The Summer of Sir Lancelot Read online

  Richard Gordon was born in 1921. He qualified as a doctor and then went on to work as an anaesthetist at St Bartholomew‘s Hospital, and then as a ship‘s surgeon. As obituary-writer for the British Medical Journal, he was inspired to take up writing full time and he left medical practice in 1952 to embark on his ‘Doctor‘ series. This proved incredibly successful and was subsequently adapted into a long-running television series.

  Richard Gordon has produced numerous novels and writings all characterised by his comic tone and remarkable powers of observation. His Great Medical Mysteries and Great Medical Discoveries concern the stranger aspects of the medical profession whilst his The Private Life of... series takes a deeper look at individual figures within their specific medical and historical setting. Although an incredibly versatile writer, he will, however, probably always be best known for his creation of the hilarious ‘Doctor‘ series.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  ALL PUBUSHED BY HOUSE OF STRATUS

  THE CAPTAIN‘S TABLE

  DOCTOR AND SON

  DOCTOR AT LARGE

  DOCTOR AT SEA

  DOCTOR IN CLOVER

  DOCTOR IN LOVE

  DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

  DOCTOR IN THE NEST

  DOCTOR IN THE NUDE

  DOCTOR IN THE SOUP

  DOCTOR IN THE SWIM

  DOCTOR ON THE BALL

  DOCTOR ON THE BOIL

  DOCTOR ON THE BRAIN

  DOCTOR ON THE JOB

  DOCTOR ON TOAST

  DOCTOR‘S DAUGHTERS

  DR GORDON‘S CASEBOOK

  THE FACEMAKER

  GOOD NEIGHBOURS

  GREAT MEDICAL DISASTERS

  GREAT MEDICAL MYSTERIES

  HAPPY FAMILIES

  INVISIBLE VICTORY

  LOVE AND SIR LANCELOT

  NUTS IN MAY

  THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DR CRIPPEN

  THE PRIVATE LIFE OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

  THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JACK THE RIPPER

  SURGEON AT ARMS

  The Summer of Sir Lancelot

  Richard Gordon

  Copyright © 1965, 2001 Richard Gordon

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Richard Gordon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This edition published in 2001 by House of Stratus, an imprint of Stratus Holdings plc, 24c Old Burlington Street, London, W1X 1RL, UK.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  Typeset, printed and bound by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 1-84232-501-9

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher‘s express prior consent in any form of binding, or cover, other than the original as herein published and without a similar condition being imposed on any subsequent purchaser, or bona fide possessor.

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author‘s imagination.

  Any resemblances or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  1

  It was one of those glorious blue and gold mornings in May, sent to fool us that summer for once won‘t be the usual programme of rain and bad light stopping play, Wimbledon flooded, frostbite at Henley, and the Derby run in a thunderstorm. Instead there seemed the chance at last of farmers ruined by drought, half the Guards fainting at Trooping the Colour, roads jammed to the coast, and the New Forest going up in flames. It was a Saturday, so Clarice and Edna could get out their little motor scooter and putter away from Birmingham right after breakfast. They‘d planned a picnic among the Herefordshire orchards, which, like the two girls, were all dolled up in their best spring finery.

  It was a flagon of cider with the sardine sandwiches which braced them to press across the borders of Wales, where the mountains had drawn handkerchiefs of cloud over their faces to sink into an afternoon doze. But even such pretty girls on a motor scooter got nudged a good deal by the passing traffic, until they found refuge in a peaceful lane which wandered among the mountains before bringing them suddenly to the banks of a river. They stopped. The water frisked and laughed among the rocks, spreading into a deep clear pool at their feet. Birds swooped and skimmed over the surface. Bright-coloured flies hovered indecisively in the air. Oaks spread benevolent arms over soft new knee-high bracken. As for the human race, it seemed for the moment to have gone out of production.

  ‘It‘s lovely,‘ breathed Clarice, switching off the engine. ‘You wouldn‘t think, would you,‘ observed Edna, the thoughtful one, ‘we were hardly a hundred miles from the office and Mr Stallybrass?‘

  ‘I know what — ‘ Clarice unbuckled her shiny white helmet. ‘Let‘s have a swim.‘

  ‘A swim?‘ Edna‘s eyebrows, drawn with special care that morning, shot upwards. ‘But we haven‘t got our swimsuits.‘

  ‘Who said anything about swimsuits?‘ Clarice was the daring one, who even cheeked Mr Stallybrass. ‘Come on, Edna, there isn‘t a soul for miles. It‘ll be ever so cooling after the ride.‘

  ‘Oh, no! Not without swimsuits. My mum wouldn‘t like it.‘

  ‘Your mum would never find out, would she?‘

  The water gurgled a throaty invitation.

  ‘But not a word to Mum, mind,‘ said Edna breathlessly.

  It took the two pretty girls hardly a minute to slip out of their clothes and come giggling through the downy bracken to the water‘s edge. I hasten to add, in case you‘re thinking of giving this book to Auntie for Christmas, that nothing in the slightest rude is going to happen. It was but a scene of sunlit, innocent gaiety, which would have had Renoir reaching hastily for his paintbox.

  ‘Go on, Edna,‘ laughed Clarice, ‘you first.‘

  ‘No, you first. I bet it‘s proper cold.‘

  ‘Both together, then!‘

  Hand in hand the two pretty girls fell into the pool, and with little shrieks started splashing each other‘s back.

  A large hawthorn bush standing alone on the bank opposite emitted a howl.

  ‘Hey! You!‘

  The girls submerged to the neck.

  ‘You pair of cretinous vandals!‘ A red-faced bearded gentleman in tweed knickerbockers and deerstalker emerged from the quivering bush. ‘You couple of barbaric morons, get out of my river this instant.‘

  ‘We — we‘re swimming,‘ Clarice‘s startled head addressed from the surface.

  ‘You don‘t imagine I think you‘re waiting for a blasted bus?‘

  ‘We‘ve a perfect right-‘

  ‘Do you realize, you half-witted harpies, I‘ve been stalking a fish there for two entire weeks? Don‘t you understand I have spent the whole day in this highly uncomfortable piece of shrubbery solely in the hope of seeing him stick his neck out of the water for a fly? Do you know you are now probably trampling the thing to death under your feet? Get out of that water, before I call the bailiff.‘

  ‘We‘ve no clothes on!‘ screamed Edna.

  ‘I‘ve seen more naked women than you‘ve had hot dinners,‘ the fisherman informed her briskly.

  ‘He‘s mad!‘ Edna had underwater hysterics. ‘Mad! Like you see in the papers.‘

  ‘Give over, Edna! We can‘t expose ourselves, can we
?‘

  ‘Oh, Clarice! Let‘s get out. Before we‘re both assaulted.‘

  ‘If you‘re not ashore in two seconds,‘ added the bearded gent furiously, ‘I shall wade in and gaff the pair of you.‘

  Indiscretion seeming the better part of valour, the two pretty girls scrambled blushingly up the bank, climbed breathlessly into their clothes, and made damply for their motor scooter and safety from bearded monsters who clearly embarked upon assaults as lightly as bidding you good morning. They left behind a more or less harmless old-fashioned Englishman, gazing sadly at the muddied waters of a favourite pool now as much use for fishing as the fountains in Trafalgar Square.

  ‘Ye gods,‘ was all Sir Lancelot Spratt could bring himself to say. ‘What is the world coming to?‘

  ‘Ye gods,‘ repeated Sir Lancelot over breakfast the following Monday morning, ‘what is the world coming to?‘

  ‘That‘s the nineteenth,‘ remarked Lady Spratt absently, reading a letter. ‘Nineteenth what?‘

  ‘The nineteenth time you‘ve made that observation over the weekend.‘

  ‘Well, what is it coming to?‘ Sir Lancelot notched the score to twenty, brandishing his Times like the banner of the Old Guard at bay. ‘Look at this - a group of family doctors have formed what they describe as a “Ginger Group” to get more pay from the Government. How on earth does the profession expect to retain even the shreds of public respect if it persists in behaving like a gang of disgruntled boilermakers? It is totally beyond me. I suppose next they‘ll be working to rule, and shoving a dirty great gastroscope down everyone complaining of a bellyache. Thank God I‘ve retired! Who‘s that letter from?‘

  ‘Nikki Sparrow. Simon‘s wife.‘

  ‘Ha! She‘s expecting again?‘

  ‘If she is, she doesn‘t find it a matter worth mentioning.‘

  ‘How's Simon like being registrar to old Cambridge? Stout feller, Cambridge,‘ Sir Lancelot reflected. ‘Never saved a life and never lost one. Such are the salt of the surgical earth.‘

  ‘Simon has decided to put in for your old job on the senior staff of St Swithin‘s,‘ Lady Spratt informed him. ‘The election‘s been definitely fixed for the end of summer.‘

  ‘Oh?‘ returned Sir Lancelot distantly. ‘Indeed?‘

  ‘Nikki Sparrow shares your own exquisite tact, my dear,‘ continued Lady Spratt, a little fluffy thing who against her husband was very much a soufflé compared to sirloin, ‘by not saying in so many words she‘d desperately like you to exert a little influence for Simon.‘

  ‘That would be most unethical.‘

  A little sigh fluttered from his wife. ‘And to think in your time you‘ve pulled more strings than a band of Welsh harpists. You could at least write to my brother.‘

  ‘My dear Maud, I wish you‘d realize I have left St Swithin‘s finally and completely. I wouldn‘t attempt to influence goings-on in the place any more than I would in the blasted Kremlin.‘

  ‘Very well.‘ She filed the letter under a plate for further action.

  ‘Most unethical.‘ Sir Lancelot reached for the stoneware jar of Beaulieu‘s Bespoke Marmalade, the treacly stuff which has apparently stickied our royal fingers every morning since George the Fourth. He was very fond of it. Breakfast at the Spratts‘ was always quite a spread with interesting things sizzling in little dishes round the edge, Sir Lancelot believing the modern habit of everyone sitting at the kitchen table neurotically shaking it out of packets to be the cause of such contemporary phenomena as juvenile delinquency, road accidents, broken homes, and the decline and fall of the British Empire.

  ‘And how are you intending to occupy today?‘ she asked.

  ‘I‘m going after that trout in Witches‘ Pool, ifl don‘t happen to find the place in use as a lido.‘

  ‘And tomorrow?‘

  ‘In the morning I am on the Bench, of course. In the afternoon I shall go fishing again.‘

  ‘I simply can‘t understand how you manage to spend day alter day doing absolutely nothing.‘

  ‘I wish you wouldn‘t fall into the vulgar error of thinking angling is doing nothing,‘ objected Sir Lancelot, munching a slice of toast loftily. ‘It is a skilful and absorbing pursuit, blessed by some of the finest pens in the English language. Ah, good morning, my dear,‘ he broke oft, as his eighteen-year-old niece Euphemia came in for breakfast.

  ‘Good morning, Uncle. Good morning, Auntie. What a delightful day! I‘ve been up for simply hours walking down by the river. It was so marvellous! The water seemed to be chortling to itself over some delicious secret it was hurrying to confide in the sea.‘

  ‘Any fish rising?‘ asked Sir Lancelot.

  ‘Surely, Effie,‘ Lady Spratt cut in, pushing across the Beaulieu‘s Bespoke, ‘you‘d like me to take you down to London for a week or two? Just to see a few shops and shows and have a little fun? You must find it quite as dull here as Cinderella in that beastly kitchen. And I‘m afraid you won‘t have much time for gadding about once you start at St Swithin‘s.‘

  ‘But I don‘t find it dull here at all, Auntie.‘ Euphemia opened her big blue eyes a couple more stops. ‘Honestly, I don‘t. I sometimes wish I could stay with you for ever.‘

  You may be surprised to find a delicate blossom like Euphemia sprouting on such rugged ancestral timber. The daughter of Sir Lancelot‘s younger brother Jasper, who‘d settled out East and opened some of the most influential stomachs ever to be filled in Raffles Hotel, Singapore, she was a little blonde with a figure as slim as a bottle of hock, a laugh as gay as the splash of a fountain, and a smile which would have melted an abominable snowman. It had, in fact, managed to achieve a certain liquefaction of Sir Lancelot.

  ‘What the devil does that cadger Jasper think I am?‘ he‘d demanded, slamming down a letter on that same breakfast table three months before. ‘A cross between Little Nell‘s grandfather and the YWCA?‘

  ‘I expect Effie will be extremely nice,‘ Lady Spratt countered briskly. ‘She certainly looks it in our photograph.‘

  ‘Might I suggest that certain hormonal changes have possibly taken place since the age of five?‘

  Sir Lancelot glared at the letter. It appeared that Euphemia had suddenly declared in Singapore she wanted to uphold family tradition by training as a nurse at St Swithin‘s Hospital, and Mr Jasper Spratt, FRCS, had agreed only on condition that she solemnly promised to put herself in the strict moral guardianship of Uncle Lancelot. After all, Jasper had once been a student in the place himself. Much to the surprise of her family

  Euphemia had accepted the plan with enthusiasm, which was more than could be said for Uncle.

  ‘I know exactly what she‘ll be like. The same as all those other ghastly lank-haired adolescents hanging round coffee bars, doting on weedy young men in atrocious trousers playing the banjo, or whatever it is, and staying out till all hours. No wonder the Registrar-General‘s annual report these days reads like Lolita. Anyway she‘s bound to pinch all the bathwater,‘ Sir Lancelot ended briefly. ‘The whole project‘s out of the question.‘

  ‘We‘ll see,‘ said Lady Spratt.

  But that May morning, a month alter meeting Euphemia with his Rolls at London Airport, Sir Lancelot had to confess himself impressed with the child‘s qualities - her quietness, her serious-mindedness, her love of the country, her appetite for surgical reminiscence and gluttony for fishing stories. Odd, he felt, a bounder like Jasper should have produced such a daughter. The feller must have married into a decent set of genes. He bestowed on his niece across the breakfast table a look of approval wobbling on affection.

  ‘The early dew was sparkling on the lawn so,‘ Euphemia continued, reaching for the toast, ‘I wanted to take off my shoes and sing and dance.‘

  ‘You mustn‘t do that, my dear, you might get a chill,‘ advised Sir Lancelot, furling The Times and pushing back his chair. ‘Do you suppose that demobilized druid we have in the kitchen has prepared my sandwiches?‘ He dabbed the last speck of Beaulieu‘s Bespoke from his beard wit
h a yellow silk handkerchief. ‘I shall be out on the river till dinner.‘

  ‘Lancelot! You know perfectly well the Vicar is coming to lunch.‘

  ‘Although it is extremely unlikely the Vicar will go to hell,‘ remarked Sir Lancelot affably, making for the door, ‘I will simply record that I should have no objection.‘

  An old-fashioned Englishman out for a day‘s fishing needs a good deal of equipment. Apart from such essentials as rods, lines, nets, and all those pretty flies, he requires chicken sandwiches, Stilton and Bath Olivers, a slice or two of fruit cake, bottled beer, Thermos of tea, the morning paper, pipe and tobacco, shooting-stick, anti-midge lotion, sunglasses, raincoat, hip-flask, and The Angling Letters of G E M Skues. All these supplies swung from various parts of Sir Lancelot as he majestically descended the front steps to a garden set for the opening of summer, with roses bursting at the seams, gladioli impatiently awaiting their cue, and the laburnum in the corner dripping on to the lawn like split scrambled eggs. Contentedly sniffing the day and softly whistling a snatch from The Gondoliers, he strode towards that world of woods and water where the peace of the fisherman passeth all understanding.

  Fishing, as Izaak Walton would have argued more elegantly with Lady Spratt, is a rest to the mind, a cheerer of the spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness, that begets habits of peace and patience in those who profess and practise it. This list, Sir Lancelot admitted when the year before he retired prematurely from the St Swithin‘s surgical staff, neatly matched his needs.

  But Sir Lancelot, like God, with whom he was sometimes understandably confused, moved in mysterious ways. He‘d simply delivered the St Swithin‘s annual Founders‘ Lecture — his theme was ‘The Importance of the Family Doctor‘, and he‘d never been in better form at a lectern — dropped his resignation into the Secretary‘s office, collected his hat, and disappeared. Admittedly, he was known to have trouble with his intervertebral discs, but as most consultant surgeons hang on to their jobs as doggedly as prime ministers he left his colleagues trying to decide if they were more astonished than affronted.