Doctor In The Swim

by Richard Gordon

  I noticed from his tray the management had tried to make up for this by adding a coloured paper cap with Good Morning, Folks! written on it, a folder of matches with a girl suffering from mammary hypertrophy on the cover, a sheet of black-edged paper headed Your Sixty-Second Sermon for Today, and a plastic box done up with ribbons containing a complimentary pink carnation for the buttonhole.

  ‘No gentleman,’ ended Sir Lancelot sadly, ‘would of course ever contemplate wearing in his buttonhole anything but a red carnation.’

  We slipped down the express elevator to the street, and pretty cosy it was out there, too, particularly as in America, where they do everything properly, they don’t only have heat but they have humidity as well. We picked up a cab, the driver put us square on the international situation, and we arrived at the Conference in the Liberty Room of the Washington-Herxheimer Hotel.

  Early in the proceedings I began to suffer from a chilly feeling which had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

  I’m much in favour of medical conferences, as long as they’re properly organized. At a medical conference in England they naturally always provide a hall for a few enthusiasts to hear another one rambling away over some cracked lantern slides shown upside down. The rest of the doctors take the chance to clear off and play golf, or to go on the toot with other doctors out of sight of their patients.

  But when American doctors hold a conference, they jolly well confer. I was banking on everyone gently drifting away once Archbold had raised the tapes with his Presidential address, so I could pass a happy three weeks seeing the sights of New York, such as Jack Dempsey’s Bar and the burlesque shows. But those enthusiastic chaps went hammering at the door of knowledge from eight in the morning till six at night, with an hour off at noon for waffle-burgers and Coca-cola. And anyone mounting the rostrum with a folder of notes slimmer than the Manhattan telephone directory was clearly thought to be betraying the great traditions of American oratory.

  ‘Thank you, Grimsdyke, for kicking me on the ankle when I started to snore,’ mentioned Sir Lancelot, when we were released at the end of the day.

  ‘Not a bit, sir, Always glad to avert an international incident.’

  ‘I fear I must have been sadly wrong over the years,’ he sighed, ‘when I held at St Swithin’s that anyone could express all his knowledge of any scientific subject on a postcard. Though how an executive or anyone else can possibly ever feel completely healthy in this place is totally beyond me.’

  He indicated with his umbrella a poster outside the subway announcing that we’d arrived in National Nephrosis Week, while from other posters I gathered the citizens had only just got over National Hemiplegia Week and could look forward after Sunday to a jolly National Schizophrenia Week,

  ‘Our American chums are well up with the clinical articles in the Reader’s Digest, and regard Time as the great healer, sir,’ I suggested. ‘They’d never fork out for our dear old British charities with their Spare a Copper for the Distressed Gentlefolk or Our Roof is Leaking.’

  ‘They certainly have an eye for clinical detail. Even in the obituary pages of the newspapers. The New York Times this morning quite reminded me in parts of the Pathologist’s Handbook.’

  I nodded. ‘Especially as the undertakers oil round the margins with cosy invitations to let them lay you out on the never-never. Could make an executive feel pretty nasty over breakfast I should think, particularly on hot mornings with a hangover.’

  ‘Odd,’ mused Sir Lancelot, hailing a cab, ‘that everyone here should take death so extremely seriously.’

  But our American chums don’t pass their days simply looking forward to their absolutely slap-up funeral, any more than we spend ours puffing our churchwardens in our smocks at the doors of our thatched cottages, in between Morris dancing and trying to trace our ancestors. The clouds of oratory were brightened no end by the nightly flashes of hospitality, and after a week even Sir Lancelot started making concessions to the New World, such as drinking Scotch-on-the-Rocks and calling Archbold by his christian name. Though he still wouldn’t dress up in white blouse and trousers like Dr Kildare to visit Archbold’s private hospital, saying he refused to go around looking like a ruddy West End hairdresser. For years, of course, he had found it unnecessary to go round looking like anything but Sir Lancelot Spratt.

  As for our American chums, they took to calling him ‘Lance’ and asking him all about our National Health Service, even though they did imply that anyone walking about with a mouthful of free teeth was undermining the great traditions of Western democracy.

  ‘It is now four o’clock,’ announced Sir Lancelot, snapping open his watch in the middle of Fifth Avenue on the Saturday afternoon, which was free for sightseeing. ‘And I must confess I should much like a peaceful cup of tea.’

  The old boy had certainly passed a wearying day, what with nearly getting shot by one of the strong-arm chaps they keep to stop people helping themselves in New York banks, and trying to find where they hid the trains in Grand Central Station. Particularly as the temperature was so high I fancied the heat was even getting into the martinis.

  ‘If one can obtain such a thing as tea in the tumult of this urban Niagara,’ he added.

  ‘That looks a quiet little spot over there,’ I suggested, indicating a neon sign. ‘The one that’s called The Haven of Rest,’

  ‘That should suit me perfectly.’

  I must say, we took to the place as soon as we stepped off the sizzling sidewalk under the striped canopy, and pushed through the big plate-glass doors into the soothing air conditioning.

  ‘A very decent small hotel,’ conceded Sir Lancelot, glancing approvingly round the lobby.

  ‘Just the spot for a long cool beer,’ I nodded,

  The lobby was done in restful purple, with some well coiffeured bunches of flowers standing agreeably in the corners. There was piped music, naturally, but instead of Top Hat and South Pacific it was soft and gentle stuff played quietly on the organ. Best of all, there seemed absolutely no one about, making a change from our own hotel lobby, which was bags and bustle all round the clock.

  ‘Not much sign of life,’ I remarked. ‘I suppose the cafeteria’s on the roof.’

  ‘Do you know, Grimsdyke,’ announced Sir Lancelot suddenly, ‘I’ve more than half a mind to move my quarters here for the rest of the conference. You stay where you are, of course. This is far too quiet for you. But it will suit me absolutely down to the ground.’

  At that moment a purple door marked ‘Reception’ opened, emitting a thin pale chap with grey hair, wearing the usual black jacket and striped trousers.

  ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ said the chap, in a quiet respectful voice which seemed to please Sir Lancelot no end. ‘I am Ed Samboys, the manager here. May I ask whom you have called to see?’

  ‘We haven’t called to see anyone,’ I told him.

  ‘Ah, no,’ murmured the manager.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ went on Sir Lancelot, ‘I wondered if you happened to have a room available.’

  Mr Samboys let fall a sigh.

  ‘I’m real sorry, sir, but at this moment I guess all our rooms are occupied.’

  ‘I only want a single room,’ added Sir Lancelot. ‘Not a double.’

  The manager looked a bit worried at this, but apologized, ‘We’re mighty busy this time of the year, sir. I guess it’s the sudden heat.’

  ‘Quite,’ nodded the surgeon. ‘Had I any acquaintances visiting New York just now, I should do my utmost to get them into one of your cool rooms. I have formed an excellent impression of the establishment.’

  Mr Samboys bowed.

  ‘I suppose I couldn’t book a room for later?’

  The manager gave a smile and a quick rub of the hands.

  ‘Sure you can, sir, we always advise our folk to think ahead.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Who would the room be for, sir?’

  Sir Lancelot frowned slightly. ‘For myself, of c
ourse. I suppose you can give me a definite date? I shall be needing it quite soon.’

  Mr Samboy’s smile sagged a bit in the middle.

  ‘Quite soon, sir?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Sir Lancelot told him briskly. ‘In the next day or two at the latest. Indeed, I am quite ready to move in now.’

  ‘Aw, you poor guy,’ muttered the manager. ‘You poor guy.’

  ‘I say,’ I chipped in, feeling pretty thirsty. ‘Do you think you could fix me up with a beer?’

  The manager’s jaw unhinged rather more. ‘Fix you up with a bier? What, right now?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Where’s the bar?’

  ‘Say,’ exclaimed Mr Samboys. ‘Do you guys know where you are?’

  ‘Damnation, man,’ exploded Sir Lancelot. ‘This is the Haven of Rest Hotel–’

  ‘It’s the Haven of Rest Funeral Parlour, that’s what,’ said the manager, staring a bit.

  ‘Grimsdyke!’ hissed Sir Lancelot.

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologized. ‘Wrong number.’

  ‘Hey, wait a minute!’ As we made for the door, Mr Samboys replaced his smile and did a quick handwash. ‘You gentlemen have gotta think of the future. Yes, sir! And our terms are mighty moderate. We’ve buried five generations right here in New York City. We have a fine name for consideration of the bereaved ones’ feelings, particularly financial. We have twenty storeys of magnificently appointed air conditioned apartments–’

  Sir Lancelot grabbed the door handle.

  ‘Not today,’ I told the chap.

  ‘But say, listen. We do a mighty fine embalming job on easy terms.’ Mr Samboys gave a little laugh. ‘Die now, pay later, you know.’

  ‘No thank you!’ roared Sir Lancelot.

  ‘My friend here,’ I explained to Mr Samboys, ‘already has his do-it-yourself kit.’

  We stepped on to the roasting sidewalk.

  ‘Embarrassing,’ muttered Sir Lancelot. ‘Damnably embarrassing.’

  ‘There’s one thing, sir,’ I consoled him. ‘At least you’ve tried the only digs in New York where they don’t advertise all the rooms with television.’

  5

  It was at three the following morning that my bedside telephone rang.

  ‘Grimsdyke? Spratt here.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Sir Lancelot.’ I was naturally rather fuddled at that hour. ‘Surely you’re not still in the Conference for Extending Executives’ Existence?’

  ‘I am not in any ruddy conference. I am in jail’

  ‘You’re in what, sir.’

  ‘In jail, you fool! Can’t you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, sir,’

  After the Haven of Rest, I felt used to surprising things happening in New York at a rate which made Alice in Wonderland read like Mrs Beeton. But I was pretty startled to learn that the place had now got the Emeritus Senior Surgeon of St Swithin’s Hospital incarcerated in the nick.

  ‘Shall – shall I send for the British Ambassador, sir?’

  ‘I very much doubt if His Excellency would be roused from his slumbers to take a personal hand in the crisis. You will kindly come yourself with the utmost dispatch and get me out.’

  ‘Get you out, sir?’

  ‘Will you stop making those irritating bleating noises on the end of the line, man?’

  The old boy was understandably a bit short-tempered.

  ‘I mean, where are you in, sir?’

  ‘I am at this moment in the corner of an extremely uncomfortable and overheated room, in the company of a large number of highly unprepossessing persons, whose appearance of villainy is to my mind exceeded by that of the police officers standing among us with loaded firearms.’

  ‘Good lord, sir.’

  ‘You will find me in a police station at the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and First Avenue, on what they call the East Side. Be good enough to leave your bed instantly.’

  ‘Yes, of course, sir.’

  ‘And Grimsdyke–’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You will not mention one word of this to a soul.’

  ‘No, of course not, sir.’

  ‘Thank you. I shall reimburse you the taxi fare.’

  I switched on the light and reached for my trousers, feeling like a nervous French Revolutionary on the morning of July the fourteenth.

  ‘I am not at all sorry to be without an engagement tonight,’ was the last Sir Lancelot had said to me, hiding a yawn as we sat over a Scotch in the alcoholic grotto earlier. ‘Archbold asked me to dine, but he had to go out in his private yacht to examine a movie producer arriving on the Queen Elizabeth. I fear, anyway, that yesterday’s dinner with full symphony orchestra and aquacabaret was rather too much for me. I shall tonight content myself with a light meal in an establishment known, I believe, as the Hamburger Heaven. I am sure, Grimsdyke, you would prefer to be left to your own devices, so I shall not press you to accompany me.’

  As a matter of fact, I was so exhausted from a week’s nannying Sir Lancelot, I nipped into the hotel grill for a Protein-Packed Chunk of Milk-Reared Ram with Man-Sized Marrowbone (a mutton chop), went up to bed, switched on the telly, watched the Late Show, the Late Late Show, and possibly the Early Early Show, and quietly dropped off,

  And now I was on my way to the chokey, wondering what sort of crimes Sir Lancelot had been up to before getting himself put inside,

  I wondered if he might simply have been mistaken for some leading New York gangster, except that all the leading New York gangsters now are aged about sixteen. Then I reflected it was easy enough to find yourself in jail anywhere these days, what with income tax and the way some people try and cross the road. And the jails in New York are particularly accessible to the general public, some of the less respectable citizens being so unrespectable. Altogether the police tend to handle any rumpus with arrests all round and a merry sorting out later.

  I easily found the police station, which like all the other amenities of New York at that hour on a Saturday night was fully open and doing a thriving business – nobody in Manhattan has been to bed for years and years, of course. I stepped past the photographs of chaps the authorities would like a word with, and gingerly approached a tall desk with a cop sitting behind it – a fat, bald, dark fellow, with the expression of having witnessed all the depravities of the world and having got pretty fed up with them, like those pictures of the Emperor Nero.

  ‘Yeah?’ said the cop.

  ‘Er – good evening, officer.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  It was a bit difficult knowing where to start.

  ‘My name is Dr Grimsdyke.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  The cop had a bit of a chew at his gum.

  ‘I am calling on behalf of the prisoner Spratt.’

  ‘Ah, yeah.’

  The cop brightened up, like the Emperor Nero reaching for his music when he heard the crackle of flames.

  ‘You a psychiatrist?’ asked the cop.

  ‘A psychiatrist? No, not actually.’

  ‘Because a psychiatrist is what that guy sure needs. Yes, sir. Is he a nut!’

  ‘A bit eccentric, possibly,’ I agreed. ‘But quite safe in public.’

  ‘See here. The guy first says he’s an English lord–’

  ‘An English knight. Like King Arthur’s pals on the telly.’

  ‘Then the guy says he’s a famous English doctor. I don’t get it. Don’t lords just sit around all day in golden crowns eatin’ crumpets?’

  Our American chums sometimes have a hazy idea of life in the English aristocracy, I suppose through all those gin advertisements. But I felt it wasn’t the moment to explain the niceties of Debrett, and merely asked, ‘What’s the – er, charge, officer?’

  ‘Ah, yeah.’

  The cop now looked like the Emperor Nero with a broken string just as the blaze got nicely started.

  ‘The charge is obstructin’ a police officer in the execution of his duty and usin’ foul language on the sidewalk. Hey, O’Reilly,’ he directed another
cop. ‘Bring in Spratt.’

  In a couple of minutes Sir Lancelot appeared through a steel gate leading to the guest accommodation. As I’d expected, a spell in the cooler had only stoked up his emotional temperature. He glared at the Emperor Nero. His beard was quivering like a terrier spotting a postman. He shook with indignation to the very ferrule of his umbrella.

  ‘Extremely good of you to come, Grimsdyke,’ he snorted. ‘You will now kindly explain to these constables exactly who I am. Then I might be spared more of this perfectly intolerable indignity and we might both obtain a little sleep in what remains of the night.’

  ‘Why ain’t ya carrying ya passport?’ demanded the cop.

  ‘Because, my man, I have never in my life found it necessary to walk about with a piece of paper explaining who I am.’

  ‘Ya used foul language on the sidewalk,’ the cop persisted.

  ‘I certainly did not use foul language on the sidewalk. I have never used foul language anywhere in my life.’

  ‘Ya called the patrolman an insolent pip-squeak.’ The cop took out his gum and inspected it sadly, as though it were some faithful old pet nearing its last legs. ‘Sounds like mighty foul language to me.’

  I began to see what the fuss was about, and pretty worried it made me, too. You can always try a bit of give and take with an English rozzer, and no hard feelings. But you have to go pretty cagily with the New York constabulary, particularly when you remember they walk about swinging ruddy great baseball bats, and are so ringed round the middle with revolver bullets they look in danger of going off on hot afternoons like a Guy Fawkes’ set-piece.

  Sir Lancelot slapped the desk with his umbrella. ‘The constable officiously tried to prevent my crossing the street.’

  ‘Yeah. The street sign was signalling “Don’t Walk”.’

  ‘At my age,’ declared the surgeon, drawing himself up, ‘I believe I know how to cross the road.’

  ‘Aw, sure,’ grunted the cop.

  America may be the Land of the Free, but they’re pretty hot on the traditional liberty of British subjects to wander all over the road and chuck themselves under the buses.