15

‘“Either you or your husband must first have actually paid twenty-six contributions of any class for the period between the time of entering insurance and the date, or expected date, of your confinement,”’ I read to Nikki.

‘“And second have paid or been credited (for example, for weeks of sickness or unemployment) with at least twenty-six contributions of any class for the last complete contribution year before the benefit year in which the confinement takes place, or in which the confinement is expected.” Now what the devil does all that mean?’

I was studying leaflet NI/17A, the sixteen-page pamphlet by which Her Majesty’s Government instructs her subjects how to claim the compensations they have voted themselves for perpetuating the population. ‘What on earth’s the difference between a contribution year and a benefit year?’ I grumbled.

I read on: ‘“A benefit year is a period of twelve months beginning five months after the end of the contribution year.” What can they possibly mean by that?’ I asked. ‘It seems an awful pity for the chaps in Whitehall that God didn’t decide on a tidy period of twelve months, with an extra day on leap years.’

‘Nine months is quite enough,’ said Nikki, putting down her knitting. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do the moment I’m back in circulation?’

‘Buy a lot of tight-waisted dresses?’

‘I’m going to storm the platform at the next meeting of the Royal College of Obstetricians and insist on delivering a lecture. I’m going to call it “The Minor Disorders of Pregnancy,” and announce it with a hollow laugh. For months I’ve had cramp, swollen ankles, varicose veins, heartburn, and backache – not to mention breathlessness and frequency – my face is puffy, my hair’s ghastly, and I feel the size of the dome of St Paul’s. And every time I complain to Ann she asks what I’m worrying about, my blood pressure’s fine, and looks at me as though I were being fussy.’

‘Don’t worry darling,’ I told her cheerfully. ‘It won’t be for much longer. Pregnancy’s an eminently self-limiting condition.’

‘At the moment I’m getting terribly fed up with the whole project.’

‘A perfectly normal psychological reaction.’

Nikki snorted. ‘Heaven knows what would happen if men could be pregnant. I daren’t even begin to think of the fuss that would go on.’

My wife had burgeoned since the afternoon of Sir Lancelot’s visit. The year had now reached that depressing season when dusk chases dawn so briskly across the English rooftops, and the baby – which had previously seemed almost as theoretical as the drawings in my old embryology books – had a pulse of its own and was kicking like a Twickenham full-back. Its approach was signalled to the neighbours by a string of washed new nappies fluttering from the clothes line in the Marston’s garden, for their broken home was now our own. The negotiations had been managed by Mr Robbinson, and I was frighteningly in debt to something called the Everlasting Building Society, whose directors seemed to take him a good deal out to lunch. Nikki and I lived among a discarded suite of my father’s waiting-room furniture and several fretwork bookcases made by her brother, but I was very content, except when reading advertisements for fast cars. Meanwhile, Dr Ann Pheasant called frequently, poked Nikki’s abdomen like a jolly farmer befriending his pigs, and told me the little nipper was lying beautifully and she thought she could feel the feet.

My godfather, to my relief, now took little notice of us, being far too occupied reorganising the plans for the St Swithin’s bicentenary. This interference disconcerted not only Mr Cambridge but all the consultants in the hospital, for though they all had agreed that the anniversary should be celebrated they equally strongly all disagreed how. The surgeons wanted to build more operating theatres and the physicians more medical laboratories, the obstetricians proposed a new antenatal clinic and the pathologists a new post-mortem room, the ophthalmologists suggested a new ocular department in place of the disused laundry (which they described as ‘a perfect site for sore eyes’), the hospital chaplain wished the event to be celebrated with stained glass, and the director of the VD department with a champagne party.

But Sir Lancelot championed none of these schemes. There had been no more fearsome politician in the history of St Swithin’s, and his ability to breathe a word in the right ear or to grasp the right lapel would in Westminster probably have put him in the Cabinet. Although no longer on the council himself, he persuaded sufficient old friends to vote for an International Surgeons’ Conference and had already been heard booming to an advance party of Continental colleagues, ‘Pardon mille fois que je suis en retard pour l’operation, messieurs, mais le big end de mon motor car est allé au coin de Oxford Street.’ He was not a man to let anything so flimsy as a language barrier stand between himself and the personal expression of his opinions.

Sir Lancelot further disconcerted the St Swithin’s staff by starting operative surgery again, by simply inviting himself to assist Mr Cambridge in his theatre. His notion of assisting at an operation was like the Yarmouth waiter’s of assisting young David Copperfield with his dinner, and after declaring ‘I want you to treat me exactly as yer houseman, Cambridge, and swear at me if I get in the way,’ he would take over more and more of the procedure until he was shortly cutting out anything he fancied himself. Mr Cambridge meanwhile was becoming noticeably short tempered and developing the beginnings of a facial tic.

‘Is the old boy still staying with the Cambridges?’ asked Grimsdyke, when Nikki and I met him in London a few days later.

‘He’s practically one of the family,’ I told him.

‘Poor old Cambridge!’ said Grimsdyke.

‘Poor Mrs Cambridge,’ said Nikki.

We were enjoying what was probably my wife’s final outing, sitting in the bar of a small West End restaurant where Grimsdyke had insisted on taking us in compensation for the dinner snatched from our lips at the Arundel. It was a plush-lined place with pink lighting which gave all the food the look of being laced with cochineal and all the guests of suffering from polycythaemia rubra vera, and the head waiter had given Nikki a look of fearsome disapproval on arrival; but Grimsdyke declared that it was the current place to watch all the fashionable actors, actresses, and politicians feeding themselves, if you wanted to.

‘How about splitting a bottle of Bollinger before we eat?’ asked Grimsdyke, turning to more serious topics.

As I hesitated, he added, ‘Just the thing for Nikki’s condition. All the old midder books advise a glass to keep the mother’s spirits up, along with a daily ride in the Park. And don’t worry about the bill;’ he went on. ‘Old McGlew’s stomach is paying for it.’

‘But hasn’t he gone back to his pork butchery?’ I asked in surprise.

‘He’s in town again. But having got fed up with the way they do boiled fish at the Arundel he’s taken a tasteful flat in Grosvenor Square, where I continue to lavish medical attention on him. I don’t want to boast, but the chap’s come to rely on me so much I pretty well have to tell him when to change his socks. Besides,’ Grimsdyke added, nodding towards the restaurant entrance. ‘I’ve another guest arriving in a few minutes whom I particularly want to impress. What’s your ogreish old godpop doing, anyway?’ he demanded, ordering the champagne.

‘Mainly wrecking all poor old Cambridge’s plans for the bicentenary. Though why he should make such a nuisance of himself I don’t know. Particularly when a few months ago he swore he wouldn’t touch the business with the end of a long pair of forceps.’

‘But haven’t you heard the gossip?’ asked Grimsdyke, who always had. ‘Why, in order to mark the bicentenary of the dear old place,’ he went on, as Nikki and I shook our heads, ‘the powers that be are dishing out a knighthood. You know, an honour for all worn by one, like when they give a medal to the captain of a ship which goes down very decently with all hands. It’s all terribly secret, of course,’ he added, lowering his voice slightly. ‘And no one knows who’s going to be the lucky chap. But obviously if old Cambridge runs the fun and games he’s well in the running.’

‘But why should a modest fellow like Cambridge let himself in for it in the first place?’ I asked, feeling puzzled. ‘I know he hates messing about with committees and he doesn’t give a damn for titles. Anyway, his practice is big enough to do without a built-in advertisement.’

‘Personally I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be a knight,’ Grimsdyke agreed, ‘now that it doesn’t involve something exciting in the line of rescuing beautiful maidens from dragons. You just have to make a lot of speeches and get touched by every charitable organisation in London. Though there must be something in it, I suppose,’ he added inspecting the bubbles in his glass reflectively. ‘Look at those chaps in the Civil Service, slaving away on a pittance – from ten to four, that is – just to call themselves Sir Thingummy Whatnot in Bournemouth for a couple of years before their arteries pack up.’

‘For a surgeon who’s reached the top,’ I suggested, ‘I suppose it’s a way of going into posterity.’

‘Either that or getting some ghastly disease named after you,’ said Grimsdyke. ‘I’ll stick out for a barony myself. It must be jolly good fun getting up in the House of Lords and telling everyone what’s wrong with the world, without even having to kiss a lot of beastly babies every five years.’

‘I expect it’s the wife who wants the title really,’ said Nikki.

‘You have a point,’ Grimsdyke observed. ‘They’ve said at St Swithin’s for years that if she were dead and opened you’d find “Lady Cambridge” lying in her heart.’

Further speculation was interrupted by a waiter bending over my friend’s shoulder and announcing, ‘The lady has telephoned to say she will be a few minutes late, sir.’

‘Thank you. I should shortly like you both,’ he went on as we looked at him enquiringly, ‘to meet the charming girl whom I hope will be the future Mrs Grimsdyke.’

‘No!’ Nikki and I exclaimed at once.

‘Yes, indeed. You can’t imagine the hours I’ve put in, Simon, since we had that little chat in your sitting-room last summer. Following your advice to the letter, the first thing I did on reaching Town was to cast my address book into the flames. As soon as it went up in smoke, of course, I knew I’d made a damn silly start – I could have flogged it for quite a bit of cash to the housemen at St Swithin’s. But it was symbolic. A purified Grimsdyke was about to face the world.’

He looked at me, seeming disappointed that I did not appear particularly impressed. I was used to Grimsdyke’s recurrent attacks of morality, when he would cut down his drinking, smoking, and betting, start out on a long walk, and even take his bath slightly cooler in the morning. The only difference over the present one lay in the spasm usually being precipitated by a severe hangover. ‘Becoming a better man,’ my friend went on, sipping his glass of champagne, ‘has turned out to be a darned sight easier than finding the right girl. At first I was almost reduced to sticking a pin in the membership list of the University Women’s Club. Then I got the hang of it, and met some very decent females. If I might be allowed to say so, it’s been a pretty close race that tonight enters the finishing straight. Did you remember that sweet little thing Angela Palgrove-Badderly?’

I frowned.

‘The girl I was chatting to last week, the afternoon you were buying Christmas presents in Harrod’s.’

‘Ah, yes…’

‘Of course, she only works in a shop because it’s the fashionable thing among her friends. Angela’s terribly aristocratic – they’ve got the old country house, or rather they did have until they let it go as a reform school. Presented at Court, too, or she would have been if they hadn’t stopped the whole business. But the family’s very modest about it all, and live in quite a little place near Holland Park. I got along with her famously. The only trouble was her father, a retired brigadier whom I think is suffering from some of those senile mental changes. Acted most oddly when I was there, sometimes.’

As Miss Palgrove-Badderly had seemed about sixteen and her conversation consisted in asking me if I knew a large number of people whom I didn’t, I felt the attitude of her father was a stroke of luck. But Grimsdyke always did have a weakness for pretty girls behind counters.

‘Then there was Hesta,’ he went on, ‘whom you never met. She really was intelligent. I don’t think she could talk about anything that didn’t affect the lives of half a million people. I ran into her in an espresso bar, and we saw quite a lot of each other for a while. I learnt all sorts of interesting things about state monopolies and the condition of the peasants in the Ukraine.’

‘Pity you didn’t marry her,’ I remarked. ‘You could have got through your evenings without television.’

‘She wanted me to go to some sort of jamboree in Trafalgar Square, holding a placard,’ he explained with a touch of embarrassment. ‘I mean to say, there are limits to what a chap can do. On a Sunday morning, too, when I look forward to my little bit of lie-in. After that there was a nice girl called Amanda, who painted and kept falcons, but I won’t bother you with all that. The fact is, the lady you are about to meet,’ he ended, suddenly becoming solemn, ‘is the one whom I feel fit to bear my children.’

‘And I hope she enjoys it,’ murmured Nikki.

‘There’s just one thing, old lad,’ Grimsdyke went on anxiously. ‘Having great trust in your judgement, I wonder if you’d just sort of…well, look her over critically before I commit myself to anything definite?’

‘Really, Grim!’ I exclaimed, ‘you can’t expect me–’

‘Just for old time’s sake,’ he entreated. ‘Remember at St Swithin’s when you stopped me running off with that conjurer’s assistant? I’ll tell you what we’ll do – we’ll have a little code. If you think she’s the horrors, say, “There’s been a lot of rain for the time of year,” and I’ll take no further action. But if you think she’s just the one, remark lightly, “It looks like a change in the weather,” and I’ll turn on the charm. How’s that?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said firmly. ‘But if you’re really contemplating such a serious step as marriage, the whole idea’s completely out of–’

At that moment the waiter reappeared to announce, ‘The lady has now arrived, sir,’ and Grimsdyke made for the lobby.

‘Surely you’re not going to fall in with such a crazy scheme, Simon?’ asked Nikki at once.

‘Not on your life! That sort of thing was all very well when we were a couple of students messing about at St Swithin’s, but I sometimes wish that old Grim would grow out of his delayed adolescence before it starts being taken for premature senility.’

‘I wonder what she’s going to look like?’ said Nikki, glancing at the door.

‘Oh, pretty smashing, I should think. He always could pick ’em, even as a penniless medical student.’

We were interrupted by the appearance of a handsome blonde girl about six feet tall, whom Grimsdyke led in as though she had just won the Derby.

‘The Countess Suschika,’ he announced proudly. ‘From Latvia.’