DOCTOR IN CLOVER

His Lordship grew steadily feebler and feebler, while everything else in sight was burgeoning wildly in the sunshine. It wasn't long before I began to grow alarmed about his condition. Modern medicine's all very well, with antibiotics and heart-lung machines and so on, but once a chap's decided he doesn't want to live any more we're not much better off than the witchdoctors in Central Africa. And my professional problems weren't made easier by the other Nutbeams, who now the excitement had died down treated me like the man come to mend the drains. Far from his Lordship, they were terrible snobs-particularly the missus, whom everyone knew in the village was only a road-house remnant from Percy Nutbeam's youth, anyway.

'It would be much more convenient if you could make your daily visit earlier,' she said, as I limped into Nutbeam Hall one evening after a heavy day's practice among the pigsties. 'We are expecting Lord and Lady Farnborough for dinner any minute, and I should naturally prefer my guests not to be greeted in the hall by the doctor. Perhaps you would also have the goodness to change your shoes before coming to us, Dr Grimsdyke. I realize that you cannot avoid walking through the farmyards during the day, but-'

I must say, her attitude made me pretty annoyed. Particularly as I felt she wouldn't have tried it with the old uncle, not with those old-fashioned looks of his. Then, a couple of days later, Lord Nutbeam went off his food and started looking like Socrates eyeing the hemlock.

'We're all bursting to see you back to normal again,' I told him, hopefully writing a prescription for another tonic. 'Here's something which will have you chirping with the birds in no time.'

'Thank you, Doctor. You are very kind. Indeed, everyone is very, very kind. Especially, of course, my dear brother and his wife.' He listlessly turned a few pages of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall._ 'But I fear my accident had more effect than I imagined. I've hardly been out of Nutbeam Hall for many years, you know, on account of my delicate health. Meeting so many people in the hospital was something of a disturbance. You are doubtless familiar with the lines in Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard-'_

Feeling that churchyards were definitely out, I interrupted with the story about the parrot. But I don't think he got that one either.

I left him in the library, wondering whether to assemble the family again and confess the old boy wasn't living up to my prognosis. But I was stopped by Percy Nutbeam himself in the hall.

'Could you spare time for a whisky and soda, Doctor?'

My professional duties being over for the day, I accepted.

'I'm very worried about my brother's condition,' he declared, after a bit of chat about the weather and the crops.

'And so am I,' I told him.

'I remember the case of our aunt so well. The collapse seemed to set in all at once. Like a pricked balloon. I suppose there's not any danger of-er, is there?'

I nodded. 'I'm afraid I've got to say there is.'

The poor chap looked so concerned I felt I must have misjudged him all along.

'Then how long, Doctor, would you give him-?'

'Might be a matter of only a week or two,' I said gloomily.

'Good God! Not before May the twenty-eighth?'

I looked puzzled, wondering if they'd arranged a picnic or something.

'This is a very delicate business, Doctor.'

He poured himself another whisky. 'But I must be frank with you. You remember Sir Kenneth Cowberry?'

'I don't think I've had the pleasure.'

'He was leaving as you returned, the night of the accident. He's the head of Hoskins, Harrison, Cowberry, and Blackthorn. My brother's accountants, you know. I thought we'd better send for him at once, in case there were any arrangements my brother might have wished-'

'Quite,' I said.

'Lord Nutbeam naturally desires to leave my wife and myself his entire fortune. After all, we have devoted our lives to his welfare.'

'Quite, quite.'

'But it was only that evening we learned-my brother is oddly secretive about money matters-that he had in fact already made over his estate to me. In order to-er, escape death duties. You may have heard of other cases, Doctor? But under the rules of the Inland Revenue Department my brother must stay alive for five years after signing the document, or it doesn't hold water. And those five years are up at midnight, May the twenty-eighth. So, Doctor, if you can keep him alive till then-I mean, I hope and trust he will have many happy years among us yet-you understand the position…? I didn't think highly before of this pint-sized Lord and Lady Macbeth. Now I felt it would serve them damn well right if the Government carted off the lot, to pay, among other things, my National Health salary.

'I understand the position very well,' I replied, wishing I could produce one of the uncle's looks.