As it turned out, I wasn’t far off the mark. Emily had spent the last ten years in and out of mental hospitals. She had been released this last time on condition that she remained in the care of her sister. The sister, glad to get rid of her for a bit, had presumed that she could come to no harm by taking a job in a doctor’s house, and let her go.
Sorting out this problem in between doing my calls and popping home every now and then to make sure Emily had not escaped, took me the best part of an incredibly busy day. Emily’s sister was not on the phone. It was early evening before I contacted her, and then she calmly told me that it wasn’t convenient to have Emily back, and since she obviously was having another attack I had better take her straight back to Bolney Thatch, the mental hospital which had become her second home, where they would welcome her with open arms.
It was midnight when, having got rid of Emily, I was tired and irritable and ready for bed.
“For heaven’s sake don’t take on any more lunatics,” I said to Sylvia. “I’ve quite enough to do without wandering round the countryside returning stray maids to mental homes. Kindly see that the next one produces a reference. A personal reference.”
Sylvia yawned. “It doesn’t look as if there’ll be a next one for some time. None of the agencies has got a soul, unless we want a footman. And you may be quite sure that I shall examine the pedigree of any future applicants. I’ve no wish to be murdered in my bed.”
I put out the light.
“Mind you,” Sylvia said, “it’s a pity.”
“What?”
“About Emily. She certainly knew her job.”
“So did Crippen,” I said. “Goodnight!”
Two days before I was due to leave for Edinburgh and the refresher course, I still had not got a locum to look after the practice while I was away, and we had found no one to replace Emily. It began to look extremely doubtful that I would ever get there. The BMA said they were doing their best, and there was just a possibility that they might have somebody for me by the end of the day. They were trying to contact him.
Rather depressed by the situation, as I was looking forward to going to Edinburgh, I did my calls hoping that the person the BMA had in mind would be more suitable than the last doctor they had sent me.
His name had been Doctor O’Brien and he had arrived one Friday afternoon at the end of Emily’s first week with us.
“There’s a personage to see you, Doctor,” Emily had announced, intercepting my gloves on their way to the hall table, as I came from my rounds. “A Doctor O’Brien if mai ears didn’t deceive me. Ai put him in the drawin’- room.” She sniffed in a particular way she had, and I wondered what poor Doctor O’Brien had done to incur her displeasure.
It didn’t take me long to find out.
I thought it was a little strange when I found Doctor O’Brien, not sitting on one of the chairs as one would expect, but perched on a console table, with his legs dangling. He was singing. He did jump down as soon as he saw me and, weaving his unsteady way towards me across the roses on the carpet, pumped my hand heavily.
“’Tis a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Docthor,” he said, his breath nearly anæsthetising me as he spoke, “and ’tis a dream of a set-up you have here, quiet as the grave, or Killarney on a summer morn.”
I extricated my hand from his leaning grip and he nearly fell over.
“Doctor O’Brien,” I said. He held up his hand.
“I know, boy, I know. You’re thinking I’m a trifle inebriated. ’Tis not so. ’Tis not so. To be honest with you,” he lowered his voice confidentially, “I’m sufferin’ from a rare complaint affectin’ me balance mechanism. Picked it up in the East when I was surgeon on His Majesty’s Ship…”
“Doctor O’Brien,” I said more firmly, coming towards him. He pushed me away.
“There’s no need to apologise, boy. When I was young, like you, still fresh from Queen’s, I too had me difficulties with diagnoses. I remember once in County Down – of course, I had me own practice, then…”
“About the locum, Doctor,” I said, intending to tell him the vacancy was already filled.
“Ah! yes, the locum. In me last post ’twas all indostrial, a sad town hoddled ’neath the smoking chimneys, one church, one cinema and twenty-one public houses!”
I took his arm. “I’m afraid the vacancy is already filled,” I said, propelling him towards the door. “The BMA must have made a mistake.”
“Yes, yes,” he said amiably, “and no hard feelings, Doctor, though ’tis a lovely set-up you have here.” He eyed the cocktail cabinet.
“If you’ll not mind I’ll take a drop of me medicine.” He took a flask from his pocket and enjoyed a long swig of whisky. “Mist. soda sal. cum colchicum,” he said; “fine for the creaking joints.”
Watching him weave his unsteady way down the path, his shiny suit hanging loosely from his bony frame, I could not help feeling sorry for him. I wondered what had happened that had made him take to drink and set him on the dreary job of drifting from locum to locum. In his student days he must surely have been as carefree as the rest of his year, a sponge for knowledge and convinced of a brilliant medical future. He turned the corner, and I wondered if he was aware that his path from now on lay only downhill or if the whisky bottle still beckoned him with a rosy mirage.
Pulling myself together, I realised that feeling sorry for Doctor O’Brien was getting me no nearer to Edinburgh, and went in to phone the BMA and tell them what had happened.
It was now two weeks since I had seen Doctor O’Brien and there had so far been no other applicants for the job.
At the end of the afternoon, as I came home and saw no car outside the house, I presumed that the BMA had failed to contact the person they had told me about, and that the refresher course would have to manage without me.
When Sylvia told me that a Doctor Cataract was waiting to see me it cheered me up considerably.
Doctor Cataract was wearing a duffle coat and had arrived on foot. He was a fine upright figure of an old man with an impressive mane of white hair. He had retired, the told me, from his own practice which he had had for many years, and now took on short locums whenever he felt again the itch to work. He was, he assured me, in spite of his years, in perfect health, and I had to admit that he looked it. Remembering the unfortunate Doctor O’Brien, I looked carefully at the references he produced. They all seemed impeccable and could, he told me, be confirmed by telephone with the principals who had written them.
There was one thing only about Doctor Cataract that worried me a little. He not only had no car but was unable to drive. He walked, he said, everywhere, and the BMA had told him that my practice was all within a fairly close area.
“I shall bring my bicycle,” he said, “for emergencies.”
“Have you always managed like that, Doctor Cataract?” I asked, curious.
“Always. I like the exercise. I consider the motor car dangerous and unhealthy.”
“Yes, but what about emergencies?”
“As you know,” he said, “there are very few situations in general practice in which immediate attention is essential, except in the eyes of the patient and his relatives. The fact is that I usually find the little wait to be beneficial; the convulsion subsides, the nosebleed stops, the patient on the floor returns to consciousness. The panic has passed and the situation is more easily dealt with.”
“True,” I agreed, “but what about an accident or a perforated ulcer?”
“Should something like that occur,” Dr Cataract said calmly, “I should possibly take a taxi or beg a lift from a passing car.”
“And at night?”
“Come, come, Doctor,” he said. “I have been in general practice for nearly fifty years and I assure you I haven’t yet lost a patient through dilatoriness. There is always a way to get there. You have seen my references.”
“Forgive me,” I said, not really convinced; “it’s just that not to get about by car today seems
a little strange.” I changed the subject. “Have you your own case?” I asked him, “or shall I leave you mine?”
“I never carry a case,” he said; “I find them weighty and superfluous.”
He reached into the bulging pockets of his duffle coat and from their depths produced two syringes in sterile containers, several ampoules of morphia and pethidine, a rubber-capped vial of adrenaline, an auroscope, a prescription pad, three or four tiny tins containing tablets of sedatives, a polythene bag in which I could see a bandage, a quantity of cotton-wool and some gauze.
“All I carry in my hand,” he said, “is my sphygmomano-meter. If necessary.”
I could not but admire him. He seemed to have reduced general practice to a fine art. Despite what had appeared at first to be major drawbacks, I felt that my patients would be safe in the seemingly unperturbable if unorthodox hands of Doctor Cataract. He was also a pleasant character to leave around the house with Sylvia for two weeks.
Sylvia, having given him a cup of tea while he was waiting for me, thought he was an “absolute darling” and was very sensible to do all his visits on foot. She was always telling me I didn’t get enough exercise as I spent most of my time in the car, but woman-like ignored completely the fact that at least once and often twice a week I walked some five or six miles round the golf course.
We had for the moment shelved the problem of our new car. In spite of George Leech’s repeated warnings that there was very little life left in my present rattletrap, we had come to the conclusion that we could not really afford a new one.
When I had first, as H H Brindley advised me, discussed the matter with Sylvia, she said:
“I once went out with a man who had the most divine car. I think it was an Aston Martin, and it had real leopard upholstery.”
I explained as simply as I could that I was a humble National Health practitioner, and that even if every one of my patients paid me pre-Health Scheme private fees I still wouldn’t be able to afford an Aston Martin. We then had a long discussion about the “cake” provided by the private patient, compared with the bread and butter of the panel, and I made up my mind, now that I was established, to build up this side of my practice. There were many people in the district, I knew, who preferred to pay private fees rather than wait in crowded surgeries, and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t have my share.
Convinced of the impossibility of an Aston Martin with leopard upholstery or a Mercedes Benz, which was her second choice, Sylvia had gone from the sublime to the ridiculous and said what about one of those little bubble cars. She got quite enthusiastic about how much petrol I would be able to save, but when I pointed out that she also liked to be taken out occasionally her enthusiasm disappeared.
Since the thing that had spurred me to action on the car question was the comings and goings of the obnoxious Archibald Compton in his superior Allard, and not the increasing unnroadworthiness of my own car, I decided that in the interests of a good few hundred pounds I would have to swallow my inferiority complex and until my finances improved look the other way.
Now, Sylvia decided, the answer to the problem was simple. If my car finally gave up the ghost, I could be like Doctor Cataract and walk!
Six
Edinburgh was beautiful, the refresher course interesting and the golf superb.
After the difficulties of fixing up the various arrangements at home I could hardly believe that I had actually managed to get there at all.
The problem of the practice had been solved with the appearance of Doctor Cataract, but up to the day before I was due to leave we were still maidless, and I couldn’t leave Sylvia alone and tied to the house for a fortnight.
In the maid line, we were willing to settle for anything from a husky Swede to an Italian peasant. Our advertisements had brought answers only from colonels’ daughters who were willing to do a little “light” housework in exchange for a room, or women who were willing to do anything at all provided we could accommodate their various small infants. The agencies assured us that help would be forthcoming, but that we mustn’t be impatient. “We can get you someone from the Continent within two months, or someone might walk into the office today.” Needless to say they never did walk into the office “today” or any other day; or if they did they were never re-routed in our direction. We had to remain satisfied with the varied assurances that our requirements would be “put at the top of the list,” “born in mind,” “taken good care of,” and “given priority.” Meanwhile we had placed a firm order for a Dutch girl with an unpronounceable name whose passport photograph revealed nothing except that in company with many of her countrywomen she had a stolid, moonlike face. She was not due to arrive, however, for many weeks. At the last moment Sylvia thought of Molly.
Molly was the actress friend with whom she had shared a flat before our marriage.
“She’ll come like a shot if she’s ‘resting,’” Sylvia said. And fortunately Molly, who was inclined to be “resting” more often than she was working, was, by a strange coincidence, waiting for a part she had been promised in a West End production to materialise. Knowing Molly, we were sure that the part would most likely not be given to her within the next two weeks, if it existed at all. She said she would be delighted to come and keep Sylvia company while I was away.
At ten o’clock on the evening before I was to leave they were both still packing for me, although I had explained several times that I was only going to Edinburgh for a fortnight and not on a world tour. My protestations fell on deaf ears. Sylvia was adding the umpteenth pair of pants to a formidable collection of shirts, collars, vests, handkerchiefs, ordinary socks and golf socks, and Molly was trying to find some reasonable numbers among what she said was a collection of “perfectly deadly” ties. I had told them several times and in various tones of voice, that before I was married it took me about two minutes to pack, and they had been at it for at least two hours. It made no difference, though, and I gave up trying to compete with the girlish chatter and bursts of hysterical laughter when they tried to shut the too-full case and was glad when I had to go out on a call.
At midnight I was polishing my golf clubs in the kitchen. Sylvia and Molly, exhausted by the effort of getting me packed, had gone to bed.
I was just burnishing my favourite wood to conker-brightness and hoping that Archibald Compton would not pinch any of my patients while I was away, when I felt two arms entwine themselves round my neck.
“Sweetie,” Sylvia said, “you know you’ve got to be up at six!”
“I know, but I couldn’t go with dirty equipment.”
“I don’t believe you’re going to any lectures at all. You’re just going to play golf.”
“It depends on the weather,” I said.
Sylvia kissed me. “I shall miss you,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking all day. It’s a funny feeling, isn’t it? Perhaps I’d better not go.”
“After all the packing I’ve done so beautifully?”
“Seriously, darling. I like being married. I don’t want to leave you.”
“Think of the golf courses.”
“I still don’t.”
“Then put down that stupid golf club and prove it.”
I put down the golf club and almost missed my train.
I had reserved a room at the large hotel near the station, and on the first evening made the mistake of sitting in the vast morgue-like lounge to have my coffee. The hotel visitors seemed to be either doctors for the postgraduate course or commercial travellers, and I hadn’t yet discovered which were which.
The bald-headed, tubby little man wearing a navy-blue suit and shy brown shoes, who was sharing the little coffee table with me, waited only until I had taken the first sip of lukewarm, treacle-like coffee.
“Will I buy ye a drink, Doctor?” he boomed at me suddenly.
“How do you know I’m a doctor?” I said, putting down my cup in surprise.
“Well, ye’re no one of the boys, so it was
na’ difficult.” He snapped his fingers at a passing, seedy-looking waiter. “Two brandies, Jock.” He winked at me. “And mebbe we can afterwards go into the bar. I’ll introduce ye to one or two of the boys. What did ye say ye’re name was again?”
“I didn’t say,” I said, “and although it’s extremely kind of you I don’t really want a brandy just now.”
He held up a pudgy hand. “It’s a real pleasure,” he said, “to buy a drink for you, Doctor. I’ve a great admiration for your profession and I’ve had the misfortune to see a great many medical men in my time.” He shuffled his chair in a little closer and leaned towards me conspiratorially. “It’s ma liver,” he said, “though to tell ye the truth it’s no playing me up as it was in fifty-five. No, mebbe it was fifty-four… Yes, fifty-four it was; I remember I was in Glasgie and the specialist there…”
I looked round for some means of escape, but I didn’t know a soul and everyone was sitting round motionless as stuffed dummies and silent under the soporific spell of brown plush and potted plants.
The brandy came and went. I returned the compliment. After three-quarters of an hour my friend had exhausted his liver, hypertension and query gallbladder and we had progressed to yarns.
His face was flushed and his little eyes warming to the theme.
“Have ye heard the one about the honeymoon couple and the wee dog? Well, this honeymoon couple…”
A young man with glasses at the end of his nose was loping by our table. I was desperate. “Hey, Blanchard!” I called, catching at the edge of his sports jacket. He looked round in amazement, but by the time he had taken the pipe out of his mouth to protest, I had excused myself to my companion, halted in mid-joke, and thanked him for his company. “Must have a word with old Blanchard,” I said, “we did our midder together at St Albans.” I put a matey arm round “Blanchard’s” shoulders and hauled him out of the lounge.
“Blanchard,” once he had recovered from the shock of being accosted so rudely, was understanding. His name was Musgrove, he had a third share in a practice in Dulwich and, most important of all, he had brought his golf clubs. I didn’t go near the mausoleum of a lounge for the rest of my stay and spent much of my time with Musgrove, with whom it turned out I had much in common. He had also not long been married and we had plenty to discuss.
Love on My List Page 5
