Doctor On The Ball Read online

  ‘I think you should fix with one of the partners and take a few days off,’ said Sandra.

  The programme ended with Ernie Partridge subsiding on the sofa, blood trickling from his mouth over his wife’s new dress.

  ‘Well, they’re certainly making the point that he’s rather off colour,’ observed Sandra.

  I was no longer concentrating. An icy flood of fear numbed my brain. Was this the first sign of presenile dementia?

  2

  Sandra had the right prescription. I needed a winter break.

  Next lunchtime I visited our High Street travel agent’s to flick through the brochures. As I leaned against the counter, entranced by near-naked girls lying in ecstasy on the rocks, a soft voice asked, ‘Going somewhere?’

  It was Dr Quaggy. Tall, spare and handsome, with smooth dark hair, steely moustache and expression of amiable authority, he resembled doctors in the pretty BUPA advertisements which make illness look like another of life’s pleasures. He was Churchford’s most successful GP, and like successful people everywhere was better at the politics of his occupation than its performance.

  I mentioned a snatched weekend.

  ‘I’d take a month.’

  ‘A GP in midwinter? Impossible!’

  ‘Don’t you owe it to yourself, Richard?’ he suggested in his quiet way. ‘Your punishing workload is a byword in Churchford. We all marvel how you keep it up. Absolute martyrdom. Why not take a clear three months while you’re at it, on one of these fascinating luxury cruises?’

  I told him shortly, ‘My partners wouldn’t hear of it.’

  He sighed. ‘Neither would Bill Topping’s. And look what happened. Fatal coronary only last Monday. Wasn’t it the Frenchman Clemenceau who said, “Cemeteries are full of indispensable men”? Or you could go the whole hog and opt for early retirement.’

  I said indignantly, ‘The idea of retirement’s never entered my head.’

  He continued calmly, ‘Perhaps, Richard, you’ll thank me one day for installing it.’ He leafed the seductive pages. ‘There’s some lovely places, just look – Marbella, Majorca, Malta. Pleasant, relaxed British people, plenty of parties, golf. Sandra could make a delightful home in one of those charming villas, which strike me as very reasonably priced. She loves the sun, doesn’t she? After all, our pension’s not to be sneezed at, and I’m sure you’ve done as well as me out of private practice; everyone calls you Churchford’s most popular doctor.’

  I changed the subject. ‘Where are you off to?’

  I’m after some ski brochures for my son Arnold. How’s your own lad getting on?’

  ‘Andy’s landed a research job in the cardiac unit at St Swithin’s,’ I told him proudly.

  ‘What splendid news! I’m sure he’ll do wonderfully well. Even when they were students, Arnold reported him a high-flyer. Did you know that Arnold’s doing his GP training? I must confess a sentimental wish that he could eventually practise here in Churchford. But of course, no immediate vacancies. Unless we have another premature death. Or a premature retirement? Much preferable!’

  He gave a little laugh, like the whinny of the Trojan horse.

  That week the flu epidemic hit Churchford. I had barely time to think of a rest. Nor of Nigel Vaughan, until he reappeared at the following Monday morning’s surgery. I suspected queue-jumping, but Mrs Jenkins, our receptionist, smilingly assured me of everyone in the waiting room willingly postponing their appointments for so beloved a national invalid as Ernie Partridge.

  He came sustained by Mrs Sophie Vaughan. She too was middle-aged and overweight, fair-haired and gold-braceleted, like any other prosperous local housewife chic from Robbins Modes (our fashionable High Street couturière).

  ‘Why, you’re looking much better,’ I greeted him cheerfully, seating them facing the consulting-room desk. ‘Much, much better! I’d say a complete transformation from the way you looked when I saw you last week. Yes, a different man,’ I continued happily. ‘I’m sure you think the same?’ I invited from Sophie.

  Nigel Vaughan was puzzled. ‘But Dr Gordon, I haven’t consulted you for nearly a fortnight. When you put me on the white pills, remember?’

  ‘Yes, when I first examined you,’ I agreed readily. ‘But the next time I saw you, I must confess a little concern. Particularly as you did not seem to be heeding my warning against drink. Alcohol is a severe irritant to the stomach lining, you know, specially when swallowed neat. Indeed, straight out of the bottle–’

  ‘But doctor! That was Ernie Partridge you were watching knocking back the booze.’

  I aligned my thoughts.

  ‘Just my little joke,’ I said feebly. ‘TV can seriously damage your health.’

  ‘I’m still having the pangs, doctor,’ he declared, looking miserable again. ‘Real ones, not electronic. Even though Sophie’s making me special things like boiled fish and coddled eggs, aren’t you dear? As for the drink, I haven’t touched a drop. Not that I’ve ever indulged in much more than a sherry. Though it’s funny,’ he mused, ‘all doctors seem to think that all actors, whatever’s wrong with them, have also got cirrhosis of the liver as a matter of course.’

  ‘Come and see the show being recorded on Saturday,’ invited Sophie eagerly. ‘After all, the studios aren’t far away.’

  Off the London to Churchford motorway stood a cluster of buildings like aircraft hangars, which once produced epics of the British cinema, largely starring Alec Guinness.

  ‘You might find the studio audience a bit dull, being busloads of OAPs,’ Nigel added doubtfully. ‘And maybe you’d think the warm-up man a bit basic.’

  ‘You should have watched last week’s show,’ Sophie continued enthusiastically. ‘Sensational!’

  ‘As you know, I’m a pillar of respectability on the Estate,’ Nigel explained more warmly. ‘The father figure, everyone turning to me with their problems, sex, drink, money, relatives, all that. I’m above all the little squabbles, deceits, disloyalties inevitable in any community.’

  ‘Like a good GP?’ I suggested.

  He nodded. ‘That’s right. But we’re all human, aren’t we? And now it’s suddenly come out,’ he confessed solemnly. ‘I have put a flighty young secretary with child.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ I muttered.

  ‘But I am standing by him, doctor,’ Sophie asserted quietly. ‘What is it but the lapse of any man recapturing his youth? No, it shall make no difference to our marriage,’ she said determinedly. ‘None whatever. That is something based on mutual affection and trust. And on understanding the little frailties of those who love us.’

  ‘Particularly,’ Nigel added, rubbing the canary pullover, ‘in view of my delicate state of health.’

  ‘I must say, I admire your tolerant attitude,’ I told her sympathetically. ‘As you can guess, this is a problem which comes before us doctors fairly regularly. How much more sensible you are than many other wives – particularly young, inexperienced ones, to whom marriage is ridiculously romantic.’

  He declared firmly, ‘Marriage is as practical as any other job of work in your life.’

  ‘And our love burns as steadfastly as a lighthouse on a rock, whatever the storms and tides that battle against it,’ she confirmed.

  ‘Very nicely put, both of you.’

  ‘It’s in the script,’ said Nigel.

  I drilled my thoughts. ‘Wait a minute!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s not you, it’s Ernie having the little bastard.’

  ‘Oh, doctor!’ Sophie gave a slow smile. ‘It’s so confusing, really. As Nigel is Ernie to everyone, even the neighbours, even the vicar when he comes to call, so I’m Mrs Partridge. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? I’m his lawful wedded wife.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said confusedly. ‘Quite, quite.’

  She sighed deeply. ‘Sometimes I wonder if we really live inside our lovely timbered home or inside everyone’s TV set.’

  ‘Keep on taking the tablets,’ I suggested hastily, deciding the problems of Nigel’s dyspeps
ia simpler than those of Ernie’s paternity. ‘Though if the pain persists, perhaps we’d better toddle along to the General for an X-ray.’

  ‘Any time you like, doctor, before January the thirty-first. I thought I’d take a short holiday once I’m dead.’

  I have really no need to buy newspapers. A glance round my waiting patients provides all Fleet Street’s headlines. That Wednesday, most declaimed ERNIE’S SHAME! After surgery, I opened a discarded tabloid and read its sentimental and scandalized story of the sensationally ill-conceived child. What will Mrs Ernie do? the paper asked agitatedly. Will she stand by him? Is Ernie really dying? In that unfortunate event, the article suggested, will she adopt the baby to perpetuate Ernie’s name for posterity, in episodes stretching into infinity?

  I turned to Mrs Jenkins, tidying her desk. I said smugly, ‘She will stand by him.’

  ‘Doctor?’

  I held up the newspaper. ‘Ernie’s wife. She won’t let this paternity business destroy their marriage, which is as sound as a lighthouse on a rock. She told me exactly that, here in the surgery last Monday.’

  Mrs Jenkins pursed her lips and drummed them with her fingertips.

  ‘Doctor…I may be thick, but…wasn’t it the actor and his wife you were treating?’

  I gave a little laugh. ‘Just pulling your leg,’ I pretended.

  My case had become more serious than my patient’s. His folie à deux had spread like measles to folie à trois. Or was I just another case in an epidemic of folie à tous sweeping the country, worse than the itching Taiwanese?

  Or was it just another illustration that all the world’s a stage? People took me for a doctor because I acted like a doctor. Judges, bishops and soccer hooligans all gave the performances expected by their public. The world picked its leaders because they looked statesmanlike on television, which is like buying the poke as well as the pig. If everyone thought of Nigel Vaughan as Ernie Partridge, who imagined Boris Karloff without rivets in his neck?

  I sombrely determined on a word with Ollie Scuttle, the psychiatrist at Churchford General Hospital, if I saw him in the golf club on Sunday.

  As I strolled into the club bar after my morning round, I found myself facing Hal Tibbs.

  I had forgotten he was a member. He lived near the studios in a floodlit Elizabethan house with a swimming pool, and had an electric golf buggy. He played terrible golf, but our community cherished him as a curiosity. The Nottingham Miners’ Club probably thought the same about D H Lawrence.

  I went straight to the point.

  ‘I say, it’s a bit hard, isn’t it? Suddenly sacking a fine actor like Nigel Vaughan. After ten years in your show, too.’

  Hal Tibbs grinned over his Buck’s fizz. He was a large man with a complexion like smoked salmon and an eye always glancing over your shoulder for someone more interesting. ‘I’ve no complaints about the publicity, doc, and I don’t think he has.’

  I demurred. ‘The publicity can’t be helped, but the judgement does seem a little severe on the poor fellow.’

  Hal Tibbs looked wary. ‘What do you know that the papers don’t?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I admitted, ‘but losing your job these days seems a tough price for a little bit of scandal.’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘Scandal?’

  ‘Putting your secretary in pod, of course. Happen to anyone in a moment’s aberration. Businessmen, MPs, Cabinet ministers, even doctors, always getting away with it. I’d have thought you were more broadminded in the world of entertainment. Oh, I know some tiresome people think television should be a branch of the Church of England, but I’m certain his millions of fans would be only too delighted if the girl ended up with quins.’

  He stared. ‘You taking the mickey?’

  ‘No, but as an ordinary, decent, tolerant member of the public, I’d like to put in a good–’

  I stopped.

  He laughed. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV, doc. Bad for the eyes, isn’t it? Turns ’em square. Have a drink.’

  I silently took a Glenfiddich in a numb grasp. My condition was becoming desperate.

  Hal Tibbs explained amiably, ‘It’s hardly top secret in the business that we’re writing Nigel out because we’ve a big American actor coming in, and we can’t afford both. Simple as that. It’s all in the papers next week. But don’t cry for Nigel, some West End management’s putting him into a season of Hamlet. Can’t lose, can they? The viewers would queue to see him as the back legs of a pantomime horse. For a couple of months, until they forget all about him, of course,’ he ended casually.

  I went home shaken to Sunday lunch. Sandra said I had better make it a week off.

  Andy appeared that evening from London. He resembles me, except for the infuriating, insolent lissomness of youth. He drinks single malt whisky, for which I have transmitted the appreciative gene. His research into coronary artery disease retains him in the wards of St Swithin’s, where Jilly and myself trained as doctors, also their grandfather and two uncles, one who was struck off but married the girl.

  Andy greeted me, ‘I hear you’re retiring, Dad?’

  I frowned. ‘Whatever gave you that outlandish notion?’

  ‘I met Arnold Quaggy at the St Swithin’s reunion last night – he’s the same bumptious little creep. Apparently, you’d told his old man you were quitting this year for Marbella. I hope you’ll invite me for my holidays?’

  ‘Outrageous!’ I exclaimed angrily. ‘It was Quaggy trying to sell the idea to me in a travel bureau.’

  ‘Ah, that explains it. Arnold was telling everyone cockily about his father fixing it with the Family Practitioner Committee he’d get your job.’

  I was horrified. ‘God forbid! They’d snake their way into all the local committees, call the tune for general practice in Churchford, and between them grab all the private patients.’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ assessed Andy calmly.

  Nigel Vaughan was at Monday morning’s surgery. The stomach was worse. He rubbed the canary pullover harder than ever. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, barely think. It was dreadfully worrying, because he must be in peak form for Saturday’s recording of the big episode when he died.

  ‘I’ll give you an urgent letter for a private consultation with Dr Gravelston,’ I told him, ‘who is the big star of the stomach scene.’

  ‘Sooner the better, doctor,’ he said unhappily. ‘I can’t face another night like last. I really felt I was about to expire before my time. Which would be a terrible pity, because my death will be the performance of my life.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said. ‘Quite, quite.’

  I spent the day worrying if I had referred to old Gravelston Mr N Vaughan or Mr E Partridge.

  During next morning’s surgery Mrs Jenkins announced agitatedly that she had a raving maniac on the line. It was Hal Tibbs.

  ‘Doc? Got you!’ he exclaimed excitedly. ‘What’s the matter with Nigel?’

  I hesitated. ‘I cannot discuss my patients,’ I said stiffly.

  ‘I know he’s in hospital,’ Hal snapped impatiently. ‘They said at his home Sophie’d just taken him in. I’ve got to get hold of him. It’s a matter of life and death.’

  I calmed him down. ‘It’s only for an X-ray. He’ll be back by lunchtime.’

  ‘Thank God!’ cried Hal Tibbs. ‘You see, he isn’t going to die after all.’

  ‘Oh, there’s no question of that,’ I reassured him quickly. ‘It’s only a routine investigation.’

  ‘I mean on Saturday night. The big American actor’s pulled out. We’re rewriting the episode so he’s saved by the miracles of modern medicine. Next week he’ll be feeling absolutely fine. But he’s got to learn the lines by tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Delighted to hear it!’ I said heartily. ‘I’ll see he gets the good news straight away. He’ll need cheering up, he’s probably in the middle of a barium meal.’

  Our red-brick, slate-roofed, Gothic-porticoed, bow-windowed and finger-chimneyed villa in Foxglove Lane resembl
es the Welsh chapels, Highland railway halts and seaside boarding houses created by the freely interchangeable Victorian architectural flair. I had bought it twenty-five years ago, to run my one-man practice with the ingenuity, toil and watchfulness of Robinson Crusoe. We have been intending to move for years, but I cannot tolerate the conversation of house agents. We have withdrawn like England’s dukes to a corner of our encumbering residence, comfortable enough amid amiably threadbare furniture and dull unmeddlesome decorations. A kitchen large enough to feed fecund Victorian families delightfully catches the sun at breakfast, the following morning interrupted by our front doorbell. In the drive stood Nigel and Sophie Vaughan, on the way to the studios in their Mercedes.

  ‘Doctor–’

  Nigel clasped my hand and stared silently into my eyes. I returned the glance solemnly.

  ‘I have come to say only half a dozen words,’ he continued quietly. ‘Which mean more than all others ever written in the world. Thank you for saving my life.’

  I muttered, ‘I was only doing my job.’

  ‘So my guardian angel might have said.’ He wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his vicuña overcoat. ‘Last night,’ he said reverently, ‘the wife and I got on our knees and offered up a little prayer for you.’

  I felt a lump in my throat.

  ‘That you may live long to continue your wonderful good work in an undeserving world,’ explained Sophie softly.

  He put his hand in his overcoat pocket. He produced a wristwatch. ‘From an eternally grateful patient.’

  ‘It’s Swiss, not Jap,’ said Sophie.

  I mumbled brokenly.

  They entered their car. They waved. They drove down the drive, stopped, and waved again. They went off into the winter sunrise.

  I slowly shut the front door.

  ‘Your bacon’s getting cold, Richard,’ called Sandra from the kitchen. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Nigel Vaughan,’ I replied simply. ‘He brought me this. For snatching him from the grave.’

  She frowned. ‘But you said the barium meal was negative. There was no need to snatch him from anywhere.’