‘My fingers have got cramp.’
‘Yet people just don’t understand the simplest psychological concepts. Do you know, Sir Lancelot simply laughed in St Swithin’s the other day when I explained the lucky horseshoe represents the female genitalia. Yet it’s so obvious when you think about it. If only people could be reasonable and normal.’ He gave a long, low whistling sigh. ‘Like me. All I crave is a little simple affection and tenderness – don’t I? I honestly believe I am one of the very few perfectly balanced men in the entire world, psychologically.’
She kissed him again, this time with a quick flutter of her tongue against his domed forehead.
‘I think I will look in and see the old dean about my stomach, once he gets home. I’ll hear him come in, of course. These houses are really dreadfully jerry-built. The hospital should have spent much more money on them.’
‘They’re delightfully cheap to rent.’
Dr Bonaccord fell silent for a moment. ‘Remember that job I was offered last week, away from St Swithin’s? Perhaps I turned it down rather hastily, just because it wasn’t in clinical psychiatry. I think we should move from here, Gisela.’
‘But why?’
‘People may suspect something about us.’
She looked indignant. ‘I’ve got my own flat, haven’t I?’
‘Oh, yes…but…well, remember how old Sir Lancelot looked at us under his eyebrows, when we were dancing rather indiscreetly at the students’ May Ball?’
‘We’d drunk too much of his champagne.’
‘Or perhaps people simply expect us to get married? Divorce is so easy these days.’
‘I must have explained a thousand times how my husband is abroad, and very difficult.’
‘Well, maybe it’s safe to stay. Tickle me. No, not with your fingers. As I like it.’
She slipped off her shoes, climbed on to the sofa, balanced herself astride him, hitched her skirt above her hips and tickled his right ear with her nylon-sheathed big toe, ‘Nice?’
‘Lovely.’ There was a crash from next door. ‘That’s the dean coming home. He had lunch with Frances Humble today.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I met her at this afternoon’s session of the seminar on student mental health.’
There were more noises from next door. The dean seemed to be rampaging through the house shouting his head off. Dr Bonaccord took Gisela’s foot, and putting her big toe in his mouth sucked it for some moments contemplatively. Then she resumed gently tickling his ear with it. He always thought it felt nicer when it was moist.
6
‘Josephine!’ The dean flung open his bedroom door. ‘Josephine!’ He went back to the landing and shouted down the staircase. ‘Josephine! Where are you?’
There was no reply. ‘Damn,’ muttered the dean. He had a bad headache and a taste as though his mouth was filled with iron filings. ‘Where is the bloody woman?’
He heard the front door shut again. ‘There you are, Josephine. Where the devil had you got to?’
She looked alarmed as he hurried downstairs into the narrow hall. ‘I was only posting a letter. I wanted to catch the late collection from the box outside St Swithin’s.’
‘How did I manage to miss you? I’ve just come from the hospital.’ The dean led her into the front room on the ground floor. The walls of their sitting-room were half-covered with bookcases, there was a painting of St Swithin’s in the eighteenth century on one wall and an etching of the dean’s Cambridge college on the other, at the far end a glass case with the silver cups he had won for running as a student. He threw himself on to a comfortable shabby sofa of flowered chintz, head on a green satin cushion extruding its feathers, feet stretched towards an occasional table with a pink cyclamen. ‘Something terrible has happened.’
‘It’s the students – they’ve put the matron’s car on the roof again?’
‘No, no…though I’ll never object in future to a little bit of harmless, innocent clean fun like that. Do sit down, Josephine. You’re irritating me, striding about.’
She sat in a velvet-covered armchair and folded her hands expectantly.
‘I met Frankie Humble for lunch.’
‘Was she as pressingly charming as ever?’
‘She offered me a job. Vice-chancellor of a new university.’
Josephine jumped up. ‘But how absolutely thrilling!’
‘Of Hampton Wick University.’
‘Oh!’ She sat down again.
‘It’s been founded…how long? Barely five years. And it’s got through ten vice-chancellors.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Each of them appointed for life.’
‘Poor Bill Smeed was always in delicate health, remember.’
‘Oh, yes. But not so delicate that he had to go on a world cruise to recover after only three months, I suppose they should never have exposed a meek little civil servant to those terrible students. He was followed by the clerical fellow, Canon Grimes. As far as I know, he’s still in that mental home. The next was the Australian, who simply packed his bags after a couple of nights and went back to Melbourne. Wise fellow. Then Professor Dancer–’
‘Dear man! I grew quite fond of him, visiting him in the wards at St Swithin’s before he died.’
‘And the final outrage on the economist fellow, Dumble–’
‘Perhaps the newspapers played it up, dear. They always do.’
The dean snorted. ‘At Hampton Wick, they don’t need to exaggerate. I suppose it’s fair game for the students, occupying the vice-chancellor’s private house for six weeks, But making him wait on them hand and foot, cleaning out the lavatories–’
‘Better than being tarred and feathered four Saturdays running, like the Canon.’
‘They don’t need a vice-chancellor. They need a particularly conscientious commandant from a Siberian salt mine.’
‘But the students there might like you, dear.’
‘How? Fried, I suppose. That almost happened to Bill Smeed. They set the place on fire, then chopped the firemen’s hoses with axes and drove the engines to London for an evening out.’
‘I admit, Lionel, the undergraduates sound something of a problem.’
‘They’re the most undisciplined bunch of roughnecks in the country – in the entire world, I should imagine. Academic Mafia. They actually revel in their awful reputation. All those well-meaning people who have accepted invitations to speak at Hampton Wick…’ The dean shuddered. ‘The Thames must be silted up with their motorcars by now.’
Josephine persisted grimly in seeing the bright side. ‘But just think, the university’s all beautifully modern, and we’ll have a delightful free house – if they can ever evict the sitting-in students, of course.’
‘I won’t do it. I refuse to preside over a non-stop carnival of promiscuity, psychopathy, pregnancy, and pot.’
‘So you didn’t accept?’
The dean hesistated. ‘I did.’
‘Lionel! How could you, when you hated the very idea?’
‘Well…you know how Frankie is when she wants her own way.’
‘You’re an absolute fool. You always behave towards Frankie like a first-year student to the first junior nurse who bothers to smile at him.’
The dean looked offended. ‘On the contrary. I admire Frankie only for her intellect.’
‘Nonsense. It’s all sex.’
The dean fell silent, scowling at the cyclamen. ‘Anyway, what the devil am I going to do?’
‘Tell her you’ve changed your mind.’
‘Tell Frankie? She’d soon change it back again.’
‘Suggest someone else for the post.’
‘My dear Josephine, nobody in the entire academic world would touch that job with a well-sterilized barge-pole. I suppose that’s the only reason she asked me,’ he added ruefully.
‘Surely you can think of someone? Another doctor, perhaps? One older than you, who’s retiring anyway, who wouldn’t worry overmuch if he only lasted a few months?
There must be someone with the knack of enjoying popularity among the students – even if it’s a cheap popularity.’
‘I can’t think of a soul. I certainly wouldn’t recommend Hampton Wick to one of my friends. I don’t think I’d care to offer it even to my worst enemy…’
There was a violent thumping noise from the wall on the dean’s left. ‘Really! These houses are ridiculous. It’s bad enough hearing that peculiar fellow Bonaccord playing records or scraping away on the violin till all hours, but living next door to Sir Lancelot is like being on top of an Army assault course–’
The dean paused. He slowly scratched his chin. For the first time a faintly cheerful expression came to his face. ‘I wonder… I wonder…’ he muttered to himself. ‘Well, it would certainly make an awfully good end to his obituary.
7
The thump which had disturbed the dean was Sir Lancelot hurling a copy of Progress in Clinical Surgery at the crimson velvet curtain which hung from a brass rail to cover his sitting-room door. He stood on the Indian rug in the middle of the polished floor, breathing heavily. He shuddered, producing again the red-and-white spotted handkerchief to mop his face. But nothing emerged from behind the door curtain. There was no movement. No mewing. ‘Imagination,’ muttered Sir Lancelot. ‘I mustn’t let it get me down. I can conquer this thing. Just as I’ve conquered a lot of other unfortunate little traits in my life, like going into an abdomen too late and striking at a trout too early.’
He sat again in the deep leather armchair. His sitting-room resembled the corner of a comfortable club, with plain walls of battleship grey, some early nineteenth-century prints of angling scenes and two enormous brown trout in glass cases, glassy-eyed and lacquered, to Sir Lancelot as emotive a reminder of past glories as the equally carefully preserved contents of the Kremlin mausoleum to the population of Moscow. At his left elbow was an angled reading-lamp, at his right a small table with the folded Times and Lancet, and a half-finished large whisky and soda with decanter and syphon, on a silver tray laid out by Miss MacNish. On his knee was a blotter, with the foolscap pages of the dean’s obituary.
Sir Lancelot was in a mellow, indulgent frame of mind as the whisky gently ironed the wrinkles out of his soul. The consultation with the nut-wallah Bonaccord had not proved too painful – possibly his advice might even be worth taking. Neither cat had appeared all day, and he was even entertaining the cheerful notion that they had both been squashed somewhere by a bus. And there was tripe and onions for dinner – though inclined to produce wind in the bowel, certainly a dish to savour in anticipation. Sir Lancelot twitched his nostrils as the delicate, delicious scent pierced the door-curtain. His eye ran along the handwritten lines on his knee. The dean wasn’t really such a bad sort at heart, he decided. He took out his fountain-pen and changed, Lychfield’s natural abstemiousness was unfortunately interpreted by his friends as a certain meanness in sociability to His aesthetic streak happily did not prevent him from accepting with cheerfulness the hospitality of others.
Sir Lancelot suddenly looked up. For almost a minute he sat stock-still, staring across the room over his half-moon glasses. Then with a deliberate movement he set pen and obituary on the side-table. He stood up. ‘I shall overcome,’ he murmured. ‘I shall definitely overcome,’
He stared round keenly. This time it wasn’t his fancy. There was one about somewhere.
‘Am I a man?’ he asked himself sombrely. ‘Or indeed a mouse?’
He stood stroking his beard, shuddering slightly. Perhaps it would have been easier, he thought, had he succumbed to the temptation of slipping poison into the tins of well-advertised cat food which Miss MacNish put out with the same attention as she laid his dinner. Something rather painful, like strychnine. But that would have been unsporting. It was more humane to try the psychological cure, if less likely to be immediately effective.
‘Puss,’ Sir Lancelot said bravely. ‘Pretty puss.’
Something moved. It was in the nook between a small bookcase and the corner. Sir Lancelot felt his hands tremble. Then like some old soldier, battleweary but screwing up his courage, he pursed his lips and uttered a moist squeaking noise. The cat appeared with callous insouciance round the bookcase, tail high. At least it was Chelsea the black one, not Kensington the grey one, which Sir Lancelot liked even less.
‘Pussy-wussy,’ said Sir Lancelot.
It sat, staring at him with yellow eyes.
‘Tenderness,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘Tenderness.’
He advanced gingerly across the rug. The cat started washing itself. The long pink tongue made Sir Lancelot remember saucers of milk, and he wondered distractedly if whisky and soda would do instead. ‘Think of it as a baby,’ he told himself. He bravely extended a hand. ‘Nice little baby. Tickleum tum-tums.’
The cat abandoned its toilet and gave a haughty glare. Sir Lancelot crouched down and touched it. The cat arched its back, stuck out its tail, and made a noise like the final squirt from a soda-syphon.
‘Ahhhhhh!’ cried Sir Lancelot.
He leapt back, knocking over the table and smashing the decanter. To keep his balance he grabbed the reading lamp, tripped over the flex, and plunged beside the armchair. ‘Bloody animal!’ he shouted. ‘Pestiferous beast!’
The cat resumed licking itself. The door flew open and Miss MacNish appeared.
‘Sir Lancelot! Are you all right?’
‘Of course I am not all right. Do you imagine I have been entertaining a poltergeist, or something?’
She hastened to help him up. ‘But what was the matter?’
Sir Lancelot jabbed a forefinger. ‘That was the matter. That articulated flue-brush.’
A chilly look frosted the warm solicitude of her expression. ‘Do I take it that you don’t care for my cat?’
‘I have no feelings one way or another about the animal. I only ask you to keep it permanently out of my sight, that’s all.’
Miss MacNish knelt to pick up the broken decanter. ‘You can’t expect cats to stay imprisoned all day in my little flat,’
‘Why not? I’ll buy a couple of birdcages for them if you like.’
‘I was always brought up to believe one should be kind to dumb animals.’
‘But those cats aren’t dumb.’ Chelsea had hollowed its back and was sharpening its claws on the door-curtain. ‘They may not actually say anything, but they radiate malevolence like an atomic pile.’
Her lips were tight. ‘I simply don’t understand you, Sir Lancelot. I really don’t.’
‘Get it out of here, before it has the door-curtain in ribbons.’
Miss MacNish stood up. ‘You’re always being nasty to my cats,’ she burst out.
‘On the contrary, they’re always being extremely unpleasant to me.’
‘Yes, you are. Ever since I gave the poor wee things a home. You think I haven’t noticed, don’t you? But I have. Yes indeed, I have. I saw you tread on poor Kensington. Tread on her, with your great big feet. And just now, I heard you throw something at Chelsea. If I so much as told the RSPCA, there’d be a fine old scandal in the Sunday papers.’
‘My dear Miss MacNish! I assure you I enjoy humane feelings towards mankind and all warm-blooded creatures–’
‘Oh, I know you medical people. You’ll take my cats over to the hospital and do unspeakable things if you have half the chance. I’ve read all about vivisection, you know.’ She gathered the fragile bones of contention and pressed them to her bosom. ‘There, there! Poor little harmless beastie. Was the man nasty to you, then? Dinner is served,’ she added briskly, disappearing.
Sir Lancelot snorted. He felt the only dish for which he now had appetite was a brace of roast cat. He glanced sadly at the whisky-stain on the rug, then went through another door to the small dining-room, containing a couple more stuffed fish. Miss MacNish came in with a large steaming, china tureen, a silver spoon protruding through its lid.
‘Miss MacNish, I think I owe you an explanation. I am, in fact, delighted you
have those two animals as your companions – you must become somewhat bored up there, with nothing but the television. And doubtless they are admirable examples of their species. My behaviour can be explained perfectly simply, in that I suffer a sort of psychological allergy to cats. I cannot bear to be within yards of one. It’s like being with…well, something entirely disgusting and menacing. Something like a venomous snake. Many distinguished men have felt exactly the same,’ he added quickly. ‘It was possibly a cat straying into Napoleon’s tent at Waterloo which changed the course of European history.’
Miss MacNish plonked the tripe in the middle of the table. ‘Disgusting and menacing are they?’
‘I only meant they affect me that way,’ he said patiently.
‘I’m glad that at least you admit I might get bored in the evenings.’ He noticed two bright red patches on her freckled cheeks. ‘But a lot you care about that, don’t you. When have you asked me down for a chat? Or a glass of whisky? When? Even on Christmas Day you didn’t.’
‘My dear Miss MacNish, you must surely see that sort of thing would be most improper for a man on his own.’
‘Oh? A scarlet woman, am I? Going to seduce you on your own hearthrug in ten minutes before I cook your dinner? Thank you. Now I know exactly where I stand in your estimation.’
‘Damnation, woman! I did not mean that in the slightest–’
‘Please do not become uncivil.’
Doctor On The Brain Page 5