Richard Gordon: DOCTOR IN CLOVER

'Sir Lancelot Spratt is making an infernal nuisance of himself on the committee. He is opposing my candidature, purely because Mr Cambridge is supporting it. Sir Lancelot has quarrelled with him, you know. Cambridge refuses to knock down his old clinical laboratory, and Sir Lancelot wants to park his car there. To think! My future decided by a car park.'

'There's nothing like a mahogany table and a square of pink blotting-paper to bring out the worst in a chap's character,' I sympathized. 'How about the other runners?'

'There are thirty other prospective candidates for the post, all as well qualified as I. But we are mere pawns, mere cyphers. Perhaps I should apologize for being short with you earlier, Gaston. The strain, you know. The uncertainty…'

He miserably cracked a nut.

I felt sorry for the chap. Personally, there was nothing I'd have liked less than being a consultant at St Swithin's, having to wear a stiff collar every day and never being able to date up the nurses, but it had been Miles' ambition ever since he was cutting up that dogfish. And I rather felt that Connie, too, fancied herself in a new hat running the hoop-la with other consultants' wives at the annual hospital fкte. Besides, Miles was the brightest young surgeon St Swithin's had seen for years, and I should have felt a bit of a cad not helping so worthy a practitioner along the professional path.

'If you didn't get on at St Swithin's,' I tried to console him, 'you'd find a consultant job easily enough in the provinces.'

'But it wouldn't be the same thing. And, of course, Connie and I would have to leave our home.'

I nodded. Since the waiter episode girls had been in and out of my life like people viewing an unsatisfactory flat, but I'd always retained a soft spot for Connie. The thought of her confined for life to a place like Porterhampton upset me so much I'd almost have had another go at living there myself to prevent it.

'In such delicate circumstances,' I suggested, 'I take it you'd more than ever like me tucked away in some respectable job?'

'Exactly.'

'Find me one, old lad, and I will. I can't possibly face Palethorpe for months, of course.'

'I have some influence with the Free Teetotal Hospital at Tooting. They'll be needing a new house-surgeon next week.'

'And the week after, I'm afraid, as far as I'm concerned.'

Miles stroked his pale moustache.

'A pity you didn't keep your position on the _Medical Observer. _At least it utilized your talent for the pen respectably.'

'That was a congenial job,' I agreed, 'until the old editor banished me to the obituaries.'

The _Medical Observer_ was the trade press, which lands on doctors' doormats every Friday morning and is widely appreciated in the profession for lighting the Saturday fires. It has an upstairs office near the British Museum in imminent danger of condemnation by the health, fire, and town planning authorities, where I'd been assistant to the editor, a thin bird with a wing collar and severe views on the split infinitive.

'You can't imagine how depressing it was, writing up dead doctors from nine to five,' I told Miles. 'Though I composed my own for the files while I was there, and a jolly good one it will be, too. Yours isn't bad, either.'

'I am gratified to hear it. Perhaps you should go abroad? An oil company for which I do insurance examinations are prospecting up the River Amazon in Brazil. They have a vacancy for a medical officer on a five-year contract. The salary would certainly appeal to you. And you just said you could do with some sunshine.'

'But not five years of it, all at once.'

Miles began to look irritable again. 'I must say, Gaston, for a man in your position you're being extremely difficult to please.'

'Oh, I don't know. If I'm going to sell my soul I might as well get a decent price for it.'

'I do wish you'd discuss the subject of your livelihood seriously.'

'I was just about to, old lad. I don't suppose you could advance me ten quid, could you? Resigning abruptly from Porterhampton left me a month's salary short.'

'You know I am against loans among relatives. But I will agree if you accede to my suggestion about the psychiatrist. I am certain that's what you need. I can easily arrange for you to see Dr Punce, who manages the aptitude tests for the oil company. He rather specializes in whittling down square pegs.'

I don't share the modern reverence for psychiatrists, mostly because all the ones I know are as cracked as a load of old flowerpots. But the financial blood was running so thinly I accepted.

'I suppose you have no serious plans at all for maintaining yourself?' Miles asked, putting away his cheque book.

'I've a few more medical articles on the stocks. I'd also thought of trying my hand at a bit of copywriting-you know, "Don't let your girdle be a hurdle, we make a snazzier brassiиre," and so on.'

Miles winced.

'Gaston looking for another job?' asked Connie, appearing with the coffee. 'That's no problem anyway. A bright young man like him should be in demand anywhere.'

A bit _infra dig,_ I thought, a doctor going to a psychiatrist. Like a fireman ringing the station to say his house was alight. I didn't remember much of the psychiatry course at St Swithin's myself, except the afternoon Tony Benskin was left to hypnotize a young woman with headaches, and once he'd got her in the responsible state suggested she took her blouse off. Apparently Tony's hypnotic powers are low voltage, because the girl clocked him one against the corner of the instrument cupboard. Quite some confusion it caused when the chief psychiatrist came in, to find the patient stamping about shouting and the doctor unconscious.

But I dutifully appeared at Dr Punce's rooms in Wimpole Street the following afternoon, and found him a tall, thin fellow in striped trousers, a pince-nez on a black ribbon, and side-whiskers. I was shown in by a blonde nurse, which put me in a awkward position at the start-if I gave her the usual once-over the psychiatrist might decide something pretty sinister, and on the other hand, if I didn't, he might decide something even worse. I hit on a compromise, and asked her what the time was.

I took a seat and prepared for him to dig into my subconscious, shaking the psychopathic worms out of every spadeful.

'I don't suppose you treat many doctors?' I began.

'I assure you that all professions are fully represented in my casebooks.'

'Psychiatry is the spice of life, and all that?' I laughed.

But he had no sense of humour, either.

'The note I have from your cousin mentions your difficulty in finding congenial employment,' he went on, offering me a cigarette, as psychiatrists always do.

I nodded. 'Miles seems to think I should find a job with security. Though frankly I rather prefer insecurity. But I suppose that's a bit of a luxury these welfare days.'

'H'm. I am now going to recite a succession of words. I wish you to say the first word that comes into your head in reply. Light?'

'No, it's going very well, thank you. I've got some matches of my own.'

'That is the first word.'

'Oh, I see. Sorry. Yes, of course. Er-sun.'

'Night?'

'Club.'

'H'm. Sex?'

'Psychiatrists.'

'Line?'

'Sinker.'

'Straight?'

'Finishing.'

'Crooked?'

'Psychiatrists. I say, I'm terribly sorry. I didn't mean to say that at all.'

Dr Punce sat for a while with his eyes closed. I was wondering if he'd had a large lunch and dozed off, when he went on, 'Dr Grimsdyke, I have had a particularly heavy month with my practice. I fear that I am sometimes tempted to be rude to my more difficult patients.'

'If it's any consolation,' I sympathized with him, 'I'm tempted quite often too. But don't worry-the feeling will pass. I recommend a few days in the open air.'