Doctor On The Ball

by Richard Gordon

  ‘You’ve done terrible harm just by appearing here.’

  He was pained. ‘I’m just claiming my paternity rights, ain’t I! No one’s said nuffink about my feelings in the matter, I’ve noticed. No one’s come to me and said, “Ow, Kevin, ow delightful, without you we’d never ave got the old cow off the ground.” I ave given Mrs Iles of my body, and I definitely ave a 50 per cent interest in the action, I wanna see my offspring’s reared proper. Natural instincts. No one’s gonna argue with that. If they do, I’ll soon effin well change their effin mind for them, geddit?’ He flicked his knife again.

  I was thinking busily during the declaration of paternal solicitude. ‘What’s in it for you, young feller?’

  ‘Nuffink. Can’t a bloke even say ’ello to a woman wot e’s screwed by remote control!

  ‘As you noticed, I’m the bleedin doctor. I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  He sprawled on the sofa, contentedly exhaling cigar smoke. ‘OK. Now I’m one of the family, they gotta keep me in style. Can’t ave me going round skint, not when I done the old sod’s job for im. Stands to reason.’ He reached out and helped himself to a handful of assorted cocktail biscuits.

  ‘So you intend to live here with free Scotch and cigars until the child goes to school, if not gets married?’

  ‘You’re learnin,’ he complimented me.

  I had an inspiration. I crossed the front hall, flicking through my appointments dairy. I dialled the discreet doctor. An answering machine informed me he had left on a month’s holiday.

  I cursed. I paused reflectively on the parquet. It needed a cool professional mind. It struck me, as it did Lady Macbeth, that what’s done cannot be undone. Mr Iles came stumbling downstairs, glassy-eyed. I invited him to discuss the unfortunate situation on the patio. He nodded, absently picking up a packet of baby rusks.

  ‘We must be constructive,’ I began.

  ‘All right. How?’

  ‘I have taken a detached view of your emotional predicament, and found the only answer,’

  ‘Wonderful!’ he exclaimed, mouth full of baby rusks.

  ‘First, you’ve got to face it. That pink-haired punk is the father of your child. It’s inescapable.’

  He howled, beating his fist into his palm and scattering rusks over the crazy paving.

  ‘Unfortunately, that’s no crime. It was by invitation. I suppose you could nail him for trespassing, but if you took him to court he’d retreat using your dirty washing for flying colours.’

  ‘Every time I look at him I want to fumigate the furniture.’

  ‘People do seem to take their maternity, paternity, gay and lesbian rights so seriously these days. Look at those American tennis players.’

  Mr Iles muttered impatiently, ‘As we can’t simply return his donation with thanks, what next?’

  I pronounced, ‘Probably the wisest course is for you and Thelma to adopt him.’

  Mr Iles tried to push me into the pool.

  I felt this a poor reward for imaginative and logical thinking. I bid him good afternoon. I was eager to enjoy my apple pie.

  21

  Rebuffed, I determined to leave the broody Ileses in their nest with the live-in cuckoo. Overnight, I reflected that I had precipitated a genetic mess which could not be cleaned up, but might be swept decently under the carpet. It was Saturday, with a busy morning surgery. I applied constructive thought while enjoying my fat-free cottage cheese and low-calorie yoghurt.

  The telephone rang. It was Mr Iles, hysterical.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I muttered hurriedly, reaching for my bag.

  ‘But you haven’t finished your lunch. What’s the matter with the man?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she’s swallowed a month’s supply of tranquillizers.’

  Sandra reminded mc, ‘You’re playing golf with Jack Windrush at two.’

  I reached for my clubs as well. ‘I’ll drive straight on, unless it’s inconveniently fatal.’

  Through the half-open patio door I observed Mr and Mrs Iles, Kevin and a teenage girl with green hair.

  ‘It’s the bleedin doctor again,’ Kevin greeted me amiably, waving his Havana. ‘Must be ard up, goin round toutin for custom.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded ferociously of the female.

  ‘She’s my wife,’ Kevin supplied. ‘Common-law.’

  ‘Hiya.’ She took the cigarette from her mouth. ‘Christ, the bleedin fags in this ouse taste of sawdust.’

  ‘Get out,’ I ordered, pointing helpfully.

  ‘I ain’t gonna leave me usband,’ she objected shrilly. ‘Not likely. Oojer fink you are, splittin up families?’

  ‘Partickerlary,’ Kevin pointed out, ‘as Karen’s auntie to my unborn baby.’

  Mrs Iles broke her silence with hysterical screaming, but happily avoided a faint.

  ‘Edgar, pour a large Scotch for the doctor,’ Kevin commanded.

  ‘I am going to tie the barbecue round my neck and jump into the pool,’ Mr Iles declared, beating his head with his fists.

  ‘Calm down, everybody,’ I directed sternly. ‘The relationships of Mrs Iles’ coming child are admittedly complex. Doubtless they can be clarified after the happy event. Possibly the College of Heralds can be of help. Meanwhile, the situation calls for constructive thought. Now listen – oh, Edgar, do take Thelma upstairs and stop her screaming. I’ll meet you on the patio. Thank you. Now listen, you pair of died-in-the-hair villains,’ I continued when we were alone. ‘You’re not going to use this place as an up-market dosshouse, even if Kevin’s impregnated Mrs Iles with sextuplets.’

  ‘Oo, ark at im!’ Karen giggled. ‘Language!’

  ‘Reely, I’m surprised at you, talking like that,’ said Kevin hurtfully. ‘I ave a delicate and beautiful relationship wiv Thelma, OK? Can’t deny it, neither me nor er. But wot do you suppose me own lovely wife finks about it? Wot would your wife fink, if you came in one night and said, “Ho, by the way me old darlin, hi ham to be the father of another woman’s child”?’

  ‘That’s an utterly outrageous comparison.’

  Karen giggled again. ‘Wouldn’t put it past im, randy lot of sods them doctors, you’d never believe wot that one in Camden Town did to me, said I’d go blind otherwise, the cheek. Mind, e looked more like a witchdoctor if you ask me.’

  I declared in exasperation, ‘Your lovely wife thinks exactly as you do – now you’ve serviced Mrs Iles, you want to extract the largest possible stud fee.’

  ‘Well, we’ve nowhere else to go,’ Kevin pointed out with finality. ‘Unless you’d like to take us in? Maybe I can do the same favour for your own old woman, if she ain’t well past it?’

  I told him what I thought of him.

  ‘Oooo!’ cried Karen, hands over ears. ‘Whereja suppose e learned words like that?’

  Mr Iles was distractedly pacing the patio. I kept him between me and the pool.

  ‘I’ve got to adopt her as well, I suppose?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Why not their whole bloody families at the same time, save a lot of bother as they’re liable to move in by the busload any moment.’

  ‘Relax, relax.’ I gripped his elbow. ‘I smell a cellarful of rats. Dial 999.’

  ‘Not on your Nelly.’

  I was startled. ‘Don’t you and Thelma want to stand at the front gate waving your handkerchiefs while they’re driven off in a van with flashing blue lights?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, then consult some crafty solicitor. Do you know, there’s nothing whatever in the law to stop an AID mother claiming a court order to unmask the father and getting maintenance for life? Any hint of Kevin paying a penny for his own child, he’d be off quicker than a dirty nappie.’

  ‘You and your constructive thought,’ he complained bitterly. ‘If I had them arrested for anything from blackmail to squatting, all would come out in open court. You said as much yourself. I’ve told the entire biscuit factory the baby is all my own work. What will they think if I stand in the witness box and c
onfess my pathetic lack of virility? It would have a disastrous effect on labour relations, for a start.’

  I countered, ‘What’s the Kevin pustule do all day in the house?’

  ‘Drink and watch telly.’

  ‘Let’s leave them for a bit, while we think even more constructively. After all, they’ll be no more trouble about the place than a pair of Great Danes.’

  He said doubtfully, ‘But my poor wife suffers vomiting of pregnancy – she throws up every time she sets eyes on this awful youth.’

  ‘Send her home to Mother,’ I suggested brightly.

  ‘But what about me? I want to vomit whenever I look at him, too.’

  I prescribed a pregnancy anti-emetic for them both. I was eager to enjoy my golf.

  A week passed. I played golf with Jack Windrush again. On my way home, I called on the Ileses. My meals not having been disturbed by further frenzied phone calls, I assumed the spare pair of parents had been shed.

  They were all four enjoying a hot dinner, with a bottle of Blue Nun.

  I slipped through the patio doors.

  ‘Why, the doctor,’ Mr Iles called cheerfully above the laughter. ‘Kevin, my dear lad, pour him a Scotch. Karen, love, help Thelma to more stuffing and take another slice for yourself. Excuse me if I go and have a little consultation on the patio.’

  ‘Are you euphoric?’ I demanded outside. ‘Like hostages who fawn on their captors?’

  ‘I decided temporarily to accept the situation,’ he explained. ‘Like Sindbad the Sailor with the Old Man of the Sea on his back. And after all,’ he reflected, ‘Kevin and Karen aren’t such bad youngsters at heart.’

  ‘Personally, I think they make Bonnie and Clyde look like the Bisto kids.’

  ‘Maybe they’re just misunderstood at home, by society and so on,’ he continued dreamily. ‘It’s quite unrealistic, expecting everyone in the world to behave as if they were members of Churchford Golf Club. They’ve simply been deprived of cultural opportunities. Thelma and I are already planning visits to the public library, antique boutiques, the local ruins. Yes, they’re a jolly, lively pair, once you get to know them,’ he revealed. ‘Full of fun and good-natured teasing. And it makes a change, young laughter echoing through the house, even at all hours of the day and night. When the infant arrives,’ he ended determinedly, ‘we’ll be just one happy, integrated family, though mind you, their language is terrible, and you cannot leave so much as a second-class postage stamp around or they nick it.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ I exploded. ‘Don’t you realize, this callous couple of crooks will lounge about freeloading until they’re bored, then scarper with everything in the house not actually fixed down with six-inch screws? Probably invite some of their equally jolly and lively young friends to come and help themselves.’

  ‘If only somebody would tell me what to do,’ he said pathetically.

  ‘I keep telling you what to do.’

  ‘I mean, tell me what to do that I wanted to do.’

  ‘Bribe them,’ I suggested constructively. ‘You must be worth a bob or two? Everyone munches biscuits, even in world recessions.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they just spend the money and come back?’ He wiped away a tear. ‘I’ve nothing left but a brave face. This is a situation totally unknown in the history of parenthood since the Garden of Eden.’

  I left. I was eager to enjoy my evening Glenfiddich.

  The following weekend Mrs Iles appeared at evening surgery.

  ‘Thought I’d better have a check-up, doctor, to see the baby’s unaffected by that nasty experience.’

  ‘Ha! They’ve taken their leave?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear?’ She was amazed. ‘It’s all round Churchford, five in the morning police arrived, hundreds of them, with walkie-talkies and Alsatians, surrounded the house and took them off in handcuffs, it was better than the telly.’ She sat across the consulting desk like a cat which had had a narrow escape but still counted nine lives. ‘It was all a con job, you see, they burgled my doctor in Wimpole Street, stole his appointments book, and used it to terrify families all over the Home Counties until they were bought off. Edgar won’t even need stand up in court. They’re wanted for a whole catalogue of crimes from grievous bodily harm to shoplifting.’

  I exclaimed, ‘What a worry lifted for both of us! And now your baby’s parentage will remain an inviolate secret for ever and ever. Amen!’

  Andy had arrived home for dinner. I opened a bottle of Bruichladdich.

  ‘How’s Imogen?’

  ‘Ah, Imogen. We decided we were incompatible. It was all perfectly amiable. When we parted, she said she would give me first refusal of her kidneys on her donor card.’

  Briefly condoling, I leaned against the mantelpiece to recount with relish the Ileses’ pregnancy drama.

  Andy grinned. ‘The Wimpole Street wank bank! I think all the donors are medical students.’

  ‘Medical students! A turn-off for the prospective mothers, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ah, the vulgar Dickens’ Bob Sawyer image,’ Andy corrected me.

  ‘Even the refined Thackeray called medical students rakish, gallant, dashing and dirty.’

  ‘Well, didn’t we play up to it, Dad, both of us? It was fun, made us exciting to girls, and perhaps the horrors wouldn’t have been tolerable otherwise. Medical students are highly responsible young persons, or they wouldn’t be let in. And they know all about hereditary diseases. Did you hear that Italian women are mad on English medics? Well, on their sperm. Just imagine the Ileses’ situation in reverse – some twenty-year-old Italian raver invading a middle-aged doctors’ conference in London demanding Daddy?’

  I laughed heartily.

  ‘Must have made a useful few quid out of Wimpole Street, when I was a student,’ he reflected nostalgically.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes, my specimens were frozen. Funny thing, I ran into the sperm-mongering doctor at St Swithin’s about a couple of months ago, and he mentioned he was just getting round to using my donations.’

  Sandra entered as my whisky glass crashed to the hearth.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she exclaimed in alarm.

  ‘I am Mrs Iles’ baby’s grandfather,’ I told her. ‘What’s for dinner?’

  22

  Christmas is coming, and I still have not retired.

  From a shop long remembered behind Edinburgh Castle, I ordered a case of selected single malts – Auchentoshan, Inchgower, Dalwhinnie, Tullibardine, Ladyburn, Craigellachie, Rosebank, Bunnahabhain. Lovely names. Lovely whisky.

  It arrived at breakfast-time.

  ‘You mustn’t drink too much over Christmas,’ Sandra uttered the routine warning.

  ‘As every medical student knows, alcohol dilates the coronary arteries.’

  ‘I can’t understand why you tipple so. The whole family for Christmas dinner should be stimulating enough. Everyone knows what a scream my brother George is.’

  ‘I’ll tell you why.’ I screwed up my eyes. ‘I quote the Victorian novelist Marcus Clarke – “Pleasing images flock to my brain, the fields break into flower, the birds into song, the sea gleams sapphire, the warm heaven laughs. Great God! what man could withstand a temptation like this?” Mind, he was writing about an alcoholic parson on an Australian convict settlement.’

  Sandra silently cleared away breakfast, unmoved by English literature.

  It was a bleak Monday morning. The young Bellwethers, married last autumn, arrived at the surgery with a dead cat.

  They unwrapped it from the Guardian on my consulting desk, cold and stiff. It appeared a sad case of feline hypothermia.

  ‘Spent the night in our deep-freeze,’ Herbert Bellwether informed me solemnly.

  The tragedy flashed upon my mind like the apocalypse. The couple delving for the oven-ready chips, tabby inflamed by the unleashed tang of fish fingers, the lid carelessly slammed, piteous miaows unheard, supper eaten and telly watched, fruitless puss-pusses throughout their little home, with the br
eakfast bacon stark revelation.

  ‘Rotten luck,’ I sympathized. ‘Though the end was probably painless.’

  ‘I mean, the body spent the night in our deep-freeze.’

  I was puzzled. ‘Wouldn’t you be better off calling at the vet’s? Though it rather looks as if nothing can be done at this stage.’

  ‘This cat is a doctor’s problem cat,’ he insisted quietly.

  I started. Rabies! It was raging chronically among cross-Channel cats. From Boulogne to Bordeaux people were frothing at the mouth and shying at their bottles of Perrier. I recalled posters at the ports more intimidating than the Customs men, and coastal magistrates regretful at an inability to have pet smugglers put down.

  ‘Who’s it bitten?’ I demanded anxiously.

  ‘Can’t you see, doctor?’ Julie Bellwether pointed tearfully. ‘She’s been shot in the neck.’

  ‘How extraordinary. It’s nice of you to let me have a look, but I’d suggest you display the corpse to the RSPCA. They must be hot stuff on feline murder.’

  ‘It happened at the General Hospital,’ Herbert added.

  I became lost in a blizzard of bewilderment.

  The Bellwethers had been my patients since childhood. Herbert wore a beard and an anorak and ran a garden centre. Julie had straight hair and big round glasses and helped at a nursery school. They were an ideally suited gentle couple, who believed the world would be a better place if it renounced nuclear weapons and ate compost-grown veg.

  I inquired, ‘Some disturbed patient ran amok with an automatic? I do hope he did not similarly shoot his psychiatrist?’

  ‘On Sunday afternoon they had a cat shootout,’ Herbert explained.

  ‘I don’t think I follow?’

  ‘You know we live right against the hospital? Well, a man appeared beyond our back garden fence with a rifle and started firing at cats. He got six, including Samantha.’

  I mentioned, ‘Do you think we might have the cat wrapped up again? Thank you so much.’

  ‘She was in such lovely condition,’ said Julie anguishedly. ‘I cry every time I see her unopened tins of cat food.’

  ‘But surely someone must have noticed a man spending his Sunday afternoon going round shooting cats?’