The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher(15)

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Dr. Shinbone presents his compliments and begs to state that his fee will be: 300 guineas



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But behind the patients’ backs it’s more like “Bloody neurotics! Know-alls! Have the nerve to come in here, wanting attention! Asking me questions! Me, a Barts man!”

You probably think I’m cynical, jaundiced. But I’ve always found Harley Street a hopeless street, very long, very monotonous, the endless railings and the brass plates and the paneled dark doors all the same. I wonder if the patients dream about it as I do, in these sticky summer dawns: as if it stretches not just through space but through time, so that at the end of it there’s not Marylebone Road and Cavendish Square, but there’s death, and the place you were before you were born. Naturally, I wouldn’t mention anything like this to Bettina or Mrs. Bathurst. For the patients’ sake, you have to try to keep cheerful during the day.

Our premises, though, are not designed to lift the spirits. Even if you’ve never been to Harley Street you’ve probably got a picture in your mind: leather chesterfields, brass lamps with deep green shades, repro yew coffee tables stacked with Country Life—on the whole, an ambience that suggests that if you’re terminal you’re at least departing in style. Our waiting room is not like that. Our armchairs are assorted types, and greasy where heads and hands have rested. We’ve even one kitchen chair, with a red plastic seat. As for reading matter—old Shinbone brings in his fishing magazines when he’s done with them—What Maggot?, that sort of thing. I forget now why we call him Shinbone. Usually we name them by their specialities, and he’s not in orthopedics. It must be because of the way his patients look—thinner and thinner, sharpening and sharpening. We see them come in the first time, bluff and flushed, walking bolsters in tweed and cashmere: then we see them get too weak to make it upstairs.

By contrast there’s Gland, the top-floor endocrinologist. Gland is a woman who wheezes as she walks. “Make me normal,” her patients plead: as if she had any grip on that condition. She treats women for the premenstrual syndrome and for change-of-life upsets: gives them hormones that fatten them up. They come in drawn and wan, hands trembling, very slightly violent and insane—and a couple of months later they’re back again, drunkenly cheerful, rolling and puffing, double chinned, ankles bloated, mad eyes sunk into new flesh.

I dwell, as I’ve said, in a small cave, which has an opening into the hall, a kind of serving hatch. Bettina says, it’s like Piccadilly Circus here; she thinks the expression is original. All our time-share doctors come tramping in and out. They put their heads into the hatch and say things like “Miss Todd, the cleaning is unsatisfactory.”

I say “Is that so, now?” I reach into my cupboard, and bring out a cloth. “Doctor,” I say, “meet the duster. Duster—this is the doctor. You’ll be working closely together, from now on.”

Cleaning, you’ll appreciate, is not my job. It’s done in the night by Mrs. Ranatunga and her son Dennis, when I’m not here to supervise them. Mr. Smear the gynecologist, who is Mrs. Bathurst’s employer, is especially obnoxious if his desk doesn’t shine. They don’t want to pay out, you see, our doctors—but they still want the red-carpet treatment, they expect deference from me like they get from their medical students. Mr. Smear is an ambitious man, Mrs. Bathurst says: works all hours. He lives in Staines—quite near me, but in rather more style—and in the evenings he does abortions at a clinic in Slough. Sometimes when he comes to pick up his post from me I say, “Oh, look, doctor! Your hands are dirty.” He’ll look huffy, hold them up; but yes, there, there, I say. It’s amusing then, to see him wildly stare, and scrutinize his cuffs for blood spots. I take a moral line, you see. I’m not well paid, but I have that luxury.

Our other full-timer is Snapper, whom I mentioned before. He has his own little waiting room, where he puts his patients while their jabs take effect. His trick is to wait until he has one in the chair—a numb-lipped captive, mouth full of fingers—and then start voicing his opinions. Pakis out, that sort of thing: all the sophistication you expect from a man with letters after his name. I send his patients back into the world, their faces lopsided and their brains fizzing like bombs. Even if they had free speech, would they contradict him? He might hurt them next time.

One thing to be said for Snapper—he’s not as greedy as the others. As I said, he gave Mrs. Bathurst a cut-rate course of treatment.

“Do you have trouble with your teeth, Mrs. Bathurst?” Bettina asked: her usual tone, all gush and dote.

Mrs. Bathurst said, “When I was a girl they made me wear a brace. My gums have been tender since.” She put her hand up, as if she were blotting a bead of blood from her lip. She has long fingers, and horrible stumpy gnawed-off nails. I thought, it’s obvious; she’s one of those people who don’t like to talk about their childhood.

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I REMEMBER THE day that Mrs. Bathurst appeared at the door, her CV in her bag: a woman of uncertain age, sallow, black hair graying, scooped back into wings and pinned with kirby grips. She wore a dark cape—which she carried well, because of her height. She’s worn it all summer though: in August, people stare. Perhaps it was part of her uniform once, when she was a hospital nurse. It’s the sort of thing that’s too good to throw away.