Doctor And Son

by Richard Gordon

  ‘Isn’t he going to his own home for Christmas?’ I asked.

  Mr Cambridge shook his head.

  ‘Surely he won’t wish to leave Lady Spratt all alone at this season?’ remarked Dr Pennyworth.

  ‘He isn’t leaving her all alone,’ said Mr Cambridge gloomily. ‘She’s going off on a cruise.’

  ‘A very original idea for Lady Spratt,’ Dr Pennyworth observed.

  ‘It wasn’t her idea, it was mine,’ complained Mr Cambridge. ‘I saw an advertisement. It was in the paper. It struck me that he himself might like to get away for a few weeks into the sunshine. Very reasonable for a man of his age.’

  ‘Very reasonable,’ agreed Dr Pennyworth.

  ‘So I suggested a cruise. But he simply turned it into an opportunity to stay a bit longer in London. Not of course that I’m anything but delighted to entertain him over Christmas. One would have been equally honoured to entertain Lister or Harvey. But…well, Christmas is supposed to be a sort of family occasion,’ he went on morosely. ‘And I was rather looking forward to spending it with my girls. I hardly get to know them these days, apart from the fortnight when we all play cricket together on the sands.’

  Mr Cambridge sounded so miserable that I said, ‘Look here – I’ve got a large house on my hands, and we could easily change our plans and have him to stay with us. Nikki’s unlikely to go off before New Year’s Day at the earliest. And after all, I have got some sort of family connexion with him.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, Simon. Very kind of you indeed. As a matter of fact I’ve already suggested it,’ Mr Cambridge confessed. ‘But he won’t go. Too much work, he says, for the bicentenary.’

  ‘I really can’t understand why he’s taking such an enthusiastic interest in it,’ frowned Dr Pennyworth.

  Sir Lancelot certainly knew about the knighthood – he had known about everything at St Swithin’s for the last forty years – but as he had literally cut his own way into the titled ranks many years before I suspected that he just wanted to dish Mr Cambridge’s chances and pay out Mrs Cambridge for all those red-hot instruments.

  ‘There was a painful scene, a most painful scene, the other night,’ said Mr Cambridge, who after a second glass of sherry began to unbottle his troubles. ‘I had to inform Mr McCurdie, the sculptor, that we had changed our minds about his statue. I asked him round to my house. He is a perfectly charming fellow,’ he explained to me. ‘And quite a gentleman. You wouldn’t think he was an artist for one moment. But like all these people he is somewhat strong-minded.’

  The surgeon paused.

  ‘He arrived rather angry. He’s a big man, you know, with a beard. In fact, he looks rather like Sir Lancelot when he was younger. He said some very unkind things. Very unkind indeed. He quite frightened my three girls. I must confess I got rather uneasy myself.’

  ‘You explained he would receive financial compensation, of course?’ asked Dr Pennyworth.

  ‘Naturally. But that only made him grow rather contemptuous. I think I could have handled him in the end – after all, in our work we’re especially trained to deal with violent and excitable people – but unfortunately Sir Lancelot heard the noise, and took issue.’

  Seeming unable to bring himself to describe the evening further, Mr Cambridge drank another glass of sherry.

  ‘Unfortunate, perhaps, that you didn’t arrange for your guest to be out,’ murmured Dr Pennyworth.

  ‘That’s the trouble. I’d expected Sir Lancelot to be at the meeting of the International Fraternity of Surgeons. But he didn’t go on that particular night – that’s one of those infuriating knacks of his, always being where you don’t expect him. He simply came out of his sitting-room and started on Mr McCurdie. I’ve never seen him quite so angry before, except when a patient had the temerity to question his treatment. But I fear that for once Sir Lancelot met something like his match.’

  ‘I don’t think you can browbeat an artist,’ reflected the physician.

  ‘Particularly one who spends his life banging away at great hunks of rock,’ I added.

  ‘Sir Lancelot started by accusing Mr McCurdie of insulting the intelligence of the medical profession. Mr McCurdie replied he was beginning to suspect that was impossible. Sir Lancelot said that he’d seen better objects produced by a pottery class for criminal lunatics. Mr McCurdie replied that if he had the aesthetic appreciation of a Broadmoor warder he couldn’t do anything about it. Sir Lancelot then shouted “You are being abominably rude!” And Mr McCurdie shouted back that he was being rude to uphold the principles of artistic freedom, while Sir Lancelot was being rude only because he couldn’t help it.

  ‘Sir Lancelot next called Mr McCurdie an overblown stonemason, and Mr McCurdie called Sir Lancelot something like a presumptuous tripe-slicer. It was terrible. They had quite lost control of themselves. Two of my daughters were in tears and the dog was barking. There they were, glaring at each other with their beards almost touching, in the middle of my hearthrug. For a moment I thought they were coming to blows. It would have been most undignified.’

  ‘And Lancelot a member of the Parthenon,’ murmured Dr Pennyworth.

  ‘I hope it came all right in the end?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘My wife,’ explained Mr Cambridge, ‘jumped into the breach. She is rather adept at such situations. Perhaps you remember in Sir Lancelot’s theatre, the day he had that terrible row with the anaesthetist? I’m afraid that Celia doesn’t quite understand what a great man Sir Lancelot is. We have had one or two most unfortunate episodes in the house, particularly when he has commented on her cooking. On one occasion she put a red-hot vegetable dish into his hands, I suspect not entirely accidentally. But I think that evening she put both Sir Lancelot and the sculptor rather to shame. Mr McCurdie left shortly afterwards, threatening to send writs.’

  ‘Then I expect you’ve heard the last of it,’ said Dr Pennyworth hearteningly.

  Mr Cambridge shook his head.

  ‘The next morning,’ he went on in a pathetic voice, ‘Sir Lancelot announced he was instructing his solicitors to start proceedings against Mr McCurdie, for about a dozen things from breach of contract to common assault and battery. He can’t bring himself to discuss anything else, and he’s making all sorts of terrible threats. He’s talking of briefing half a dozen famous counsel. No one can reason with him, or even get a word in edgeways.’

  ‘I tried hard to dissuade him. I told him it would all be most frightfully expensive. And then–’ Mr Cambridge swallowed. ‘Then he explained it would all be paid for out of the Bicentenary Fund. That’s the one all the hospital graduates subscribed to. I’m sure they don’t want their money spent on litigation.’

  ‘I certainly don’t want my own thirty bob spent on it,’ I told him warmly.

  ‘My wife – I mean I – was particularly anxious to take charge of the bicentenary personally. And now Sir Lancelot’s managed to scotch every single idea of my own, and is going to fill the place with foreign surgeons, six of whom are to be billeted in my house. Dear me, dear me! I don’t know what I shall do. I really don’t.’

  Mr Cambridge abruptly collapsed in a chair and held his head in his hands.

  ‘My dear fellow! Have another glass of sherry?’ said Dr Pennyworth in alarm.

  ‘If there’s any way in which I can possibly help–’

  Mr Cambridge didn’t hear us.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ he went on. He stared fixedly into the fireplace. ‘Far from it. I don’t mind Sir Lancelot spending an hour in the bathroom every morning. I don’t mind him thumping about in his room half the night doing his Japanese exercises. Not a bit. Such things must be allowed a man of Sir Lancelot’s standing. I don’t mind him ordering all our meals, whatever the expense. I don’t even jib at pig’s trotters once a week, if he happens to be fond of them. I didn’t even complain about his instructing my daughters in the facts of life. With coloured diagrams.’

  He silently wiped his glasses.

  ‘But t
he real trouble,’ he declared quietly, ‘is the television.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I recalled. ‘He has views–’

  ‘I bought a television set a few months ago,’ Mr Cambridge went on. ‘I thought it might amuse the girls. I can’t understand the programmes very well myself. Sir Lancelot noticed it, of course, as soon as he moved in. He was rather rude about it. He said it was more demoralising than honest debauchery out in the open. Why, from the way he carried on you’d have imagined that I’d opened a house of ill repute.

  ‘After that, of course, we never dared turn it on. The girls were very upset. They seemed to have become very attached to some of the performers. Then one evening, as it was getting near Christmas, I took Celia and the girls to a musical comedy as a treat. As so often happens, as soon as the performance started I was called out to see a case. It didn’t seem worth going back to the theatre, and I don’t care much for that sort of thing anyway, so I went straight home. What do you think I found? Lancelot in the sitting-room, looking at the television.

  ‘“Just doing some sociological research,” he explained.

  ‘He seemed a little put out, and not wishing to disturb him I said I’d sit in the dining-room.

  ‘“Interesting study, the media of mass-hypnosis,” he told me.

  ‘I agreed with him, of course.

  ‘“One must put oneself out to inspect such things from time to time,” he said. He didn’t refer to the incident again.’

  ‘So after that you could turn your television on sometimes?’ I suggested.

  ‘After that,’ said Mr Cambridge solemnly, ‘we could never turn the damn thing off. Sir Lancelot does sociological research every evening – right from the moment those peculiar young men appear and start talking about the weather. My wife has to get the evening meal early and when I’m late I have to eat mine in the kitchen. If anyone speaks or wants the light on there’s hell to pay. Dear me, dear me! I really find some of the items difficult to sit through. But I have to watch the lot because he likes discussing everything with me afterwards. Then he has to have his eggs boiled for exactly two minutes, and a special kind of blacking for his shoes, and as he doesn’t believe in laundries my wife has to starch his collars and press his suits. And then there’s this fuss about no one opening his particular newspapers and – My God, is that the time? I shall be out in the kitchen again.’

  Mr Cambridge sprang up, and snatching his hat without another word made for the door.

  ‘Bertie is far from himself,’ observed Dr Pennyworth.

  ‘I feel rather responsible for it all,’ I told him. ‘If it hadn’t been for this baby we’re having, Sir Lancelot would never have come to London in the first place.’

  We stood on the doorstep watching the surgeon disappear towards Cavendish Square, distractedly trying to remember where he had parked his car.

  Dr Pennyworth shook his head. ‘Perhaps it would have been as well if Granley-Dowkins had been able to come along this evening after all,’ he remarked softly.

  18

  Nikki and I spent Christmas within safe distance of base at her parents’ house in Richmond, where for me the festivities were overshadowed less by my wife’s condition, or the image of Sir Lancelot in a paper hat presiding over the Cambridge’s table, than the bright new sports car my brother-in-law had bought himself. I needed to invoke powerfully the spirit of the season to prevent myself dwelling on the injustice of feckless young men roaring about the countryside in fast cars when they should instead be having wives and babies.

  It was clear that by the time I could afford a sports car myself my reflexes would have become too slow to risk driving it, and I was resigned to the small old saloon in which we drove home late on Boxing Day, ready for the casualties of Christmas at the next morning’s surgery. As soon as we got in I pottered round our cold unfriendly rooms like a good householder, and returning to the sitting-room was surprised to find Nikki beside the empty fireplace reading a book.

  ‘That must be pretty interesting,’ I remarked. ‘You haven’t even taken your coat off.’

  She held up the title. I read The Elements of Practical Midwifery.

  ‘I think I’ve started,’ she announced.

  ‘No! Not already?’

  ‘I’m absolutely certain. I’ve got a definite backache. It began just as we were driving through London.’

  ‘That’s certainly the first sign,’ I agreed.

  ‘It’s starting to come and go, too.’

  I paused, considering the symptoms.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the book again,’ I said.

  After half an hour of diagnostic dithering which would have made any of our own patients promptly telephone another adviser, we concluded that Nikki was in fact experiencing the onset of the first stage of labour.

  ‘Right,’ I said, getting up. ‘I’ll telephone Ann Pheasant.’

  ‘And what shall I do?’ Nikki asked.

  I scratched my head. I couldn’t remember being consulted at such an early period.

  ‘Go to bed, I suppose.’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m going to clean out the kitchen,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Clean out the kitchen? Don’t be ridiculous! Not now.’

  ‘Yes I am. Otherwise I won’t have a chance before your parents arrive and think I’m a messy housewife. Besides, domestic activity is traditional.’

  Ann Pheasant wasn’t at her surgery. There was no reply from her lodgings, and I was beginning to feel anxious when someone came on the line and told me to call the obstetrical department of the local Memorial Hospital.

  ‘Hello, old thing,’ she said, reaching the telephone after a delay which seemed several hours. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nikki’s gone into labour,’ I explained quickly. ‘I hope you’re not in the middle of another case?’

  ‘No, I’m in the middle of a hospital party.’ From her tone I gathered she was rather enjoying herself. ‘You’re quite sure?’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m sure. Perfectly.’

  ‘Oh, very well. I’ll be along as soon as I can decently detach myself. Keep her quiet and comfortable.’

  I found Nikki on her hands and knees with a bucket, scrubbing the kitchen floor.

  ‘Darling,’ I protested. ‘I’m perfectly sure you shouldn’t be doing that.’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t look so alarmed, Simon. Anyone would think you were about to have it instead of me.’

  ‘I am rather alarmed,’ I confessed. ‘Even though I must have told hundreds of husbands it’s a perfectly natural process.’

  ‘But there’s hours to go before anything dramatic happens. Though perhaps you’d better ring up our parents and tell them the overture has started. Besides, it’ll give you something to do,’ she added, taking charge of my treatment.

  I was surprised to find myself, despite nine months’ warning and my professional education, in a peculiarly agitated state. It didn’t seem possible that in a few hours time I should be holding my own offspring and watching it being sick down my tie. I pottered round the house, moving things about. I tried to read a magazine, but it was as useless as trying to read one in a dentist’s waiting-room. Nikki meanwhile went on scrubbing the kitchen.

  ‘Perhaps I had better go upstairs,’ she announced, appearing some time later drying her hands on a dishcloth.

  ‘How’s the backache?’

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘Still intermittent?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then perhaps you’d better.’

  I stayed in the cold sitting-room. I paced about. I seemed to get through a lot of matches lighting my pipe.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Thank God!’ I cried.

  I threw open the front door, and was face to face with Grimsdyke.

  ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ I demanded, with unreasonable ferocity.

  But instead of seeming put out, he flung out his hand.

  ‘I agree, old lad. Exactly the sort of greeting I
deserve.’

  ‘But what on earth–’

  ‘After the way I spoke to you on the phone, you really ought to kick me all round your crazy paving. I was an idiot, a fool and an ungrateful cad. Since then,’ he said sombrely, ‘I have been both sorry and humbled.’

  ‘Oh, damn what you said on the phone! I was expecting our doctor. Nikki’s in labour.’

  ‘Good Lord, is she? But surely all that’s next week?’

  ‘You know as well as I do that a week one way or another–’

  ‘Yes, yes, old lad. And at such a time even I can feel that I’m definitely a bit superfluous. I’ll come back in a couple of days when all the smoke’s died down.’

  ‘No, come on in,’ I said, changing my mind. ‘As a matter of fact, I’d rather like someone to hold my hand. It’s all a bit nerve-racking. That’s why I was so short just now. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. If you really want me to stay, offering my company at such a time is not only a pleasure but a duty. I’m staying in Hampden Cross a few days, by the way. At the Hat and Feathers, of course – I knew you wouldn’t want me mucking about here.’

  ‘But what’s the matter with your flat?’

  He looked a little uncomfortable.

  ‘Fact is, I’ve rather got to make myself scarce from London for a week or two.’

  ‘What, not again?’

  But further enquiries were forestalled by the arrival of a midwife on a bicycle, followed much more noisily a few moments later by Ann Pheasant’s car.

  ‘Sorry I’m a bit late, old thing,’ the obstetrician greeted me. ‘The old bus took a bit of starting. Fortunately one of the registrars got it going with a bottle of ether in the petrol tank. Heard a lot about you,’ she said, as I introduced Grimsdyke. ‘And how’s the patient?’

  ‘Sitting up in bed reading Barchester Towers.’

  ‘Jolly sensible. It’s as good a sedative as any in the pharmacopoeia.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’ I asked anxiously, as she brought her bag inside.

  ‘Nothing, except forget you’re a doctor.’

  I left Ann with Nikki upstairs. Retiring to the sitting-room, I fetched a bottle of whisky I’d hidden in one of the fretwork bookcases.