'I'd be feeling bloody awful. And please hurry up.'
By the time Nurse Macpherson appeared I had downed my quadruple whisky and twenty grains of aspirin, while the waiter found some coal and brought the poker from the office. 'We have to be careful over the fires,' he explained to me. 'Some of them commercial gentlemen pile it up as though they were stoking the _Queen Mary.'_
'Nan, my dear,' I greeted her more cheerfully. 'You're looking very beautiful.'
'My God, I could do with a drink, too. That room up there's absolutely freezing.'
'That would be number three?' asked the waiter sympathetically. 'Oh, that's a terrible room that is. It's a wonder they put humans in it at all. I'd rather sleep in the tent of a circus, that I would.'
'We want some more drinks.'
'Would the lady like a cocktail, now? I could do her a good cocktail, and very reasonable.'
'Two large whiskies will do.'
As he left and we sat down on each side of the fire I began to feel better. 'It's a pity about the single rooms,' I said, looking shiftily to see if the door was shut. 'That old buzzard in the office quite put me off my stride.'
'It doesn't matter,' she said, lighting a cigarette. 'You can creep down as soon as everyone goes to bed. It saves a lot of bother in the long run.'
'You've had some experience of this-this sort of thing?' I asked.
'Really, darling, I wasn't born yesterday.' She glanced round her. 'What a bloody hole you've taken me to, if you don't mind my saying so. This place looks like a waiting-room got up for the wake of a dead stationmaster.'
'I'm sorry. Really I am.' I reached for her hand. 'But I've never done anything like this before. And-and I did so much want to do it with you, Nan.'
She smiled, and squeezed my fingers. 'You're really very, very sweet.'
The waiter then returned with the drinks.
'I was looking you up in the visitors book, and I see you're from London,' he said. 'What sort of line of business would you be in, now?'
'I'm a doctor.'
I bit my lip; it was my second idiotic slip. Apart from the danger of discovery by confessing my profession, I was now the target for everyone's intimacies.
'Are you now? And that's very interesting.' The waiter settled himself, leaning on his up-ended tray. 'I've a great admiration for the medical profession myself, Doctor. It must be a great work, a great work. I had a brother, now, and he started off to be a doctor, but he had some sort of trouble with the authorities. Now he's an oyster- opener in one of the big hotels in O'Connell Street. Oh, he would have been a fine doctor, he would, a lovely pair of hands he had on him. And the lady wouldn't be a nurse, would she?'
'It happens that we are cousins,' I told him firmly. 'Our uncle, who was in the brass business, has unfortunately died suddenly. We are attending his funeral. The reason we are travelling together is that we both work in London, and it is obviously more convenient for us to share the same car. The reason we are in this hotel is that we met a man on the road-'
'Now it's a very convenient thing that you should have come tonight, Doctor, because I was having a lot of trouble with my feet, you see, and I was meaning to go to a doctor tomorrow. But now you're here, it'll save me the journey. I think that the arches must be dropped, or something, but I get a sort of burning pain along here which sort of moves round and round-'
'I'll hear about your feet later, if you really want me to. Will you please get us two more drinks.'
'But you've only just started those.'
'I know. But we shall have finished them before you can turn round.'
'I've had some trouble with my kidneys, too, I'd like to talk to you about, Doctor.'
'Yes, yes! Later if you like. But drinks now.'
'Just as you please, Doctor. I don't mind at all.'
We had several more drinks, after which Nurse Macpherson became more romantic. The waiter fortunately had to go and serve dinner.
'How about some food,' I suggested.
'Ummm! I'm ravenous. And there's a good three hours to kill before we can decently disappear.' I kissed her, and she began to laugh. 'I wonder how old Plumtree is?' she asked. Both laughing, we entered the coffee- room.
I later decided that the decline of the evening really started with dinner. The coffee-room itself instantly damped our spirits. It was a long, cold place, decorated only with pictures of horses in heavy gilt frames. Most of the tables were bare, those laid for dinner being huddled round a small fire in a large grate at one end. Our fellow diners were a pair of old ladies at a table thickly covered with patent-medicine bottles, an elderly couple, a red- faced, fat man with a ginger moustache, and a thin, white-haired man who was drinking soup and reading the paper propped against a bottle of beer. Everyone was silent and eating steadily, as though they were anxious to get back to the unknown corners of the hotel where they lurked.
'If you please, Doctor, over here, Doctor,' said the waiter loudly, interrupting his service and clattering a vegetable dish on the table. 'I've put you nice and near the fire, Doctor.' He crossed to a small table almost in the hearth and began beating the seat of a chair violently with his napkin. 'There you are, Doctor. And the young lady, too, now, Doctor. Nice and cosy, would it be?'
Coming from a land where only the Church and the medical profession are venerated, the waiter had automatically made us his favourities. This was good for the service, but it immediately made everyone in the room fix us with their fiercest attention.
'And what would you be having, Doctor?' he continued as we sat down.
I looked at the menu. 'I'll have some of the Potage Dubarry,' I said, trying to appear unaware of the spectators.
'Oh, I wouldn't have any of that, Doctor.'
'Very well,' I glanced at Nurse Macpherson. 'We'll try the steamed plaice with pommes vapeur and cabbage.'
The waiter, who had his order-pad in one hand, scratched his head with the butt of his pencil. 'I wouldn't touch the fish if I was you, Doctor. Mind, it's not a thing I'd tell anybody, but even the cats downstairs are refusing the fish.'
'How about the casserole de mouton? And we'll have some wine.' He looked blank, so I added, 'You have some wine?'
'Sure, we've got wine. I'll bring you a bottle.'
'Red wine,' I insisted. 'I'd like to choose a Burgundy, if you've got one ready at room temperature.'
'You just leave it to me, Doctor.'
'Did I understand, sir,' said the man with the ginger moustache, 'that you are a medical man?'
I nodded.
'My name is Major Porter,' he continued. 'If I may effect an introduction to your good self and your lady wife-'
'I'm a lady, but no wife,' Nurse Macpherson said tartly.
'We're cousins, as it happens,' I explained. 'We have an uncle in the lead business in Scotland, who died, and we've been to his funeral. So we came together because we both work in London. I mean, we're going to his funeral. Poor fellow.' I felt that my whisky before dinner had made the story mildly confused, so to clarify it I added, 'He wasn't in the lead business, I mean the brass business.'
I noticed Nurse Macpherson's mouth harden.
'I hope you won't mind my saying so,' Major Porter continued, 'but I don't believe in doctors. I've nothing against doctors individually, mind-not a thing. Some of my best friends are doctors. I've no faith in the medical profession as a whole.'
'Neither have I,' said Nurse Macpherson, with the frankness of the slightly tipsy.
'Really, madam? I'm interested to hear it. Are you-forgive me if I ask-at all connected with medical work?'
