Doctor On The Ball (10 page)

‘Do you know who’s captain of Beagle Hill?’ Windrush demanded. ‘Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper! QC! The bastard!’

The name stirred the uneasiness of Big Brother’s. ‘The barrister who makes a killing bullying doctors in malpractice suits?’

Windrush nodded fiercely. ‘Who specializes in extorting grossly inflated damages for minor errors. Why, the patients don’t know how lucky they are! Lose the wrong finger or toe, take a world cruise and retire for life. Tax free, too, just like winning the pools. Hand in glove with the judges, of course. They all have a neurotic distrust of doctors.’

‘Because they seldom send us to gaol, but we can always tell them to take their clothes off.’

‘
They
make so many mistakes, they keep a special court sitting to correct them. Supposing they’d taken up medicine? My God! We’d have a housing problem with post-mortem rooms.’

I do not think I really like lawyers. Perhaps because they are trained to be nasty to people and we are trained to be nice to people. And doctors are spared from growing pompous. We have to look up too many fundamental orifices.

‘Now’s our chance to get our own back,’ said Windrush warmly.

‘That’s up to your team.’

‘It’s up to you.’

‘But I’m the umpire!’

‘Exactly.’

I objected indignantly, ‘
That’s
not in the spirit of the game.’

‘Look, we’ve no more hope of beating Beagle Hill than Dr Barnardo’s of winning the Cup Final,’ he imparted frankly. ‘Our team’s half doctors, and I hear he’s bringing a flock of lawyers, so this is a professional needle-match. Do you want the legal leech bragging round the Law Courts on Monday morning how he’s pulverized us? Furthermore–’ He eyed me sternly. ‘Bill Ightam has a case pending. Stomach that went wrong.’

I said unhappily, ‘I see a conflict of loyalties.’

‘I don’t.’ Windrush returned to the nets.

I was left in the moral turmoil of E M (
Passage to India
) Forster, who speculated on having to choose between betraying his country or betraying his friend. I recalled that he hoped he would have the guts to betray his country, but perhaps he was just being clever. I decided on blunting the horns of the dilemma with a pint of Huntsman’s Double Hop, but Bill Ightam’s Rover appeared.

He proudly introduced Thomasina. She was quiet, slight, pink, eighteen, with an Adidas bag and two cricket bats, wearing jeans and a Sussex University sweatshirt. She was finishing her first year (artistic studies).

‘I was desperately hoping to see her bat,’ Bill said dotingly. ‘But you know how it is – half a dozen private cases this afternoon, and Jilly’s just phoned about a nasty abdomen.’ He sighed. ‘How I envy you! I’d still be umpiring, but I kept getting bleeped at the wicket.’

I became aware of a slight noise beside me. It was Windrush grinding his teeth. A latest-model Rolls-Royce was approaching down the track from the main road.

‘That’s him,’ Windrush muttered pugnaciously, as Bill Ightam drove off. ‘Look at that new Roller! Bought at we poor doctors’ expense.’

Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC was six feet tall with shoulders like kerbstones, long thick black hair and a massive blue chin. Put in an identity parade, he would not stand a chance. He wore a bright-buttoned double-breasted blue blazer, with the gold and scarlet MCC tie. He advanced extending a large hand, assessing us under eyebrows like gorse bushes. I expected him to greet us with, ‘Fe fi fo fum,’ but he mentioned amiably, ‘I hope the rain will keep off,’ in the deep voice which could wring from a juryman’s heart hundreds of thousands of pounds of other people’s money.

Windrush uttered some saw about the swallows being high.

‘Then we shall enjoy a grand game.’ Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC gave a grin, as the Carpenter to the Oysters. ‘If I always step to the wicket with the same feelings as I enter the court room – to wit, annihilating the opposition – is not this the great glory of our Constitution? Our law, like our games, like our politics, is surely confrontation between two sides, fought unsparingly, but observing manifest rules – some, I submit, unwritten – evolved over the centuries of our magnificent history?’

I suggested a pint of Huntsman’s Double Hop, but he never drank before play.

‘Dr Windrush – I put it to you, what is your speciality?’

‘I’m a pathologist. All my patients have to be dead first.’

Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC grinned again. ‘I am sure that spares you much trouble in litigation. You deal, if I may make the point, with the
fait accompli
. But whatever the verdict returned today–’ His arm scythed the pleasant green view. ‘I submit, every right-thinking man will, beyond reasonable doubt, remember that when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name, he marks not that you won or lost but how you played the game. Shall we toss for innings?’

Windrush produced a coin.

‘May I object? We have not yet exchanged lists of teams, which may not thereafter be changed. Law 1.’

Windrush took a scrap of paper from his flannels. He flicked. Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC won.

‘We shall bat,’ he pronounced, as if opening an agreeably sound case.

Windrush gripped my arm as the QC was extracting bats and pads from the boot of his Rolls.

‘That little car bouncing by the pitch. It’s Bill Ightam’s houseman from the General. On call this weekend, up to his neck in patients, but Bill’s given him the afternoon off. What terrific sportsmanship!’

I asked why.

‘He’s a Cambridge cricket blue,’ he hissed.

‘But he can’t play.’

Windrush stared. ‘Why ever not?’

‘He’s not in the team list you gave the opposing captain.’

‘Don’t be so petty. I’m sure the chap won’t mind assuming the
nom de guerre
of someone who is. Only about half the side ever turn up.’

The teams trickled into their dressing rooms. Thomasina in white culottes and long white socks was cracking away hearteningly in the nets. I found a white coat, stamped PROPERTY OF CHURCHFORD GENERAL HOSPITAL. My fellow-umpire was a short, mild, bird-faced man, the most sought-after solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn. I gathered ball, two bails and six coins. I was startled on stepping from the pavilion to encounter my son Andy, whom I had not seen for two months while he did cardiac research at St Swithin’s, holding hands with a slim blonde in a black and red dress whom I had never seen at all.

‘Dad!’ he exclaimed. ‘Mum said you were here. Meet Imogen. We’re engaged.’

‘Thank God! Andy!’ Windrush appeared from the pavilion, distraught. ‘We’re one short. Find yourself a pair of flannels and field in the covers, will you?’

Andy disappeared. Windrush was already leading his team on the field. I paced with the birdlike solicitor to the wicket, my mind a kaleidoscope of my forthcoming daughter-in-law’s possible qualities. I always treated our two children’s followers with respect. However awful, they stood the chance of entering a companionship to be broken only with their attendance at my funeral.

The Beagle Hill innings was opened by Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC. His partner was a small, fat, tax barrister with large, round glasses. I stationed myself at square leg, inspecting Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC’s generous gluteal region. The solicitor crisply called, ‘Play.’

Our demon bowler, a Mayfair advertising executive, began to run. Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC raised a well-gloved restraining hand.

‘Second slip,’ he observed to me, ‘is female.’

‘No law against it.’

‘Though it is, I submit, indubitably an irregularity in procedure.’ He gave his smile. ‘But I shall enter
nolle prosequi
.’

He rattled a defiant tattoo with his bat on the crease.

The first ball passed ten feet over his head.

The umpire signalled a wide.

The next struck the pitch just beyond the bowler’s crease.

The umpire signalled a no-ball.

The third was another no-ball which whizzed past the QC’s umbilicus, was grabbed by first slip, excitedly hurled at the wicket for a run-out and sped to the pavilion for four overthrows. Beagle Hill had six on the board, and the match had not yet begun.

The following ball crashed against the QC’s pads.

‘Howzat?’ shouted all the fielders, and myself.

‘Not out,’ ruled the umpire stonily.

This dialogue was repeated five times, until he called, ‘Over.’ I reflected that barristers got their clients only from solicitors, as consultants their patients only from GPs, instilling among both professions a mutual interest in covering up each other’s mistakes.

Windrush’s young laboratory technician bowled neat medium-pace, which the little fat barrister hit briskly enough to keep on his feet the man who, pint in hand, hung metal numbers on the scoreboard. The spectators were depressingly outnumbered by the players. Andy’s fiancée sat in a deckchair, wearing a wide black and red straw hat. She seemed to have nice legs. When I approached Andy for a word of fatherly congratulation, Windrush angrily waved at me for interfering with the fielders’ concentration.

After three overs, our demon bowler, red-faced and damp-browed, was complaining of exhaustion.

‘Can’t risk the chap copping a coronary,’ Windrush said humanely, letting him leave the field. ‘I want to bowl him a lot, later in the innings. All right to lend us a sub?’ he shouted to Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC, who inclined his head graciously.

A bright-faced Beagle Hill youngster sprang from the pavilion and eagerly took position inside the boundary rope. Tradition as old as the Men of Hambledon now ordained the field as keenly as any man of Churchford. Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC lofted the lab technician in the newcomer’s direction.

‘Catch it!’ shouted all the fielders, and myself.

The substitute dropped it.

Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC lifted the next ball in the same direction.

The substitute dropped it again.

This was repeated four times.

It struck a glint in Windrush’s eye, as a spark from flint. He started bowling his leg-spinners, delivered with an action resembling a pussyfooting octopus. This so confused Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC, he responded to the second one by hitting his own wicket.

‘My goog!’ Windrush confided exuberantly. ‘On a good day I’d get through the entire West Indian batting order.’

Next batsman was Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC’s usual junior, who specialized in instruments left inside. Two googlies later, I was surprised to notice the dismissed, still-padded QC re-enter the field.

‘With respect, m’umpire,’ he addressed me. ‘The player who has just left the ground on urgent medical grounds is now downing a gin and tonic and smoking a cigar. I submit this is contrary to Law 2, also Law 46 (Duties of Umpires) Note 4(i).’

‘Objection sustained,’ said Windrush readily. ‘Only thing to stop that little bugger dropping more catches, short of making him field behind an oak.’

Two more balls, and Windrush jubilantly bowled the new batsman for a duck. Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC again advanced from the pavilion.

‘With great respect, m’umpire. My learned friend wasn’t ready.’

‘To me, he looked as ready as a virgin on her wedding night.’

‘He wasn’t ready in accordance with Law 25 Note 2(i).’

I said curtly, ‘You’re obstructing the field. Law 40. If you don’t clear off, I’ll give the other batsman out as well.’

He bowed. ‘As your umpireship pleases.’

After another over I felt hungry and announced the lunch interval.

‘Dad! Meet Imogen.’

Andy approached excitedly, sweater looped round neck, hand in hand with his fiancée at the pavilion steps.

But Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC had appeared at my elbow as disquietingly as a writ.

I remarked politely, ‘May I introduce my son?’

Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC frowned. ‘Indeed? But he appears on the nominated batting order – with which I was furnished by his captain before tossing for innings as Corncroft, T J.’

‘I changed my name,’ said Andy quickly.

‘In
deed
?’ The QC regarded him as he might a witness explaining that the bullion had dropped off the back of a lorry. ‘It is undeniable, and I would not contest the fact, that Mr Corncroft bears a strong resemblance to yourself, Dr Gordon.’

‘I changed it at the death-bed wish of a rich uncle,’ Andy elaborated. ‘In Canada. Keen to perpetuate the family name. Touching, don’t you think?’

‘So your wife’s maiden name was Corncroft?’ the QC said to me.

‘No, it was Sandiford,’ I replied automatically.

His eyebrows rose like gorse bushes in a high wind. ‘Are you fencing with me?’

‘Corncroft was my mother’s mother’s maiden name,’ Andy told him. ‘Naturally.’

‘I put it to you,’ he continued the cross-examination, ‘the label on your sweater says R N Duckins.’

‘Oh, that! I grabbed what gear I could. You see, I only joined the side when we were taking the field.’

‘So! You were never in the official list? You confess?’

Andy snapped the fingers unattached to his future bride. ‘I must have been! I phoned my sister last night at the General, and said to tell her houseman I’d be free to play. Ask him yourself,’ he nodded in confirmation towards the Cambridge blue. ‘Charley Barnes.’

‘But
that
is Wilberforth, R N D.’

‘So it is!’ exclaimed Andy. ‘They look very much alike.’

‘Doubtless, brothers who have changed the names?’ asked the QC with measured menace.

‘Quite likely,’ I agreed. ‘There was dreadful incest in the family.’

‘Might I remind you that you are on oath?’

‘I’m not on anything, except tenterhooks that the Huntsman’s Double Hop’s running out.’

Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC slowly smiled. ‘I beg your umpireship’s indulgence. I rest my case. I was carried away. Often happens with you doctors, eh? Cut off more than you intended? Eh? Eh?’

He slapped my back and roared with laughter, sounding like the Marquis de Sade thinking up a fruity one.

‘Dad, we’ve got to rush,’ apologized Andy. ‘We promised Mum we’d snatch a bite of lunch at home. She’s making some fabulous tomato and aubergine pie. See you.’

They disappeared. I wondered what Imogen did for a living.

Returning after lunch, Andy leaped from his car, was put on to bowl and had the tax lawyer caught deftly by Thomasina. Replacing him came a wiry, flashing-eyed, briskly moustached Pakistani law student, whom we had been watching all morning with misgivings. He hit his first three balls for four, then swished so vigorously for six that his elaborate necklace broke, flew at the wicket and removed a bail.

‘Howzat?’ shouted all the fielders, and myself.

‘Out,’ I said.

While batsman and wicketkeeper gathered beads from the pitch, Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC reappeared.

‘With utmost respect, m’umpire, that judgement was wrong in law.’

‘The wicket is down if the striker’s person removes either bail from the top of the stumps,’ I stonewalled. ‘Law 31.’

He gave an indulgent smile. ‘With deepest respect, though the term “person” under Law 31 Note 5 includes the player’s dress as defined in Law 25 Note 4, viz. the equipment and clothing of players as normally worn, I submit with all submission that this is not dress, to wit, decent covering, but ornament, i.e. decorative.’

‘Not on your Nelly,’ I said.

‘I understand you are not conceding having acted
ultra vires
? Then I thank your umpireship.’

Windrush suddenly realized he had forgotten the Cambridge blue. He had him bowl and the opposition were all out in fifteen minutes for 110.

Between innings, I looked for Imogen.

‘She went to the loo, and I expect got lost,’ Andy explained. ‘Excuse me, Dad – must pad up, I’m opening with Dr Windrush.’

Was Imogen middle-class? Working-class? Aristocracy? I wondered. Protestant? Catholic? Australian?

Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC opened the Beagle Hill bowling. Windrush was hit on the elbow, chin, ribs, toe, ear and scrotum, then retired hurt. He was replaced by Bill Ightam’s houseman, who made 50 in three overs. He missed an off-break from the Pakistani student, which lodged in the pad top of the wicketkeeper – the substitute who had dropped the catches.

‘How is that?’ demanded Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC. ‘Case of batsman caught by wicketkeeper’s pads. Law 35 Note 4.’

‘Not guilty.’

‘Be a pal and pick it out,’ the wicketkeeper invited the batsman. ‘What with these gloves…thanks.’

‘How is that?’ repeated Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC, more loudly.

‘Whoever heard of a batsman catching himself?’

‘I am pleading under Handled the Ball, Law 36. He is
in flagrante delicto
.’

But Bill Ightam’s houseman had tucked his bat under his arm and said he was going to retire anyway, to make a game of it. Thomasina was quickly bowled, followed at the wicket by Andy. During the next over, it drizzled. To needle Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC, I said as we reached the pavilion, ‘You should have appealed for your last ball to T J Corncroft. I’d have given him out, plumb lbw.’

We decided to take tea. I searched for Andy and Imogen, but they were enjoying the intimacy of his car. What sort of accent had she? Kelvinside, Kensington or Kennington? I finished my Dundee cake. Play resumed. ‘How is that?’ Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC bellowed at once.

‘But you haven’t bowled yet,’ I objected.

‘I refer to the last ball. The appeal is permissible, because the next one has not been bowled nor has Time been called, as defined in Law 18. I cite Law 47. There is no stipulation of the time between balls. You’ve got to give him out. No case to answer.’

Andy left the wicket with the hurt and puzzled look of Esau arriving too late with the venison for his father.

Our last batsman arrived with our score only 80. The next over, he politely tapped an immobilized off-break back to the Pakistani student. Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC appealed for Hit the Ball Twice, Law 37. The following delivery, his bat and the wicketkeeper’s knee shattered the wicket simultaneously.

‘How is that?’ called Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC feelingly. ‘Hit wicket. Law 38 Note 1.’

‘The batsman is Not Out if he breaks his wicket in avoiding being stumped,’ I quoted. ‘Note 3.’

‘I must protest.’

‘Don’t argue. Law 46 Note 4(ii).’

Reckless in the justice of his cause, Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC appealed to his fielders, so passionately that in the confusion Churchford reached 100 with twelve overthrows before the polite batsman was run out.

‘We’ve won!’ exalted Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC.

‘You haven’t,’ I said.

I pointed to the pavilion. Windrush was hobbling out in a motorbike crash helmet. Behind him walked Thomasina with bat and pads, to run between the wickets for the disabled batsman’s shots.

‘I’m resuming my innings,’ he shouted to Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC. ‘Law 33.’

The pavilion clock was eyed nervously by all the fielders, and myself. Eleven runs to win. Only an over to go.

‘I’ve just discovered that Thomasina is the Sussex University 100 metres champion,’ Windrush muttered in my ear at the crease. ‘Watch her whizz between the wickets.’

‘The runner,’ complained Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC, approaching in outrage, ‘must be dressed exactly like the batsman. Yours is wearing spiked running shoes.’

‘OK, Portia, have your pound of flesh,’ Windrush snarled at him. ‘She can wear her sister’s moped helmet, my spare flannels held up with the other end of this NHS bandage, and an Elastoplast dressing where you bloody near fractured my ulna.’

Play resumed. Windrush hit two, then three. Thomasina flickered to and fro like Francis Thompson’s run-stealing Hornby and Barlow long ago. Windrush sneaked a single. Four runs behind! Three balls to go! A breathless hush. Broken by Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC roaring, ‘Further objection! I beg to submit, the runner is
not
dressed as the batsman.’

‘She looks lovely to me,’ I said, as Thomasina stood panting at the stumps.

‘Ha ha!’ cried Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC, with the air of producing the missing murder weapon from under his wig. ‘
Is she wearing a box?
’

Thomasina hit him over the head with her bat.

It was instantly clear that the fielders needed to be treated as hostile witnesses. The prostrate Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC was borne from the wicket threatening litigation, if not prosecution – for assault, probably grievous bodily harm, possibly murder. As we all reached the pavilion, I said, ‘I declare the match a draw.’

The casualty leaped to his feet. ‘Of course it isn’t a draw,’ he said belligerently. ‘We’ve three balls left. The way you were playing, we’d collar your last wicket.’

I retorted calmly, ‘If the players have occasion to leave the field during the last over of the match, there shall be no resumption of play and the match shall be at an end. Law 18 Note 1.’

Mr Horace Fenny-Cooper QC glared. The muscles round his jaw, so powerful they could tatter doctors’ reputations like masticating a tenderloin steak, twitched in frustration. ‘I enter
nonsuit
,’ he conceded curtly. ‘But of course, with cricket it is not the result that counts. It is the spirit in which the game is played.’

He vanished into the dressing room, as abruptly as an unsuccessful criminal downstairs at the Old Bailey.

‘That stupid law monger,’ Windrush said gleefully. ‘He hadn’t the sense to spot that I wasn’t wearing a bra. Thomasina, my dear! I award you your Churchford Cricket Club cap. I’ve a feeling that your father will be pleased. Come on, Richard, let’s get stuck into the Huntsman’s Double Hop.’

‘I was looking for Andy and my potential daughter-in-law,’ I protested.

‘Oh, they had to rush back to London. Important research project, couldn’t be left.’

I wondered if I should have liked her, had I ever got to know her.