Doctor And Son Read online

  ‘And is she really the horror he made out?’

  ‘That’s another mystery about it. She doesn’t exactly look like an Italian film star, but she’s quite pretty and strikes me as a very decent sort. In fact, if he really wants to get married she’d be a far better proposition than all those others.’

  Nikki frowned. ‘Do you suppose,’ she asked, ‘that Grimsdyke is really just a little bit insane?’

  ‘Oh, mad as a hatter, darling. Has been for years. Backache?’ I demanded suddenly.

  ‘Indigestion,’ said Nikki.

  I wondered what other plausible story my friend would appear with later that evening, when Nikki went to bed leaving me with an article on gastroenterology in the British Medical Journal, which soon put me into a gentle doze at the fireside. The doorbell woke me with a start, and I noticed that it was already near eleven.

  ‘I want to unburden my soul,’ said Grimsdyke immediately, entering with swirls of fog.

  ‘That soul of yours is getting a bit overloaded, isn’t it?’

  But he threw himself into a chair so despondently I immediately felt sorry for him.

  ‘Anyway, Grim,’ I added, ‘after all we’ve been through together, I’m afraid you can always rely on me to give you advice.’

  ‘All I told you about that boat,’ he admitted at once, ‘was pure ruddy rationalisation, like the psychiatrists keep talking about. You know, the same as when you want to buy a new car and kid yourself you’ll save on train fares. The odd business is, you actually do believe it at the time. Stupid thing, the human mind, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sure no philosopher would disagree with you.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, Zoë’s the fairest blossom on the evolutionary tree,’ he confessed simply. ‘I wanted to marry her, old lad. So I asked her when the opportunity arose, which was during ping-pong. She mumbled something rather confused about thinking it over. Then, of course, I got cold feet.’

  He paused to reach for my cigarettes.

  ‘I suppose I’m a sort of Dr Jekyll and Dr Hyde. On one hand, I saw myself cosy with Zoë in a suburban semi-det. with all the buttons on my shirts. On the other, I was ploughing through stacks of dirty nappies to clip my eldest on the earhole for emptying my only bottle of beer over the other five. I know it’s time I had a steady job and a smile from the bank manager, but it’s dashed difficult to come to the point. Hence my recent erratic behaviour.’

  ‘I should chose the semi-det. and nappies,’ I told him. ‘Most people do in the end.’

  ‘Did I tell you old McGlew’s offered me a decent job overseas? But there again, after my Poparapetyl experiences I’m certainly not going without a wife to keep me on the rails and apply the brakes as required.’

  ‘And Zoë – ?’ I asked.

  ‘Won’t have me.’

  He stared gloomily at his feet.

  ‘Funny thing, it never occurred to me before that any girl wouldn’t. We broached the subject again tonight – we could hardly help it, could we? – and all we agreed was never to establish contact again. I wouldn’t even know where to find her, except she lives somewhere in Yorkshire. It would be the biggest ruddy county of the lot,’ he added miserably.

  ‘There are other girls, Grim,’ I said, trying to cheer him up. ‘Apart from Scandinavian masseuses.’

  ‘But there aren’t! Fact is, old lad,’ he explained, as though confessing some shameful felony. ‘I love her.’

  Nikki called from upstairs.

  ‘She forgot her New Year’s glass of milk,’ I told him. ‘Just a minute while I fetch it from the kitchen.’

  But when I reached the bedroom one glance at my wife’s face was enough.

  ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed. ‘How long – ?’

  ‘All afternoon…’

  She paused, gripping my hand tightly. It was a moment before she could go on. ‘I felt such a fool getting Ann the last time, I really wanted to make sure–’

  ‘Let me have a look at your tummy,’ I said, deciding it was the moment for professional briskness.

  ‘Regular and strong contractions,’ I agreed, replacing the bedclothes. ‘Now don’t worry, darling – I’ll ring Ann this very second, and tell her to hurry.’

  Grimsdyke jumped to his feet as I rushed downstairs.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nikki. In the second stage.’

  ‘Good God! Shall I clear off?’

  ‘No, don’t. You may be useful.’

  This time Ann Pheasant was at a New Year’s party in the midwives’ hostel.

  ‘You’re quite sure, old thing?’

  ‘Sure? Of course I’m sure. She’s terribly far gone.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Give her some pethidine and I’ll bring the midwife with me. I haven’t time to see the New Year in, I suppose?’

  ‘You certainly haven’t!’

  I boiled up a syringe in a saucepan and gave Nikki a hundred milligrams of pethidine. Afterwards I divided my time between holding her hand and getting things ready for Ann Pheasant. Grimsdyke meanwhile sat downstairs, looking more frightened than either of us.

  ‘Hasn’t the damn woman come yet?’ I demanded, bursting again into the sitting-room.

  ‘Only twenty minutes since you rang her, old lad,’ murmured Grimsdyke uncomfortably. ‘Nikki all right?’

  ‘A bit too all right.’

  But after forty minutes had passed even Grimsdyke couldn’t try to reassure me. When the telephone rang we both jumped like shot rabbits.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Had a bit of trouble starting the car, old thing,’ said Ann calmly. ‘But it’s all right. I’ve warmed up the plugs in the autoclave.’

  ‘For God’s sake do hurry,’ I implored her. ‘Things are really going on fast.’

  ‘Don’t look so worried, old lad,’ said Grimsdyke, trying to raise a smile as I put down the telephone. ‘After all, there are three doctors in the house. But why not ring up the old uncle? As a sort of insurance policy, in case this Pheasant woman blows a gasket.’

  ‘What a good idea!’ I exclaimed, clasping him gratefully.

  I rang the flat over our surgery, but the call was taken by a sleepy receptionist.

  ‘What’s the trouble now?’ asked Grimsdyke, noticing my face.

  ‘He’s out,’ I explained briefly. ‘On a maternity case.’

  We passed another fifteen minutes. Nikki was now trying to reassure me as much as I tried to reassure her. Grimsdyke looked like someone invited to a party which turns out much rowdier than he expected.

  The telephone rang again. Ann Pheasant was lost in the fog.

  ‘That’s the trouble with female doctors!’ I exploded unfairly. ‘They always let you down in a crisis.’

  I gave our obstetrician another ten minutes, then I made my decision.

  ‘Yes, it is a bit hot in here, old lad,’ said Grimsdyke, watching as I took my jacket off.

  ‘Not as hot as it’s going to be for all of us in a minute. I’m going to do the delivery myself.’

  His eyebrows shot up.

  ‘I suppose it’s our own fault for putting the wind up Ann Pheasant last time,’ I said. I felt surprisingly calm once I knew what I had to face. ‘Could you give me a hand?’

  Grimsdyke didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course, Simon. For all our fooling about over the years, we’ve never let the old profession down over a job of work, have we?’

  ‘I’ll boil up some scissors and needles in the kitchen,’ I told him. ‘You go and collect the trilene inhaler from the boot of the car.’

  But I had hardly left the sitting-room when Grimsdyke appeared from the garage with a shout of, ‘It’s all right, old lad! Panic over. She’s here. Look – two ruddy great headlights in the fog.’

  ‘Thank God!’ I cried.

  I ran to the front door. A figure came stamping through the darkness.

  ‘I have just undergone the most insulting experience of my life,’ declared Sir Lancelot Spratt.

  ‘That prepos
terous woman!’ he continued, coming straight inside. ‘How the devil Cambridge ever married her is totally beyond me. She threw me out. Me! After I had been putting up with their extremely indifferent hospitality, not to mention taking considerable pains to be of no trouble to anyone, she had the effrontery to hurl ill-mannered abuse at my head and order me out of the house. Can you imagine such behaviour among civilised human beings? And on such a trivial excuse! Just because I wanted to see something on channel nine, when she for some reason insisted on watching some rubbish on channel one–’

  ‘For God’s sake shut up!’ I snapped.

  My godfather stared at me.

  ‘Have you taken leave of your senses too, boy?’ he roared.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said shortly. I told him the situation in the house.

  Sir Lancelot immediately became grave. He looked round like a new commander in a demoralised garrison.

  ‘And if your obstetrician remains lost,’ he asked, stroking his beard, ‘who, pray, will do the delivery?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You will not. For a doctor to take clinical responsibility for his wife in childbed is wholly unfair to all three participants. Where is the patient?’

  ‘The room at the top of the stairs.’

  ‘Right. It is perhaps fortunate that I have always regarded myself as a general surgeon in the widest sense. You are unaware that I delivered a woman in a somewhat similar situation while holidaying in Ireland last year? I fear,’ he continued with some satisfaction, ‘it might be beyond the abilities of some of my younger colleagues who now charge more and more for treating less and less. I am glad to see you have the latest automatic inhaler there,’ he continued, catching sight of my friend.

  ‘You will take charge of it, Dr Grimsdyke. The apparatus is claimed by its designers to be foolproof, and now we shall have a chance to find out. Sparrow, you will stay out of everybody’s way. Fetch me a surgical mask, some hot water, and a clean hand towel.’

  With a step that bore a lifetime’s experience of life and death, of men and women, and of the greatest joys and tragedies human beings can experience, Sir Lancelot Spratt went calmly upstairs.

  20

  I had prepared myself to experience all manner of noble feelings when I first looked at my son. But as I rushed upstairs after Grimsdyke’s shout, ‘Right-ho, Simon, you can order a set of trains – it’s a boy!’ all I could think as I inspected the pink and noisy lump was, ‘Good Lord! Did I do that?’

  The rest of the night was rather confused. Ann Pheasant arrived shortly after the baby (as I am sure all five of us had more than once as midwifery students), and seeming demoralised by the presence of Sir Lancelot made a few remarks about abnormally rapid labours and withdrew. Nikki sat serenely in bed, holding her baby and drinking the traditional cup of tea. My godfather looked highly pleased with himself, and even slapped Grimsdyke on the back. No one took much notice of me.

  In an hour or two the nurse appeared and firmly took possession of the infant, and when I woke up after a doze on the sofa I found Grimsdyke frying bacon and eggs.

  ‘I particularly want to be back for lunch at St Swithin’s today,’ explained Sir Lancelot, who was breakfasting in the kitchen. He seemed to smile at some inward joke. ‘I intended only to sponge on you for a bed, even though it was that infernal canvas contraption. I might say that now I feel I’ve earned it.’

  ‘You certainly have, sir.’

  ‘I’ll stay at the club for a while,’ he told me, ‘and then go back for a bit of rest to Hereford. I think I can leave the bicentenary to Cambridge, now I’ve put him on the right path. But first I would like a word with you and your wife, Sparrow. And the baby, too, if you like. After all, it concerns him.’

  Nikki had just finished the early feed when Sir Lancelot and I appeared in the bedroom.

  ‘I expect you know what I’ve got to say,’ he began, after tickling young Lancelot’s nose. ‘Despite my somewhat disillusioning experience when last in this house, I think, Sparrow, that you have somewhat surprisingly turned into a reasonable member of society. That the metamorphosis is entirely due to your charming wife I have no doubt whatever.’

  Nikki smiled.

  ‘And so my offer of financial assistance – not to you, but to the little brat who is at this moment interrupting me – still stands.’

  I hesitated. Then I said, ‘It’s very kind of you, sir. We – we greatly appreciate it. But – if you don’t mind – we’d rather just stand on our own six feet.’

  Sir Lancelot said nothing. I wondered if I had detonated a delayed explosion.

  ‘You are quite right,’ he declared quietly after some moments. ‘I think that I should have made precisely the same reply in similar circumstances. But I nevertheless ask you to accept. It is you who are doing the kindness, not me.’

  My godfather got up and walked slowly about the room, his hands clasped behind his tail coat.

  ‘We all grow old,’ he said. ‘It is only physiological. The dermis loses its elasticity and wrinkles. The arcus senilis holds the iris in its embrace. The bones grow brittle, the joints arthritic. Our temperatures fall, our metabolism slows. But worst of all is a chilling of the spirit.’

  He paused, with a look of humility I had seen before only when he referred in lectures to famous professional forbears.

  ‘I’ve had a good life. But I suppose all I’ve really got to show for it is a row of bottles in the St Swithin’s pathology museum. Oh, I know I’ve made a good many people more comfortable. I’ve prolonged for a while a good many lives. I might even have saved one or two. But a surgeon’s on earth to do surgery like a shoemaker’s on earth to make shoes. And neither has the right to get sentimental about it.

  ‘That is not to say I’m belittling the profession that all three of us are privileged to belong to. I’m not. No man or woman can do better than apply his life to maintaining the health of his fellow creatures. Without health this world seems to contain no comfort, and the next no kindliness. And our reward is in the mind – a mind trained to strip the pretences and prejudices that men cover themselves with like their clothes. I believe it is only we who discover what is basically good or bad underneath. I should have hated to have lived without experiencing that.’

  He stood stroking his beard for some seconds. His namesake stopped crying, yawned widely, and went to sleep.

  ‘If I had children of my own, I should hope that one at least followed me to St Swithin’s. You yourselves cannot realise at this moment what comfort that would be to me – to know that I had a personal interest in someone walking the same path not only of myself, but of Pasteur, John Hunter, or Horder. It is highly unlikely that I shall be in existence when this young man might decide to take up medicine. But it would be enough for me to feel that I was going to be of some help to him if he should.’

  Sir Lancelot paused.

  ‘I’m talking a lot,’ he said briskly. ‘I thought I wouldn’t have to bare me soul like this, Sparrow. I imagined it would have been perfectly easy to have bullied you into it.’

  ‘Of course, we accept, gratefully,’ said Nikki. ‘Don’t we, Simon?’

  ‘Then I’m delighted,’ was all Sir Lancelot said.

  ‘I was afraid before,’ Nikki went on frankly, ‘that you would terrorise us about how to bring him up.’

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Sir Lancelot. ‘Me? Why, I’m scared stiff of children.’

  Shortly afterwards my godfather left for London. ‘I’ll come back and see you one of these days,’ he announced, as I bade him farewell at the door. ‘Meanwhile,’ he added, catching sight of an object on the hall table, ‘I hope my wedding present will prove useful.’

  ‘By the way, sir,’ I asked, emboldened by our new relationship. ‘What exactly is it?’

  ‘My dear chap, I haven’t the slightest idea. I picked it up at an auction and have been trying to get rid of it for years.’

  The fog had disappeared with the other trials of the night, and in c
risp sunshine I picked up the papers and letters left unnoticed on the doormat. Then the telephone rang.

  ‘It’s for you,’ I called to Grimsdyke. ‘It’s Zoë from London.’

  ‘She wants me to take her out to lunch,’ he exclaimed in delight, after a brief and almost whispered conversation. ‘She actually wants me to buy her food. She rang up specially to find me. Do you realise what it means, Simon? Do you understand? She doesn’t think I’m an uncouth great baboon after all. She agrees to be seen in public in my company. She actually wants to put up with my footling conversation. She’s prepared to look at my vacuous great face. She’s–’

  ‘Take it easy, Grim,’ I said, smiling. ‘There’s a long way to go between taking a girl out to lunch and leading her down the aisle.’

  ‘But the Grimsdykes old lad,’ he explained proudly, ‘are fast and efficient workers, once they get their teeth into a job. Bet you a quid in another couple of years we’ll be pushing our prams out together?’

  I laughed.

  ‘Done!’

  ‘Just you wait and see. Must rush off now if I want to tidy up a bit in Town. Lots of love to mother and child. And thanks for the excitement.’

  As he grabbed his corduroy cap and hurried down the path I absently looked at my letters. The first had an Australian stamp on it. I ripped open the envelope.

  Sydney, NSW

  ‘Dear Doctor,

  Don’t I turn up in the most peculiar places? I am living with Harold again and we are terribly happy. That nasty bit of baggage has gone off with a sheep farmer. I could have told him so. Harold was very, very naughty in England, and I’m going to see he works hard and pays every penny back in Hampden Cross. But with you he really could have got into awful trouble. It was all that baggage’s fault. Harold is so sweet and simple he is easily led astray. That’s why I’m insisting he makes it up to you first, with a big whack over as conscience money. I’m not putting our address, so you can’t try and return it. Didn’t I tell you I’m having a baby in July? Isn’t it thrilling? No of course I didn’t, I couldn’t have been having it then, could I?