Doctor at Large (14 page)

She laughed. ‘Jimmy isn’t out of the mistletoe stage.’

‘Do say yes,’ I implored. ‘I can’t stand suspense.’

‘You must
go
, Richard! Night sister’s due any second.’

‘I won’t go till you tell me.’

‘Oh, well – I suppose I was going to buy a new toothbrush anyway.’

‘Nan, darling! How wonderful–’

‘Shhh! And remember – not a soul.’

‘How could you think I’d breathe a word?’

I immediately woke up Grimsdyke.

‘Can you imagine it, Grim?’ I said excitedly. ‘What luck! She’s agreed. We’re nipping off for a dirty weekend. Or a dirty night, anyway,’ I corrected myself.

‘You’ve woken me up to tell me this disgusting piece of news–’

‘I want your advice. You see, I haven’t had any experience of – of this sort of thing. Where do we go, for instance? Brighton? What do we sign in the visitors’ book – Smith or Jones? Supposing they ask for our marriage licence or something–’

‘There’s a sort of country hotel called The Judge’s Arms on the way north, which is very romantic I’ve heard. You could try that. Now for God’s sake let me get some sleep.’

‘The Judge’s Arms. Thanks a million times, old fellow.’

‘I suppose you’re going to these lengths to unload Miss Plumtree?’ he asked sleepily, turning over.

‘Good Lord! I’d completely forgotten about her.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Grimsdyke muttered, dropping off. ‘I don’t like it a bit.’

For the next few days Bingham and I both slapped each other on the back like brothers. What the psychology was behind it I didn’t dare to work out.

The stubborn streptococcus in Nurse Plumtree’s throat refused to budge. She soon felt well again, but as no nurse could be let loose to spray penicillin-resistant organisms over the patients, second opinions were summoned. The senior ear, nose, and throat surgeon recommended that he remove her tonsils, excise her nasal septum, scrape out her sinuses, and extract all her teeth; the Professor of Bacteriology, a simpler-minded man, advised a week’s holiday. This was thought to be the most convenient course for everybody, and the next day she left the hospital for Mitcham with an armful of homebuilding magazines.

‘We’ll announce it when I get back,’ she declared as I saw her off. ‘So far, I haven’t told a soul – except my best friends, of course. It’ll be nice to have the date fixed for the wedding, won’t it? Now don’t forget – no late nights while I’m away.’

A couple of afternoons later, in a state of devilish excitement, I started Haemorrhagic Hilda and drove from the hospital car park to pick up Nurse Macpherson.

Our plans had been laid the night before, over a cup of Ovaltine. I had left my junior house surgeon on duty for me, asking Mr Cambridge for permission to spend the night away from the hospital; she had told Bingham that duty to her parents demanded a visit. To allay suspicion, I arranged to meet her outside the zoo.

She was waiting with her attaché case by the main gates.

‘Hello, hello, hello!’ I called, drawing up and unhooking the loop of string that restrained the nearside door. ‘What a cad I am! Fancy keeping a girl waiting on an occasion like this.’

I noticed that she was staring at me in amazement. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked in alarm. ‘Is my suit all right? It’s my second best.’

‘My God! Am I supposed to travel in
that
?’

I remembered that she hadn’t seen Haemorrhagic Hilda before. ‘It’s a remarkably good motor car,’ I told her stoutly. ‘As reliable as a London bus and with a lot of charm about it. You wait till we get going.’

‘Oh, it’s charming all right. Like one of Emett’s railway engines. How do I get aboard – do you let down a pair of steps?’

I helped her into the car, and she settled in the Windsor chair I had lashed specially to the floorboards beside me. I felt nettled. I was proud of Haemorrhagic Hilda, and even if she looked as startling on the road as George Stevenson’s
Rocket
, such mockery hurt. But refusing to allow the start of a great adventure to be marred by the petty pride of ownership, I called cheerfully, ‘Hang on!’ and performed the rapid manipulation of the choke, ignition, throttle, brake, gear lever, and hand petrol pump necessary to put Haemorrhagic Hilda in motion. ‘Off we go to the wide-open spaces!’

‘By the way,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘I’ve got to go to Oxford Street first.’

‘Oxford Street! But that’s miles out of our way. What on earth do you want to go there for?’

‘I simply must do my shopping. I’ve got to get a length of curtain material for my room – I can’t stand the hospital stuff any longer – and a birthday present for Cissy Jenkins, and some kirbigrips and some linen buttons for my uniform and a teapot and some soap.’

‘But couldn’t you do it another time? I mean to say – Apart from anything else, I’d like to get there in daylight. The headlamps aren’t terribly efficient.’

‘What other time? You seem to forget I’m a working girl, my dear young man.’

‘Oh, sorry. No offence, of course.’

She left me for an hour and a quarter in Oxford Street, though the time passed quickly enough because I spent it driving through side streets looking for somewhere to park and anxiously peering out for policemen, as though I were about to hold up a bank. She rejoined me with a Christmas Eve load of parcels, which she threw on to the sofa in the back, and said, ‘Phew! What a bloody tussle! Drive on, James.’

‘Are you sure you’ve got everything?’ I asked stiffly.

‘Except some cigarettes. But that doesn’t matter. I can smoke yours.’

My spirits had dropped badly since leaving St Swithin’s, and now it occurred to me that I had never seen Nurse Macpherson out of uniform before. Indeed, I had never seen her in daylight at all for several weeks. She was unfortunately one of those nurses who are flattered by the starched severity of their dress, and she had chosen for our escapade an odd orange knitted outfit that recalled the woollen suits worn at one period by Mr Bernard Shaw. Her face, too, suffered away from the night-club dimness of a sleeping ward. Her make-up was careless, the freckles that had enchanted me across the Night Report Book now reminded me of a dozen skin diseases, and I reflected that she must have begun her nursing training comparatively late, because she was clearly several years older than I was.

My mood was darkened further by the weather, which had turned from a lunch-time of brittle blue sky and sharp-edged sun to an afternoon in which the clouds and the twilight were already conspiring to make me confess Hilda’s deficient headlights. On top of this, I was getting a sore throat. Nurse Plumtree’s streptococcus, breathed into our brief farewell kiss, was already breeding generations of grandchildren across the mucous membrane of my pharynx. I had left the hospital with a half-perceived tickling in the back of my throat, and now I felt like a fire-eater after a bad performance.

Fortunately, Nurse Macpherson became more romantic as we left the outskirts of London, and began stroking my arm against the steering wheel while murmuring that she felt deliciously abandoned. She even managed a few flattering words about Hilda, expressing surprise that the car had managed to travel so far without stopping or coming off the road. This was encouraging, but I was too busy to listen attentively through contending with the traffic on the Great North Road, which that afternoon was composed only of cars driven by men late for important interviews, bicycles propelled by blind imbeciles, and lorries carrying boilers for ocean liners. But we progressed without breakdown or accident, and when darkness fell I was delighted to find that the headlights shone more brightly than before, sometimes both of them at once. By the time The Judge’s Arms appeared in front of us I began to feel more cheerful and more appreciative of the unusual treat in store for me.

‘Here we are, Nan,’ I said, as I pulled up at the front door.

She peered through the cracked window. ‘Are you sure? It looks like a municipal lunatic asylum to me.’

‘It’s very romantic inside. And – according to a friend of mine who ought to know – they’re very broad-minded.’

My heart was beginning to beat more quickly. ‘Sure you’ve got the ring on the right finger?’ I asked nervously.

‘Of course I have. Put these parcels in your case, will you? I can’t possibly get them in mine.’

We got out of the car.

When I had asked Grimsdyke more about The Judge’s Arms he had murmured that it was ‘a coaching inn in the best English tradition.’ It was in the English inn-keeping tradition, right enough, but the most widespread rather than the best. The walls of the hall sprouted thickly the heads of deer, otters, badgers, foxes, ferrets, stoats, and weasels, among the glazed bodies of pike, salmon, trout, perch, and bream in generous glass coffins; in the corner a pair of rigid snipe huddled beneath a glass dome, and over the stairs was impaled the horned skull of a buffalo. The place was so dark, empty, and musty that it immediately reminded me of a corner in the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road.

On one side of the hall was a door with a cracked frosted-glass panel embossed with the words ‘Coffee Room’ in curly letters; opposite was a similar door marked ‘Lounge.’ In the corner, carefully hidden by a spiky palm leaning in a large brass pot, was a hatch with a panel inviting ‘Inquiries.’ In front of the hatch was a ledge bearing a small brass hand-bell, secured to the wall by a length of chain.

‘Cosy place,’ murmured Nurse Macpherson.

‘It’s bound to be rather quiet,’ I said, feeling I ought to defend the hotel as well as Haemorrhagic Hilda. ‘We’re in the country, you know.’

She made no reply, so I set down our cases, picked up the bell, and gave a timid tinkle. She began to make up her face, and I read a large notice in a black frame explaining that it was your own fault if anyone walked off with your valuables. As no one appeared, I rang the bell again.

Not a sound came from the hotel.

‘I suppose they haven’t all been scared away?’ said Nurse Macpherson, snapping her compact closed. ‘You know, like the
Marie Celeste
?’

‘It’s just a sleepy part of the world,’ I told her testily, for my throat was beginning to hurt badly. ‘We’re not in Piccadilly Circus, you know.’

‘I can see it now,’ she went on, gazing at the sooty ceiling where it was gathered round the root of the tarnished chandelier. ‘We shall find every room empty, meals half-eaten on the tables, baths filled, beds turned down, fires burning in the grates. Some awful thing came through the front door, perhaps from Mars. Everyone has fled except for one corpse in the garden, with its features twisted into an expression of spine-chilling terror. What a wonderful story for the newspapers! We’ll phone the
Daily Express
, and in no time there’ll be reporters and photographers and these tedious little men from television saying, “Now, Doctor, will you explain how you happened to be here with a trained nurse–”’

‘Please be quiet for a minute. I’m doing my best.’

I rang the bell again, as though vending muffins. With the other hand I rapped the frosted glass, and Nurse Macpherson tapped a large and greasy gong with her foot.

‘Yes?’

The coffee room door had opened. Through it poked the head of an old man, in no collar and a railway porter’s waistcoat.

‘We want a room.’

‘I’ll fetch Mrs Digby,’ he said, disappearing.

We waited in silence for some minutes. I was beginning to wonder whether it would be less trouble to bundle Nurse Macpherson into Haemorrhagic Hilda and turn her out at the Nurses’ Home, when the glass suddenly shot up beside me.

‘Yes?’

I turned to meet one of the most disagreeable-looking women I had seen in my life. She had a thin peaky face, cropped hair, a gold pince-nez on a chain, and a dress apparently made from an old schoolmaster’s gown.

‘Oh, er, good evening. You’re Mrs Digby?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Well, you see, I wanted a room.’

‘Yes?’

‘You have a room?’

‘Yes.’

I was now plainly nervous, for we had reached the point in our adventure that I had rehearsed the most in the secrecy of my room. It all seemed so easy in novels and the Sunday papers: once the initial difficulty of persuading the girl was overcome, the rest of the trip was sheer enjoyment. I had hoped at least for a genial boniface at the reception desk, but now I felt more confident of seducing a hundred women than convincing this sharp-eyed shrew that we were married.

‘What name?’ she demanded, opening a ledger like the Domesday Book.

‘Phillimore,’ I said. I had decided that was the most natural-sounding alias I could imagine.

‘Sign here.’

She handed me a pen, and spattering ink freely over the page I anxiously filled in the name, address, and nationality. I noticed that the last column left a space for ‘Remarks.’

The manageress blotted the book. ‘Which of you’s Framleigh?’ she asked, frowning.

‘Eh? Oh, yes, of course, I am. I’m Framleigh. Mr Framleigh. The young lady’s Phillimore. Miss Phillimore.’

I cursed myself. Framleigh had been my second choice of
nom d’amour
, and in my agitation I had scrawled it over the visitors’ book. Mrs Digby was now looking at me like Hamlet sizing up his uncle.

I tried to smile. ‘We want two rooms,’ I said.

‘And I should think so, too!’

I put my hands in my pockets, took them out, and scratched the back of my head.

‘The young lady must register.’

Mrs Digby handed the pen to Nurse Macpherson, who coolly wrote across the page ‘Hortense Phillimore. Park Lane, London. Manx.’ Feeling I should offer some innocent explanation of a young unmarried couple arriving for a single night in an unfrequented hotel in mid-winter, I said, ‘We happened to be travelling north. We’re cousins, you see. We’re going to our uncle’s funeral. Charming old gentleman, in the brass business. You may have heard of him. We both work in London, and to save the expense we decided to come up together by car, and we asked a man on the road for a good hotel–’

‘Er-nest!’ Mrs Digby poked her head out of the hatch like a cuckoo-clock. ‘Er-nest! Where are you, Er-nest?’

The head reappeared from the coffee room. ‘Yes?’

‘Ernest, take up the baggage.’

Ernest, who looked unfit to carry anything heavier than a letter, creaked arthritically across the floor.

‘The lady’s in number three,’ said Mrs Digby, taking from the rack behind her a key secured to a steel flag nine inches long. ‘And the gentleman–’ She carefully went to the far end of the rack. ‘Is in number ninety-four.’

‘Right,’ said Ernest, picking up our cases. ‘Foller me.’

‘We happen to be cousins,’ I told him as he stumbled up the stairs. ‘We’re going north for our uncle’s funeral. He used to be in the brass business, poor fellow. We happen to work in London, so Miss Phillimore and I decided to come up together. On the road we met a man, and I asked him to recommend a good hotel. He said, “You can’t beat The Judge’s Arms–”’

‘Number three!’ Ernest interrupted, as though announcing the winner of a raffle. He threw open the door and switched on the light. We found ourselves in an apartment the size of a billiard room, lined with dark brown wallpaper and containing a pair of marble-topped tables, a bowl of waxed fruit, a dressing table ornamented with cherubs, a washstand with a mauve jug and basin, and sufficient solid wardrobes to lock up a gang of burglars. In the centre of the room was a large knob-garnished brass bedstead.

Nurse Macpherson, who had said nothing since signing the register, drew in her breath.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered.

‘Foller me,’ Ernest repeated.

‘I’ll see you downstairs in five minutes for a drink,’ I said. ‘Hope you’ll be comfortable.’