Doctor And Son

by Richard Gordon

  ‘Very charming,’ I said.

  ‘The American Bar will be nice and empty,’ suggested Grimsdyke. ‘It’s the only place the Americans don’t seem to go. And don’t worry about the drinks,’ he added, as I followed him through another luxurious lobby. ‘I just sign for them. A very convenient arrangement, don’t you think?’

  ‘But how on earth did you manage to get a magnificent job like this?’ I asked, as we sat down in a corner of the bar.

  ‘The Grimsdykes, old lad, may often be on their uppers,’ he explained a little grandly. ‘But they always fall on their feet. Do you remember Miss Hales?’

  I frowned.

  ‘Which one of your girl friends was that?’

  ‘No girl friend. Miss Hales was at my table on the ship. She was the one with the kidneys, which she talked about every time she could get them in edgeways. Fortunately for me, as a conscientious servant of the shipping company I lent a sympathetic ear, instead of shoving her through the nearest porthole in the public interest. It was only when presenting my modest account at the end of the voyage that I discovered she lives here permanently. When she volunteered that the dear hotel doctor had been carted off to hospital – with symptoms sounding to me suspiciously like cirrhosis of the liver – I smelt the chance of a job. She very decently said she’d have a word with the management, and I can only suppose the old bird runs up a fantastic bill here every week, because they just told me to come along.’

  ‘And very nice, too.’

  He paused.

  ‘Yes and no. Mind you, this is the way I really like to live – cordon bleu cuisine, early tea and biscuits in bed, chap to press your pants, and within a taxi-hoot of Piccadilly Circus. The snag is, they give me a reproduction of Nell Gwynn’s bedroom and plenty to eat and drink, and damn all else. Why, it’ll take me months even to pay for these togs I had to buy.’

  ‘But surely you’ve got lots of rich and aristocratic patients?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Indeed,’ he agreed, ‘I have what you might call an embarras de duchesse. But the blasted manager only lets me keep ten per cent of the fees. You can’t imagine what a mean bunch they are backstage,’ he went on indignantly. ‘If I ran a place like this, you’d see me on the doorstep day and night welcoming my old friends to wine and dine lavishly at my expense. But this lot pretty well count the bubbles in the soda-water. However, I didn’t ask you here to weary you with the trials of a hotel doctor’s life. Fact is, old lad, I want a bit of professional advice. And at this particular moment you seem just the man to give it to me.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I can be of much help,’ I said, wondering what trouble he had got himself into now. ‘But I’m more than ready to do my best.’

  ‘Let’s have another gin,’ said Grimsdyke, reaching for his pencil. ‘And I’ll tell you all about it.’

  5

  When the waiter had served our drinks as though presenting a humble petition to royalty, Grimsdyke looked over his shoulder, lowered his voice, and asked: ‘Have you heard of Monica Fairchild?’

  ‘What, the actress? Of course I have.’

  ‘She lives here, too. Damn great suite on the top floor, like the National Gallery. With an entourage consisting at the moment of one husband and one secretary.’

  ‘And she’s one of your patients?’ I said, looking at him with greater respect.

  He nodded.

  ‘I’d better start by explaining that she’s a rather difficult one. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I’ve met some pretty difficult women in my time, but I’d rather face Boadicea in her chariot any day.’

  He broke off as a thin man in rimless glasses glanced into the bar.

  ‘Good evening, Mr McGlew,’ said Grimsdyke politely. ‘And how is the oesophagheal dysfunction this evening?’

  ‘OK, Doc.,’ grunted the man. ‘Just looking for the wife.’

  ‘That’s Mr Harry McGlew,’ Grimsdyke explained, as he withdrew. ‘He made fifty million dollars from canned pork and has to live on boiled fish. Serves him right, if you’ve ever tasted the stuff. Did you notice the technical terms, by the way? Very keen on them, the Americans. I have a hell of a job keeping one disease ahead of the patients, though reading up the medical section of Time helps no end. But I digress.

  ‘I first made the acquaintance of Miss Fairchild,’ he continued, ‘at two o’clock in the morning, when I was summoned by the young woman who’s her secretary with the news that the great actress was dying. And when I reached the bedside I damn well thought she was. She looked absolutely on her last legs, and was crying hoarsely for people to summon her mother and her agent. Then I took another look, found temperature and pulse were all right, and after puzzling it out a bit I suddenly remembered that she’s currently playing Desdemona at the Old Vic, much to the appreciation of press and public. Do you see the point, old lad? It was all part of the act.

  ‘I think all actresses are a bit potty,’ Grimsdyke declared warmly. ‘And I’ve known a few of them in my time. Not in the Fairchild class, of course – most of mine were eking it out with a bit of chorus work in the provinces. Now, I don’t really believe Miss Fairchild was creating for the hell of it. She just felt like death, as most of us do from time to time, and thought that was the way you went about it. Actually, she was constipated.’

  ‘At least, she’s an interesting patient,’ I murmured consolingly.

  ‘Again, yes and no. The Fairchild is not only a shocking hypochondriac, but she’s somewhat imperious. I suppose when a thousand or so people clap you to the echo night in and night out you begin to get the inkling you’re someone pretty damn important. As soon as she discovered that she wasn’t in fact dying, she demanded, “Who is this mere boy at my bedside? Bring me a proper physician.” Annoyed me a bit at first, until I realised that it was really Lady Macbeth speaking. After that we got on rather better. She even took a fancy to me, in a distant sort of way. The only snag came when I wanted to examine her. Wouldn’t let me inspect her chest at any price. If I want to have a look at her sternal region, it seems I’ll have to wait until she’s in Restoration comedy.’

  At that moment we were again interrupted, by the appearance of a rather plain girl of about nineteen with pony-tail hair, tartan trews, and upswept glasses and an upswept bosom.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Dr Grimsdyke. I have a message for you.’ Her voice dropped reverently. ‘From Miss Fairchild. She wishes to see you when she returns this evening.’

  ‘Right-ho. I’ll be waiting on the mat,’ said Grimsdyke submissively. ‘About what time?’

  ‘Not before one-thirty. Miss Fairchild is going to a supper party at Les Ambassadeurs.’

  ‘And how’s her second bottle of medicine going along?’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to taste at all like the first one, Dr Grimsdyke.’

  ‘Oh, come come. The same prescription and all that. Perhaps Miss Fairchild’s been eating something first – onions, or so on?’

  ‘It is always I who tastes Miss Fairchild’s medicines, Dr Grimsdyke. Will you kindly send another prescription to her suite at once? And Miss Fairchild never eats onions.’

  ‘You see the situation?’ asked Grimsdyke as the girl left us. ‘That’s the secretary, of course. Absolutely under old Fairchild’s thumb. And what’s more, seems to revel in it. She’s a psychologically negative personality, just the same as the husband. He’s a rather nasty chap with Charing Cross Road hair, who spends his time trotting meekly after his illustrious missus helping her out of her minks and into her Rolls. What a life! But it brings me right to my point. Listen, old lad–’

  He glanced round the bar again.

  ‘You’re sound on your professional secrecy, I suppose?’

  ‘Of course I am!’

  ‘Forgive my asking, but it’s absolutely essential that not a word of this leaks out. Even to other members of the trade.’ He dropped his voice further. ‘I have reason to suspect that Miss Monica Fairchild is in the family way.’

  I raise
d my eyebrows. ‘Really? That’ll be very interesting for everyone.’

  ‘It certainly will be. If she is. After that bloomer on the high seas I’m not going to be caught a second time, believe me. Oh, no! That’s why I wanted a consultation with you, with your up-to-the-minute experience of the condition.’

  ‘What are her symptoms?’ I asked.

  After he had described them I agreed, ‘It certainly sounds suspiciously like it.’

  ‘Exactly, old lad. The question is, what’s the next move?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be simplest if you just sent her along to one of the high-powered gynae. boys in Harley Street?’

  ‘That’s the snag,’ Grimsdyke explained, with a worried look. ‘You can’t imagine how tricky it is dealing with La Fairchild. Why, I daren’t even raise the subject. Oh, I know all about the doctor-patient relationship and so on. But none of the rules apply to this particular one. There’d be a tremendous fuss, to start with. And if I was wrong… Well, they wouldn’t need a doctor, they’d need a lion-tamer.’

  ‘Then if you want to make the diagnosis discreetly, why not fall back on our mutual friend the xenopus frog?’ I suggested.

  He looked puzzled. ‘The what frog, old lad? I never was very hot on my midder and gynae.’

  ‘It’s the standard test,’ I explained. ‘All you do is acquire what is known generally to the public as “a specimen.” You send the bottle to the clever chaps in the path. lab., and by applying it to one of these unfortunate frogs they can tell in a few hours whether the patient is or isn’t. It’s all a matter of excreted hormones. Of course, it has to be a xenopus frog, which is also known as the xenopus laevis, or South African clawed toad–’

  Grimsdyke jumped up.

  ‘My dear chap, what a magnificent idea! I can easily get her to provide me with a specimen, without saying what it’s for. Then I’ll send it to the lab. and have the answer in my pocket with no one the wiser. That makes life ever so much simpler. I’ll be eternally grateful to you.’

  ‘Only too glad to help,’ I said modestly.

  ‘Look here, let me express my thanks in more useful form. Why don’t you and Nikki come down to dinner one evening? Don’t worry, it’ll all come off the old expense sheet,’ he added, as I hesitated. ‘We can all three of us have an absolutely slap-up beano, completely buckshee. Yes, I’ll get the chef to start laying it on straight away.’ He rubbed his hands enthusiastically. ‘Great chum of mine, the old chef, now I treat his chronic indigestion.’

  ‘It’s certainly very decent of you, Grim,’ I told him appreciatively. ‘I’m sure Nikki would like to come very much.’

  ‘It’s the least I can do, old lad. Though I’m afraid you’ll have to dress up a bit,’ he apologised. ‘I have to change into a dinner jacket at nightfall, like a ruddy television announcer. Let’s make it Wednesday fortnight.’

  With strong feelings of mutual helpfulness, we parted.

  ‘I’d simply love to go to the Arundel,’ said Nikki, when I got home that night. ‘It’ll be quite a treat, particularly as we haven’t been out for ages.’

  ‘And particularly as it won’t cost us a bean.’

  ‘I shall need a new dress, of course, darling.’

  ‘New dress? But what about that new black one you’re so fond of?’

  ‘Oh, but I couldn’t possibly wear that at the Arundel.’

  ‘Then I suppose I’d better get my dinner-jacket cleaned,’ I grumbled. ‘It’s still wearing the battle scars of the last St Swithin’s reunion.’

  ‘Yes, it will be nice going out,’ repeated Nikki. ‘While I’m still fit to appear in public.’

  6

  About this time our unborn child introduced me to Dr Ann Pheasant, MRCOG.

  Dr Pheasant was in practice on the other side of Hampden Cross, and being a member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists – known in the trade as the royal college of organ-grinders – she attended most of the local confinements. I myself avoided maternity patients as shamelessly as smallpox cases, and now knew as little obstetrics as a retired surgeon-admiral. As Dr Farquarson really enjoyed delivering babies only by the light of guttering candles in a crofter’s cottage during a Highland blizzard, Nikki herself performed most of the midwifery in our own practice, an arrangement which would have to be modified when she started to frighten all her new patients. But she had known the obstetrician since Dr Pheasant was a student senior to her in medical school, and she decided to place her own pregnancy in her hands.

  ‘Of course, it’s the best idea of the lot, pupping at home,’ declared Dr Pheasant, sitting in our cottage on a social rather than professional visit. ‘It pleases the pundits in the Ministry of Health, who don’t have to pay for your board and lodging and clean sheets,’ she went on. ‘It’s a jolly sight more convenient, and you can order your own grub. For the mother’s psychology you can’t beat it. You get an extra four quid out of the Government, too.’

  ‘I’d rather like to have it at home,’ agreed Nikki. ‘Hospitals these days seem to be getting as impersonal as department stores.’

  ‘And the father’s always handy,’ Ann continued warmly. ‘Personally, I like to persuade him to watch the actual delivery as well. Had to give the idea up, though. So many of them were sick.’

  ‘I’m quite certain I’d be,’ I told her.

  I never felt wholly at ease with Ann Pheasant. One of the brightest splashes on the modern academic scene is the discovery of professional women that asserting their equality with men doesn’t necessitate stripping themselves of their sexual characteristics. Lady doctors, like lady politicians and lady Wimbledon champions, now appear in public looking pressingly feminine instead of going about as if they had all been drawn by Mr James Thurber. But some girls seem perpetually confused by the essentially male world of medicine, and looking at Dr Ann Pheasant, a cigarette dangling from her lips, clasping her knees and showing her knickers, I felt that she was one of them.

  ‘Come along to the surgery and I’ll do your haemoglobin and blood pressure and albumin,’ she went on, slapping Nikki on the knee. ‘And I must remember to give you a certificate. In the eyes of the Welfare State you’re not officially pregnant without one. You can make up your mind if you want to have it at home, or in the local Memorial Hospital or what have you, a bit later on.’

  She got up.

  ‘I must be nipping along to my other mothers. Give me a ring, old thing, and relax. Relaxation – that’s the secret of modern childbirth. And do your exercises and watch your fat. Pregnant women put on an indecent amount of weight, quite apart from the little beast and its landing-tackle. Cheery-bye, and don’t worry.’

  ‘Dr Pheasant certainly brings a refreshingly basic approach to the miracle of childbirth,’ I observed as she rattled away in her old car, which seemed to be held together largely with lengths of the surgical wire used to repair hernias.

  ‘She’s very sweet really, dear,’ said Nikki.

  I said nothing. A wife’s friends are a mystery to any man.

  ‘Particularly as I don’t suppose there’s much chance of her ever having a baby of her own,’ Nikki added.

  ‘But that ghastly idea of hers, having the husband in the room. I’m sure it’s much better for everyone’s psychology if he enjoys his traditional twilight sleep in the nearest pub. Anyway, where would you really like to have the baby? I suppose you’re still not keen on St Swithin’s?’

  I had at first wanted the child to be born in the place which had provided me with my means of livelihood and most of my friends. There is a robust family spirit about all big British hospitals, where many of the staff take a wife from the nurses’ home and a family from the obstetrical wards before ending up themselves on one of the porcelain tables in the post-mortem department. The Maternity Department at St Swithin’s seemed to be maintained exclusively for the convenience of its former pupils, and I knew that Sir Jeffrey Supe, the senior gynaecologist, would treat my application for a bed with the geniality s
hown by Harley-street consultants to all their old students, who might now be in a position to send them private patients.

  But I knew that Turtle Supe, though a man who almost weekly presented Debrett with another entry, always seemed to be attending either a confinement in the country or Ascot races whenever he was wanted in a hurry. We decided that Nikki might end up anyway in the hands of Sister Studholm, the senior midwife, who was widely held to be a contemporary of Sarah Gamp and once reported me to the Dean for changing the ‘e’ on the AnteNatal Clinic door to an ‘i.’

  ‘No, Simon,’ Nikki now declared. ‘Not St Swithin’s. Apart from anything else – though as a primip. I suppose I can expect about twelve hours’ warning – if anything went wrong it would be highly undignified for someone to be born along the North Circular Road. Let’s have it at home. After all, a newborn baby hardly takes up more room than a puppy.’

  ‘At this home?’ I asked, looking round. I was fond of our cottage, but it was as draughty to live in as Stonehenge. ‘Besides, we can’t have the poor little thing sharing the camp-bed at weekends with Grimsdyke.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Nikki doubtfully, ‘the time has come for us to launch into something grander?’

  ‘There goes the sports car,’ I sighed. ‘But I suppose a family man has to face a few necessary expenses.’

  ‘By the way, talking of necessary expenses, dear,’ Nikki went on. ‘That dress I bought for our party at the Arundel next week was rather more than we expected. And of course I had to get a new bag to go with the dress. And new shoes to go with the bag, and some more nylons to go with the shoes.’

  I only hoped that Grimsdyke would put on a damn good menu.