DOCTOR AT SEA Read online

  A fortnight ago I had been an assistant in general practice-the medical equivalent of the poor curate, the unbriefed barrister, the new subaltern-living in an atmosphere of Dettol and damp overcoats and dispensing the loot of the National Health Service like a maniacal Lady Bountiful. My principal had a bedside manner and two stock remedies with which he had built up a local reputation of infallibility, and we divided the work between us. He saw the private patients, who diminished in number each Budget day, and took the morning surgery; I had the night calls and the evening clinic. As my clinic came conveniently after work, school, and high tea, it was popular with everyone who wanted a certificate, new teeth, hair, or spectacles, or simply to pass the time. The patients brought their troubles and left them on my doorstep like unwanted babies. They wedged themselves into the uncomfortable and unhygienic-looking sofas in our waiting-room, mirthlessly turning the pages of Punch, and glancing shiftily at their neighbours wondering what they had got and if it was catching. There were so many of them they could idle the drab hours of their evening away contentedly. It was cheaper than the pub, and more interesting.

  For this I was paid the same wages as an engine-driver; in ten or fifteen years, however, if I behaved myself, I would become a partner and take a share in the spoils. But my life at the time was illuminated with a more pressing excitement: I was going to be married.

  Marriage is as much of an obligation for a young doctor as celibacy for a Roman Catholic priest. A medical bachelor is unpopular with the patients, except for visits to eligible daughters, and as even these are now obtainable on the National Health he is a frank financial liability to the practice. My principal had no intention of losing his patients through marital hesitation on the part of his young assistant, and after he had made this as plain as possible he asked his wife to apply a woman's practical mind to the problem and set about finding me a bride.

  She procured the daughter of a town councillor. She was a girl called Wendy, a blonde, but of the arid sort, like the stubble in a wheat-field after a hot harvest. Her position in local society made it impossible for me to escape: once the town saw what my principal's wife was up to, Wendy and I were mated as firmly as two rats put in the same cage in the biological laboratory.

  We became engaged. The wedding approached with the speed of an early winter.

  I suppose, looking back on it, there was good reason for my subconscious to slip into disorder, like a wrecked gear-box in an overdriven car. Wendy was a nice girl. She was well educated, and could talk about things like trigonometry and economics. But she had her defects. Her voice was as dull and authoritative as a Salvation Army drum, she walked like an overloaded wheelbarrow, and she had a figure like a stook of corn. I began to suffer an attack of _terror celebans,_ or bachelor's panic.

  More robust personalities than mine would have stood up to it: it is a common premarital complaint. But I did not. I developed headaches. I immediately diagnosed a cerebral tumour and hurried to London to see a brain specialist, savouring everything on the way with exquisite farewell tenderness, even the fish served for lunch by British Railways.

  The brain specialist listened to me for five minutes and packed me off to a psychiatrist.

  The psychiatrist was an important and busy man and I arrived at the end of the day, but he let me talk for a quarter of an hour while he signed a few letters and looked for his car key.

  'A long holiday,' he said sternly, putting on his overcoat.

  'Why don't you take a ship? You won't have any work to do. I did it when I was your age. Signed on a cattle boat going to Murmansk. Half the deckhands were washed overboard one night and I had to turn-to with the rest of them to work the ship. Great fun.'

  'I don't think I'd be much good as a deckhand.'

  'Anyway, you've got to have a holiday. Put on your best suit and walk down Leadenhall Street. You never know your luck.'

  'All right, sir,' I said doubtfully. 'If you advise.'

  Thus my honour was saved by modern psychiatry.

  The next afternoon I tramped Leadenhall Street, trying to get a berth out of every big shipping office and, by mistake, a branch of Barclay's Bank. It was one of those unfriendly November days when dawn and dusk meet each other in a dim conspiracy over the lunch-table. The rain drizzled onto the grimy pavements, soaking through my mackintosh and the seams of my shoes, and my depression deepened with the twilight. It looked as if the sea had rejected me.

  When the offices began to close and the important shipping men were already hurrying westwards I walked up the creaking stairs of the Fathom Line building, prepared to sail with Captain Bligh if necessary. There I was introduced to a Mr. Cozens, a little bald man crouched in a high leather chair. He was suspiciously pleased to see me.

  'Our Lotus, Doctor,' he said, 'is in need of a surgeon. We should be delighted to have you. Forty pounds a month, no need for uniform, just the Company's regulation cap. Can you leave for Santos on Monday?'

  But a seafaring friend had once warned me to treat a new ship like a prospective bride and discover her exact age and precise tonnage before committing myself. And I was touchy on such points.

  Cozens rapidly sketched for me a description of the Lotus. 'She isn't a big ship,' he concluded. 'Nor a fast ship, exactly.' He smiled like a house agent. 'But she's a very nice ship.'

  I wondered what to do. I was being asked to sail in a ship I had never seen, to a place I had never heard of, in the employ of a business I knew nothing about. I looked anxiously through the dark window running with comforting English rain. The wisest course was obviously to go back to Wendy and settle for a fortnight in Sidmouth instead.

  'Very well,' I said. 'I accept.'

  'Excellent!' said Mr. Cozens, with relief. 'I'm sure you'll find yourself well suited, Doctor. She's a very nice ship indeed. Quite a lady.'

  I nodded. 'Where do I go now?'

  'There are a few formalities to be gone through I'm afraid, Doctor. Regulations and such things, you understand. First of all, I must supply you with a letter of appointment. If you'll just wait one minute I'll get one of the girls to type it.'

  Running away to sea has become more elaborate since the unhedged days when the errant son slipped down to the docks at nightfall, mated up with a bos'n at a wharf-side tavern, and sailed with an Indiaman on the dawn tide. Now there are forms to be filled in, documents to be issued, permits to be warily exchanged for a string of personal data. The next day I was sent down to the Merchant Navy Office, an establishment which was a cross between a railway booking-hall and the charge-room of a police station on a Saturday night. There I poked my letter of appointment nervously through a small window at a clerk, who glanced through it with the unconcealed disgust of a post office employee reading one's private thoughts in a telegram.

  'Got your lifeboat ticket?' he asked gloomily, his steel nib arrested in mid-air.

  'My what?' I saw for a second the picture of myself shivering on a sinking deck, refused permission to enter the lifeboat because I had not purchased my ticket at the proper counter. 'Where do I buy it?' I asked wildly.

  The man looked at me with pity. 'They sends us some mugs these days,' he observed wearily. 'Lifeboat ticket, he repeated, mouthing the words as if addressing a deaf idiot. 'Ministry certificate. Savvy?'

  'No,' I admitted. 'I haven't.'

  'Got any distinguishing marks?' he asked, giving me a chance to redeem myself 'Or blemishes? Tattoos?'

  'No. None at all. As far as I know.'

  He nodded and gave me a chit entitling me to a free photograph at a shop across the street. I queued between a tall negro in a jacket that half covered his thighs and a man in a strong-smelling roll-necked sweater who picked his teeth with a safety-pin. When my turn came I had to face the camera holding my number in a wooden frame under my chin, and I felt the next step would be in handcuffs.

  Now, sitting in my cabin with _War and Peace,_ my Company's Regulation Cap hanging from a hook above me, I saw that Mr. Cozens was wrong. The
_Lotus_ wasn't a nice ship at all. She was a floating warehouse, with some accommodation for humans stuck on top like a watchman's attic. All the cabins were small, and mine was like a railway compartment quarter-filled with large pipes. I wondered where they went to, and later discovered I was situated immediately below the Captain's lavatory.

  My appraisal of the Lotus was interrupted by a knock on the jalousie door. It was Easter, the Doctor's steward. He was a little globular man, who felt his position was not that of a mere servant but of a slightly professional gentleman. As an indication of his superiority to his messmates a throat torch and a thermometer poked out of the top pocket of his jacket, and he frequently talked to me about 'We of the medical fraternity.' He was always ready to give advice to his companions on problems of a medical or social nature that they felt disinclined to pour into the ears of the Doctor, and had an annoying habit of counselling them, for the good of their health, to hurl into the sea the bottles of physic just handed to them by their medical attendant.

  'Good morning, Doctor,' he said. 'I have a message from Father.'

  'Father?'

  'The Captain.'

  'Oh.'

  'He said he wants a bottle of his usual stomach mixture, pronto.'

  'His usual stomach mixture?' I took off my spectacles and frowned. 'How do I know what that is? Has he got a prescription, or anything?'

  'Dr. Flowerday used to make him up a bottle special.'

  'I see.'

  The problem grew in importance the more I thought of it.

  'The Captain suffers from his stomach quite frequently, does he?'

  'Ho, yes sir. Something chronic.'

  'Hm.'

  'When he has one of his spasms he gets a cob on, worse than usual. Life ain't worth living for all hands. The only stuff what squares up his innards is the special mixture he got from Dr. Flowerday. Makes him bring up the wind, Doctor. Or belch, as we say in the medical profession.'

  'Quite. You don't know what's in this medicine, I suppose?'

  'Not the foggiest, Doctor.'

  'Well, can't you remember? You were with Dr. Flowerday some time, weren't you?'

  'Several voyages, Doctor. And he was very satisfied, if I may make so bold.'

  It occurred to me that this might be the point to clear up the Flowerday mystery for good.

  'Tell me, Easter,' I said sharply, 'what exactly happened to Dr. Flowerday?'

  He scratched his nose with a sad gesture.

  'If you wouldn't mind, sir,' he replied with dignity, 'I'd rather not talk about it.'

  I got up. It was useless sounding Easter on the fate of my predecessor or on his balm for the Captain's gastric disorders.

  Down aft there was a cabin with a notice stencilled above the door saying CERTIFIED HOSPITAL. It was a fairly large apartment which smelt like an underground cell that hadn't been used for some time. There were four cots in it, in a couple of tiers. One bulkhead was taken up with a large locker labelled in red POISONS, one door of which was lying adrift of its hinges on the deck.

  Inside the locker were half a dozen rows of square, squat bottles containing the supply of medicines for the ship. These-like the Doctor-were prescribed by the Ministry of Transport. Unfortunately the Ministry, in the manner of the elderly, elegant physicians who come monthly out of retirement to grace the meetings of the Royal Society of Medicine, holds trustingly to the old-established remedies and the comely prescriptions of earlier decades. There were drugs in the cupboard that I had seen only in out-of-date books on pharmacology. I picked up a bottle: Amylum. What on earth did one do with amylum? There was a pound of Dover's powder and a drum of castor oil big enough to move the bowels of the earth. At the back I found an empty gin bottle, some Worcester sauce, a tennis racket with broken strings, a dirty pair of black uniform socks, two eggs, a copy of the _Brisbane Telegraph,_ and a notice saying NO FUMARE.

  I dropped these through the porthole, taking care with the eggs. Below the shelves of bottles was another compartment. I looked into it. It held a heavy mahogany case labelled INSTRUMENT CHEST, which contained the left component of a pair of obstetrical forceps, a saw, a bottle-opener, and a bunch of tooth-picks; but there were five gross of grey cardboard eyeshades, over seven apiece for all hands.

  I saw that prescribing was going to be more difficult than in general practice, where I scribbled a prescription on my pad and the patient took it to the chemist, who deciphered my writing and slickly made up the medicine. We had been obliged to attend a course of lectures on pharmacy and dispensing in medical school, but these were always held on a Saturday morning, when most of the students were already on their way to the rugger field. For this reason there was an informal roster among the class to forge the signatures of their companions on the attendance sheet, before slipping softly away themselves when the lecturer turned to clarify some obscure pharmacological point on the blackboard. As I had attended the greater number of my pharmacy lectures by proxy in this way, I now felt like a new wife in her first kitchen.

  I picked up one or two bottles hopefully, and I was delighted to find that my predecessor, Dr. Flowerday, had his pharmacy lectures on Saturday mornings also. On the back of each bottle was a small label bearing in shaky handwriting guidance such as 'Good for diarrhoea,' or 'This mixed with Tinct. Ipecac. seems all right for colds,' or 'Apparently inert.' There was also a sheet of cardboard on which Dr. Flowerday had written in Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Hindustani translations of three questions which he seemed to find adequate for investigating his patients; 'Have you a cough?' 'Where is the pain?' and 'Have you been with any dirty women recently?'

  I found an old pair of pharmacist's scales and a glass graduated in drachms, and started to make up the Captain's medicine. The first one turned into a pink putty, and was abandoned (it later came in useful for minor infections of the crew's feet). The second tasted strongly of peppermint but seemed adequate. I corked it and carried it up to the Captain's cabin.

  I had not met Captain Hogg before. He had been ashore the previous night and he never came down for breakfast. When I had asked Hornbeam about him he replied unconvincingly, 'He has his good points.'

  'What are they?' Trail asked gloomily.

  I enquired what form Captain Hogg's malignity took.

  'Oh, he thinks the sun shines out of his bottom,' Trail said. 'They all get like that. It's living alone too much that does it. They ought to be made to carry their wives with them to keep them under control.'

  'The Old Man isn't married,' Hornbeam told him.

  'Neither was his father,' Trail said.

  I knocked on the cabin door.

  'Enter!'

  I went in.

  Captain Hogg was of a curious shape. He was like a huge pear. From the sharp top of his bald head he came out gradually until the region of the umbilicus, from which point he spread abruptly in all directions. He was sitting in an armchair in his shirt-sleeves, his face obscured by the book he was reading. It was a periodical called _True Horrors,_ on the front of which a vivid blonde with an alarming bosom was struggling unsuccessfully with a gorilla, a man in a black mask, and her underclothes.

  The book didn't move. I stood just inside the door, holding the medicine bottle in front of me like a talisman. He spoke:

  'Well?'

  I rubbed my right shoe slowly up my left calf.

  'Doctor, sir,' I said.

  The magazine came down. For a moment we stared at each other with interest. I thought he looked as friendly as a firing-squad.

  'Ah!" he said.

  I proffered the bottle.

  'Your stomach mixture, sir.'

  Either my prescribing or Dr. Flowerday's directions were at fault; perhaps the ship's drugs had degenerated with time. Some unplanned reaction occurred within the bottle. With a sharp pop the cork flew into the air.

  'You may find this a little strong,' I said, picking up the cork quickly. 'I recommend taking it well diluted.'

  He took the bottle silently a
nd stood it on the desk beside him.

  'Your cap,' he said. 'You have a cap?'

  'Yes, sir. Company's regulation pattern.'

  'Why aren't you wearing it?'

  'I'm sorry sir, I-'

  'The cap is worn on all official visits to the Captain. If I were asking you up here for a peg, that would be different. But I'm not. It's a matter of etiquette. There's no tramp ship stuff about this vessel. This is my ship, you understand, Doctor? My ship. If we get that straight we shall rub along splendidly together.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  I was a medical student again, before the Dean for filling the senior surgeon's rubber operating boots with iced water.

  'Good. You haven't been to sea before?'

  'No, sir.'

  'You'll find the routine fairly simple, as far as you're concerned. You take your surgery at nine every morning, and at ten you bring me up a list of the sick on board and what's wrong with 'em. There's none of this damn medical secrecy nonsense at sea. I want to know all about them. I have to carry the can in the end. Understand?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Good. Then at eleven o'clock we inspect the ship-you wear your cap again. Dinner is at twelve-thirty and supper at six. Do you play cribbage?

  'No, sir.'

  He looked disappointed.

  'Pity. The last Doctor played a good hand. Passes the tedium of the evenings at sea.' He indicated the magazine. 'I'm a great reading man myself, but I like a game of crib now and then.'

  On a sudden thought he leant over and rummaged in the desk.

  'I've got a book on it here. Read that through, then we might be able to have a few games.'

  'Thank you, sir.'

  He hesitated a moment, staring at the square toes of his shoes.

  'Did you know Dr. Flowerday?' he asked.

  'No, sir.'

  'He was the last Doctor. Very good man. We all liked him very much. Unfortunately, he didn't know when to stop. I shouldn't like to see you go the same way. The Company might think there was something wrong with my ship.'