Doctor in Clover (9 page)

‘You’re working terribly late, aren’t you?’

She gave the bed-cover a professional flick.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I rather like work. You new on the ward?’

‘I came down from ENT yesterday. My name’s Nurse Crimpole.’

‘Mine’s Miles Grimsdyke.’

‘Of course I knew that.’

‘You did?’

‘Surely everyone in the hospital has heard of the clever Miles Grimsdyke. Quite unlike the other one.’

She gave him another smile. Miles’ stomach felt as though he’d swallowed a nest of glow-worms.

‘What would you enumerate as the differential diagnosis of acute nephritis?’ asked Charlie Barefoot across Mrs Capper’s red-plush tablecloth later that evening.

Miles switched his eyes from Mr Capper’s Buffalo Group over the fireplace.

‘Eh?’

‘You all right?’ Barefoot looked concerned. ‘You haven’t touched your cocoa.’

‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Fit as a flea. Though perhaps I’m overdoing the Saturday tramps a little. Sorry, old man.’

‘It wasn’t important. Anything interesting happen in the ward this evening?’

‘No. Nothing worth mentioning at all,’ said Miles.

The next Saturday Miles told Barefoot he was visiting his aunt in Sydenham, and took Nurse Crimpole to the pictures.

‘You really mustn’t work so hard,’ she murmured, as he held her hand afterwards outside the mortuary gate. ‘I shouldn’t like anything to happen to you.’

‘Perhaps I’ll cut down in the evenings a bit, Dulcie. The finals aren’t for a couple of years yet, anyway.’

‘And I’m sure you’re not getting nearly enough to eat.’

‘Mrs Capper’s a bit mean with the first-class proteins, I must say.’

‘Do look after yourself. Miles – won’t you?’ She looked into his eyes and stroked his lapel. ‘For my sake.’

Next week Miles told Barefoot he was visiting his uncle in Beckenham, and took Nurse Crimpole to the Palladium.

For once in his life old Miles found he couldn’t concentrate. Unlike myself, whose thoughts tend to wander from the books in the direction of Lord’s or Epsom, Miles could not control his brain like a prize fighter his muscles. But now Nurse Crimpole’s smile kept coming between him and such things as the electrocardiographic diagnosis of Fallot’s tetrology. No nurse had wasted her time on the poor chap before, with such grand people as housemen and registrars about in the ward, Come to think of it, no woman had wasted her time on him at all. I wish I’d known what was going on. I might have buttonholed the chap and offered some fatherly advice.

Miles decided the next Saturday to tell Barefoot he was visiting his nephew in Croydon, and take Nurse Crimpole to the Corner House. When he slipped into the ward sluice-room to issue the invitation, he was surprised to discover her chatting to his room-mate.

‘Just looking for my diabetic specimens,’ Miles said quickly.

‘They’ve been taken down to the path. lab., old man,’ Charlie Barefoot told him. ‘If you’re going that way, I’ll come along and collect my own. Bye-bye, Dulcie,’ he added to Nurse Crimpole. ‘See you on Saturday.’

‘Two o’clock outside the Nurses’ Home,’ she replied, and went on polishing her bedpans.

Miles felt he’d been given the electroconvulsive treatment he’d seen in the psychiatric department. It had never occurred to the idiot that Dulcie Crimpole could have eyes for anyone else – particularly, he felt angrily, a stodgy old bookworm like Charlie Barefoot.

‘Known Nurse Crimpole long?’ he asked in the pathology laboratory, his hand trembling as he unstoppered a bottle of Benedict’s reagent.

‘I’ve seen her about the ward, you know.’

Miles paused.

‘I didn’t go to my relatives those last week-ends,’ he scowled.

‘So she tells me.’

‘I think Dulcie’s a very nice girl.’

‘So do I,’ said Charlie Barefoot.

That evening, Miles glanced up sharply from his Muir’s
Pathology
and said, ‘Perhaps, Barefoot, you would have the kindness to return my pencil, when you’ve finished chewing it.’

‘This happens to be my own pencil, Grimsdyke. And I am
not
chewing it.’

‘I distinctly saw you chew it just now. Apart from ruining the pencil – my pencil – you ought to know that chewing pencils is a thoroughly unhygienic habit, leading to the transfer of
Streptococcus viridans
and large numbers of other oral pathogens.’

‘Oh, take the bloody pencil!’ said Barefoot, and went up and sat in his bedroom.

It was the old business of sex. Cut-throat rivalry in class had never ruffled the two chaps’ friendship. Now they glared at each other all night across the top of their textbooks. The following Saturday evening, Miles sat alone miserably drinking cups of cocoa and wondering blackly how to do Charlie Barefoot down. The Saturday afterwards he told his chum he was taking Dulcie to the Festival Hall, and visited her parents in Guildford. On the Monday morning the whole hospital discovered that he and Nurse Crimpole were engaged.

Barefoot was very decent about it.

‘I won’t say I am not disappointed,’ he confessed in Mrs Capper’s parlour. ‘Dulcie’s a wonderful girl, and I was getting rather fond of her. But…well, there’s no one I’d rather lose her to than you, Miles,’

‘It’s really extremely generous of you, Charlie.’

‘And when’s the wedding?’

‘Not till I’ve qualified, of course, I’ve cabled my father out East that my new status certainly won’t interfere with my work. You’ll be my best man, I hope?’

‘That will be my only consolation for the whole affair.’

‘You’re a brick, Charlie.’

‘And you’re a real sport, Miles,’

They shook hands across Eden & Holland’s
Obstetrics
.

‘Now,’ began Charlie Barefoot. ‘What would you consider the leading features in the management of a case of puerperal paranoia?’

The years which stretch pretty chillingly ahead of you as a junior medical student soon start to melt away. As far as I remember, after that Miles took Dulcie out regularly every Saturday, while Barefoot went by himself for tramps in the country. The rest of the week the pair of them studied as steadily as before.

‘You’ll collar the Medical and Surgical Prizes in the finals all right,’ conceded Barefoot, when the exams were only a few weeks ahead.

Miles smiled across the plush tablecloth, now a little faded.

‘It could easily be your turn, Charlie.’

Barefoot shook his head. ‘No, Miles. You’re streets ahead of me on the practical. But I suppose we’d both better get on with some work. There’s really so much revision to get through. What are the ninety-four causes of haematuria?’

When Miles next met Dulcie, he explained he couldn’t spare his Saturday afternoons from studying any longer.

‘But you really must get some fresh air,’ she insisted. ‘After all, now I’m a staff nurse and know all about these things. Lack of sunlight can reduce your vitamin D right down to danger-level.’

‘Damn vitamin D!’ exclaimed Miles. ‘And A, B, and C as well.’

‘Miles!’ she said, horrified at such blasphemy.

‘I’m sorry, dear. I’m a bit irritable these days. It’s only the pressure of work.’

‘Are you sure that’s all? You’re looking terribly peaky.’

‘Yes, of course that’s all.’

Old Miles is fundamentally honest, which has nearly wrecked more careers than his own. He disliked telling Dulcie a lie. But how could he explain that he wished the ruddy woman were dead? A couple of years in the rough-and-tumble of the hospital wards has changed far worldlier young fellows than my cousin. As a junior student he’d been surprised at any girl smiling at him. Now he was almost a doctor and got smiles all round, some of them very pretty ones. And he could no longer dissuade himself that the woman was a shocking bore.

‘Are you sure you’re getting enough sleep?’ Dulcie went on. ‘The Professor says seven hours is the normal minimum. And what about your diet? I’m certain you’re not taking nearly enough calories. Dr Parsons gave us a smashing lecture about them yesterday.’

‘Very interesting, dear. How would you like to pass the afternoon? Shall we go round an art gallery?’

‘If you don’t think it would tire you too much. From the way you walk about, Miles, I’m not at all sure you haven’t got flat feet.’

The wedding was planned for a fortnight after the examinations, and I was already wondering how to raise the rent of a Moss Bros. suit. I hadn’t seen anything of Miles for weeks, and supposed he was swotting steadily for the exam. In fact, he was mostly sitting in Mrs Capper’s parlour trying to find some honourable escape from his obligations short of suicide. After my own later experiences in Porterhampton, I could sympathize with the chap. He told me afterwards he’d almost reached for Murrell’s
Poisons
before the answer appeared, with the clarity of all great inspirations.

Miles decided deliberately to fail his exam.

Even I could appreciate the simplicity of the scheme. Miles couldn’t sit again for another six months, and by then Dulcie Crimpole might have got tired of waiting. She might have got a sister’s job miles away in the North. She might have got run over by an ambulance. At least he wouldn’t be walking up the aisle with her in exactly six weeks’ time.

‘Hello!’ exclaimed Barefoot, arriving home from his tramp in the Chilterns. ‘You’re looking much happier with life tonight.’

Personally, I always find the day of the examinations as unattractive as the Day of Judgement, but Miles and Barefoot strode into the examination hall a few weeks later without flinching.

‘Good luck, Miles,’ whispered Barefoot, as they separated among the schoolroom desks just far enough apart to make cribbing rather tantalizing.

My cousin smiled, ‘This time you don’t need any, Charlie.’

Miles told me he did well in the written paper – bottling up that knowledge from Mrs Capper’s parlour would have been almost as heartbreaking for him as marrying Nurse Crimpole. Besides, the clinical session presents more opportunities for spectacular failure under the eye of the examiner himself. When a few mornings later Miles approached the bedside of his allotted examination case, he felt both determined and serene.

‘Well, my boy,’ began the examiner, appearing after the interval they give you for diagnosis, ‘what do you find wrong with your patient?’

‘I am afraid, sir,’ said Miles, ‘that I can’t make a diagnosis of anything at all.’

The examiner seized him by the hand.

‘Congratulations! We’ve put in a perfectly normal man, and you’d be horrified at the peculiar diagnoses I’ve had to put up with all morning. Mr Miles Grimsdyke, isn’t it? I thought so. Only a student of your outstanding ability could have seen through our little deception. Excellent, my dear sir! Good morning.’

Poor old Miles staggered into the street, gripped by an alarming thought – after all those years of being an academic athlete it was impossible for him to fail an examination at all. He made his way from the hall in a daze, wondering what the devil to do. There was still the oral examination that afternoon. He’d half a mind simply to clear off to the cinema instead, but they’d only give him another appointment like a candidate taken ill. The vision of Nurse Crimpole rose before him, wearing a wedding dress.

When he finally focused on his surroundings, he found himself facing a sign announcing THE RED LION – Ales and Spirits.

I don’t believe Miles had ever swallowed a drink in his life, but he felt so miserable he decided to experiment with the treatment he’d seen me administering to myself for years.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said the chap behind the bar. ‘What can I get you?’

‘I want a drink.’

‘Of course, sir. What sort of drink?’

It had never occurred to Miles that there were different ones.

He noticed an advertisement showing bottles glistening on blocks of ice, which looked very refreshing.

‘A drink of that,’

‘Vodka, sir? Large or small?’

‘Oh. large, please. I didn’t have time for my second cup of tea at breakfast.’

The story of Miles’ oral examination never got out. No one likes a bit of gossip better than me, but even I should have felt a cad so much as hinting about it. His answers to Sir Lancelot Spratt at first flew across the green-baize table, even though he was grasping it for support as he wiped away the perspiration with his handkerchief.

‘Now, Mr Grimsdyke,’ went on Sir Lancelot, perfectly used to the oddities of nervous candidates, ‘let us discuss the subject of gastric pain.’

‘No,’ said Miles.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said no. You’re always discussing gastric pain. And do you know why? I’ll tell you. It’s because you know all about gastric pain. You might know sweet Fanny Adams about anything else, as far as your students are concerned. You’ve bored me stiff with gastric pain for three years, and I’m not going to talk about it now.’

‘You’re perfectly correct, Mr Grimsdyke,’ agreed Sir Lancelot after a thoughtful pause. ‘Of all dead horses to flog, dead hobby horse are the worse. I’m glad that a gentleman of your courage had the decency to stop me becoming a tyrannical bore on the subject. Thank you. We shall discuss nausea and vomiting instead.’

‘Oh, God!’ said Miles, and gripped his waist coat.

He still might have passed if he hadn’t been sick into Sir Lancelot’s Homburg.

The next evening the pass-list was read from the examination hall steps, with the announcement that Charles Barefoot (St Swithin’s) had won the University Prizes in Medicine and Surgery. Miles wasn’t mentioned at all.

He’d arranged to meet Dulcie Crimpole outside Swan and Edgar’s, and hurried to detonate his news. But before he could speak she held out her hand and said:

‘Good-bye, Miles.’

‘Good-bye?’

‘Yes.’ She felt for her handkerchief. ‘I – I’m afraid I’ve been a bad girl. I’m very fond of you, Miles, but – I’m really in love with Charlie Barefoot after all. Now we want to get married.’

Miles gasped. ‘But – but how long has this been going on?’

‘Just a few weeks. I’ve been out with him every Saturday, while you studied at home. But I didn’t want to tell you before. I thought it might upset you for your examination.’