DOCTOR AT LARGE

'Yes, I'm a member of a Sisterhood of Druids. We use a good deal of mistletoe, and aren't past sacrifice at sunrise. Can I do anything for your warts?'

Major Porter seemed surprised, but continued, 'I'm sure you'll be interested in my case, Doctor. In fact, I'd like your opinion on it. Not that I expect you to approve of my treatment.' He looked at me slyly. 'You fellows stick together, eh? There's no closed shop like the doctors' shop, I often say. I mean no offence, of course. Now would you believe it, Doctor,' he said, drawing back his coat and protruding his abdomen proudly, 'at the age of five I was given only six months to live?'

I recognized wearily the doctor's second social blight worse than the men who insist on telling you about their orthodox illnesses are the people cured by faith, herbs; and osteopathy. Major Porter addressed the coffee-room about his miraculous lease of life while we ate our mutton stew and drank our wine, boiling hot from under the stillroom tap. By the time the waiter reverently bore us the porcelain slab with the remains of the cheese, the Major was tugging up his trousers and pointing to the scar of his old tibial osteomyelitis. The white-haired man, who like the Major was a commercial traveller, joined in with the story of the remarkable cure effected by a man in Catford on his sister-in-law who came out all over when she ate strawberries. Then the waiter made himself comfortable leaning against the fireplace and began talking about his kidneys.

'What you need for your kidneys', declared Nurse Macpherson, with slight slurring, 'is pure water. Flush them. Drink water-several gallons a day.'

'That's a damn silly remark,' I said. I was beginning to have a hangover, my throat was raw, and I was starting to shiver. 'That treatment went out with pneumonia jackets and ice-bags. You restrict fluids and give 'em a high protein intake.'

She looked at me steadily. 'Have you ever nursed a case of nephritis?' she demanded.

'You don't have to know any medicine to be a nurse, my dear. Any more than you have to know dietetics to be a good cook.'

She was about to reply, when the old gentleman said, 'Doctor and nurse, eh? What brings you to this part of the world?'

'We met a man on the road who recommended the hotel. You see, we're cousins. We're going to the funeral of our uncle in the brass business-'

'For God's sake!' shouted Nurse Macpherson. 'Not again!' She stood up. 'I'm going to bed.'

Bed! I suddenly remembered what we were there for.

'I'm going in a minute, too,' I said, as she stalked from the room.

'It isn't ten yet,' said the Major. 'Let's have a drink.'

'No thanks.' I turned to the waiter, who was rubbing his loins thoughtfully under his coat. 'Bring me what's left in the whisky bottle. I'll take it to my room.'

I sat on the edge of my bed feeling miserable. I wished I were tucked up in a ward at St Swithin's, with someone bringing me throat lozenges every half-hour. But I would have to go through with it. Nurse Macpherson, the unruffled heroine of a dozen such adventures, would roast me in her contempt if I didn't. After waiting for the hotel to become silent I slowly undressed and put on my dressing-gown. Carefully I opened the door. I began to creep down the stairs towards the first floor.

The effect of fever, excitement, and alcohol raised my pulse rate alarmingly as I felt my way along the darkened corridor towards room number three. I had carefully memorized my landmarks before dinner, and I remembered that you turned left by the fire-extinguisher, went down three steep stairs, and reached the first-floor landing. I was checking my position by feeling for a marble statuette of Britannia when the light went on.

'Yes?'

Mrs Digby, in hair-net and dressing-gown, stood at her bedroom door.

I tried to smile again. 'Good evening.'

She said nothing.

'I was looking for the bathroom.'

'There's a bathroom on your floor.'

'Oh, really? Is there? I didn't notice it.'

'It is opposite your room. There is 'Bath' written on the door in large white letters.'

'Thank you. Thank you very much. Stupid of me, coming all this way. Should have seen it. All conveniences, what? Good hotel. Capital!'

She made no reply, so I made my way back along the passage. She waited at her open door until I had disappeared, then put the light out. I tried to creep back after shivering on the upper landing for ten minutes, but she opened her door again before I had reached the foot of the stairs.

'Did you say opposite my room?' I asked. 'With 'Bath' on it?'

'Yes.'

'Well. Thanks. Good night to you. A very good night to you.'

I went back to my bedroom and drank the rest of the whisky. It was then eleven-thirty. Clearly I should have to wait another hour, or even two, before operating my risky sortie. I lay down on top of my bed and picked up the Lancet, which I had somehow included in my packing.

When I woke up it was eight-thirty in the morning.

'God Almighty!' I said. I already saw myself the laughing-stock of St Swithin's. I dressed quickly, dashed downstairs, and threw open the door of Nurse Macpherson's room. It was empty, with her pink nightie rumpled on the bed. So was the hall below, and the coffee-room.

'If you're looking for the lady,' said the waiter, 'she's gone out for a walk with the Major.'

***

Nurse Macpherson and I said little on the journey home. When we were nearing the Zoo again she began to laugh.

'I don't really see there's anything very funny in it,' I told her sourly. 'I've been extremely, unwell all the time, I've got a roaring temperature, and how did I know what the bloody place was like?'

'I'm not blaming you about the hotel I was just thinking what a laugh the girls will get in the Nurses' Home.'

'You wouldn't tell them?' I asked anxiously.

'Why not? A nurse's life is a dull one. It can always do with brightening up.'

'If you breathe a word about this to your friends,' I said savagely, 'I'll spill it all round the Residency.'

She laughed again. 'You wouldn't dare.'

'I damn well would.'

But I knew she was right.

Nurse Plumtree never spoke to me again. Two weeks later Nurse Macpherson became engaged to Bingham.

21

'It was hard luck, old lad,' Grimsdyke said sympathetically. 'Still, it might have been worse. There was one fellow I knew who took a girl away for a week-end to Torquay. Best hotel, no expense spared and so on. They'd just got to their room and he'd opened the windows to have a breath of sea air, when what do you think he saw? Her whole bloody family arriving for their summer holidays at the front door, ma, pa, and several small sisters and brothers. Phew!'

We were sitting in his room some time later. I stared gloomily at my drink in his toothglass; my throat was better, but my pride would wear its scars for a lifetime.

'My trouble', I said solemnly, 'is women.'

'Come, come, Richard! A less flighty citizen than you would be hard to discover. Disregarding the pocket harem you were running until this disaster, I've never thought, of you as one of nature's bottom-pinchers.'

'I don't go chasing women right and left, I admit. But ever since I qualified I seem to keep getting involved with