The bicycle was kept in a small shed in the hospital courtyard, and had for its stablemate the long trolley used for moving unlucky patients to the mortuary. I saw that the first problem of the case was balancing myself and my equipment on the machine. As well as the two leather bags I had a couple of drums the size of biscuit barrels containing the sterilized dressings. There was a piece of thick string attached to the bicycle, which I felt was probably part of its structure, but I removed it and suspended the two drums round my neck like a yoke. Carefully mounting the machine, I clung to the bags and the handlebars with both hands and pedalled uncertainly towards the front gate. The snowflakes fell upon me eagerly, like a crowd of mosquitoes, leaping for my face, the back of my neck, and my ankles.
The few yards across the courtyard were far enough to indicate the back tyre was flat and the direction of the front wheel had no constant relationship to the way the handlebars were pointing. I crunched to a stop by the closed iron gates and waited for the porter to leave his cosy cabin and let me out.
'You all right, sir?' he asked with anxiety.
'Fine,' I said, 'I love it like this. It makes me feel like a real doctor.'
'Well,' he said dubiously, 'good luck, sir.'
'Thank you.'
The porter turned the key in the lock and pulled one of the gates open against the resisting snow.
'Your back light isn't working, sir,' he shouted.
I called back I thought it didn't matter and pedalled away into the thick night feeling like Captain Oates. I had gone about twenty yards when the chain came off.
After replacing the chain I managed to wobble along the main road leading away from the hospital in the direction of the brewery. The buildings looked as hostile as polar ice-cliffs. Everything appeared so different from the kindly daytime, which gave life to the cold, dead streets with the brisk circulation of traffic. Fortunately my thorough knowledge of the local public houses provided a few finger-posts, and I might have done tolerably well as a flying angel of mercy if the front wheel hadn't dropped off.
I fell into the snow in the gutter and wished I had gone in for the law. As I got to my feet I reflected that the piece of string might have been something important to do with the attachment of the front wheel; but now the lesion was inoperable. Picking up my luggage, I left the machine to be covered by the snow like a dead husky and trudged on. By now I was fighting mad. I told myself I would damn well deliver that baby. If it dared to precipitate itself into the world ungraciously without waiting for me I decided I would strangle it.
I turned off the main road towards the brewery, but after a few hundred yards I had to admit I was lost. Even the pubs were unfamiliar. I now offered no resistance to my environment and submissively felt the moisture seeping through my shoes. I leant against a sheltering doorpost, preparing to meet death in as gentlemanly a way as possible.
At that moment a police car, forced like myself into the snow, stopped in front of me. The driver swung his light on my load and on myself, and had no alternative than to decide I was a suspicious character. He asked for my identity card.
'Quick!' I said dramatically. 'I am going to a woman in childbirth.'
'Swithin's?' asked the policeman.
'Yes. It may be too late. I am the doctor.'
'Hop in the back!'
There is nothing that delights policemen more than being thrown into a midwifery case. There is a chance they might have to assist in the performance, which means a picture in the evening papers and congratulatory beer in the local. The constable who walked into St. Swithin's one afternoon with an infant born on the lower deck of a trolley bus looked as pleased as if he were the father.
The warm police car took me to the address, and the crew abandoned me with reluctance. It was a tall, dead-looking tenement for ever saturated with the smells of brewing and shunting. I banged on the knocker and waited.
A thin female child of about five opened the door.
'I'm the doctor,' I announced.
The arrival of the obstetrician in such a briskly multiplying area caused no more stir than the visit of the milkman.
'Upstairs, mate,' she said and scuttled away into the darkness like a rat.
The house breathed the sweet stench of bed-bugs; inside it was dark, wet, and rotting. I fumbled my way to the stairs and creaked upwards. On the second floor a door opened a foot, a face peered through, and as the shaft of light caught me it was slammed shut. It was on the fifth and top floor that the accouchement seemed to be taking place, as there was noise and light coming from under one of the doors. I pushed it open and lumbered in.
'Don't worry!' I said. 'I have come.'
I took a look round the room. It wasn't small, but a lot was going on in it. In the centre, three or four children were fighting on the pockmarked linoleum for possession of their plaything, a piece of boxwood with a nail through it. A fat woman was unconcernedly making a cup of tea on a gas-ring in one corner, and in the other a girl of about seventeen with long yellow hair was reading last Sunday's _News of the World._ A cat, sympathetic to the excited atmosphere, leapt hysterically among the children. Behind the door was a bed beside which was grandma-who always appears on these occasions, irrespective of the social standing of the participants. Grandma was giving encouragement tempered with warning to the mother, a thin, pale, fragile woman on the bed, and it was obvious that the affair had advanced alarmingly. A tightly-packed fire roared in the grate and above the mantelpiece Field-Marshal Montgomery, of all people, looked at the scene quizzically.
'Her time is near, doctor,' said grandma with satisfaction.
'You have no need to worry any longer, missus,' I said brightly.
I dropped the kit on the floor and removed my duffle coat, which wept dirty streams on to the lino. The first step was to get elbow room and clear out the non-playing members of the team.
'Who are you?' I asked the woman making tea.
'From next door,' she replied. 'I thought she'd like a cup of tea, poor thing.'
'I want some hot water,' I said sternly. 'Lots of hot water. Fill basins with it. Or anything you like. Now you all go off and make me some hot water. Take the children as well. Isn't it past their bedtime?'
'They sleep in 'ere, doctor,' said grandma.
'Oh. Well-they can give you a hand. And take the cat with you. Come on-all of you. Lots of water, now.'
They left unwillingly, in disappointment. They liked their entertainment to be fundamental.
'Now, mother,' I started, when we were alone. A thought struck me-hard, in the pit of the stomach. The midwife-the cool, practised, confident midwife. Where was she? To-night-this memorable night to the two of us in the room-what had happened to her? Snowbound, of course. I felt like an actor who had forgotten his lines and finds the prompter has gone out for a drink.
'Mother,' I said earnestly. 'How many children have you?'
'Five, doctor,' she groaned.
Well, that was something. At least one of us knew a bit about it.
She began a frightening increase in activity.
'I think it's coming, doctor!' she gasped, between pains. I grasped her hand vigorously.
'You'll be right as rain in a minute,' I said, as confidently as possible. 'Leave it to me.'
'I feel sick,' she cried miserably.
'So do I,' I said.
I wondered what on earth I was going to do.
There was, however, one standby that I had thoughtfully taken the trouble to carry. I turned into the corner furthest away from the mother and looked as if I was waiting confidently for the precise time to intervene. Out of my hip pocket I drew a small but valuable volume in a limp red cover-_The Student's Friend in Obstetrical Difficulties._ It was written by a hard-headed obstetrician on the staff of a Scottish hospital who was under no illusions about what the students would find difficult. It started off with 'The Normal Delivery.' The text was written without argument, directly, in short numbered paragraphs, like a cookery book. I glanced at the first page.