‘Then what were you doing by Witches‘ Pool at that early hour?‘

  ‘I — I had an appointment.‘

  ‘Indeed?‘ scoffed Sir Lancelot. ‘May I ask with whom?‘

  ‘I‘m afraid I have no intention of telling you,‘ returned Tim calmly.

  ‘A likely tale! An appointment, begad! At seven o‘clock in the morning? I‘m not at all certain I shouldn‘t consider your committal for perjury.‘

  ‘Very well,‘ Tim countered briskly, ‘it was your niece, Your Worship.‘

  ‘My niece?‘

  ‘Yes, Euphemia.‘

  ‘There! I told you the feller was lying!‘ exclaimed Sir Lancelot in triumph. ‘He doesn‘t even know her.‘

  ‘On the contrary.‘ Nothing is quite so savage as the bite of a turned worm. ‘I‘ve met her before breakfast at Witches‘ Pool every morning for three weeks, Your Worship.‘

  Sir Lancelot stared. The penny dropped, like the blade of the guillotine.

  ‘Moreover,‘ continued Tim, discovering, doubtless like St George and the Dragon, it wasn‘t half as hard as it looked once you got started, ‘I want to marry her.‘

  ‘Marry her?‘ Sir Lancelot looked blank.

  ‘I fear we are getting rather away from the facts-‘ cut in Mr Evans.

  ‘Marry her?‘ repeated Sir Lancelot. ‘Do I hear aright? Look here, you direct descendant of Sweeney Todd - ‘

  ‘Sir Lancelot! This will never do!‘ Miss Morgan-Griffiths‘ trifle bobbed excitedly. ‘You must remember you are on the Bench — ‘

  ‘You‘ve as much chance of marrying that girl as marrying Cleopatra, and she‘s been dead two thousand years.‘

  ‘Oh, the Press, the Press!‘ cried Mr Evans, blowing a despairing note on his nose.

  ‘Evans, you must get an antrostomy done on that beastly sinus,‘ snapped Sir Lancelot. ‘Listen to me, you young rake — ‘

  ‘Save us!‘ added Mr Evans looking heavenwards, this time for the dividend.

  ‘You can think yourself damn lucky the old-fashioned practice of horsewhipping,‘ Sir Lancelot continued, straining across the desk, ‘which I regard as a perfectly healthy corrective for under-ripe Bluebeards like yourself, has unfortunately dropped from the — Ahhhhhhhh!‘

  Heaven obliged its faithful servant. The senior magistrate‘s back had gone again.

  I can briefly describe the exits of our principals in this courtroom drama. Constable Rees and the Clerk bore Sir Lancelot to the retiring-room. Miss Morgan-Griffiths dabbed his forehead with her eau-de-Cologne. Mr Evans adjourned the case sine die. The reporter from the Brecknock Bugle started writing MEDICAL MAGISTRATE HAS SEIZURE ON BENCH. Constables Howells and Jenkins drove the invalid home in his Rolls.

  ‘Ye gods,‘ was all he could manage to utter on the way, ‘what is the world coining to?‘

  He screwed down the window as the car halted in his front drive.

  ‘Euphemia,‘ Sir Lancelot invited, ‘I should like a little word with you.

  4

  ‘Nurse Spratt,‘ announced the Sister in Virtue Ward, ‘Matron wants you immediately.‘

  ‘Yes, Sister,‘ said Euphemia.

  I fear we should hardly recognize the girl sporting gaily by the river bank and dancing barefoot on dew-spangled lawns. Like all young ladies starting at St Swithin‘s, Euphemia had been put through the de-sexing machine they seemed to keep down in the Matron‘s office.

  ‘You may leave polishing those bedpans till you come back, Nurse.‘

  ‘Yes, Sister.‘

  ‘And Nurse James can sort your soiled bed-linen for you.,

  ‘I have already done it, Sister.‘

  ‘Oh? Well, make yourself tidy, Nurse. I don‘t want you a disgrace to the ward.‘

  ‘I hope I should never be that, Sister,‘ asserted Euphemia, dropping her eyes.

  Sister Virtue nodded. Not a woman given to generous assessment of her staff- she reduced three or four a week to tears as regularly as she ate her breakfast —she was forced to admit that Nurse Spratt‘s approach to her job like a maniac stakhanovite, combined with the girl‘s demeanour in her own presence of a particularly self-effacing worm, raised her slightly from the level of the pert gadflies they seemed to let into the hospital these days.

  ‘Very well, Nurse. Don‘t forget not to speak until the Matron addresses you.‘

  It was a Thursday morning three weeks later, at the toothsome kernel of the English year w hen the second Test is starting at Lord‘s, Wimbledon waits to ping into life the following Monday, Royal Ascot froths with hats and champagne, the London parks greet you with a fanfare of roses, and strawberries are down to half-a-crown a punnet. Usually, of course, all this is carried on under a monsoon lost on the way to Assam, but that summer the weather was giving a gala performance, and the sun which dappled the contentious surface of Witches‘ Pool pierced the London haze and the dusty plane trees to flood the venerable soot-pickled courtyard of St Swithin‘s Hospital.

  That courtyard hasn‘t much changed since I first edged in nervously as a student, with a brand-new stethoscope sticking out of my pocket and a brand-new collar sticking into my neck. In fact, it hasn‘t much changed since Wren stood thoughtfully licking his pencil over the smoking ruins of Old St Paul‘s. The inscription across the main gate announcing SUPPORTED ENTIRELY BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS has at last been chiselled out, the place having been supported for some years by entirely involuntary ones from the taxpayer. The nurses‘ dresses now show another daring inch of calf, and those lady medical students would in my day have caused as much flurry as the Dagenham Girl Pipers marching through the Athenaeum. But the patients sitting quietly under the trees drawing strength from the London sun look exactly the same. Perhaps they are. The complaints of some of them were extremely chronic.

  There was a crash from the main gate. A hospital dustbin rolled across the courtyard, emitting a mixture of used bandages and uneaten chips. A Rolls-Royce had halted under the red notice demanding SILENCE with its horn baying. A red-faced, bearded, old-fashioned-looking Englishman had his head out of the driver‘s window, addressing a youth pushing a hand-trolley.

  ‘I don‘t give a damn if you are possessed of some perverted ambition to see inside the orthopaedic wards,‘ he was observing, ‘as long as you don‘t achieve it by denting my highly expensive coachwork.‘

  ‘You oughter look where you‘re going, you oughter,‘ rounded the youth.

  ‘Young man — it so happens this is the only place in London where other people are expected to look where I am going... Morning, Dicky,‘

  Sir Lancelot added amiably through the window in the direction of the Professor of Surgery. ‘Have you heard? England won the toss and Australia are fielding. Turnbull was out first ball.‘

  He drove across the courtyard, and parked on the far side in a space labelled CHAIRMAN OF THE GOVERNORS ONLY.

  ‘Oh no!‘ exclaimed the Professor‘s Registrar, beside his chief. ‘To think we were talking ot that particular devil only this morning.‘

  He fingered the latest copy of The Countess in the pocket of his white coat.

  ‘Well, well,‘ murmured the Professor. ‘We must utter a pious hope, I suppose, that the visitation is only a temporary one?‘

  He gave a smooth smile. Professor Richard Hindehead was a youngish man with a pale smooth complexion, smooth dark hair, long smooth hands, a voice which smoothed the most unwilling patients into surgery, and shirts which somehow stayed smooth to the end of a whole day‘s emergency duty.

  ‘But he‘d become such an utter hermit in
Wales,‘ protested Paul Ivors-Smith, the Registrar. ‘He‘d cancelled all his medical journals and resigned from the BMA — rather rudely, I gather.‘

  ‘Yes, the poor fellow was becoming very peculiar towards the end,‘ agreed the Professor, resuming their walk from the lecture theatre towards the surgical block. ‘Good morning, Nurse,‘ he broke off smoothly. ‘Enjoying life on your new ward? I‘m so glad.‘

  Paul Ivors-Smith, a tall, fair-haired, droopy young surgeon in his thirties, thoughtfully stroked his chin. He hadn‘t much of it, but it did for the purpose.

  ‘I would make no secret,‘ Professor Hindehead continued, ‘that Slasher Spratt‘s translation into a Cambrian troglodyte bettered your chance of becoming one of my colleagues instead of one of my staff.‘

  ‘You mean getting that vacancy as a consultant?‘

  The Professor nodded. ‘Exactly. The post must be advertised, of course, but that is merely a formality. You‘ve only one serious rival, Simon Sparrow. Luckily for us, his sponsor Cambridge is utterly useless in committee. He simply sits drawing extraordinary animals on his blotting paper. With Slasher hors de combat you can certainly rely on me to swing things in your favour. Good morning, Mr Jeavons,‘ he interrupted himself. ‘Stitches out yesterday? Good. Why, you‘ll be swimming at the seaside in a couple of weeks.‘

  Paul anxiously twitched his old school tie. ‘The committee might elect some brilliant outsider,‘ he suggested. ‘From New Zealand or... Manchester, or somewhere.‘

  ‘My dear boy, we never elect outsiders at St Swithin‘s. It tends to make us a race of intellectual Pitcairn Islanders, but at least one knows where one is.‘ The Professor gave a sigh. ‘And brilliant men are so often quite unreliable in matters of dress, eating habits, or political views. Anyway, Paul,‘ he ended more briskly, ‘your work on the new steroid alone deserves the recognition of consultant status.‘

  ‘Awfully good of you to say so, sir.‘

  ‘How's Sir John, by the way?‘ the Professor added casually.

  ‘Father‘s in fine form, thanks. He hopes you‘ll come to dine soon. Oh, and — ‘ Paul shot a glance over his shoulder, ‘he says to sell your holding of Imperial Coppers.‘