She was a real “moaner.” She disregarded the fact that I had during the past year saved her from premature death by my prompt diagnosis of her perforated ulcer, cured one of her children of bed-wetting, cared for her ailing husband, and seen one or other member of her family at least twice a week. Nothing I did, though, was ever good enough. The medicine usually “made it worse,” no matter what “it” was; the pills “upset her stomach,” and nothing got better as quickly as she would like. Her husband’s certificates were frequently wrongly dated, the chemist accused of giving her the “wrong” prescription, and there were always too many people in the waiting-room. When I visited her to see the baby he had always just gone to sleep and she didn’t like to disturb him; when she visited me she was surprised that I was unable to make a diagnosis without asking her to undress. She considered it a personal affront that I could not listen to her chest if she undid only one button of her cardigan. In one year she had had, in exchange for her contributions to the Health Service, more visits, operations, dressings, pills, placebos and “tonics” than I cared to remember. Now she demanded iron tablets. I refused to give them to her.
“I think they’d do me good,” she said, pulling on her neat kid gloves. “Doctor Compton gave them to my friend when she was feeling run-down and they’ve bucked her up enormously.”
“Perhaps your friend needed iron tablets, Mrs Rumbold,” I said. “You had a blood test only a few weeks ago when you complained of feeling giddy, and you’re not the slightest bit anæmic. I see no necessity for prescribing them for you.”
She pushed her face, with its sharp nose and thin lips, nearer to mine.
“They are available on the Scheme, aren’t they?” she said threateningly.
“At my discretion.”
“I tell you I need them, Doctor. I’m utterly exhausted.”
I stood up. “They’ll do you no good at all, Mrs Rumbold, and I refuse to prescribe them for you. You cannot make your own diagnoses and expect me to prescribe for them. I’m the doctor, not you.”
“Well!” she said, standing up and quivering with indignation. “You’ve never done me the slightest good. I shall make a complaint to the Health Service. I shall change to my friend’s doctor. He’s a Harley Street man.”
“Doctor Compton is welcome to you,” I said rudely, fed up with Mrs Rumbold. It was a pity that I had to yield seven National Health cards to my competitor, but he was more than welcome to Mrs Rumbold.
She swept imperiously past me and out of the surgery. Her exit would have been dignified had she not carried with her my stethoscope dangling from one of the spokes of her umbrella. The next patient brought it back.
By ten-thirty the waiting-room was practically empty, and I still had seen nobody who looked as if they had stepped out of a lengthy convertible, a swish MG or a substantial Rover. Curious, I opened the waiting-room door to see who was left.
Mr Thwaite of “Regent Motors,” Mr Ironside, manager of the local “Blue Star” Garage, and George Leech from the kerb in Warren Street, sat glaring at each other through the smoke- screen they had put up.
Together, without removing their hands from the pockets of their overcoats or their cigarettes from their mouths, they each assured me that in answer to the feeler I had put out for a new car, they had brought along the most dignified (Mr Thwaite, for his Rover), the nippiest (Mr Ironside, the MG), the smartest (George Leech of his convertible) car on the road.
I had an interesting and unusual morning. I visited a chicken-pox and a mastitis in the Rover, and an emphysema and a glandular fever in the MG. By the time I arrived at the largest and “most desirable” residence in the district in the convertible with the top down, my head was spinning with details of compression ratios, cooling systems, turning circles, fuel consumption, dipped beams, recirculatory ball steering boxes and twin windtone horns.
Horace H Brindley was one of the wealthiest men in the neighbourhood. He was also my one and only private patient. At one time plain Bert Brindley from the provinces, he had had the good fortune to have his bicycle repair shop in the dead centre of a block of property where one of the big multiples was planning to erect a store. Aided and abetted by the friend who had lent him the money to set himself up in business and by his native shrewdness, inherited from a father who had managed to support himself and a family without ever working for more than two or three weeks at a stretch, he had firmly refused the first tempting offers dangled before his nose. They had actually started building round him before Bert Brindley decided the price was right, left the provinces, never to return, and gave birth to the H H Brindley Bicycle Company whose products were known and bought all over the world. “HH,” as he now liked to be known, having received his initial shove, climbed steadily up the ladder. He married a wife, if not from the top drawer, from a good few drawers higher than his own, became known as a public benefactor, hung a Seurat and a Manet on his walls, walked softly on Aubusson and settled down to a life of luxury. By the sheerest luck he had become my patient when he moved to the district a year ago.
His parlourmaid was the daughter of old Hodge, our gardener and odd-job man. It was she who had answered his shouts one morning when he had bent to pick up a newspaper and had been unable to straighten up again, and she who had telephoned for me. Pleased with my manipulation of his disc, he had asked me to continue to treat him and his family whenever necessary. I was delighted, especially when I had asked him for his medical cards and he had said: “I’ve got plenty of brass, lad, and I don’t want owt for nowt. You do take private patients, don’t you?” I assured him that of course I did, although he and his family remained my sole cash customers.
This morning he was sitting up in bed leaning against the peach satin, quilted bedhead, smoking a six-inch cigar and reading the Financial Times, his glasses on the very end of his nose.
“It’s me heart, lad,” he told me, pointing to his chest and putting his newspaper down on top of the Daily Mirror, “and if there’s owt wrong you’d better tell me.”
I took the history and examined him carefully, but could find nothing wrong. I reassured him and asked if he had anything on his mind.
“To be perfectly honest,” he said, getting out of bed and tying his pyjama trousers more tightly round his rotund abdomen, “I have got something on me mind. I’m worried about our Tessa. She’s a good lass but she’s keeping the wrong company. I haven’t given my daughter the best education money can buy to see her mixing with a bunch of lads with no brass and no brains. We take her to dances, her mother and me, the right dances, mind you, and for looks and clothes there’s none can hold a candle to her, though I say it meself; but she comes along just to do us a favour. I told you she was a good lass, but it’s as plain as the nose on your face she’d rather be out with her pals rocking and rolling all over the place. I know she’s young and she needs her fun, not that I ever had much fun when I was young, but I’d like to see her moving in the right direction.”
He waved his hand round the bedroom, large enough for a small ballroom, with its pearl-grey carpet, peach satin curtains and ormolu cherubs carrying everything from lights to flower vases. “I’m not an unreasonable chap, but I haven’t got where I have for nothing. She could have anyone, our Tessa could – and I mean anyone – I’ve got connections. And look what she does with herself!” He now had his crocodile slippers on and was fastening his black silk dressing-gown festooned with dragons and with “HH” embroidered boldly in scarlet on the breast pocket. He added a white silk, self-patterned muffler and prowled round the bedroom with his hands in his pockets.
“I’d like her to marry someone with brains,” he said. “Not ‘H H Brindley Bicycles’ brains, but someone who knows what it’s all about.”
He stopped prowling and stood stolidly before me. “I’ve got twenty-five thousand pounds’ worth of pictures hung on my walls,” he said, “and I can’t even spell names of chaps that painted them. There’s ten yards of books in my bookcases, and I’
ve never read one of them. I can’t start learning about these things at my age, but I want someone with some appreciation of them for Tessa. She’s been to Paris, to Switzerland and all over t’ place being educated, and now she sits in coffee bars with a lot of brainless idiots!” he said bitterly. “What am I to do with her?”
I shook my head. The problem of a husband for Tessa Brindley was outside my province.
“She went out with a medical man once, and Mother and me were quite excited when…” He went on abut the disappointing end to Tessa’s romance with the medical man, but I wasn’t listening. I had suddenly remembered Faraday and his request to us to find him a wife.
“I know a chap,” I said enthusiastically, but then I remembered. Faraday certainly knew a Manet from a Monet, but he hadn’t two halfpennies for a penny. What use would he be to Tessa Brindley?
“Aye?”
“No,” I said, subsiding. “It wouldn’t do.”
Horace Brindley looked me in the eye. “If it’s a question of brass,” he said, “I’ve got more than enough for Tessa. Don’t worry on that score. What’s he like?”
“A doctor,” I said, “my oldest friend. Specialising in neurology. He’s doing very well, but of course he hasn’t yet got a consultantship. When he does…”
HH held up his hand. “I can fix all that,” he said, “if he’s a good lad.”
“It doesn’t work like that in medicine,” I said; “it’s not a question of money.”
“I’ve got friends as well,” he said; “there’s always strings that can be pulled. I’d have him in Harley Street in no time.”
I shuddered as I thought of what Faraday would say to this airy disposal of his academic aspirations, although Tessa Brindley, at eighteen, more than fulfilled his list of requirements, having one of the most beautiful figures and faces I had ever seen. She was also a charming girl.
HH slapped me on the back. “Fix it up, lad,” he said; “fix it up and I’ll see you’re all right.” He made me feel like a taxi driver, but I knew that in spite of his brashness he meant well.
I was a bit sorry I had opened my mouth about Faraday at all but, having done so, promised to arrange a meeting.
HH accompanied me to the door in his dressing-gown. I had to explain about the smart convertible which George Leech was dusting with his silk handkerchief, and I asked HH his opinion as to what make of car I should buy.
“It’s not so much what you want, lad,” he said: “what about your wife? It’s no earthly use you getting a Rover if she fancies herself in an MG, or vicky-verky. They always have the last word, you know. I discovered that a long while back.”
Of course, he was right. I had quite forgotten that Sylvia might be interested in our new car, and wondered if I would ever learn all there was to know about marriage.
With his crocodile slippers crunching on the gravel of the well-kept drive HH beckoned me to follow him. We walked round to his garage and there, outside the huge triple doors, stood the most elegant Rolls-Royce, certainly the most expensive I had seen outside the Motor Show. He ran a hand over her lovingly.
“Now there’s a car,” he said.
“I’d have one of those, of course,” I said, “but I’m afraid it wouldn’t go in my garage.”
HH looked at me shrewdly. “You never know your luck, lad,” he said. “You fix our Tessa up and anything could happen.”
Driving home beside George Leech, my mind on Rolls-Royces, Faraday, Tessa Brindley, Rovers and MGs, I listened with only one ear as he enthused lengthily about the appearance, performance and exceptional value of the convertible he was trying to sell me.
Outside the house I thanked him for his help and told him, as I had told Messrs Thwaite and Ironside, that unfortunately all the cars they had shown me that morning were too expensive, but that as soon as I had made up my mind about something more within my price range I would get in touch with him. In any case, I said, I would have to discuss the matter with my wife.
George Leech understood. “Natch,” he said, sliding into the driving seat. “Gotta keep ’em happy. Bless ’em.”
Everybody seemed to know how to treat a wife except me.
In my hurry to get out in my new cars I had forgotten to take my door key. I rang the bell. The door swung wide and holding it was a middle-aged woman with a deadpan face, dressed in a black dress with a frilly lilac-coloured cap and apron. For a moment I wondered if I had come to the right house; then I remembered it was Monday – the day that Bridget was going and the new maid arriving.
“Aim so sorry,” the vision said, unsmiling: “Doctor’s out.”
“That’s all right,” I said, “I am the doctor. How do you do?”
“Oh!” she said. “Aim so sorry, sir,” and stepped back for me to come in.
“Moddom’s in the daining-room,” she said, and trotted back to the kitchen.
“Moddom” was grinning all over her face.
“Isn’t she a treasure, Sweetie?” she asked, putting her arms round me.
“She looks too good to be true. Did you get any references?”
“I told you she’s been at her sister’s home, looking after her. She hasn’t worked for quite a while and she hasn’t the address of the people who last employed her because they’ve moved.”
“There’s one born every day,” I said, stroking Sylvia’s hair.
“Don’t be silly, Sweetie. You can see Emily is honest and respectable just by looking at her, and she certainly knows her job.”
“She looks like an escapee from RADA to me,” I said, “and the name just puts the tin lid on it. Let’s eat.”
Five
Emily was a paragon of all the virtues and she lasted exactly two weeks.
To Sylvia she had been the answer to a prayer. She could deal with the phone, adequately if pompously, hand out the prescriptions at the door and do everything required of her in the house efficiently, thereby giving Sylvia a lot more freedom.
Sylvia was delighted at the prospect of introducing Faraday to Tessa Brindley. Not only because, like all newly-weds, she was anxious to see everyone she knew happily married but also because of Emily. We would have our first dinner party as soon as I came back from Edinburgh, at which Emily would wait at table. Being used to more formal service she had, as Sylvia felt, been hiding her light under a bushel. At a dinner party she would really shine.
As far as I was concerned Emily gave me the creeps, and I am sure that I was a constant thorn in her flesh. Like a lilac-trimmed zombie she padded after me in her soft-soled shoes, looking at me reproachfully every time I left my gloves on the hall table or my overcoat slung across the banisters. A tight-lipped martyr, she was forever handing me my auroscope from where I had left it on the drawing-room mantelpiece or informing me unnecessarily that “Modom” had gone to do her “little errands” and would be back “quaite soon.” It wasn’t long before I yearned for the unobtrusiveness of Bridget – burnt toast, curlers and all.
When Emily cracked it was in a way that neither of us had expected.
It would not have surprised me if she had disappeared one day with the spoons or made advances to the whisky bottle; she had looked respectable enough in a phoney kind of way for either. But she did nothing of the sort. She merely appeared one morning while we were having breakfast, her eyes ablaze in her usually impassive face, and in a steely voice said: “Ai’d like to have a word with Modom.”
Since “Modom” was sitting there, not three feet away, eating her toast, I couldn’t see what she was waiting for. I told her to proceed.
Fixing Sylvia with a look of hatred she said: “Ai reely thought comin’ to a doctor’s house that Ai’d be enterin’ a gentleman’s service. If Ai’d thought for one moment that Modom would stoop to such a thing Ai’d never have considered acceptin’ the post.” She was quivering with indignation.
“What is it, Emily?” I asked, getting up and standing near to Sylvia, whom I was afraid Emily was going to strike. “What’s this all
about?”
She gave me one of her reproachful looks as if I should have known. “About the itchin’ powder, sir. In mai bed, in mai clothes, in everything Ay possess. Ask Modom; there’s not an article she’s missed.”
“Emily,” Sylvia said, “what on earth are you talking about? I haven’t been near your room.”
“Ai’m sorry, Modom, but you can smell it a mail away. Smell!” she commanded, and thrust her apron under my nose. I could smell nothing.
“Come upstairs, Emily,” I said, “and you can show me what it’s all about.”
In her room everything seemed to be in order, except that she had packed all her possessions into her two suitcases, which were on the bed.
“Were you thinking of leaving us, Emily?” I said.
“Oh! no, sir. But I dursn’t leave anything out, not even mai nightdress. Suppose Modom were to come in again with the powder. Can’t you smell it, sir? It’s everywhere.”
I prowled round the room and sniffed at the clothes in her cases. There was nothing at all to be smelled.
“Now, Emily,” I said firmly, “this is all your imagination. There’s no itching powder anywhere and nobody has touched your clothes. I suggest that you unpack your things and get on with your work.”
Emily shook her head. “Ai couldn’t leave mai room,” she said, “not with all mai things in. Suppose Modom was to come up again!”
It was after nine and I should have started the surgery ten minutes ago. I couldn’t waste any more time arguing.
“All right, Emily, you stay here and we’ll have a little chat when I’ve finished the surgery.”
She sat down on the bed with her arms folded and fixed a watchful glance on the door.
Downstairs, I told Sylvia not to disturb her. I would try to sort out the problem after the surgery.
“I’m scared, Sweetie,” she said; “she seems to have it in for me.”
I blew her a kiss. “Don’t worry, darling. I locked the door on the outside. She looks like a paranoiac to me, probably escaped from a bug-house.”
Love on My List Page 4
