Doctor at Large

16

The second disturbance to my romance with Nurse Plumtree was the dinner at home.

'Mummy and Daddy are very sweet really,' she said as I drove Haemorrhagic Hilda down to Mitcham.

'I'm sure they are.'

'Forgive Daddy if he's a little crotchety sometimes. He's been rather like that since he retired from the Army. And Mummy's arthritis sometimes upsets her in weather like this. But I'm sure you'll like them very much. Just be yourself,' she advised me.

The Plumtrees lived in a small house called 'Blenheim' that stood in a neat garden containing a row of yews shaped into horses' heads, with a miniature brass cannon by the steps and a notice on the door saying CIVIL DEFENCE-CHIEF WARDEN. She rang the bell, which had the effect of a bomb going off in a zoo. Immediately there was an outburst of barking, caterwauling and human shouting from inside, and I waited nervously on the mat wondering if it was a pair of lions who were scratching hungrily for me inside the door.

'I do love animals so,' Nurse Plumtree said.

The door burst open, and two Great Danes sprang at me, put their paws on my shoulders and began licking my face.

'Alexander! Montgomery!' cried someone inside. 'Mind what you're doing to the Doctor.'

'Don't worry,' said Nurse Plumtree calmly. 'They're only puppies.'

The dogs were pulled off, I staggered through the hall, and found myself in a sitting-room decorated with long photographs of regimental groups, a pair of crossed swords, a tiger-skin rug, and several ceremonial helmets under glass domes like forced rhubarb. The room seemed to be filled with human beings and animals. There were dogs in the corners, cats on the cushions, birds in the windows, and a tank of fish over the fireplace; scattered among them were a thin, stooping man with a white moustache, a fat dark woman in a purple dress, and a young man and a girl who both looked strongly like Nurse Plumtree.

'My dear, dear, Doctor,' said the Colonel, advancing with outstretched hand. 'How very pleased we are to see you! Edna has told us so much about you. May I introduce Edna's mother?'

As I shook hands she said warmly, 'Edna's told me so much about you, too.'

The young man held out his hand and said, 'Hel-lo. Name's Ian. I'm at the BBC. Sweet of you to come, old thing. This is Joan. We're Edna's brother and sister, and we've heard so much about you it isn't true.'

Joan said, 'Smashing you could come. Always hearing about you.'

I began to feel annoyed. I had expected the evening to be a quiet dinner, and it had been turned into a gathering of the clan.

'Naughty, Cromwell,' Joan said, picking up a wirehaired terrier which had sprung from the hearthrug to start biting my ankles. 'Naughty, naughty Cromwell! Did you want to eat the Doctor, then?' She buried her nose in the struggling dog's neck. 'Don't you think he's got a lovely face?'

'He's getting married tomorrow,' Ian explained. 'Which makes him rather excited.'

'Now let's have a cocktail, Doctor,' said the Colonel, rubbing his hands. He smiled at me. 'Or I'd better call you Richard, hadn't I?'

'If you like, sir, of course.'

For some reason this made everyone roar with laughter.

Before long I could not help mellowing in the warmth of my reception. I had come prepared for suspicious tolerance at best, and now Edna Plumtree's father was treating me like the man bringing the winnings from Littlewoods. Even conversation at dinner was easier than I had feared, because the Plumtree family, like many others, believed that the only way to make a doctor feel at home was to narrate their ailments since childhood in a richness of clinical detail more suitable for the operating table than the dining table. First Colonel Plumtree described the pelvic wound he had suffered at Dunkirk, starting with a short sketch of the military situation leading up to it and finishing with an account of the croquet lawn of his convalescent hospital in Torquay. Mrs Plumtree took up the surgical saga by relating all the events occurring both outside and inside her from the moment of entering hospital for a cholecystectomy. Joan Plumtree was bursting to begin the story of the carbuncle she had as a child which had to be squeezed of pus every morning, when Ian put his head in his hands and groaned, 'Not your beastly boils again, Joan darling, please!'_

They all looked at him in surprise.

'But Richard's a doctor,' Joan said.

'I know,' Ian shakily reached for his glass. 'But I'm not. It makes me go all over and over inside. If you don't stop I'll throw up, really I will!'

The family stared at the brother like passengers on a business-man's train watching a parson come aboard in the middle of a good story.

'I can't even stand talking about blood,' Ian went on to me. 'It's one of my things. I've got all sorts of things. I've got a thing about heights, and a thing about being trapped in the Underground and it filling up with water and everyone being drowned, and a thing about suffocating when I'm asleep. In fact, I'm all things. It all started when I had a nasty experience in a beastly prep school in Broadstairs-' He went on to give a full history of his neurosis, and those of several of his friends in Broadcasting House.

For most of the meal Nurse Plumtree had remained silent. But as the sweet arrived the family ran out of clinical material, and kept the conversation going by asking her to repeat once more the story of the morning she put Mr Cambridge in his place, or the day she settled the Matron's hash in front of the whole hospital. It was soon clear that Colonel and Mrs Plumtree believed their daughter dominated the nursing staff at St Swithin's, in the same fond way that the parents of the spottiest fourth-form dunce imagine their child is the school's sparking-plug. I noticed that they afforded me similar status in the surgical department, and began asking my opinion on medical matters of the day. So far nothing had been expected of me beyond sympathetic 'Umms' and 'Really's' at long intervals, but the Colonel had provided a good bottle of Burgundy and I was feeling in the mood to let myself expand a little. After addressing them for some time like the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, I ended by giving a stitch-by-stitch description of removing a kidney, which brought Ian's face into his hands again but left me confident that I had been an overwhelming success with the rest of the family.

'Well,' said Colonel Plumtree as I finished, 'that was most interesting, Richard. Absolutely fascinating. And I now, I expect the ladies would like to retire.'

The three women left us, followed by Ian, who murmured that he wanted to lie down. Colonel Plumtree brought a decanter of port from the sideboard and ' said genially, 'This is a drop I've been saving. It's from a the old Regiment. I think you'll like it, my boy.'

'That's very good of you, sir. But I hope, you haven't decanted it specially for me?'

'Not a bit, Richard, not a bit. Special occasion, special port, eh? Cigar?'

'Thank you, sir.'

Feeling that a medical qualification was worth the hard work, if it could occasion such handsome treatment in a staff nurse's home, I lit my cigar and settled myself at the head of the table close to the Colonel.

'You haven't known Edna long really, have you?' he asked.

'No, not very long. I only started on her ward a few months ago.'

'That doesn't seem to matter,' he said and roared with laughter.

To be polite I laughed, too.

'Tell me something about your career,' he went on. 'By all accounts you're a rather brilliant young man.'

'Oh, not really, you know,' I said, feeling flattered. 'There's nothing much to tell. I got qualified, did a spell in general practice, and now I'm at St Swithin's again. My ambition is to be a surgeon, of course.'

'Capital!'

He poured me some more port.

'If you'll forgive a more personal question,' Colonel Plumtree continued. 'About-ah, how much are you making at the moment?'

'I don't mind telling you at all.' I enjoyed giving inside information about the National Health Service. 'All we poor housemen get is about three hundred a year, when they've knocked off the board and lodging. But, of course, it soon goes up. In another four years or so I should be well inside the four-figure bracket.'

He nodded thoughtfully over his cigar. 'That's pretty reasonable, on the whole.'

'Not too bad at all, I'd say.'

'But you'll probably find yourself a bit short of cash at the moment, eh? After all, you've got to pay for the ring.'

'The ring?'

What on earth was he talking about? I had said nothing about amateur boxing? The circus, perhaps? Opera? Or bookmakers?

He nudged me. 'Her mother insisted on diamonds,' he chuckled.

The room spun round. The port boiled in my mouth. The cigar shot from my fingers like a torpedo.

'Steady on, old chap, steady on!' The Colonel patted me heartily on the back. 'Something go down the wrong way?'

It was almost a minute before I managed to speak. 'The port-perhaps a little strong-'

'Of course, my boy. Mustn't have you choke to death just now, eh? Ha, ha! Come along in and join the family.'

I followed father into the sitting-room, looking like Ian having one of his things.

The rest of the evening passed in a sickly blur, as though I were recovering from a bad anaesthetic. Joan said she hoped we'd be jolly good pals, and Ian thought I'd like to meet his interesting chum Lionel at the BBC. Father showed us his photographs from the war, and mother kept pressing my hand, murmuring 'I'm so glad,' and bursting into tears. As soon as I dared I pleaded a headache, lack of sleep, and early duty. There were disappointed cries, and I bought my freedom with false pledges of returning for Sunday tea to meet the aunts and dining next week at Daddy's club.

We drove away in silence. 'Poor Richard,' said Edna, wrapping my muffler tenderly round me. 'Daddy's Regimental port is rather strong. But don't worry-you made an awfully good impression on the family. It really was time they knew about us, wasn't it?'