Doctor in Clover

'The hotel engineer will attend to it at once, madame.'_

'As for the plumbing, it's disgraceful. What's the idea of that ridiculous washbasin six inches off the ground? Sir Theodore Theobald shall hear about this, believe you me. Furthermore, my daughter is still airsick, and I must have a doctor at once.'

'A doctor, Mrs Madder? We shall send for the best available.'

I pushed myself forward.

'Forgive my butting in,' I said quickly, 'but if you want a doctor, I happen to be the chap.'

She looked as if I were another of the local inconveniences.

'The gentleman, madame, is personal physician to Lord Nutbeam.'

'Oh, are you? Well, I suppose you'll do.

But I don't mind telling you here and now you can't expect any fancy fees.'

'In an emergency, Mrs Madder, it would be quite unethical for me to make a charge.'

This seemed to tip the scales, and I felt pretty pleased with myself as I followed her into the lift and up to a bedroom stuffed with flowers. Not only could I issue old Nutbeam's invitation as I felt Melody Madder's pulse, but I might be able to go over her chest as well.

'Get yourself ready, my girl,' said Mrs Madder, advancing to the bed. 'I've brought the doctor.'

'Good Lord!' I exclaimed. 'Why hello, Petunia.'

15

Petunia gave a little shriek and sat up in bed.

'Gaston! What on earth are you doing here?'

'But what are you doing here? In that hair, too.'

'What's all this?' demanded Mother.

'Mum, it's Dr Grimsdyke-you know, the one who used to bring me home in the rattly old car.'

'Oh, it is, is it? Yes, I remember now. I've often seen him from the bedroom window.'

'You seem to have come up a bit in the world, Pet,' I observed warmly. 'Jolly good job you didn't get the mumps after all.'

I kicked myself for not recognizing all those photographs. Though I must say, she'd been heavily camouflaged since the days when we shared the same bedroom. In her natural state old Pet would never strike you as particularly short on the hormones, but the way the film chaps had got her up she looked like an endocrinologist's benefit night.

'She's still feeling sick,' said Mother.

'Mum, I'm not. I told you I'm not.'

'Yes, you are. It was just the same when we went on the coach to Hastings. You're always sick for hours afterwards.'

'Perhaps you will permit me to prescribe, Mrs Madder-or Mrs Bancroft, rather.' I took charge of the situation. 'If you'll run down to the chemist's with this, they'll concoct it on the spot.'

'What's wrong with the hall porter, may I ask?'

'Better go yourself to see they make it up properly. These French pharmacists, you know.'

Mum hesitated a moment, but seeming to think it safe because I was the doctor, left the pair of us alone.

'Gaston, it's divine to see you again.'

Petunia held out her arms. 'But what on earth are you giving me to take?'

'Bicarbonate of soda, which you could get from the chef, I just wanted a moment to find how the transformation had taken place.'

She laughed. 'Of course, I haven't seen you since that place up north-what's it called? Mother was furious. She'd no idea I'd met you, though. Wanted to hear what I'd been up to, fog or no fog. You know what she's like.'

'I'm beginning to find out.'

'She almost threw me out of the house. I was terribly hurt. After all, nothing in the slightest immoral happened there at all.'

'Quite,' I said.

'She told me to get a respectable job-usherette, nursemaid, secretary, or something. I was awfully upset, because I never really wanted to leave the stage. Not even if I hadn't half a chance of reaching the top.'

'You seem to have disproved that one, anyway.'

'Oh, being an actress isn't much to do with all this.' Pet picked at the bed-cover. 'It's the other things that count. I wanted a mink coat.'

'And what girl doesn't?'

'I mean, to get a start you have to wear the right clothes. Appear in the right places. Meet the right people. The only people I met were as broke as I was, which I knew for a fact because I tried to borrow money from all of them.'

'I know the feeling.'

Petunia smoothed back her new red hair.

'The very day after the fog I went to Shaftesbury Avenue to see my agent, and as usual he said, "Sorry, darling, nothing at the moment. Unless you happen to be a distressed gentlewoman."

'I asked why, and he told me Monica Fairchild had just been in. You know who she is, Gaston?'

'I certainly do. I was her doctor for a bit. Before she had the baby.'

'Whoever her doctor is now told her to get away from it all and have a rest. She was leaving the baby with her husband and taking a Mediterranean cruise, and wanted this distressed gentlewoman as her secretary-expenses paid, no other dibs, of course.'

I remembered Miss Fairchild was as openhanded as a dyspeptic tax-collector.

'When I got out into Shaftesbury Avenue again,' Petunia continued, as I took her hand in a professional sort of clasp, 'it struck me-wham! If I could play a doctor's wife in a fog, why couldn't I play a distressed gentlewoman on a cruise? And if I got friendly with Fairchild, there's no knowing how she'd help me along. Anyway, I'd have four square meals a day, and perhaps a bit of fun. Also, I could get away from Mum for a bit. So I put on my old tweed skirt and went round to her flat in Mount Street and got the job. She didn't know me from Eve, of course.'

'You then developed one of these famous shipboard friendships with the Fairchild,' I suggested, 'and that's how you got on all the magazine covers?'

'Not on your life. In fact, when I see her again, she'll probably tear my hair out to stuff her pillow with.'

I looked surprised.

'We went down to the ship with enough luggage for a circus,' Petunia went on. 'You can't imagine the fuss, with the photographers, flowers, and all the sailors trying to get her autograph. Nobody took any notice of me, of course, especially in my old tweed skirt.

'If I didn't know I was dogsbody there and then, I soon found out. It was "Miss Bancroft, tell the Captain I must have my special diet," and "Miss Bancroft, complain the water's too hard for my complexion," and "Miss Bancroft, if they don't stop that awful siren thing this very minute, I shall positively have hysterics." I should have gone crackers if the old hag hadn't been sea-sick. You know she usually looks like a combined operation by Dior and Elizabeth Arden? Lying on her bunk groaning under an icebag, she reminded me of one of my touring landladies when the rent was overdue. I think it gave me a bit of confidence.'

'Great leveller, the nausea,' I agreed.

'In fact, it gave me enough confidence to put on my new dress. I'd bought it with all the money I had left in the world. It was the one I wore on the cover of last month's _Gentlemen's Relish.'_

I remembered it was a thing fitting Petunia as closely as her epidermis, to which it gave way for large areas about the upper thorax.

'It was the first night we had dinner at the Captain's table. He was ever so nice. Kept leaning over to pass me the butter and things with his own hands. He didn't take half as much notice of Fairchild, sitting there in her best mink. She was furious, of course. Developed a headache and disappeared to her cabin, and next morning the steward told me I'd been shifted to another table. It was behind a pillar thing in the corner, with five commercial travellers from Birmingham.'

'A bit of a come-down,' I sympathized. 'Eating below the old salt's salt.'

'Can't blame Fairchild, I suppose. Even off-stage a star has to keep in the limelight. And don't I know it now.'

'But I don't quite follow how this made you into Melody Madder.' I felt puzzled. 'All Fairchild did was chase you about enough to have made all Cleopatra's slaves give notice.'

'That all started when we got to Naples.

When Count Longrandesi came aboard.'