A Seaside Practise

by Tom Smith

  ‘Ah, le médecin est arrivé,’ he shouted. ‘Va t’en, Docteur. Ce n’est pas ton affaire.’

  I gathered that I wasn’t particularly welcome. That wasn’t the view of the police inspector. I stood behind the yew tree with him, and he filled me in on what had happened. A holidaymaker had passed by the house early that morning and had been told to go away or be shot. The visitor’s response had been to call the police, who had duly arrived in a car with blue light flashing. That was mistake number one.

  The second mistake was to try to arrest the doctor. He had run upstairs, climbed like a cat burglar out of the dormer window in the roof, and walked up the slates onto the apex of the roof, that stretched between the chimneys at the gable ends. There he would stay until all the ‘foreigners’ left his premises.

  No one was going to leave him in that state, and when this dawned on him, he started throwing slates. One or two had narrowly missed the police officers, and when Willie Tait arrived as support, he had suggested me as their saviour.

  I wasn’t feeling best pleased with Willie at this point, but had to concede that Dr Marshbank needed medical help. Somehow we had to persuade him down from the roof, and get him to a place of safety – which for the time being meant the Ayr psychiatric unit.

  The slates stopped flying, and Dr Marshbank took to walking along the rooftop between the two chimneys. It looked a dangerous pastime, as the top tiles were curved, and the balance needed for the feat was similar to that of a tightrope walker. He didn’t seem in the least unsteady as he watched us, while keeping up his walk. He turned at each chimney and walked back without a hint that he might fall.

  ‘Someone had better go up there and try to talk to him,’ I said. The police inspector, Willie, the fire chief and the ambulance man all agreed, then looked at me.

  ‘I’m not good at heights,’ I said, weakly.

  ‘You’re the professional, Doc,’ said Willie, not unkindly.

  The firemen pushed a ladder up against the wall. No slates came our way. Dr Marshbank looked on curiously from his perch, leaning against one chimney, saying nothing. The top of the ladder rested above the guttering, and a hefty fireman stayed at the bottom to hold it in place. I walked forward and started to climb. The doctor stayed where he was, watching me closely. I clambered onto the roof.

  The firemen passed me up a shorter ladder with a hook at the end, to fix it over the top of the roof. I slid it upwards, and it held fast. Dr Marshbank allowed me to climb up it, laboriously, flattening myself against the rungs as I did so. I reached the top and sat astride the roof, facing him. It started to rain. I felt the cold water permeate through my trousers. I shuffled towards him, inch by inch, unable to loosen my grip of the rooftop for fear of falling.

  My quarry was now facing me, angry that I had invaded his space. He towered above me, drawing himself fully upright, standing on the top of the roof, not even holding on to the chimney with one hand.

  He put his right hand into his jacket pocket, and drew out a black object that I couldn’t at first see in detail: my glasses were covered with raindrops, and I had to take them off and wipe them with a handkerchief. I shuffled closer, saying to him that I just wanted to speak to him, and had no intention to harm him.

  The lenses now clear, I saw that the object was a children’s toy gun, just like the ones you could buy from Woolworths. He waved it at me, up and down.

  ‘If you come any nearer, I’ll shoot,’ he shouted, this time in English. I was encouraged by the change of language. That seemed to suggest that he was perhaps a little closer to normality than a few minutes before. I shuffled forward again, near enough to reach his outstretched hand.

  ‘Be careful,’ I said, ‘waving that about might make you fall. I’ll just take it.’

  I simply reached forward and pulled the toy gun from his hand. It was heavier than I thought it would be. I tossed it down to the ground beside the police inspector, and edged a little closer. All I wanted to do was to talk for a while, to try to calm him.

  I obviously had got too close. Two events followed in quick succession. First Dr Marshbank made a run for it. He jumped down to the top of the dormer window, used the finial above it as a lever, and swung out into space. For a moment I thought he was lost – falling over the side of the roof onto the hillside far below us. But he was more agile than I thought. His body described a graceful arc in space, and he crashed downwards feet first through the glass of the window into the bedroom below. I heard later that he had been ‘apprehended’ there by two burly ambulance men, and quickly sedated with an injection.

  Why did I hear this later? Because of the second event.

  While I was beginning to back off the roof, still straddling it, towards the ladder, there was a loud bang from the garden below. I peered though my wet glasses to see the inspector gazing at the barrel of the toy gun. There was now a bullet hole in the yew tree alongside the slates.

  The inspector looked up at me.

  ‘That was a real gun, doc. You were bloody lucky,’ he called.

  I’d like to say I took the news in my stride, but I didn’t. I clung to the sides of the roof with all four limbs and started to shiver. I shook so hard that I dislodged even more slates. I couldn’t stop shivering. I was totally unable to move my arms and legs.

  One of the firemen leapt up the ladders to reach me, and carried me down, in a genuine fireman’s lift. I was hardly able to stand when I reached the ground. The enormity of the risk I had taken had reduced me to a shaking wreck. I was helped to my car, and Willie Tait offered to drive me home. As I sat in the passenger seat, a man walked over to greet me.

  It was Vivian Lewis. He had witnessed the whole event, from the moment I had climbed on to the roof.

  ‘You have got the job,’ he said, grinning. ‘I’d better get you out of this practice before you get killed.’

  We left Collintrae three months later, to start our new life. We didn’t use the brick lorry for the move. The last few weeks were heartrending as we said goodbye to so many patients who had become friends, and to all our colleagues. Leaving the house was a wrench, too, but it was tempered by the fact that we had bought a cottage in the district, between Kilminell and Braehill, where we would return as often as possible.

  The new job was certainly different. In the beginning I saw much more of the children, and Mairi could devote her time to them as she had never been able to before. We found out what was causing Catriona’s infections. A year after the move, she developed appendicitis, and at the operation the surgeon found that the appendix had been lying across her ureter – the tube between the right kidney and the bladder. The infections stopped when the offending appendix was removed. She never looked back.

  Dr Marshbank responded excellently to treatment, becoming completely well and living another twenty years happily at Cranhill. He never spoke French again. One day he and his wife were picnicking on the Collintrae beach when two young boys got into trouble in the receding tide. He responded to their calls for help by running into the sea and rescuing them, pulling them safely to shore before collapsing and dying where he lay. He was in his eightieth year.

  The tattie howkers were replaced by machinery in the late 1980s, and a lot of colour went out of the Collintrae scene when they disappeared.

  I was replaced by two doctors, a man and wife team who worked together for one salary. So the local medical committee had their wish, of employing two doctors for the cost of one. Thankfully that has changed. More than thirty years later, the practice has two-and-a-half doctors (one works part time in the district general hospital). They are paid and supported appropriately. It’s a good arrangement, they are excellent doctors and I count them as good friends.

  After seven years in the south we returned to the Stinchar Valley to write, and to help out friends as their locum. From time to time I still work in Collintrae for a d
ay or so, which is how I know how my old patients and friends are managing. I do regular locum stints for other doctor friends along the Solway coast, and occasionally in the Highlands and Islands. General practice is different now, and the old doctor-patient relationship has gone, replaced by a more efficient Health Service machine. We are told it’s better for both patients and doctors, but I miss it.

  Then there’s Jenny. One of my first tasks in my new job was to help write the official reports of the trials of a new drug treatment for chorionepithelioma. It turned the tumour into a benign growth that could be removed, safely and completely. From a disease that was one hundred per cent fatal, it became one that was one hundred per cent curable. I only wish we had had it for Jenny Plum.

  ENDS

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