Doctor On The Job

by Richard Gordon

  ‘I don’t think there’ll be time for any notices,’ Pip said doubtfully. ‘I wanted the Founders’ Hall for seven this evening.’

  ‘It doesn’t say you have to stick up notices,’ Mr Grout agreed, peering into the book. ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘There’s just one thing –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why are private patients treated in National Health hospitals?’

  ‘Because of Section Five of the National Health Service Act, 1946, as amended in the Health Services and Public Health Act, 1968. Charges by medical or dental practitioners were delimited under Circular S I 1966 stroke one five five three good afternoon,’ said Mr Grout, turning his eyes dismissively down to his blotter.

  In his evangelical tour of the hospital, Pip quickly discovered that Harold Sapworth had a sure grasp on the opinions of his flock. Many of the union members understood only the languages of Continental Europe or Asia. Of his compatriots, most asked who was going to pay their bus fare back to the hospital after work, and didn’t they see enough of the bleeding place anyway? Pip explained that ACHE was becoming a shining example of participation in democracy, like the cities of ancient Attica. They replied that they didn’t give a monkey’s, so long as it landed the next pay claim.

  The busy afternoon hurried past. Pip wished he’d still a watch.

  The dean of St Swithin’s, too, was preoccupied. At six-forty-five he was on his feet declaring, ‘Matron, Sisters. Student nurses. Happy prize winners. Even in this moment of jubilation, it behoves us to ask, what sort of future do you smiling, innocent girls face? What sort of future do we all face, if it comes to that? In the thought-provoking words of Henry Francis Lyte, “The darkness deepens, earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away.” I certainly see nothing but catastrophe, on either hand. Total and inescapable. For our country and for the entire world. The precious edifice of Law has been demolished by modern brutishness like…like Coventry Cathedral. Yes, that’s rather good. Like Coventry Cathedral. The former Cathedral, of course. Not the new one, which between you and me I thought rather an ecclesiastical Odeon. That’s rather good, too. It is all very amusing for some of us to “Do our own thing”, as it is sometimes put, I believe. But when doing our own thing is “mugging” – as I believe it is also put – old ladies in the streets at midnight, and coming out on strike whenever we happen to feel like it, then responsible members of society like myself what are you doing in that cupboard?’ he demanded across his dining-room to his wife.

  ‘Getting a gin. You don’t expect me to face the nurses’ prizegiving cold sober, I hope?’ She held up the bottle. ‘This is cuvée Maudling, I think. Or even Selwyn Lloyd. That was a very good year. Besides, Faith wants a drink, too,’ she added, as their daughter appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I disapprove of young women imbibing spirits like Hogarth’s washerwomen,’ the dean declared with unexpected mildness. ‘But I must admit my heartfelt pleasure at your being with us this evening, Faith. I don’t believe you’ve enjoyed the experience of hearing me speak in public before? Fleet Street will be there,’ he added proudly. ‘I am fortunately treating a young gentleman of the Press for a nervous gut, and he has agreed to attend. I believe he only writes the tittle-tattle column, but through the miracles of mass communications even his words are winged throughout the country between its cocoa and its cornflakes. I can assure you that this prizegiving will stay in your memory. Are you dining at home afterwards?’

  ‘No, Daddy. I have to see someone in St Swithin’s. About my destitutes. And as you know, I must be back at the hostel by ten.’

  The dean twinkled. ‘Perhaps you may find yourself invited to dine by one of the unattached housemen? I specifically ordered as many as could be spared from duty to support me in the Founders’ Hall tonight. I know that Mr Havens and Mr Raffles will certainly be there. They are shortly coming up for better jobs.’

  As Josephine handed a glass to her daughter, he decided, ‘Perhaps you could pour me a gin and tonic, my dear. I believe a little lubrication has improved even the greatest orators, like Sir Winston Churchill. Lancelot won’t be there, of course,’ he continued shortly. ‘Very uncivil of him to refuse. But I expect he would only have laughed in the wrong places, doubtless deliberately. The Matron of the Bertie Bunn will be presiding, the St Swithin’s Matron – or Supreme Nursing Commander or whatever her new-fangled title is these days – being on holiday in Morocco. Morocco! We overtaxed and overworked consultants can hardly afford Minehead. If I weren’t able to earn a few extra pence slaving away early mornings and late at night and entire weekends with our private beds in the Bertie Bunn, I don’t know how we’d make ends meet at all. Have I time to run through my whole speech again?’

  ‘No,’ said his wife.

  The three stepped into a still, clear, bright evening, almost as warm as midday. The dean lived in Lazar Row, one of the short alleys on the fringe of the City of London which so pleasantly lodge its minute nightly population. It had once contained the St Swithin’s pesthouse, but now provided some redbrick Georgian dwellings for the more privileged of its consultants, among which the dean always succeeded in finding himself. Its convenience appealed to him, and so did the low rent. And being a man with a fond if erratic grasp on history, it pleased him to look through the bow-fronted parlour windows on an evening and imagine the shades of Mr Pepys or Dr Johnson or Mr Milton strolling their way home.

  Round the corner, the new tower of St Swithin’s burst from the City soil so richly fertilized with tradition. The old forecourt still separated the hospital from the road, to one side had been carefully preserved the Inigo Jones Founders’ Hall and the garish Victorian chapel. The dean recalled that Mr Clapper had been campaigning vigorously for the demolition of both to make room for an adequate new incinerator and body store. ‘Perhaps I should say a bit about euthanasia?’ he mused. ‘There seems to be a lot of it about this time of the year.’

  ‘It would be much better if you told a few jokes,’ his wife advised.

  ‘I don’t know any jokes. I don’t seem to be the sort of person people tell jokes to,’ he explained a little sadly.

  ‘Some of the male nurses look dreadfully scruffy,’ she remarked, observing the small crowd round the hall door.

  ‘Scruffiness is the fashion these days,’ said the dean disapprovingly. ‘You can’t tell some of them from the porters. Which reminds me, I experienced a most peculiar coincidence this evening. I was walking across the concourse in St Swithin’s on my way home, when I ran into a porter who was the spit and image of that scamp Chipps, whom I expelled from the hospital after he behaved like a homicidal maniac in his surgery finals yesterday morning. Most strange. I suppose that unintelligent, feckless sort of face is common enough in the working classes. What’s the matter, Faith?’

  ‘Hay fever, Daddy. Did he say anything to you?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I just strode by. I’ve better things to do than chat to hospital porters. If young people must wear jeans, they should wear them with a decent crease down the front,’ he declared, looking at the crowd with distaste. ‘A great pity the nurses aren’t still ordered to wear their uniforms for this occasion. Like with everything else these days, they’re left to do as they please. The young ladies all sitting there with turned up tails to their caps reminded me of rows of pouter pigeons.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Faith?’ asked her mother. ‘You look worried.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve got a strange feeling something might go wrong.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ laughed the dean. ‘You’ve got stage fright, that’s all. Nothing can possibly go wrong with the matron of the Bertie Bunn organizing the revels.’

  They made their way among the crowd drifting into the main door of the hall. The dean always liked to reach the far platform through the seated audience, as impressively as possible.

  11

  There was another small, hardly noticeable doorway at the far end of the barn-like brick hall, whe
re Pip was saying to Harold Sapworth, ‘I can’t go on.’

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘I said I can’t.’

  ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘Can’t go on. Go on the stage,’ Pip told him desperately.

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘Harold, for God’s sake say something different.’

  ‘Keep your hair on. I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘I just peeped in there,’ Pip glanced anxiously over the shoulder of his brown coat. ‘Through the door there’s a little stairway, with another door at the top. I pushed it open a bit. I could see the whole hall absolutely crammed to the rafters,’ he gasped.

  ‘Must be a strike blacking out the telly.’

  ‘Almost the entire St Swithin’s membership of ACHE should be there.’ Pip rubbed his palms in gratification. ‘It’s quite amazing, even to me. I never imagined I’d get so many to turn up, just by buzzing round the hospital for one afternoon. I must have enormous powers of persuasion. Yet I’d never one inkling that I possessed them. Perhaps I ought to have taken up salesmanship for some drug company. I’d have made a fortune.’

  ‘Have a drop of that whisky what you bought,’ suggested Harold, producing a bottle from under his own brown coat.

  ‘It seems to have gone down a bit,’ Pip observed tartly.

  ‘I’ve got the wind up, too.’

  ‘Do you know, there’s also a lot of junior nurses speckled about in their uniforms.’ Pip took a swig. ‘Which proves that even the nursing staff are solid with us against the private patients. It’s odd, I never thought the nurses cared about the Bertram Bunn Wing one way or another. And the platform itself! That door up the stairs leads directly on to it. The whole stage is decked with lovely flowers, there’s microphones and little gilt chairs all over the place.’

  ‘Must be Mr Grout’s doing.’ Harold took a gulp of the whisky.

  ‘I suppose when these hospital administrators decide to do something, they do it properly,’ Pip agreed admiringly. ‘I must revise my opinion of them. I thought Mr Grout and Mr Clapper only a pair of self-opinionated, self-satisfied, self-important, incompetent, overpaid cretins.’

  Harold sucked the tip of his thumb. ‘What are you going to say to the lads and lassies?’

  ‘That’s the trouble.’ Pip suddenly turned gloomy. ‘Faced with such a vast audience, I don’t think I could physically open my mouth. It’s very flattering that so many have come to hear me, and I expect they’ll be wildly enthusiastic. But to tell the truth, I’ve never made a speech in my life. Not even at occasions like weddings or rugger club Saturday nights.’

  ‘A bright bloke like you will think of something off the cuff,’ Harold encouraged him. ‘I remember once, seeing a stand-up comic in a club. Died the death, he did. Then he noticed one of our blokes sitting up front with a bit of black velvet. He started making jokes about race relations, and that. Soon had everyone rolling on the floor. It’ll be the same with you.’

  ‘If only I’d prepared a formal speech,’ said Pip in anguish. ‘Of course, I imagined after all you said, Harold, that only a couple of fellows would bother to turn up. I could give them a chat rather than a harangue. But now I know that I shall dry up. Everyone will hiss me, and even throw things. Tomorrow I’ll have to resign as shop steward, and probably be sent to Coventry into the bargain.’

  ‘Another bevvy?’

  ‘Thanks.’ Pip took the bottle. The clock on the Founders’ Hall began to strike seven. ‘If they do try and lynch me, Harold, use the rest of this stuff for setting the place on fire to cause a diversion.’

  Pip went through the small door. Followed by Harold Sapworth, he climbed the steps inside as though ascending a gallows. At the top he paused, took a deep breath, and threw open the door leading on to the stage.

  The St Swithin’s Founders’ Hall was lofty and oblong. Half a dozen tall deep-set windows stood along each wall, between them oak panelling encrusted in gilt with the names of hospital benefactors – City merchants and worthies from those centuries when ten pounds could buy remembrance to eternity. Portraits of past St Swithin’s consultants, commissioned by the medical school, here and there gazed down with expressions of surpassing wisdom in gorgeous academic robes. The dean had planned his own, sagaciously contemplating a skull, a combination of Hamlet and Rodin’s The Thinker, unaware of Sir Lancelot Spratt’s widely expressed determination that he would countenance first an oil-painting of Dr Harvey Crippen. The portrait of Sir Bertram Bunn himself, pink-cheeked, generously moustached and paunched, frock-coated and gold watch-chained, ironically looked from the rear of the stage in moneyed affability.

  As Pip stepped on to the platform the packed audience gave a thunderous burst of applause, with foot-stamping and one or two little cheers. Gratified if mystified, Pip stepped towards the geraniums and hydrangeas with a modest bow of acknowledgment. Then he noticed the dean taking the stage from the flight of steps leading down into the hall.

  The dean halted. Pip faced him. The audience fell into an uneasy silence. The matron of the Bertram Bunn in her uniform, following the dean’s wife and daughter up the steps, could be heard complaining piercingly, ‘Haven’t those porters got the platform ready yet? They grow lazier and lazier every day.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Pip to the dean. He gave a faint smile and a flutter of the fingers. ‘Our paths do rather keep crossing, don’t they?’

  ‘Chipps! What’s this?’ hissed the dean. ‘Get off this stage at once. And out of this hospital.’

  Pip looked puzzled. ‘But what are you doing at my meeting?’

  ‘Your meeting? This is my meeting. I’ve spent all week getting ready for it.’

  Pip shook his head. ‘I’m afraid there’s some mistake. You see, I booked the hall tonight for a branch meeting of ACHE. Mr Grout gave his permission. It was all arranged perfectly correctly. Through the usual channels.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of your stupid practical jokes,’ said the dean in suppressed fury. ‘Get out this instant. Or I’ll send for a couple of porters to throw you out.’

  ‘They’d hardly do that,’ Pip told him amiably. ‘You see, I’m the porters’ shop steward.’

  The dean held a hand to his eyes. ‘I’m dreaming. This is one of my nightmares when I’ve been foolish enough to indulge in the crackling off the pork. In a moment, I’ll wake up beside Josephine with a nice hot cuppa ready in the Teasmade –’

  ‘Pip!’ came a screech from the matron. She pushed on to the stage, cap streamers flying. ‘What do you mean by this perfectly outrageous intrusion?’

  The audience began to mutter and titter, shifting with embarrassment in their chairs. The unexpected drama had to them a straightforward plot. The dean was upbraiding one of the hospital porters, who seemed to be taking it with commendable cheerfulness. Meanwhile, the matron was having one of her turns.

  ‘Oh, hello, Auntie Florrie.’ Pip gave another smile and little wave. ‘It’s not an intrusion, honestly.’ He nodded towards the audience. ‘Those are all members of my union. I’m about to address them, as one of their duly appointed officials. It’s democracy in action.’

  ‘There’s nothing democratic about this,’ she told him hotly. ‘It’s the nurses’ prizegiving.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ asked Pip with interest.

  ‘Furthermore, you absolutely reek of drink.’

  ‘Really, everyone is becoming over-excited,’ said Josephine calmly, coming to the centre of the stage while the audience sat in open-mouthed confusion. ‘It’s quite obvious there’s been a slight mistake. Mr Clapper booked the hall for the nurses’ prizegiving. Mr Grout booked the hall for this young man to do whatever he wants to do in it. It’s like on our last holiday in Ibiza, Lionel, when we had to muck in with that peculiar taxidermist couple from Scunthorpe.’

  ‘Those bloody administrators,’ exclaimed the dean angrily. ‘They’re all the same. If they’d existed in the Garden of Eden, the world today would be full of nothing but apples and serpents. Telephone them
at once, Matron. I demand Mr Clapper or Mr Grout instantly, in person.’

  ‘Not much hope of that,’ Pip told him. ‘They’re all off home promptly at five. No overtime, see.’

  ‘No wonder the country’s in such a terrible state. Obviously, you’ll have to give way, Chipps. I’ve no idea what you’re doing in ACHE, or even in that coat. This is hardly the moment to sort out such complexities. Doubtless, it’s another of your inane jokes. The nurses’ prizegiving is infinitely more important than one of your seditious little union cabals. Besides, those are our flowers,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Don’t worry, I shan’t be unreasonable,’ Pip told him calmly. ‘Me and my friend –’ He indicated Harold Sapworth, clutching the whisky bottle under his brown coat, nervously trying to creep unseen to the hall steps behind a fringe of palms in tubs. ‘Will convene a meeting down in the hospital garage, or somewhere. I don’t suppose more than half a dozen of this audience came to hear me, anyway.’ The dean gave him a brisk satisfied nod. ‘In a way, it’s a relief. I don’t think I could have brought myself to address such a mass of strange faces.’

  ‘Public speaking is indeed an art,’ the dean agreed with him. ‘Given to only a few of us. It calls for considerable memory, concentration and practice.’

  ‘You rehearse, do you?’ Pip inquired. ‘Not just get up and say whatever comes to mind?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no,’ the dean told him condescendingly. ‘I practise before a mirror every morning in the bathroom. The same pains were taken by such renowned orators as the late Lloyd George and the late Adolf Hitler.’

  ‘I lack the gift,’ Pip said unhappily. ‘I lack the confidence.’

  ‘I might be able to give you a lesson or two –’

  The dean was brought back to reality by the slow handclap starting in the hall. He stepped decisively to the microphone amid the geraniums. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. I must apologize for a slight technical hitch. The porter is now about to leave the stage.’