Doctor in Love by Richard Gordon

the moment finally came to leave, we couldn’t get the bloody Major off the floor. Absolutely impossible. We couldn’t budge him an inch, all lifting. We had a long discussion about it, and decided the only thing was to send for Jim O’Flynn’s breakdown van with the crane on it, or to unwrap him again. The guests became divided on this point, and as you know, when Irishmen are divided they become heated. After a while I gathered what I was thought the cause of the trouble, so I slipped away and gathered my few possessions and caught the afternoon bus. And here I am. There wasn’t any more point in staying anyway.”
    I laughed. “I don’t believe half of that story.”
    “It’s true. Even I don’t have to exaggerate about Ireland. Still, my emerald phase has now passed, Richard. I am to restart as a respectable English GP. And I might say how delighted I am to find myself in practice with an old chum like you.”
    “And so am I, indeed!” I clapped him on the shoulder. “It was always one of my more sentimental hopes at St Swithin’s.”
    “I’m mugging up my medicine, too. I opened Conybeare’s textbook this afternoon at the section on Diseases of The Alimentary Canal. I started with Oral Sepsis and got as far as Disorders of the Salivary Glands by teatime. I should be down to the caecum and appendix by Saturday.”
    Grimsdyke’s gay demeanour and gay waistcoats certainly came refreshingly to the practice. His manner was perhaps more suited for the bookies’ enclosure than the bedside, but he had the superb gift of being able to draw smiles from anyone between nine and ninety. He was obviously popular with the patients – except the Porsons, where he sportingly went in my stead when Cynthia developed her next vague pains, and was received “very much like the third-rate understudy appearing at short notice on a Saturday night”. Otherwise, only Miss Wildewinde seemed to take a dislike to my friend.
    “A cheeky young man,” she described him to me one morning after he had been with us a week.
    “Oh, I don’t know, Miss Wildewinde. Dr Grimsdyke has a rather cheerful manner, but he’s a serious soul at heart.”
    “I’m quite sure that Dr McBurney wouldn’t have taken to him for a moment, if I may say so.”
    “Come, now,” I said charitably. “He may attract lots of rich old ladies to us as private patients. Who knows?”
    “It seems as if he’s started,” she said tartly. “There’s a car outside that doesn’t look at all National Health.”
    I had just finished my surgery, and opening the front door was surprised to find at the kerb a long, new, black Bentley, with a smart young man with curly hair and a six-inch moustache lightly polishing the windscreen with a Paisley handkerchief.
    “Dr Gordon?” he asked, a row of teeth appearing beneath the moustache.
    “That’s right.”
    “How do you do, Doctor?” He shook hands with great affability.
    “How do you do?”
    “Well,” he continued, a slight pause occurring in the conversation. “Here’s a very great motorcar.”
    “Of course,” I agreed. “There’s none better.”
    “Not in the whole world. It’s got everything, plus.” He gave the bonnet a reverent pat. “Automatic gearbox, variable suspension, built-in lubrication, sunshine roof, three-tone radio – the lot. A wonderful motorcar. A cigar, Doctor,” he insisted, producing a box of Havanas from the glove locker as I offered my cigarette case. “Take a few for afterwards. That’s right. A drink, Doctor? The fittings include a cocktail cabinet.”
    “I’m afraid I can’t touch a drop during the day.”
    “I’m Frisby,” he said, producing a card. He was the sort of man you often find yourself next to in saloon bars, drinking light ales and talking about tappets. “Buckingham Palace Motors, of course.”
    I nodded. Car salesmen share with insurance agents and medical equipment manufacturers a quaint belief in the solvency of junior members of the medical