“What the blazes…?” I said, shaking him.
“Ain’t no good doing that, man,” a voice from the back of the car said, “he’s switched on.”
“Who switched him?”
“I did, man.”
I opened the back door. Lying full length on the seat was something that looked like a cross between an unwashed cowboy and a drunk Red Indian. I had had enough for one evening. Taking hold of his fringed jacket I heaved him out and onto the pavement, where he wrapped himself affably round the lamp post. I picked up the unconscious Watkins, no easy task as he must have been a solid thirteen stone, and spread him out on the back seat. I then put myself into the driver’s seat, shut the door and prepared to do battle with the controls, the like of which I had not seen before. I prayed that I would deliver the car back to Olivia Duke in one piece, also that it was insured for unnamed drivers. Saying my prayers, I turned the ignition switch and set off the burglar alarm. The almighty row brought the whole street running, not to mention the costumed masses from what had once been my house but was now Fred’s.
Sick and tired I put my head in my hands and waited for the police.
It was Olivia Duke who bailed me out at the police station, but not until I had been breathalysed, blood-tested, grilled and cross-questioned until I felt like a criminal of the lowest order.
No, I had not stolen the Rolls. No, it did not belong to me. No, I had not slugged the unconscious Watkins. No, I had not switched him on. No, I did not know who switched him on. Yes, they were my own dangerous drugs. Yes, I was a doctor. Yes, I was on my way to visiting a patient. Yes, my own car had been stolen under the very noses of the police.
Olivia came straight from a cabaret performance in a sequinned dress that left little to the imagination.
“You poor darling,” she said, flinging her arms round me. “You, poor, poor, darling. What an absolutely frightful day you’ve had!”
“Not a bad ending,” the police Superintendent muttered.
“You mind your own business,” I said. “If you can’t look after people’s cars when they’re left under your very nose…”
“Shush!” Olivia put a finger on my lips. “He needs a drink.”
“Horlicks!” I said quickly, as the Superintendent opened his mouth.
It was still open as Olivia hustled me out of the police station, followed by a dozen pairs of eyes.
Olivia drove and poor Maureen Clarke’s mother had to get out of bed to open the door.
“Sorry to have been so long,” I said. “I was held up. Emergency.” I tested Maureen’s urine and was not surprised to discover that it indicated that she had toxaemia of pregnancy. I told her mother to keep her in bed until I called in the morning.
Back in Church Row, St Saviour’s had long past chimed the witching hour and all was quiet.
As Olivia, her arm entwined in mine, escorted me up the garden path, Sylvia, in her dressing-gown, opened the front door.
She looked at the Rolls outside and then at Olivia in her near nudity.
“And where, may I ask, have you been?”
I thought of her sitting on the floor at Fred’s party, what seemed light years ago, when she had sworn she was staying at home to start her book.
“I think you’ve got a damned cheek,” I said, “to ask.”
Seventeen
There were rows and rows. This was the very lulu of them all and might have continued all night had it not been for the parsimony of the builders of our town house. When Olivia had gone, leaving me with the imprint of her lipstick upon my cheek and the aura of her perfume on my coat, we faced each other from opposite corners of the hall like prize-fighters.
Sylvia opened: “Do you know the time?”
“Perfectly well.”
“Well, perhaps you wouldn’t mind explaining where you’ve been?”
“As a matter of fact I would.”
“Would what?”
“Mind.”
“Why?”
“Because first I would like to know what you were doing like some tramp with all those pushers at Fred’s when you swore to me you were going to stay at home and start your book.”
“Well, I was.”
“That’s your story. You made absolutely certain though that I’d be out the way by conniving with Caroline to ask me to dinner…”
“I did not connive!”
“…while you sneaked out, leaving our poor innocent children…”
“Mrs Glossop’s Renee came to baby-sit.”
“…our poor innocent children…”
“She didn’t even have any clothes on!”
“Who? Mrs Glossop’s Renee?”
“No, that woman!”
“Are you referring…?”
“Yes, I am. You seem to be getting more and more involved…”
“I can explain everything.”
“…usually in the small hours of the morning…”
“At least I do not sit around stoned with a whole lot of…”
“I was not stoned!”
“And what on earth were you wearing?”
There was silence for a moment.
“The nursery curtains.”
“And not even taking any notice when I called you.”
“I am not a dog!”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“And will not come trotting.”
“You’re my wife and you’ll do as I say!”
“I will not. I suppose you have never heard of equal rights for women?”
“Ever since you’ve had the prospects of earning tuppence ha’penny for yourself from that lousy book, which hasn’t even been published…”
“Don’t you dare!”
“…you’ve been absolutely impossible!”
“You seem to forget that before we were married I was earning ten times as much as you were, as a highly successful model…”
“I often wondered what you had to do for it.”
I defended myself as she lunged for my hair. “You lousy…”
“Sylvia!”
“How dare you!” she screamed. “Anyway, you can talk! Carrying on with that tarted-up bitch, when everyone knows that she’s married, or rather not married to an old faggot and just looking for…”
I held my hand firmly over her mouth until she bit me. I let go and she kicked my shins.
“You’ll apologise for that!” I yelled, hopping on one foot.
“I’ll do no such thing. If anyone needs to apologise it’s…”
I never heard because at that moment there was a loud and persistent knocking sound. We stood, frozen, listening.
“There’s someone at the door,” Sylvia hissed.
I opened the front door. There was no one there but down the length of Church Row a head hung from every window.
“It’s next door,” Sylvia said, when I’d closed the door again.
“Listen?”
I listened.
The knocking seemed to come from the middle of the staircase.
I knocked back at the identical spot and Diana Pilkington’s upper-class voice said:
“I’m frightfully sorry to interrupt, but Sissil has to get up in the morning!”
“Town House,” I hissed, nursing my shin, “you can’t even talk to your wife without…”
“Talk!” Sylvia shrieked. “If you call that talking…”
This time the knocking was louder.
The sight of the faces out of the window had made me recover my temper. I put my arm round Sylvia.
“Come on,” I said, “let Sissil get to sleep. And if we want to show our faces in the morning it will have to be in diguise.”
“Its is morning,” Sylvia said, collapsing against my chest. “Let’s save the post mortem for the dawn. Before we know where we are, Eugénie will be waking up.”
But it wasn’t Eugénie. It was Barbara Basildon.
It must have been almost four o’clock by the time we actually got to sleep. In
my arms Sylvia explained that Fred had telephoned during the evening for some information about a patient and had told Sylvia about the state of the party. Sylvia had had the sudden idea that amongst the stray odds and bods he had collected she might find some material for her new book and had agreed with Fred’s suggestion that she go along. After giving the matter much thought she had decided against a “little black dress,” come up with the idea of the as yet unhung nursery curtains as the most suitable garb, left me a note on the hall table, and gone. I explained my own dubious sounding sequence of events as best I could. We atoned for our previous harsh words in the manner recommended by all the best marriage guidance textbooks and were awoken abruptly three hours later by Sylvia’s favourite patient.
“It’s Barbara Basildon,” she said through clenched teeth, her hand over the mouth-piece.
“It can’t be, she doesn’t know our ex-directory number.”
“How do you suggest she got through then?”
“What does she want?”
I waited while Sylvia asked her.
“She has a headache.”
“So have I.”
“She feels giddy when she stands up and her face has gone all queer.”
“It always was.”
“I’m tired,” Sylvia said, handing me the receiver. “And I’m going back to sleep. Barbara Basildon, bless her little cotton socks, is your problem.”
So saying she buried her head beneath the bed clothes and abandoned her doctor’s wifely duties.
I berated Barbara Basildon for calling at such an early hour with symptoms which could easily wait until surgery time, told her that I would be along to see her during the morning and inquired, remembering suddenly, how she had discovered our private number.
“I made a note of it,” she said cheerfully, despite the “terrible pains” in her head.
“What do you mean?”
“From your hall telephone dial when I came to call – with the chicken, remember?”
The crafty thing. There was nothing that woman would not stoop to in order to persecute me. It was useless inquiring why she hadn’t called the surgery number as I knew she was not an admirer of Fred’s.
Unwilling to start my day after so rude an interruption I drifted back to sleep. No more than ten minutes later I was awoken once more abruptly. This time by a thump on my chest.
I opened one eye and met Peter’s two. “How dare you, Peter!”
“I brought the newspapers.”
“That’s awfully decent of you but was there any need to wake me up. Mummy and I didn’t get to bed until late…”
“Sorry,” he said, backing away in his pyjamas at the anger in my voice, “I would have thought you’d want to see them?”
“Why should I?”
But he was gone, the door slamming behind him.
I closed my eyes once more but something nagged the further reaches of my mind. It was unlike Peter to volunteer to bring the newspapers so early.
I picked them up and squinted at the headlines.
“Sea gas could bubble out in twenty-five years.” What was the matter with the child? I lowered the paper then it caught my eye. “Drug in African carving. Doctor’s Denial.” Beneath the caption was a picture of Fred. “Oh, no!” I groaned.
“Wassermarrernow?” Sylvia said.
“Fred Perfect had no knowledge of cannabis.” The text continued. “Police who raided the house of general practitioner, Dr Fred Perfect, found fifty grains of cannabis in a hollowed-out African carving. Dr Perfect, who was holding a party on the premises at the time of the raid, denied all knowledge of the drug and could not believe what was happening when the police showed him the cannabis. He was, he stated, absolutely shattered and exceedingly worried about his professional reputation…”
“My God!” I said. “Sylvia! Wake up.”
She did so reluctantly and when she was focusing I handed her the paper.
“That’s jolly,” she said when she had read it.
“Jolly! Do you realise you were at that party. It would have looked very charming wouldn’t it, to see your name down there?”
“But it isn’t and I wasn’t. I’d already left.”
“I wonder how the police got onto it? Where’s Fred? Do you think they’ve locked him up…?”
I picked up the paper again and discovered to my relief that Fred had been released on bail. I shuddered when I thought of the patients, of morning surgery, of Fred, what if he was struck off…
“Where are you going?”
“To the surgery.”
“At this hour?”
“I must see what’s going on. This is serious.”
There was an imperious ringing at the doorbell.
“While you’re up,” Sylvia said, “you may as well answer it.”
But before I had a chance to disentangle my dressing-gown cord, Peter burst into the room, white-faced.
“Dad,” he said, “it’s the police.”
“I think,” I said, “I shall live to rue the day when ever I met Fred Perfect. I suppose they want me on a drugs charge. You’d better hurry up with that book of yours because I shall probably be reduced, when I come out of prison that is, to selling Encyclopaedias from door to door…”
“Encyclopaediae!” Peter said. “You’d better hurry!”
The policeman was unsmiling. “Sorry to disturb you, Doctor,” he said politely. They were invariably polite, no matter what it was you had done.
“Yes?”
I waited while he ponderously took out his notebook and I wondered why they always kept them in those stupid buttoned-up pockets instead of some more accessible place.
He found the page he was looking for.
“It was 1492 YD, wasn’t it, sir?”
“What was?”
“Your car. Stolen from grass verge one mile from…”
I sighed with relief. “The car! Yes, I thought for a moment…”
“Yes, sir?”
“I thought…I mean…what I thought was…I wondered when you were going to find the car.”
“It didn’t take us long, sir,” he said indignantly. “Not considering he’d got as far as Exeter. My Sergeant’s been driving all night…”
“How terribly kind…and terribly clever of you…I really am most awfully grateful. Look…won’t you both come in for a cup of tea?”
“That’s very kind of you, sir, but we’re both going off now, so if you’d just sign here that the car has been received in good condition…”
The neighbours withdrew their heads from the windows for the second time in eight hours as I shut the front door behind me. I wondered whether we would be drummed out of Church Row or kept for entertainment value.
To my amazement I found Fred in the front garden cutting the dead heads off the roses.
“Fred!” I said. “How can you show your face?”
He passed a hand over it. “Something wrong with it, man?”
“Have you seen the morning papers?”
He looked at me reproachfully and I remembered suddenly that one of his idiosyncracies was that he never read a newspaper. He considered their content a mass of distorted reportage, biased news reports and gossip fabricated by Public Relations Departments. If he wanted to know what was going on in the world he listened to the radio.
“You are all over the front page.”
He continued cutting the roses.
“Don’t you care?”
He looked at me scornfully.
“You could be struck off! You should be on the phone to the Medical Defence Union, talking to your solicitors, not standing here…”
“You’re all excited, man!”
“You’re dead right I am. What do you think will happen to my reputation with a scandal like this? It is my practice too, you know.”
“You don’t need to be afraid of the fuzz, man.”
“The fuzz?”
“Police. I hate to mention it but it was your fault anyway. B
lowing your trumpet in the street, waking the neighbours, I was having a good, quiet, private party, until you got the fuzz buzzing, then the neighbours complained, then…”
“I know. So does the whole district by now.”
“My, how you fuss.”
He wasn’t in the slightest bit perturbed. I discovered, however, over breakfast with him that the case against him would probably be heard quite shortly, and that having spent so long at the police station he hadn’t troubled to go to bed. I told him that I would cope while he caught up with his sleep, thinking it better that he didn’t show his face anyway, and started the morning surgery.
I was wrong about his face. They all wanted to see Fred, some of them didn’t even bother to think up a complaint, and were bitterly disappointed at having to go away again without sight of the celebrity. Measured against his colourful notoriety I was a pale substitute. With one voice they clamoured for Fred.
By the time the last two patients came in I was getting fed up with it. You would think I existed not at all; that the entire practice was the affair of Fred.
It was a vicar and his wife I had not seen before. When Lulu showed them in and they caught sight of me, their faces fell. I pretended not to notice.
“Good morning,” I said, not frightfully enthusiastically. “What can I do for you?”
The vicar ran a finger round his dog-collar.
“To be truthful,” he said, “my wife wanted to see Dr Perfect.”
My temper, after two and a half hours’ surgery and only three hours’ sleep, was getting short.
“He isn’t here. If you’d care to tell me what’s the matter with your wife I’ll do my best, in his absence, to help you.”
“Well, to be absolutely honest with you,” the Vicar said, “my wife finds herself exceedingly distressed. It’s a matter that really has to be discussed with Dr Perfect. He would understand, you see…”
“Look here,” I said, with unaccustomed sharpness. “I am the senior partner in this practice and the only doctor available at the moment. Dr Perfect is an exceedingly competent practitioner…”
The vicar nodded his head in agreement. “I know,” he said, “I’m his father!”
Eighteen
It was almost unbelievable, that this meek little man, with his even meeker looking little wife, had spawned the large, flamboyant Fred.
Practice Makes Perfect Page 14
