Mr Clew at morning surgery, bubble-haired, droopy-moustached, velvet-jacketed, interior decorating and fitted kitchens. He announced that he would deliver the baby at home himself.
‘That will really open a tin of wasps,’ I predicted forcefully.
‘But if giving birth is not a family matter, what is?’ He was one of those irritatingly aggressive meek people, who wish to inherit the earth without delay. ‘Debbie and me are a serene, caring couple, and it occurs to me that women were having babies long before doctors were invented. I saw our two little ones being delivered at the General, and I must say there seemed nothing to it.’
‘It’s the same with showjumping on the telly. Looks as easy as riding the roundabouts, until you try it yourself.’
‘Haven’t human beings something deep down to produce their young safely, like the rest of God’s animals, doctor? I don’t think I’ve seen anything more tender than a cow with a newborn calf or a mare with a foal. When the time comes, won’t the father’s instinct work as strongly as the mother’s? Debbie and me vibrate as one person, you know. So powerfully that when she goes into labour I develop stomach pains.’
‘The couvade is a well-recognized male reaction to childbirth,’ I informed him briskly. ‘I believe there was a lot of it about among the Red Indians.’
He made the hushed suggestion, ‘Why don’t
you
deliver my wife, doctor, at home? Surely you’re entitled to?’
‘I’m entitled to do heart transplants, but for the good of all concerned I prefer leaving them to doctors who know more about it than I do. Well, if you want to deliver your wife’s child, I can’t stop you, no more than cutting her corns. Good morning.’
I reached home for lunch to find Dr Basil Barty-Howells, the new consultant physician at the General, who everyone tells me is utterly brilliant, standing on my hearthrug in an agitated state.
‘Look, about the Queen opening our brand-new Elizabeth Block in three weeks,’ he said, accepting a barely noticeable sherry.
‘It isn’t brand-new.’
‘Buildings unlike ships can be launched when going full speed ahead,’ he remarked impatiently. ‘Oh, I know it was started when Barbara Castle was Minister of Health, or perhaps Enoch Powell, but those little problems like having to redig the foundations, the asbestos lagging likely to kill all the patients and the plastic ceilings liable to burn like napalm, and the unions blacking the improved food trolleys, they’re happening to new hospitals throughout the NHS. It’s an opening to celebrate, that’s why we asked all the local GPs. Particularly when the rest of the General resembles a cross between a Victorian abattoir and a refugee camp. I was to make the speech welcoming Her Majesty, but I can’t.’
‘Stage fright!’
‘No, hunting.’
‘Couldn’t you put it off?’
He began to pace the room. ‘As a student, I was a dedicated anti-huntsman. I sabotaged them all. Had wonderful days out with the Quorn, Pytchley, Heythrop! So I cannot bring myself to address the mother of a regular hunter. Oh, I know it’s ridiculous.’ He shakingly set down his untasted sherry. ‘But I suffer overwhelming feelings of revulsion. As everyone knows, I’m a socialist anti-nuclear ecologist.’
I nodded. He had a beard.
‘So as you’re retiring–’
‘What! How did you know? I divulged the secret to my partners and receptionist only yesterday.’
‘Oh, it’s all over Churchford. So we thought it would be a nice gesture for you to do the speech. It would also prevent quite murderous jealousy among the other hospital consultants.’
‘Impossible!’
‘What, you’re a hunt saboteur, too?’
‘No, but I’m unaccustomed to public speaking.’
‘Nonsense. They tell me at golf club dinners you go on for hours. I’ll announce you’ve accepted. I’m late for my clinic.’
When I bemusedly told Sandra, she said, ‘I must buy some more clothes.’
‘You’ve already spent a fortune on clothes.’
‘That was for being in the audience, not part of the show. I’ll go this very afternoon to Robbins Modes.’
Next morning Mrs Bryanston-Hicks demanded to see me in the surgery. She was Churchford’s queen-bee midwife. She was nearly six feet tall, with tits the size of goldfish bowls. She was enough to make any newborn baby bolt back to its burrow. She slapped on my desk the
Churchford Echo
.
She said, ‘Well?’
I was appalled. The front page. Mr Clew defying the General Hospital by doing his own thing with his own baby, encouraged by Dr Gordon, one of the few traditional family doctors, full of loving care. There was a big photograph of the family under a sign, CLEW’S CLASSIC KITCHENS.
I pointed out nervously, ‘But the
Echo
is no more reliable for the truth than
Pravda
.’
She declared forthrightly, ‘I am going to prosecute Mr Clew under the Midwives Act (1951).’
I frowned. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Of course I can. It’s all in section 9.’
‘But isn’t the Midwives Act only to stop Sara Gamps setting up obstetrical shops in their back rooms?’
‘Don’t you read the papers? We’ve brought unruly fathers to heel everywhere from Stockton-on-Tees to Redruth. We can’t allow the whole country to have babies however they please, making a mockery of midwives.’
I murmured defensively, ‘Mr Clew’s a very caring man.’
‘Caring, caring!’ she exploded. ‘Why does everyone these days say caring when they only mean sloppiness? Looking after people is damn tough work demanding a highly trained intellect. Was anybody more caring than Florence Nightingale? Of course not. And what did she do? Rolled up her sleeves and organized everybody, like Mrs Thatcher and the Falklands.’
I complained uneasily, ‘That paper’s dreadfully unfair. I only said that people needn’t take the doctor’s medicine or advice if they didn’t feel like it. Look at the Jehovah’s Witnesses.’
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘I shall prosecute you as well, as an accessory before the fact.’
My horror grew with the winter shadows. I calculated that I could be hauled before the General Medical Council on four counts. Advertising myself in the papers. Inciting lawbreaking. Denigrating my fellow-practitioners at the General. And associating with unqualified midwives. I thanked God for shame avoided by pre-emptive retirement.
I drove home that evening to find Jilly. She said that Bertie Taverill was most surprised at my behaviour, but supposed I was seeking martyrdom like a Russian dissident. He had expressed puzzlement at my knocking his competence, as a fellow-student from St Swithin’s, a neighbour who was always furthering my own professional interests, social life and family happiness. He hoped the GMC would take a lenient view, though he could not for the life of him see how they could possibly avoid striking me off for years.
I said unhappily that I hoped it would not upset Peter.
She snapped, ‘What do you mean, Peter? I’m only concerned about my career. I mean absolutely nothing to Peter.’
She left the room hurriedly.
The atmosphere in my house was as in Cleopatra’s during the application of asps. I bolted to the golf club. In the bar was Dr Quaggy.
‘Read all about you in the paper, Richard.’
‘Halfway through this morning’s surgery, I decided that if another patient said that to me with a sly grin, I would batter him to death with the knee-jerk hammer.’
‘As an old friend, Richard, I can tell you frankly we’ve been worried about your overstrain for months. All the GPs are terribly relieved to hear you’re going for good.’
He smiled like a snake in the grass meeting a charmer. ‘By a strange coincidence, my son Arnold has just finished that GP training. He would be absolutely ideal to step into your shoes, I’m sure you’ll agree? Did you hear I’m becoming president of the Churchford Medical Society, after Charlie Pexham died last year? Not of course that that would influence the selection committee in Arnold’s favour. Poor Charlie!’ He sighed into his pink gin. ‘Should have retired early, might have been alive today. We all miss him.’
I agreed. There were many of my colleagues I passionately wished were not dead, and vice versa.
I drove to the empty, dark surgery. I had to dredge my alluvia on the shoals of time. I tipped my files on to my desk. I was baffled where to start. I supposed Gibbon felt the same about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
My mind wandered. I reached for
Titles and Forms of Address
, borrowed from Dr Lonelyhearts. My first problem with the Queen was how to say hello. The book directed me to use ‘Ma’am’. But as in ham or marmalade? It added, ‘On presentation to the Queen the subject does not start the conversation.’
Just like doctors, I thought, who
always
start the conversation, even if just, ‘What, you here again?’ The royalty business suddenly lay exposed. Just like doctors, royals must be unflaggingly pleasant to a succession of total strangers not feeling at their best, often embarrassed by the unwonted situation and some possibly pissed.
What do royals think about during a lifetime of interminable addresses by mayors, worshipful masters and bards in Welsh? I wondered. It was humanly impossible to concentrate on the flood of oratory while awaiting your cue to slap trowel on foundation stone, fire champagne at bows, congratulate some university’s harvest of intellectual sprouts. I supposed that like the rest of us at boring parties they wondered if the lads were likely to kill themselves with daring sports, the girls were pregnant again, what was for dinner, why the spouse was so bloody-minded this morning and where the money goes.
I composed a few simple sentences on a blank patient’s card. The worry about speechifying lessens with not trying to be too clever, as I advise young persons worried about sex. It was midnight. Jilly would be back at the General, Sandra in bed. I could venture home for a solitary soporific single malt.
That night I had a frightful dream. I stood wordless and blank-minded while everyone coughed and shuffled their feet and the Queen eyed me like her predecessor on receiving a newsflash of the approaching Armada. I woke in panic. The anxiety lingered. I could become tongue-tied, lose my notes. We would be Not Amused at my joke. I began to share the phobia of P G Wodehouse’s Gussie Fink-Nottle presenting the prizes, of my trousers splitting down the back. I began to wish I had never accepted.
My first patient that morning was Moira Days. She had deposited Tracey early at the nearby Clement Attlee Primary. I wondered if she still wished to leave her mark on our faded insubstantial pageant, even nestling in someone else’s pelvis. Though with her alcoholic history. I would not take her liver as a gift.
‘Doctor, I can’t afford to live in my room just down the road any longer,’ she revealed chirpily. ‘What with being supportive to my brother, and Dad griping about missing his little comforts in that home, and of course Tracey having to be properly nourished and I won’t have her shabbily dressed, it means a lot to a child, I always say, you’d be surprised how cruel they can be to one another in the playground. If I wasn’t so cheerful I’d think of letting the Welfare take Tracey and ending it all, honestly.’
I interrupted sharply by quoting Churchill. ‘Never commit suicide, you may live to regret it.’
Moira laughed. I was puzzled. ‘Doctor, you’re always making that joke. Don’t worry, the patients often have a good giggle in the waiting room, how you always make the same little jokes to all of us.’
With mixed feelings, I remarked, ‘Well, you can enjoy some brand-new jokes from Dr Spondeck, once I retire.’
‘Don’t say that, doctor.’ She fell silent. ‘Don’t retire yet. Please. You’re my only friend left.’
I gently pooh-poohed that I was more than her medical adviser. But I was deeply stirred.
My last week in medical practice. My career would end like a Prime Minister’s by seeing the Queen.
By the Wednesday morning I felt I would give anything for Basil Barty-Howells to appear saying he was doing it after all. At lunchtime he appeared saying he was doing it after all.
He distractedly paced the carpet. ‘This is dreadfully awkward, Richard. I know it’s exactly the honour we should all have liked to see marking your retirement, but the Ministry are absolutely insisting that I perform. The government seems to have sunk almost as many millions into the new building as into the North Sea. So they want one of their own doctors to get on television news. Also, the health workers require a glowing tribute from a consultant, or they’ll instantly shut the place down again by blacking the improved operating-theatre lifts. And further, I feel fox-hunting is perhaps not so inhibiting, as I’m into gassed badgers.’
I exclaimed, ‘Utterly delighted! I’ve become a terrible case of pedal hypothermia.’
As he left, I imparted to Sandra, ‘Hooray! No speech. Now I’ve absolutely no obligation to retire.’
She stared. ‘But all month you’ve been grumbling about hardly waiting to get out.’
‘Ah, yes.’ I agreed. ‘And so I do. Well, I hope I shall have a nice quiet week, before never again laying hands on human flesh except your own.’
In the waiting room as I arrived for evening surgery was Mrs Radnor. She was neat, slight, thirtyish, with a black eye. Accompanying her was a huge woman in jeans and a fisherman’s knit sweater, who announced herself as Ms Hammersham of Sanctuary.
‘Ms Radnor is a battered wife,’ she informed me. ‘I want you to examine her, doctor, before I call the police.’
I barred her following us into the consulting room. ‘I examine patients without a studio audience, if you don’t mind.’
She glared. ‘But I demand to be present. I am safeguarding women’s rights.’
I said, ‘Hop it, dearie.’
She retired, fuming and muttering about the
Guardian
.
I sat Mrs Radnor down, still in her apron, and asked what happened.
‘Well, Fred’s tea was cold again, it was egg and chips, and he lost his temper, hardly blame him, really, he hit me in the eye, or perhaps he just caught it with his elbow while making threatening gestures, but I was in a temper myself, and remembered Sanctuary in what used to be the greengrocer’s on the corner, so I went straight there, I suppose mostly to get away from Fred, who was carrying on like a great baby, but the big lady got all excited and wants to send Fred to jail.’
I examined the contusion. No treatment needed. We emerged. I explained to Ms Hammersham it was a storm in that afternoon’s teacup.
She countered, ‘I demand, Dr Gordon, that you supply signed evidence of Ms Radnor’s violation.’
‘Might I demur that you imagine yourself to be as important inside this surgery as you imagine yourself to be out of it?’
She said furiously, ‘A typical male doctor! Doubtless you see women only as sex objects.’
‘I should hope so,’ I told her. ‘If none of us were sex objects on the appropriate occasion the human race would be extinct animals. Might I tell you how utterly bored I am with women who are constantly kicking against the pricks, if you’ll pardon that expression. All this nonsense about chairpersons and watchpersons and God’s sublime achievement is person, in the next century it’ll be a laughable fad, like the Victorians putting skirts round piano legs.’
She grabbed Mrs Radnor’s hand, hissed, ‘You shall hear more of this,’ and slammed the door.
That night saw my retirement dinner. Just Dr Lonelyhearts and Jack Windrush and selected cronies in Soho. I reached home late in a minicab. Sandra was agitated. The newspapers had been telephoning. But I was trying to tell her Windrush’s funny story about the tart’s hearing aid, and not inclined to pay much attention.
Came the dawn. Horror! I found myself promoted in vilification from the local to the national press. Worthy Sanctuary was obstructed in its merciful work among battered women by callous Dr Gordon, who was unavailable for comment. In my blazing fury at this synthetic disgrace there glowed a tardy realization that people who wrote for newspapers made fork-tongued vipers look as harmless as glow-worms. I wondered if the Queen had read it. I could never have made the speech. It would have been dreadfully uncomfortable for both of us. I thanked God again that I could vanish into retirement, as infamous Nazis into South America.
Jilly appeared unexpectedly at lunchtime.
‘I suppose you know that Bertie Taverill’s the president of Sanctuary?’
I started, over my cholesterol-free steamed cod.
‘But that’s like making John Peel patron saint of the Anti-Blood Sports League.’
‘Sanctuary has to deal with both men and women, so chose a president who was both.’ She hesitated, compressing her lips. ‘I don’t know what Mr Taverill thinks of your conduct, Daddy, but it won’t…won’t at all help…my professional career, ug.’
She left the room quickly again.
I took the rest of the day off. I felt we would get on well over a couple of malts, if I met King Lear in the golf club. I went to bed deciding to shirk the surgery for my final day. At 3 a.m. the telephone rang. It was Mr Clew, with violent abdominal pain.
I drove through the icy night. It could not be his habitual couvade, Mrs Clew not being due for a couple of months. The two children were screaming. Mrs Clew was distraught with scarlet-spotted cheeks. Mr Clew was in bed groaning. I examined him and telephoned the General.
‘Jilly? It’s Daddy. Sorry to rouse you, but I think I’ve a nasty appendix here.’
‘Pop him in an ambulance, go back to bed, and I’ll do the rest,’ she told me cheerfully.
‘I’ll have to take the children with me on the demo tomorrow morning,’ said Mrs Clew flusteredly.
I asked crossly. ‘What demo?’
‘Didn’t you hear, doctor? The big one Re-Birth is holding outside the General. Oh, I couldn’t possibly miss it, even with my husband a patient inside. It’d be like missing my own twenty-first birthday party. There’s coaches booked overnight from Manchester, Birmingham and Bath.’
‘But you can’t hold a demo tomorrow,’ I pointed out. ‘You’ll clash with the Queen.’
‘That’s the idea,’ she told me.
I slept an hour. I supposed I had better go to the surgery. A vanquished soldier must fight till the armistice. I arrived late. In my consulting room was Mrs Radnor, sobbing.
‘I didn’t mean to do it, honest, doctor.’
‘What didn’t you mean to do?’ I demanded shortly.
‘I wouldn’t have dreamed of it in a month of Sundays, if it hadn’t been for that big lady from the greengrocer’s carrying on about women’s rights.’
‘You’ve made it up with Fred?’
‘No, doctor, I’ve put him in the General with a fractured skull, from hitting him with a saucepan when he complained at breakfast his bacon was cold. Oh, it’s terrible! The police are threatening to shop me, there was reporters everywhere at the hospital for some demo or something, nosy parkers the lot of them, you’d have thought I’d won the pools, and come to think of it, doctor, Fred never hit me in the first place, not even with his elbow by mistake, I caught myself on the kitchen door, but at the time I was that mad at Fred, oh dear, what shall I do, I am a wicked woman.’
‘Your husband’s not seriously hurt, I hope?’ I asked with concern.
‘I don’t fancy he’s too bad, he’s being looked after by a lady doctor who was ever so nice to me, and funny thing, she’s got the same name as you.’
The telephone rang. Mrs Jenkins had a call from the General.
‘That appendix?’ I asked Jilly at once. ‘Complicated?’
‘Don’t know, Daddy,’ she told me brightly. ‘It’s still inside.’
I was surprised. ‘Really? I thought the surgeons’ motto was, “If in doubt, cut it out.”’
‘I might have done, before I got my Fellowship. But I was suspicious. It wasn’t quite right, somehow. Wrong white count, Now he’s fine and opening a bottle of champagne.’
‘Do your patients pretty well on the surgical wards, don’t you?’
‘But didn’t you hear about Mrs Clew? She arrived for the demonstration this morning, made such an impassioned speech she went into labour, and Bertie Taverill’s just delivered her of a little boy. Bertie says he does so wish you GPs would help the consultants by getting the patients’ dates right.’
‘The couvade!’ I exclaimed. ‘Mr Clew must be the only case of a father admitted to hospital with labour pains before the mother. Thank God you didn’t cut him open.’
Mrs Radnor blew her nose.
‘And I hope Bertie Taverill isn’t upset about the backlash from my Sanctuary patient?’ I asked hastily.
‘That’s another thing he wanted me to say. He’s eternally grateful for the wonderful turn you’ve done him. He says it’s going to make Sanctuary look as ridiculous as the Two Ronnies and a wonderful excuse to resign. He was only talked into heading the paranoic outfit by a Lady someone or other with fibroids.’
‘I can’t think of any better news to ensure my happy retirement.’
‘Oh, and Daddy, Peter Taverill and I are getting married next month. Damn! My bleep. Must go. See you with the Queen.’
The opening ceremony was delightful, freed from the agony of a speech. But… Well… Perhaps my elegant sentences from a patient’s record card would have gone better than a half-hour of Basil Barty-Howells, and it would have been a moment worth recalling to my now prospective grandchildren before they took me away to the St Boniface Twilight Home. Still, the Queen smiled at me. I wondered, what
was
she thinking about?
I had only that Friday evening to clear my files from the consulting room to which I should never return. Alone, I wrote my letter of resignation to the Family Practitioner Committee. It was growing late, on a bloody night pissing with rain. I sealed and stamped the envelope. The doorbell rang.
I frowned. Nobody called at the surgery that time of night. Patients telephoned for the partner on call. I opened the front door. Tracey was outside, dripping.
‘Doctor,’ she said solemnly. ‘Come at once.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Mum’s having one of her turns.’
I knew the code. Moira was back on the drink.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘Seems asleep now, though she’s been sick all over.’
I said kindly, ‘Really, the other doctor who’s on duty tonight is now in charge of Mum’s case.’
‘Mum told me, if anything happened like this to get you. She said you’re the only doctor who can help her.’
I said wearily, ‘All right, Tracey, I’ll come.’
I went back to the surgery for Mrs Jenkins’ red plastic brolly. I saw my letter on the desk. I said, ‘I’m buggered if I’ll retire.’ We left.
The rain drummed fiercely on the top of my opened umbrella. The little girl nestled close to my side and clung to my left arm as she had been bidden. We passed, this odd pair, across the rain-slashed oblong of light that the window cast.