Doctor On The Boil Read Free

from New Delhi?’
    ‘Yes, I’m sure I did… I’m afraid for the moment my mind was on other things. You see, I heard only this morning with much gratification that I am shortly to be–’
    He stopped, horrified at his indiscretion. He was vague about the protocol, but he felt that leakage of the glad news would so upset Her Majesty the honour would automatically be cancelled. The word ‘knighthood’ had only to drop from his lips for his cup of happiness to be snatched away from them.
    ‘I am shortly to be…to be…’ he said unhappily.
    ‘Good grief, you haven’t put Josephine in the family way again at your age?’
    The dean shook his head. ‘To be given a free introductory lesson at a dancing school.’
    ‘That hardly seems a cause for jubilation, I must say.’
    ‘How was the Far East?’ the dean went on hastily.
    ‘Bloody.’
    ‘Oh. Did you see the Taj Mahal by moonlight?’
    ‘I did not see the Taj Mahal at all.’ They both sat down. Crossing one knickerbockered leg over the other, Sir Lancelot observed, ‘You’ve still got that ghastly sentimental picture by Fildes on the wall, I see. You know it was described by our late professional colleague and playwright James Bridie as depicting “a middle-aged man scratching his beard and wondering what the devil is the matter with a sick child he is expected to cure”?’
    ‘I happen to like it.’
    ‘I must say, Dean, I expected a rather more substantial welcoming committee. After all, I have been away from the hospital for some time.’
    ‘Several members of the consultant staff have gone unexpectedly on holiday.’
    ‘But they knew perfectly well I was coming.’ The dean said nothing. ‘That, I presume, is why they went unexpectedly on holiday? Well, I can only hope it keeps fine for them. Professor Bingham’s here?’
    The dean smiled. ‘I don’t think our new professor of surgery ever takes a holiday. Young and keen, you know. Bags of drive and energy. An excellent choice for the job.’
    I bet that keenness is spilling a few basinsful of unnecessary blood, Sir Lancelot thought. But he said nothing. He was a fair man, who never made a professionally slighting remark behind others’ backs. To their faces, of course, he allowed himself to be as colourfully offensive as possible.
    ‘I gather from the newspapers you and young Bingham are in cahoots over this transplant business?’
    ‘I am the physician, and he is the surgeon heading the team, certainly,’ said the dean guardedly. ‘A very good team, too. We have had some excellent results.’
    ‘Yes, your last picture in the papers looked as though you’d just won the Cup Final.’
    The dean looked offended. ‘It is the surgery of the future.’
    ‘In my old-fashioned view, we would be better employed trying to perfect the surgery of the past. My dear Dean! These surgical fashions – I’ve seen them come and go, like women’s hats and skirts. Once we used to fill the patients up with liquid paraffin until they leaked. We tried to remove every organ compatible with the continuance of life, for every complaint from constipation to mother-fixation. After that, we invented the floating kidney, and lashed down everything inside the abdomen like deck-cargo in a storm. Do you remember the septic focus, Dean? I never saw one, quite honestly, but I seemed to have removed several hundred of the nasty little things. That was at the end of the war, when we thought they caused every bodily condition possible except pregnancy. Then we all forgot about them – I fancy because of the horrifying distraction of Nye Bevan with his National Health Service–’
    ‘Where are you staying in London?’ asked the dean. Sir Lancelot’s reminiscences, though authoritative and captivating, quickly grew impregnable to interruption.
    ‘I booked a room at the Crécy. I’ll drive round later.’ Sir Lancelot pulled a large red-and-white spotted handkerchief from his pocket and coughed into it.
    ‘I only