Doctor in Clover

'I expect you're a pretty knowledgeable chap about films?' I went on, trying to work up some sort of conversation.

'Me? Don't be daft, lad. I never go to the pictures, unless I can't help it.'

He sat for some time staring at his bunions. There didn't seem much else to talk about.

'What's your line of country?' he asked.

'I'm a doctor.'

'You are, by gum?' He almost rolled off the deck-chair. 'Just the feller I'm looking for.'

'Delighted to be of assistance,' I said politely.

'Tell me, Doctor-how can I get some of this blessed weight off?'

'Losing weight is perfectly simple,' I replied.

'Is it?' He brightened up a bit. 'Then what do I do, Doctor?'

'Eat less.'

'But I don't eat enough to keep a bird alive! Not fattening foods, at any rate.

Nothing like-well, oysters, for instance.'

'One dozen oysters.' I disillusioned him, 'have only the food value of a lightly-boiled egg.'

'Go on? But I thought…I can be frank with you, of course, Doctor? Now that I'm getting married-Melody and me, y'know-and none of us are getting any younger, perhaps a few oysters…'

I disillusioned him about that one, too.

'How about massage?' he asked hopefully. 'Isn't that good for taking off weight?'

'Excellent,' I told him. "For the masseuse.'

Hosegood looked gloomily at the agreeable combination of blue sea and girls in bikinis frolicking in the sunshine. I recalled a dietetic lecture at St Swithin's, when a professor resembling an articulated meat-skewer explained how he lived on a diet of crushed soya beans, while Sir Lancelot Spratt, who held that no gentleman ever dined off less than four courses, suffered violent trembling attacks and had to be taken out.

'They say in the papers it's dangerous to be fat,' Hosegood added sombrely.

'The commonest instruments of suicide,' I agreed, 'have rightly been described as a knife and fork.'

'But I've led a good, clean life. There's some I've seen in the club eating like steam shovels, and never putting on an ounce. I've only to look twice at the menu myself, and I'm letting out all my trousers again.'

'One of the nastier jokes of Nature,' I sympathized. 'It's all a matter of the appetite-regulating centre, nuzzling in the cranium between your pituitary gland and our sub-conscious fixations about Mother.'

'Then perhaps you can suggest some sort of diet, Doctor?'

'As a matter of fact I can.'

Usually I prefer professional incognito in social surroundings, what with people keeping coming up and telling you all about their ruddy prolapsed kidneys, but old Hosegood struck me as a very decent sort, and even a good bridegroom for a girl preparing to risk getting stuck in the door of the church.

'The St Swithin's Hospital Diet,' I explained, producing the card from my wallet. 'All perfectly simple, as long as you remember to treat potatoes and puddings like deadly nightshade.'

'No fish and chips?'

'Nor alcohol.'

'I'm rather fond of a drop of beer.'

'So am I. That's the bitter pill.'

But he didn't seem in the mood for joking and pocketed the card in silence.

'Thank you, Doctor. I'll give it a go at lunch-time. I'm having a bite with Stringfellow in the Cafй de Paris. I suppose he wants to talk me into more brass for Melody's picture.'

'Talking of Miss Madder,' I went on, 'I certainly wouldn't contemplate marriage until you've lost a couple of stone.'

He looked alarmed. 'You really think so?'

'Without a doubt. Most dangerous.'

This wasn't strictly correct professionally, though I remembered a fat chap brought into St Swithin's orthopaedic department on his honeymoon with a dislocated shoulder when the bed broke.

'Besides,' I went on, 'there's always the risk of-'

I was aware of Lady Nutbeam standing in front of us, looking flustered.

'Doctor! There you are. I've been looking simply everywhere. We have to go back to England at once. This very afternoon.'

'Good Lord, really? Nothing serious, I hope?'

'My husband-'

'He hasn't fractured his other hip?'

'No, no! It's the hotel management. The white mice he let loose at breakfast.'

'Oh, I see.'

'I'd like you to come in the car with us, Doctor. I'm afraid Aubrey…sometimes a little trying, even for me.'

'Of course,' I said, though I'd counted on another fortnight of free drinks in the sunshine. 'If Mr Hosegood will excuse me, I'll pack at once.'

'And this telegram just arrived for you.'

'For me? I didn't think anyone knew my address.' I opened it. It said:

RETURN ENGLAND INSTANTLY WHOLE COUNTRY DISGUSTED BY YOUR BEHAVIOUR.

MILES

17

'And how, pray,' started Miles, 'do you account for that?'_

It was a few days later, and I'd gone round early to his flat to see what the fuss was about.

'Account for what? It seems like the morning paper to me. Not even today's, either.'

'You fool! Read what's on the middle page.'

'Good Lord!' I exclaimed. 'There's a photo of me.'

There was a headline saying MELODY'S MEN, also pictures of Quintin Finn commanding a battleship and Jimmy Hosegood laying on the beach like a jettisoned beer barrel.

I gave a laugh. 'It says, "Dr Gaston Grimsdyke, the fashionable young London physician, is also tipped at the Festival as the future Mr Madder." I wonder what gave them that idea? Lots more about me, too.'

'Good God, man! You actually seem proud of it.'

'Well, I've never had my photograph in the papers before.'

Miles got rather excited.

'The disgrace and scandal of your being mixed up with this-this-'

'Melody Madder's a very decent type, and I won't have anyone being beastly about her.' I helped myself to a cup of his coffee. 'Anyway, you've been advising me to marry and settle down for years.'

'Not to the woman with the most advertised thorax in Britain.'

'But Miles!' interrupted Connie, dusting somewhere in the background, 'nobody believes what they read in the papers.'

'Kindly leave this discussion to us. Far from people forgetting it, I had a most uncomfortable evening of ribald jests last night at the club. As you have deliberately bruited my name abroad-'

'Me? I haven't bruited anyone's name anywhere.' I glanced again at the paper, and noticed something about my cousin, the brilliant Harley Street Surgeon. 'Oh, well, you know what reporters are for getting up a story. I suppose it was that blonde in the hotel. I should have spotted she was a journalist, but I just thought she was nosey and sporting about paying for the drinks. Mind if I have this piece of toast?'

'This happens to be my breakfast.'

'Oh, sorry.'

'And what's all this rubbish about you writing a book?' Mires began again.

Put that in too, did she? As a matter of fact, I've just sent off the manuscript to Carboy and Plover. Jolly good advance publicity.'

'You've really written a book?' exclaimed Connie. 'How terribly clever of you.'

'May I remind you that you were not trained to waste your time scribbling penny dreadfuls? It's high time you made some contribution to the progress of medicine.'

'My best contribution to the progress of medicine, old lad, would be giving it up.'

'Not to mention your obligation to suffering humanity.'

'Suffering humanity's so overstocked with doctors there's always a few of the poor chaps on the dole,' I told him. 'And all of them probably better than me. Now look here.' I started to feel annoyed with my idiotic cousin. 'I may not have written _War and Peace,_ but I'm jolly proud of my modest literary efforts. And I'm not going to have them sneered at by chaps who've never written anything except the footer reports for the school mag., and pretty terrible they were, too, if my memory serves me right.'