Doctor at Large

6

The shock of finding the Cockney blonde was Hockett's wife did not lead to my losing much nourishment. Nothing followed the bread and sardines, Hockett maintaining that margarine was biochemically the superior of butter, and weak tea had a low caffeine content which prevented eventual nervous, alimentary, and moral degeneration. The wife, whose name I gathered was Jasmine, said little because she ate steadily through a pile of bread and margarine; but while Hockett was carefully mopping up the sardine oil with his bread I was horrified to see her wink at me.

As we rose from the table Hockett was struck by an afterthought. 'You didn't take sugar, did you, Doctor?' he muttered.

'It's all right, I can do without it at a pinch.'

'I'm so glad, Doctor. Extremely unhealthy, sugar. Pure carbohydrate. Surplus carbohydrate in the diet leads to obesity, and then what? We all know that obesity is a cause of arteriosclerosis, arteriosclerosis causes heart failure, and heart failure is fatal. Taking sugar in the tea is suicidal, Doctor.'

'I want the fire on,' Jasmine declared.

'Do you, my dear? But it's extremely warm. I find it warm enough, anyway. So does Dr Gordon. You feel warm, don't you, Doctor? A remarkably mild winter we're having.'

'I'm frozen to the marrow, I am,' Jasmine said. She clutched herself and shivered dramatically.

'Very well, my dear,' he said with an air of solemn generosity, as though reading her his will. 'You shall have the fire. Doctor, do you happen to have a match on you?'

This conversation had taken place in the dark, as the daylight had been fading swiftly during the meal and neither of them had thought of turning on the light.

'Very restful, the twilight,' Hockett continued, stumbling over the furniture as he groped for the switch through the blackness. 'Extremely valuable for restoring the sensitivity of the retina. We suffer from far too much light.'

He lit the fire, carefully turned it half down, sat in a chair beside it, and began reading the _Daily Express_ steadily from the headlines to the printer's name at the foot of the last sheet.

'You may smoke, if you wish, Doctor,' he said, looking up. 'We ourselves do not-'

'Liable to give fatal disease of the lung, you mean?'

'Exactly. If you wish for something to read, there are some books on the table behind you. They were left in the waiting-room by patients, but I expect they are perfectly readable.'

I started on _Pears' Cyclopaedia._ When I became tired of reading this, I stared for a while at a stuffed duck in a glass case opposite. Once I had seen enough of the duck, I took another dip into _Pears._ Jasmine sat between us knitting, and every time I looked at her she winked. Thus the evening passed.

At nine o'clock Jasmine yawned and said, 'I'm off to get a bit of kip.'

'Very wise of you, my dear. Early to bed and early to rise is a perfectly sound motto physiologically.'

'Good night one and all,' she said cheerfully, gathering her knitting. 'Sleep tight, Dr Gordon.'

As soon as she had ad left the room Dr Hockett turned the fire out.

'Sweltering in here, Doctor, isn't it? Now that my wife has retired we can have a talk on professional matters. I don't like to discuss such things in front of her. First of all, your duties. You will see the National Health patients twice a day at the surgery in Football Ground Road, and take all the night calls. I see the rest and the private patients, such as they are, in my consulting-room here. I don't go out at night.' He gave me another look under his eyebrows. 'I don't like leaving Jasmine alone. She is still very young.'

'Quite understandable.'

There was a pause.

'A very attractive woman, Jasmine,' he added.

'Most attractive, sir,' I agreed politely. As he continued to stare at me in silence, I shifted in my chair and added, 'I mean, in a sort of utterly platonic way, and all that, you know.'

After gazing at me for several more seconds he suddenly produced a key on a string from his waistcoat pocket. 'This is the duplicate key of the drug cupboard in my surgery next door. There are only two keys in the house. Please see that the cupboard is always locked. I do not think it wise for Jasmine to have access to it.' He handed me the key and went on, 'Jasmine is in many ways somewhat childish. As we are to work closely together, Doctor, I think it best for me to confide in you now. It may come as a shock to you to hear that Jasmine was my daily maid before becoming my wife.'

'No! Really?'

'I had practised abroad for many years. Out East. I never married. Marriage somehow seemed always beyond my means. However, when I settled here-I nevertheless love Jasmine very deeply, Doctor,' he continued, staring hard. 'I would not like to see anyone harm a hair of her head.'

'That's the spirit,' I said brightly. I was now feeling badly in need of a drink. 'After all, you're her husband and all that, aren't you?'

'Yes, Doctor,' he murmured. 'I am her husband.'

He then rose, switched out the light, and suggested we went to bed.

Breakfast the next morning was tea and porridge. Dr Hockett didn't believe in overloading the gastric absorption so early in the day.

The meal was begun in silence, because Hockett was attending to his morning mail. The general practitioner's daily postbag is filled with advertisements from the pharmaceutical firms and boxes of free samples, which are passed by most of their recipients directly into the waste-paper basket. But Hockett carefully opened each one, smoothing the envelopes for future use and reading the shiny pages of advertisements from the coloured slogans at the top to the formulae in small type at the bottom.

'Surely, sir, you don't believe in all that rubbish?' I asked. I felt I had been bullied long enough in the house, and I had slept sufficiently badly to have the courage of a bad temper. 'At St Swithin's we were taught to chuck advertisements away unopened.'

'On the contrary, Doctor, I find I derive a great deal of medical information from them. One of the difficulties of a general practitioner is keeping up with the latest work. And all the medical journals are so infernally expensive.'

'But look at the muck they send in free samples! No G.P. in his right mind would prescribe it. This, for instance-' I picked up a large bottle of green liquid labelled DR FARRER'S FAMOUS FEMALE FERTILITY FOOD.

'Careful, Doctor! Don't drop it. As a matter of fact I keep all the samples. I have several hundred in the cupboard in my consulting-room. My private patients seem glad enough of them.'

'You charge for them, I suppose, sir?' I asked coldly.

'Naturally,' he replied without hesitation. 'Patients do not appreciate what they do not pay for. That is surely recognized as one of the evils of the National Health Service? Now I really think you should be getting along, Doctor-your surgery is well over a mile, away, and it is bad for the practice to arrive late.'

I drove Haemorrhagic Hilda through the rain towards Football Ground Road, trying to suppress my feelings. If I were to be a G.P. I was going to be a damn good one, despite Hockett, Jasmine, a bed as uncomfortable as the rack in the Tower, and the effects of incipient frostbite and starvation. This determination wavered when I saw the surgery itself: it was a shop-front with the glass painted bright green and DR HOCKETT'S SURGERY Written across it in red, like the window of a four-ale bar.

There was already a queue of patients on the pavement as I unlocked the door. Inside I found a single room filled with parish-hall chairs, with a partitioned cubby-hole for the doctor in the corner. This cubbyhole was largely filled with filing cabinets, though there was an old examination couch, a small stained desk, a basin, a Bunsen burner, and an oil stove, which I immediately lit. I washed my hands, took out my fountain-pen, put my head round the cubby-hole door, and said, 'First patient, please.'

A fat mother accompanied by a fat adolescent schoolgirl rose from the first line of chairs, and advanced on me with the expression of purposeful dislike used by women when demanding to see the manager.

_'Adiposa familiars,' _I said brightly, as they entered.

'What's that?' the mother asked sharply.

'A Latin expression. Medical terminology. You wouldn't understand it.' I waved them towards the two chairs jammed beside the desk, placed my finger-tips together, and began, 'Now, what's the trouble?'

'Where's the doctor?' the mother asked.

'I am the doctor.'

'No, the real doctor.'

'I assure you I am a perfectly real doctor,' I said calmly. 'Surely you don't want me to produce my diploma?'

'You're Hockett's new boy, are you?'

'I am Dr Hockett's most recent assistant, certainly.'

She assessed me for some seconds.

'Well, I can't say I like the idea much of you meddling with our Eva' she declared. Eva was meanwhile staring at me malevolently, saying nothing, and picking her nose.

'Either you want me as your daughter's medical attendant or you don't,' I said emphatically. 'If you don't, you can take your National Health card elsewhere. I assure you I shall have no regrets about it whatever.'

'It's the chest,' she said, nodding towards the girl.

'What's wrong with the chest?'

'Cough, cough, cough all night long she does. Why, I never get a wink of sleep, I don't sometimes,' she added indignantly.

'And how long have you had this cough, Eva?' I asked, with my best professional smile.

She made no reply.

'Very well,' I said, picking up my stethoscope. 'I'd better start by examining her, I suppose. Off with your things, now.'

'What, you mean take all her clothes off her chest?' the mother asked in horror.

'I mean take all her clothes off her chest. Otherwise I shall not be able to make a diagnosis, we won't be able to start treatment, Eva will get worse, and you won't get any sleep.'

Eva said nothing as her mother peeled away several layers of cardigans, blouses, and vests. At last her chest was exposed. I laid my stethoscope over the heart, winked at her pleasantly, and said with a smile, 'Big breaths.'

A look of interest at last illuminated the child's face. She glanced at me and grinned. 'Yeth,' she said proudly, 'and I'm only thixteen.'

The morning passed quickly. The patients came steadily to my cubby-hole, though every time I began to think of lunch and peeped outside there seemed to be as many waiting as ever. I was relieved to find that my work was reduced through most of them not needing a full diagnosis and treatment, but only a 'Sustificate, Doctor'. I signed several dozen of these, certifying that people were in a state to stop work, start work, go to the seaside, stay away from court, have a baby, draw their pension, drink free milk, and live apart from their relatives. I gained confidence with every signature, and was beginning to feel I had a flair for general practice when I came against the case of the cheerful old lady.

'Hallo, Doctor,' she began. 'And how are you this fine morning?'

'I'm extremely well,' I said, delighted to have a pleasant patient. 'I hope we'll find that you are too.'

'I'm not so dusty. Especially considering. Do you know how old I am, Doctor?'

'Not a day over fifty, I'll be bound.'

'Go on with you, Doctor!' She looked coy. 'I'm seventy next birthday, that's a fact.'

'You certainly don't look it,' I told her briskly, feeling it was time to start the professional part of the interview. 'And what's the trouble?'

'Trouble?' She looked startled, as if I had asked her whether she wanted lean or streaky. 'There ain't no trouble, Doctor.'

'Then why-forgive me if I ought to know-have you come to the doctor's?'

'To get another bottle of me medicine, of course.' 'Ah, I see.' I put my finger-tips together again. 'And what sort of medicine is this?'

'The red medicine, Doctor. You know.'

'I mean, what do you take it for?'

'The wind,' she answered at once.

'You suffer from the-er, wind?'

'Oh, no, Doctor!' She was now humouring the teasing of a precocious child. 'Haven't had the wind for years, I haven't.'

'And how long have you had the medicine?'

'Oh-let me see-I first 'ad it the year we went to the Isle of Wight-no, it couldn't be that year, because our Ernie was alive then. It must have been the year after. Except it couldn't have been, because we had our Geoff with us, and he's been under the sod a good fifteen-'

'Quite,' I interrupted. I saw before me as clearly as the eyesight chart hanging from the wall the Ministry of Health circular on extravagant prescribing. 'Well, I'm afraid you can't have any more medicine. You're as sound as a bell, really, and you don't need it. Take a walk in the park every day instead. Good morning to you.'

At first she didn't believe me. Then she said in a sad faint childish voice, 'But I must 'ave me medicine, Doctor.'

'You really don't need it.'

'But I always 'ave me medicine, Doctor-always. Three times a day regular after meals-' Then she suddenly burst into tears.

'Now please control yourself,' I said anxiously. I began to wish I had taken the Hospital Secretary's advice and chosen the. Army. 'It's nothing to do with me. It's simply a Ministry regulation. If it was up to me you could have a dozen bottles of medicine a day. But we doctors have to cut it down.'

'I want me medicine!' she cried.

'Dash it! Do you wish to unbalance the Budget and ruin the country? Please be reasonable.'

Suddenly her grief became anger. Beating the desk with her umbrella she shouted, 'I want me medicine! I know me rights! I've paid me National 'Ealth like everyone else!'

'I will not stand for this,' I said, wondering if there was anything in the Hippocratic Oath against losing your temper. 'Kindly leave the surgery.'

'You thief! You robber! That's what you are! Taking all them shillings every week from poor folk like me what can't afford it! I know what 'appens to them insurance stamps! I know! Lining the pockets of the doctors, that's what! I want me medicine!'

She left the cubby-hole, but repeated her demand to the patients who had been listening intently outside, inciting them to riot. I held my head in my hands. For five years at St Swithin's I had probably ruined my health through overwork and deprived my parents of the last comforts of their declining years-for this. It would have been easier to face if I had eaten a nourishing breakfast.

'Sit down,' I said dully, hearing another patient enter. 'Name, age, and occupation?'

'Wilkins. Twenty-one. Trades union organizer.' A youth in a tight blue suit sat down, still wearing his hat. 'But I ain't a patient. At least, not at the minute.' He spoke softly and slowly, as though demanding my money and valuables in an alley on a dark night. 'You've upset my mother you 'ave.'

'If that lady outside is your mother, I'd be obliged if you'd kindly take her home.'

'Under the Regulations for the Conduct and Control of the National Health Service,' he continued, staring at the ceiling, 'a patient what receives inefficient service from a doctor can state a case before the local Executive Council, who, if they shall decide the facts proved, shall deduct an appropriate fine from the doctor's remuneration.'

I lost my temper.

'Get out!'

'Take it easy, Doc., take it easy,' he continued in the same tone. 'I'm not saying nothing against you-I'm only quoting regulations, see? It just happens that I know 'em.'

'And I suppose you go round making a damn good thing out of it?'

Picking his front teeth with a matchstick, he continued, 'I'd be careful what I was saying, if I was you, Doc. There's a law of libel in the land, don't forget. As a matter of fact, I've had five cases against doctors. Won every one. All fined. I'm worth near a thousand quid a year to the Executive Council, I'd say.'

'Now look here, Mr Watkins-'

'Wilkins.'

'I don't care who the bloody hell you are or what you intend to do, but if you don't get out of here at once I'll kick your ruddy coccyx so hard-'

'Violence won't get you nowhere,' he said imperturbably. 'I could lay a complaint before the General Medical Council in that case. That you was guilty of infamous conduct in a professional respect.' He rose. 'Don't forget the name, Doc., Wilkins. You'll be hearing more from me.'

When I got home Jasmine was laying the table for our midday dinner.

'Hello,' she said brightly. 'You look like you're a bear with a sore head, and no mistake.'

'At the moment I'd make a pack of bears with sore heads look like a basket of puppies. Where's Dr Hockett, Jasmine?'

'The Doctor ain't in yet. He had to go out to the Vicar.' She laughed. 'That's the first time what you've called me Jasmine.'

I threw myself into a chair and picked up my _Pears Cyclopaedia._ After a while she went on, 'Didn't 'arf give you a start, didn't it? Yesterday at tea.' She giggled. 'Didn't know I was married to the Doctor, did you?'

'If you must drag the incident up again, Mrs Hockett, I will tell you that I didn't. And it did give me a start. Quite put me off my sardine.'

She laid out the last of the plates. 'I'm not blaming you,' she said amiably. 'Fancy me being the wife of a doctor! Phew! I can't get over it yet, sometimes.' As I said nothing, she came nearer my chair. 'Of course, he only married me to save the wages. Or mostly, I suppose. He's a mean old devil, like you said. Still, I acted for the best.'

'My dear Mrs Hockett-'

'Call me Jasmine, ducks.'

'I really cannot give opinions on your strictly domestic affairs. I have had an exhausting-in fact, excruciating-morning, and quite enough trouble for today, thank you.'

'Do us a favour, duckie,' she said.

'No.'

'Yes, go on. Be a sport.' She came near enough to stand over me. 'The Doctor's given you the key of the drug cupboard, ain't he?'

'No.'

'Yes he has-he always gives it to the assistant.'

'And what of it?'

'Be a gent and give us the lend of it a minute.'

'I certainly will not.' I turned to my Cyclopaedia again with finality.

'Oh, go on! I'll give it back. Dr Azziz let me have it.'

'Well, Dr Gordon won't.'

'Fetch us a bit of nembutal from the cupboard, then. I love nembutal.' She rubbed her stomach and rolled her eyes. 'Lovely grub, it is. Sends you to sleep and makes you forget what a bloody old miser the Doctor is.'

'That hardly seems the way for a woman to talk about her husband.'

Suddenly she made a grab for my waistcoat pocket.

'Come on! Give it over!'

'For God's sake, woman-!'

'Ooo! Let go! You're hurting!' she cried pleasurably.

'Damnation! Can't you control yourself?

We struggled over the chair and fell on to the floor. Jasmine was a sturdy girl and obviously experienced in parlour fighting. I had managed to push her from above me with difficulty, when Dr Hockett came in.

I scrambled up. My collar had flown from its stud, my face was red, I was sweating and breathless. Hockett stood in his overcoat in the doorway with his hands behind him, staring at me in the usual way.

'We-er-I had lost something on the floor,' Iexplained.

He nodded.

'Jasmine-Mrs Hockett, that is-was helping me find it.'

There was a long silence, while Jasmine smoothed down her clothes.

'Time for dinner,' Hockett said quietly. 'My dear, it is surely not necessary to have the fire on at this hour of the morning? It is really remarkably warm, for the time of year.'

None of us spoke during the meal, which was sausage and mash. When Jasmine had cleared away the dishes and left, Hockett said in his usual voice, 'Surprising the numbers of doctors who have sinned, isn't it?'

'Sinned?' I looked at him uncomfortably. 'You mean-er, sexually?'

'I mean who have committed murder.'

'Oh, yes?' I said faintly. 'I suppose it is.'

'There was Crippen-Palmer the Poisoner-Neil Cream in London. And many more. Do you remember the Ruxton case? He cut them up in the bath.'

'I suppose it's-sort of tempting to have all the stuff around. To go murdering people with.'

'Exactly.'

'Ah, well!' I said. I stood up, clutching the table for support. 'I must be getting along.'

'Many murderers are never detected, Doctor,' Hockett observed.

I ran to my room and wedged the bed behind the door.

The evening nevertheless passed the same way as the one before. Dr Hockett sat beside the faint-hearted fire and read the Express; Jasmine knitted, and winked every time she caught my eye; I looked at the duck and read my Cyclopaedia._

We went to bed at ten, parting as amiably as any trio which has shared for supper the same cod fillet. I heard Dr Hockett turn the electricity off at the main. I felt for my torch beside me, and went to sleep.

The telephone rang at one-thirty. As it was my job to take all night calls I automatically climbed out of bed, crept downstairs, and answered it.

'Fifteen Canal Place,' a man's voice said immediately. 'And hurry up.' The line went dead.

I pulled on my clothes, started up Haemorrhagic Hilda, looked for Canal Place on my new map, and bounced over the deserted tram-lines into the night. After losing myself three or four times I found the address at the far end of a long, narrow, twisting street too cramped for Hilda to pass. I walked the rest of the way, and as it was raining again I knocked on the door with my new suit soaked through to the pyjamas underneath.

'You've taken your time, I must say,' said the man who opened the door.

I shone my torch in his face. 'Wilkins!'

'The very same.'

'If this is some sort of joke-' I began angrily.

'Joke? I don't play jokes, Doc. Some people say I ain't got a sense of humour. It's mother.'

'What's wrong with her?'

'She's dying.'

'She is, is she? Well, we'll see.'

I found Mrs Wilkins in bed upstairs, suffering from the wind.

'She wants to go into 'ospital,' Mr Wilkins announced in a threatening voice.

'No doubt she does. So do half the population of the country. She needs a large glass of hot water, that's all.'

'She wants to go into 'ospital,' Mr Wilkins insisted.

'Good night,' I snapped, picking up my stethoscope.

'Ere!' He grabbed my lapel. 'You 'eard what I said-she ought to be in 'ospital.'

Mrs Wilkins belched loudly. 'I'm dying!' she cried.

'Now look here. I don't want to threaten you with bodily violence twice in a day, Mr Wilkins, but if you don't take your hands off me this instant-'

He stared at me, tight-lipped. 'All right. Have it your own way. I'm going to the Executive Council in the morning.'

'Go to the bloody Town Council tonight, if you want to.'

'And I'm going to the General Medical Council, too. You mark my words,' he shouted after me as I made for the street. 'Infamous conduct-professional respect!'

The words followed me as I ran through the rain, while his mother recovered sufficiently to stick her head out of the window and swear in away that would certainly have been inadvisable for a dying woman.

By the time I left the car outside Dr Hockett's house I was trembling with indignation. This was really too much. I had been treated worse than a man come to fix the drains. Already composing an outraged letter to the B.M.A., I opened the front door and flashed my torch along the hall. I found Jasmine standing at the bottom of the stairs in her nightie.

'Good God!'

She giggled. 'Hello, duckie. The Doctor's out. He had to go to the Vicar.'

'Get back to bed at once!'

'Go on! You sound like my old dad.' She came towards me. 'I'll go to bed,' she whispered, 'if you come too.'

I dropped the torch in fright. 'Have you gone insane, woman? Are you crazy? What do you think I am? He'll be back in a second.'

'No he won't, ducks. He's only just gone.' She grabbed me in the darkness. 'Come on! Now's our chance-don't you want a bit of fun?' Then she started kissing me, in the spirit of a boxer limbering up on the punching bag.

I managed to push her away and said desperately, 'Let me go! Let me go! Haven't I got enough to worry about as it is? Damn it-if you'll only leave me alone and go back to bed I'll-I'll give you some nembutal.'

She hesitated. 'You really will?'

'Yes, I really will,' I wiped my face with my handkerchief. 'In fact,' I went on breathlessly, 'I wish I could give you the whole ruddy bottle. But only if you'll go to bed at once and stay there like a good girl. Thus preventing both of us being cut up in the bath by tomorrow morning.'

She thought for a moment, weighing up the alternative delights of me and nembutal.

'O.K.,' she decided. 'It's a deal.'

'Run along then. I'll get it from the surgery and bring it up.'

As she disappeared upstairs I opened the drug cupboard and nervously flashed my torch inside. It was filled with several hundred small bottles of samples, which rattled like Haemorrhagic Hilda going downhill as they began to tumble on to the floor all round me. I grabbed the nembutal bottle, pushed the others back, locked the cupboard, and made for the stairs.

On the landing I hesitated. Jasmine had gone back to her room. Her door was shut. Was I in honour bound to keep my side of the bargain? Perhaps I could sneak back to bed and barricade the door. She might come after me, but Hockett would be back before she could make much more trouble…I heard a creak inside the room: she was impatiently getting out of bed. Her bare footsteps crossed the floor. I grabbed the door-handle and pulled.

'Ere!' she called., 'What's the big idea?'

'The idea is that you stay inside, my good woman.'

'Oh, is it-'

Together we pulled at the handle, one on each side of the door. As I had the nembutal bottle in one hand, I had a struggle to keep it closed. I didn't hear the front door shut, and as Hockett had returned to the house silently on his bicycle the first I knew of it was finding myself standing in the light of his torch.

'Lord Almighty!' I cried. Immediately it struck me how the situation would appear to him. 'It's all right, I said urgently. 'Your wife couldn't sleep. I was just going to fix her up with some of this.'

I waved the bottle in my hand. Then I saw it wasn't nembutal, but Dr Farrer's Famous Female Fertility Foods.