Steady Now Doctor Read Free Page B

beginning to get religion and thought no evil. His Bible was Baden-Powell’s Handbook for Scouts, which clearly outlined what was good and what was bad. Under the heading masturbation it said, “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t want your sister to know about.”
    Now there was a time before Lettice got religion, when she would have been quite interested and probably would have encouraged him, but once she had linked up with her one-eyed love there’s no doubt she would have been on Baden-Powell’s side.
    For Andy, who thought he had found something unique that only he knew about, was now in a position where he always meant to stop doing it but of course never did, but from then on had a guilty conscience every time he did it.
    Returning to the parental battle, some aspects of it were a complete enigma to him.
    In 1938 at the age of thirty-seven his mother decided that she wanted to be an actress and went off for a year to Drama School in Croydon.
    Even today this would be a bit unusual. In those days it was quite incredible, and the fact that his parents must at some stage have had a rational discussion to agree it, was almost unbelievable. Sadly, it was eventually to lead to tragedy.
    For a year he was a latch-key schoolboy, living off school dinners, which weren’t bad, and having unlimited bread and jam as soon as he got home.
    He did not get religion as badly as Lettice, but he got it badly enough. When he was fifteenish he joined the Crusaders which was religion for Secondary School children only.
    There were camps (nothing like Scout camps) where older men took you for walks and asked you if you had found the Lord. There were Bible meetings, prayer meetings and on a Sunday Andy went to five different services. He was the complete little prick. He was called by a fellow Christian to come to his sister who was weeping uncontrollably after being jilted by some long-standing boyfriend. Andy knew just what to do. He put his arm round her and said, “Why not turn to the Lord, He succoureth all in need.” Hardly turning, she smacked him right in the eye.
    He was even elected to, and gave a sermon in church. But he was getting all muddled up with masturbation, the Scouts, and his parents; so one day in church he prayed that God would guide him in the Vicar’s sermon as to what to do.
    He got a surprisingly direct reply.
    The Vicar got up into the pulpit and quoted a verse from St Matthew, “Go ye then before all nations baptising them in my name,” and he went on to talk about the need for medical missionaries in China.
    He had been called.
    That afternoon, he went to Crusaders almost in a state of trance. On hearing the circumstances of his calling everybody fell about praying. This went on for weeks.
    A man from the China Inland Mission called to see him and said that if he did follow his calling the Mission would help with his fees in medical school.
    It was settled; he was going to be a Missionary Doctor. Then one day a boy who had been in the same form at the Grammar School was killed whilst riding his bicycle. He couldn’t remember who it was as the only people he remembered from that school were Joneson, Ward and Dinga Powell, and he couldn’t remember Ward or Dinga Powell.
    The death necessitated a special Crusader Prayer Meeting where they all prayed and wept and also rejoiced, as three days before he was knocked off his bike, whoever it was had accepted the Lord and had been saved.
    Suddenly it all didn’t seem to make sense to Andy. If he was saved, why did the Lord let him get knocked off his bicycle?
    From then on he slowly drifted away from the church. He couldn’t have one logic for everyday life and one for religion.
    His departure was slow and he changed from wanting to be a Missionary Doctor to just wanting to be an ordinary doctor.
    As far as he could remember, both through his Baden-Powell and religious days, he was still a supplier of French