DOCTOR IN CLOVER

'Mrs Wattle.' Petunia turned to face her. 'I'm not going. I must stay with my husband. I'll send a telegram to London and resign my job. My mother can send on my things tomorrow.'

'I'm absolutely delighted!' exclaimed the old dear, embracing us. 'As I always say, a woman's place is at her husband's side, come what may. Of course, my children, you may stay with us as long as you wish. I'll just put the kettle on for your hot-water bottles.

I expect after such excitements you'll both be wanting to go early to bed.'

If I wasn't keen on marrying Avril, I'd rather have swallowed the entire poisons cupboard before marrying Petunia. An agreeable companion for a gay night out, certainly. But you can't make a life partner of a woman who keeps trying to conduct the band with sticks of celery.

'You haven't eaten your nice soup, Gaston,' said Ma Wattle at supper.

'Not very hungry, I'm afraid.'

'What a wonderful thing love is!'

I was nearly sick over the sliced brawn.

I was edgy and jumpy the rest of the evening, which, of course, the idiotic Wattles put down to passion, or the expectation thereof. Worst of all, the mental trauma of the past two days seemed to have beaten my brain into paralysis. Nothing I could contrive by ten o'clock prevented Petunia and myself again being shown into my bedroom.

'Alone at last!' breathed Petunia.

'Yes, but only for a couple of shakes,' I told her smartly. 'As soon as the Wattles have bedded down, I'm going to skip it into the night again.'

'But Gaston! Surely you're not going to leave your wife?'

'Pet, you chump! You're not my wife-only on the programme. Let me make it perfectly clear I'm not going to stay with you up here.'

'How honourable you are!' she breathed. 'How fine! How different!'

The Grimsdykes, of course, have their honour. But I must admit I wouldn't have objected to the same arrangement if we'd been in a hotel at Brighton instead of the Wattles' spare bedroom. Under prevailing circumstances the only place for me was Clem's Caff.

'We'll be married tomorrow if you like,' she said, starting to unzip her dress. 'A girl friend of mine once got a special licence terribly easily.'

'Petunia! You don't understand-'

'I understand everything, darling. You're a wonderfully honest man, and I shall love you more and more as the years go by.'

About twenty minutes later I was sitting again over one of Clem's cups of tea. I woke at five-thirty the next morning, so ill from the effects of prolonged exposure that I would almost have married Petunia on the spot for a comfortable night's rest in my own bed. I got back to the house shivering and with a shocking headache, and found Dr Wattle in the hall.

'Just come in from seeing the Mayor's gout,' he greeted Me. 'I didn't know you'd been called out too. I never heard the phone.'

'It was someone with fits. Difficult diagnosis. Took a lot of time.'

'You don't look very perky, my boy. Are you sure you're all right?'

'Bit chilly, this night air.'

'Perhaps I'd better take your temperature?'

As he removed the thermometer from my mouth he asked, 'Ever had mumps? Well, I'm afraid you have now.'

'Mumps!' I cried. 'But-but that means isolation.'

'I'm afraid so. You'll have to stay in your room. Your wife hasn't had it either? Then you'd better be strictly alone. I'll go up and break the sad news. It's best for you not to breathe over the poor child.'

'Petunia's rather alarmed about it,' explained Dr Wattle, returning with some surprise. 'She seemed remarkably upset over those hormonal complications. I told her how terribly rare they are, but she's still awfully agitated. Keeps saying it would ruin her career. I shouldn't have thought it would have mattered much one way or another to a nurse. However, it's none of my business. We'll make you up a bed in the attic.'

I slept for twenty-four hours, which Dr Wattle later wrote a letter about to the BMJ entitled 'Unusual Stupor in Epidemic Parotitis'. Petunia spent the morning gargling, then disappeared for London. As soon as my lumps were down I announced I must go to the sea-side for convalescence, and sent a wire from London explaining I'd been summoned to a dying uncle in South Africa.

I felt pretty sorry for myself. I'd broken a couple of girlish hearts, had a nasty illness, and expected hourly to be assaulted by Commandos, and so on, in the street. Porterhampton had thenceforward to be blotted from my atlas. And now I had to explain it all to my cousin.

But at least I never hurt the dear old Wattles' feelings.

6

'From your appearance,' started Miles, 'you would seem to have finished some protracted party.'

'If you must know,' I replied, rather hurt, 'I've had a nasty attack of epidemic parotitis. I've hardly got over it yet.'

'I'm sorry.'

It being one of my principles always to confess my short-comings promptly, particularly if they're likely to be discovered pretty quickly anyway, I'd telephoned Miles on arrival and invited myself to dinner. I now sat in his South Kensington drawing-room wondering how best to explain the retreat from Porterhampton.

'And when are you returning to your practice?' asked Miles.

I shifted on the sofa.

'As a matter of fact, old lad, I'm not.'

'What? Damn it! You've not been thrown out already?'

'Thrown out?' I looked offended. 'I resigned, with the dignity of a high-principled Cabinet Minister.'

Miles fell silent. To fill the gap I reached for a magazine-one of the shiny ones which report the activities of all our best-bred young women and horses.

'That's what I need,' I said, indicating a photograph of people with long drinks on a yacht at Cannes. 'A few weeks in the sunshine to buck me up.'

Miles made a noise like a tearing sheet of canvas.

'Damnation, Gaston! Are you mad? Are you fit for some institution? Here you are-out of work, penniless, a walking disgrace to your family if not to your entire profession, and you ramble about weeks in the sunshine. Really!'

I tossed the magazine aside with a sigh.

'The trouble is, you're perfectly right,' I admitted. 'I'm not the shining figure of the eager young doctor.'

'You're the shining figure of the shiftless young wastrel, and I don't mind telling you. I seriously advise you to see a psychiatrist. He might at least be able to explain your highly unstable occupational history.'

'The fact is, old lad, I don't need a psychiatrist to tell me that I don't like medicine very much.'

Miles stared as though I were Cinderella telling the Fairy Godmother she didn't care greatly for dancing.

'At Porterhampton the dear old couple handed me every chance to settle down as a respectable family man and family doctor. But do I want to be the modern GP, signing certificates for all the uninteresting patients and hospital letters for all the interesting ones? No, I jolly well don't. And neither do a lot of other chaps, judging by the correspondence in the BMJ. As I'll never be a specialist in anything, and I couldn't possibly sit in the Town Hall with a map of the local sewers doing public health, there isn't much left. The trouble is, I'm temperamentally unsuited to my work.'

'But think of all those years of study-wasted!'

'They're not wasted a bit,' I argued. 'Look at all the famous chaps who've benefited from a medical education- Leonardo da Vinci, John Keats, Chekhov, and so on. Not to mention Crippen.'