'But I doubt whether there will be much money left, because I intend to spend it. I realize now how I have wasted my life, because you two cleverly insisted on keeping me under your noses. I'm not at all delicate. Ethel tells me I'm as vigorous as any man of twenty. I knew I'd been missing something, ever since I was among all those nice young people in hospital.'
Lord Nutbeam smiled benignly all round.
'Dear Doctor, do you recall I once mentioned Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard?_ I was about to quote-'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.' Charming poem. Well, I'm going to blush all over the place from now on. Ethel and I are off tomorrow for our honeymoon at Monte Carlo. You must come, Doctor, and visit me there when we've settled down. You probably prefer to stay here, Percy. And so you may, if you wish. Until we get back.'
'Don't forget the present, darling,' said Lady Nutbeam, looking as unruffled as when she changed his Lordship's pyjamas.
'Ah, the present. It was you, Doctor, who brought dear Ethel and I together. So perhaps you will accept this little token of our lasting gratitude and affection?'
And he handed me a gold cigarette case, still in its box from Cartiers.
12
'I don't believe a word of it,' said Miles.
'Don't you indeed?' I replied, and produced a couple of identical gold cigarette cases from my pockets.
'The only snag is knowing what to do with the things, my life never being organized to meet such a situation. I think I'll reserve one for the hock shop, and have the other engraved 'With Gratitude From a Successful Patient.' Then I can offer people cigarettes from it, and do my professional standing no end of good. Though I suppose I might as well have 'With Gratitude from Her Royal Highness' while I'm about it, don't you think?'
I'd left Long Wotton that morning to the touching distress of everybody, particularly the sub-postmistress, who burst into tears and gummed up all the threepenny stamps. Even the old uncle had congratulated me on handling the Nutbeams, and not only written a comfortable cheque as promised but given me a straw hat from Jamaica. Percy Nutbeam himself had smartly disappeared from the district, it was rumoured to sell cars in a Piccadilly showroom, and I'd half a mind to go along later and make faces through the plate-glass window.
It was a beautiful afternoon in the middle of Ascot week as I arrived in London, when even the chaps with placards announcing Doom is Nigh at the bottom of the Edgware Road looked as though the world wasn't such a bad old place after all. I was sorry to find the only drab patch on the whole cheerful canvas of life was poor old Miles himself.
'They've postponed the appointment at St Swithin's for six months,' he announced, not seeming really interested in cigarette cases. 'The committee have invited Professor Kaiser from Kentucky to fill the gap with a clinical visit.'
'Gloved hands across the sea, and all that?'
He snorted. 'Not a bit of it! It's nothing but a transparent ruse for everyone to organize their forces. My only encouragement is that Mr Longfellow from the Neurosurgical Department is now supporting me. Though, of course, he always opposes Sir Lancelot in everything.'
'Because Sir Lancelot gave him out, umpiring the last Staff and Students cricket match.'
'I shouldn't be at all surprised at that.' Miles stared gloomily at the print of Luke Fildes' _The Doctor._ 'If only the patients knew what went on behind their backs!'
'Why don't you and Connie get away from it all and take a holiday?' I suggested. 'The yearly change of scene is essential for mental and bodily health-lesson one, social medicine.'
'Nothing depresses me quite so much as packing.'
'But the sunny shores of the Mediterranean-'
'Only seem to give me the gut-rot.'
I'd thought of passing on Sir Lancelot's advice, but the poor fellow looked so hopelessly miserable I said instead, 'Don't worry about me, old lad. I'll do my bit by staying out of sight and out of trouble. At least for the next six months.'
'You know, Gaston, you're…you're being rather decent about all this.'
'Not at all. One of the family, good cause, and all that.'
'I'm sincerely grateful to you. If can be any help in finding a new position-'
'Not necessary, old lad. I have a scheme which will take me right out of everybody's hair for a bit.'
'You're not emigrating?' I thought his voice sounded a little too hopeful. 'Apart from the oil company, I know the Secretary of the Commonwealth Resettlement Board pretty well at the club. He could easily fix you up somewhere like Australia or Canada.'
I shook my head. 'Worthy places all, but I shall remain based on this blessed plot. What was it old Sir Lancelot used to tell us? 'I know one-half of this country thinks it's underpaid and the other half that it's overtaxed, but believe me, gentlemen, it's cheap at the price.' Anyway, my immediate future is taken care of in the homeland.'
'Respectably, I trust?'
'Very. But I must maintain strict professional secrecy about it at the moment.'
Miles looked surprised, but asked no more questions. We parted on such excellent terms I wished afterwards I'd thought of asking him for another ten quid.
I didn't enlighten Miles that I was planning to write a book, because he would have told me it was a stupid notion, and I should have agreed with him. Though a good many other doctors seem to have had the same idea- Oliver Goldsmith, Smollett, Rabelais, Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham, and so on. The thought had come to me in the uncle's study at Long Wotton, where I'd been browsing to keep up with Lord Nutbeam's conversation. Half-way through _The World's Ten Great Novels_ it struck me that a chap who could write the obituaries for the _Medical Observer_ ought to be pretty good at producing convincing fiction.
The only snag was paying the rent while writing it, and I suppose the same problem worried Goldsmith and Smollett as well. But now I had the uncle's cheque I could afford to take a small houseboat in Chelsea, if I managed to live largely on baked beans and benzedrine.
The next afternoon I'd an appointment with some publishers called Carboy and Plover in Bloomsbury, a district with high-class literary associations but now consisting of small hotels for drunk Scotsmen missing the night trains from King's Cross.
'A hospital story, eh? They're generally sellers, at any rate,' said Mr Carboy.
He was a fat chap in a tweed suit, whom I'd found sitting among photographs of his best-selling authors and prize-winning cattle reading the _Farmer and Stockbreeder._ But he was very civil, and gave me a cup of tea.
'The drama of the operating theatre,' murmured Plover, a thin, pale fellow on whom nothing seemed to grow very well-hair, moustache, bow-tie, all drooped like a sensitive plant after a thunderstorm.
'I'll have a go, then,' I said. I felt the interview was more encouraging than the one you got on entering St Swithin's, when they just told you the number of chaps they chucked out for slacking.
'Have a go by all means, Doctor,' agreed Carboy. 'Just send us the manuscript when it's finished. Can't promise anything definite, of course. But we'll certainly read it.'
'Er-one small point-'
I didn't want to raise sordid questions among such literary gents, but I went on, 'I met an author chap once, who said publishers often made a small advance-'
'We should be delighted, Doctor,' said Carboy. 'Absolutely delighted,' agreed Plover. 'Nothing gives a publisher greater pleasure than encouraging the young artist. Eh, Plover? But alas! The state of the book trade.'
'Simply terrible just now,' affirmed Plover, drooping further.
'Quite indescribable.'
'Bankruptcies weekly.'
'Poor Hargreaves. Shot himself only yesterday.'
'I'm not at all certain,' ended Plover, 'that I didn't hear the crack of a pistol shot on my way to lunch.'
