Muriel glanced at her watch. ‘At any moment someone will walk through the front door to change the lives of all of us.’
‘What are you raving about?’ complained the dean. ‘Who do you expect at this hour? It’s hardly the season for Santa Claus.’
‘I wanted you, Father, and Mother – and you, Edgar – to be here when he arrived. That’s why I engineered the dinner-party. He couldn’t come earlier because of his job.’
‘Love, you’ve been overworking,’ suggested Sharpewhistle.
‘Muriel, my dear,’ said the dean. ‘Possibly you’re in the grip of some hallucination or other. How about the pair of us slipping next door to Bonaccord?’
The doorbell rang. They all looked at one another. ‘I’ll go,’ said Muriel.
She reappeared with a tall, thin, pale, clean but shabbily-dressed young man.
‘Mother… Father… Edgar…this is Andrew Clarke.’
The dean jumped up and glared. ‘And what, may I ask, do you want?’
‘I want to marry your daughter.’
‘Good God,’ muttered the dean. ‘It’s me. Yes, I’m the patient. I’ve developed organized delusions. Probably schizophrenia. Must see Bonaccord at once.’
‘Here, steady on–’ began Edgar.
‘Oh, Andy,’ said Muriel. ‘This is my fiancé.’
Andy extended his hand. ‘Peace to you, my friend. Hold no rancour in your heart, I pray you.’
‘You’re pulling my bird–’
‘Life is such a magnificent gift, brother,’ he continued, ‘our destinies so mysterious, we cannot let our vision be clouded by trivialities.’
‘You can’t just pinch my wife–’
‘Peace, peace–’
‘I’d give you a punch on the nose, if I was bigger.’
‘Edgar, do please avoid making an exhibition of yourself.’
‘Anyway, I feel quite sick.’
‘Who is this man?’ demanded the dean. ‘Where did you bring him from?’
‘I have known Andy for some months, Father. Since I was doing my sociology course. We are very much in love with one another.’
‘Sociology student, is he? I might have known as much. Depraved, the lot of them.’
‘No, Andy isn’t one of the students. He’s one of the subjects. He doesn’t believe in money or possessions, or anything but leading a pure life. Though now he’s got a steady job, you may like to know. So we want to get married.’
‘An evening job, sir,’ Andy explained. ‘Washing up in a hotel. It’s remarkable the satisfaction one can get from scraping dirty plates.’
The dean wagged his finger. ‘Don’t imagine that you’re going to get any financial assistance from me. Not a penny, I assure you. Nor are you going to move in and live here, free of charge…’ He stopped. He stared at Sharpewhistle and Andy in turn, then finally at Muriel. He added in a weak voice, ‘Er…does he…your new young man…know?’
‘I’m aware, sir, that Muriel is expecting a child by another man.’ He bowed courteously towards Sharpewhistle. ‘But that is a mere nothing, compared with our own future happiness.’
‘You mean you’re…you’re prepared to rear this cuckoo?’
‘It will be Muriel’s child.’
‘Here! What about me?’ demanded Sharpewhistle.
‘Do be quiet, Edgar. You must try and adjust yourself like an adult.’
‘But I’m the father of it! Don’t I count at all?’
‘Yes, it must be mass delusions,’ muttered the dean. ‘First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll all five of us have to go and see Bonaccord.’
‘You’ve got to marry me,’ shouted Sharpewhistle.
‘Nothing in this world would make me do that, Edgar. I must have been mad to contemplate it in the first place.’
‘Well, that’s all very satisfactory, isn’t it?’ Josephine spoke for the first time. ‘Muriel will marry Andy, whom she is very fond of and the baby will have a nice, cheerful home. It’s a little hard on you, Edgar, I must admit, but I’m sure you’ll take it in a very reasonable way. After all, there’re plenty of other very nice girls about the place, whom you can make pregnant in the fullness of time.’
‘Drugs!’ exclaimed the dean. ‘I’ve got it! That’s what you’re on, young man, aren’t you? Hallucinogens. The obvious diagnosis.’
‘I take neither drugs, sir, nor tobacco, nor alcohol nor meat. My life is devoted to purity, to sweetness towards others, and to intellectual integrity.’
Sharpewhistle stood in the corner making choking noises. Josephine continued calmly, ‘As everything’s settled, Lionel, why not get that bottle of champagne from the fridge to celebrate?’
‘What’s the point, my dear, he says he doesn’t drink alcohol… I mean, the whole thing is outrageous. Ridiculous. Impossible. I won’t hear a single word of it. Muriel! Come to your senses. You must marry young Sharpewhistle there.’
‘I refuse to.’
‘Why couldn’t you get this other fellow to put you in the family way in the first place?’ asked the dean furiously. ‘Why do you have to make life so bloody complicated for all of us? Absolutely typical of a female medical student!’
There was a crash. An iron casserole came sailing through the window.
Josephine screamed. The dean stared through the shattered glass in horror. ‘Send for the police. Dial 999 instantly.’
‘Let me in,’ shouted Sir Lancelot from the pavement. ‘I’m being raped.’
‘Come back, you old sod.’ A shrill female voice rang from outside. ‘You’re not going to walk out on me like this, you randy old doctor–’
‘Madam! Will you please desist in hurling household appliances at me?’
‘Are you coming to bed or aren’t you?’
‘You are to leave my premises at once.’
‘What, at this time of night? You must be joking. Go all the way back to Wiveliscombe? That’s your game, is it? Lead me on and throw me out. Like this, too, with hardly a stitch on my back.’
‘Muriel dear, I think it would be convenient for Sir Lancelot if you opened the front door,’ said Josephine.
The surgeon staggered into the room, wiping his face with his red-spotted handkerchief. The dean perched on the edge of the sofa, staring into the middle distance and biting his nails.
‘And who was your friend, Lancelot?’ asked Josephine.
‘A middle-aged alcoholic nymphomaniac.’
Josephine looked through the broken window. ‘She seems to have retreated inside your house. I expect in that state she found the night air chilly.’
‘You may possibly be wondering how in the name of God I managed to get mixed up with her?’
‘Don’t think I’m nosy, Lancelot, but it would seem of interest.’
‘I went to a place called Hotblack’s–’
‘Lancelot! So you decided to marry again, after all? How charming.’
‘No, I did not blasted well decide to get married. Nor shall I. Nor have another female of any description whatever in my house again. I imagined Hotblack’s was a domestic employment agency.’
‘Oh, dear. You should have gone to Morpeth’s in the Strand. I’ll telephone them tomorrow. Though perhaps it would be best if I asked them to send the ladies to be interviewed at St Swithin’s?’
Sir Lancelot sat down heavily next to the dean.
‘Couldn’t you have simply thrown her out?’ asked Josephine.
‘She said she liked the brutal approach. When she appeared, I thought she was at least civilized. Quite refined, in fact. She was raising her elbow rather, though I was prepared to put that down to nerves. In the end, she turned out a…a monster. I only hope I can get rid of her somehow tomorrow. I see I owe you for a window.’
‘But where are you going to sleep?’
‘It is totally out of the question to return to my own house, of course. I rather hoped, Josephine, that I could impose on you for a shakedown here?’
‘That would be no trouble, honestly.�
��
‘This sofa would suit me perfectly well.’
She looked doubtful. ‘You’re sure you’d be comfortable enough?’
‘Mother–’
Sir Lancelot looked up. He seemed to see the three others for the first time.
‘Yes, dear?’
‘I’m afraid Andy will have to stay here the night, too.’
‘Of course he can. But he hasn’t brought any things, has he?’
‘My things,’ said Andy with a saintly gesture, ‘are in my pockets. A man should never own more possessions than he can carry on his person.’
‘If he stays, I stay.’ Sharpewhistle stared angrily at everybody. ‘To see there isn’t any hanky-panky.’
‘Oh, dear, that might make the house a little crowded.’
‘But Andy’s got nowhere else to go, Mother. Usually, he sleeps where they put the hotel garbage, but they will have locked it up by now.’
‘How very awkward. Well, Andy, if you would care to sleep down here on the sofa, and if Edgar will sleep in the spare room on the first floor, then I’ll move into the divan bed in your room on the top, Muriel. And Sir Lancelot can share our own bedroom with Lionel.’
The dean came to life. ‘I utterly refuse.’
‘Now you’re being churlish, Lionel.’
‘I will not sleep in the same room as Lancelot. It strikes me as quite unhygienic.’
‘Well, you’d better share the sofa down here with young Andy, then.’ The dean jumped up. He pulled half a dozen copies of The Medical Annual out of the bookcase, and removed the bottle of brandy lying on its side behind them. ‘So that’s where you’d hidden it,’ said Josephine. ‘I do wish I’d known after dinner.’
‘I am taking this liqueur cognac up to our bedroom. I am going to drink as much as possible before it anaesthetizes me. I shall then not care in the least if my bedmate is to be Lancelot, Andy, Edgar or all three. And the lady next door, too, if she feels like it.’
He marched from the room, Sir Lancelot following. The dean went straight through his bedroom to the bathroom, produced a tooth-mug, and half-filled it with brandy.
‘I say, dean,’ murmured Sir Lancelot. ‘I could do with a peg of that.’
For a second the dean glared, but relented. He fetched Josephine’s tooth-mug, gurgled in the brandy, and handed it over in silence. The pair sat on the twin beds.
‘We have problems,’ observed Sir Lancelot.
The dean gulped his brandy and snorted. ‘I have problems. My daughter having got herself pregnant by that over-moustached dwarf Sharpewhistle, now announces she wants to marry that El Greco leftover Andy, or whatever his name is.’
Sir Lancelot raised his eyebrows. ‘You mean the fellow who sleeps on garbage? An odd situation, I must say. Ibsen might have made something of it.’
‘My daughter is an odd female.’ The dean took another gulp. ‘She takes after her mother.’
‘While I am let in for this bloody vice-chancellor’s job.’ Sir Lancelot half-drained the brandy. ‘Did you see the Hampton Wick students’ latest antics?’ he asked gloomily. ‘They got bored with hanging their professors in effigy–’
‘I should imagine so. They’re always up to it.’
‘So they decided to do it for real. I believe the poor fellow escaped with a stiff neck and a severe fright. He was the Professor of Criminology, too.’
The dean winced. ‘If only we could get Bonaccord to accept, after all. I wouldn’t worry very much if they hanged him. Nor drew and quartered him while they were at it.’
‘He’s already told me he won’t.’
‘Can’t we put some pressure on him?’
‘What pressure? We can hardly blackmail him. He’s perfectly open about his fornication with that girl, and doesn’t give a damn anyway.’
‘But at his age, the vice-chancellorship of Hampton Wick would be a big step in his career. Can’t he take a rational view?’
‘Rational? Don’t be stupid. He’s a psychiatrist.’ There was a silence. ‘It’s all Frankie’s fault.’
The dean nodded. ‘I’m afraid it is.’
‘It was moreover Frankie who sent me to the marriage agency instead of the domestic agency.’ For the first time, the dean laughed. Sir Lancelot looked at him bleakly. ‘I fail to see anything funny in it, dean. Frankie simply took us both for a ride. She doubtless looks upon us as a pair of burbling old fools.’
‘You know, Lancelot, I’m beginning to believe something which I have long suspected. Frankie’s a bitch.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you, dean.’
The dean yawned. ‘We’d better get some sleep, I suppose. You’re examining in surgery tomorrow, aren’t you?’
Sir Lancelot nodded.
‘It’s the finals of the Royal Society of Bleeders.’
‘At least that won’t be very exacting on the brain. I expect you’d care to borrow a pair of my pyjamas?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d look like a hippopotamus in a zebra skin.’
When Sir Lancelot lay in the nude between Josephine’s sheets, he said, ‘Lionel…with Frankie…to be honest, now. Did you?’
‘To be honest, Lancelot, no.’
‘You don’t mind my asking?’
‘Not a bit.’ There was a pause. ‘And did you – to be perfectly honest?’
‘To be perfectly and absolutely honest – no.’
‘Remind me in the morning, Lancelot, to do a little work at some writing I have in my desk.’
‘And perhaps you’d remind me of some editing I must do on a literary effort in my own desk?’
‘Of course, Lancelot. Good night.’
‘Good night, Lionel.’
The dean switched out the light. For a long time he stared through the darkness at the ceiling, grappling with his troubles. But in a second Sir Lancelot was asleep and snoring, as usual.
23
Just before ten-thirty the following morning, the dean hurried in his bowler hat up the front steps of the wide granite entrance of the Old Bailey. He stood for a moment in the entrance-hall, looking confusedly at the barristers, policemen and, he supposed, criminals milling about. Then spotting a helmetless young constable sitting in a booth, he asked, ‘Mr Humphrey Fletcher-Boote, please?’ adding for full measure, ‘QC’.
‘I imagine you’d find him in the barristers’ robing room, sir.’
‘He said he’d come out here to collect me.’
‘Are you his client, sir?’
‘Oh, no,’ exclaimed the dean. ‘At least, not yet.’
‘Lionel, there you are! My dear, dear fellow! What an unexpected pleasure.’
The deep voice which with commendable fairness had boomed blackly of the misdeeds of criminals, or alternately mellifluously indicated their innocence, which had humbly submitted to the wisdom of judges or passionately stirred the wits of juries, came ringing across the busy hall. Mr Fletcher-Boote was a big, red-faced cheerful man, in bands, wig and gown, advancing with huge hand outstretched.
‘I hope you didn’t mind my telephoning you at home so early?’ the dean apologized.
‘Not a bit. Delighted I could fit you in this morning. By jove, you’re looking well.’
‘Thank you. Though I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’
The QC dug him hard in the ribs. ‘Can’t you doctors knock yourselves flat with drugs?’ He gave another dig. ‘Or do you simply count sheep like everyone else? How’s the family? How’s that clever young daughter of yours? She must be quite grown up now.’
‘Grown up!’ muttered the dean.
‘We really must get a little golf, some time. Though I’ve honestly hardly touched a club since our days at the university. What’s the bother?’ he asked, noticing the clock and coming briskly to business.
‘I wondered if I could cadge a little professional advice?’
‘In trouble, eh?’ The QC laughed heartily and dug the dean in the ribs again. ‘General Medical Council, I suppose? Being naughty with the
ladies, eh, Lionel? Just like you used to be.’
‘It’s entirely theoretical.’ The dean looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘You see… I, well, I’m examining students today. For the qualifying examination of the Royal Society of Bleeders – it has an ancient right to bestow medical degrees, you may know.’
‘And it keeps a splendid cellar. I’ve dined there.’
‘Doubtless. I wanted to ask questions more unusual than the general run – I’m afraid the Bleeders candidates do turn up time and time again, poor fellows, and I fancy only pass in the end because they’ve answered everything we can possibly ask. You know the medico-legal line–’
‘Murder, rape and bestiality? All very interesting.’
‘Something a little more esoteric, I thought. Now there’s this girl–’
‘Which girl?’
‘Muriel.’
The QC frowned. ‘That’s the name of your daughter, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, she’s got nothing to do with it. Nothing whatever. But I thought I’d better call this girl something, instead of just calling her “this girl”. So I called her Muriel.’
‘I see.’
‘This girl – let’s call her Mary instead – she’s pregnant, you see.’
‘Ah! A condition with almost limitless medicolegal possibilities – either after, or immediately before, its initiation.’
‘Quite. Well, Muriel. That is, Mary. This girl. She’s pregnant. By a man.’
‘That would be hardly astounding.’
‘No. Of course not. I meant, by this man, whom she knows.’
‘Some girls don’t know, of course. Dance halls in the provinces,’ he added with a professional appreciation. ‘How confused they can get in the dark afterwards.’
‘But Muriel knows. This girl knows.’
‘That’s Mary?’
‘She knows who did it.’
‘She wants a bastardy order?’
‘Not a bit. He’s perfectly prepared to marry her.’
‘Stout fellow.’
‘But she doesn’t want to marry him.’
‘That’s not unknown. After all, one may enjoyably sip a good port, but feel disinclined to lay down a whole cellarful.’
‘She wants to marry somebody else.’
‘The same girl?’
Doctor On The Brain Page 15