The Summer of Sir Lancelot by Richard Gordon Read Free Book Online

to let into the hospital these days.
    ‘Very well, Nurse. Don‘t forget not to speak until the Matron addresses you.‘
    It was a Thursday morning three weeks later, at the toothsome kernel of the English year w hen the second Test is starting at Lord‘s, Wimbledon waits to ping into life the following Monday, Royal Ascot froths with hats and champagne, the London parks greet you with a fanfare of roses, and strawberries are down to half-a-crown a punnet. Usually, of course, all this is carried on under a monsoon lost on the way to Assam, but that summer the weather was giving a gala performance, and the sun which dappled the contentious surface of Witches‘ Pool pierced the London haze and the dusty plane trees to flood the venerable soot-pickled courtyard of St Swithin‘s Hospital.
    That courtyard hasn‘t much changed since I first edged in nervously as a student, with a brand-new stethoscope sticking out of my pocket and a brand-new collar sticking into my neck. In fact, it hasn‘t much changed since Wren stood thoughtfully licking his pencil over the smoking ruins of Old St Paul‘s. The inscription across the main gate announcing SUPPORTED ENTIRELY BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS has at last been chiselled out, the place having been supported for some years by entirely involuntary ones from the taxpayer. The nurses‘ dresses now show another daring inch of calf, and those lady medical students would in my day have caused as much flurry as the Dagenham Girl Pipers marching through the Athenaeum. But the patients sitting quietly under the trees drawing strength from the London sun look exactly the same. Perhaps they are. The complaints of some of them were extremely chronic.
    There was a crash from the main gate. A hospital dustbin rolled across the courtyard, emitting a mixture of used bandages and uneaten chips. A Rolls-Royce had halted under the red notice demanding SILENCE with its horn baying. A red-faced, bearded, old-fashioned-looking Englishman had his head out of the driver‘s window, addressing a youth pushing a hand-trolley.
    ‘I don‘t give a damn if you are possessed of some perverted ambition to see inside the orthopaedic wards,‘ he was observing, ‘as long as you don‘t achieve it by denting my highly expensive coachwork.‘
    ‘You oughter look where you‘re going, you oughter,‘ rounded the youth.
    ‘Young man — it so happens this is the only place in London where other people are expected to look where I am going... Morning, Dicky,‘
    Sir Lancelot added amiably through the window in the direction of the Professor of Surgery. ‘Have you heard? England won the toss and Australia are fielding. Turnbull was out first ball.‘
    He drove across the courtyard, and parked on the far side in a space labelled CHAIRMAN OF THE GOVERNORS ONLY.
    ‘Oh no!‘ exclaimed the Professor‘s Registrar, beside his chief. ‘To think we were talking ot that particular devil only this morning.‘
    He fingered the latest copy of The Countess in the pocket of his white coat.
    ‘Well, well,‘ murmured the Professor. ‘We must utter a pious hope, I suppose, that the visitation is only a temporary one?‘
    He gave a smooth smile. Professor Richard Hindehead was a youngish man with a pale smooth complexion, smooth dark hair, long smooth hands, a voice which smoothed the most unwilling patients into surgery, and shirts which somehow stayed smooth to the end of a whole day‘s emergency duty.
    ‘But he‘d become such an utter hermit in Wales,‘ protested Paul Ivors-Smith, the Registrar. ‘He‘d cancelled all his medical journals and resigned from the BMA — rather rudely, I gather.‘
    ‘Yes, the poor fellow was becoming very peculiar towards the end,‘ agreed the Professor, resuming their walk from the lecture theatre towards the surgical block. ‘Good morning, Nurse,‘ he broke off smoothly. ‘Enjoying life on your new ward? I‘m so glad.‘
    Paul Ivors-Smith, a tall, fair-haired, droopy young surgeon