Richard Gordon - DOCTOR IN CLOVER

I found Percy and his wife standing in the hall, looking as if they'd just checked off the winning line in their penny points.

'Dr Grimsdyke,' Percy said at once, 'we both want to thank you for restoring my dear brother to us.'

'It is a great comfort, Doctor, to have him with us today. And, of course, for many more years to come.'

'If God spares him,' added Percy, looking at the chandelier again.

'To mark our appreciation,' Amanda went on, 'my husband and I would like you to accept this little gift. I hope it will remind you of one of your earliest successful cases.'

Whereupon Percy handed me a gold cigarette case, still in its box from Cartiers.

I stumbled out a few words of thanks, wondering how much it had set them back. Then I suggested I'd better make my adieus to the patient himself.

'My brother's out for his afternoon drive at the moment,' Percy told me, 'but of course he's due home any minute.'

'He never likes to be far from Nutbeam Hall,' said Amanda.

'Do wait, Doctor. Perhaps a cup of tea?'

At that moment we heard the Daimler in the drive, and as we opened the front door Lord Nutbeam got out with Nurse Jones. It was then I noticed something about him-possibly the look in his eye, like a chap reaching for his first pint at the end of a tough game of rugger-which made me slip the cigarette case into my pocket and prepare for trouble.

'Percy…Amanda,' began Lord Nutbeam, 'allow me to introduce Lady Nutbeam.'

The two Honourables looked as though they'd been run through the middle by a red-hot cautery.

'That's impossible!' cried Mrs Nutbeam.

'Not impossible at all, my dear Amanda.

Ethel and I were married half an hour ago in Gloucester Registry Office. Two very pleasant young men from the Waterworks Department were our witnesses.'

Percy Nutbeam gasped. 'But the money!'

'I'm afraid there isn't any, Percy. Not for you, anyway. The deed is, of course, annulled by my marrying before the five years are up. You will inherit the title when I eventually perish, unless Ethel and I happen to have children…'

Mrs Nutbeam burst into tears.

'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.

'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.