Richard Gordon - DOCTOR AT LARGE

'Steady on, old chap, steady on!' The Colonel patted me heartily on the back. 'Something go down the wrong way?'

It was almost a minute before I managed to speak. 'The port-perhaps a little strong-'

'Of course, my boy. Mustn't have you choke to death just now, eh? Ha, ha! Come along in and join the family.'

I followed father into the sitting-room, looking like Ian having one of his things.

The rest of the evening passed in a sickly blur, as though I were recovering from a bad anaesthetic. Joan said she hoped we'd be jolly good pals, and Ian thought I'd like to meet his interesting chum Lionel at the BBC. Father showed us his photographs from the war, and mother kept pressing my hand, murmuring 'I'm so glad,' and bursting into tears. As soon as I dared I pleaded a headache, lack of sleep, and early duty. There were disappointed cries, and I bought my freedom with false pledges of returning for Sunday tea to meet the aunts and dining next week at Daddy's club.

We drove away in silence. 'Poor Richard,' said Edna, wrapping my muffler tenderly round me. 'Daddy's Regimental port is rather strong. But don't worry-you made an awfully good impression on the family. It really was time they knew about us, wasn't it?'

I burst into Grimsdyke's room as soon as I reached the hospital.

'Good God, what's the matter?' he asked in alarm. He jumped from his bed, where he was lying in his crimson silk dressing-gown. 'Been frightened by the ghost of a blighted patient, or something?'

'A drink!' I fell into his armchair. 'At once!'

'Coming up right away. You look so bloody awful you make me want one, too.'

He threw aside the novel he was reading and brought a bottle of gin from the commode thoughtfully provided by St Swithin's. After we had both drunk deeply from his tooth-glasses he screwed his monocle into his eye and said, 'Now tell the doctor all.'

I gave him the story of my tragic evening, and he roared with laughter.

'I can't see anything funny in it,' I said crossly. 'Damn it all, I treat this girl with perfectly normal good manners and affability, and what happens? Before I know what's happening I'm surrounded by her bloody family patting me on the back and saying how nice it will be to have grandchildren. What the devil can she have been telling them all this time? She must think like a story in a woman's magazine.'

'I'll admit you're in a bit of a fix,' Grimsdyke said cheerfully.

'Bit of a fix! I know that without your help. The question is, what the hell can I do about it?'

Grimsdyke took a long drink. 'I should think the easiest way out is to go ahead and marry the girl.'

'Marry her? Marry her? Are you mad too, man? Apart from anything else, have you seen her family? I wouldn't share the same railway carriage with that bunch, let alone marry into them.'

'Have another drink,' Grimsdyke said.

'Thanks. I will.'

'Let's suppose you did marry Nurse Plumtree,' he continued in a reflective tone, lying down again. 'The worst part's over of course-being inspected 'by the family. Think yourself lucky. Many fellows have gone down to the old folks busting with love, and found themselves kicked into the rhododendrons before the fruit and coffee came round. You were a great success.'

I grunted.

'Then, as Father observed, you'd need a ring. Terribly expensive, engagement rings. The thing the best man loses in church is a brassy job worth a couple of quid, but the one you choose together in Mappin and Webb's is a sort of down payment on delivery of goods. You'll have to put it in _The Times_ of course-you pay for that too-which will load your post for weeks afterwards with advertisements for photographers, florists, and contraceptives. All your bachelor chums will slap you on the back and tell you what a lucky chap you are, clearly implying what lucky chaps _they_ are. They stand you drinks, I admit, but you don't get much chance for drinking because you spend all your spare time sitting on the edge of the sofa in her front parlour discussing the wedding. By now you may have decided that you don't want to marry the girl after all-'

'Must you go on?' I demanded. 'This isn't a bit funny.'

'…but that won't do you the slightest good because once you've set the terrible machinery of marriage in motion you stand as much chance as a crate of eggs under a pile-driver. You'll soon discover that marriage is nothing to do with the fusion of two souls, but an excuse for women to buy lots of expensive clothes. The bride is decked out to ride in triumph round the social circus, to the delight of her relations, the relief of her married friends, and the gratifying jealousy of those still single. You, of course, will be the horse. But I anticipate rather, because for several months you'll be forced to listen politely to exhaustive discussions about whether the bridesmaids should wear Juliet caps and if the bride can go to the altar in her usual undies. Incidentally the bridesmaids themselves-whom you'll later have to reward handsomely-will apparently be recruited from a home for female morons, while your own best man will be as socially acceptable to the bride, mother, and steering committee of aunts as Jack the Ripper. Your last loophole of escape is meanwhile blocked by a landslide of saucepans, teaspoons, egg-cups, gravy-ladles, toasting forks, and hand-embroidered tea-cosies, for all of which you will have to write a letter extending over at least one page beginning, "Dear Uncle Augustus and Aunt Beatrice. Thank you a thousand times for your delightful contribution to our new little home."'

Grimsdyke took another drink, and staring at the ceiling continued: 'Brightly dawns your wedding day. You have a terrible hangover as you climb into the outfit you've hired from Moss Bros and you still can't find your collar when the best man arrives to collect you. He generally tries to cheer you up with a few funny jokes. The last thing you want to do in the world is get married, but before you know what's happening you're in church with your eyes on the level of the clergyman's boots. The reception afterwards will be upstairs in a tea-shop, there won't be nearly enough to drink and everyone will make speeches-some of the uncles twice-several of the aunts will be in tears, and only the waiters will at all be mellowed by alcohol. Then the "going-away"-frightfully pagan and primitive really, old shoes and tin cans on the back of the car in the middle of the High Street on a Saturday afternoon. This brings me to the honeymoon. There you are, arriving at St Ives in a snowstorm in your best clothes, trying to pretend you've been married for years and feeling that everyone is looking at you as though you were performing one of those expositions in the back streets of Marseille. However, I will skip all that. I next see you and Edna Plumtree-that-was strolling from your villa on a Sunday morning with the pram and two-possibly three?-walking along beside-'

I smashed his glass on the floor and walked out.

The next morning was my most miserable since the final examinations. The newspapers seemed concerned only with actions for breach of promise, judges' remarks about broken homes, and advertisements for cheap wedding rings. I could hardly eat any breakfast and hurried across the quadrangle to the surgical block feeling that every nurse in the hospital was pointing her finger at me and giggling. As I scrambled into my operating trousers I wondered if Nurse Plumtree had already spread the news around the Nurses' Home or was waiting for the Matron's blessing and a ring.

In the operating theatre it was one of those mornings. The Sister was in a bad temper, the catgut broke, the artery forceps slipped, the transfusion needles came adrift, the scissors were blunt, the swabs were lost. My own assistance was so clumsy that even mild Mr Cambridge was moved to murmur, 'My dear Mr Er-er, couldn't you do something more helpful to the patient than gaze at his umbilicus?'