'Yes, yes! Later if you like. But drinks now.'
'Just as you please, Doctor. I don't mind at all.'
We had several more drinks, after which Nurse Macpherson became more romantic. The waiter fortunately had to go and serve dinner.
'How about some food,' I suggested.
'Ummm! I'm ravenous. And there's a good three hours to kill before we can decently disappear.' I kissed her, and she began to laugh. 'I wonder how old Plumtree is?' she asked. Both laughing, we entered the coffee-room.
***
I later decided that the decline of the evening really started with dinner. The coffee-room itself instantly damped our spirits. It was a long, cold place, decorated only with pictures of horses in heavy gilt frames. Most of the tables were bare, those laid for dinner being huddled round a small fire in a large grate at one end. Our fellow diners were a pair of old ladies at a table thickly covered with patent-medicine bottles, an elderly couple, a red-faced, fat man with a ginger moustache, and a thin, white-haired man who was drinking soup and reading the paper propped against a bottle of beer. Everyone was silent and eating steadily, as though they were anxious to get back to the unknown corners of the hotel where they lurked.
'If you please, Doctor, over here, Doctor,' said the waiter loudly, interrupting his service and clattering a vegetable dish on the table. 'I've put you nice and near the fire, Doctor.' He crossed to a small table almost in the hearth and began beating the seat of a chair violently with his napkin. 'There you are, Doctor. And the young lady, too, now, Doctor. Nice and cosy, would it be?'
Coming from a land where only the Church and the medical profession are venerated, the waiter had automatically made us his favourities. This was good for the service, but it immediately made everyone in the room fix us with their fiercest attention.
'And what would you be having, Doctor?' he continued as we sat down.
I looked at the menu. 'I'll have some of the Potage Dubarry,' I said, trying to appear unaware of the spectators.
'Oh, I wouldn't have any of that, Doctor.'
'Very well,' I glanced at Nurse Macpherson. 'We'll try the steamed plaice with pommes vapeur and cabbage.'
The waiter, who had his order-pad in one hand, scratched his head with the butt of his pencil. 'I wouldn't touch the fish if I was you, Doctor. Mind, it's not a thing I'd tell anybody, but even the cats downstairs are refusing the fish.'
'How about the casserole de mouton? And we'll have some wine.' He looked blank, so I added, 'You have some wine?'
'Sure, we've got wine. I'll bring you a bottle.'
'Red wine,' I insisted. 'I'd like to choose a Burgundy, if you've got one ready at room temperature.'
'You just leave it to me, Doctor.'
'Did I understand, sir,' said the man with the ginger moustache, 'that you are a medical man?'
I nodded.
'My name is Major Porter,' he continued. 'If I may effect an introduction to your good self and your lady wife-'
'I'm a lady, but no wife,' Nurse Macpherson said tartly.
'We're cousins, as it happens,' I explained. 'We have an uncle in the lead business in Scotland, who died, and we've been to his funeral. So we came together because we both work in London. I mean, we're going to his funeral. Poor fellow.' I felt that my whisky before dinner had made the story mildly confused, so to clarify it I added, 'He wasn't in the lead business, I mean the brass business.'
I noticed Nurse Macpherson's mouth harden.
'I hope you won't mind my saying so,' Major Porter continued, 'but I don't believe in doctors. I've nothing against doctors individually, mind-not a thing. Some of my best friends are doctors. I've no faith in the medical profession as a whole.'
'Neither have I,' said Nurse Macpherson, with the frankness of the slightly tipsy.
'Really, madam? I'm interested to hear it. Are you-forgive me if I ask-at all connected with medical work?'
'Yes, I'm a member of a Sisterhood of Druids. We use a good deal of mistletoe, and aren't past sacrifice at sunrise. Can I do anything for your warts?'
Major Porter seemed surprised, but continued, 'I'm sure you'll be interested in my case, Doctor. In fact, I'd like your opinion on it. Not that I expect you to approve of my treatment.' He looked at me slyly. 'You fellows stick together, eh? There's no closed shop like the doctors' shop, I often say. I mean no offence, of course. Now would you believe it, Doctor,' he said, drawing back his coat and protruding his abdomen proudly, 'at the age of five I was given only six months to live?'
I recognized wearily the doctor's second social blight worse than the men who insist on telling you about their orthodox illnesses are the people cured by faith, herbs; and osteopathy. Major Porter addressed the coffee-room about his miraculous lease of life while we ate our mutton stew and drank our wine, boiling hot from under the stillroom tap. By the time the waiter reverently bore us the porcelain slab with the remains of the cheese, the Major was tugging up his trousers and pointing to the scar of his old tibial osteomyelitis. The white-haired man, who like the Major was a commercial traveller, joined in with the story of the remarkable cure effected by a man in Catford on his sister-in-law who came out all over when she ate strawberries. Then the waiter made himself comfortable leaning against the fireplace and began talking about his kidneys.
'What you need for your kidneys', declared Nurse Macpherson, with slight slurring, 'is pure water. Flush them. Drink water-several gallons a day.'
'That's a damn silly remark,' I said. I was beginning to have a hangover, my throat was raw, and I was starting to shiver. 'That treatment went out with pneumonia jackets and ice-bags. You restrict fluids and give 'em a high protein intake.'
She looked at me steadily. 'Have you ever nursed a case of nephritis?' she demanded.
'You don't have to know any medicine to be a nurse, my dear. Any more than you have to know dietetics to be a good cook.'
She was about to reply, when the old gentleman said, 'Doctor and nurse, eh? What brings you to this part of the world?'
'We met a man on the road who recommended the hotel. You see, we're cousins. We're going to the funeral of our uncle in the brass business-'
'For God's sake!' shouted Nurse Macpherson. 'Not again!' She stood up. 'I'm going to bed.'
Bed! I suddenly remembered what we were there for.
'I'm going in a minute, too,' I said, as she stalked from the room.
'It isn't ten yet,' said the Major. 'Let's have a drink.'
'No thanks.' I turned to the waiter, who was rubbing his loins thoughtfully under his coat. 'Bring me what's left in the whisky bottle. I'll take it to my room.'
I sat on the edge of my bed feeling miserable. I wished I were tucked up in a ward at St Swithin's, with someone bringing me throat lozenges every half-hour. But I would have to go through with it. Nurse Macpherson, the unruffled heroine of a dozen such adventures, would roast me in her contempt if I didn't. After waiting for the hotel to become silent I slowly undressed and put on my dressing-gown. Carefully I opened the door. I began to creep down the stairs towards the first floor.
The effect of fever, excitement, and alcohol raised my pulse rate alarmingly as I felt my way along the darkened corridor towards room number three. I had carefully memorized my landmarks before dinner, and I remembered that you turned left by the fire-extinguisher, went down three steep stairs, and reached the first-floor landing. I was checking my position by feeling for a marble statuette of Britannia when the light went on.
'Yes?'
Mrs Digby, in hair-net and dressing-gown, stood at her bedroom door.
I tried to smile again. 'Good evening.'
She said nothing.
'I was looking for the bathroom.'
'There's a bathroom on your floor.'
'Oh, really? Is there? I didn't notice it.'
'It is opposite your room. There is "Bath" written on the door in large white letters.'
'Thank you. Thank you very much. Stupid of me, coming all this wa
y. Should have seen it. All conveniences, what? Good hotel. Capital!'
She made no reply, so I made my way back along the passage. She waited at her open door until I had disappeared, then put the light out. I tried to creep back after shivering on the upper landing for ten minutes, but she opened her door again before I had reached the foot of the stairs.
'Did you say opposite my room?' I asked. 'With "Bath" on it?'
'Yes.'
'Well. Thanks. Good night to you. A very good night to you.'
I went back to my bedroom and drank the rest of the whisky. It was then eleven-thirty. Clearly I should have to wait another hour, or even two, before operating my risky sortie. I lay down on top of my bed and picked up the Lancet, which I had somehow included in my packing.
When I woke up it was eight-thirty in the morning.
'God Almighty!' I said. I already saw myself the laughing-stock of St Swithin's. I dressed quickly, dashed downstairs, and threw open the door of Nurse Macpherson's room. It was empty, with her pink nightie rumpled on the bed. So was the hall below, and the coffee-room.
'If you're looking for the lady,' said the waiter, 'she's gone out for a walk with the Major.'
***
Nurse Macpherson and I said little on the journey home. When we were nearing the Zoo again she began to laugh.
'I don't really see there's anything very funny in it,' I told her sourly. 'I've been extremely, unwell all the time, I've got a roaring temperature, and how did I know what the bloody place was like?'
'I'm not blaming you about the hotel I was just thinking what a laugh the girls will get in the Nurses' Home.'
'You wouldn't tell them?' I asked anxiously.
'Why not? A nurse's life is a dull one. It can always do with brightening up.'
'If you breathe a word about this to your friends,' I said savagely, 'I'll spill it all round the Residency.'
She laughed again. 'You wouldn't dare.'
'I damn well would.'
But I knew she was right.
Nurse Plumtree never spoke to me again. Two weeks later Nurse Macpherson became engaged to Bingham.
21
'It was hard luck, old lad,' Grimsdyke said sympathetically. 'Still, it might have been worse. There was one fellow I knew who took a girl away for a week-end to Torquay. Best hotel, no expense spared and so on. They'd just got to their room and he'd opened the windows to have a breath of sea air, when what do you think he saw? Her whole bloody family arriving for their summer holidays at the front door, ma, pa, and several small sisters and brothers. Phew!'
We were sitting in his room some time later. I stared gloomily at my drink in his toothglass; my throat was better, but my pride would wear its scars for a lifetime.
'My trouble', I said solemnly, 'is women.'
'Come, come, Richard! A less flighty citizen than you would be hard to discover. Disregarding the pocket harem you were running until this disaster, I've never thought, of you as one of nature's bottom-pinchers.'
'I don't go chasing women right and left, I admit. But ever since I qualified I seem to keep getting involved with them just the same. First it was the shocking female married to Hockett. Then there was that smooth piece of goods in Park Lane. Next Plumtree. Then that frightful nympho Macpherson.'
'Personally, I'm all for getting in the clutches of unscrupulous women now and then,' Grimsdyke said cheerfully. 'Rather fun.'
'But it was never like this when we were students!'
'You underestimate the fatal allure of a medical qualification, old lad. In a quiet way, it's about ten times as powerful as any uniform.'
'You think so?'
'Sure of it. Look at all these chaps that get hauled in front of the G.M.C. Why do you suppose every textbook starts by telling you to have a nurse handy when examining any female from nine to ninety? Then look at the medical profession as a whole. A more pug-ugly collection of badly-dressed social misfits would be difficult to find.'
'True,' I admitted.
'Allure, old lad. Remember it. Have another drink.'
'The unpleasant truth', I said, 'is that I've shirked the responsibility of my ambitions. I'm not saying I've been a good-time Charlie, but now it's a year since I qualified and I haven't gone far towards becoming a surgeon.'
'You've learnt a lot about men and women, as opposed to male and female patients, though.'
'Unfortunately that cuts no ice with the Fellowship examiners. There's no easy way out. I'll have to buckle down to the books again.'
'How about a job?'
I sighed. My appointment at St Swithin's had only another week to run. 'I'll have to start on those beastly interviews again, I suppose. This time, I'll address the committee "Dear Sir or Madam".'
The next few days were sad ones. I would be sorry to lose the companionship of the Residency, and to leave at last the hospital that had been the centre of my life for seven years. But there was no alternative: under the hospital rules I had to make way for the junior men just qualified, and I could never gain promotion to become a registrar like Hatrick without my Fellowship. I could only say good-bye to St Swithin's as cheerfully as possible, turn again to the back pages of the B.M.J., and mark the date of the next reunion dinner in my diary.
Then hope appeared, outlandishly embodied in the Professor of Surgery.
I had gone to his laboratory behind the surgical block to fetch the notes of one of our patients, when he unexpectedly appeared from his office.
'Gordon!'
'Sir?'
'Will you step inside a minute?'
Licking my lips nervously, I followed him into his tiny room, which was filled with ungainly physiological apparatus, pickled things in pots, piles of text-books, journals in several languages, and the forbidding photographs of his predecessors in the Chair.
'Sit down,' he commanded.
I gingerly took the edge of a packing-case marked RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL, while he sat in his swivel chair and pulled his white coat tightly round him. I wondered what was coming. I had carefully avoided the Professor since my return, but every time I caught his eye I had felt him mentally signing my Certificate of Lunacy.
'I had lunch with my friend Mr Justice Hopcroft today,' he began.
I said nothing.
'We recalled that incident when you were my Casualty H.S.'
'I had hoped, sir, he might have forgotten it.'
'On the contrary, we laughed about it heartily. Most amusing in retrospect. Hopcroft has a lively sense of humour, you know. Some of his remarks when passing sentence have caused many a chuckle in the Bar.'
"I'm sure they have, sir.'
There was silence, while the Professor stared hard at a pair of kidneys mounted in a glass jar.
'I was perhaps rather hasty with you, Gordon,' he confessed.
'It's kind of you to say so, sir.'
'Unfair, even.'
'Not at all, sir.' The interview was developing more comfortably than I had imagined. 'I deserved it,' I added indulgently.
'I might say it has worried me somewhat since. If one's judgement once becomes clouded by one's emotions, there's no telling where it will end.' There was another silence.
'Bingham' said the Professor.
'Yes, sir?'
A friend of yours?'
'Hardly a close one, sir.'
'I will confess, Gordon-in confidence-that Bingham has been something of a disappointment to me. The young man has ability, I'm not denying it, But I sometimes have a little difficulty in the operating theatre deciding which of us is the Professor of Surgery.'
'Quite so, sir,' I said.
'I gather he is not one of the most popular members of the Residency?'
'Not the most popular, sir.'
'A job on the Unit here has come up unexpectedly,' the Professor went on. 'The resident pathologist-Shiradee-has had to return to Bombay. It's a fairly leisurely job, which would give a man plenty of time to work for his Fellowship. Some minor research would be expected, o
f course. The appointment will be made with the others at the Committee on Wednesday evening-naturally it's my duty to support Bingham for the job. But I can't answer for the rest of the Committee. And in the present state of my relations with Bingham I assure you it would not take a great deal to make me change my mind. In short, Gordon, if you agree, I'd like to make up for my somewhat high-handed treatment of you earlier in your career by at least offering you a chance of the job. Will you apply on the usual form?'
I was so excited that I was almost unable to sleep for the rest of the week. In the operating theatre, where I now approached the table with the confidence of Robert Liston in his prime, I began fumbling so badly that Hatrick declared wearily that I was again in love.
Every time I saw Bingham approaching I avoided him indeed, I had hardly spoken to him at all since his engagement, apart from stumbling out my congratulations with the rest. But on the evening before the meeting I was forced to seek his company. I was sitting in my room after dinner writing up my case notes, when I became aware of an unpleasant smell. As I sniffed, it grew stronger. From a whiff of the Southend mudflats it rapidly turned into the odour of a faulty sewage farm, and within a few minutes it appeared that some large animal was decomposing in the room next door. Holding my handkerchief over my nose,. I banged on Bingham's door.
'Come in!'
Bingham was in his shirt-sleeves, boiling something in a glass beaker over a spirit-lamp.
'Good God, man!' I exclaimed. 'What the devil are you cooking?'
'What, this? Oh, it's manure, old chap,' he said calmly
'Manure!'
'Yes, old chap. Ordinary horse manure. You see, the Prof.'s very interested in the enzymes present in the manure of different animals. Pure research, you know. I've studied it a bit, and it might easily throw a good bit of light on the old human guts. Interesting, eh?' He blew out the lamp. 'I've collected specimens of all sorts of animal manure,' he continued proudly, picking up a row of small test-tubes. 'This one's dog, that's cat, that's pigeon, and the end one's ferret. I just caught the horse when I saw a carter's van stop outside casualty.'
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