Sometimes I feel like a doctor in Chekhov: worn out, prematurely balding, old before my time and utterly superfluous. The trouble is that I’m not surrounded by Mashas, Irinas and Yelenas, but by Lees, Dwaynes and Craigs. As for birch trees, mandolins and tables set for tea, there’s not a one to be seen. On the other hand, there’s quite a lot of shooting offstage.
A patient said something to me last week that brought Chekhov to mind: ‘I’m bored out of life.’ Some critics believe that Chekhov was an optimist, and that it is wrong to stage his plays wistfully, or as the dramatic equivalent of faded cotton prints. And, as if to bear these critics out, my patient added brightly, ‘But, doctor, I’m going to make a new leaf.’
He was a drug addict as it happens, driven to the needle by what he called his common law. ‘She’s a terrible woman, doctor,’ he said. ‘Horrible.’
I don’t, of course, deny the power of women to drive men to distraction. On my walls at home is a portrait by Lemuel Abbott, who painted Nelson. The Dictionary of National Biography records that he ended his days in an asylum, driven there by his wife, ‘a woman,’ says the DNB, ‘of the most absurd conduct.’ I wouldn’t mind betting, though, that she was a very Portia compared with my patient’s common law.
‘She used to be an ex-model,’ he said. ‘I can’t go back to her.’
‘Where will you go, then?’ I asked.
‘My drug-worker will help me find somewhere.’
Ah, drug-workers: the people who never say no to drug addicts.
‘Can you phone her for me?’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Dag.’
All drug workers have names like that. I asked what his or her surname was.
‘I don’t know. They don’t give surnames out. She’s just known as Dag.’
I phoned.
‘Hello, Heroin Line.’
‘Hello, I’m Dr Dalrymple. Do you have someone working with you called Dag?’
‘Yes we do.’
‘Could I speak to her?’
‘She’s not available.’
‘Why not?’
‘She’s in a training meeting.’
‘Can’t you get her out of her training meeting?’
‘No. She can’t come out.’
‘Why not?’
There was a shocked silence. The thought of it! Bateman could have drawn a cartoon of the situation.
Dag was found in the end, but she wasn’t very helpful. I moved on to the next patient. He too had a common law. I asked him how he came by the cut on the bridge of his nose.
‘My common law skimmed a plate at me.’ He imitated someone throwing a frisbee.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’d gone to the hairdresser’s, which is next door to my oldest daughter, so she assumed I was having it off with my ex.’
‘Your daughter’s mother?’
‘Yes.’
‘And were you?’
‘No, I haven’t seen her for at least a month. I’m telling you, my missus is a psycho.’
‘Why do you stay with her, then?’
‘I love her. Besides, I’m being bribed with our child. She says that if I don’t stay with her, I’ll never see the child she’s had off me ever again.’
‘Why is she like that?’
‘The whole family’s like it, doctor, they’re all on the brown.’
‘You mean heroin.’
‘Yes. And all they talk about is sex and stripping. It’s disgusting, in front of the f—–g babby ’n’ all.’
Comments