‘But everyone says I’ve got talent.’
‘Who does? Inga, I suppose? And don’t you go fiddling about with her, either. I’ve noticed it. We maintain certain standards in this family, even if the rest of the country is nothing but pot, pill, and pornography. Ah, there you are, my dear.’
George made his escape. His mother was a tall, good-looking, and smartly dressed woman, with kind grey eyes and a soft nature, which to the dean had the comfortable attraction of a fireside sofa on a chilly afternoon. He unlocked a cupboard in the corner and produced a decanter of sherry.
‘Josephine, let us drink a toast.’ He poured two glasses. ‘To…no, let’s make it to you. To the future Lady Lychfield.’
She stared at him. ‘It’s all fixed,’ he added with a wink. ‘I had a letter from Willie at the Ministry. Wheels have been turning. My years of unselfish service to St Swithin’s and medicine in general are to have their just reward, on the Queen’s birthday to be exact. Though now I come to think of it,’ he added, ‘they ought to have given me a knighthood years ago.’
‘Oh, Lionel!’ she gasped. ‘Sir Lionel.’
The dean kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘Makes it worthwhile being married to me all these years, eh?’
Her eyes glowed. He thought he had never seen her looking so beautiful. How strange – in a country where even prime ministers take pains to make known they put the same bottled sauce on their chips as the rest of the population – is the feudal potency of the twice-yearly honours list.
‘Though not a word to a soul,’ he told her sternly. ‘Of course, I’ve got to keep my nose clean for the next month or so, as Willie says, but that’s hardly an obstacle. Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.’ The words rolling round his mouth were more intoxicating than the sherry. ‘Though naturally, I don’t give tuppence for titles and suchlike myself,’ he added quickly. ‘I’ll accept it only as an honour to the hospital. It’s high time we had a knight again on the staff of St Swithin’s–’
He paused. A cloud had drifted across the sunshine of his life. ‘I’d forgotten. Sir Lancelot.’
‘He’s dead?’ she exclaimed.
‘No damn fear. That man’s as indestructible as a fossilized rhinoceros. He’s back from the Far East.’
‘How splendid! We must ask him to dinner.’
‘There’s no hurry.’ Toleration of Sir Lancelot he thought one of those items in any woman’s life quite beyond the understanding of her husband. ‘He’s going to stay in London quite a while. But most certainly not with us.’
The dean stared through the window, where dusk was falling over the pleasant, neat green circle of Regent’s Park. His house was large, but near Harley Street and the West End, affording a precious feeling of spaciousness amidst the dignified crescents and tree-lined streets spreading towards the northern slope of London.
‘Perhaps he’ll quarrel with everyone and go back to Wales,’ the dean consoled himself. ‘He only resigned from the staff because of a row with the last professor of surgery.’ Whether this was over the higher principles of operative technique, or because the professor insisted on parking his Mini in the corner of the courtyard reserved by tradition for Sir Lancelot’s Rolls, no one at St Swithin’s ever found out. ‘Though it’s annoying. An old curmudgeon like him could easily upset all the exciting changes we’re seeing at St Swithin’s.’
‘If the fishing season’s open, he may not stay a long time, dear.’
‘Any time is long in the company of Lancelot,’ he said wearily.
There was a knock on the study door. It was Miss MacNish, the cook-housekeeper, a pleasant, neat, competent, red-headed Aberdonian in her thirties, who they had snatched eagerly from Sir Lancelot’s service on his leaving London.
‘Sir Lancelot Spratt is back in London,’ the dean informed her sombrely.
‘Now isn’t that good news, Doctor! Have you invited him to stay?’
‘I have not invited him to stay.’
‘I’ll bake him one of those Dundee cakes he enjoys so much. It’ll be a nice change after all that curry and chop suey he must have been getting. I came to say your dinner’s ready.’
The dean shook his head. Women were quite ridiculous when it came to judging a man’s character. No wonder so many of them ended up in the divorce courts. He reached the door before he remembered Sir Lancelot’s X-rays. He turned back to open his document case. He held the pictures up to the reading-lamp. He gasped.
‘Oh, no!’ The film shook in his hand. ‘It can’t be?’ He stared more closely. ‘Dear me! But it is. Poor fellow. Poor Lancelot. To think that I could have spoken so harshly of the dear, unfortunate man.’
6
‘Officer,’ demanded Sir Lancelot from the window of his Rolls. ‘I would appear to have lost a hotel. Perhaps you’d kindly direct me to the Crécy?’
‘But it’s right opposite, sir. The tall white building.’
A frown congealed on Sir Lancelot’s broad forehead. ‘That overgrown silo?’
‘Maybe you’re thinking of the old hotel, sir? That was pulled down.’
‘Good grief. They haven’t pulled down Buckingham Palace yet, I suppose?’
The policeman grinned. ‘No, sir. But from what they’re charging at that little pub opposite, you might find staying at Buckingham Palace a bit cheaper.’
Sir Lancelot drove into the hotel forecourt, which to his puzzlement was crowded with young and noisy females.
‘Some sort of demo, I suppose,’ he decided, slamming the car door. ‘Or a carnival. Though I suppose today they wear those sort of clothes even at funerals.’ His face lit as he recognized the same manager standing in black jacket and striped trousers beside the doorman. ‘Luigi! How good to see you. Though your establishment has undergone a somewhat alarming metamorphosis.’
‘A pleasure to have you staying again, sir.’ The tall, white-haired Italian was a dignified figure suggesting a particularly experienced doyen of the diplomatic corps in some stylish capital. ‘I’m afraid the days of the old-fashioned family hotel in London are over. But I assure you our comfort and service are maintained. We have put you on the sixteenth floor, next to the Picardy suite. And the chicken à la kiev in the grill-room is as good as ever.’
‘Is Potter-Phipps still your hotel doctor?’
‘Alas, no. We have a new man – quite young, and very brilliant, so he leads me to understand. The doorman will garage your car,’ he added, as the porter collected Sir Lancelot’s suitcases.
‘Kind of you to come and greet me in person, Luigi.’
The manager looked a shade uncomfortable. ‘I have in fact another guest due any moment. One as important as yourself Sir Lancelot. Eric Cavendish. You know, the film actor.’
‘Is he still going? I’m sure I used to see him in a double-bill with the new Buster Keaton.’
The manager laughed. ‘He is as popular as ever – with the teenagers particularly, as you can see.’
‘Odd,’ murmured the surgeon. ‘I suppose Freud has the answer, if I could ever understand what the fellow is talking about.’
As he spoke, screaming broke out in the crowd. Luigi hurried forward as a chauffeur-driven Mercedes drew up. The manager shepherded into the hotel a tall slim man followed by a short fat one, both wearing large dark glasses despite night having fallen.
‘I suppose he’s in the Picardy suite?’ Sir Lancelot asked the porter. ‘I’ll let the fuss die down before I venture up, I fancy. Besides, I’ve had a long day driving from Wales and am in need of the bar, if you still have such old-fashioned nooks among all this functional plastic.’ He stopped in the hotel doorway. ‘Piped music! The country’s getting like Prospero’s isle – “Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices…” and I don’t bloody well like it.’
The first action of Eric Cavendish on reaching the Picardy suite was to remove his toupee, which was itching. Then he took off his dark glasses and with care
inspected his eyelids for puffiness. Next, he opened a small crocodile-skin hand-case full of plastic containers, and selecting one green pill, one blue, two orange, and another with red and yellow stripes on it, went to the bathroom for a glass of water and swallowed them.
‘That’s better, Ted,’ he announced to the fat man, his British agent who had met the plane from New York. ‘God, it’s great to be back in dear old London Town! The place where I was born, you know. You might call me a citizen of the world – I’ve an apartment in Paris and a production company in Hollywood, I’ve been married in Las Vegas and divorced in Mexico, I’ve my bank account in Switzerland and I pay my taxes in Liechtenstein – but I only feel at home here, right here.’
Ted, who had kept his glasses on, asked, ‘Have you any plans for tonight, Eric? The wife and I thought maybe a quiet dinner after your trip–’
‘My plans are very beautiful.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In ninety minutes the most wonderful little dolly in the world is going to come through that door. I’m entertaining her up here for dinner – just the two of us, quiet after the trip, as you said.’
Eyebrows rising above the dark glasses indicated Ted’s interest. ‘Do you suppose I’d know her?’
‘No.’ Eric started undressing for a shower. ‘I met her on my TV show in New York. She was over on some sales-promotion trip – Miss Toothpaste or Miss Garbage-cans, or something spine-chilling like that. I made a date. I called her up this morning before take off. And it’s all go.’
‘Where’s she live?’
‘Let me see – I’ve forgotten the geography of this town. Place called Tooting. Quaint name, eh?’ The actor laughed. ‘I guess it’s historical. Fashionable?’
‘It’s had a lot of improvement schemes recently,’ Ted said evasively. He lit a cigarette. ‘How old is she?’
‘Seventeen.’
There was a short silence. ‘Look, Eric – I don’t see so much of you these days, but I was your mate as well as your agent back when you started. So I can talk in a brotherly way. Right? Why don’t you ease up?’
‘Why?’ asked Eric Cavendish gaily, pulling off his shirt and starting to unzip his stays. ‘I like ’em that age, and they like me.’ He paused. ‘Did I remember to take the striped pill?’
‘That’s what I mean. I’m worried about your health. You were pretty sick that time in California.’
‘And do you know how I pulled through? I had an English doctor and an English nurse. They were terrific. I remember one night I just wanted to turn it all in – curl up and die, never look another day in the face again. But that nurse, she sat just holding my hand like a kid and talking to me. I guess she saved my life.’
‘If you need a doctor now, there’s one attached to the hotel. I took care to find out.’
‘Thanks, Ted. But I’ve never felt fitter. Nor younger. Do you mind if I ask you to leave? I’ve got my electric massage, then my medicated bath and my meditation.’
An hour and a half later, Miss Iris Fowler of Tooting Bec, the reigning Miss Business Furnishing, was calmly asking at the porter’s desk for Mr Eric Cavendish.
‘Yes, he’s expecting you, Miss. The page will show you up.’
She was a short blonde girl with delicate, babyish features and large long-lashed blue eyes, wearing a dress which Sir Lancelot would have described as wholly suprapubic. In the lift she took a deep breath.
She was not particularly looking forward to the evening. There were a dozen boys of her own age she would have preferred to spend it with. But she was a clear-headed girl. She wanted to break into modelling or television or the films – anything to get free from a typewriter. Being Miss Office Furnishing, to her disappointment, seemed to lead nowhere. But an hour or so alone with Eric Cavendish might achieve a lot.
‘Hello, there,’ the actor greeted her enthusiastically. His toupee was securely fixed, his eye-lotion applied, his girdle tightly zipped, his skin massaged and medicated, his mind heightened by meditation. ‘And how’s my baby doll?’
‘Very well, thank you, I’m sure.’
He laughed. ‘That sweet British accent! I’m British, you know. At least, I started off that way. I was taken to the States when I was a kid.’
‘Well, fancy that.’
‘Have you seen all my movies?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You liked them?’
‘Yes, ever so.’ She added, ‘Thank you,’ being a carefully brought-up girl.
Eric poured the martinis. Dinner was served and eaten. He talked about himself while she looked at him with her big soft eyes, and he thought her a delightful conversationalist. When the meal was cleared away and the waiters handsomely tipped, he sat next to her on the sofa and decided to get on with things.
‘Quite a place to visit, London these days.’
‘Oh, yes. There’s the Tower, the Changing of the Guard–’
‘I mean for sex.’
‘Oh, sex. Yes. I suppose so.’
‘If you want to do it, you just do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Sex.’
Her eyes fell on the electric wall clock. ‘Oo, is that the time? I’ve got to think of my last bus.’
He laughed. ‘You go on a bus? There’s democracy or socialism or whatever you label it. Let’s take our time. I’ll hire you a car.’
‘No, I mustn’t be late. My dad will worry that I’ve had an accident.’
‘Shall we get on with it, then?’
She swallowed. ‘All right. Thank you.’
He led her into the bedroom, murmuring, ‘Do you mind if I put out the light? I’m strangely shy.’
‘Please yourself, do.’
In the dark he removed his suit, his girdle, and the copper band he wore against rheumatism. ‘Where are you, baby doll?’
‘I’m on the bed. It ain’t half cold.’
‘I’ll be with you…’ He took off the rest of his clothes, to enjoy it the more. Arms outstretched, starting to breathe heavily, he stumbled through the darkness. ‘Here I am, baby doll.’
He climbed on to the bed. ‘Coo, you are hairy.’ She giggled. ‘It tickles.’
‘Where are your lips?’ he asked throatily. His sexual technique, like his acting, had through experience become automatic, though it was polished, if a little old-fashioned, and generally satisfied the audience.
‘Oh, sorry,’ she apologized. ‘I was looking the other way.’
‘I’m going to bite you.’
‘Will you do it where it doesn’t show? The girls in the office–’
‘Or maybe you just want me to go ahead?’
‘Well, there’s no point in wasting time, is there?’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘You London girls! Eager!’
‘I’ve still got to think of my bus–’
He gave a loud cry. She sat bolt upright. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s gone again!’
‘What’s gone?’
He gasped. ‘I’m going to die.’
‘Blimey.’
‘Put on the light.’
‘I don’t know where it is.’
‘Beside the bed, you damn fool.’
She fumbled for the switch. He was sprawled face-down, groaning and holding the small of his back.
‘Fetch a doctor.’
‘I got my first-aid badge in the Guides–’
‘A doctor! Ring down to the desk.’
‘I don’t want nobody to see me like this,’ she told him spiritedly.
‘There’s a bath-robe…in the closet…’
‘This never happens in any of your films,’ she complained.
‘Please! Get a doctor. I implore you.’
She screamed loudly.
‘What in God’s name–’
‘Your head!’ she cried in horror. ‘The top’s coming off.’
He replaced his toupee. ‘Get a doctor, there’s a good little girl. A doctor! I’ll do anything for you, anything…’
Her eyes lit
up. ‘My mum says I deserve a modelling career–’
‘All right, all right, I’ll fix it. For both of you. But for God’s sake get the doc before it’s too late. And cover me up with something before I catch pneumonia as well.’
The doctor was quickly found in the grill, where he was finishing dinner at the hotel’s expense. He hurried from the lift to the Picardy suite, his mind already busy with the case – the suite was invariably taken by rich, elderly overseas visitors, and he was calculating what the latest occupant would stand in the way of fees. To his surprise, the door was opened by a young girl in a man’s short dressing-gown.
‘Good evening. I’m Dr Grimsdyke. Are you the patient?’
‘No, there’s a gentleman took queer suddenly in bed.’
‘Oh, what a shame,’ said Grimsdyke sympathetically. ‘Well, I’d better have a look at the fellow, hadn’t I.’
He recognized the actor at once. ‘Eric Cavendish! I’ve always wanted to meet you. But why do you happen to be lying under that candlewick bathmat?’
‘My back,’ he groaned. ‘It’s gone again.’
Grimsdyke assumed a professional manner. ‘Were you putting any strain on the back?’
‘What the hell do you suppose I was doing with that dolly? Mind-reading?’
‘Ah, the old love-muscles sometimes let us down,’ Grimsdyke told him gravely. He poked with his finger. ‘Hurt?’
Eric Cavendish let out a cry.
‘I think we’d better apply traction, if the young lady can help. What’s her name?’
‘I’ve forgotten,’ said the patient distractedly. ‘But she’s Miss…Hardware, or something.’
Iris’ head appeared round the door from the sitting-room. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like my clothes.’
‘Miss Hardware, would you kindly take the patient’s arms while I pull his feet?’ There was a thunderous knocking on the outside door of the suite. ‘Perhaps you’d better answer that first,’ Grimsdyke told her. ‘I’ll give a few preliminary tugs. Tell me if I hurt.’
Eric Cavendish gave another loud howl.
‘Grimsdyke!’ It was Sir Lancelot in a tartan dressing-gown. ‘I might have thought as much. How the devil do you expect me to get a minute’s sleep when the place sounds like Dante’s Inferno? What are you organizing in here? Some sort of sadistic orgy?’
Doctor On The Boil Page 4