DOCTOR IN CLOVER

'Hello!' I called. 'Hope you didn't have a beastly journey.'

'It was stinking.'

'Welcome to Porterhampton.'

'And what a dump, too!'

'The city has several charming features, I assure you. Though I shan't be able to provide much of a conducted tour, as your train home's at nine-ten.'

'Thank God for that. What on earth have you got in your arms?'

'They're chrysanthemums, from the greenhouse.'

'You look as though you've lost your street barrow.'

'I think we'd better get off the platform. I might be spotted by one of my patients.'

I led Petunia Bancroft to the car.

'I've had some pretty funny parts in my time,' Petunia complained as we drove away.

'But this one makes the Crazy Gang look like the Old Vic.'

'It's perfectly simple,' I reassured her. 'You've only to play The Doctor's Wife, straight. To an accomplished actress like you, Pet my dear, it's as easy as selling theatre programmes.'

'If I hadn't been out of work I wouldn't have sniffed twice at the idea, believe you me.

'Regard it as a professional challenge.'

'Costume all right?'

'Perfect for the part.'

'I thought I'd better leave off my ankle bracelet.'

'Can't say I've seen a nurse wearing one.'

'Supposing this old fellow-what's his name?-asks a lot of questions with long medical words and that? What the hell am I supposed to say?'

'Leave it to me. Anyway, all he's likely to talk about is our epidemic of mumps. Just remember the time you had it yourself.'

'I haven't.'

'Neither have I. Good job, in your case,' I smiled. 'Might possibly have mucked up your hormones.'

She asked how, so I gave a brief dissertation on the pathology and virology of mumps until we arrived at the Wattles' front gate.

'Petunia,' I announced. 'Your cue.'

I was pretty worried about the performance, though I didn't let on to Petunia. Another of the useful things you learn from studying medicine is radiating cheerful confidence all round while wondering what the devil's going to happen next. But I must say, she created the part of Mrs Grimsdyke magnificently. In half an hour the old couple were all over her.

'Where did you train, my dear?' asked Dr Wattle, as we sat down to lunch.

'Oh, at RADA,' said Petunia.

He looked puzzled. 'That seems a hospital I haven't heard of.'

'An affectionate name for the Royal Diabetic,' I told him.

'Is it really? Dear me, I never knew. One learns something every day. And what is the trouble with this important case your husband tells us you're nursing?'

'Er-foot and mouth disease.'

'Attacking a human? Good gracious me!

How extraordinary. I've never heard of such a thing before in my life.'

'Petunia means the poor fellow is down in the mouth because he's got one foot in the grave. Quite a common nurses' expression.'

'Is it indeed? Of course, you've had more recent contact with such things than I, Gaston. How one hates to be thought behind the times! I must try it out at the next BMA meeting. I expect, my dear, you've had wide experience nursing cases of mumps?'

But I neatly managed to steer the conversation away from shop, and as the afternoon wore on I felt my troubles were sorting themselves out splendidly. The old couple's feelings were saved, I was out of the matrimonial target area, and I could make a leisurely exit from Porterhampton as soon as Miles was safely on the St Swithin's staff. Besides, I now had a handy excuse for nipping down to London any weekend I felt like it.

'My train goes in about an hour,' Petunia reminded me, when we'd reached the cold ham supper stage.

'What a shame you can't stay longer,' sighed Mrs Wattle.

'Petunia has to be on duty at midnight,' I explained. 'As a matter of fact, I might as well be getting the car out.'

I opened the front door, and a nasty complication to my little plan rolled all over me.

I suppose this country wouldn't be the same if it weren't dosed regularly through the winter with fog. Can you imagine such national heroes as Sherlock Holmes or Jack the Ripper prowling about on nice mild summer evenings? How would Dickens' characters have looked in the Neapolitan sunlight? Or the dear old Houses of Parliament shining like the Taj Mahal? Our national character gets regularly tested by the frightful complications of fogs, particularly the great big grey thing that rose like a wall of dirty muslin from the front doorstep.

'I'd better telephone British Railways,' I muttered.

The word 'trains' evoked only a mystified silence on the wire.

'The midday hasn't turned up yet from Manchester,' said the fellow at the station.

'And where the morning express from Glasgow's got to, nobody knows. If you want your prospects of getting to London tonight, sir, they're nil. It's the biggest and thickest we've had this century, according to the wireless.'

'So now Petunia will have to stay till morning,' said Ma Wattle, smiling benevolently.

'But that's impossible!' she cried.

'Has to be back to her case,' I explained quickly.

'Surely under such circumstances a replacement could be found in London?' insisted Dr Wattle.

Petunia stamped her foot. 'Gaston can drive me.'