DOCTOR IN CLOVER

'Quite so. To be perfectly frank, Gaston, it might embarrass me if you simply continued to flit about the medical scene-'

'My dear old lad!' I hadn't realized this worried him sufficiently to stand me a lunch. 'I may be a poor risk for a five-bob loan, but you can always rely on me to help a kinsman. A couple of weeks to say farewell to the haunts of my misspent youth, and I'll have made myself scarce from London for good.'

Miles still looked doubtful.

'I hope the permanency of your new position is more durable than some of your others.'

'They were mere flirtations with work. This is the real thing. And everyone will say, "See how that steady chap Miles has put even old Gaston Grimsdyke on his feet."'

'If that is indeed so, I'm much indebted to you. We may not always have seen eye to eye, Gaston-'

'Oh, come. Every family has its little misunderstandings.'

'But I assure you I have always acted entirely for your own good. And what precisely is this position you have in mind?'

'GP up north,' I explained.

I had been in Palethorpe's office that morning, when he'd greeted me with the news: 'I have exactly the right opening for you, Dr Grimsdyke. General practice in the Midlands-the backbone of England, you know. Assistant wanted, with a view, as we say. Start end of January. Dr Wattle of Porterhampton. A very fine man.'

'It doesn't matter what the doctor's like,' I told him. 'How about his wife?'

Palethorpe chuckled. 'How I wish our other clients were half as perspicacious! Fortunately, Mrs Wattle accompanied the doctor when he called, and I can assure you that she is a highly respectable and motherly middle-aged lady?

'Nubile daughters?'

'It is their sorrow to be a childless couple, alas. I believe that is why they particularly asked me to find some decent, honest, upright, well-mannered, single young practitioner to share their home with them.'

'I can only hope you come as a nice surprise,' muttered my cousin when I told him.

'At last I feel set for a peaceful and prosperous career,' I went on, enlarging on my prospects a little. 'Who knows what the future holds? The dear old Wattles might take me to their bosoms. They might look upon me as a son to enlighten their declining years. They might send for their solicitors and start altering their wills. There should be plenty of lolly about in Porterhampton, too. They make turbines or something equally expensive up there.'

'My dear Gaston! You know, you really must grow out of this habit of counting your chickens before the hen's even ovulated.'

'What's wrong with a little imagination?' I protested. 'Lord Lister and Alexander Fleming wouldn't have got far without it. Anyway, at the moment roots are fairly sprouting from my feet like spring carrots.'

2

Until then Porterhampton was just another entry in my football pools, but a fortnight later I found myself driving past the Town Hall on a morning as crisp as an icicle, and pretty solemn I felt about it, too.

While lunching with Miles, I'd been putting an optimistic face on a pretty desperate situation, which is another of the useful things you learn from studying medicine. I didn't really like the prospect of being a respectable provincial doctor. In fact I didn't really like the prospect of being a doctor at all.

I was a _medecin malgrй lui._ I'd taken up the profession because nobody in the family ever had the originality to think of anything else, and anyway all my uncles and cousins seemed to have a pleasant time of it, with large cars and everyone listening to their opinions at cocktail parties. But with medicine and marriage, the earlier you go in for either the riskier the project becomes. Quite a different chap emerges at the end of the course from the apple-cheeked lad with big ideas who went in. It's great fun at first, of course, being casualty houseman in a clean white coat with all the nurses saying 'Good morning, doctor,' even if the job does consist mostly of inspecting unpleasant things brought along in little white enamel bowls. It's a bit of a shock finding afterwards that you've got to make a living at it, though I suspect a good many housemen feel the same and keep pretty quiet. The public doesn't much care for entrusting their lives to doctors who don't love their profession, even though they entrust them every day to bus drivers and no one expects a bus driver to love his bus.

But as I couldn't go exploring like Dr Livingstone, become a Prime Minister of France like Dr Clemenceau, or play cricket like Dr W G Grace, I had to find a steady job like everyone else. And what of these Wattles? I wondered, as I drove past the Porterhampton fish market. They might at that moment be hopping about like a small boy waiting for the postman on his birthday.

Or they might be plotting to kick me about like a medical tweeny. Fortunately for my low psychological state, I was soon reassured over my conditions of work.