Doctor in Love (15 page)

“Good Lord, yes. Remember the first object of treatment is to remove the source of the patient’s anxiety.” I looked down at the sheet of paper I held. “Though I must say, Nikki, it’s rather knocked my careful budgeting for six. Can’t we cut down a bit on the furniture? Do we really need three chairs in the house?”

“Darling, do be sensible. Supposing somebody calls?”

“We could borrow old Farquy’s shooting-stick, or something.”

“Richard, you really must take this seriously. And don’t forget you’re coming round the furniture shops with me on Thursday.”

“Oh, dear! Must I?”

“Richard! Remember, you promised.”

“Oh, all right, Nikki.”

“After all, darling, it’s only a fortnight till the wedding. And we must have some furniture of some sort.”

“I see your point,” I said. “Though I must admit, there’s a hell of a lot to be said for the Arabian idea of sitting on the floor and eating with your fingers.”

It was either the stimulating effect of my treatment or the stimulating effect of my seventy-five pounds, but Mr Doggett managed to finish at Floral Cottage in another couple of days. The three men retreated from room to room, taking their fire and teapot with them, until they made their final brew out in the back garden. As I paid the bill I reflected that the laughter of beautiful women was cheaper to enjoy these days than the honest ring of hammer on chisel. Nikki meanwhile seemed to be insisting that all manner of utensils and oddments were essential to our married life. I started having dreams in which I found myself chased by furious ironmongers or struggling with gangs of builders in bowler hats trying to brick me into the ramparts of the Tower of London. I assumed that this was a manifestation of the normal psychological disturbance before marriage.

Then there was another complication.

“I’ve got a proper surprise for you,” said Kitten Strudwick after surgery one evening.

She opened the waiting-room door and led in a pale young man with spectacles and a blue suit, whom I recognized as a gas-fitting salesman I had just treated for varicose veins.

“This is Harold,” she explained. “We’re going to get married.”

“Good Lord, are you!” I exclaimed. The idea of Kitten’s emotional life extending much further than the Palais and the Odeon came as a shock. “I mean, how wonderful. It certainly seems a catching complaint, doesn’t it? My heartiest congratulations,” I said, shaking hands with Harold. “And long life and happiness to you both.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” replied Harold solemnly. “I might add, had it not been for your good self Catherine and I would not thus have been blissfully brought together.”

“We met in the waiting-room,” Kitten explained. “The day you were such a long time over Mrs Derridge’s sinuses.”

“Might I now intrude further on your valuable time, Doctor?” Harold continued, as I motioned them to seats. “I have long believed, Doctor, that all persons about to be joined in the state of holy matrimony should first undergo an extensive physical examination.”

“Well…perhaps that’s putting it a bit seriously. As far as I’m concerned, I think doctors should be kept out of it as much as possible. I’d say if you feel strong enough to walk up the aisle you’re all right.”

“I also believe that the happy couple should have a frank talk with their doctor before the ceremony.”

I put my fingertips together as I caught Kitten’s eye. “Er…yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“Sex,” Harold continued, as though describing some particularly attractive form of gas-fitting, “is, as they say, an important factor in marriage.”

I agreed, though I felt at the moment that it took second place to Doggett & Buzzard in ours.

“I should like now, Doctor,” Harold went on, warming a little, “for you to give my future wife and myself a frank talk.”

He folded his arms expectantly. I noticed Kitten was grinning broadly over his shoulder, and I shifted in the surgery chair. I had many times since qualification been asked to give patients several years my senior frank talks on their sex lives. I always felt that I discharged this professional duty inadequately, because the St Swithin’s teaching staff had a sound British attitude to such things and any patient mentioning sex was immediately packed off to the psychiatrists. I felt that Kitten knew far more about the subject than I did, and I was sure she was anxious to hear my views on her future sex life only for the light it would throw on my own.

“Well, you see,” I said, starting at the beginning, “in marriage there’s a man…and a woman…and possibly children.”

“I am naturally concerned about our relations, Doctor.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think they’d mind if you had children a bit.”

“I mean our sexual relations.”

“Quite, of course. Well, now. There are several excellent books on the subject, you know.” Grimsdyke had once recommended one to a married couple, and the man had angrily reappeared the next day having fallen out of bed and fractured his ankle. “But most people worry too much about the whole business,” I continued. “That’s how you get a neurosis. After all, sex is nothing to get excited about. I mean, it doesn’t do to… When are you getting married?” I asked Kitten abruptly, feeling that the consultation was being held under too many difficulties to be effective.

“Next May. But I want to leave next week, please.”

“So soon?”

“Harold has to go back to Hartlepool.”

“Of course you may leave when you wish, Miss Strudwick. Though we shall all be sorry to lose you.”

“I’ve quite liked it here. Life’s interesting.”

“And I am sure you’ll find life with Harold here even more so. I suppose I’d better advertise for a new receptionist in this week’s paper. Good evening, now, to you both. I hope you’ll be very happy. If you want to know any more, why not go and see the Vicar?”

I hoped that had set them up physiologically for life.

“It’s a nuisance about the lass leaving,” said Dr Farquarson when I told him. “Particularly when you’re so preoccupied with impending matrimony yourself.”

“I could stay here and work all next Thursday,” I said eagerly. “Nikki only wants me to meet her to do some shopping in Town.”

“Och, I wouldn’t hear of it for a moment, Richard. Anyway, the work’s slackening off a bit. There’s nothing like a few fine days in midwinter for making folk forget how ill they are, And anyway, getting married’s a much tougher job than running a practice.”

I agreed with him. At that stage the preparations for our marriage seemed to be as complicated as Noah’s preparations for the Flood.

I left Floral Cottage early on the Thursday and met Nikki outside a large furniture store in Oxford Street.

“We’ll choose the curtains first, darling,” said Nikki. “I won’t get anything you don’t like every bit as much as I do.”

“Fine! You won’t forget our little budget, though, will you dear?”

“We only want some cheap contemporary designs. Just something to keep us out of sight of the neighbours.”

We were approached inside the door by a tall, silver-haired man with the lofty bearing and formal outfit of a nineteenth-century Harley Street physician.

“We want curtains,” Nikki told him, instinctively taking charge. “Then kitchen equipment and tableware, and after that inexpensive suites and beds and bedding.” For a second I caught in his eye the expression of the wolf welcoming little Red Riding Hood. Then he bowed low, and we followed him through thickets of Chippendale into the shop.

“This is
absolutely
contemporary,” said the young man with the high voice and the long vowel sounds in the curtain department, “but rather busy, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes,” Nikki admitted. “Rather busy.”

“This,” he continued, holding up another length, “is less busy, but of course more pricey.”

“I
do
rather like that one.”

“How about that?” I interrupted, pointing to some material in the corner. “The one with the beer-mug pattern. Rather jolly, I think. I expect you sell a lot of that?”

“Only to public houses, sir.”

“Oh.”

“And now perhaps madam would like to see an amusing little damask?”

Shortly after we had bought the pricey curtains I realized that the shopping expedition was really nothing but a conspiracy between Nikki and the salesmen. We left the curtain department ten pounds above our budget, in the kitchen department we overspent forty with ease, and there was a difference of fifty guineas between the store’s notion of inexpensive suites and ours.

“I suppose we’ll
have
to take this one,” I told Nikki, as we self-consciously bounced together on a double bed. “Even though it does cost twice as much as I allowed. I really don’t know how we’ll ever pay all the deposits, let alone the instalments. Do you really need as many pots and pans as that? When I lived in a flatlet I found a frying-pan and an old mess-tin quite enough for anything.”

“But darling, do be reasonable! You’d soon complain if your bacon and eggs tasted of Irish stew. Assuming, of course,” she added, “that I learn how to cook Irish stew.”

“Anyway, thank God this is the last port of call. Now we can go and have a drink. I’ve been dreaming about a beer for the last half-hour.”

“But Richard, you can’t just go wandering into pubs. We’ve got to go to glass and china and linen and blankets yet. Then we must simply rush back to Richmond. I promised we’d be there at lunch-time to settle the invitations.”

“Invitations? But they all went out weeks ago.” I remembered the bitter evening when aunts and uncles were sacrificed ruthlessly as we tried to cut the list to a realistic length.

“Yes, but a lot can’t come and there’s lots of people we really must ask that we’d forgotten, and there are people who’ve sent presents who haven’t been asked, and so we must do something about it. Then we’ve got to settle about the reception and fix the photographer and you’ll have to meet the bridesmaids. By the way, what presents will you be buying them?”

“A packet of Player’s apiece, at this rate.”

“I think they’d like ear-rings, Richard, and that’s the traditional gift. Right, we’ll have this,” Nikki told the salesman. “Now how about hanging cupboards?”

In Nikki’s home, the table in the sitting-room where I had first been received looked like a shoplifter’s den after an energetic but erratic day. All round, the chairs were draped with dresses and the floor was deep in hatboxes, and a number of young women were chattering excitedly amid the disorder like birds after a hurricane.

“This is Jane,” said Nikki. “And this is Cissy, and this is Helen, and this is Carmen, and this is Greta.”

She introduced five girls, all of whom looked to me the same. They stared at me for some seconds with uninhibited curiosity before returning to trying on hats.

“Now,” said Nikki, “we must decide whether the invitation that Mummy’s old nanny refused can go to Lady Horridge, because a title would look good in the account in the local paper, or to Mrs Grisewood who was so nice to Mummy and Daddy when they were in Madeira. By the way, it’s only sandwiches for lunch, I’m afraid. And I’d kept a bottle of beer for you, but Robin seems to have drunk it.”

Thenceforward no one seemed to take much notice of me, though Aunt Jane got me in a corner and said she thought we were very, very brave getting married at all in such difficult times. I agreed with her. Later, Robin arrived with his father from the City, and after pointing out that several presents were well known to fall to pieces immediately on use, asked “Where are you going for the honeymoon?”

“South of France.”

“What, at this time of the year? Didn’t you know the rainfall comes in February? And it’s the worst season they’ve had for years down there, too. I met a chap today in the City who’s only just come back.”

“Thank you,” I said. “On the strength of your kind advice I shall cancel the bookings, and Nikki and I will go to Manchester instead.”

“Manchester? That’s rather an odd place for a honeymoon, isn’t it?”

Fortunately the Commander spotted me, and carried me off to his cubby-hole for a gin.

I had been invited to stay the night, but as two of the bridesmaids were also in the house I had to share a room with Robin, who not only snored but got up at six and did exercises. I left alone early the next morning, because I had my own shopping to do. First I went to the travel agent for the tickets, then to the jewellers to collect the wedding-ring, then to fix the flowers and confirm the cars, afterwards to buy the bridesmaids’ ear-rings, and finally to try on my own clothes. It is a curious reflection on the psychology of the British middle-classes that their inhibitions about appearing unsuitably dressed for any occasion overcome their inhibitions about getting into a pair of trousers already favoured by half a dozen unknown occupants. As I was expected to be married in the costume of a Young Man About Town at the start of the century, like every other male on the invitation list I went to a large clothes shop near Regent Street where they could fit you out by the day for anything from a hunt to the House of Lords.

“Yes, sir?” said one of the aristocratic-looking figures inside the door as I nervously approached.

“I wanted to…er, that is…” I felt like the first time I took my microscope to the pawnbroker’s. “I wondered if it would be possible to see someone about…actually, the loan of some morning clothes?”

“Our hiring department would be delighted to be at your disposal, sir. Small door off the street, just round the corner.”

As I was greeted by another man inside the discreet door, the performance suddenly brought a sense of
dêja vu
, as though I had somehow observed it all before. The first nervous and shameful enquiry, the cheerfully broadminded tone of the directions, the sheltered door, the tactful segregation, the air of silent comradeship among the other customers… Of course! I had it. The VD Department at St Swithin’s.

“Would you take the end one, sir?” asked the attendant, my morale rising rapidly as I walked down the line of cubicles overhearing “Yes, My Lord…of course, General…not at all, Professor…the trousers are perhaps a shade too tight, Your Grace?”

“We’ll fix you up in a jiffy, Doctor,” he continued, looking at me with the glance of an experienced undertaker. “How about a lilac waistcoat? Just the thing for a wedding.”

I took the lilac waistcoat, and also a grey top hat specially cased in a black tin box resembling those used by pathologists for taking interesting organs back to their laboratories. As I stowed my trousseau in the back of the car before driving off for a weekend’s duty in Hampden Cross, it suddenly occurred to me that in eight days’ time Nikki and I would be man and wife.