Doctor On Toast Read online

  Sir Lancelot gave the bell another push.

  ‘I would write to The Times myself,’ he added, ‘except that it is one of my principles never to write letters to the newspapers. It is in the worst possible taste to inflict your opinions on total strangers over breakfast. Besides, you never get paid for them.’

  Sir Lancelot then opened the drawing-room door and called ‘Maria!’ several times in a loud voice.

  ‘What on earth’s all that commotion?’ demanded his wife outside.

  ‘I am merely requesting a glass of sherry for myself and my guest, my dear.’ He shouted ‘Maria!’ a bit more. ‘Where the devil has the girl got to?’

  ‘Why, good evening, Gaston.’ Lady Spratt appeared. ‘We don’t seem to have seen you for quite a time. Have you been away? It won’t do the slightest good shouting like that, Lancelot. Maria has left.’

  ‘Left?’ Sir Lancelot looked insulted. ‘What do you mean, “Left”? I thought she was so happy with us?’

  ‘And I expect she will be even happier with the American airman she’s going to marry.’

  ‘But damnation! Who’s going to look after the house? Surely you’ve engaged someone else?’

  ‘Please remember, dear, this is your home and not your hospital. You cannot simply clap your hands and get someone running to do all the dirty work.’

  ‘Really, Maud! You should have informed me first–’

  ‘Don’t get so excited, dear. Of course I’ve asked the agency to send another girl. Meanwhile, if you want the sherry you’ll find it on the dining-room sideboard as usual.’

  ‘When this legal affair started I didn’t know if it were laughable or contemptible,’ continued Sir Lancelot, reappearing with a decanter and glasses. ‘My first instinct was to ignore the whole business, but your cousin Miles kept nagging me to see my solicitors. He has become rather sanctimonious since joining this Immorality Commission. “The peculiar repulsiveness of those who dabble their fingers self-approvingly in the stuff of other’s souls,”’ he growled. ‘You know your Virginia Woolf? Have some sherry.’

  ‘Perhaps the case will never come to court, sir,’ I suggested to cheer them up. ‘I gather a good many never get beyond the slanging stage.’

  ‘Preposterous as it may seem, it is coming to court. Just as I was congratulating myself on keeping clear of the legal fraternity, since all that fuss over the idiotic magistrate who thought I’d parked on the wrong side of Harley Street. Though how any judge with more than half his wits and less than half asleep can possibly fail to throw my case straight out again is totally beyond my comprehension.’

  I must say I felt a little cagey over this, having once had no end of trouble about some errand boy who rode his bicycle under my Bentley. But I supposed at least they couldn’t send the old boy to clink, or even endorse his licence.

  Lady Spratt reached for a cigarette. ‘Did you hear any more from the Medical Legal Insurance, dear?’

  Sir Lancelot grunted. ‘All I got out of that lily-livered bunch were orders to settle out of court. However, I insist on fighting the case and risking the costs from my own pocket. I shall, of course, be represented by my elder brother, who will cut down somewhat on the expenses.’

  ‘Your elder brother?’ I looked surprised.

  ‘Yes, he has made quite a thing of it at the Bar.’

  I’d often read in the papers of Mr Alphonso Spratt, QC, who was always appearing in complicated cases arising from City wizards doing the dirty on each other. I supposed he was the one referred to briefly in Sir Lancelot’s papers as ‘Ugly Alfie.’

  ‘You will kindly attend a conference on the case in my brother’s chambers in the Temple on Wednesday afternoon at three, Grimsdyke. We can meet just beforehand at my solicitors’. I wish you to document most carefully every word of these proceedings. They will not only, of course, provide me with total vindication. They may well have the same importance for our profession as the case of John Hampden and the ship-money for our nation.’ He swallowed his sherry. ‘Where are you staying in Town? I’m afraid it is quite impossible for me to put you up, in view of our domestic disorganisation.’

  ‘I’m lodging for a bit with Miles, sir.’

  ‘We’d love to have you,’ agreed Lady Spratt. ‘But I’m afraid one guest is as much as we can manage just now.’

  Sir Lancelot looked up. ‘Guest? What guest?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you, dear? My brother will be arriving this evening. You know how he has to come up to London, now he’s Chairman of the Royal Commission.’

  Sir Lancelot kicked the fender. ‘Maud, this is absolutely outrageous! Good God! These Royal Commissions sit for ever, and I’ll be dead and buried for years before you get the blasted fellow out of the house. Even fully staffed life becomes utterly impossible in his presence–’

  ‘Lancelot, there’s really no need to become so dramatic.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m perfectly prepared to put the fellow up at the Savoy at my own expense–’

  ‘You know that’s out of the question. Besides, he must have his home comforts.’

  ‘My home comforts, you mean.’

  Sir Lancelot turned pink. I must say, I could sympathise with the old boy. After all that trouble to free the house of bishops, here they were creeping back again with the warmer weather.

  ‘I suppose this time he’s coming alone?’ he asked shortly. ‘I know how I’ll tackle the feller. I shall render him a bill every Saturday morning for professional advice tendered during the week.’ He paused, breathing heavily. ‘I think, Grimsdyke, you had better leave us. I wish to go to my study and sit for a moment in peace, while that is still possible.’

  I said goodbye, strolled up the Marylebone Road, and took a bus across London to Miles’ house in South Kensington. And a pretty thoughtful sixpennyworth it was, too.

  It was all very fine and large Sir Lancelot roping me in for his court case, but knowing the legal boys regarded time the same way as the Spanish peasants, I felt it might take months sorting out. And here I was going about with the great novel busting inside me, like a new tube of toothpaste. Besides, I couldn’t sponge on Miles for ever, and the episode of Ophelia had left me suffering acutely from the old complaint of anaemia of the exchequer. In fact, I reckoned as we turned Hyde Park Corner, if I didn’t buckle to the new book soon for my fresh bunch of publishers, I should be facing poverty – the real grinding stuff. But I remembered if it hadn’t been for Sir Lancelot removing my appendix I should have been some mute inglorious Grimsdyke, and a fat lot of good that would have done anybody.

  Miles hit on the same problem in his own little way as he stood me a whisky and soda that night before I retired, rather looking forward to his spare bed instead of the cradle of the deep.

  ‘After that unfortunate experience with your publishers, Gaston,’ he remarked, ‘I wonder you don’t abandon this adventure of novel writing for good. Why can’t you simply return to the serious practice of medicine?’

  ‘That might be difficult,’ I hedged. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t open an abdomen with a rusty scalpel.’

  ‘I could easily arrange a refresher course with my own students at St Swithin’s.’

  ‘But as old Trollope put it, “It is difficult for a man to go back to the verdure and malleability of pupildom, who has once escaped from the necessary humility of its conditions.”’

  This seemed to floor him for a bit, then he went on, ‘I don’t want to seem at all uncharitable your first night home in England, but I will make no secret of its being a great relief to me if you settled in a more orderly way of life. I will be frank. Any other existence might reflect on my position as a Royal Commissioner. The honour has come to me unexpectedly early – admittedly I have published many useful papers on moral problems – and you know how I wish to make a success of it.’

  The same dear old Miles, I thought, always expecting everybody to stop what they were doing and attend to his own little problems first. It was just the s
ame at school, whenever anyone pinched his marbles.

  ‘I’ll give it some thought,’ I promised, helping myself to another whisky. ‘Meanwhile,’ I asked, to get off the subject, ‘perhaps you can give me the low-down on how the law and Sir Lancelot collided?’

  It had all started in Sir Lancelot’s Thursday morning Out-patients’, which at St Swithin’s is a ceremony rather than a clinic. The affair is held in a long room with white-tiled walls, which strike you as cold and formal as an old-fashioned boiled shirt-front. At one end is the consultant’s desk, with a big brass inkpot and one of those little bells you use to call the barmaid in country pubs. At the other is a laboratory bench with a Bunsen burner, and a blackboard for Sir Lancelot to draw interesting bits of people’s insides in coloured chalks. The space between is filled with rows of wooden benches apparently bought second-hand from railway stations, on which the chaps crowd to watch the niceties.

  That morning Sir Lancelot appeared as usual, the buzz of conversation stopping like a swatted fly.

  ‘Mr Harris.’

  He fixed his eye on the nearest student.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Where can we discover a classical case of under-functioning of the pituitary gland?’

  The student quaked a bit, naturally.

  ‘The endocrine clinic, sir?’

  ‘The public library. The Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers presents all the clinical features, though neither Dickens nor anyone else at the time had ever heard the slightest mention of the endocrine glands. Observation, ladies and gentlemen! That is ninety per cent of medicine. The other ten per cent is common sense. So you may console yourselves that lack of brains is no bar to professional advancement. The first patient, Sister, if you please.’

  The Out-patient sisters usher them in and out with the practised briskness of Old Bailey wardresses, and the first that morning was a woman with gallstones, which Sir Lancelot drew several feet across on the blackboard.

  ‘Cholelithiasis, madam, a long Greek word which won’t convey anything to you in the slightest,’ he explained as usual, when she had the temerity to ask what was the matter with her. The old boy regarded any patient asking the diagnosis as taking a morbid interest in themselves. ‘So don’t worry your head about it – I’m the one who does the worrying from now on, and there’s nothing for you to bother about except doing exactly what I tell you and getting better. Next patient, please.’

  A weedy chap in a blue suit appeared, clutching a bowler hat.

  ‘Mr Harris, what do you observe?’ Sir Lancelot demanded. ‘Why, the boots, man, the boots! Note the worn inner surface – a clear case of flat feet. How long have you suffered from this distressing condition, my good man?’

  ‘Sir Lancelot Spratt?’

  ‘I believe that is the name displayed on the door.’

  ‘I have this for you, sir.’

  Whipping a paper from his hat, the chap slipped it into the surgeon’s top pocket and made flat-footedly for the door.

  Everyone gasped. There hadn’t been such a sensation in the place since Sir Lancelot set his trousers alight with the Bunsen.

  ‘Sister!’ he roared. ‘Can’t you keep a closer eye on the patients? That fellow is raving mad. He could easily have assassinated me if he’d had a pistol hidden in his hat. As it happens, he has contented himself with presenting me with some sort of tract–’

  It was then he noticed the paper was covered with nasty phrases in gothic writing like ‘High Court of Justice’ and ‘We command You.’

  ‘But I’m afraid he only tossed it aside, muttering something about tomfoolery,’ ended Miles sadly. ‘In fact, his only response was making the rest of the patients strip naked and come up wrapped in the surgery bath-towel.’

  17

  I’d never mixed much with lawyers, except when fixing the St Swithin’s v. Inns of Court rugger matches in the ‘Bell and Bottle’ behind the Law Courts, where you find them by the dozen downing the beer and sandwiches in their black coats and striped trousers. Come to think of it, it’s one of the charming conveniences of London that you can hobnob with any profession if you happen to know the right pub – you find doctors in the ‘White Hart’ opposite Bart’s, stockbrokers elbowing each other in the ‘George and Vulture’ on Cornhill, MPs knocking it back at the ‘St Stephen’s’ in Westminster, artists in the ‘Cross Keys’ at Chelsea, and even professional Marxists telling funny stories to each other in the ‘Nag’s Head’ near the Communist headquarters in Covent Garden.

  From Sir Lancelot’s remarks over the years I’d expected his solicitors to lurk in a Dickensian garret up among the chimneys of Cheapside, and was therefore rather surprised to find one of those modern buildings all made of windows, with slim-legged office furniture and secretaries to match. The solicitor himself, far from adding up to both Dodson and Fogg, was a youngish bird quite as smartly turned out as any car salesman in Piccadilly.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Beckwith,’ grunted Sir Lancelot as he bustled in.

  He was in a pretty black mood, I gathered from having to boil his own breakfast egg and the Bishop nabbing The Times.

  ‘Now let us make haste to dispose of this totally preposterous situation.’ Sir Lancelot came briskly to business. ‘It is not only outrageous but somewhat insulting for anyone to suggest that I have committed professional negligence. I can assure you, Beckwith, that I have never been negligent in my life, except over remembering my blasted wedding anniversary. I am not at all certain that I haven’t a case for litigation against these people myself for gross defamation of character.’

  ‘Everyone’s suing their surgeon these days,’ smiled Beckwith, with the cosily reassuring air of a good family doctor. ‘There’s quite an epidemic, in fact.’

  ‘An epidemic which I fully intend to stamp out. I have no doubt whatever that the result of this case will provide an excellent remedy.’

  ‘Anyway, there’s no need to worry about it, Sir Lancelot. Any worrying from now on can be safely left to us.’

  ‘Let me assure you that I am not worrying in the slightest. I merely want to know from you, Beckwith, my precise legal position.’

  The solicitor pursed his lips. ‘That would involve a lot of lawyer’s jargon which wouldn’t mean anything to you, I’m afraid. And now,’ he added, in the more businesslike tone of a good family doctor telling you to start taking your clothes off. ‘I think it’s time we were making for your brother’s chambers.’

  Mr Alphonso Spratt provided a more legal atmosphere, all mahogany and leather bindings and no open windows, with seedy-looking old boys poking about among piles of papers done up with red tape.

  ‘Where’s Alfie?’ muttered Sir Lancelot as we entered.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Beckwith. I’m afraid that Mr Spratt has been delayed,’ said one of the seedy birds, fussing up.

  ‘I am a very busy man,’ Sir Lancelot told him.

  ‘And so is Mr Spratt,’ replied the seedy bird, showing us into an inner office.

  ‘Alfie always was an untidy hound,’ grunted Sir Lancelot, glancing round more piles of papers. ‘His bedroom was an absolute disgrace.’

  As we sat down, he went on, ‘Thank God I haven’t been exposed to this nefarious part of the world since the days when I used to give medical evidence for Hoppings. Remember him, Beckwith? He specialised in elderly gentlemen behaving peculiarly in Hyde Park. Then they improved the Park lighting and he lost his practice.’

  Sir Lancelot spent the next five minutes glaring at an etching of a severe-looking chap in a large wig, whom I fancied was Judge Jeffreys. Suddenly the door burst open, and Mr Alphonso Spratt shot in.

  ‘My dear Lancelot! How extraordinarily pleasant to see you.’

  He was thinner than the surgeon, his beard was greyer, his hair was longer, and his voice was fruitier.

  ‘So sorry I’m a trifle late,’ he apologised briefly. ‘At this very moment I should be on my feet in the Court of Appeal.’

  ‘And at this very moment,’ said Sir L
ancelot, shaking hands coldly, ‘I should be on my feet in my operating theatre.’

  Alphonso didn’t seem to notice this remark, but settling in the most comfortable chair went on briskly, ‘Let’s get this little matter straight in our minds, shall we?’

  He produced a crocodile case from an inside pocket and lit a cigar.

  ‘This young man is my amanuensis,’ explained Sir Lancelot, as his brother gave me a curious glance. ‘Now look here, Alfie, I want you to understand from the start the importance of this action. The point is not simply to justify myself, but the entire practice of British surgery. I cannot put it too strongly. Personally, I was about to chuck the original communication from these impossible people into the wastepaper basket–’

  ‘Good Heavens, that was a High Court writ, not a bookie’s circular,’ muttered Alphonso, looking shocked.

  Beckwith handed him a bundle of papers.

  ‘But hadn’t you been getting letters from their solicitors?’ asked the barrister, looking a bit puzzled.

  ‘Of course I had, man! For months.’

  ‘Then where, may I ask, have they got to?’

  ‘Naturally I tore them up. You cannot expect someone with my volume of work to fritter away valuable time with a lot of litigious lunatics. I was finally persuaded to consult Beckwith here. Unlike the rest of the population, I fortunately do not regard money spent on professional advice as wasted. Though the whole business is, of course, as ridiculous as Gilbert and Sullivan.’

  Alphonso puffed his cigar. ‘On the contrary, I must advise you to take it with the utmost seriousness.’

  Sir Lancelot looked startled. ‘But damnation! It’s just a piece of dastardly blackmail.’

  ‘Most court cases are, of course,’ his brother returned calmly. ‘Now let’s see – who’s this Herbert Egbert Thomas Possett?’