Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

Jolly Jumbo says: ‘I swear on my mother’s grave, Alph, I haven’t got it. But I’ll have it in Portsmouth, on my Bible oath. You know me. Sacred word of honour! I’ll be at The Hope and Anchor for a matter of weeks, and you’ll be paid in full. And I’ll send you a doctor, by my father’s life I will. Honour bright! In the meantime, Alph, I’ll look after Dot for you.’

And so he picked up the dog – I hadn’t the strength to prevent him – and went out, and I heard the whips cracking and the vans squelching in the mud.

But little Dot got away and come back….

I’ve been talking too much, sir. I thought you was the doctor. Get one for the girl, if you’ve a heart in you – and a bit of meat for the dog. I’ve got a few shillings on me.

I said: ‘Keep still. I’ll be right back.’ And I ran in the rain, closely followed by the dog Dot, down through that dripping green tunnel into Wettendene, and rang long and loud at a black door to which was affixed the brass plate, well worn, of one Dr MacVitie, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

The old doctor came out, brushing crumbs from his waistcoat. There was an air of decrepitude about him. He led me into his surgery. I saw a dusty old copy of Gray’s Anatomy, two fishing rods, four volumes of the Badminton Library – all unused these past twenty years. There were also some glass-stoppered bottles that seemed to contain nothing but sediment; a spirit lamp without spirit; some cracked test-tubes; and an ancient case-book into the cover of which was stuck a rusty scalpel.

He was one of the cantankerous old Scotch school of doctors that seem incapable of graciousness, and grudging even of a civil word. He growled: ‘I’m in luck this evening. It’s six months since I sat down to my bit of dinner without the bell going before I had the first spoonful of soup half-way to my mouth. Well, you’ve let me finish my evening meal. Thank ye.’

He was ponderously ironic, this side offensiveness. ‘Well, out with it. What ails ye? Nothing, I’ll wager. Nothing ever ails ’em hereabout that a dose of castor oil or an aspirin tablet will not cure – excepting always rheumatism. Speak up, man!’

I said: ‘There’s nothing wrong with me at all. I’ve come to fetch you to treat two other people up at Wagnall’s Barn. There’s a man with a broken ankle and a girl with a congestion of the lungs. So get your bag and come along.’

He snapped at me like a turtle, and said: ‘And since when, may I ask, were you a diagnostician? And who are you to be giving a name to symptoms? In any case, young fellow, I’m not practising. I’m retired. My son runs the practice, and he’s out on a child-bed case…. Damn that dog – he’s barking again!’

The poodle, Dot, was indeed barking hysterically and scratching at the front door.

I said: ‘Doctor, these poor people are in desperate straits.’

‘Aye, poor people always are. And who’s to pay the bill?’

‘I’ll pay,’ I said, taking out my wallet.

‘Put it up, man, put it up! Put your hand in your pocket for all the riffraff that lie about in barns and ye’ll end in the workhouse.’

He got up laboriously, sighing: ‘Alex is over Iddlesworth way with the car. God give us strength to bear it. I swore my oath and so I’m bound to come, Lord preserve us!’

‘If—’ I said, ‘if you happen to have a bit of meat in the house for the dog, I’d be glad to pay for it——’

‘– And what do you take this surgery for? A butcher’s shop?’ Then he paused. ‘What sort of a dog, as a matter of curiosity would ye say it was?’

‘A little grey French poodle.’

‘Oh, aye? Very odd. Ah well, there’s a bit of meat on the chop bones, so I’ll put ’em in my pocket for the dog, if you like … Wagnall’s Barn, did ye say? A man and a girl, is that it? They’ll be some kind of vagrant romanies, or gyppos, no doubt?’

I said: ‘I believe they are some kind of travelling performers. They are desperately in need of help. Please hurry, Doctor.’

His face was sour and his voice harsh, but his eyes were bewildered, as he said: ‘Aye, no doubt. I dare say, very likely. A congestion of the lungs, ye said? And a fractured ankle, is that it? Very well.’ He was throwing drugs and bandages into his disreputable-looking black bag. I helped him into his immense black mackintosh.

He said: ‘As for hurrying, young man, I’m seventy-seven years old, my arteries are hard, and I could not hurry myself for the crack of doom. Here, carry the bag. Hand me my hat and my stick, and we’ll walk up to Wagnall’s Barn on this fool’s errand of yours. Because a fool’s errand it is, I fancy. Come on.’

The little dog, Dot, looking like a bit of the mud made animate, only half distinguishable in the half dark, barked with joy, running a little way backwards and a long way forwards, leading us back to the Barn through that darkened green tunnel.

The doctor had a flash-lamp. We made our way to the barn, he grumbling and panting and cursing the weather. We went in. He swung the beam of his lamp from corner to corner, until it came to rest on my jacket. It lay as I had wrapped it over poor Dolores, but it was empty.

I shouted: ‘Alpha, Beta! Here’s the doctor!’

The echo answered: ‘ Octor! ’

I could only pick up my jacket and say: ‘They must have gone away.’

Dr MacVitie said, drily: ‘Very likely, if they were here at all.’

‘Here’s my jacket, damp on the inside and dry on the outside,’ I said. ‘And I have the evidence of my own eyes——’

‘No doubt. Very likely. In a lifetime of practice I have learned, sir, to discredit the evidence of my eyes, and my other four senses, besides. Let’s away. Come!’

‘But where have they gone?’

‘Ah, I wonder!’

‘And the dog, where’s the dog?’ I cried.

He said, in his dour way: ‘For that, I recommend you consult Mr Lindsay, the vet.’

So we walked down again, without exchanging a word until we reached Dr MacVitie’s door. Then he said: ‘Where did you spend your evening?’

I said: ‘I came straight to the Barn from The White Swan.’

‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I recommend ye go back, and take a whisky-and-water, warm; and get ye to bed in a dry night-shirt. And this time take a little more water with it. Good-night to ye——’ and slammed the door in my face.

I walked the half mile to The White Swan, which was still open. The landlord, Mr Lagg, looked me up and down, taking notice of my soaking wet clothes and muddy boots. ‘Been out?’ he asked.

In Sussex they have a way of asking unnecessary, seemingly innocent questions of this nature which lead to an exchange of witticisms – for which, that night, I was not in the mood.

I said: ‘I went up to Wagnall’s Barn for Jolly Jumbo’s Carnival. But he pulled out, it seems, and left a man, a woman, and a dog——’

‘You hear that, George?’ said Mr Lagg to a very old farmer whose knobbed ash walking-stick seemed to have grown out of the knobbed root of his earthy, arthritic hand, and who was smoking a pipe mended in three places with insulating tape.

‘I heerd,’ said old George, with a chuckle. ‘Dat gen’lemen’ll been a liddle bit late for dat carnival, like.’

At this they both laughed. But then Mr Lagg said, soothingly, as to a cash customer: ‘Didn’t you look at the notice on the bill, sir? Jolly Jumbo was here all right, and flitted in a hurry too. And he did leave a man and a girl (not lawfully married, I heerd) and one o’ them liddle shaved French dogs.

‘I say, you’m a liddle late for Jolly Jumbo’s Carnival, sir. ’Cause if you look again at Jolly Jumbo’s bill, you’ll see – I think the programme for the Cricket Match covers up the corner – you’ll see the date on it is August the fourteenth, 1904. I was a boy at the time; wasn’t I, George?’