Doctor In The Swim

by Richard Gordon

  ‘Really, sir, I swear there was nothing–’

  ‘You are returning to London by rail? I fear I can hardly offer you a lift. My car is not nearly large enough for all your wives and their luggage.’

  There was one compensation, I reflected, as I made my way from Victoria Station towards my horses’ larder. At least I’d got rid of Miles, just as it was coming up for his turn on the divan again, too. I had a couple of hours’ hard work ahead packing up the chap’s junk, I calculated as I mounted the narrow stairs and felt for the key, then for the first time in weeks I should be able to lay back and spread myself and take as long as I liked in the bath.

  I opened the front door. Lying on the divan in his shirt sleeves with a box of my special Christmas cigars was Squiffy. ‘How the devil did you get in?’ I demanded crossly from the threshold.

  ‘Grim, my dear chap!’ Squiffy leapt up, spilling the cigars. ‘Thank heavens you’ve arrived! Through the window, of course,’ he added.

  ‘Through the window? And why, pray?’ I asked, as icily as a morning dip at Whortleton.

  ‘But the front door was locked,’ he explained.

  I sat on the divan.

  ‘Grim, I simply had to see you,’ Squiffy went on, taking off his glasses and scratching his head with them. ‘I got your address from Lucy. Though she hasn’t the first idea I’m round here. Or about the beastly jam I’m in. But, honestly, you’re the only chap in the world who can possibly help me. I’m being persecuted by the Kremlin.’

  Paranoia, of course, I diagnosed. Persecution mania. A lot of it about. I’d always thought Squiffy was mad, since he’d painted pink the pet hedgehog he kept in the dorm and wrote poetry to it. I decided I’d better quietly humour the poor chap and hope he wouldn’t go berserk, not that there was much room in my flat for anyone to go berserk decently, anyway.

  ‘Grim, I desperately need advice.’

  ‘You desperately need a drink first, if you ask me,’ I told him, making for the kitchen sink.

  ‘My old man will kill me.’

  ‘You mean, he’s turned up and discovered that instead of telling the Government where to put its atoms you’re telling grubby little boys that sugar with sodium chlorate makes a hell of a bang?’

  ‘No, I’m on hols from the beastly prepper at the moment,’ Squiffy sat trying to detach his left hand at the radiocarpal joint. ‘And Father’s been held up in Karachi for another month, which is just as well, as they’ve sent in the bill for the lab I burnt down in Mireborough. I suppose you couldn’t lend me five hundred quid, could you?’

  ‘There, there,’ I said, offering a sympathetic glass and shifting a few of my breakables out of his reach. The chap was clearly having delusions as well. ‘Why can’t you just ring up the bank and ask them to send a boy round with it?’

  ‘My old man would kill me in a rather more painful way, that’s all. You know his odd ideas of keeping me and the millions separated? I had to borrow five hundred for day-to-day expenses from the head beak at the prepper – a mean blighter, counts the nibs and chalk – on the strength of Father’s name. Though mind you,’ Squiffy added, the family financial acumen showing through, ‘if you could raise only fifty quid and we put it on a real cert at ten to one, it would do just as well, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but what’s all this got to do with you being persecuted by chaps with beards and snow on their boots?’

  Squiffy paused. ‘Do you suppose that actor chap, Basil Beauchamp, when he’s finished being Hamlet for the evening goes home and moons about muttering Alas! poor Yorick, and so on?’

  ‘No, he generally goes out and has no end of a time of it with your sister.’

  ‘That’s the point. Once he’s given the customers their moneysworth of Hamlet he goes on being Basil Beauchamp again – not that I’ve much to say in favour of that.’ Squiffy took a gulp from his glass. ‘My trouble, Grim, is being carried away by my part. It was fair enough covering up that little trouble at Mireborough by spreading the rumour I’m a top scientist round the family. But… well, when you go to a party and some girl asks you what do you do in life, you can’t just explain your days are dedicated to teaching a bunch of kids how the hall barometer works. You say you’re a scientist, and her eyes light up and she says, How fascinating, I suppose you make hydrogen bombs and space ships, and you say, Naturally, and in no time at all you’re out in the garden pointing out the galaxies.’

  I remembered that Squiffy was quite a one for the girls, and in the old days at Whortleton had a terrific pash on some little blonde number with a plastic windmill,

  ‘I was holding forth like this at an odd sort of party out in Notting Hill to a girl called Noreen – very decent type, works one of those wonderful machines in an espresso bar, all steam, I wish I could. Then this little fellow Yarmouth oiled up,’ Squiffy explained. ‘A funny bird, largely moustache and glasses. But he’s an absolutely top-of-the-bill secret agent.’

  ‘Look here, Squiffy, you can’t really expect me to believe–’

  ‘Damn it, Grim, you’re always reading about them in the papers. Ordinary looking fellows who walk into the Admiralty saying they’ve come to clean the windows and stuff all the plans up their jumpers. I was expanding a bit about life at Woomera–’ Squiffy suddenly scratched his head. ‘Where is Woomera, by the way? I suppose I’d had a few noggins, because I was holding forth on the international situation as well when Yarmouth went a bit shifty and asked if I’d like to meet his comrades. I thought he meant for a game of darts or something, so I said, Yes, and he said, Go to the British Museum next Sunday with a copy of the Telephone Directory E to K and a string bag containing three oranges – or it may have been lemons, I forget, or even grapefruit – and approach the chap with the Telephone Directory L to R and a string of onions, and say that your grandmother has broken her spectacles. He’d reply that home-made brawn was very nourishing, and we’d be in business.’

  ‘My dear Squiffy,’ I explained. ‘This is only some fellow-maniac–’

  ‘What do you mean, “fellow”?’ Squiffy looked offended. ‘All this started before Lucy got back from New York. Naturally, I never turned up that Sunday, and a weekend or so later Yarmouth phoned me. Got my number from Noreen, you see. He seemed pretty narked, too. Beastly place for anyone to wait about, the British Museum, I suppose. He still rings up wanting me to meet his chum with the onions – what was that?’

  It was a knock at the door. Squiffy plunged behind the divan.

  ‘My dear old lad, don’t panic! It isn’t the bloke from Moscow, it’s only the neighbours come to scrounge some cigarettes. Why, hello,’ I smiled, opening the door. ‘Quite a surprise.’

  ‘Hello, Gaston,’ Lucy smiled back from the mat. ‘I’ve come to find my brother.’

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘Yes, he’s the man with his foot sticking up behind your divan.’

  ‘How on earth did you know I was here?’ demanded Squiffy crossly, restoring himself among those present.

  ‘My dear, it was as obvious as Nelson in Trafalgar Square from the way you wanted the address.’

  ‘I just called to have a chat with Gaston. About my work, you know. In the laboratory.’

  ‘Exactly. And I have just called to say your laboratory has rung urgently to complain that you’ve left with the keys to the tuck-shop.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ explained Squiffy. ‘“Tuck Shop”. Code name for our latest secret bomb. Very destructive.’

  ‘I couldn’t find the keys in your room,’ Lucy went on levelly. ‘Only an exercise book containing some formulae corrected by you in red ink – extremely untidily, if I may say so –with a remarkably lifelike sketch of you on the back page and the caption “Stinkers is a Fool”. May I come in?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You are heartless, Gaston,’ Lucy added sweetly to me. ‘Not so much as phoning to say what happened to that lovely divorce.’

  ‘I just thought you’d be terribly occupied with charity mat
inées and Basil Beauchamp, and so on.’

  ‘Basil’s away at the moment. He’s having quite a time, going round judging seaside beauty contests looking for his musical Saint Joan.’

  I remembered noticing through the haze that Basil was visiting the Whortleton Holiday Camp to judge the national finals the following Saturday.

  ‘Lucy, I can explain everything,’ burst out Squiffy, who had been making asphyxiated noises on the divan.

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘You see, Lucy–’ He scratched his head. ‘Oh, hell! You tell her, Grim.’

  I briefly described her brother’s standing in scientific and espionage circles,

  ‘George,’ Lucy summed up. ‘You’re a fool.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but I can’t even ask for police protection, or whatever it is. Then the cats would be out of the bag and being sick all over the carpet by the time the old man got home.’

  ‘I can assure you this Yarmouth is simply pulling your leg,’ said Lucy calmly.

  I must say, I admired the cool way she took charge of the proceedings. I remembered Lucy had a great knack for handling awkward situations, even in those days at Whortleton when Squiffy somehow managed to sit on himself while putting up a deckchair.

  ‘You don’t know how nasty he can seem on the phone, particularly rather early in the morning,’ grumbled Squiffy. ‘I’ve never known anyone who could give the words “British Museum” such a sinister ring.’

  ‘It so happens that all the British Museum business is exactly the same as an episode of the mystery serial that Basil did on television weeks ago.’

  ‘Really?’ Squiffy brightened up. ‘Of course, I always watch the puppets on the other channel.’

  ‘Even to the telephone directories and the oranges.’

  ‘Then it sounds as if the chap really is a spoof?’

  ‘Making two of you,’ I remarked.

  ‘George,’ said Lucy firmly. ‘You need a rest.’

  ‘You’re jolly well not getting rid of me to our country place. You know the butler down there gets his wages put up every time he reports to the old man something nasty I’ve done.’

  ‘You could go abroad.’

  ‘My passport has been in the vaults since the business of that girl on the Costa Brava. Anyway I can’t go away,’ Squiffy pointed out. ‘Now Basil’s haring round the coast, I’m supposed to be taking you to Lord’s and Glyndebourne this week.’

  Lucy smiled. ‘I’m sure Gaston would take me instead – if you’ve no other commitments.’

  ‘Who me?’ That sunset broke out again inside. ‘Yes, of course, Lucy. I’ve got no other commitments at all. None whatever. I say, let’s have a lunchtime drink,’ I suggested eagerly. I glanced round. ‘Except that George seems to have killed the bottle.’

  ‘I’ll get another from the pub on the corner.’ Squiffy leapt up. ‘After the terrific relief about Yarmouth it’s absolutely the least I can do.’

  ‘Gaston, you certainly lack the woman’s touch,’ remarked Lucy, looking round as Squiffy disappeared.

  ‘Bit untidy, I admit. Had a relative to stay.’

  ‘I insist you let me smooth the surface, anyway.’ She pushed up her sleeves. ‘What on earth do you do with this ghastly thing in a bottle?’

  ‘That’s my relative’s, it came out of a High Court judge.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Lucy, and started to sort out the crockery. I could never have entertained Lucy alone in my flat while still engaged to the nicest girl in the world, of course. But now, I reflected as I fingered the obsolete ring in my pocket, I could entertain all the women in London I liked, though even a few of them would have made quite a crowd.

  ‘Lucy,’ I mentioned, as she started wielding the broom with advanced alopecia. ‘I thought you were booked for that part of Basil’s singing saint?’

  She gave a little pout, which brought the sunset back to the pylorus.

  ‘Oh, he seemed to think my voice hadn’t enough appeal and my legs had too much or something. You know, Gaston – Basil’s a dear, and knows absolutely everyone on the stage – but I sometimes wonder if he might be more interested in my father’s finances than in me.’

  ‘Oh, come!’ I was quite horrified. ‘Dear old Basil’s one of the best. I’ve been chummy with him for years.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it’s only my female intuition, and nothing’s quite so unreliable as that.’

  ‘Admittedly, of course, he’s rather vain. But then all actors are.’

  ‘Um, yes,’ said Lucy, raking a harvest of cigarette packets from under the divan.

  ‘I’d be quite unbearably vain myself if I had his looks. And with all the girls falling for me.’

  ‘All the girls?’

  I laughed. ‘An occupational hazard with actors, you know. Sometimes you can hardly hear his lines in the stalls for the snapping of broken hearts.’

  ‘Um, yes,’ said Lucy again.

  ‘And of course, he does wear scent.’

  ‘Scent? But he told me it was some lotion the doctor advised for his skin.’

  I laughed again. ‘Basil has very charming manners,’ insisted Lucy, picking up three or four old socks.

  ‘Yes, that’s what the landlady’s daughter used to say in our digs. Poor girl! I wonder how it all turned out after she’d had her…her holiday.’

  ‘Gaston!’ Lucy suddenly threw down the broom. ‘Basil expects me to marry him.’

  ‘Congratulations. Very decent husband, I’m sure. Good provider, always cheerful about the house, careful dresser, tells a good anecdote–’

  Lucy stamped her foot. ‘Gaston! Can’t you turn off your insane drivel for one moment? Don’t you see I’m serious?’

  ‘Here, I say, Lucy, I didn’t realize–’

  ‘Oh, Gaston! I did promise him, and I don’t really want to now at all,’ cried Lucy.

  And there she was, weeping on my shoulder, just like Connie, but a jolly sight nicer.

  ‘There, there,’ I said, hoping my hanky wasn’t too mucky after the rough night at Whortleton.

  ‘Dear Gaston,’ sobbed Lucy. ‘You’re – you’re such a psychological aspirin.’

  ‘Always ready to treat a case of acute distress in the damsel, I assure you.’

  Lucy swallowed. ‘I’ve thought about you so much, Gaston dear.’

  ‘Go on?’ was all I could manage, what with the sunset spreading up the oesophagus and down into the duodenum.

  ‘I’ve thought about those lovely days we had together as kids in Whortleton. And how you were so frightfully brave about taking that bee off my neck.’

  ‘Ah, that bee.’

  ‘The other day Basil wouldn’t even dare kill a mosquito on my collar.’

  ‘I mightn’t be much cop at mosquitoes myself,’ I admitted. ‘I’m strictly a bee man.’

  ‘Gaston – do you remember when you kissed me?’

  ‘Behind the whelks, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No. By the outfall.’

  ‘Yes, you were wearing your little one-piece.’

  ‘I’ve never forgotten it.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Lucy,’ I told her truthfully, ‘neither have I.’

  ‘Kiss me again, Gaston,’ Lucy started to say.

  But I already had. ‘What on earth’s going on in here?’ shouted Squiffy through the letterbox. ‘I’ve been knocking for simply hours. Have you lost all interest in drink, or something?’

  ‘And now,’ smiled Lucy, taking my hand as I opened the door, ‘Gaston’s coming home with us for lunch.’

  22

  The next morning I was woken by a terrific knocking on my front door.

  I sat up on the divan, feeling confused. I’d just experienced the most wonderful day in my life. I’d lunched in Lucy’s flat, then we’d gone for a walk in the Park, where somehow we’d lost Squiffy. There admittedly wasn’t much to do for the rest of Sunday because of Miles and his moral chums, but I managed to find a restaurant open to buy Lucy dinner, and afterwards she said she
’d love to drink beer in a little pub I remembered snuggling among the warehouses on Bankside. Then we walked hand in hand along the Embankment, baring the old soul a bit and looking at the lights sparkling on the bridges, and feeling that Nature was after all creeping up on the late James Whistler. Before I’d even looked at my watch it was already long past midnight.

  I now looked at my watch again, and found it was already long past ten. I supposed I’d been pretty tired, not having much sleep the night before on emotional tenterhooks down at Whortleton, not to mention a mattress apparently stuffed with dried seaweed.

  ‘All right, all right,’ I shouted, as the terrific knocking was repeated. ‘Don’t bash the ruddy thing off its hinges.’

  I pulled on a dressing gown, wondering who the devil it was. Miles again, to say he’d had a second bust up with Connie and asking me kindly to fix another divorce? Or it might have been Squiffy, after wandering all night in the Park. Or perhaps just Mr Hildenborough come for the empties.

  ‘Half a jiffy, blast it!’ I called to another burst of terrific knocking. ‘Damn it, what have you got out there? Twelve halberdiers and a battering-ram?’

  I threw open the door. On the mat stood Dame Hilda and Anemone.

  ‘You poor, poor boy,’ cried Dame Hilda.

  She enfolded me to her bosom, which was like being trapped in a padded cell.

  ‘You poor, poor, dear boy.’

  ‘Er – good morning, Dame Hilda. Lovely day, isn’t it?’

  ‘You poor dear misunderstood thing!’

  ‘Good morning, Anemone.’ We Grimsdykes remember our manners, whatever the hour. ‘Would you care to step inside? A cup of coffee? I must apologize for the stubble and slippers, but I forgot to wind my alarm clock. Remarkable how one goes on sleeping–’

  ‘How can you ever forgive me?’ exploded Dame Hilda.

  ‘Nothing to forgive, I’m sure,’ I returned politely, reaching for the coffee-pot.

  ‘I mean, about Saturday night down at Whortleton.’ I gave a little laugh. ‘Oh, that? Yes, rather a ruined evening all round, wasn’t it?’

  Dame Hilda gazed at me. ‘Gaston, how I admire the brave gaiety with which you hide from the hard world your inner suffering.’