'Well-listen, old man, don't go to sleep for God's sake! To-night I nipped up to see her as usual, and I was brimming over a bit with the old joys of spring and so forth owing to being full of beer…'
'Disgusting.'
'…and Christ Almighty, before I knew where I was I'd proposed to the bloody woman!'
I tried to clear sleep and alcohol out of my eyes, like soapsuds.
'Did she accept?' I asked, yawning.
'Accept! She said 'Yes, please,' as far as I remember. Don't you realize what's happened? Can't you see the gravity of the situation?'
'Perhaps she'll have forgotten by the morning,' I suggested hopefully.
'Not on your life! You know what these women are-at night nurses' breakfast it'll be a case of 'Guess what, girls! Tony Benskin proposed to me at last and we're going to be married in May!' Oh God, oh God!' He clasped his head. 'It'll be all round the hospital by nine o'clock.'
'I gather you're not keen on the idea of marrying her?'
'Me! Married! Can you see it?' he exclaimed.
I nodded my head understandingly and propped myself up on an elbow.
'This needs some thought.'
'How right you are!'
'Surely there must be something you can do…can't you go back and explain it was all in fun?'
Benskin gave a contemptuous laugh.
'You go,' he said.
'I see your point. It's tricky. Let's think in silence.'
After about twenty minutes I had an idea. I criticized it to myself carefully and it seemed sound.
'I think I've got the answer,' I said, and explained it to him.
He leapt to his feet, shook me warmly by the hand, and hurried back to the ward.
The solution was a simple one. I sent Benskin round to propose to every night nurse in the hospital.
13
The clock on the lecture-room wall crept towards ten past four: the Professor of Pathology had overrun his time again.
It was a gloomy, overcast afternoon at the beginning of April. The lights were reflected from the brown varnish on the walls in dull yellow pools. The windows just below the ceiling were, as usual, shut tight, and the air was narcotic. The students packing the tiers of uncomfortable benches were sleepy, annoyed at being kept late, and waiting for their tea.
The Professor was unconscious of the passage of time, the atmosphere in the room, or the necessity for food and drink. He was a thin little white-haired man with large spectacles who was standing behind his desk talking enthusiastically about a little-known variety of louse. Lice were the Professor's life. For thirty years they had filled his thoughts during the day and spilled into his dreams at night. He had, at points during that time, married and raised five children, but he was only faintly aware of these occurrences, The foreground of his mind was filled by lice. He spent his time in his own small laboratory on the top floor of the hospital wholly occupied in studying their habits. He rarely came near his students. He left the teaching to his assistants and considered he had done his share by occasionally wandering round the students' laboratory, which he did with the bemused air of a man whose wife has invited a lot of people he doesn't know to a party. He insisted, however, on, giving to each class a series of lectures on his speciality. He was the greatest authority on lice in the world, and when he lectured to other pathologists in Melbourne, Chicago, Oslo, or Bombay, men would eagerly cross half a continent to hear him. But the students of his own hospital, who had only the effort of shifting themselves out of the sofas in the common room, came ungracefully and ungratefully, and found it all rather boring.
As the lecturer droned on, describing the disproportionately complicated sexual habits of an obscure species of louse, the students glanced sullenly at the clock, shuffled their feet, yawned, folded up their notebooks, put away their pens, and lolled in their seats. Some of the class started chatting to their neighbours or lit their pipes and read the evening paper as comfortably as if they were sitting in their own lodgings. From the back row came a subdued stamping of feet on the wooden floor-the students' only means of retaliation on their lecturers. But the Professor had by now forgotten the presence of his audience and if we had all marched out into the fresh air or set the lecture theatre on fire he would have noticed it only dimly.
I was sitting at the back with Tony Benskin and Sprogget. Benskin always took a place as far back as he could, for some lecturers had the unpleasant habit of asking questions of students who were dreamily inspecting the ceiling and at a distance it was possible to give the impression of overpowering concentration even if asleep. It was also convenient for making an exit unobtrusively when the lecturer became insupportably boring. Attendance at lectures was compulsory at St. Swithin's, and a board was passed round the benches for each student to record his presence by signing it. This led to everyone in the medical school rapidly becoming competent in forgery, so that the absence of a friend could easily be rectified. This unselfish practice diminished after the Dean counted the students at his own lecture and found not only that thirty-odd men were represented by ninety signatures but that some of the absentees had in their enthusiasm forgetfully signed the board in different places four times.
The Professor had left me behind some time ago. I was cleaning my nails, letting my thoughts wander pleasantly to the comfortable drone of the lecturer's voice. Unfortunately, in their wanderings they stumbled across a topic I wished they could have avoided.
'I say, Tony,' I asked softly. 'I suppose you couldn't lend me three or four quid, could you?'
Benskin laughed-so loudly that men in the three rows in front of him turned round.
'I thought not,' I said. 'All the same, it's damned difficult. Now we've started the path. course I've got to have my microscope back. While we were in the wards it was perfectly all right for it to lodge in Goldstein's window, but if I don't get it soon I shan't be able to do the practical classes at all.'
'I sympathize,' Benskin said. 'Have no doubts about that. My own instrument is at present locked in the coffers of Mr. Goldstein's rival down the road, and I see no prospect of recovering it from the clutches of said gentleman at all. The old money-bags are empty. For weeks now I've had to wait outside the bank until the manager goes to lunch before cashing a cheque.'
My microscope was an easy way of raising ready money; I could pawn it without inconvenience when broke and reclaim it the moment my allowance came in. But I had recently piled up so many other commitments that this simple system had broken down. My tastes had altered expensively since I first arrived at St. Swithin's, though my allowance had stayed much the same. Then I smoked a little, drank hardly at all, and never went out with girls; now I did all three together.
'The funny thing is, old man,' said Benskin when the Professor had exhausted the educational qualities of lice, 'that I was just thinking of putting the leeches on you for a quid or so. The cost of living is extremely high with me at the moment. I suppose there really is no possibility of a small loan?'
'None at all.'
'I must raise a little crinkly from somewhere. Surely one of the students has a couple of bob he can jingle in his pocket?'
'You can try Grimsdyke,' I suggested. 'He usually has a bit left over for his friends.'
Benskin frowned. 'Not since he got married, old boy. The little woman takes a dim view of the stuff being diverted from the housekeeping to the pockets of old soaks. No, there's nothing for it-it's a case of bashing the old dishes again.'
All of us had recurrent bouts of insolvency, and each had his favourite way of raising enough money to pay his debts. Dishwashing by the night was the most popular way of earning small sums, as it did not interfere with classes, it could be taken up without notice, and the big hotels and restaurants in London paid comparatively well for a few hours spent in the stillroom. Baby-sitting was Sprogget's speciality, and John Bottle occasionally brought home a few pounds from the tote or by winning the waltz competition at an Oxford Street palais. But Benskin sometimes overspent himself so much that more settled employment had to be found. One afternoon during a time when he was suffering a severe attack of poverty he appeared in the students' common room in his best blue serge
