‘You don’t really want to run away and leave me?’
‘Leave you? But of course not! What in heaven gave you the idea? Not yet anyway,’ I said, as she raised a faint smile. ‘Give me a year or two more. Besides, at sea you generally have to wash your own socks.’
‘I’m sorry, Simon.’ She started to stack away the plates. ‘I’m being rather foolish.’
‘Now let’s not even talk about it any more. Blow your nose and we’ll finish the washing-up. Do you know how Grimsdyke does his? He sticks the dishes in the bath and turns on the taps before he goes to bed.’
This incident surprised me. It was so untypical of Nikki, who was a level-headed young woman. She was the product of a medical school not far from St Swithin’s, whom I had first met professionally when she came to Hampden Cross to work for me, our roles being rapidly and permanently reversed.
The next few days offered some of the bleak weather which often comes at the end of April to nip an Englishman’s sprouting thoughts of deck chairs and cricket fields, and I could prevent myself envying Grimsdyke shortly playing deck-tennis in the Mediterranean sunshine only by imagining him being violently seasick in the Bay of Biscay getting there. He telephoned before he sailed to say that he’d fitted himself out with a naval uniform at a theatrical costumier’s, and to ask which was port and which was starboard, explaining that he was leaving time following afternoon from Southampton.
I didn’t expect to hear more of him for two or three weeks, but as I snatched my breakfast the morning afterwards I picked up the paper and exclaimed to Nikki in alarm,
‘Good Lord, look at this! Grimsdyke’s in trouble already.’
There was a small headline on the front page saying DOCTOR TAKEN OFF CRUISE SHIP.
‘It isn’t him at all,’ I added, with some relief.
I read on: ‘The luxury liner Lady Anne interrupted the start of her annual Mediterranean cruise last night to call at Falmouth and put ashore a sick man. The patient was the ship’s own doctor, Sir Horace Harberry, former Harley-street surgeon. Sir Horace told reporters on landing he was not seriously ill. He has a recurrence of an old illness which he cannot risk having treated at sea. The ship sailed later in charge of his assistant, Dr G Grimsdyke, a London doctor.’
‘That’s the end of his days in the sunshine,’ I said, as Nikki handed back the paper.
‘And his nights on the boat deck,’ she laughed.
‘Poor old Grimsdyke! For the first time in his life he won’t be able to shift any patient requiring prolonged mental effort on to the staff of the local hospital.’
My friend’s professional predicament was emphasised later that morning by a cable from the Lady Anne demanding HOW DO YOU TREAT SPRAINED ANKLE MUMPS LUMBAGO, to which I replied IMMOBILISATION ISOLATION EMBROCATION, and felt rather pleased with myself.
In the next few days I received several more cables from Grimsdyke asking my advice on conditions varying from schizophrenia to scabies, and a scribbled airmail letter from Gibraltar describing his activities in terms which made Florence Nightingale’s accounts of the Crimea read like the latest report from the Medical Research Council.
‘As long as the lad doesn’t kill anyone – and I think he’s just about got enough common sense to avoid it – the experience will do him the power of good,’ said Dr Farquarson gruffly. ‘For once he can’t run away from work, short of turning himself adrift in an open boat.’
‘And he was looking on it all as a wonderful cheap holiday,’ I said more sympathetically. ‘As it is, he’d be far better off if he’d gone to Butlin’s.’
I heard nothing more from my friend for a fortnight, when the surgery telephone rang one afternoon and he was speaking himself from Southampton docks.
‘Hello, old lad.’ He sounded as though he were glancing nervously over his shoulder. ‘I’m back on terra firma.’
‘It’s good to hear from you.’
‘Can you possibly give me a shakedown for a few days? It’s absolutely essential I lose myself in the country for a bit.’
‘Of course,’ I told him. ‘Have a nice trip?’
‘Don’t be ruddy silly. I’ve been through something that makes that Kon-Tiki business look like a picnic on the river.’
‘Tell me all about it this evening. We’ll expect you for dinner.’
‘That’s very civil of you,’ he said gratefully.
‘Not a bit. I’m always glad to entertain Jolly Jack ashore. Be sure to bring along your parrot.’
But Grimsdyke only made a rude reply and rang off. ‘I don’t suppose he’ll mind your camp-bed in the sitting-room,’ Nikki decided. ‘And I’ll make a nice curry. I’ve been meaning to experiment on the recipe for weeks.’
‘From his voice on the phone,’ I said, ‘it might be a good idea to mash in a few tranquillisers.’
I was startled at Grimsdyke’s appearance. He had lost weight, and wore a pale haunted look I had seen before only after his student’s viva voce examinations with the St Swithin’s senior surgeon, Sir Lancelot Spratt.
‘Has a ghastly female called Zoë been ringing you up, or prowling round the vicinity?’ he asked, almost before we had greeted each other.
‘Zoë? Not that I know of.’
‘Thank God for that!’ He fell into a chair. ‘She doesn’t know your address, of course, but the beastly woman’s got a mind like Sherlock Holmes. Same sort of jaw, too. My flat in Town’s completely out of the question, of course. A drink, my dear chap, a drink! I can’t possibly tell you more till I’ve had one.’
‘Now you just relax by the fire,’ ordered Nikki, as I fetched the brandy bottle from the cupboard it shared with her dustpans and brushes. ‘We mustn’t encourage an anxiety neurosis.’
‘But what on earth have you done to make this girl pursue you?’ I asked, pouring him a stiff dose.
‘You might as well ask the same question of some poor innocent lamb being pursued by a tigress.’
‘Tell us about it when you’ve had some food,’ said Nikki. ‘The curry will be ready in a minute.’
‘Curry!’ exclaimed Grimsdyke, so violently that I thought he was going to be sick on our hearthrug.
‘But don’t you like curry?’ I asked. ‘When we shared digs you used to be rather fond of it.’
‘And so I was. But many things in my life have changed these last two weeks. Curry, let me tell you, was served for every meal on board the Lady Anne, including breakfast. By now I feel like a fire-eater in need of a holiday.’
‘Of course, she usually sails to the Far East,’ I recalled.
‘Yes, the beastly ship’s still all pukka sahib and punkah wallah, and you half expect General Gordon to come strolling out of the Veranda Café. The whole crew looked on cruising as terribly infra dig, like having to open up the old stately home to the public.’
Calming down a little and remembering his usual good manners, Grimsdyke then assured Nikki that he would enjoy his curry to the last mouthful.
‘By now, of course,’ he said, as we sat round the table, ‘I never want to see a ruddy ship again, even the Woolwich Ferry. But I don’t mind telling you that when I stepped aboard the Lady Anne at Southampton docks I was as blithe as young Jim Hawkins. The thing seemed as high as the white cliffs of Dover, and looked very comfy. I was shown to a cabin somewhere below the engine-room, but that didn’t worry me. And I then reported smartly to Sir Horace Harberry.
‘I’d somehow imagined Sir Horace to be a jovial Captain Cuttle sort of chap. But he’s a tall pale fellow with a wing collar who looks as though he’s been brought up on a diet of birdseed. Also, he has no sense of humour. I tried a little light conversation, but he just said something about having one of his attacks of indigestion and packed me off to see the Captain.
‘The Captain, at least, I expected to be a merry old sea dog – look at the pictures you see in the advertisements, with children crawling all over them on the bridge. But this one was a haggard fellow with bushy side-whiskers who reminded you of
those portraits of the Duke of Wellington. And he didn’t have any sense of humour, either. To break the ice, I made a few light-hearted remarks about it being very jolly for him having a wife in every port, but he didn’t seem to catch on. He just said, “Doctor, have you been in ships before?”
‘And I said, “Of course.”
‘And he said, “Which ones?”
‘And I said, “The ones that go from Dover to Calais and back.”
‘There was a bit of a silence then. He just shook his head rather slowly and handed me a copy of Regulations for Ship Surgeons, a thing about the size of the family Bible.
‘“You will particularly remember, Doctor,” the Captain went on, “that your bar account is strictly limited to fifteen shillings weekly, and that you are not allowed to cultivate the friendship of any particular passenger. Also that you may converse with female passengers on deck after nightfall only when it is essential for the safety of the ship. Good afternoon.”’
Grimsdyke took another gulp of brandy.
‘So for a start it didn’t look as if I’d be able to get some nice girl alone between the lifeboats unless the ruddy thing was actually sinking. However, I didn’t have much time to brood about this, because the passengers were now coming aboard. So I went on deck and hung over the rail to see what my future shipmates would look like.’
‘All the nice girls, you mean?’ asked Nikki.
Grimsdyke snorted.
‘Nice girls! You might as well have looked for nice girls coming up the gangway of the Ark. Of course,’ he added bitterly, ‘if I’d any sense I’d have realised before I let myself in for the trip that – despite all those fraudulent pictures in the travel agents’ – no one under sixty could possibly afford a ticket on a tub like that. The entire passenger list now came tottering up looking as if they’d been advised by their doctors to take a long sea voyage for their health. That’s rubbish to start with,’ he added warmly. ‘Believe me, you’ve got to be absolutely fighting fit to face a Mediterranean cruise.’
‘I think the advice to take a voyage is generally given to old chronics, to get a holiday for the doctor who’s fed up with the sight of their faces,’ I suggested.
‘Damned unprofessional conduct, if you ask me,’ muttered Grimsdyke.
He hesitated, then pushed his plate aside.
‘Do you think I could just have a little cheese?’ he said weakly.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Nikki. ‘I rather suspected one of the eggs was a bit off, but it was masked by the Bombay Duck.’
‘It seems very tasty to me,’ I told her dutifully. Nikki was as anxious as any other new wife to woo her husband’s stomach, but our menus sometimes suffered from her insistence that cooking was only a branch of biochemistry. ‘And anyway, today I didn’t get any lunch. Go on, Grim.’
‘There was a great deal of bustle and several old boys called out to me, “Steward! Fetch me a large whisky-and-soda!”’ Grimsdyke continued. ‘But at last we made for the open sea. Then we’d hardly got past the Isle of Wight when old Harberry summoned me. At first I thought he’d relented and asked me down to his cabin for a gin. But instead he gave me a sort of clinical viva.
‘“How would you treat single-handed a well-preserved elderly gentleman who’d perforated his duodenal ulcer?” he asked me.
‘I thought for a moment and said, “Open him up and sew up the hole.”
‘“You have, young man, a considerable experience of this operation?” he went on.
‘I hedged a bit, and then I said there had to be a first time for everything.
‘“Explain to me, then, precisely how you would set about it?”’
‘So I told him – to the best of my knowledge. Then he gave a groan and disappeared into his bathroom. The next thing I knew he was going over the side with his suitcase and leaving the lot to me.’
‘A bit of a blow,’ I agreed.
‘A blow, but not a knock-out. The Grimsdykes, old lad, have their faults, but they always rise to the occasion when they’re absolutely forced to. Refusing to be daunted, I found a very useful little book tucked away called the Ship Captain’s Medical Guide, which explains how to tackle pretty well everything from broken legs to bedbugs in hearty language that sailors can understand. And with the aid of your invaluable cables I settled down to cope.’
‘But surely there must have been someone on board to help you?’ asked Nikki.
‘Oh, yes. Two nursing sisters who seemed to have been recruited from the sick bays of military prisons, and a hospital orderly who drank all the surgical spirit.’
‘So you didn’t have much time for the social life?’ I remarked.
‘My professional trials,’ Grimsdyke went on sombrely, ‘were nothing – absolutely nothing – to what I had to put up with on the social side. As a matter of fact, I can hardly bring myself to think of it.’
‘Have some more brandy,’ I said.
‘And let’s sit round the fire,’ said Nikki. ‘It’s much more appropriate for telling tales of adventure at sea.’
3
‘I had my own table in the dining saloon,’ Grimsdyke went on, when we had rearranged ourselves. ‘I played host to five passengers. I can see them now.’ He stared round glassily. ‘Mr and Mrs Slingsby, the Reverend Peckhorn, Miss Hales – ghastly woman, all beads and spiritualism – and Major Dampier.
‘For some reason the ship’s Purser, who incidentally had the only nice-looking bits on board sitting at his own table, seemed to imagine that doctors enjoy talking only to interesting invalids. And this lot were certainly interesting – to themselves. They had enough wrong with them to restock the pathology museum in the Royal College of Surgeons.
‘“Doctor,” Miss Hales would begin, just as I was tucking into my plate of curry. “I’m sure you’ll be most interested to hear about my kidney. Just a bag of stones, that’s what the doctors called it. Why, I’m lucky to be here at all.”
‘She would then give a textbook account of her nephrectomy, ending up of course by claiming that her kidney was quite the worst the surgeon had ever laid hands on. Odd, isn’t it, that people wouldn’t dream of boasting in public about their bank accounts or front gardens, but when it comes to their illnesses there’s no holding them?
‘Of course, Mrs Slingsby immediately took up the challenge and weighed in with her goitre, which they’d invited surgeons from all over London to see taken out, and Major Dampier followed up smartly with his prostate and the Reverend Peckhorn with his jejunal diverticulum. I didn’t mind giving these organs my best and keenest attention at the right place and time,’ Grimsdyke concluded warmly.
‘But it was about the end having them served with all my meals.’
I felt this was the moment to pour him another brandy. He sat for some moments staring into the fire in silence, until Nikki asked gently, ‘How about Zoë?’
He gave a brief sigh.
‘I told you there were a few girls on board, didn’t I? Well, Zoë was one of them.’
‘Was she nice?’ I asked.
‘She was about six feet tall,’ he said, ‘and she shook hands like a pair of nutcrackers. She was also a born organiser. At home I bet she captains the tennis club and runs all the fêtes. On board she organised the Sports Committee, of which I found myself an ex officio member. There were about six of us, who met every morning in the Veranda Café, to arrange all those silly games people wouldn’t dare to be seen playing on dry land. That was fair enough. But pretty soon she was organising me.
‘The main trouble with a ship,’ he went on, taking another drink, ‘is that you can’t get away from people, except by chucking yourself over the rail – which I considered more than once. Everywhere I went, Zoë was sure to go. I’ve never met a woman with such a capacity for being round the next corner. And every time she greeted me with something like, “Haven’t you played your shuffleboard heat with Mr Carter-Berrison yet, you naughty boy? He’s been waiting half an hour and getting ever so shirty.” Na
useating, you’ll agree? Worse than that, she entered me for every damn contest going, from chess to high-diving. That was a terrible shock to a man whose daily exercise has for years been confined to winding up his wrist-watch before going to bed.
‘But worse disaster was in store. For some reason she took a tremendous fancy to me. God knows why. But you know how girls think doctors are wonderful? Particularly when they’re all decorated with gold braid and brass buttons. Rumours got round the ship. People began to giggle and give us significant glances over their morning cups of beef tea. Then one afternoon,’ he went on, his voice starting to shake, ‘when we were all alone in the games room and had just finished our ping-pong heat, she kissed me. I shall never forget it. It was like being run over by a tractor. After that I had to slink about the ship like a ruddy stowaway. Then the horrible woman wormed my address out of the Purser, and is probably at this very moment squatting on my doormat with an invitation for mixed hockey next Sunday.’
‘A soul-testing experience,’ I observed feelingly.
‘But a mere nothing,’ he continued with masochistic pride. ‘To my real trouble aboard.’
‘Surely there couldn’t be anything worse than Zoë?’ asked Nikki.
‘There was. In the person of her ladyship, my prime patient.’
‘The only reason you were there at all,’ I reminded him.
‘Knowing her psychological history, I suppose I should have been prepared for the worst when she came up the gangway, with her new husband and enough luggage for a touring pantomime. It soon turned out that she was one of those unfortunate people who vomit almost as soon as they see a sign with the words “Boat Train.”’
‘What a bit of bad luck, Grim,’ I sympathised. ‘They couldn’t even cure Lord Nelson of that.’
‘Lady Corrington started being seasick as soon as we got into the Channel. I treated her with antihistamines and hyoscine and so on, of course. But I might just as well have given her aniseed balls. Therapy was further complicated by Lord Corrington, who not only regarded her as a fragment of Dresden china but was a pretty nasty piece of work himself into the bargain.
Doctor And Son Page 2