The Citadel (21 page)

‘Look here, Boland,’ Andrew said quickly. ‘This business of Llewellyn’s cut is a shocking imposition. Why don’t we fight it?’

‘Eh?’

‘Why don’t we fight it?’ Andrew repeated in a louder voice. Even as he spoke he felt his blood rise. ‘It’s a damned injustice. Here we are hard up, trying to make our way – Listen, Boland, you’re the very man I’ve been wanting to meet. Will you stand in with me on this? We’ll get hold of the other assistants. Make a big united effort –’

A slow gleam irradiated Con’s eyes.

‘Ye mean, ye want to go after Llewellyn?’

‘I do.’

Con impressively extended his hand.

‘Manson, my boy,’ he declared momentously. ‘We’re together from the start.’

Andrew raced home to Christine full of eagerness, thirsting for the fight.

‘Chris! Chris! I’ve found a gem of a chap. A red-haired dentist – quite mad – yes, like me. I knew you’d say that. But listen, darling, we’re going to start a revolution.’ He laughed excitedly. ‘Oh, Lord! If old man Llewellyn only knew what was in store for him!’

He did not require her caution to go carefully. He was determined to proceed with discernment in everything he did. He began therefore, the following day, by calling upon Owen.

The secretary was interested and emphatic. He told Andrew that the agreement in question was a voluntary one between the head doctor and his assistants. The whole thing lay outside the jurisdiction of the Committee.

‘You see, Doctor Manson,’ Owen concluded, ‘Doctor Llewellyn is a very clever, well-qualified man. We count ourselves fortunate to have him. But he has a handsome remuneration from the Society for acting as our Medical Superintendent. It is you assistant doctors who think he ought to have more –’

‘Do we hell,’ thought Andrew. He went away satisfied, rang up Oxborrow and Medley, made them agree to come to his house that evening. Urquhart and Boland had already promised to be there. He knew, from past conversations, that every one of the four loathed losing a fifth of his salary. Once he had them together the thing was done.

His next step was to speak to Llewellyn. He had decided on reflection that it would be underhand not to make some disclosure of his intention beforehand. That afternoon he was at the hospital giving an anaesthetic. As he watched Llewellyn go through with the operation, a long and complicated abdominal case, he could not repress a feeling of admiration. Owen’s remark was absolutely true: Llewellyn was amazingly clever, not only clever but versatile. He was the exception, the unique instance, which – Denny would have contended – proved the rule. Nothing came amiss to him, nothing floored him. From public health administration, every bye-law of which he knew by heart, to the latest radiological technique, the whole range of his multifarious duties found Llewellyn blandly expert and prepared.

After the operation, while Llewellyn was washing up Andrew went to him, jerkily tugging off his gown.

‘Excuse me for mentioning it, Doctor Llewellyn – but I couldn’t help noticing the way you handled that tumour, it was awfully fine.’

Llewellyn’s dull skin tinged with gratification. He beamed affably.

‘Glad you think so, Manson. Come to speak of it, you’re improvin’ nicely with your anaesthetics.’

‘No, no,’ Andrew muttered. ‘I’ll never be much good at that.’

There was a pause. Llewellyn went on soaping his hands equably. Andrew, at his elbow, cleared his throat nervously. Now that the moment had come he found it almost impossible to speak. But he managed to blurt out:

‘Look here, Doctor Llewellyn. It’s only right to tell you – all we assistants think our salary percentage payments to you unfair. It’s an awkward thing to have to say, but I – I’m going to propose they are done away with. We’ve got a meeting at my house tonight. I’d rather you knew that now, than afterwards. I – I want you to feel I’m at least honest about it.’

Before Llewellyn could reply, and without looking at his face, Andrew swung round and left the theatre. How badly he had said it. Yet anyway, he
had
said it. When they sent him their ultimatum, Llewellyn could not accuse him of stabbing him in the back.

The meeting at Vale View was fixed for nine o’clock that evening. Andrew put out some bottled beer and asked Christine to prepare sandwiches. When she had done this, she slipped on her coat and went round to Vaughans’ for an hour. Strung with anticipation, Andrew stumped up and down the hall, striving to collect his ideas. And presently the others arrived – Boland first, Urquhart next, Oxborrow and Medley together.

In the sitting-room, pouring beer and proffering sandwiches, Andrew tried to initiate a cordial note. Since he almost disliked him he addressed Doctor Oxborrow first.

‘Help yourself, Oxborrow! Plenty more in the cellar.’

‘Thanks, Manson.’ The evangelist’s voice was chill. ‘ I don’t touch alcohol in any shape or form. It’s against my principles.’

‘In the name of God!’ Con said, out of the froth on his moustache.

As a beginning it was not auspicious. Medley, munching sandwiches, kept his eyes all the time on the alert, his face wearing the stony anxiety of the deaf. Already the beer was increasing Urquhart’s natural belligerence; after glaring steadily at Oxborrow for some minutes he suddenly shot out:

‘Now I find myself in your company,
Doctor
Oxborrow, maybe you’ll find it convenient to explain how Tudor Evans, Seventeen Glyn Terrace, came off
my
list on to
yours.
’

‘I don’t remember the case,’ said Oxborrow, pressing his finger-tips together aloofly.

‘But I do!’ Urquhart exploded. ‘It was one of the cases you stole from me, your medical reverence! And what’s more –’

‘Gentlemen!’ cried Andrew in a panic. ‘ Please,
please
! How can we ever do anything if we quarrel amongst ourselves? Remember what we’re here for.’

‘What
are
we here for?’ Oxborrow said womanishly. ‘ I ought to be at a case.’

Andrew, standing on the hearth-rug, his expression taut and earnest, took a grab at the slippery situation.

‘This is the way of it, then, gentlemen!’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I’m the youngest man here and I’m not long in this practice but I – I hope you’ll excuse all that! Perhaps it’s because I am new that I get a fresh look at things – things you’ve been putting up with too long. It seems to me in the first place that our system here is all wrong. We just go hacking and muddling through in the antediluvian way like we were ordinary town and country GP’s fighting each other, not members of the same Medical Society with wonderful opportunities for working together! Every doctor I’ve met swears that practice is a dog’s life. He’ll tell you he drudges on, run off his feet, never a minute to himself, no time for meals, always on call!
Why
is that? It’s because there’s
no attempt at organisation in our profession.
Take just one example of what I mean – though I could give you dozens. Night-calls! You know how we all go to bed at night, dreading we’ll be wakened up and called out. We have rotten nights because we
may
be called out. Suppose we knew we
couldn’t
be called out. Suppose we arranged, for a start, a co-operative system of night work. One doctor taking all night-calls for one week and then going
free
of all night-calls for the rest of that month, while the others take their turn. Wouldn’t that be splendid! Think how fresh you’d be for your day’s work –’

He broke off, observing their blank faces.

‘Wouldn’t work,’ Urquhart snapped. ‘Dammit to hell! I’d sooner stay up every night of the month than trust old Foxborrow with one of my cases. Hee, hee! When
he
borrows he doesn’t pay back.’

Andrew interposed feverishly.

‘We’ll leave that then – anyway, till another meeting – seeing that we’re not agreed on it. But there’s one thing we are agreed on. And that’s why we’re here. This percentage we pay to Doctor Llewellyn.’ He paused. They were all looking at him now, touched in their pockets, interested. ‘We’ve all agreed it’s unjust. I’ve spoken to Owen about it. He says it has nothing to do with the Committee but is a matter for adjustment between the doctors.’

‘That’s right,’ threw out Urquhart. ‘ I remember when it was fixed. A matter of nine years ago. We had two rank Jonahs of assistants then. One at the East Surgery and one at my end. They gave Llewellyn a lot of trouble over their cases. So one fine day he called us all together and said it wasn’t goin’ to be worth his while unless we could make some arrangement with him. That’s the way it started. And that’s the way it’s gone on.’

‘But his salary from the Committee already covers
all
his work in the Society. And he simply rakes in the shekels from his other appointments. He’s rolling in it!’

‘I know, I know,’ said Urquhart testily. ‘But, mind you, Manson, he’s damn useful to us, is the same Llewellyn. And he knows it. If he chose to cut up rough we’d be in a pretty poor way.’

‘Why should
we
pay him?’ Andrew kept on inexorably.

‘Hear! Hear!’ interjected Con, refilling his glass.

Oxborrow cast one glance at the dentist.

‘If I may be allowed to get a word in. I agree with Doctor Manson in that it is unjust for us to have our salaries deducted. But the fact is, Doctor Llewellyn is a man of high standing, excellently qualified, who gives great distinction to the Society. And besides he goes out of his way to take our bad cases off our hands.

Andrew stared at the other.

‘Do you
want
your bad cases off your hands?’

‘Of course,’ said Oxborrow pettishly. ‘ Who doesn’t?’

‘I don’t,’ Andrew shouted. ‘I want to keep them, see them through!’

‘Oxborrow’s right,’ Medley muttered unexpectedly. ‘ It’s the first rule of medical practice, Manson. You’ll realise it when you’re older. Ger rid of the bad stuff, get rid of it, rid of it.’

‘But damn it all!’ Andrew protested hotly.

The discussion continued, in circles, for three quarters of an hour. At the end of that time, Andrew, very heated, chanced to exclaim:

‘We’ve got to put this through. D’you hear me, we’ve simply got to. Lleweilyn knows we’re after him. I told him this afternoon.’

‘What!’ The exclamation came from Oxborrow, Urquhart, even from Medley.

‘Do you mean to say, doctor, you
told
Doctor Llewellyn –’ Half rising, Oxborrow bent his startled gaze on Andrew.

‘Of course I did! He’s got to know some time. Don’t you see, we’ve only got to stand together, show a united front and
we’re bound to win
!’

‘Dammit to hell!’ Urquhart was livid. ‘You’ve got a nerve! You don’t know what influence Llewellyn has. He’s got a finger in everything! We’ll be lucky if we’re not all sacked. Think of
me
trying to find another pitch at my time of life.’ He bullocked his way towards the door. ‘You’re a good fellow, Manson. But you’re too
young.
Good
night.
’

Medley had already risen hurriedly to his feet. The look in his eye said he was going straight to his telephone to tell Doctor Llewellyn apologetically that he, Llewellyn, was a superb doctor and he, Medley, could hear him perfectly. Oxborrow was on his heels. In two minutes the room was clear of all but Con, Andrew, and the remainder of the beer.

They finished the beverage in silence. Then Andrew remembered that there were six more bottles in the larder. They finished these six bottles. Then they began to talk. They said things touching the origin, parentage and moral character of Oxborrow, Medley and Urquhart. They dwelt especially upon Oxborrow, and Oxborrow’s harmonium. They did not observe Christine come in and go upstairs. They talked together soulfully, as brothers shamefully betrayed.

Next morning Andrew marched on his rounds with a splitting headache and a scowl. In the Square he passed Llewellyn in his car. As Andrew lifted his head in shamed defiance Llewellyn beamed at him.

For a week Andrew went about chafing under his defeat, bitterly cast down. On Sunday morning, usually devoted to long and peaceful repose, he suddenly broke loose.

‘It isn’t the money, Chris! It’s the principle of the thing! When I think of it – it drives me crazy! Why can’t I let it slip? Why don’t I like Llewellyn? At least why do I like him one minute and hate him the next? Tell me honestly, Chris. Why don’t I sit at his feet? Am I jealous! What is it?’

Her answer staggered him. ‘Yes, I think you are jealous!’

‘What!’

‘Don’t break my eardrums, dear. You asked me to tell you honestly. You’re jealous, frightfully jealous. And why shouldn’t you be? I don’t want to be married to a saint. There’s enough cleaning in this house already without you setting up a halo.’

‘Go on,’ he growled. ‘Give me all my faults when you’re about it. Suspicious! Jealous! You’ve been at me before! Oh, and I’m too
young
, I suppose. Octogenarian Urquhart rammed that in my teeth the other day!’ A pause during which he waited for her to continue the argument. Then, irritably, ‘ Why should I be jealous of Llewellyn?’

‘Because he’s frightfully good at his work, knows so much, and well – chiefly because he has all these first-class qualifications.’

‘While I have a scrubby little MB from a Scots University! God Almighty! Now I know what you really think of me.’ Furious, he flung out of bed and began to walk about the room in his pyjamas. ‘What do qualifications matter anyway! Pure damn swank! It’s method, clinical ability that counts. I don’t believe all the tripe they serve up in text-books. I believe in what I hear through the ends of my stethoscope! and in case you don’t know it I hear plenty. I’m beginning to find out real things in my anthracite investigation. Perhaps I’ll surprise you one fine day, my lady! Damn it all! It’s a fine state of affairs when a man wakes up on Sunday morning and his wife tells him he knows
nothing
!’

Sitting up in bed, she took her manicure set and began to do her nails, waiting till he had finished.

‘I didn’t say all that, Andrew.’ Her reasonableness aggravated him the more. ‘ It’s just – darling, you’re not going to be an assistant
all
your life. You want people to listen to you, pay attention to your work, your ideas – oh, you understand what I mean. If you had a really fine degree – an MD or – or the MRCP, it would stand you in good stead.’