Doctor On The Brain by Richard Gordon Page A

didn’t accept?’
    The dean hesistated. ‘I did.’
    ‘Lionel! How could you, when you hated the very idea?’
    ‘Well…you know how Frankie is when she wants her own way.’
    ‘You’re an absolute fool. You always behave towards Frankie like a first-year student to the first junior nurse who bothers to smile at him.’
    The dean looked offended. ‘On the contrary. I admire Frankie only for her intellect.’
    ‘Nonsense. It’s all sex.’
    The dean fell silent, scowling at the cyclamen. ‘Anyway, what the devil am I going to do?’
    ‘Tell her you’ve changed your mind.’
    ‘Tell Frankie? She’d soon change it back again.’
    ‘Suggest someone else for the post.’
    ‘My dear Josephine, nobody in the entire academic world would touch that job with a well-sterilized barge-pole. I suppose that’s the only reason she asked me,’ he added ruefully.
    ‘Surely you can think of someone? Another doctor, perhaps? One older than you, who’s retiring anyway, who wouldn’t worry overmuch if he only lasted a few months? There must be someone with the knack of enjoying popularity among the students – even if it’s a cheap popularity.’
    ‘I can’t think of a soul. I certainly wouldn’t recommend Hampton Wick to one of my friends. I don’t think I’d care to offer it even to my worst enemy…’
    There was a violent thumping noise from the wall on the dean’s left. ‘Really! These houses are ridiculous. It’s bad enough hearing that peculiar fellow Bonaccord playing records or scraping away on the violin till all hours, but living next door to Sir Lancelot is like being on top of an Army assault course–’
    The dean paused. He slowly scratched his chin. For the first time a faintly cheerful expression came to his face. ‘I wonder… I wonder…’ he muttered to himself. ‘Well, it would certainly make an awfully good end to his obituary.

7
    The thump which had disturbed the dean was Sir Lancelot hurling a copy of Progress in Clinical Surgery at the crimson velvet curtain which hung from a brass rail to cover his sitting-room door. He stood on the Indian rug in the middle of the polished floor, breathing heavily. He shuddered, producing again the red-and-white spotted handkerchief to mop his face. But nothing emerged from behind the door curtain. There was no movement. No mewing. ‘Imagination,’ muttered Sir Lancelot. ‘I mustn’t let it get me down. I can conquer this thing. Just as I’ve conquered a lot of other unfortunate little traits in my life, like going into an abdomen too late and striking at a trout too early.’
    He sat again in the deep leather armchair. His sitting-room resembled the corner of a comfortable club, with plain walls of battleship grey, some early nineteenth-century prints of angling scenes and two enormous brown trout in glass cases, glassy-eyed and lacquered, to Sir Lancelot as emotive a reminder of past glories as the equally carefully preserved contents of the Kremlin mausoleum to the population of Moscow. At his left elbow was an angled reading-lamp, at his right a small table with the folded Times and Lancet , and a half-finished large whisky and soda with decanter and syphon, on a silver tray laid out by Miss MacNish. On his knee was a blotter, with the foolscap pages of the dean’s obituary.
    Sir Lancelot was in a mellow, indulgent frame of mind as the whisky gently ironed the wrinkles out of his soul. The consultation with the nut-wallah Bonaccord had not proved too painful – possibly his advice might even be worth taking. Neither cat had appeared all day, and he was even entertaining the cheerful notion that they had both been squashed somewhere by a bus. And there was tripe and onions for dinner – though inclined to produce wind in the bowel, certainly a dish to savour in anticipation. Sir Lancelot twitched his nostrils as the delicate, delicious scent pierced the door-curtain. His eye ran along the handwritten lines on his knee. The dean wasn’t