I mentioned corneas, though adding encouragingly, ‘At the end of your own long life, Moira, perhaps we’ll assemble an entire human-being construction kit. You never know, with these ambitious surgeons. But why the sudden generosity?’
‘Well, I’ve nothing in life which means anything but my little Tracey.’
She was a clean, solemn, fair child of six, sitting beside mother quietly reading Snoopy.
‘And I’d like to feel I’d done some good, passing through this world. Who knows? My kidneys might live after me in some man doing great deeds, like a Member of Parliament. Or maybe end up in a real saint like a bishop.’
‘How’s things at home?’ I asked.
She could smile as she said, ‘My husband’s gone away again, six years this time, robbery with violence; still, it spares me getting knocked about for a bit, doesn’t it? My old dad’s no better in that home with his stroke, and you know about my mum in the bin, my brother’s into hard drugs now, heroin and that, and my sister’s still on the game, though she pretends she’s a hostess and attracts rich Arabs. Well, it could be worse. We could all be dead.’
I was constantly amazed at Moira. She was left in perfectly good shape by the mills of fate, which would have rolled me flat as tinplate.
‘If only half my patients kept as sunny with one-hundredth of your troubles,’ I congratulated her.
‘I always remember what Dad told me from some radio show back in the war – “It’s being so cheerful as keeps me going.”’
‘By the way, I’m retiring at the end of January.’
‘No! You mustn’t.’ She added shyly, ‘You’re the only doctor I want to look after me.’
‘All doctors have the same training, you know,’ I pointed out.
‘You’re the only one I really trust.’
‘I assure you that my three partners are extremely trustworthy,’ I rebuked her mildly.
‘But it’s you who’s kept me off the drink.’ Now her face clouded. ‘I’m always remembering the terrible time I had.’ She shuddered. ‘It’s horrible, just the thought of slipping back.’
I gently pooh-poohed my importance in her eyes, but I was deeply stirred. Perhaps I should stay after all? But it would be such a dreadful disappointment to Mrs Jenkins.
24
Mr Clew at morning surgery, bubble-haired, droopy-moustached, velvet-jacketed, interior decorating and fitted kitchens. He announced that he would deliver the baby at home himself.
‘That will really open a tin of wasps,’ I predicted forcefully.
‘But if giving birth is not a family matter, what is?’ He was one of those irritatingly aggressive meek people, who wish to inherit the earth without delay. ‘Debbie and me are a serene, caring couple, and it occurs to me that women were having babies long before doctors were invented. I saw our two little ones being delivered at the General, and I must say there seemed nothing to it.’
‘It’s the same with showjumping on the telly. Looks as easy as riding the roundabouts, until you try it yourself.’
‘Haven’t human beings something deep down to produce their young safely, like the rest of God’s animals, doctor? I don’t think I’ve seen anything more tender than a cow with a newborn calf or a mare with a foal. When the time comes, won’t the father’s instinct work as strongly as the mother’s? Debbie and me vibrate as one person, you know. So powerfully that when she goes into labour I develop stomach pains.’
‘The couvade is a well-recognized male reaction to childbirth,’ I informed him briskly. ‘I believe there was a lot of it about among the Red Indians.’
He made the hushed suggestion, ‘Why don’t you deliver my wife, doctor, at home? Surely you’re entitled to?’
‘I’m entitled to do heart transplants, but for the good of all concerned I prefer leaving them to doctors who know more about it than I do. Well, if you want to deliver your wife’s child, I can’t stop you, no more than cutting her corns. Good morning.’
I reached home for lunch to find Dr Basil Barty-Howells, the new consultant physician at the General, who everyone tells me is utterly brilliant, standing on my hearthrug in an agitated state.
‘Look, about the Queen opening our brand-new Elizabeth Block in three weeks,’ he said, accepting a barely noticeable sherry.
‘It isn’t brand-new.’
‘Buildings unlike ships can be launched when going full speed ahead,’ he remarked impatiently. ‘Oh, I know it was started when Barbara Castle was Minister of Health, or perhaps Enoch Powell, but those little problems like having to redig the foundations, the asbestos lagging likely to kill all the patients and the plastic ceilings liable to burn like napalm, and the unions blacking the improved food trolleys, they’re happening to new hospitals throughout the NHS. It’s an opening to celebrate, that’s why we asked all the local GPs. Particularly when the rest of the General resembles a cross between a Victorian abattoir and a refugee camp. I was to make the speech welcoming Her Majesty, but I can’t.’
‘Stage fright!’
‘No, hunting.’
‘Couldn’t you put it off?’
He began to pace the room. ‘As a student, I was a dedicated anti-huntsman. I sabotaged them all. Had wonderful days out with the Quorn, Pytchley, Heythrop! So I cannot bring myself to address the mother of a regular hunter. Oh, I know it’s ridiculous.’ He shakingly set down his untasted sherry. ‘But I suffer overwhelming feelings of revulsion. As everyone knows, I’m a socialist anti-nuclear ecologist.’
I nodded. He had a beard.
‘So as you’re retiring–’
‘What! How did you know? I divulged the secret to my partners and receptionist only yesterday.’
‘Oh, it’s all over Churchford. So we thought it would be a nice gesture for you to do the speech. It would also prevent quite murderous jealousy among the other hospital consultants.’
‘Impossible!’
‘What, you’re a hunt saboteur, too?’
‘No, but I’m unaccustomed to public speaking.’
‘Nonsense. They tell me at golf club dinners you go on for hours. I’ll announce you’ve accepted. I’m late for my clinic.’
When I bemusedly told Sandra, she said, ‘I must buy some more clothes.’
‘You’ve already spent a fortune on clothes.’
‘That was for being in the audience, not part of the show. I’ll go this very afternoon to Robbins Modes.’
Next morning Mrs Bryanston-Hicks demanded to see me in the surgery. She was Churchford’s queen-bee midwife. She was nearly six feet tall, with tits the size of goldfish bowls. She was enough to make any newborn baby bolt back to its burrow. She slapped on my desk the Churchford Echo.
She said, ‘Well?’
I was appalled. The front page. Mr Clew defying the General Hospital by doing his own thing with his own baby, encouraged by Dr Gordon, one of the few traditional family doctors, full of loving care. There was a big photograph of the family under a sign, CLEW’S CLASSIC KITCHENS.
I pointed out nervously, ‘But the Echo is no more reliable for the truth than Pravda.’
She declared forthrightly, ‘I am going to prosecute Mr Clew under the Midwives Act (1951).’
I frowned. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Of course I can. It’s all in section 9.’
‘But isn’t the Midwives Act only to stop Sara Gamps setting up obstetrical shops in their back rooms?’
‘Don’t you read the papers? We’ve brought unruly fathers to heel everywhere from Stockton-on-Tees to Redruth. We can’t allow the whole country to have babies however they please, making a mockery of midwives.’
I murmured defensively, ‘Mr Clew’s a very caring man.’
‘Caring, caring!’ she exploded. ‘Why does everyone these days say caring when they only mean sloppiness? Looking after people is damn tough work demanding a highly trained intellect. Was anybody more caring than Florence Nightingale? Of course not. And what did she do? Rolled up her sleeves and organized ever
ybody, like Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands.’
I complained uneasily, ‘That paper’s dreadfully unfair. I only said that people needn’t take the doctor’s medicine or advice if they didn’t feel like it. Look at the Jehovah’s Witnesses.’
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I shall prosecute you as well, as an accessory before the fact.’
My horror grew with the winter shadows. I calculated that I could be hauled before the General Medical Council on four counts. Advertising myself in the papers. Inciting lawbreaking. Denigrating my fellow-practitioners at the General. And associating with unqualified midwives. I thanked God for shame avoided by pre-emptive retirement.
I drove home that evening to find Jilly. She said that Bertie Taverill was most surprised at my behaviour, but supposed I was seeking martyrdom like a Russian dissident. He had expressed puzzlement at my knocking his competence, as a fellow-student from St Swithin’s, a neighbour who was always furthering my own professional interests, social life and family happiness. He hoped the GMC would take a lenient view, though he could not for the life of him see how they could possibly avoid striking me off for years.
I said unhappily that I hoped it would not upset Peter.
She snapped, ‘What do you mean, Peter? I’m only concerned about my career. I mean absolutely nothing to Peter.’
She left the room hurriedly.
The atmosphere in my house was as in Cleopatra’s during the application of asps. I bolted to the golf club. In the bar was Dr Quaggy.
‘Read all about you in the paper, Richard.’
‘Halfway through this morning’s surgery, I decided that if another patient said that to me with a sly grin, I would batter him to death with the knee-jerk hammer.’
‘As an old friend, Richard, I can tell you frankly we’ve been worried about your overstrain for months. All the GPs are terribly relieved to hear you’re going for good.’
He smiled like a snake in the grass meeting a charmer. ‘By a strange coincidence, my son Arnold has just finished that GP training. He would be absolutely ideal to step into your shoes, I’m sure you’ll agree? Did you hear I’m becoming president of the Churchford Medical Society, after Charlie Pexham died last year? Not of course that that would influence the selection committee in Arnold’s favour. Poor Charlie!’ He sighed into his pink gin. ‘Should have retired early, might have been alive today. We all miss him.’
I agreed. There were many of my colleagues I passionately wished were not dead, and vice versa.
I drove to the empty, dark surgery. I had to dredge my alluvia on the shoals of time. I tipped my files on to my desk. I was baffled where to start. I supposed Gibbon felt the same about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
My mind wandered. I reached for Titles and Forms of Address, borrowed from Dr Lonelyhearts. My first problem with the Queen was how to say hello. The book directed me to use ‘Ma’am’. But as in ham or marmalade? It added, ‘On presentation to the Queen the subject does not start the conversation.’
Just like doctors, I thought, who always start the conversation, even if just, ‘What, you here again?’ The royalty business suddenly lay exposed. Just like doctors, royals must be unflaggingly pleasant to a succession of total strangers not feeling at their best, often embarrassed by the unwonted situation and some possibly pissed.
What do royals think about during a lifetime of interminable addresses by mayors, worshipful masters and bards in Welsh? I wondered. It was humanly impossible to concentrate on the flood of oratory while awaiting your cue to slap trowel on foundation stone, fire champagne at bows, congratulate some university’s harvest of intellectual sprouts. I supposed that like the rest of us at boring parties they wondered if the lads were likely to kill themselves with daring sports, the girls were pregnant again, what was for dinner, why the spouse was so bloody-minded this morning and where the money goes.
I composed a few simple sentences on a blank patient’s card. The worry about speechifying lessens with not trying to be too clever, as I advise young persons worried about sex. It was midnight. Jilly would be back at the General, Sandra in bed. I could venture home for a solitary soporific single malt.
That night I had a frightful dream. I stood wordless and blank-minded while everyone coughed and shuffled their feet and the Queen eyed me like her predecessor on receiving a newsflash of the approaching Armada. I woke in panic. The anxiety lingered. I could become tongue-tied, lose my notes. We would be Not Amused at my joke. I began to share the phobia of P G Wodehouse’s Gussie Fink-Nottle presenting the prizes, of my trousers splitting down the back. I began to wish I had never accepted.
My first patient that morning was Moira Days. She had deposited Tracey early at the nearby Clement Attlee Primary. I wondered if she still wished to leave her mark on our faded insubstantial pageant, even nestling in someone else’s pelvis. Though with her alcoholic history. I would not take her liver as a gift.
‘Doctor, I can’t afford to live in my room just down the road any longer,’ she revealed chirpily. ‘What with being supportive to my brother, and Dad griping about missing his little comforts in that home, and of course Tracey having to be properly nourished and I won’t have her shabbily dressed, it means a lot to a child, I always say, you’d be surprised how cruel they can be to one another in the playground. If I wasn’t so cheerful I’d think of letting the Welfare take Tracey and ending it all, honestly.’
I interrupted sharply by quoting Churchill. ‘Never commit suicide, you may live to regret it.’
Moira laughed. I was puzzled. ‘Doctor, you’re always making that joke. Don’t worry, the patients often have a good giggle in the waiting room, how you always make the same little jokes to all of us.’
With mixed feelings, I remarked, ‘Well, you can enjoy some brand-new jokes from Dr Spondeck, once I retire.’
‘Don’t say that, doctor.’ She fell silent. ‘Don’t retire yet. Please. You’re my only friend left.’
I gently pooh-poohed that I was more than her medical adviser. But I was deeply stirred.
25
My last week in medical practice. My career would end like a Prime Minister’s by seeing the Queen.
By the Wednesday morning I felt I would give anything for Basil Barty-Howells to appear saying he was doing it after all. At lunchtime he appeared saying he was doing it after all.
He distractedly paced the carpet. ‘This is dreadfully awkward, Richard. I know it’s exactly the honour we should all have liked to see marking your retirement, but the Ministry are absolutely insisting that I perform. The government seems to have sunk almost as many millions into the new building as into the North Sea. So they want one of their own doctors to get on television news. Also, the health workers require a glowing tribute from a consultant, or they’ll instantly shut the place down again by blacking the improved operating-theatre lifts. And further, I feel fox-hunting is perhaps not so inhibiting, as I’m into gassed badgers.’
I exclaimed, ‘Utterly delighted! I’ve become a terrible case of pedal hypothermia.’
As he left, I imparted to Sandra, ‘Hooray! No speech. Now I’ve absolutely no obligation to retire.’
She stared. ‘But all month you’ve been grumbling about hardly waiting to get out.’
‘Ah, yes.’ I agreed. ‘And so I do. Well, I hope I shall have a nice quiet week, before never again laying hands on human flesh except your own.’
In the waiting room as I arrived for evening surgery was Mrs Radnor. She was neat, slight, thirtyish, with a black eye. Accompanying her was a huge woman in jeans and a fisherman’s knit sweater, who announced herself as Ms Hammersham of Sanctuary.
‘Ms Radnor is a battered wife,’ she informed me. ‘I want you to examine her, doctor, before I call the police.’
I barred her following us into the consulting room. ‘I examine patients without a studio audience, if you don’t mind.’
She glared. ‘But I demand to be present. I am safeguarding women’s rights.’
I said, ‘Hop it, dearie.’
She retired, fuming and muttering about the Guardian.
I sat Mrs Radnor down, still in her apron, and asked what happened.
‘Well, Fred’s tea was cold again, it was egg and chips, and he lost his temper, hardly blame him, really, he hit me in the eye, or perhaps he just caught it with his elbow while making threatening gestures, but I was in a temper myself, and remembered Sanctuary in what used to be the greengrocer’s on the corner, so I went straight there, I suppose mostly to get away from Fred, who was carrying on like a great baby, but the big lady got all excited and wants to send Fred to jail.’
I examined the contusion. No treatment needed. We emerged. I explained to Ms Hammersham it was a storm in that afternoon’s teacup.
She countered, ‘I demand, Dr Gordon, that you supply signed evidence of Ms Radnor’s violation.’
‘Might I demur that you imagine yourself to be as important inside this surgery as you imagine yourself to be out of it?’
She said furiously, ‘A typical male doctor! Doubtless you see women only as sex objects.’
‘I should hope so,’ I told her. ‘If none of us were sex objects on the appropriate occasion the human race would be extinct animals. Might I tell you how utterly bored I am with women who are constantly kicking against the pricks, if you’ll pardon that expression. All this nonsense about chairpersons and watchpersons and God’s sublime achievement is person, in the next century it’ll be a laughable fad, like the Victorians putting skirts round piano legs.’
She grabbed Mrs Radnor’s hand, hissed, ‘You shall hear more of this,’ and slammed the door.
That night saw my retirement dinner. Just Dr Lonelyhearts and Jack Windrush and selected cronies in Soho. I reached home late in a minicab. Sandra was agitated. The newspapers had been telephoning. But I was trying to tell her Windrush’s funny story about the tart’s hearing aid, and not inclined to pay much attention.
Came the dawn. Horror! I found myself promoted in vilification from the local to the national press. Worthy Sanctuary was obstructed in its merciful work among battered women by callous Dr Gordon, who was unavailable for comment. In my blazing fury at this synthetic disgrace there glowed a tardy realization that people who wrote for newspapers made fork-tongued vipers look as harmless as glow-worms. I wondered if the Queen had read it. I could never have made the speech. It would have been dreadfully uncomfortable for both of us. I thanked God again that I could vanish into retirement, as infamous Nazis into South America.
Doctor On The Ball Page 17