Doctor On The Brain

by Richard Gordon

  ‘The last question was really very simple,’ he was explaining. ‘The old odd-word game. You pick the odd word out of five. The answer, you might remember, was “Loathsome”. It was just a matter of noticing that the number of letters between the first and last of each word was three times that of the letters in the word plus three. See? “Loathsome” didn’t fit into the series. No trouble, really. Took me eighteen seconds by the clock.’

  ‘And you’re through to the next round?’ asked a tall, elegant student called Roger Duckham.

  ‘That’s it. Mind you, it gets tougher as it goes along.’

  ‘What do you think your chances are of actually picking up the final prize, Edgar?’

  ‘You mean the thousand quid, specially selected library and a trip for two to the Bahamas–’

  ‘Plus a year’s supply of some ghastly minced fish instant dinners, I believe?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Sharpewhistle shamefacedly.

  ‘That’s from the firm behind it really. Fish for brains, and those old wives’ tales, you know. A pretty good chance, I’d have thought.’

  ‘You mean, you honestly don’t know the questions in advance? Not even a hint? Nothing faked at all?’ Sharpewhistle looked indignant. ‘Well, I hope you win it, Edgar. Very much indeed. I’m sure we all do. Don’t we?’

  The others agreed warmly. Sharpewhistle was unable to hide a look of pleasure, Roger Duckham having taken pains to be exquisitely arrogant towards him for years. ‘I’m only doing it all for the honour of St Swithin’s, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Roger agreed. ‘Particularly as we got trounced in the rugger cup. No one who knows you, Edgar, would ever believe you wanted anything out of it yourself. Not even the fish dinners. You keep at it for the sake of us all.’ He had noticed Muriel sidle into the room, and smiled at her. Everyone knew of the bitter, sometimes only faintly masked rivalry between her and Sharpewhistle over the examination for the gold medal.

  ‘Time to go and look round before the dean’s class.’ Sharpewhistle picked his short white coat from a row of hooks on the wall. The brainiest student at St Swithin’s was, like such other exceptionally intelligent men as Voltaire or Dr Johnston, not of a handsome presence. He was short, almost a midget, with a flat head, sandy hair drawn forward into a quiff, and a pale moustache which drooped dispiritedly over the corners of his mouth. His complexion was pink and shining, as though he had just been lifted from a pan of boiling water. His voice was squeaky and he had an armpit problem. He was dressed in plain grey trousers and a dark blue blazer with a St Swithin’s crest, a throat-torch and three ballpoints in different colours arranged neatly in the pocket.

  ‘Got your thyroid all lined up, then?’ Sharpewhistle asked Muriel.

  ‘Yes, I hope so.’

  ‘Good. I’d like to have a quick feel of it before the round, if I may.’

  ‘Of course.’ Muriel looked quickly behind. She dropped her voice. ‘I’ve taken the specimen up.’

  ‘When’ll you hear?’

  ‘Half past five.’

  ‘We’ll have to wait, then, won’t we?’ Answering IQ questions on television had given him an admirable calmness in emergency.

  3

  As the dean arrived breathless outside his wards after trotting up four flights of stairs – he thought the exercise beneficial to the coronary arteries – Sir Lancelot was still in his study coming to the end of his literary exercise.

  He is survived by his wife, Josephine, a lady of charm, tact, wide intellect, grace, good taste and generosity, whose qualities so felicitously counter-balanced his own. There are two children, one of whom follows him in the profession.>

  Sir Lancelot turned back the four pages and read them closely, fountain-pen poised. But apart from a comma or two, there was really no need for alteration. He congratulated himself on so stylish a depiction of the dean’s personal qualities. He supposed these had been rubbed in his face hard enough, since they had first shared cold, late meals and midnight cups of coffee as overworked residents at St Swithin’s.

  Sir Lancelot suddenly looked up. He straightened himself, as his body froze. His eyebrows quivered. His mouth opened. His eyes flicked anxiously from side to side. The pen started to shake violently in his hand.

  ‘Pull yourself together…!’ he muttered.

  He managed to set down the pen, sitting for a moment with head in hands. With an effort, he slowly turned round in the chair, his expression indicating barely-suppressed horror at what he might see.

  The study was empty.

  Sir Lancelot forced himself to his feet. He squared his shoulders. With a determined stride, he looked behind a tall, wooden roll-fronted filing cabinet. Nothing. He pushed aside the single easy chair beneath the reading-lamp. An empty space. There was no more furniture in the small room, but he gingerly reached out to feel behind the curtains. No. He was alone.

  ‘Imagination, I suppose.’ He took out a red-and-white handkerchief to mop his broad forehead. ‘Still, it gave me a most unpleasant turn…’ His large frame shuddered. ‘It must be the effect of the chronic strain these last four weeks, getting me down.’ He glanced at the bracket clock in the corner, startled to see the time already past ten. He had been carried away by his literary task, and the harrowing appointment of the morning was now pressing. ‘Better get going,’ he went on to himself. ‘Can’t funk it, I suppose. Though it takes it out of a man, suffering so many weird new experiences at my age.’

  Sir Lancelot slipped the dean’s obituary into a desk drawer. He had thought of posting it to the editor straight away, but felt some improvements might occur to him, some little flourishes which might raise it to a classical example of its art-form. He crossed the landing to his dressing-room, changing the golden dragons for a formal black jacket. He walked sedately downstairs to face the blue-overall-covered backside of Miss Fiona MacNish, his much cherished housekeeper, who was polishing the hall floor.

  ‘I shall be dining at home tonight.’

  The housekeeper straightened up. She was a freckle-faced, sandy-haired Aberdonian, whose frank green eyes and open smile suggested white heather, buttered scones, teetotal Sundays and similar exemplary, wholesome items from north of the border. ‘I thought you might like some tripe and onions.’

  Sir Lancelot nodded. His favourite dish.

  ‘And if you’re in for tea, I was going to make some fresh hot buttered baps.’

  ‘I shall, alas, be kept at the hospital this afternoon. I am taking the morning off.’

  ‘A morning off? That’s most unusual for you, Sir Lancelot, isn’t it – ?’ She stopped. His eyes had started to roll and his shoulders to twitch. ‘Are you all right, Sir Lancelot?’ she asked with deep concern.

  ‘It’s nothing, nothing…’ He stared anxiously round the small hallway. He produced the handkerchief again to mop his face. ‘A spasm. Lot of it about this time of the year.’

  ‘You haven’t been yourself at all, you know. Not for weeks now. Not since that lovely champagne party you gave for the students’ ball. I’ve been really worried about you, I don’t mind admitting. I think you ought to go and see a doctor.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve no faith in the medical profession. It’s a touch of migraine, perhaps. Nothing to worry about.’ He picked up his black homburg. ‘Should anyone telephone, I am spending the morning conducting family business with my solicitors in the City.’

  ‘Very good, Sir Lancelot.’

  The surgeon stepped outside. Well, he thought, at least it’s a pleasant day. Almost makes one forget the dreadful humiliation. He started to walk along the cul-de-sac, extremely slowly.

  St Swithin’s Hospital owned Lazar Row, the site of its sixteenth-century lazar house, where the lepers were segregated and allowed abroad only with bells or clappers to keep terrified uninfected fellow citizens at bay. When leprosy disappeared from Europe a hundred years later, the building was made over to smallpox sufferers, visited by fashionable physicians in buckskin breeches and gilt-button
ed satin coats, wigs and three-cornered hats, and gold-headed canes from which they anxiously inhaled aromatic and hopefully disinfectant herbs concealed therein. After Edward Jenner and his Gloucestershire dairymaids the lazar house fell empty, and becoming dilapidated was used for rabies sufferers and other violent lunatics, on the workmanlike theory that they would be totally unaware of their surroundings anyway. In late Victorian days, it was, like most of St Swithin’s, rebuilt in the bright red brick which served with such cheerful adaptability for colleges, chapels or railway-stations, to become the isolation wards – the ‘Fever Hospital’, a piece of standing scenery in the nightmares of local children, to whom the stoutly-porticoed front door served only too often as the jaws of Moloch.

  When antibiotics began to tame infections after the Second World War the building was turned over to the accommodation of junior nurses, and becoming too tumbledown even for this purpose was demolished. The residential area round St Swithin’s, having become déclassé, was now réchauffé, with its experimental theatre, amusing little restaurants and boutiques instead of shops. A little guiltily, the hospital built the three comfortable houses on the bones of its lazars, with the excuse that the complexities of modern medicine required a senior consultant always near at hand. They were taken up eagerly, the rent being hardly more than peppercorns.

  Each house had its top floor as a self-contained flat, Muriel occupying the one in the dean’s home and Miss MacNish that in Sir Lancelot’s. The surgeon made a point of showing his professional visitors the stout front door at the top of his staircase, Miss MacNish being comely, himself a widower, and doctors through long experience of mankind having incorrigibly dirty minds. From the top-floor flat of No 1, the house nearest the main road, a pair of large, well made-up blue eyes were at that moment watching Sir Lancelot closely as he ambled along the pavement.

  ‘Well – !’ breathed the owner of the eyes. ‘And what does the old fool expect everyone to imagine he’s up to?’

  It was a morning of mysterious movement for the inhabitants of Lazar Row. Sir Lancelot stopped at the corner. He took out his half-hunter, put it back, clasped his hands behind his back, and stared at the sky as if weighing the chances of rain. He edged a glance over his shoulder. The row was empty. He abruptly strode towards the front door of No 1, taking off his hat and holding it in front of his face.

  The woman with the blue eyes had already reached the foot of the staircase as he rang the bell.

  ‘Good morning, Sir Lancelot.’

  ‘Not late, I hope?’ He pushed his way hastily inside, shutting the door behind him.

  ‘It’s ten-fifteen exactly.’ She awarded his punctuality with a smile. She was tall, slim and fair-skinned, her blonde hair clearly tended at great expense, her make-up indicating a good deal of early morning labour, her dress simple but in the latest style. Sir Lancelot put her in the late twenties. He thought of her as the icily efficient type of modern secretary, the sort who bestowed even amiability with the measured care of a physician prescribing drugs. At that moment the lively opening bars of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nacht Musik came on the violin from immediately upstairs.

  ‘I suppose he is expecting me, Mrs Tennant?’ asked Sir Lancelot anxiously.

  ‘Of course.’ She looked reproachful. ‘He has been feeling a little disturbed this morning.’ Sir Lancelot followed her to the first floor. The music stopped in mid-bar as she announced, ‘Dr Bonaccord, Sir Lancelot is here.’

  Dr Bonaccord stood up, one hand outstretched, violin and bow in the other. ‘A great pleasure, my dear fellow. We don’t see nearly enough of each other. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you properly for that delightful champagne party, which my secretary and I enjoyed so much. It’s the very first time you’ve set foot in this house, I believe? We really are a most unneighbourly lot in Lazar Row. Gisela, do take my violin and put it away, there’s a good girl.’

  ‘I was unaware that you were a talented amateur musician.’

  ‘Alas, I am a very indifferent one. But I find it soothing whenever I’m in danger of developing a bad temper. “What passion cannot music raise and quell”, eh? Do sit down.’

  Dr Bonaccord was chubby, with pale eyes and light chestnut hair fashionably cut. He was in his early thirties. He wore an expensive dark suit which Sir Lancelot thought more suitable for a luminary of the acting profession than the medical one, with a brightly-patterned shirt and a flashy tie. He had severe-looking rimless glasses under a bulging forehead, and his face had a pinkish tinge to it. Sir Lancelot always thought of him as a highly intellectual strawberry blancmange.

  Like the dean’s and Sir Lancelot’s studies, the room was small and overlooked a garden, which was largely filled with a hothouse containing orchids and rare pinguicula plants from South America reputed to eat flies. The walls were a cheerful primrose, the carpet and curtains mossy green, the furniture Sir Lancelot dismissed vaguely as ‘Scandinavian’. In one corner was a small white statue which struck him as a boiled egg suspended by spaghetti, in another a crystal vase crammed with crimson, budding roses.

  The door shut behind the secretary. Sir Lancelot continued to stare round. ‘No couch?’

  ‘I’ve dispensed with that prop of the comic cartoons. You’ll be perfectly comfortable in the easy chair. You can put your feet up on the little pouffe.’

  Sir Lancelot sat down obediently, folding his hands across his expansive stomach. He was almost horizontal, facing across the room with only the top of his head visible to Dr Bonaccord. Well, the moment has finally arrived, the surgeon thought. In a way, it was a relief. Though he still thought psychiatry the last refuge of the incompetent doctor, and Bonaccord himself as further round the bend than an acrobat’s umbilicus. But desperate illnesses needed desperate remedies.

  ‘You will not, of course, breathe a word to our colleagues at St Swithin’s that I have consulted you today?’

  ‘Naturally, I preserve professional discretion about all my patients.’ Dr Bonaccord sounded hurt. ‘Though I am at a loss, if I might say so, why people should hide the fact they have seen a psychiatrist. If you break a leg, you go openly enough to an orthopaedic surgeon to have it set.’ He leant back, pudgy fingertips together. ‘Now, I want you to forget I am here. To forget me completely. Imagine you are quite alone, addressing these four bare walls. Good. Well, what’s the trouble?’

  ‘The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte–’

  ‘Ah!’ Dr Bonaccord scribbled a note. ‘You’re really convinced of it, are you?’

  Sir Lancelot screwed round his head. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Is the whole thing systematized? Do you suppose I’m Baron Larrey, who did all your amputations at Borodino? Have you been brooding much recently on Waterloo?’

  ‘I don’t think I follow?’

  ‘Napoleon. That’s who you think you are?’

  ‘I do not think I am Napoleon, nor anyone else.’

  The psychiatrist looked disappointed. He had suffered under Sir Lancelot as a student, and felt that had the old boy started to develop delusions of grandeur they would have to be of great magnificence to be recognized as at all abnormal.

  ‘Cats,’ said Sir Lancelot.

  ‘Cats? By all means. Do go on.’

  ‘The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte suffered from a pathological terror of cats.’

  ‘Yes, that is quite correct, according to the history books. It’s not an uncommon phobia. Field-Marshal Lord Roberts in the First World War had the same trouble. He couldn’t bear to be in the same room with one.’

  ‘You may count me among that distinguished company.’

  The psychiatrist’s eyes glistened with interest. ‘How long have you noticed this?’

  ‘I suppose in the mildest of ways all my life. But recently it has become acute. You know my housekeeper, Miss MacNish? About four weeks ago – I remember distinctly, it was the afternoon of the students’ May ball – she imported into her flat a couple of stray cats. They are a pair of highly unprepossessing ani
mals. One is grey and thin, the other black and fat. I suspect they suffer from the mange and similar feline ailments. At first I had only a vague uneasiness in the presence of these disgusting beasts–’

  Sir Lancelot paused, unable to suppress a shiver. ‘The condition has steadily grown worse. Yesterday morning I suffered complete demoralization when I discovered one asleep behind the heated towel-rail as I left my bath. I can understand perfectly well how they made Napoleon feel about as imperial as a fruit jelly. They get all over my house, of course. Cats are completely impossible animals to confine. I anyway only have to imagine one is in the room, to suffer symptoms of the most painful anxiety. Well, Bonaccord? What’s to be done about it?’

  ‘This is of course part of the obsessional symptomatology–’

  ‘I pray you not to beguile me with the delightfully exculpatory theories of Freud.’

  ‘Well, how about tranquillizers?’

  ‘For me or the cats?’

  ‘Or wouldn’t it be simpler just to change your housekeeper?’

  ‘My dear man! Do you imagine I am going to deprive myself of the best cook in London? I am not a glutton, but a man of my age and respectability is sadly restricted in his choice of indulgences.’

  ‘We could try some transference therapy. Excellent results have been reported recently in the journals, by bringing patients under the influence of hypnosis or sodium amytal right up against the feared objects – cats, goldfish, bus-conductresses or whatever.’ Sir Lancelot continued to look bleakly unenthusiastic. ‘Though with a man of your well-integrated personality we could move more simply. You must simply engender feelings of tenderness towards the cats. Stroke them. Pet them. Offer them saucers of milk.’

  ‘I could no more bring myself to touch one of those monsters than to pet a hyena with rabies.’

  Dr Bonaccord looked pained again. As he had anticipated, the consultation was a trying one. ‘May I finish? You can achieve this quite simply by telling yourself they are not cats at all.’