Doctor in the House

'Oh, he's finished, has he?' said the man with the paper, as the scuffling of students getting to their feet disturbed him. He peered at the clock through his monocle. 'H'm,' he remarked. 'He's cut three minutes off his best time so far. Did he leave out that bit about the hospital traditions?'

'No,' I told him. 'He seemed to have quite a lot to say about them.'

The student raised his free eyebrow. 'Did he now? Then he's speeding up his delivery. Next year I bet the old boy gets it down to fifteen minutes dead.'

I was very afraid of this superior and critical young man, but I could not help asking a question.

'You've heard the lecture before?' I said hesitantly. 'I mean, you haven't just arrived in the hospital like the rest of us?'

'This makes the fourth time I've heard old Lofty say his little piece,' he replied, smiling faintly. 'Wouldn't have come to-day, except that I got the dates mixed. I was expecting an anatomy lecture.'

The rest of the class was filing past us through the door and clattering down the iron stairs. We rose and joined the end of the line.

'You must be a very senior student,' I said respectfully.

'Not a bit of it, old boy.' My companion absently flicked a crumpled piece of paper to one side with his stick. 'I'm not a minute senior to you and the end of the year will probably find me back here again.'

'But surely,' I said from behind him as we descended the stairs, 'if you have four years' study to your credit…'

He laughed.

'Ah, the ingenuousness of youth! Four years' study, or at least four years' spasmodic attendance at the medical school, is of no significance. Exams, my dear old boy, exams,' he explained forcibly. 'You'll find they control your progress through hospital like the signals on a railway line-you can't go on to the next section if they're against you. I've come down in my anatomy four times now,' he added cheerfully.

I condoled with him over this quadruple misfortune.

'Don't sympathize, old boy. I appreciate it, but it's wasted. All my failures were achieved with careful forethought. As a matter of fact, it's much more difficult to fail an examination skilfully than to pass the damn thing. To give that impression of once again just having been unfortunate in the choice of the questions, you know…Come along and have a beer. The King George will be open.'

We crossed the road and the experienced examinee thrust open the door of the saloon bar with his cane. I had meanwhile decided the medical course was a far more complicated affair than I had imagined.

The King George was one of those dark, cosy, pokey little pubs that, like brewers' drays and paralytic drunks, seem to be disappearing from the London drinking scene. The small saloon bar was heavy with dark wood and thick mirrors splashed with gilt _fleurs de lis._ The dingy white ceiling was gathered into plaster rosettes, the lamps sprouted out of the walls on curly metal stems, and in the corner a pale palm drooped over a large brass pot.

The influence of the hospital on the King George was noticeable immediately. Between the mirrors the walls were covered with framed photographs of past rugby and cricket teams, from which there stared down defiantly several hundred young gentlemen who were now respectable and ageing practitioners all over the country. Above the bar, in a glass case like a stuffed pike, was the rugby ball with which the fifteen had once won the hospitals' cup for the third year running. Next to it there hung a large, old-fashioned brass fireman's helmet. Behind the beer taps a fat old man in an apron, waistcoat, and grey trilby hat stared gloomily across the empty bar.

'Good morning, Padre,' my guide called cheerily.

The old man gave a smile of welcome and stretched his hand over the counter.

'Good morning, sir!' he exclaimed. 'Well! This is a treat to see you here again! Back for the new session is it, sir?'

'Every autumn, Padre, I return faithfully to my studies. Allow me to introduce a new student-what's your name, old boy?'

'Gordon-Richard Gordon.'

'Mr. Gordon, Padre. My name's Grimsdyke, by the way,' he explained.

The landlord shook hands heartily.

'And very pleased to meet you, sir!' he said warmly. 'I expect we'll be seeing some more of you in the next five or six years, eh? What's it to be, gentlemen?'

'Bitter for me,' said Grimsdyke, settling himself on a wooden stool. 'Will you take the same?'

I nodded.

'I should explain,' Grimsdyke continued, as the landlord filled the glasses, 'that this gentleman behind the bar is really called Albert something or other, I believe…'

'Mullins, Sir.'

'Mullins, yes. But no one in Swithin's would have the faintest idea who you were talking about. For the memory of living man he has been known as the Padre…how many years have you been dishing out the booze here, Padre?'

'Thirty-five, sir, just on.'

'There you are! He remembers the present senior physicians when they were students themselves-and a pretty rowdy crowd, by all accounts. There was the incident of Loftus introducing a carthorse into the Matron's bedroom…'

The Padre chuckled loudly.

'That was a real night, sir! Nothing like it happens any more, worse luck.'

'Well look at the beer you sell now,' said Grimsdyke reproachfully. 'Anyhow,' he went on to me, 'this pub is now as indispensable a part of the hospital as the main operating theatre.'

'But why the Padre?' I asked cautiously.

'Oh, it's a custom started by the housemen. One can say in front of patients "I'm popping out to Chapel at six this evening" without causing alarm, whereas a poor view might be taken by the old dears if they got the idea their doctors drank. Besides, the old boy has a not unclerical function. He's a sort of father confessor, Dutch uncle, and Dr. Barnardo to the boys sometimes-you'll find out about it before you've been here much longer.'

I nodded acknowledgment for the information. For a minute we drank our beer in silence.

'There's just another thing,' I began.

'Speak on, my dear old boy. I am always too glad to give what help I can to new students. After all, I have been one myself now five times.'

I pointed silently at the shiny brass helmet.

'Ah, yes, the sacred helm of St. Swithin's by God! Feared and coveted in every medical school in London. You must learn about that before you go any further. How it got there, no one knows. It's been the property of the rugger club for longer than even the Padre can remember, so I suppose one of the boys must have lifted it on a Saturday night years ago. Anyway, it has now become a totem, a fetish, a fiery cross. For the big matches against Guy's or Mary's and so on the helmet is laid on the touchline for luck and inspiration. Afterwards it is filled with beer and emptied by all members of the team in turn.'

'It would hold a lot of beer,' I observed nervously.

'It does. However, on the occasion of qualification, engagement, birthday, marriage, or death of rich relatives, the thing is taken down and the man stood a helmet of beer by his friends. Are you engaged or married?' he asked suddenly.

'Good Lord, no!' I said. I was shocked. 'I've only just left school.'

'Well…anyhow, it's quite a point with me at the moment. But to return to our helmet. Often the gentlemen of lesser institutions attempt to steal it-we had quite a tussle with a gang of roughs from Bart's last season. Once last year some fellows from Tommy's got it as far as the River, but we won it back from them on Westminster Bridge. By Jove, that was an evening!' He smiled at the memory. 'One of the chaps got a fractured mandible. Will you have another beer?'

I shook my head.

'No thanks. I don't drink much, you know. Hardly at all, in fact. Only if I've been out for a long walk or something and I'm thirsty.'