DOCTOR AT SEA Read online

  The door was on a hook for ventilation, so I was able to overhear it clearly. There were two speakers, who used the adenoidal grunts with which the citizens of Liverpool communicate with each other.

  'Ullo,' said one. Whatcher doin', la'?'

  'Come to see-ing quack.'

  'Ar. What's-ing trouble, la'?'

  'Dunno. Reckon I must've picked up a-ing dose, or something.'

  'Where, in Liverpeule?'

  "Sright. Nice bit of skirt she was too.'

  'You can never tell, la'.'

  '-ing right there.'

  A short silence.

  'What's quack like?'

  'Oh, he's a young-er.'

  'Reckon he's much good?'

  '-ing medical student, most likely.'

  'If we was homeward bound reckon I'd wait and see a proper doctor,' the sufferer said. I opened the door. 'Good morning, Doc,' he added brightly. 'Can you see us a second, in private like?'

  'Go down to the hospital,' I said coldly. 'I'll be along in a few minutes.'

  'Very good, Doctor.'

  When I arrived at the hospital I found that Easter had diagnosed and prescribed for the condition with an efficiency founded on wide experience of it.

  'Take these, chum,' he said, handing over a bottle of sulphathiazole tablets, 'and in a couple of days you'll be feeling like a box of birds, as they say in New Zealand.'

  The patient stuffed the bottle in his waistband and jauntily walked out.

  'Don't you think I ought to give him a short lecture?' I suggested.

  Easter seemed to find this amusing.

  'We all has our thoughtless moments, Doctor, don't we? Take a card,' he said, abruptly drawing a pack from his pocket. 'Any one. Don't let me see it.'

  I took one automatically.

  'Right,' he said. 'I will now shuffle them, see? No deception. You could have taken any card in the pack. Let me concentrate.' He screwed up his fat face in a spasm of thought. 'Four of diamonds,' he said.

  'That is perfectly correct. Though I hardly think we should be doing this sort of thing when we are supposed to be treating patients.'

  Easter slipped the cards back into the top pocket of his jacket with a subdued air of triumph.

  'Dr. Flowerday always liked me to show him a few tricks. Used to have him in fits, sometimes. Didn't half get narked when he couldn't find how they was done.'

  'And how was that one done, if I may ask?'

  'Them's all four of diamonds, actual,' Easter said carelessly, tapping his pocket.

  'You seem to be quite a specialist in this sort of thing.'

  'For three years ashore I was Pin Hung, the Famous Chinese Magician. Round the halls. Mostly the North-Barrow, Carlisle, Sunderland. Grimsby was my favourite. Always hit the jackpot in Grimsby. I've a book of cuttings down below…'

  'All right. Later on in the voyage, possibly.'

  He flicked three cards from his sleeve and manipulated them on the top of a tin of bandages.

  'Now then, Doctor. Try your luck. Bet you a dollar that you can't spot the lady.'

  'Easter,' I said with interest, 'how is it that you have come to land up in your present position? A man of your peculiar talents would be far more at home on the racecourse than in a ship's hospital.'

  'That's the trouble, Doctor. I worked the race trains for years. But I got fed up with it. You can get put inside too many times.'

  I stared at him.

  'Do you mean-are you trying to say that you have been in prison?'

  I was alarmed. In shore practice this was not a condition usually found in one's colleagues.

  'Ho, yes,' he replied, with the air of a man admitting he knew Brighton or Scarborough fairly well. 'Didn't like it much, though. Too bloody cold in winter.'

  'So you came to sea instead?'

  'That's right, Doctor. Used to be on the Western Ocean run for donkeys' years in the big passenger boats. When I was a lad that is, and could run about a bit more. So I came back to it. Signed on as a steward. It's a good life, and you gets your grub regular. I took this job on when a mate of mine jumped ship in Sydney and I helped out in the surgery homeward bound. I like it better than waiting in the saloon. More dignified. And Dr. Flowerday used to let me dispense of surplus equipment and stores on the coast, if I could. Penicillin and such like, that ain't got long to go before it's U.S. That be all right with you, Doctor? Dr. Flowerday and I used to have an understanding about the proceeds.'

  'I think we shall have to consider that later.'

  'Very good, Doctor. There's one of the crew sick in his cabin.'

  'Then why the devil didn't you tell me before? Instead of fooling around with all these damn card tricks.'

  'There ain't no hurry, Doctor. It's only Chippy. The Carpenter.'

  'What's the matter with him?'

  'He's having one of his turns.'

  I was suspicious. A diagnosis of the turns, to which over half of the middle-aged population of the country seems liable, can represent any condition from attacks of flatulence to full-blown epileptic fits.

  'We'd better go and see him at once.'

  'Very good, Doctor.'

  I followed Easter aft, to the crew's accommodation in the poop. We went up an iron ladder to a door with CARPENTER AND LAMPTRIMMER stencilled over it. It was a bleak little cabin, with green-painted steel bulkheads and a couple of metal bunks one above the other. The only decoration was a photograph of an oblong tombstone with 'Mother's Grave' written underneath it.

  On the top bunk was the patient, huddled under a grey ship's blanket. I gave him a shake. A head poked out at me, and I recognized the man with the lamp I had met at the top of the gangway. He needed a shave, there was dried saliva at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes looked like a couple of cherries on a blancmange.

  'Aghurrr!' he said.

  'Now what's the trouble, my man?' I started briskly.

  He disregarded me. His eyes were on something else in the cabin, behind me. He pointed shakily to the corner.

  'Get away you bastards!' he yelled.

  I jumped.

  'Now don't get excited…' I said nervously.

  He crouched into a corner of the bunk, pulling the blanket tightly round him.

  'Get away!' he screamed. 'Get away from me!'

  He brushed something from the bunk rail.

  'What is it?' I asked. 'What's the trouble?'

  The man started muttering, so that I had to lean closely over him to hear.

  'It's them dogs,' he said. 'Bloody great Alsatians. Bloody great green ones. Look! Five of the bastards!'

  I turned sharply round to Easter.

  'This man has got D.T.s,' I announced.

  'Ho, yes,' Easter said casually, not shifting from the doorway. 'Been having them for years. Long as I can remember, anyway.'

  'But we must do something about it! I hope you realize this is a serious condition? You seem to treat it very lightly.'

  'He always gets 'em about this part of the trip. He'll be as right as rain for weeks now. Been on the booze since we sailed. Says it makes him sad leaving Liverpool.'

  The patient rattled the bunk.

  'Get your paws orf of my face!' he yelled.

  'If I might make so bold, Doctor,' Easter said, still leaning on the door, 'I would say this was an occasion for the medical comforts.'

  'Medical comforts? What on earth are you talking about?'

  'Bottle of brandy,' he explained. 'It's issued buckshee, like, for the hospital. You can get another from the Chief Steward if you indent for it.' -

  'But I haven't seen anything of this brandy.'

  'I usually keeps it in my cabin, Doctor. Dr. Flowerday and I had an understanding about it.

  'Is there any left?'

  'Almost half, Doctor,' he said proudly. 'Dr. Flowerday used to give him a glassful and talk to him, gentle like, as if he was a baby. Worked like a charm. Shall I fetch the bottle?'

  'Here they come again!' the patient shouted.


  'Perhaps you'd better,' I said.

  I gave him a tumbler of brandy and explained that the five green Alsatians were not really present, like a nurse soothing a night-scared child. After a couple of glasses and half an hour's persuasion I had reduced the intruders to three in number, and to terriers of normal colour. I felt entitled to be satisfied with this. I left the patient sleeping in his bunk with the empty glass in his hand and went back to my cabin.

  'Seen many cases like him ashore?' Easter asked with interest, collecting the remains of the brandy.

  'No. I have not. There seems a great difference, Easter, between the practice of medicine on shore and at sea.'

  'Funny you should say that. Same thing always struck me about the doctors.'

  Chapter Five

  It is remarkable what spiritual contentment can be obtained from washing your own socks. I soaped a pair in the basin and hung them to dry on a line Easter had stretched across my cabin. I glowed with a modest sense of achievement. This was the first time I had been obliged to do any washing, which I had previously looked upon as an esoteric feminine function comparable with giving birth.

  The crew of the Lotus did their own laundering-even Captain Hogg, who appeared in the early afternoon on the strip of deck round his cabin with a bundle of white uniforms under his arm and a basket of clothes-pegs. The other officers hung their shirts over their bunks and smartened them afterwards in the bathroom with the Third Mate's travelling iron. Down aft, the crew set aside Sunday afternoon for the laundry, when it was usual to see large firemen and deckhands dressed only in underpants and tattoos scrubbing their singlets with bar soap in the fire-buckets. The clothes were then strung thickly round the winches and ventilators and flapped round the stern of the ship like some fantastic signal.

  Drying was simple, for we had reached the Tropics and the ship's company was in white uniforms. I had only to fix a white cover on my Company's regulation cap, but the officers appeared unexpectedly one morning in white shorts and shirts like a crop of snowdrops. The other hands were less affected by the order. Easter changed his blue serge jacket for a white one, but the rest were permitted the informality of uniform usual in the Merchant Service and did no more than roll their dungaree trousers half-way up their calves and remove their shirts.

  'We should have been in whites two days ago.' Hornbeam grumbled. 'It's the Old Man's fault.'

  'Why? What's he done now?'

  'The old bastard sunbathes every afternoon and keeps us in blues until his knees are brown.'

  I felt I was becoming quite a sailor. I let my days pass uncaringly, carried away in the drift of the sea routine. In a ship everybody seems constantly to be getting up or going to bed. The watch changes every fourth hour, which brings one of the mates, warm from his bunk, to the bridge, and sends a couple of engineers scuttling down the complicated ladders into the engine-room and stokehold. As well as the officers, two A.B.s go on the bridge to take turns at the wheel, and a gang of greasers and firemen troop below. All this movement is set off by the ship's bell on the bridge, which rings through each watch an arithmetical progression of half-hourly strokes.

  Members of the ship's company who had no watches to keep-people like Whimble, Easter, and myself-all arranged their days round the after-dinner siesta. In the afternoon the whole ship died. All hands, apart from those essential for the running of the vessel, tottered away from the saloon table and, encouraged by a weighty meal and the noon session of gin, crashed gratefully into their bunks. This was a habit I found condemnable, but irresistible. In medical school and practice the afternoon had been my busiest time, and I was determined to pass the hours between one and four studying _War and Peace._ At first I never drank before the meal and avoided the cook's suet roll, of which Captain Hogg must have eaten several fathoms every voyage. But-whether I was the subject of mass-suggestion or sea air contains some subtle narcotic-I was unconscious before I got the taste of the ship's cheese out of my mouth, and I stayed asleep until Easter shook me at four with a cup of tea and a small piece of confectionery known in the Merchant Service as a tab-nab. This habit I regarded nervously as the first indication of moral degeneration.

  At five-thirty every evening my bath was run by Boswell, the bath steward. Boswell, like Easter, had seen better days, and the courtly manners he had learned in big P. amp; O.s and Cunarders had not deserted him. Whatever the temperature, he wore a shining white jacket, a stiff wing collar, and a black bow tie. He would arrive at my cabin door at half-past five precisely, a clean blue-and-white towel folded over his arm, and announce 'Your bath awaits, Doctor,' as if it were an important delegation. He followed me to the officers' bathroom, which smelled like a seaside cave at low tide, spread the towel over the chair, and mixed the water with his skinny hand. He dipped in a foot-long thermometer with a little metal bucket at the end, anxiously inspecting the temperature, and made a careful adjustment to the taps (later I found the thermometer had not worked for several years). He then poured some fresh hot water from a large shining copper can into a small bowl for the feet, and laid on the white wooden rack across the bath my flannel, a long-handled scrubbing brush, a loofah, and a bar of sea-water soap.

  'Would there be anything else you require, sir?' he asked every evening. I found it difficult to complicate such a simple act as taking a bath any further, and he would bow deeply and retire backwards through the steam. I knew he did so with disappointment, for a bath suggested to him as many variations as soup to a French chef. Every few days he would press me to take a few spoonfuls of mustard in it, or some washing soda, or a tumbler of rose-water. 'Might I recommend a little Sloane's?' he asked once. 'I used to put it in regularly for one doctor I looked after in the Cunard. Very good for the joints, I believe.'

  Boswell's manners were unfortunately not sufficient to overcome the discomforts of the Lotus's bathroom. There were no portholes or ventilators, so water collected on the deck-head as efficiently as in the main condenser in the engine-room, and thence fell thickly in rusty brown drops. The deck was covered with some crumbling material that left potholes to trip the bather and make him catch his head or his shins against sharp projecting pieces of steel. The bath itself was shaped like a coffin, and was furnished with a pair of fearsome taps that gave between them hot and cold sea water and a disproportionate amount of steam. There was an alternative-the fresh-water shower outside Hornbeam's cabin, but owing to some subtle mechanical fault many feet below in the engine-room this emitted only ice-cold water or superheated steam, and after escaping a third-degree burn I decided to stick to the safe tepid waters under Boswell's supervision.

  Boswell did not stop at baths: far greater was his pride in the officers' lavatories. These were not much more efficient than the bath, and in rough weather became alarmingly unreliable. But to Boswell they were a porcelain monument to his own calling. He spent the morning cleaning and polishing them, and on our arrival for inspection would bow low and flush each as we passed with the jaunty pride of the satisfied artist.

  'There's more in lavatories than meets the eye, sir,' he explained to me one day, with a sigh. 'You've got to understand lavatories to do this job.' I gathered from Easter that as he contentedly did his morning task Boswell dreamed of his retirement in charge of a small underground nest of them at one of the quieter corners of Liverpool.

  My professional duties were not exacting. I saw a couple of patients in the morning, perhaps half, a dozen at five. The most common trouble was the constipation, doctor. This I first treated with pharmacopoeial doses of the usual remedies, but I soon found it was necessary to multiply the amount by three for most of the patients and by five for the Bos'n and firemen. There were boils and warts, a few burns from the engine-room, and several vague illnesses whose leading symptom was a disinclination to work. We had a few more cases resulting from careless choice of friends during our last nights in Liverpool. The approach to the medical attendant by sufferers from this embarrassing condition varied from the shifty reques
t-with a sidelong glance at Easter-to ''Ave a word wiv you a minute, Doctor,' to the full-blooded storming of the surgery by the experienced invalid with his 'Say, Doc, can you fix this for us by Friday?'

  At eleven we inspected the ship. Hornbeam, Whimble, McDougall, and myself gathered outside the saloon door and saluted when Captain Hogg's boots appeared on the companionway from his cabin. This homage he returned with the grace of a publican handing back a counterfeit half-crown.

  We lined up behind him and set off touring the decks, each of us trying to look as disagreeable as possible. We filed in and out of Boswell's lavatories with dignity, and zealously searched for dust under the coconut matting. The progress was broken only when Captain Hogg's eye was jarred by something that gave him displeasure, when he would turn his fury not only on the man responsible but on his parents as well. At first I shivered at the onslaught: then I grew to appreciate the range and power of the Captain's imagination and the felicity with which he turned his sentences, until I listened to him with fascination. As for the victims, they shrugged their shoulders and took no notice. Raving Captains were just like storms at sea: you had to put up with them until they blew themselves out, and not become unreasonably excited.

  After inspection the Captain went on the bridge to supervise the daily ceremony of finding the noon position of the ship. I went up there only once, because Captain Hogg looked on visitors like a sour landowner spotting picnickers on his front lawn. It was a shady, restful place, lined with dark wood and brass, like an old-fashioned saloon bar. The sea was surprisingly far below, and the only sound was the irregular loud clicking of the gyro repeater, like the ticking of an arrhythmic clock. Abaft the bridge was the chartroom, where rulers, set-squares, and neatly sharpened pencils were arranged like a tidy school desk, and the chronometers nestled under thick glass like a pair of premature infants in an incubator. Hornbeam once offered me his sextant and let me work out our position, but I disgusted him by putting the Lotus within a few miles of Cleveland, Ohio.

  I spent most of my time chatting to the officers off watch, leaning on the rail, playing quoits, or nosing round the deck. I was beginning to learn what everything was called. Ships have a distinct anatomy of their own, and our daily rounds were as confusing to me as my first demonstrations in the dissecting room. I recognized fairly early on the difference between port and starboard, fore and aft, and a binnacle and a barnacle; but I was still uncertain where to find such obscure pieces of marine furnishing as the jumper stays, the monkey island, and the shrouds.