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“Why do you want to be a doctor?” the Dean of the medical school inquired. I was not going to say, “Because I want to be a psychoanalyst.”
Bertie took his feet off the desk preparatory to telling me there was no vacancy for me as a medical student. In my desperation a voice prompted me to mention I had played rugger for Oxford University. Bertie put his feet back on the desk; we had not finished yet.
“But”, I added in a spasm of conscience, “I had to forfeit my Blue because I tore a cartilage in my knee just before the Varsity Match.”
Before he had time to take his feet off the desk again, I blurted out that I had captained the Oxford University swimming team. I did not know that the hospital had a swimming team, but I saw that Bertie was again wondering if the unprepossessing mass of ineptitude before him concealed some possibility that had not so far emerged. So did I, though even less hopefully than Bertie. The gold and enamel of the DSO, the bright red ribbon of the Chevalier, did not thaw the freezing cold within. However … in or out? ‘In’ it was.
But first I had to pass the preliminary examinations in University College, London – the Inter. B.Sc., a trivial exam for any ordinary schoolboy. However, thanks to Oxford University, I had begun to learn that I was uneducated. ‘Ob, sub, super, post and pre’, said Kennedy's Latin Grammar. ‘A right-angled triangle’ had various ‘properties’. French partitive articles likewise; and … and … what else? University College taught me that there was nothing else. Back to school I went to learn what I ought to have, but had not, learned.
If I tried to assess my assets I could hardly contemplate the truth; I still wonder how I remained afloat instead of being submerged by my ignorance. I was reputed, wrongly, to be brave – only just having
escaped being branded with a cross, bronze, for valour; wooden, to mark the spot where my body lay. I was ignorant alike of love of man or woman. Visibly I was in good health; even mentally I was