'As many opinions as you wish, Dr Grimsdyke.'
'There's a man in Harley Street just right for this type of case. Though his private fees are rather high.'
'That's of no concern at all, I assure you.'
'And, of course, he'll charge a guinea a mile for the visit.'
Percy Nutbeam looked a bit concerned doing the mental arithmetic, but he agreed, 'Nothing is too expensive with my brother's life at stake.'
'Plus his first-class fare and meals, naturally. He's a general surgeon, but I guarantee he's got the sharpest diagnostic nose in London. His name's Sir Lancelot Spratt.'
10
'Delightful air,' declared Sir Lancelot.
I'd driven over to Greater Wotton Junction to meet him, and pretty nervous I felt about it, too. In my days as a student at St Swithin's, Sir Lancelot and myself disagreed about everything from the way I tried to treat appendicitis to the way I tried to treat the nurses, and his last remark the day I proudly told him I'd qualified was that the Archbishop of Canterbury would presumably now have to make an addition to the litany.
I bowed him from his carriage like royalty come to open the local fat stock show.
'I hope you've no objection to travelling all this way, sir?' I began, feeling that I'd sent for Rembrandt to paint the attic.
'Objections? Why, boy? It is the duty of consultant surgeons and the fire brigade to give their services whenever and wherever they are needed. It is, moreover, extremely pleasant to escape from London on a summer morning, and I'm being handsomely paid for it. Don't be so damned humble, Grimsdyke!' He poked me in the epigastrium with his walking-stick. 'A doctor must feel humble only towards his own abilities. Excellent roses, these. Apricot Queens, I believe? What sort of mulch d'you use?'
This remark was directed to the stationmaster, Greater Wotton being one of those junctions regarded as an exercise in landscape gardening interrupted by the occasional arrival of trains. Sir Lancelot then ignored me for ten minutes' erudite discussion on the merits of horse and cow manure. Come to think of it, that sort of ability represents his genius. Most surgeons can talk only about the inside of their patients or the inside of their cars, but Sir Lancelot has informed views on everything from nuclear physics to newts.
'I am presumably obliged to travel in that,' he said, indicating my car. 'Am I permitted a bite to eat before seeing the patient?'
'I've arranged a modest meal, sir.'
Remembering that a high blood-sugar is conducive to mental tranquillity, I'd decided to give the old boy a jolly good lunch before getting down to business.
'I rarely take wine at midday,' Sir Lancelot observed later, mellowing over the roast lamb and a glass of the uncle's Chвteau Lafite, 'but I must say Dr Rudolph Grimsdyke has excellent taste in it.'
I agreed, though I'd been a bit alarmed to notice the cellar had somehow got down to only a couple of bottles.
'The only locums I did were in the East End of London, where in those days the doctors were as half-starved as the patients.' Sir Lancelot gazed through the window, where the cuckoos were tuning up among the blossoms. 'He seems to have found himself a very agreeable spot-botanically, ornithologically, and even meteorologically.'
'But not anthropologically, sir,' I said brightly, feeling it time to mention the Nutbeams.
'According to the essayist Hazlitt,' Sir Lancelot observed with a nod, 'all country people hate each other. You will now kindly recapitulate the family history of your patient. You were not particularly explicit on the telephone.'
An hour later the pair of us were marching into Nutbeam Hall.
I think the Hon. Percy and his repulsive missus were staggered to find themselves faced with a chap in a frock coat and a wing collar, who glanced round as though he'd been sent to condemn the place by the local Medical Officer of Health.
'We are delighted, Sir Lancelot,' simpered Amanda Nutbeam, who of course thought doctors were all right as long as they had titles. 'I am so pleased you accepted our invitation to take over his Lordship's case.'
Sir Lancelot looked as though she were a junior probationer who'd dropped a bedpan in the middle of his weekly ward round.
'Madam, I have
'Oh! Of course, Sir Lancelot-'
'That is normal professional procedure.'
These remarks put my morale up no end. Despite our differences in the past, Sir Lancelot wasn't so much offering the olive branch as proffering ruddy great groves. But I should have realized that a chap like him would back me to the scalpel hilt, now that I was qualified and one of the boys.
'We shall see the patient, if you please.'
The Nutbeams looked rather flustered. 'And I should be glad if you would kindly provide me with a clean hand towel.'
I remembered Sir Lancelot always demanded a clean towel in uppish households, and in a tone inferring that it was a pretty stiff request.
'Dr Grimsdyke will lead the way,' he went on, as I stepped respectfully aside. 'The patient's doctor 'precedes the consultant into the sickroom. That is etiquette, and I should be the last to alter it.'
Our consultation was a great success. Sir Lancelot started by discussing ancient Chinese medicine for twenty minutes, then he examined the patient, had a chat about Byzantine architecture, and left his Lordship looking his brightest for weeks.
'And you discovered the original fracture solely from the physical signs, Grimsdyke?' he asked, as we left the room.
'Yes, sir.'
'Congratulations. The difficulty in making such a diagnosis is matched only by the disaster of missing it.'
'That's-that's very kind of you, sir.'
'I believe in giving credit where credit is due. In your case it happens to be remarkably easy.'
I felt jolly pleased with myself, all the same. Though I've always maintained that orthopaedic surgery is only a branch of carpentry, and now I come to think of it I was rather hot stuff in the woodwork class at school.
The other two Nutbeams were waiting expectantly in the hall, but at the foot of the stairs Sir Lancelot simply picked up his hat.
'Sir Lancelot-?'
Percy looked as though this wasn't much of a run for their money.
'Yes, Mr Nutbeam?'
'Have you-er, anything to say about my brother?'
'I shall have a consultation with my colleague here, who will inform you later. That is the normal procedure.'
'But if you could hold out even a word of hope-' exclaimed Amanda, I fancy glancing stealthily at the calendar.
'I think my colleague will allow me to say that you will shortly see an improvement in his Lordship's condition.'
'Thank God for that,' they cried together.
'Now, if you please, Dr Grimsdyke, we shall return to your surgery.' He pulled out that great gold watch of his. 'We have really little time for discussion before the four o'clock train.'
Sir Lancelot didn't mention the patient on our way back to the uncle's cottage, being more interested in describing all the different methods of thatching. I had to wait till he was enjoying a cup of tea in the parlour, when he declared:
'Apart from an uncomplicated healing fracture, there's nothing whatever wrong with Lord Nutbeam. But there's
