Doctor And Son Read online

  9

  I drove home in some confusion. I had no head for finance and figures, unlike Grimsdyke, who could work out such things as daily doubles and tote accumulators without bothering to use a pencil. I realised that my godfather’s gift would have to be put to the most solemn use, but I couldn’t help myself feeling that somewhere might be the chance to order a new sports car. On the whole, I felt like Pip in Great Expectations.

  I was just preparing to startle Nikki with the news, when I turned into our road and noticed Grimsdyke’s Bentley drawn up at the front gate. A few minutes later I found him sunburnt and cheerful in the sitting-room, sitting in my chair with his feet on the fireplace drinking my beer.

  ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me you’d moved?’ he demanded almost at once. ‘Gave me quite a nasty turn seeing the “sold” sign on your old habitat. I went mooching round the district for hours, until I had enough sense to ring up the local Executive Council and get your phone number.’

  ‘How could we tell you, when we didn’t know where you were yourself?’ protested Nikki, appearing with another couple of bottles of beer.

  ‘What, didn’t I let you know I’d cleared off to the West Indies?’

  ‘Not on another cruise?’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Good God, no! Things were pretty bad after the Fairchild episode, but they weren’t as bad as that. As a matter of fact, I’ve been in the oil business. But I hear you’ve been bearding Sir Lancelot, you brave chap. And how is the old blunderbuss?’

  ‘In very good form. By the way, he seemed to remember you.’

  ‘I should think he does. In my time as a student he threw pretty well everything movable in the theatre at me, except the patient. But what on earth brings him back to London?’

  ‘Oh, nothing in particular,’ I said. I felt it unwise even to hint at our conversation before such an enthusiastic gossip as Grimsdyke. ‘But tell us what you’ve been up to yourself. The way you go shooting off to the ends of the earth makes you look like Edmund Hillary to stay-at-homes like us.’

  ‘It’s very simple, actually.’ Grimsdyke opened another bottle of beer. ‘After that ghastly evening in the Arundel – I’ll stand you the dinner I owe you, by the by, I’m in the chips again – I felt the time had come for me to be out of the country for a bit. Awkward questions might be asked in theatrical circles. As a matter of fact my exit went smoothly. Although my own professional qualifications may not, I fear, be of the best, I have one great advantage in the medical labour market – will go anywhere and do anything. When you come to think of it, there aren’t many doctors without a regular job and a regular wife, however fed up they may get from time to time with either.’

  I agreed with him.

  ‘After we left that fish-shop I spent the night in the Turkish bath, and the next morning went back to the Arundel to collect my belongings. There I ran into that American you met – Mr McGlew.’

  ‘You mean the pork chap?’

  Grimsdyke nodded.

  ‘He immediately sensed something was up, doubtless because I was wandering about in full evening dress while everyone else was eating bacon and eggs. So I told him pretty tersely how I’d been chucked out. He became very sympathetic, because I think he’d rather taken to me – which proves what a good thing it is to cast your bread upon the waters, even when you think the tide’s never going out.

  ‘As I believe I told you, like most Yanks chum McGlew imagined that once he’d left behind his air-conditioning and automatic Martini mixer he’d said goodbye to civilisation. When he sent for a doctor in London I really believe he half-expected someone to show up with monkey skulls round his waist and a horn of powdered snake-tooth. But knowing a thing or two, I borrowed the barman’s jacket and looked at his tongue with a head mirror, just like the doctors in advertisements advising people to choke themselves to death with cigarettes.

  ‘That did the trick, all right,’ Grimsdyke told us with satisfaction. ‘McGlew just sat back and let me take charge of his complaints. And he’d got hundreds of them, probably all caught from the Reader’s Digest. He also insisted on paying enough per visit to keep a British family ill in comfort for a couple of years.

  ‘Like most Americans, old McGlew was a generous soul, and he was also very keen on democratic justice. So on hearing the story of my high-handed dismissal he insisted on finding me another job at once – he’s not only in pigs, you know, he’s in oil, and it must be awfully monotonous for him turning up year after year in the list of the world’s ten richest chaps. Anyway, he’s got a tame oil company in London, and there and then he rang up the managing director and told him he was sending me along.

  ‘This oil company had an office near the Guildhall, and about the same size. The managing director turned out to be a genial cove, who gave me a cigar and summoned the company secretary, who summoned the chief medical officer. Cash means nothing to these petrol boys, of course,’ Grimsdyke explained authoritatively. ‘They could employ pretty well the whole BMA on what the public puts in its lighters.

  ‘The chief MO said as a matter of fact they did want someone, to go at once to Poparapetyl. The company’s regular doctor there was on a month’s leave, which apparently didn’t usually matter but some big bug with one of the most expensive blood pressures in the New York office had just gone snooping round the place. I accepted the locum on the spot, and they all looked delighted. Though whether through concern over this chap’s blood pressure or doing the bidding of old McGlew without busting themselves, I wouldn’t like to say.

  ‘The managing director then gave me another cigar and added that if I liked the job they’d be happy to keep me on the regular pay-roll. So when the next morning I found myself at London Airport with a bag of brand-new tropical kit and a whacking great cheque in my pocket, it put my morale up no end.’

  ‘Where on earth’s Poparapetyl?’ asked Nikki. ‘It sounds like some sort of bacterium.’

  ‘I hardly knew myself till I got there. It’s an island about the size of Anglesey off the coast of Venezuela, and it consists largely of oil derricks, Coca-Cola signs, and chaps in coloured shirts asleep under carts. Also, it is damned hot.

  ‘I arrived from Caracas in a small plane, and took an old taxi from the airstrip to the oil company’s bungalows – all very white and neat, and looking the cross between a holiday camp and a municipal sanatorium.

  ‘There didn’t seem to be anyone about, and I didn’t blame them in that heat, which was enough to raise blisters on a set of snooker balls. So I woke up the amiable Poparapetylian who seemed to be the chief turnkey, and explained that I was the new doctor. He seemed rather surprised, but he showed me to the bungalow with “doctor” on the door and went back to sleep again. And thus I took up the White Man’s Burden. Have you got any more beer? The very thought of the place makes me thirsty.’

  ‘I believe there’s some in the new fridge,’ said Nikki. ‘Though as I haven’t got the hang of the switches yet you may have to eat it with a hammer and chisel.’

  ‘However hot the climate, it doesn’t sound a bad job at all,’ I told him as I refilled his tankard. ‘If the pay was good you might have done worse than sticking it out for a year or so.’

  ‘The very same thoughts passed through my mind, old lad, as I dumped my duffle-bag on the bunk and switched on the radio, water-cooler, and air-conditioning. Oil’s all very well, but you have to go to such beastly places to get it that the companies pamper their servants a bit. I could have lived in modest comfort until everyone had forgotten about the Fairchild, even if she certainly hadn’t forgotten about me. But,’ Grimsdyke continued solemnly, ‘within a short hour or so such ideas were squashed for good and all.’

  ‘That sounds very alarming,’ said Nikki.

  ‘It was alarming. Though it was perhaps for the best. If the horrible dangers of the place had been brought home to me years later it might have been a shattered Grimsdyke that walked through your door, with his liver jostling with his appendix for room in his
pelvis.’

  ‘You mean drink?’ I asked simply.

  He nodded.

  ‘We all like a glass or two and no harm done. Particularly in this part of the world where you know what you’re getting, even if it is labelled something like MacEuston Scotch. Not so at Poparapetyl.’

  My friend paused to reflect.

  ‘The first thing I wanted when I arrived, naturally, was a noggin. So I wandered into the sunshine, and noticing a signpost labelled “To the Capital” I followed it.

  ‘After a short but highly thirst-making walk I reached the place, which consisted of a mixture of huts and telegraph poles and was made largely out of old oil drums. But in the middle stood a more solid-looking structure labelled “Savoy Hotel,” and I felt that even out of homesickness I had to go in.

  ‘The Savoy wasn’t much like the original, of course. But I went through a door like the ones you see chaps getting chucked out of in Wild West films, and found myself in a dim little bar which was at least a bit cooler than outside. Behind the bar was another Poparapetylian with his head in his hands asleep – which seems to be the great national enthusiasm – and in front of it was a soldierly-looking old boy with a spiky moustache and a dirty white suit.

  ‘“Why, if it isn’t old Bill Mackenzie !” he said as soon as I came in. “After all these years! I suppose you’ve just arrived in this incestuous hell-hole from London ?”

  ‘“I’ve certainly just come from London, my dear sir,” I told him. “But I’m equally certain I’m not anyone called–”

  ‘“Dear old Bill !” the chap insisted. “We’ve certainly got to have a drink on it. George! Double rum swizzle for my old friend Bill Mackenzie, pronto.”

  ‘I thought he might be a bit myopic or something, but further explanations were prevented by my sipping the rum swizzle. You know I’ve always been rather partial to a drop of rum? I regarded it as nice bland stuff you pour over Christmas puddings. I took a large gulp, and made a noise like a chap on the wrong end of Sir Lancelot’s gastroscope. Phew! It pretty well ripped the epithelium off my oesophagus.

  ‘“The drinks out here take a little getting used to,” said the soldierly chap, patting me hard on the back. “But even in the old days, Bill, you had a weak head for the drink, eh? And for the women, too, ha ha! Why, it must be years since we strolled together on a Saturday night to Frascati’s. How’s the dear Alhambra going along ?”

  ‘I was just going to tell him that I knew about as much of the dear Alhambra as of the Great Exhibition of 1851, when he started picking threads from the sleeve of his jacket. At least, I thought he was, until he began chucking them on to the floor and grinding them under his foot.

  ‘“Do these little green lizards we have out here worry you much?” he asked in a friendly sort of way.

  ‘Then, of course, I made the diagnosis. Mental confusion, loss of memory for recent events, hallucinations – the chap was a roaring alcoholic. You never see a case like it in England. It’s much too expensive a disease for the inhabitants.

  ‘“Do you – er, drink very much?” I enquired, as casually as possible.

  ‘“Alas!” replied the old boy. “I am a martyr to it. Have another.”’

  10

  ‘Things then started to get rather difficult,’ Grimsdyke went on.

  I was wondering how our education at St Swithin’s had equipped him to manage this problem of practical medicine.

  ‘You know what it’s like dealing with one of these cases, Simon? Just the same as playing with a pet tiger. They’re all very nice and friendly, but you can’t be too certain when they’re going to bite your head off.

  ‘A chronic alcoholic not being the most suitable of drinking companions,’ he continued, ‘I tried to edge away. But the old boy would have none of it.

  ‘“Let’s mull over old times, Bill,” he said.

  ‘He insisted we had lots of friends in common, which I’d never heard of and were probably all dead anyway. So I decided that the only plan was to humour him. With any luck he’d either go to sleep or drop off the stool and break his ruddy neck. But he’d just asked me how dear old Romano’s was doing when my clinical instincts came to the fore. Remembering that such cases must be forced to take a little solid protein occasionally, I said, “Don’t you think you ought to have a bite to eat?”

  ‘“Eat?” He sounded as though I’d suggested we sent for a chess board.

  ‘“Well – just a ham sandwich, or something.”

  ‘“Ham? Damn it, man!” he shouted. “Are you trying to kill me? The doctor’s put me on a salt-free diet. George! Two more rum swizzles.”

  ‘An uncooperative patient,’ Nikki murmured.

  ‘Exactly. I mentioned something about enough being enough, and the old boy started to become very excited. Knowing what would happen if I upset him, and not having a strait-jacket handy, I gave in. After all,’ he explained, ‘I have over the years developed a fair tolerance for the drug alcohol. I had a modest confidence that I could sit him out, particularly as he’d probably been at the rum swizzles since breakfast. So I joined him in another couple, while he told me he was the younger son of an earl and started singing “Abide With Me”.’

  Grimsdyke started to take another drink of beer, but hesitated.

  ‘It was then I began to feel some unusual symptoms myself,’ he said.

  ‘Simon,’ he asked, after a pause. ‘Do you remember that housemen’s party we had in St Swithin’s? The night we decided to fortify the fruit cup with a little absolute alcohol from the path. lab.?’

  ‘I don’t think any of us can possibly forget it,’ I told him.

  At the time our cellar in the Medical Officer’s Quarters was reduced to a bottle of claret and a bag of oranges. To celebrate some fellow-resident’s engagement Grimsdyke suggested making a claret cup of the type popular for young ladies’ birthday parties, but adding some of the pure ethyl alcohol used to prepare microscope slides of bacteria.

  ‘After all,’ he had explained at the time. ‘It’s the methyl sort of alcohol that makes you end up as an interesting article in the Lancet. This is perfectly pure C2H5OH, exactly the same as you’d get from a bottle of champagne if you distilled it instead of drinking it.’

  ‘But even ethyl alcohol’s got to be treated with respect,’ I had told him doubtfully.

  ‘Exactly, my dear chap. People simply make the mistake of forgetting it’s seventy-five over proof, and not adding it in judicious quantities. This is all going to be done highly scientifically. I’m going to scrounge a pipette from the biochemistry lab. and slip fifty millilitres into the mixture whenever the party shows signs of flagging. It’ll be as precise as an intravenous infusion.’

  This worked excellently until Grimsdyke had taken several glasses of the cup himself, when his impatience increased while his inhibitions diminished and he started tipping it from the Winchester quart hidden under the table. Some remarkable scenes had then ensued, and even when we’d cleared up all the foam we still didn’t know where to bury the empty fire-extinguishers.

  ‘My clinical state that evening at St Swithin’s,’ Grimsdyke continued at our hearthside, ‘was exactly reproduced in the Savoy Hotel, Poparapetyl. I had vertigo and diplopia and my stomach felt as though someone had been at it with a bicycle pump. Even old George the barman woke up and looked worried – though probably only because we hadn’t paid for the drinks. Anyway, he helped me off my stool and into a bedroom next door, while the old boy was deep in conversation with a stuffed monkey. I collapsed on an old iron bedstead with one leg off, wishing I were nicely tucked up in St Swithin’s with an ice-bag and lots of trained nurses.’

  He stopped, seeming pale even at the recollection.

  ‘Then you passed out?’ Nikki asked sympathetically.

  ‘Graduates of St Swithin’s Hospital, madam, do not pass out. Remembering my ill-spent youth, I focused my eyes on a spot on the ceiling, which turned out to be a squashed cockroach. But at least it rallied the neurones for a
ction. It became pretty obvious that I couldn’t be found on my first day dead drunk in some shanty. It also became obvious that if I stayed there I should rapidly be consumed by orthoptera. So after a bit I took a deep breath, got up, grabbed my hat, and without looking right or left started up the road home, hoping I was going in the right direction.

  ‘I shall never forget that walk. Going out it had seemed a fairly easy half mile, but now it was like crossing the Sahara. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of my cool white air-conditioned couch at the other end. I’ve heard a good bit about the evils of drink in my time, but it wasn’t till then I realised what the chaps with the big drum at the street corner really meant. But at last I staggered into my bungalow, hoping to heaven no one had seen me, and collapsed on the counterpane.’

  ‘But,’ Grimsdyke went on sadly, ‘a doctor’s work is never done.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t even have time to sleep it off?’ I asked.

  ‘I suppose I must have dozed for a few moments, but suddenly there was a terrible knocking on the door. I got up, feeling like the Drunken Porter with Macduff on the mat. Outside I found the Poparapetylian turnkey I mentioned earlier, in a bit of a state.

  ‘“Come quick, doctor, sir!” he said, grabbing my coat, “one of the bosses taken mighty sick, my word!”’

  ‘Much worse than a Casualty call after a St Swithin’s party,’ I observed.

  ‘It was like coming round from one of Tony Benskin’s anaesthetics. But never have I shirked my professional duty, old lad. The brain was functioning pretty clearly, even though I did feel someone had replaced my spinal cord with calf’s foot jelly. If the big noise from the office had chosen this moment to give in to his blood pressure, as the only doctor in sight I had to cope.

  ‘While I trudged after the turnkey for miles, trying to remember the right treatment for hypertension, I made a big resolve – at the end of the month’s job, Grimsdyke would be shipped back to the temperate climes. Even Monica Fairchild was preferable to massive necrosis of the liver.