Doctor And Son Page 14

  ‘How’s Lulu,’ I asked Grimsdyke, mainly to keep my thoughts off the proceedings.

  I might have mentioned one of his distant relatives.

  ‘Lulu? All right I suppose.’

  ‘You mean,’ I asked, my hopes rising, ‘that she’s turned you down?’

  ‘Turned me down? No, nobody’s turned me down.’ He looked shocked at the idea. ‘I’ve just had a very interesting time with her people. If I don’t see so much of her in the next few weeks it’s only because old McGlew’s shortly taking his aches and pains back to New York.’

  ‘Come off it,’ I said. ‘Even I can diagnose that the fever of love has abated by several degrees.’

  ‘Not exactly, old lad,’ he told me, still sounding hurt.

  ‘You wouldn’t think that of me, surely? But – well, they say if you’re going to marry someone the great thing is to have the same tastes all along the line, don’t they?’

  I poured a couple of stiff drinks.

  ‘And where did yours and Lulu’s diverge?’

  ‘We had rather a disagreement over this beastly bath business.’

  ‘Bath business? But you have quite a lot of baths. When we shared a flat you were always hogging all the hot water.’

  ‘Not that sort of bath. Personally I don’t think I could start the day without half an hour in the warm water with a packet of cigarettes and the crossword. But there’s a limit to everything. Having spent her life periodically charging naked through Scandinavian pine forests, Lulu is a great one for the sauna.’

  ‘That’s a kind of fish they serve in Swedish restaurants, isn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly is not. It’s a sort of supercharged Turkish bath, which is all the rage in Finland and such arctic places. Anyway,’ he interrupted himself. ‘You won’t want to hear all about it just now.’

  ‘Yes, I do. It’ll keep my mind distracted, like the Arabian Nights.’

  ‘Well, we arrived at Helsinki airport – jolly expensive trip it was, now you come to think of it – to be greeted warmly by Lulu’s fond family.’

  ‘The old Count?’

  ‘Actually, he’s a bank manager. I must say I rather expected chaps in boots dancing all over the place to the balalaika, but it’s all very civilised. Trams, you know. We had quite a jolly party, drinking schnapps and eating cold fish sandwiches. Then Lulu insisted the two of us went off to the local sauna.

  ‘Like a fool,’ Grimsdyke went on sombrely, ‘I agreed. Fact is, I’d heard vaguely it was a sort of communal bath, like the ones you have after playing rugger. But with mixed bathing allowed. I thought it might be rather agreeable to see Lulu strolling about without her vest on, not to mention lots of other beautiful blondes. Don’t misunderstand me,’ he added quickly. ‘It’s all done in a very hearty spirit and above board. Nothing sordid, just sunlight and fresh air to the pores.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  I looked at my watch. Ann Pheasant seemed already to have been upstairs a terrifyingly long time.

  ‘That was my first mistake,’ said Grimsdyke disconsolately. ‘We arrived at this place, which looked very seasonable in the snow among the Christmas trees, but at the front door Lulu promptly bade me goodbye. The communal idea was just another of those fine old national customs that have died out, like dancing round the maypole. Ladies’ night was on Thursdays.

  ‘I went inside and found myself in a place like the locker room of some posh golf club, with another lot of chaps. I was just wondering if I might get out of it all by pretending to make a phone call, when I was unfortunately befriended by a native. A fellow with a beard, who looked like Ibsen pondering over some particularly gloomy plot.

  ‘“Here is the undressing,” explained the Ibsen chap.

  ‘“Right-ho,” I said, as bravely as anyone. But I’d only undone my cuff-links when a homely-looking old dear in a white dress came in and started messing about with a pile of towels.

  ‘“But what about her?” I asked.

  ‘“What about her?” asked the chap, taking off his trousers.

  ‘An Englishman,’ continued Grimsdyke feelingly, ‘has to kick over a ruddy great heap of inhibitions before he starts unclothing himself in front of casual females. But I couldn’t let the old country down, could I? So I went ahead. But as a sort of compromise I kept my pipe in my mouth.

  ‘I followed Ibsen into a narrow room with a wooden bench down each side,’ he explained, sipping his whisky. ‘It was just like those old French third-class carriages.

  ‘“What happens here ?” I asked.

  ‘“Here we sweat,” he said.

  ‘And we did, too. It was like assisting at one of Sir Lancelot’s total pancreatectomies in the middle of Ascot week. The stuff poured off me. And all the while I couldn’t help thinking of Lulu doing the same thing every Thursday. Rather tarnished the glamour a bit, if you follow me.’

  There was a bump upstairs.

  ‘Do you want me?’ I shouted.

  ‘Relax, old thing! Relax!’ came Dr Pheasant’s voice.

  ‘Sorry,’ I apologised to Grimsdyke, sitting down again. ‘I’m a bit edgy.’

  ‘Understandable,’ he said, taking one of my cigarettes.

  ‘And what happened after that?’

  ‘By the time I was feeling totally dehydrated old Ibsen shepherded me into a tiled place like St Swithin’s outpatients’, where a lot of Scandinavian-looking coves were splashing about in showers. They all looked pretty gloomy about it, just like we do when we’re enjoying our cricket. I splashed about too, congratulating myself on coming out uncoagulated, when Ibsen pushed me into another one of their ruddy ovens. I thought the first one was hot, but this was like taking a stroll through a blast furnace. There was also a stove in the corner apparently made of disused paving-stones, which the devilish fellow started chucking buckets of water over. Phew! The steam pretty well stripped off your epidermis. Frankly, I thought I’d had it, and my charred remains would be shipped back to England, to the derision of the entire local populace. But the old boy seemed to enjoy it all no end, rubbing his great hairy chest and saying, “Very healthy, very healthy. No germs can live in the sauna. In the country many people are born in them.”

  ‘I asked how many people died in them,’ Grimsdyke added, ‘but he just looked a bit cross and said, “Now, we shall have the wash.”

  ‘In the room next door,’ my friend went on, staring steadily into his whisky glass, ‘were two tables with wooden headrests, like the ones we used to do our anatomy dissection on. And in the middle was another motherly old dear in a white dress, washing the customers.’

  ‘Grim!’ I cried in horror. ‘You didn’t – ?’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t let the side down, could I? And I was damned if Lulu was going to hear I’d funked it. So I let myself be subjected to an indignity, old lad, that I haven’t suffered since I was six. And the worst part was the washerwoman being the spit and image of the old duck who comes to scrub my flat floor. Have to sack her, of course, as soon as I get back.’

  ‘What a soul-testing experience,’ I murmured.

  ‘Even that wasn’t the end of it. Ibsen suggested we beat ourselves all over with birch twigs – just the thing for keeping out the cold in Finland, possibly, but it would look pretty nasty if ever it got on your psychological casesheet, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘“Then we shall enjoy instead the ice-cold plunge,” said Ibsen, pointing to a lake outside where some chaps had broken the ice. But – thank God ! – I can’t swim. I never learnt somehow. It always looked too wet and uncomfortable to try. I told him all I wanted was my trousers back.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s all supposed to be very good for your adrenal glands,’ I consoled him. ‘Or so I read somewhere. Makes them excrete the ketosteroids.’

  ‘My dear old lad, my adrenal glands felt like a couple of squeezed oranges. I suppose that’s why I found Lulu waiting rather expectantly – after a sauna a chap’s supposed to behave like a mixture of Sandow the Strong Man, Falstaff
, and Casanova. But whether I’ve got the wrong sort of adrenals or the wrong sort of upbringing, all I felt was terribly ill. And the point is this – there’s one of these beastly places in London. It’s up in Cricklewood, near the crematorium. Lulu takes her sponge bag there every Friday night, and she expects me to go through the fiery furnace once a week for the rest of my life just to keep my endocrine system in trim for her. Personally, I think I’d be dead in a couple of years from chronic heatstroke. Also, you keep seeing everyone’s operation scars, and it’s damned disquieting being faced with the gravestones of cholecystectomies and appendicectomies at every turn. The only good thing I can see in the whole performance is making Finnish surgeons a bit more fussy about their incisions, instead of going out for a cup of tea and leaving the sewing up to the houseman.’

  Grimsdyke fell into a thoughtful silence.

  ‘The end of Lulu?’ I asked quietly.

  He hesitated. ‘Rather unfortunately, old lad – that is, approaching her with a slightly different end in view than with the usual hotsie – I rather led her to understand–’

  ‘You proposed?’ I exclaimed. ‘Then you are in trouble.’

  ‘And of course, there’s the other two girls I told you about–’

  ‘You didn’t propose to those, too, you idiot?’

  ‘I didn’t actually propose to any of them,’ he protested. ‘The conversation somehow just drifted that way. Why, it’s just as easy to propose to a woman as to walk under a bus! God knows how I can get out of it. I don’t suppose they’ll land me in the Law Courts, but it could be dashed awkward. Come to think of it,’ he added, ‘I don’t believe I can stand the sight of all three of them. So what on earth am I going to do?’

  ‘There’s only one cure,’ I said, after a minute’s reflection. ‘Get yourself married to another one.’

  ‘What other one?’ snorted Grimsdyke.

  Prescribing for my friend’s social ills was curtailed by the sound of the bedroom door shutting and the appearance of Dr Pheasant. Coming downstairs with her was Nikki.

  ‘Nothing doing,’ said Ann Pheasant briskly.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  Nikki looked apologetic. ‘We made a misdiagnosis.’

  ‘False labour,’ announced Ann. ‘Very common in midwives, doctors, and nervous patients.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, Ann,’ Nikki said.

  ‘How damn stupid of us!’ I said. I myself felt far more foolish than contrite. ‘But it did all seem to fit in so neatly with the book.’

  ‘First rule of medicine – never go by the book.’ The obstetrician looked at her hefty wrist watch. ‘The party will probably be over by now. Pity.’

  Ann Pheasant, the midwife, and Grimsdyke then tactfully left. I fell despondently into a chair.

  ‘Now I know how a chap feels when he’s got all ready for a parachute jump and they tell him it’s his turn next week.’

  ‘And I,’ said Nikki, ‘feel that I am going to remain exactly like this for the rest of my born days.’

  ‘Cheer up, darling,’ I consoled her wearily. ‘It can’t be more than another week or so at the most. Then you’ll be quite missing your lump.’

  ‘We mustn’t bother Ann with any more false starts, at any rate.’

  ‘I hope not, for your sake.’

  ‘And for yours, dear. You’ve made quite a hole in that whisky.’

  19

  For the next week I treated Nikki with the delicacy of an unexploded bomb. Every time she stirred in her chair I asked hopefully if she had backache, and every time she woke me by turning over in bed I found myself reaching for the telephone.

  My wife’s precarious condition made any social plans impossible, though Grimsdyke paid a charitable call every evening, generally at the hour when he judged that I might be having a drink.

  ‘The old uncle’s asked me if I’d like to fill in my time by giving a hand with the practice while I’m here,’ he mentioned one evening, as we passed through the midwinter doldrums between Christmas and New Year. ‘I hardly had the heart to refuse the dear old fellow, he seemed so decently hesitant about suggesting it. But my literary work, old lad, comes first. These days I’ve hardly time to leave my bedroom at the Hat and Feathers for a quick one.’

  ‘What, more jolly articles for the Daily Hypochondriac?’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea than that,’ he told me proudly. ‘I’m writing a book. I got the idea when I drifted into your local newsagent’s the other day to see when the next edition of Ruff’s Guide to the Turf was coming out. They’d got rows of novels in there with chaps on the cover operating in their stethoscopes. It suddenly struck me how dearly the general public loves tales of gore among the gallipots – after all, you’ve only got to look at the speed they gather round a really satisfactory accident. And it should be pretty easy to write something sensational about hospitals, life and death being their stock-in-trade.’

  ‘What’s your book about?’

  ‘Oh, a chap and a girl and another chap,’ he said vaguely. ‘But at least it’ll occupy my exile. God knows how I’m ever going to face that Lulu woman again – did you spot the size of her hands?’

  We again discussed Grimsdyke’s emotional enmeshment, but I could think of no way to untangle him before he left, promising to return the following night to see in the New Year with me – Nikki having prescribed herself an early bed and a glass of milk.

  As the practice was slack at the time I had the last afternoon of the old year to potter at home among the nappies and feeding-bottles, hoping they wouldn’t disgrace the fearsomely experienced nurse I had engaged once the baby was delivered. Grimsdyke had bought a celluloid duck for the coming infant, and I was enjoying playing with this in the plastic baby’s bath when I was interrupted by a ring at the doorbell. I thought this might be Ann Pheasant coming to seek news, and as Nikki had her feet up in the bedroom I went down to open the door.

  I found on the mat a pleasant-looking dark-haired girl, grasping a large brass telescope.

  ‘Dr Farquarson?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not. I’m his partner, Dr Sparrow.’

  ‘So you’re Dr Sparrow,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do…?’

  ‘It’s a terribly silly business, really,’ the girl apologised. ‘But this object’ – she held out the telescope – ‘has been on my conscience for months. There’s a Dr Farquarson’s name and address engraved on it, and as I was going through Hampden Cross in the car I thought I’d better return it. I suppose your receptionist sent me down here because he was out.’

  ‘That’s certainly his old telescope,’ I agreed. ‘He likes to look at the stars and so on with it. But how on earth did you manage to come across it?’

  ‘My name’s Zoë Mitchel, by the way–’

  ‘Of course!’ I exclaimed. ‘Dr Grimsdyke – you found it on the boat?’

  ‘Well…he presented me with it, as a matter of fact.’ She laughed. ‘Oh, there’s quite a story.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard it,’ I said, smiling too.

  ‘I hope Dr Grimsdyke wasn’t too upset?’

  ‘I think he was, rather. He came and stayed with us afterwards.’

  She suddenly looked concerned. ‘Did he think I’d treated him rather badly? But it was a bit of a shock. I’d never been proposed to in my life before. And coming like that – right in the middle of the games room.’

  ‘Just one second,’ I said quickly. ‘Do you mean that he – my friend Grimsdyke – actually proposed to you?’

  Zoë appeared flustered.’But I thought you told me you knew all about it. I wouldn’t have dreamed otherwise–’

  We were interrupted by a cry of, ‘Any sign of the first triplet?’ as Grimsdyke came gaily down the path.

  ‘Good gracious, it’s Gaston!’ she exclaimed. ‘Fancy running into you.’

  I had always admired Grimsdyke’s poise, which I had watched him maintain even in such testing circums
tances as having his diagnosis questioned by Sir Lancelot Spratt. But now he stopped dead and seemed to droop all over, like a snowman in a burst of winter sunshine.

  ‘Oh, hello Zoë,’ he mumbled, after some time.

  He stood slowly massaging the gastrocnemius muscle of his left calf with his right toecap.

  ‘And how are you?’ he managed to ask.

  ‘I’m very well, thank you,’ said Zoë quietly. ‘And you?’

  ‘Me? I’m very well, too. Thank you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Zoë.

  There was a pause. A boy went past whistling on a bicycle, sounding like an express roaring through the station.

  ‘Ankle all right now?’ asked Grimsdyke.

  ‘Perfectly all right, thank you,’ said Zoë.

  ‘Good,’ said Grimsdyke.

  There was another silence. As the conversation seemed to be getting neither of them anywhere, and I was also feeling chilly standing on the doorstep, I suggested, ‘Perhaps you’d like to come in for a cup of tea, Miss Mitchel?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Dr Sparrow,’ she said, both seeming relieved by my intervention.

  ‘But I really ought to be getting on to London, as it’s starting to get so misty.’

  ‘It’s generally only local.’

  I became aware of Grimsdyke making rasping noises with his larynx, which I interpreted as an invitation to Zoë to take a spot of dinner.

  She bit her lip. ‘I don’t think I possibly can,’ she said. But after a moment that she could conceal from neither of us contained concentrated cerebration, she added, ‘If you’re quite sure the fog’s only local…and if you don’t mind if I do leave rather early–’

  Suddenly looking more cheerful, Grimsdyke suggested showing her round the Abbey, a building I knew that he hadn’t yet entered. After a little more disjointed conversation, they went off together in Zoë ‘s car, leaving me holding the telescope.

  ‘What on earth do you make of it all?’ I exclaimed to Nikki, telling her the story. ‘Old Grimsdyke’s a deeper fish than even I imagined. From the look on his face there wasn’t the slightest doubt the girl’s telling the truth.’