The season of mellow fruitfulness found Mrs Iles pregnant. I beamingly congratulated her.
‘You’re the one I’ve got to thank for my condition,’ she asserted.
‘Oh, come.’ I pushed half-moons half down nose. ‘My intervention in the process was brief, if satisfying.’
‘Honestly, I’d like to run round telling everyone, “It’s all the doctor’s doing!” But I suppose it’s best to keep quiet and let the neighbours think it’s my husband’s?’
I nodded gravely. ‘I’ve put several ladies in your position, and I always suggest exactly that.’
She had been married ten years (husband in biscuits). She had tried everything. Relaxing Caribbean cruise. The kama sutra position. Oysters. Prayer. Catnip (recommended by Cromwellian herbalist Nicholas Culpepper). The couple desperately consulted me in early summer. I referred her to Bertie Taverill, gynaecologist at the General, who found her as fertile as the meadows of May. The microscope pointed accusingly to her husband.
Thelma Iles was gingery, gentle, freckled and floppy. Edgar Iles was small, spectacled, energetic and edgy. He needed strenuous explanation that a low sperm count was unrelated to masculinity, aggressiveness, vigour, sexiness or management skills, and afflicted 1500 lusty fellow-countrymen a year. He had built up his biscuit business from crumbs, and desperately desired bequeathing it to a devoted son, subject to capital transfer tax avoidance. I suggested AID.
‘But what if the child comes out cross-eyed?’ he objected nervously. ‘Bowlegged? A nitwit?’
‘Not to mention the er,’ added Mrs Iles. ‘You know, doctor. The ethnic bit.’
‘The anonymous donors are screened far more carefully than the secret service,’ I reassured them. ‘Physically, mentally and er. Why, a couple of thousand Britons are conceived thuswise every year, to general satisfaction. A whole quarter of a million are already walking about the Western world, without attracting shudders.’
Mrs Iles hesitantly inquired about technical details. Simplicity itself, I extolled: the lady has a quick affair with a syringe and a little lie-down afterwards. The specimen could be fresh or frozen, like smoked salmon. They agreed to consult a discreet doctor in Wimpole Street recommended by my son Andy, who seemed to know about such things. Now sperm and ovum had met like Romeo and Juliet, and Mrs Iles sat across the consulting desk like the cat who had eaten the cream purring at the milkman.
‘Though I cannot keep out of my mind the gentleman,’ she confided coyly. ‘I mean, was he handsome and distinguished like Prince Charles? Talented like Terry Wogan? Domineering like Robin Day? Or perhaps terrifically brainy? I keep reading how those Nobel prizewinners are offered as donors, just like Miss Worlds to open dairy shows.’
‘The secret will never be known,’ I told her cosily, ‘being locked away in the doctor’s files in Wimpole Street.’
‘I suppose it’ll be a little bastard?’ she asked sadly.
‘I’m afraid so. The law is less an ass than a mule, which combines stubbornness with sexual incompetence. But don’t worry, without bastards we shouldn’t have much of an English aristocracy.’
She thanked me profusely and left a tin of de luxe chockie bikkies.
I reflected how complicated ethical problems had grown since I was a young doctor, when the only one was presented by a panting half-naked wife alone in the house, and you had to face gravely the chances of getting away with it.
Sandra greeted me at lunchtime, ‘Andy phoned from St Swithin’s. He’s home for a few days towards the end of the month.’
‘Good! With Imogen?’ She shrugged. ‘I’d love to meet her. How was she, during that cricket match? Nice? Quiet? Sense of humour?’
‘Oh, bubbling! In fits at Andy describing what a fool you were making of yourself as the umpire.’
I changed the subject. ‘Perhaps Dr Quaggy’s right. Should I retire? I know, my dear, how you yearn for the warming sun like a newly planted tulip bulb. Why not transform my life into an everlasting holiday? Why not enjoy our castle in Spain – on a time-share basis, of course? Why should I linger in a profession with the top rate of alcoholism, suicide and hypochondria? There may be no retiring age for GPs, but why should I lay a shaky stethoscope on patients who are either alarmed at the medical Methuselah or reassured that their doctor has stumbled upon the secret of eternal life?’
‘You’d be bored,’ Sandra informed me. ‘Without patients, you’d be like Dr Barnardo without waifs.’
I tucked into my cholesterol-free saltless salad. Since adopting the hobby of dietetics, Sandra had become as lunatic about food as Dr Lonelyhearts’ Scots professor of nutrition. ‘I’d miss mitigating human miseries and joining in its joys,’ I admitted. ‘Today I’d a lady who’d found pregnancy as elusive as I found fish in Llawrfaennenogstumdwy.’
‘With AID and test-tube babies and surrogate mothers and frozen embryos and fertility drugs, you meddlesome doctors have complicated a process which most people find admirably simple.’
‘Well, AID would be equally effective if we simply put both parties in a pitch-dark room and let them impregnate
per viam naturalem
.’
‘That happens,’ Sandra murmured.
‘Oh, AID’s a thriving leisure activity,’ I agreed. ‘There was something recently in the
BMJ
. Research on the population’s blood groups proved that one child in three couldn’t remotely have been the husband’s.’
I guffawed. She raised her eyebrows. I observed, ‘I hope ours are the other two,’ but she did not seem to share Imogen’s bubbling sense of humour.
The telephone rang. It was Mrs Iles, hysterical.
‘I’d better go,’ I muttered hurriedly, reaching for my bag.
‘But you haven’t finished your lunch. What’s the matter with the woman?’
‘I don’t know. She just kept screaming “Come at once!” Maybe she’s aborting. She was the one full of the joy of artificial sex.’
‘There’s apple pie, with cream for a treat.’
But a doctor’s duty comes first.
‘The childless Ileses lived near the randy Watsons and the hungry Haymasons. They had a newly built colonial-style open-plan house with swimming pool, floodlit patio and brick-housed barbecue. Mr Iles was pacing beside the pool, pulling his hair and beating his chest.
I asked anxiously, ‘Some complication of pregnancy?’
He grabbed my lapels, eye-rolling. ‘Complications!’ he spluttered. ‘Look!’
I observed through the double-glazing Mrs Iles on the G-plan sofa, ashen-faced and open-mouthed. On the Parker-Knoll opposite lounged a pale spotty youth wearing tight shiny black leather trousers, Guinness T-shirt, one gold earring, two swastika tattoos and a coiffure like a pink-haired Red Indian, smoking a cigarette with the air of owning the place.
I slid aside the patio doors.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded fiercely.
He looked round casually. ‘You gotta be the bleedin doctor.’
‘What right have you to sit there?’ I continued sternly.
‘Since you ask, mate, I’ve as much right as our beloved Queen to sit on er frone. I’m the father of this old bird’s child, see.’
Mrs Iles put her hands to her cheeks and screamed.
‘Impossible!’ I stated.
‘No it ain’t,’ he remarked calmly. ‘I did a break-in at that wank doctor’s place. Purely from idle curiosity, gemme? Meantersay, you give someone somefink useful, you wanna know it’s not bin wasted, OK? I found papers wiv all the names on.’
‘Is this some devilish blackmail?’
‘Now waita minnit. Ain’t accusing me of dishonesty, aryer? I might not like that. And when I don’t like somefink I’m likely to get
really
roused, see?’
He flicked open a knife from his trouser pocket. Mrs Iles screamed again and fainted.
I put her head between her knees. Mr Iles shook his fists and cried, ‘My God, the shock’s killed her! You swine! You’ve murdered a mother and child at one go.’ The visitor poured himself a large Scotch from the repro-Tudor cocktail cabinet.
I took her shoulders. Mr Iles took her feet. We carried her upstairs and lay her moaning on their circular bed in the fully fitted mirrored bedroom. I scribbled a prescription for tranquillizers.
‘What shall I do?’ asked Mr Iles agitatedly.
‘Administer TLC.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Tender Loving Care. Useful treatment when all else fails, thus widely practised.’
The youth had lit a large cigar and was pouring a second Scotch.
‘I’m calling the police,’ I announced resolutely.
‘Go on?’ he remarked off-handedly.
‘You’ll be locked up in one of those short-sharp-shock places for life, if I have anything to do with it.’
‘You kiddin?’ he suggested.
‘Frightening a highly sensitive newly pregnant woman like that. It’s criminal.’
He looked as innocent as Orphan Annie.
‘Tell me wot I done wrong, guv,’ he implored.
‘Done wrong,’ I exclaimed. ‘Egad!’
‘Apart from a bit of burglary, like everyone else,’ he admitted. ‘Care for a Scotch?’
‘You’ve done terrible harm just by appearing here.’
He was pained. ‘I’m just claiming my paternity rights, ain’t I! No one’s said nuffink about my feelings in the matter, I’ve noticed. No one’s come to me and said, “Ow, Kevin, ow delightful, without you we’d never ave got the old cow off the ground.” I ave given Mrs Iles of my body, and I definitely ave a 50 per cent interest in the action, I wanna see my offspring’s reared proper. Natural instincts. No one’s gonna argue with that. If they do, I’ll soon effin well change their effin mind for them, geddit?’ He flicked his knife again.
I was thinking busily during the declaration of paternal solicitude. ‘What’s in it for you, young feller?’
‘Nuffink. Can’t a bloke even say ’ello to a woman wot e’s screwed by remote control!
‘As you noticed, I’m the bleedin doctor. I wasn’t born yesterday.’
He sprawled on the sofa, contentedly exhaling cigar smoke. ‘OK. Now I’m one of the family, they gotta keep me in style. Can’t ave me going round skint, not when I done the old sod’s job for im. Stands to reason.’ He reached out and helped himself to a handful of assorted cocktail biscuits.
‘So you intend to live here with free Scotch and cigars until the child goes to school, if not gets married?’
‘You’re learnin,’ he complimented me.
I had an inspiration. I crossed the front hall, flicking through my appointments dairy. I dialled the discreet doctor. An answering machine informed me he had left on a month’s holiday.
I cursed. I paused reflectively on the parquet. It needed a cool professional mind. It struck me, as it did Lady Macbeth, that what’s done cannot be undone. Mr Iles came stumbling downstairs, glassy-eyed. I invited him to discuss the unfortunate situation on the patio. He nodded, absently picking up a packet of baby rusks.
‘We must be constructive,’ I began.
‘All right. How?’
‘I have taken a detached view of your emotional predicament, and found the only answer,’
‘Wonderful!’ he exclaimed, mouth full of baby rusks.
‘First, you’ve got to face it. That pink-haired punk is the father of your child. It’s inescapable.’
He howled, beating his fist into his palm and scattering rusks over the crazy paving.
‘Unfortunately, that’s no crime. It was by invitation. I suppose you could nail him for trespassing, but if you took him to court he’d retreat using your dirty washing for flying colours.’
‘Every time I look at him I want to fumigate the furniture.’
‘People do seem to take their maternity, paternity, gay and lesbian rights so seriously these days. Look at those American tennis players.’
Mr Iles muttered impatiently, ‘As we can’t simply return his donation with thanks, what next?’
I pronounced, ‘Probably the wisest course is for you and Thelma to adopt him.’
Mr Iles tried to push me into the pool.
I felt this a poor reward for imaginative and logical thinking. I bid him good afternoon. I was eager to enjoy my apple pie.
Rebuffed, I determined to leave the broody Ileses in their nest with the live-in cuckoo. Overnight, I reflected that I had precipitated a genetic mess which could not be cleaned up, but might be swept decently under the carpet. It was Saturday, with a busy morning surgery. I applied constructive thought while enjoying my fat-free cottage cheese and low-calorie yoghurt.
The telephone rang. It was Mr Iles, hysterical.
‘I’d better go,’ I muttered hurriedly, reaching for my bag.
‘But you haven’t finished your lunch. What’s the matter with the man?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe she’s swallowed a month’s supply of tranquillizers.’
Sandra reminded mc, ‘You’re playing golf with Jack Windrush at two.’
I reached for my clubs as well. ‘I’ll drive straight on, unless it’s inconveniently fatal.’
Through the half-open patio door I observed Mr and Mrs Iles, Kevin and a teenage girl with green hair.
‘It’s the bleedin doctor again,’ Kevin greeted me amiably, waving his Havana. ‘Must be ard up, goin round toutin for custom.’
‘Who are you?’ I demanded ferociously of the female.
‘She’s my wife,’ Kevin supplied. ‘Common-law.’
‘Hiya.’ She took the cigarette from her mouth. ‘Christ, the bleedin fags in this ouse taste of sawdust.’
‘Get out,’ I ordered, pointing helpfully.
‘I ain’t gonna leave me usband,’ she objected shrilly. ‘Not likely. Oojer fink you are, splittin up families?’
‘Partickerlary,’ Kevin pointed out, ‘as Karen’s auntie to my unborn baby.’
Mrs Iles broke her silence with hysterical screaming, but happily avoided a faint.
‘Edgar, pour a large Scotch for the doctor,’ Kevin commanded.
‘I am going to tie the barbecue round my neck and jump into the pool,’ Mr Iles declared, beating his head with his fists.
‘Calm down, everybody,’ I directed sternly. ‘The relationships of Mrs Iles’ coming child are admittedly complex. Doubtless they can be clarified after the happy event. Possibly the College of Heralds can be of help. Meanwhile, the situation calls for constructive thought. Now listen – oh, Edgar, do take Thelma upstairs and stop her screaming. I’ll meet you on the patio. Thank you. Now listen, you pair of died-in-the-hair villains,’ I continued when we were alone. ‘You’re not going to use this place as an up-market dosshouse, even if Kevin’s impregnated Mrs Iles with sextuplets.’
‘Oo, ark at im!’ Karen giggled. ‘Language!’
‘Reely, I’m surprised at you, talking like that,’ said Kevin hurtfully. ‘I ave a delicate and beautiful relationship wiv Thelma, OK? Can’t deny it, neither me nor er. But wot do you suppose me own lovely wife finks about it? Wot would your wife fink, if you came in one night and said, “Ho, by the way me old darlin, hi ham to be the father of another woman’s child”?’
‘That’s an utterly outrageous comparison.’
Karen giggled again. ‘Wouldn’t put it past im, randy lot of sods them doctors, you’d never believe wot that one in Camden Town did to me, said I’d go blind otherwise, the cheek. Mind, e looked more like a witchdoctor if you ask me.’
I declared in exasperation, ‘Your lovely wife thinks exactly as you do – now you’ve serviced Mrs Iles, you want to extract the largest possible stud fee.’
‘Well, we’ve nowhere else to go,’ Kevin pointed out with finality. ‘Unless you’d like to take us in? Maybe I can do the same favour for your own old woman, if she ain’t well past it?’
I told him what I thought of him.
‘Oooo!’ cried Karen, hands over ears. ‘Whereja suppose e learned words like that?’
Mr Iles was distractedly pacing the patio. I kept him between me and the pool.
‘I’ve got to adopt her as well, I suppose?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Why not their whole bloody families at the same time, save a lot of bother as they’re liable to move in by the busload any moment.’
‘Relax, relax.’ I gripped his elbow. ‘I smell a cellarful of rats. Dial 999.’
‘Not on your Nelly.’
I was startled. ‘Don’t you and Thelma want to stand at the front gate waving your handkerchiefs while they’re driven off in a van with flashing blue lights?’
‘No.’
‘All right, then consult some crafty solicitor. Do you know, there’s nothing whatever in the law to stop an AID mother claiming a court order to unmask the father and getting maintenance for life? Any hint of Kevin paying a penny for his own child, he’d be off quicker than a dirty nappie.’
‘You and your constructive thought,’ he complained bitterly. ‘If I had them arrested for anything from blackmail to squatting, all would come out in open court. You said as much yourself. I’ve told the entire biscuit factory the baby is all my own work. What will they think if I stand in the witness box and confess my pathetic lack of virility? It would have a disastrous effect on labour relations, for a start.’
I countered, ‘What’s the Kevin pustule do all day in the house?’
‘Drink and watch telly.’
‘Let’s leave them for a bit, while we think even more constructively. After all, they’ll be no more trouble about the place than a pair of Great Danes.’
He said doubtfully, ‘But my poor wife suffers vomiting of pregnancy – she throws up every time she sets eyes on this awful youth.’
‘Send her home to Mother,’ I suggested brightly.
‘But what about me? I want to vomit whenever I look at him, too.’
I prescribed a pregnancy anti-emetic for them both. I was eager to enjoy my golf.
A week passed. I played golf with Jack Windrush again. On my way home, I called on the Ileses. My meals not having been disturbed by further frenzied phone calls, I assumed the spare pair of parents had been shed.
They were all four enjoying a hot dinner, with a bottle of Blue Nun.
I slipped through the patio doors.
‘Why, the doctor,’ Mr Iles called cheerfully above the laughter. ‘Kevin, my dear lad, pour him a Scotch. Karen, love, help Thelma to more stuffing and take another slice for yourself. Excuse me if I go and have a little consultation on the patio.’
‘Are you euphoric?’ I demanded outside. ‘Like hostages who fawn on their captors?’
‘I decided temporarily to accept the situation,’ he explained. ‘Like Sindbad the Sailor with the Old Man of the Sea on his back. And after all,’ he reflected, ‘Kevin and Karen aren’t such bad youngsters at heart.’
‘Personally, I think they make Bonnie and Clyde look like the Bisto kids.’
‘Maybe they’re just misunderstood at home, by society and so on,’ he continued dreamily. ‘It’s quite unrealistic, expecting everyone in the world to behave as if they were members of Churchford Golf Club. They’ve simply been deprived of cultural opportunities. Thelma and I are already planning visits to the public library, antique boutiques, the local ruins. Yes, they’re a jolly, lively pair, once you get to know them,’ he revealed. ‘Full of fun and good-natured teasing. And it makes a change, young laughter echoing through the house, even at all hours of the day and night. When the infant arrives,’ he ended determinedly, ‘we’ll be just one happy, integrated family, though mind you, their language is terrible, and you cannot leave so much as a second-class postage stamp around or they nick it.’
‘You’re mad,’ I exploded. ‘Don’t you realize, this callous couple of crooks will lounge about freeloading until they’re bored, then scarper with everything in the house not actually fixed down with six-inch screws? Probably invite some of their equally jolly and lively young friends to come and help themselves.’
‘If only somebody would tell me what to do,’ he said pathetically.
‘I keep telling you what to do.’
‘I mean, tell me what to do that I wanted to do.’
‘Bribe them,’ I suggested constructively. ‘You must be worth a bob or two? Everyone munches biscuits, even in world recessions.’
‘Wouldn’t they just spend the money and come back?’ He wiped away a tear. ‘I’ve nothing left but a brave face. This is a situation totally unknown in the history of parenthood since the Garden of Eden.’
I left. I was eager to enjoy my evening Glenfiddich.
The following weekend Mrs Iles appeared at evening surgery.
‘Thought I’d better have a check-up, doctor, to see the baby’s unaffected by that nasty experience.’
‘Ha! They’ve taken their leave?’
‘Didn’t you hear?’ She was amazed. ‘It’s all round Churchford, five in the morning police arrived, hundreds of them, with walkie-talkies and Alsatians, surrounded the house and took them off in handcuffs, it was better than the telly.’ She sat across the consulting desk like a cat which had had a narrow escape but still counted nine lives. ‘It was all a con job, you see, they burgled my doctor in Wimpole Street, stole his appointments book, and used it to terrify families all over the Home Counties until they were bought off. Edgar won’t even need stand up in court. They’re wanted for a whole catalogue of crimes from grievous bodily harm to shoplifting.’
I exclaimed, ‘What a worry lifted for both of us! And now your baby’s parentage will remain an inviolate secret for ever and ever. Amen!’
Andy had arrived home for dinner. I opened a bottle of Bruichladdich.
‘How’s Imogen?’
‘Ah, Imogen. We decided we were incompatible. It was all perfectly amiable. When we parted, she said she would give me first refusal of her kidneys on her donor card.’
Briefly condoling, I leaned against the mantelpiece to recount with relish the Ileses’ pregnancy drama.
Andy grinned. ‘The Wimpole Street wank bank! I think all the donors are medical students.’
‘Medical students! A turn-off for the prospective mothers, isn’t it?’
‘Ah, the vulgar Dickens’ Bob Sawyer image,’ Andy corrected me.
‘Even the refined Thackeray called medical students rakish, gallant, dashing and dirty.’
‘Well, didn’t we play up to it, Dad, both of us? It was fun, made us exciting to girls, and perhaps the horrors wouldn’t have been tolerable otherwise. Medical students are highly responsible young persons, or they wouldn’t be let in.
And
they know all about hereditary diseases. Did you hear that Italian women are mad on English medics? Well, on their sperm. Just imagine the Ileses’ situation in reverse – some twenty-year-old Italian raver invading a middle-aged doctors’ conference in London demanding Daddy?’
I laughed heartily.
‘Must have made a useful few quid out of Wimpole Street, when I was a student,’ he reflected nostalgically.
‘You?’
‘Yes, my specimens were frozen. Funny thing, I ran into the sperm-mongering doctor at St Swithin’s about a couple of months ago, and he mentioned he was just getting round to using my donations.’
Sandra entered as my whisky glass crashed to the hearth.
‘What’s the matter?’ she exclaimed in alarm.
‘I am Mrs Iles’ baby’s grandfather,’ I told her. ‘What’s for dinner?’