‘Either that or getting some ghastly disease named after you,’ said Grimsdyke. ‘I’ll stick out for a barony myself. It must be jolly good fun getting up in the House of Lords and telling everyone what’s wrong with the world, without even having to kiss a lot of beastly babies every five years.’
‘I expect it’s the wife who wants the title really,’ said Nikki.
‘You have a point,’ Grimsdyke observed. ‘They’ve said at St Swithin’s for years that if she were dead and opened you’d find “Lady Cambridge” lying in her heart.’
Further speculation was interrupted by a waiter bending over my friend’s shoulder and announcing, ‘The lady has telephoned to say she will be a few minutes late, sir.’
‘Thank you. I should shortly like you both,’ he went on as we looked at him enquiringly, ‘to meet the charming girl whom I hope will be the future Mrs Grimsdyke.’
‘No!’ Nikki and I exclaimed at once.
‘Yes, indeed. You can’t imagine the hours I’ve put in, Simon, since we had that little chat in your sitting-room last summer. Following your advice to the letter, the first thing I did on reaching Town was to cast my address book into the flames. As soon as it went up in smoke, of course, I knew I’d made a damn silly start – I could have flogged it for quite a bit of cash to the housemen at St Swithin’s. But it was symbolic. A purified Grimsdyke was about to face the world.’
He looked at me, seeming disappointed that I did not appear particularly impressed. I was used to Grimsdyke’s recurrent attacks of morality, when he would cut down his drinking, smoking, and betting, start out on a long walk, and even take his bath slightly cooler in the morning. The only difference over the present one lay in the spasm usually being precipitated by a severe hangover. ‘Becoming a better man,’ my friend went on, sipping his glass of champagne, ‘has turned out to be a darned sight easier than finding the right girl. At first I was almost reduced to sticking a pin in the membership list of the University Women’s Club. Then I got the hang of it, and met some very decent females. If I might be allowed to say so, it’s been a pretty close race that tonight enters the finishing straight. Did you remember that sweet little thing Angela Palgrove-Badderly?’
I frowned.
‘The girl I was chatting to last week, the afternoon you were buying Christmas presents in Harrod’s.’
‘Ah, yes…’
‘Of course, she only works in a shop because it’s the fashionable thing among her friends. Angela’s terribly aristocratic – they’ve got the old country house, or rather they did have until they let it go as a reform school. Presented at Court, too, or she would have been if they hadn’t stopped the whole business. But the family’s very modest about it all, and live in quite a little place near Holland Park. I got along with her famously. The only trouble was her father, a retired brigadier whom I think is suffering from some of those senile mental changes. Acted most oddly when I was there, sometimes.’
As Miss Palgrove-Badderly had seemed about sixteen and her conversation consisted in asking me if I knew a large number of people whom I didn’t, I felt the attitude of her father was a stroke of luck. But Grimsdyke always did have a weakness for pretty girls behind counters.
‘Then there was Hesta,’ he went on, ‘whom you never met. She really was intelligent. I don’t think she could talk about anything that didn’t affect the lives of half a million people. I ran into her in an espresso bar, and we saw quite a lot of each other for a while. I learnt all sorts of interesting things about state monopolies and the condition of the peasants in the Ukraine.’
‘Pity you didn’t marry her,’ I remarked. ‘You could have got through your evenings without television.’
‘She wanted me to go to some sort of jamboree in Trafalgar Square, holding a placard,’ he explained with a touch of embarrassment. ‘I mean to say, there are limits to what a chap can do. On a Sunday morning, too, when I look forward to my little bit of lie-in. After that there was a nice girl called Amanda, who painted and kept falcons, but I won’t bother you with all that. The fact is, the lady you are about to meet,’ he ended, suddenly becoming solemn, ‘is the one whom I feel fit to bear my children.’
‘And I hope she enjoys it,’ murmured Nikki.
‘There’s just one thing, old lad,’ Grimsdyke went on anxiously. ‘Having great trust in your judgement, I wonder if you’d just sort of…well, look her over critically before I commit myself to anything definite?’
‘Really, Grim!’ I exclaimed, ‘you can’t expect me–’
‘Just for old time’s sake,’ he entreated. ‘Remember at St Swithin’s when you stopped me running off with that conjurer’s assistant? I’ll tell you what we’ll do – we’ll have a little code. If you think she’s the horrors, say, “There’s been a lot of rain for the time of year,” and I’ll take no further action. But if you think she’s just the one, remark lightly, “It looks like a change in the weather,” and I’ll turn on the charm. How’s that?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said firmly. ‘But if you’re really contemplating such a serious step as marriage, the whole idea’s completely out of–’
At that moment the waiter reappeared to announce, ‘The lady has now arrived, sir,’ and Grimsdyke made for the lobby.
‘Surely you’re not going to fall in with such a crazy scheme, Simon?’ asked Nikki at once.
‘Not on your life! That sort of thing was all very well when we were a couple of students messing about at St Swithin’s, but I sometimes wish that old Grim would grow out of his delayed adolescence before it starts being taken for premature senility.’
‘I wonder what she’s going to look like?’ said Nikki, glancing at the door.
‘Oh, pretty smashing, I should think. He always could pick ’em, even as a penniless medical student.’
We were interrupted by the appearance of a handsome blonde girl about six feet tall, whom Grimsdyke led in as though she had just won the Derby.
‘The Countess Suschika,’ he announced proudly. ‘From Latvia.’
16
However ridiculous I thought Grimsdyke’s code, we had hardly sat down to dinner before it was clear the ordinary obligations of friendship would compel me to use it. The Countess was far too strong a prescription for Grimsdyke’s suffering celibacy.
‘Have you left Latvia long?’ asked Nikki to open the conversation, as the Countess started munching her way through a pile of hors d’oeuvres.
‘Ach, no! I am not in Latvia since I am a tiny baby,’ she explained. ‘I am in Sweden and in Norway and in Germany, and now I am in Finland, where I learn the massage. And next I start a school of massage in London.’
‘Lulu’s a Scandinavian masseuse,’ announced Grimsdyke proudly. ‘As a matter of fact, we met over old McGlew’s quadratus lumborum.’
‘I do hope you’ll like it in England,’ I told her.
‘Ach, yes,’ she said warmly. ‘You have such lovely things here. Such roast beef and bacon and eggs. And such fish and chips! They are so quaint, but I love them so much already.’
Grimsdyke caught my eye. ‘Massaging people all day does rather take it out of you.’
‘And what a lovely restaurant this is! It is much better even than the Teatergrillen in Stockholm. I do not care much for drink, which upsets my liver and my kidneys,’ she said draining her wineglass. ‘But eat I always can.’
The Countess got through her food with the fascinating efficiency of the garbage disposal machine in our kitchen sink. She managed to talk a good deal at the same time, emphasising points of conversation by clasping Grimsdyke’s wrist with hands which would have been the envy of a professional goalkeeper. But to my horror my friend seemed to regard all these only as fascinating little failings.
‘And you, my dear,’ Lulu said to Nikki, pausing to pick her teeth between courses. ‘You do the exercises for expectant women, no?’
‘Not very regularly,’ Nikki confessed. ‘So many of them seem devised for pregnant female contortionists.
’
‘I have a wonderful exercise for pregnant women,’ declared Lulu, demonstrating with her arms. ‘It is quite simple, you lie down and imagine you are breaking a plank with your knees. So good for the pelvis – and the woman’s pelvis, my dear, is the most important thing in the whole world, is it not? It houses the human race. But you must have the massage. I shall give it to you. I give it to Gaston every morning.’
Grimsdyke looked rather shamefaced at this revelation, but murmured, ‘Jolly useful for toning you up.’
‘Why do you all muffle your bodies up so in England?’ Lulu went on loudly. ‘Is the body not a beautiful thing? You are doctors, you will agree. In Scandinavia we think it is very beautiful indeed. You would no longer cough and spit in each other’s faces all winter if your bobbies let you walk about Hyde Park all naked.’
She paused as the next course arrived. I prepared to give Grimsdyke my frank opinion of his prospective bride.
‘I hope you will soon have a change in this rainy weather,’ said Lulu, just at that moment.
This put me in some confusion. I could only murmur feebly, ‘The damp can’t last much longer.’
‘Do you mean there’s been a lot of rain for the time of the year, Simon?’ asked Grimsdyke pointedly. ‘Or do you think it looks like a change in the weather?’
‘I think myself it is going to freeze and snow,’ said Lulu.
‘I mean,’ I said, trying to remember how our arrangement went. ‘That we’re in for a moist spell.’
‘Now what on earth do you mean?’ asked Grimsdyke, rather shortly.
‘I told you perfectly plainly,’ I replied, annoyed at being drawn into the performance at all. ‘I said it’s going to be wet.’
‘Do you wish to state,’ he continued, leaning across the table and speaking as though I were a difficult patient in the children’s clinic. ‘That there has been a lot of rain for the time of year? Or do you mean that it looks like a change in the weather? You must mean one or the other. I do wish you’d try and make up your mind which.’
‘You can’t blame me for hardly knowing what I mean,’ I replied, feeling my face redden. ‘The whole business is so confusing, not to mention being perfectly stupid.’
‘Simon,’ murmured Nikki.
‘You English!’ said Lulu cheerfully. ‘Always arguing about the weather.’
She started about her pelvis again, but Grimsdyke skilfully switched the conversation to cricket.
‘But surely he could never seriously have intended to marry that,’ I said to Nikki, as we drove away later. ‘Why, it wouldn’t be a marriage. It would be like sharing digs with an Army PT instructor.’
‘If it’s the frustrated paternal instinct which is worrying him, dear,’ Nikki remarked, ‘she’s certainly aggressively fertile.’
‘But he used to be most particular over the girls he was seen with in public,’ I said, still puzzled. ‘Almost as much as his waistcoats. I suppose he must develop some sort of blind spot when he starts looking for one for keeps, like Henry the Eighth.’
‘Or perhaps he’s just fond of massage,’ suggested Nikki.
‘God knows what the woman’s doing to his muscular system!’ I exclaimed. ‘For years it hasn’t been subjected to any greater strain than raising pints of beer.’
But Grimsdyke seemed in great spirits when the next morning he telephoned our surgery.
‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ he asked at once. ‘Lulu I mean. I’ve never met a woman in my life with so much of the vital force they used to teach us about in biology. I’m delighted you approve of her, old lad.’
‘Just one second,’ I interrupted him, wondering how to break the news as tactfully as possible. ‘It’s not that I disapprove, Grim. But frankly I don’t think she’s quite your genetic type.’
‘But you did approve,’ he insisted. ‘You said the weather was going to change.’
‘I certainly did not,’ I replied indignantly. ‘I may have got a little confused over the whole damn silly business, but I never said anything like that.’
There was a pause.
‘You’re behaving pretty badly to an old friend, if I may say so.’
‘I’m not behaving badly at all,’ I returned hotly. ‘It was a stupid idea in the first place.’
‘What the devil do you mean by stupid? Ever since you got married you’ve been behaving as though you were suffering from premature middle age. There’s no need to be superior about chaps showing a bit of enterprise.’
‘I’m only being superior about chaps making bloody fools of themselves.’
‘Anyway, it’s too late now,’ he said briefly. ‘I’m flying to spend the Christmas holidays with her family in Helsinki.’
‘You haven’t proposed to her?’ I asked in alarm.
‘As it happens I haven’t. And it isn’t any affair of yours if I do. You’ve simply got no taste for women, Simon. How you managed to land such a nice one as Nikki has always been as much a mystery as why she ever accepted you anyway.’
‘Now look here–’
‘Being a gentleman, I do not wish to bandy a lady’s name about on the telephone wires any further,’ he said loftily. ‘Goodbye. Oh, and Merry Christmas,’ he added, ringing off.
I felt annoyed with myself. I should have foreseen that any disapproval of Lulu would be immediately consumed in the flames of his passion. I supposed it was an oversight that I shared with a good many fathers who’d made the fruitless journey to Gretna Green. But it was clear that I couldn’t let him go ahead and marry the woman if there was any chance of preventing it.
‘Why, she’d kill him in six months,’ I said anxiously to Nikki that evening.
‘She might turn out to be a very sweet and gentle wife, of course.’
I snorted. ‘So might Brunhild, but I personally wouldn’t care to take a risk on it. Anyway, Grimsdyke’s a very delicate organism. He’d need as much care over breeding in captivity as the giant panda.’
We suggested several ways of spoiling his romance, until our discussion of Grimsdyke’s sex life was interrupted by a consequence of our own, as Dr Pheasant rattled up in her car.
‘It won’t be long now,’ she said to me, coming downstairs afterwards. ‘Give us a ring as soon as the balloon goes up, old thing. I need a bit of time to start the old bus sometimes in this weather.’
‘But we’ll get plenty of warning with the first one, surely?’ I remembered all the hours spent drinking cups of tea in cold front parlours round St Swithin’s.
She gave me a severe glance. ‘Can’t say. The process isn’t run by clockwork, you know.’
‘No, of course not,’ I apologised.
‘Look at that case in the paper this morning. The wife of this shipping millionaire fellow – what’s her name…’
‘Not Lady Corrington?’
‘That’s it. Went to Switzerland for her Christmas holidays, and had the little brat in a Geneva clinic a month premature.’
I started to laugh, but she went on, ‘Then there’s this actress woman you used to hear so much about, Monica Fairchild. I had a bit of a chin-wag at the Royal College the other day with your Turtle Supe – he’s looking after her, you know. And the fuss! Letters, phone calls, telegrams, almost every half-hour. And do you know what? Everyone’s made a mistake. She’s having it a month late.’
‘So she’s really having one!’ I exclaimed. ‘I bet she cracked the whip at her husband.’ Dr Pheasant looked puzzled, so I went on, ‘I don’t suppose Turtle happened to say anything about Monica Fairchild’s secretary, did he?’
‘As a matter of fact, her secretary turned up with a note while we were there. Big fellow called Catchpole.’
‘Not a woman?’ I asked in surprise.
‘Definitely a man,’ said Ann Pheasant.
17
The next afternoon I went down to St Swithin’s for the last gastric clinic before Christmas. It was held for only a handful of patients, whose normal expressions of dyspeptic gloom were deepened by t
he prospect of facing the festivities on a glass of milk and a biscuit. I found the wards as usual heavily decorated with paper chains and seasonal frescoes made by the patients – Christmas in hospital being largely an extension of occupational therapy – and the corridors lined with advertisements for students’ performances under such titles as Physiotherapy Phollies, Babies in the Ward, and Jack and the Bedpan. These entertainments were as rigidly traditional as the old miracle plays, and it now seemed many years since Grimsdyke, Tony Benskin, and myself had given almost the same productions with a firkin of beer on a stretcher and a couple of understudies to replace any actors who happened to fall before the curtain did. At the time we felt that the hospital had never enjoyed such a set of enterprising, good-mannered, and highly intelligent students as ourselves; and though the young men and women now rehearsing noisily in the clinical demonstration rooms off the main corridors undoubtedly thought the same, I suppose in our hearts we still believed it.
When the clinic was over, Dr Pennyworth asked the three of us back to his house for a glass of sherry. Dr Granley-Dowkins had to refuse because of an acute mania in Ealing, but Mr Cambridge and I drove to Queen Anne Street, where the senior physician lived in elegant bachelorhood with his collection of Bristol glass and a housekeeper resembling Mrs Squeers. He was a slight, bald, quiet man, with an old-fashioned Daimler, an old-fashioned chauffeur, and old-fashioned manners, who whispered his way round his patients and materialised at each bedside like a courteous ghost, and was probably the last physician in London to wear spats and write his prescriptions in Latin.
‘Has Sir Lancelot gone back to Hereford?’ Dr Pennyworth asked as we stood round the fire sipping sherry which, like himself, seemed paler and dryer than normal.
‘He’s still staying with me,’ replied Mr Cambridge briefly.
‘Is he?’ Dr Pennyworth looked surprised. ‘I haven’t seen him much in the club recently.’
‘I don’t think he has much time to go to it. He’s very occupied with the bicentenary, you know.’
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