Doctor at Large

As we rose from the table Hockett was struck by an afterthought. 'You didn't take sugar, did you, Doctor?' he muttered.

'It's all right, I can do without it at a pinch.'

'I'm so glad, Doctor. Extremely unhealthy, sugar. Pure carbohydrate. Surplus carbohydrate in the diet leads to obesity, and then what? We all know that obesity is a cause of arteriosclerosis, arteriosclerosis causes heart failure, and heart failure is fatal. Taking sugar in the tea is suicidal, Doctor.'

'I want the fire on,' Jasmine declared.

'Do you, my dear? But it's extremely warm. I find it warm enough, anyway. So does Dr Gordon. You feel warm, don't you, Doctor? A remarkably mild winter we're having.'

'I'm frozen to the marrow, I am,' Jasmine said. She clutched herself and shivered dramatically.

'Very well, my dear,' he said with an air of solemn generosity, as though reading her his will. 'You shall have the fire. Doctor, do you happen to have a match on you?'

This conversation had taken place in the dark, as the daylight had been fading swiftly during the meal and neither of them had thought of turning on the light.

'Very restful, the twilight,' Hockett continued, stumbling over the furniture as he groped for the switch through the blackness. 'Extremely valuable for restoring the sensitivity of the retina. We suffer from far too much light.'

He lit the fire, carefully turned it half down, sat in a chair beside it, and began reading the _Daily Express_ steadily from the headlines to the printer's name at the foot of the last sheet.

'You may smoke, if you wish, Doctor,' he said, looking up. 'We ourselves do not-'

'Liable to give fatal disease of the lung, you mean?'

'Exactly. If you wish for something to read, there are some books on the table behind you. They were left in the waiting-room by patients, but I expect they are perfectly readable.'

I started on _Pears' Cyclopaedia._ When I became tired of reading this, I stared for a while at a stuffed duck in a glass case opposite. Once I had seen enough of the duck, I took another dip into _Pears._ Jasmine sat between us knitting, and every time I looked at her she winked. Thus the evening passed.

At nine o'clock Jasmine yawned and said, 'I'm off to get a bit of kip.'

'Very wise of you, my dear. Early to bed and early to rise is a perfectly sound motto physiologically.'

'Good night one and all,' she said cheerfully, gathering her knitting. 'Sleep tight, Dr Gordon.'

As soon as she had ad left the room Dr Hockett turned the fire out.

'Sweltering in here, Doctor, isn't it? Now that my wife has retired we can have a talk on professional matters. I don't like to discuss such things in front of her. First of all, your duties. You will see the National Health patients twice a day at the surgery in Football Ground Road, and take all the night calls. I see the rest and the private patients, such as they are, in my consulting-room here. I don't go out at night.' He gave me another look under his eyebrows. 'I don't like leaving Jasmine alone. She is still very young.'

'Quite understandable.'

There was a pause.

'A very attractive woman, Jasmine,' he added.

'Most attractive, sir,' I agreed politely. As he continued to stare at me in silence, I shifted in my chair and added, 'I mean, in a sort of utterly platonic way, and all that, you know.'

After gazing at me for several more seconds he suddenly produced a key on a string from his waistcoat pocket. 'This is the duplicate key of the drug cupboard in my surgery next door. There are only two keys in the house. Please see that the cupboard is always locked. I do not think it wise for Jasmine to have access to it.' He handed me the key and went on, 'Jasmine is in many ways somewhat childish. As we are to work closely together, Doctor, I think it best for me to confide in you now. It may come as a shock to you to hear that Jasmine was my daily maid before becoming my wife.'

'No! Really?'

'I had practised abroad for many years. Out East. I never married. Marriage somehow seemed always beyond my means. However, when I settled here-I nevertheless love Jasmine very deeply, Doctor,' he continued, staring hard. 'I would not like to see anyone harm a hair of her head.'

'That's the spirit,' I said brightly. I was now feeling badly in need of a drink. 'After all, you're her husband and all that, aren't you?'

'Yes, Doctor,' he murmured. 'I am her husband.'

He then rose, switched out the light, and suggested we went to bed.

***

Breakfast the next morning was tea and porridge. Dr Hockett didn't believe in overloading the gastric absorption so early in the day.

The meal was begun in silence, because Hockett was attending to his morning mail. The general practitioner's daily postbag is filled with advertisements from the pharmaceutical firms and boxes of free samples, which are passed by most of their recipients directly into the waste-paper basket. But Hockett carefully opened each one, smoothing the envelopes for future use and reading the shiny pages of advertisements from the coloured slogans at the top to the formulae in small type at the bottom.

'Surely, sir, you don't believe in all that rubbish?' I asked. I felt I had been bullied long enough in the house, and I had slept sufficiently badly to have the courage of a bad temper. 'At St Swithin's we were taught to chuck advertisements away unopened.'

'On the contrary, Doctor, I find I derive a great deal of medical information from them. One of the difficulties of a general practitioner is keeping up with the latest work. And all the medical journals are so infernally expensive.'

'But look at the muck they send in free samples! No G.P. in his right mind would prescribe it. This, for instance-' I picked up a large bottle of green liquid labelled DR FARRER'S FAMOUS FEMALE FERTILITY FOOD.

'Careful, Doctor! Don't drop it. As a matter of fact I keep all the samples. I have several hundred in the cupboard in my consulting-room. My private patients seem glad enough of them.'

'You charge for them, I suppose, sir?' I asked coldly.

'Naturally,' he replied without hesitation. 'Patients do not appreciate what they do not pay for. That is surely recognized as one of the evils of the National Health Service? Now I really think you should be getting along, Doctor-your surgery is well over a mile, away, and it is bad for the practice to arrive late.'

I drove Haemorrhagic Hilda through the rain towards Football Ground Road, trying to suppress my feelings. If I were to be a G.P. I was going to be a damn good one, despite Hockett, Jasmine, a bed as uncomfortable as the rack in the Tower, and the effects of incipient frostbite and starvation. This determination wavered when I saw the surgery itself: it was a shop-front with the glass painted bright green and DR HOCKETT'S SURGERY Written across it in red, like the window of a four-ale bar.

There was already a queue of patients on the pavement as I unlocked the door. Inside I found a single room filled with parish-hall chairs, with a partitioned cubby-hole for the doctor in the corner. This cubbyhole was largely filled with filing cabinets, though there was an old examination couch, a small stained desk, a basin, a Bunsen burner, and an oil stove, which I immediately lit. I washed my hands, took out my fountain-pen, put my head round the cubby-hole door, and said, 'First patient, please.'

A fat mother accompanied by a fat adolescent schoolgirl rose from the first line of chairs, and advanced on me with the expression of purposeful dislike used by women when demanding to see the manager.