Doctor On Toast Page 9

  ‘Look here, old lad–’

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor fellow. I also couldn’t help feeling it might be a good thing to build up a little friendliness.

  ‘You just leave it all to me, Basil,’ I told him. ‘I’ll nip up to the Captain and simply say you were overcome with a sort of nervous breakdown, entirely due to overwork in his service. In a way it’s perfectly true, and I can blind him with a bit of science. Then perhaps they’ll fix you up with some quiet easy job somewhere on the strength of it.’

  ‘Dear chappie!’ He seized my hand. ‘Do you think it would work?’

  ‘Absolutely certain of it. After all, I’m the doctor.’

  ‘I’d be eternally grateful.’

  ‘No trouble at all, I assure you.’

  ‘Good old Grim!’ Actors are emotional birds, and for a moment I was scared he was going to have a jolly good blub. ‘Even those days in the dear old digs, I always knew one thing – I could count on you, at least, as a real true chum.’

  ‘Oh, tut,’ I said lightly.

  All this really made me feel a stinking cad, of course. But I suppose taking to deceit is like taking to drink – after a time you get so full of it, you hardly notice a bit more. So I packed Basil off to the Glory Hole, adjusted my tie, and climbed again up all those stairs to the Captain’s cabin, preparing some sort of tale to pitch on his behalf.

  I reckoned the party should have been over by then, and was rather surprised as I tapped on the door to hear a burst of female laughter inside.

  ‘Enter!’

  There was the old boy tucking into roast chicken and asparagus, with a bottle of champagne at his elbow and Mr Shuttleworth himself in attendance. Sharing the binge with him was Ophelia.

  ‘Ah, Doctor! What have you done with that dangerous lunatic? Securely under lock and key, I hope? I should have known the feller was unbalanced. I remember now the peculiar way he kept snooping at me round corners.’

  ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything sir?’ I remarked, shooting Ophelia a bit of a glance.

  ‘Not at all, Doctor, not at all. It is simply that I felt my appearance in the saloon might prove somewhat embarrassing after tonight’s events, and I decided to dine up here. This charming young lady kindly consented to share my simple meal.’

  ‘The Captain has been telling me the most absolutely thrilling things about the ship,’ said Ophelia. ‘Haven’t you, Captain?’

  The Captain suddenly seemed to become all gold braid and medals.

  ‘It is the Master’s duty to answer his passengers’ questions, my dear Miss O’Brien. But perhaps for the first time in my life at sea I can say it is a positive pleasure as well.’ He raised his champagne glass. ‘By the way, Doctor, if you want to put that feller Beauchamp in a straitjacket, it is perfectly all right with me.’

  I gave a little cough. ‘I agree, sir, the unfortunate man is slightly off balance mentally–’

  ‘You can say that again,’ murmured Ophelia.

  ‘But I assure you it’s only a temporary condition. It was the strain, sir, being over-conscientious about his work.’

  Captain Spratt grunted.

  ‘If I might suggest, sir, he should continue with some simple job down below suitable for his limited mental capacities.’

  He stroked his beard.

  ‘Oh, the poor thing’s perfectly harmless,’ said Ophelia suddenly. I didn’t know if she was beginning to feel sorry over the way she’d treated Basil, or merely beginning to feel drunk. ‘Give him some nice easy work, Captain, where he can fuddle along in his own little way.’

  ‘H’m.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Oh, very well, very well. Mr Shuttleworth!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You heard that conversation. Put Beauchamp somewhere where he can’t come to any harm. Just see he won’t get under my feet, that’s all I ask. Thank you, Doctor. Good night.’

  ‘Bye bye, Doctor dear,’ said Ophelia.

  As I left, I fancied they were just about to pull the wishbone.

  13

  The situation on board now struck me as reasonably under control. I felt that Basil had copped it so hard from Ophelia he’d left me free to oil my way back into her affections. And though the poor fellow had made a first-class idiot of himself, he’d probably done no worse out of his eruption than taking charge of the stewards’ wash-house. It seemed very satisfactory all round.

  I was therefore rather shaken at lunch the following day to find the chap handing me my soup.

  ‘How the devil did you get here?’ I demanded.

  ‘The Chief Steward’s express orders, sir,’ replied Basil, wiping his thumb.

  ‘Chief Steward’s orders? But shouldn’t you be somewhere down among the entrails?’

  ‘The Chief Steward considered this post would be the most convenient not only for me, sir, but for everyone else.’

  It was all that fool Shuttleworth’s fault. Working everything out carefully, he’d made Basil a saloon waiter on my table, so I’d be nice and handy in case he ran riot again.

  ‘Fish and chips,’ I told him, pretty tersely.

  There seemed nothing to do but shoulder the situation.

  I suppose Basil had been living, breathing and thinking a waiter all morning, but either his heart wasn’t in the part or through emotional strain he was losing his touch, because he gave a ruddy awful performance. He was passable on the ‘I-hear-personally-from-the-Chef-the-roast-beef-is-excellent-today’ business, but he got into frightful trouble trying to serve the boiled potatoes one-handed and having to chase them all over the table with his fork. Then he kept forgetting which door to the pantry was In or Out, the butter got stuck on the point of his knife, he had oranges rolling all over the deck like tennis balls, and on the whole it was a pretty miserable lunch.

  And not only through Mr Shuttleworth’s bad casting.

  A strange gloom had come over my eating mates, apart from their having run out of symptoms. In fact, a strange gloom had come over the whole ruddy ship. It was all the fault of Jeremy in the curly bowler and his devilish pals.

  Anyone stumbling on a Capricorn Line poster through a London fog probably had to be physically restrained from selling up his home on the spot and buying a ticket for the next boat. And from that little brochure thing, a trip in a Capricorn ship made the seventh heaven of the Mohammedans like a walk in the park on a rainy Sunday afternoon. But when you come down to it, all passenger ships are just our dear old friend the English seaside hotel, with music in the palm court, thick and clear for dinner, and everyone’s favourite chair in the lounge. Except that in a seaside hotel you can always escape for a bit, for a nice bracing stroll all alone to the local at the end of the prom. And another thing. Those curly-bowler chaps had rather naughtily tended to stress sex in their advertisements, this being what people in England are most interested in, after a spot of sunshine, of course. Everyone came on board expecting to meet men like those coves in white dinner jackets or girls like Ophelia, and when they only saw the same people on the morning train to Town in their swimming-trunks, they began to feel they’d been rather done over the price of their ticket. This fell particularly hard on Mr Bridgenorth, who in forty years hadn’t found time to get married, and on Miss Miggs, who in forty years hadn’t been asked, particularly as they’d just discovered they both came from opposite ends of the same street in Dulwich.

  ‘No morning papers at sea,’ grumbled Mr Bridgenorth over the fish.

  ‘No telly,’ added Miss Miggs.

  ‘Can’t even sit on the deck in peace. Nothing but screaming kids and gossiping women and rope quoits hitting you in the neck every five minutes. You might as well be at the end of Southend Pier on August Bank Holiday.’

  ‘I can’t say I go for their six-course luncheons,’ sighed Mrs van Barn, who seemed to be keeping the most cheerful under the strain. ‘How do you imagine they get every single thing to taste like boiled knitting? I guess this refrigerated
fish has been floating a darn sight longer on top of the ocean than underneath it.’

  ‘As for the faultless service – !’ cried Mr Bridgenorth, as Basil dropped Sauce Hollandaise down his lap.

  ‘Give the steward a break,’ urged Mrs van Barn amiably. ‘The poor guy’s doing his best. Aren’t you Steward?’

  ‘One endeavours to give satisfaction, madam,’ murmured Basil, briskly mopping Mr Bridgenorth.

  ‘Sure you do. Here, let me help. A drop of cleaner and a sponge and these pants will look better than new in no time.’

  ‘Thank you, madam.’

  ‘Why, you’re welcome, Steward. That’s what we’re here on earth for, isn’t it, to help each other?’

  Basil, the wicked chap, gave a bit of a flutter to his eyelashes.

  ‘A most admirable philosophy, if I may take the liberty of saying so, madam.’

  ‘Say, isn’t he cute?’ Mrs van Barn smiled round the table. ‘What’s your name, Steward?’

  ‘Beauchamp, madam.’

  ‘No, I mean your first name.’

  ‘Basil, madam.’

  ‘Basil? Gee, that’s lovely. I can’t say I’ve ever known a man called Basil.’

  ‘Thank you, madam. Chips?’

  I didn’t think much about this little tête-à-tête until we all trooped in for dinner. Our Mrs van Barn always managed to measure up to those advertisements in the New Yorker, but that night she appeared looking absolutely smashing in her best dress and best hair. She sat down and stared at Basil like something in Cartier’s window, and got him to bring her every item on the menu.

  ‘Say, let me show you how to do it,’ she volunteered, when the poor chap was struggling with those blasted potatoes again. ‘See here, it’s easy.’

  We all admitted that Mrs van Barn was a pretty handy potato server. But after that she started helping Basil dishing out the duck, and what with her mixing the salad and sweeping up the breadcrumbs and fetching the butter from the table next door, people began to notice. Particularly Mr Shuttleworth, who went red in the face and hovered rather, but as Mrs van Barn had the most expensive suite on board he couldn’t do much about it.

  And Ophelia noticed, too.

  14

  ‘Gaston, darling.’

  Ophelia slipped her arm through mine as we left the saloon after dinner the following evening.

  ‘Who’s that ghastly fat woman with the purple hair sitting opposite you?’

  ‘Mrs Sybil van Barn? A decent enough soul, though rather heavy on the husbands.’

  ‘Terribly vulgar, don’t you think, the way she hobnobs with the waiters?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I replied sportingly. ‘Americans are always pretty pally with their servitors, and vice versa. Even in the plushiest New York restaurants the chap comes up with a deep bow and asks, “Que voulez-vous, bud?”’

  Ophelia pouted.

  ‘I mean, if Basil really wants to go round the world being a waiter, he ought to learn to keep his position as one.’

  ‘First of all he ought to learn to serve boiled potatoes, if you ask me.’

  ‘Darling,’ said Ophelia, ‘would you like to buy me a liqueur in the Veranda Bar?’

  ‘Who, me? I say! Would I, indeed! My dear old girl, come along.’

  ‘How terribly sweet of you.’ Ophelia put her little hand into mine. ‘Darling, I’m so glad you’re aboard.’

  I’d previously decided to let things drift between us until at least the scars she’d made had healed on my left biceps. I was still in love with her, of course. You couldn’t help it. After all, it had taken her only ten minutes to get someone like Captain Spratt rolling with his paws in the air at her feet. This seemed a terrific chance to reopen the attack, particularly as we’d now got into the tropical moonlight belt.

  Ophelia sat with a crème de menthe in a chaise longue, chatting away as brightly as in the old days. And I must say I felt pretty pleased with myself, particularly with all those envious glances from the chaps as they passed.

  ‘I’m sorry I was so beastly to you the other night,’ she apologised. ‘The stupid way Basil behaved quite made me lose my head. You know how it is.’

  ‘Let’s just forget the whole little episode, shall we?’

  I patted her hand.

  ‘After all, darling, you were terribly kind to me all those weeks I was quite alone in London.’

  ‘And I hope,’ I told her, patting a bit harder, ‘I can be even kinder when we get back.’

  ‘Darling, you’re so sweet,’ said Ophelia.

  I felt that as far as bliss was concerned, this was just the job.

  ‘If you’re not too tired after being photographed hanging from the rails all day,’ I ventured, deciding to strike while the iron was fair sizzling. ‘Perhaps you’d like a go at the Gala Dance?’

  ‘But darling, I’d adore to! I haven’t danced with you all the trip, have I? It’ll be quite like old times.’

  I couldn’t remember a more rapturous evening, particularly as I knew there wouldn’t be one of those sinister chaps sidling up with the bill at the end of it. Meanwhile, the tropical moonlight at least had come out as advertised, and I could hardly wait for an appropriate moment to suggest we combed the streamers out of our hair and went for a little stroll round the deck.

  ‘How divine!’ breathed Ophelia, as we paused in a nook between the starboard fan house and a ventilator.

  I swallowed a bit. What with the soft swish of the water, and the stars, and the little breeze flicking through her hair, chaps get a bit overcome.

  ‘Care for a chat?’ I murmured, edging further into the nook.

  She stroked my lapels. ‘Gaston – you’re such a dear.’

  ‘Ophelia, my darling.’ I tickled her left ear. ‘This is the very moment I’ve been living for since I came aboard.’

  ‘You came aboard for me, darling,’ she remembered softly.

  ‘For you, my sweet.’ I shifted the tickling to her mastoid bone. ‘For you alone have I adopted the perilous existence–’

  ‘Kiss me, darling.’

  I hastened to oblige. But at that moment a voice from the other side of the ventilator said, ‘Gee, Basil, you sure have made my trip.’

  ‘And you, my dear Sybil, have certainly made my year.’

  Ophelia snapped her teeth shut so fiercely she pretty well took off the end of my nose.

  ‘Basil dear!’ There was a sigh behind the ventilator. ‘You’re a wonderful man. It’s a crying shame you having to go around just being a steward like this.’

  ‘It’s only a temporary part – I mean a temporary post. Better things are in store.’

  ‘There sure will be, dear, if I have anything to do with it. Kiss me again.’

  ‘Of all the dirty little worms!’ hissed Ophelia. ‘My own fiancé, too!’

  ‘I’m afraid the chap’s a bit of a cad,’ I muttered.

  ‘You just wait till I get my hands–’

  ‘Here, wait a second – !’

  I grabbed her dress. Knowing Ophelia, if she started a scene on deck they’d have to send for the Bos’n with his fire hoses before she finished it.

  ‘I’m going to tear that skunk limb from–’

  ‘But creating in public!’ I whispered urgently. ‘It’s frightfully undignified.’

  ‘I couldn’t care less how damn undignified–’

  ‘I mean, undignified in front of – of her.’

  The point struck home. Ophelia stood breathing heavily. Before she could change her mind, I seized her hand and led her briskly down the deck.

  ‘Surely, it’s far better,’ I murmured stroking it soothingly, as we hurried past the lifeboats. ‘Simply to summon Basil to your cabin and give him it good and proper in the ear tomorrow morning?’

  Ophelia bit her lip.

  ‘I’ve half a mind to push him over the rail here and now, and laugh while the sharks eat him.’

  ‘Strong feelings,’ I agreed, as we stopped in the stern, ‘are perfectly und
erstandable in the circumstances.’

  ‘With that overweight adventuress who’s already murdered two husbands–’

  ‘If I may be of any help in your distress,’ I reminded her, ‘you can rely on me.’

  ‘Dear Gaston!’ She threw her arms round my neck. ‘You’re so upright and honest.’

  ‘Come, now–’

  ‘Yes! So honourable in your dealings with women.’

  ‘One has one’s code, naturally.’

  ‘It’s so wonderful to have someone in the whole world to trust and to admire!’

  ‘But it is you, Ophelia, who bring out the best in me,’ I explained, very civilly. ‘And now if you’d like to continue our stroll, there’s always the other side of the ship.’

  ‘I’m far too upset,’ she announced. ‘It’s all given me a beastly headache, and I must go to bed. Good night.’

  She disappeared.

  I must say, I felt a bit narked with that idiot Basil, ruining my evening again. But, I told myself as I went down to my own cabin, now there was always tomorrow. If Basil didn’t disappear over the side to the sharks, he’d certainly disappear just as completely from Ophelia’s life. To be replaced, I reflected as I put my feet on the sofa and poured myself a gin, by that upright, honest, reliable, honourable chap, Gaston Grimsdyke.

  ‘Poor old Basil,’ I murmured. I felt quite sorry for the fellow.

  I had another gin, and pictured our next meeting. We’d both be jolly dignified and pat each other on the back, and everything would end very pleasantly with a solemn handshake and condolences and congratulations all round. I was therefore a bit surprised when he burst through my door a few minutes later like one of those South Atlantic hurricanes Captain Spratt was so fond of describing over dinner.

  ‘You swine!’ He stood opening and closing his fists. ‘You toad!’

  ‘Ah, Basil, there you are! No hard feelings, I hope?’

  ‘You stinking little sawbones! I’ve just been talking to Ophelia.’

  I was a bit surprised at this, because, of course, she had a headache.

  ‘And I fear she handed you your cards?’ I observed sympathetically. ‘Rotten for you, I admit. But at least you’ve awarded yourself a very nice consolation prize.’ I gave a wink. ‘As far as Ophelia’s concerned, it’s just another case of best man win, and all that, eh?’