Prescription

He rose at five, because he always rose at five, and went out.

The house was asleep. The night footman was asleep in a chair in the hall with his chin on his chest, and did not stir when the Governor-General came down the stairs in a dark suit and let himself out by the front door. State Circle was empty and grey and wet with dew. The State House dome was the colour of a pearl. There was nobody on the grass where the class of 1926 had stood, only a torn piece of a map, which he picked up and put in his pocket, and a midshipman’s white cap, which he left on the railing where somebody would find it.

He walked the circle once, the whole way round, at a steady pace, and then he went down School Street.

He told himself that he went down School Street because it was the shortest way to Church Circle and he wished to walk Church Circle too, which was true. He walked it. He walked round the church in its yard of old graves under the dripping trees, and at the west door, the one that looked up School Street, he found it open, propped with a brick, and an old man in shirtsleeves on the step with a broom, sweeping, who was the Rector.

“Your Excellency,” said the Rector, and leaned the broom against the wall. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Rector. You sweep your own step?”

“The sexton has a bad back. And I am up.” The old man smiled. He had a long gentle face, much creased, and eyes that had faded almost to no colour at all. “I have been up at five for fifty-one years. It is the only hour of the day when nobody wants anything. I imagine you know.”

“I do.”

“Will you come in? It is cooler inside.”

Pershing went in. It was cooler. It was a plain church inside, plainer than its spire, white walls and dark pews with doors on them and a gallery round three sides and tall clear windows, and at the far end, up three steps, a rail of dark polished wood and behind it the altar with a white cloth on it and nothing else. The light came in sideways and grey. There was a smell of old wood and old stone and brass polish and, very faintly, of last Sunday’s flowers.

They stood together at the back.

“I have been thinking about your wager,” said the Rector.

“It is not my wager.”

“No. Forgive me. Your referee’s card.” The Rector looked down the aisle at the rail. “It is a curious thing. Wesley Tull is a very good man. I have known him since he came over from the Shore. He gave the chapel its organ and he gave us our new roof, which he need not have done, being a Methodist, and he did it without telling anybody, and I only know because the builder told me. He believes what he said last night. He believes it with his whole heart. And in a sense, you know, he is right.”

“In what sense?”

“Nobody in Annapolis serves liquor within sight of his house,” said the Rector. “Except me.”

Pershing turned his head.

“On the first Sunday of the month,” said the Rector, gently, “at eleven, at the Holy Communion. Tomorrow is the first Sunday in June. You will be in the front pew on the left, Your Excellency, it is in the programme, and the doors will be open, because it is June and the church is an oven by half past eleven. And from my rail, if you look back down the aisle, through that door,” he nodded at the west door, propped with its brick, at the grey street outside going up between the two old roofs, “you can see the porch of Government House. I have looked at it every first Sunday for twenty years. I find it a great comfort.” He smiled again. “I mention it because I suspect somebody will think of it before Sunday, and I would rather you heard it from me than from Mr La Guardia.”

Pershing stood very still at the back of the church.

He looked down the aisle at the rail. He looked back at the door. Through the door, up School Street, between the roofs, he could see the circle and the green rise and, yes, the white columns of the porch of Government House with the flag above it hanging limp in the dawn.

“Does it count, do you think?” said the Rector. “Under clause two? I was at the dinner. You said lawful or unlawful.”

“I said I would not rule on lawfulness.”

“I know. I wondered whether you would rule on sacraments.”

“I will not,” said Pershing, “rule on sacraments.”

“No,” said the Rector. “I didn’t think you would. I am glad.” He picked up his broom again. “Will you have some coffee? I have a pot on the stove in the vestry. It is very bad coffee. It is the only kind I can make.”

Pershing had the coffee. It was very bad. He drank all of it, standing in the vestry door, looking down the church at the open west door, and he did not mention the Holy Communion again, and neither did the Rector, and when he walked back up School Street at a quarter past six he did not look over his shoulder at all, because he did not need to. He knew exactly what was there.

---

At breakfast there was a telegram from Baltimore for Mr La Guardia, which had been delivered to Government House by mistake, or not by mistake, and lay on the hall table in its buff envelope until La Guardia arrived to collect it at a quarter to eight, which he did by walking up the front steps and in at the front door and into the dining room, where the Lieutenant-Governor and Mrs Tull and the Governor-General and the Governor-General’s son and the Governor-General’s private secretary were eating kidneys.

“Good morning,” said La Guardia. “Don’t get up. Is that for me?”

“Good morning, Mr La Guardia,” said Tull, getting up. “Will you have some breakfast?”

“I’ve had breakfast. I had it at five. I had it on the dock. Captain Tyler’s crew fry their bacon on a shovel.” He opened the telegram, read it, and beamed. “He’s coming.”

“Who is coming?” said Mrs Tull.

“Dr Kemp. Of Baltimore. Amos Kemp, of Eutaw Street, physician and surgeon. On the eight o’clock car.” La Guardia folded the telegram and put it in his pocket. “I telephoned him last night after the dock. I’ve known him for years. We were in the air service together, he patched me up twice, he’s the best doctor in Maryland and the busiest, and do you know what he’s busy with? I’ll tell you. He writes prescriptions for medicinal whisky. All day. He’s got a permit from the Treasury and a book of forms in triplicate, and he writes them for rheumatism, and for nerves, and for the grippe, and for anything else that walks in the door, a pint at a time, and they take them to a druggist with a permit, and the druggist fills them, and it’s all perfectly lawful.” He turned to Pershing. “Clause two, General. Lawful or unlawful. And there’s a druggist on Maryland Avenue at the corner of Prince George Street. Lowndes. I walked past it. It’s got a sign in the window that says PRESCRIPTIONS. And the class of 1926 tells me that at twenty-five past midnight a midshipman stood on that corner and waved his cap and the referee said within sight.”

“I did,” said Pershing.

“Well, then.”

“Mr La Guardia,” said Tull, with no alarm whatever, buttering his toast, “are you ill?”

“Not yet.”

“Then Dr Kemp cannot prescribe for you.”

“He can if I’m ill.”

“And you are not.”

“I will be,” said La Guardia, “by nine.”

---

Dr Kemp got off the eight o’clock car at West Street with a black bag in one hand and a straw hat in the other, and looked about him at the town of Annapolis with the expression of a man who has been invited to a party at which he suspects he is to be the entertainment.

He was a large slow man of fifty with a red face and a white moustache and a white linen suit, and he walked up to Government House, because La Guardia had told him to, and was shown into the morning room, because Mrs Tull had told the footman to, and was introduced to the Governor-General, which nobody had told him about at all.

“Your Excellency,” he said, and looked at La Guardia. “Fiorello, you said a patient.”

“I am the patient.”

“You’re not ill.”

“How do you know? You haven’t looked at me.”

“I’ve looked at you. You’ve got a colour like a tomato and a voice they can hear in Glen Burnie. You’re the healthiest man I’ve seen this year.” Dr Kemp put his bag down on a chair. “Fiorello, I came down from Baltimore on a Saturday in June Week because your telegram said urgent stop come at once stop referee waiting. What referee?”

La Guardia explained.

He explained at some length, with gestures, and Dr Kemp listened to all of it without moving, looking at the carpet, and then at the Governor-General, and then out of the window at State Circle, and then at the carpet again.

“No,” he said, when La Guardia had finished.

“Amos.”

“No. I won’t do it. I have a permit from the Treasury and a reputation on Eutaw Street, and neither of them is going to be spent on a bet.” He looked at Pershing. “I beg Your Excellency’s pardon. On a demonstration.”

“You write a hundred a week!”

“I write a hundred a week for people who are ill. Or who tell me they’re ill, which is the same thing under the Act, God help us, because the Act says in the judgement of the physician, and in my judgement a man who climbs four flights of stairs on Pratt Street to tell me his back hurts has a back that hurts.” He folded his arms. “I have written prescriptions for medicinal whisky for four thousand patients since 1920, Fiorello. I have never once written one for a man who came in perfectly well and wanted everybody to know it.”

“Then make me ill.”

“I won’t make you ill. I’m a doctor.”

“Then I’ll make myself ill.”

“How?”

La Guardia looked round the morning room, as if a method might be on the mantelpiece, and then out of the window at State Circle, where the midshipmen were coming up from the Academy in white in the bright morning, and the man with the barrow of soft crabs had come up from the dock to sell to them.

“Oysters,” he said.

“It’s June,” said Dr Kemp.

“Exactly. There’s no R in it. Everybody knows you can’t eat an oyster in a month without an R, they’ll kill you.” He went to the door. “There’s a man on the dock with a barrel of oysters he says came off the Sister Rose, and I’m going to eat every one of them, and in an hour I’ll be as sick as a dog, and you’ll have to prescribe.”

“They won’t kill you,” said Dr Kemp. “That’s a story. They’ll be thin and milky and not very nice. They won’t kill you.”

“We’ll see,” said La Guardia, and went.

---

Pershing did not go after him. He had the Superintendent at ten, with Tull, in the Lieutenant-Governor’s study, to go over the order of the commissions. He went over the order of the commissions. It was alphabetical. It began with Abramowitz. The Superintendent, the Rear-Admiral with the red face, said that it was a new custom, and that order of merit invited comment, and Pershing said that he had been told so, and the Admiral looked at him for a moment and then said, “You don’t like it,” and Pershing said, “It is not for me to like it,” and the Admiral said, “No, by God, it’s not,” and laughed, and slapped the desk, and Pershing found that he liked the Admiral a good deal more than he had at dinner.

At a quarter to eleven Bramwell came in with a note.

It was from Spratt, and it was written in pencil in a small clear hand on a page torn from the black book, and it said that Agent Spratt had the honour to inform His Excellency that the druggist Lowndes, of Maryland Avenue, together with every other licensed druggist in the City of Annapolis, seven in all, had been visited between seven and eight that morning by the Lieutenant-Governor in person, accompanied by Mrs Tull and a sponge cake, and had each been asked as a personal favour to the Lieutenant-Governor and in honour of June Week to close his premises until Monday, and had each agreed.

Pershing read it twice.

“Your Honour,” he said.

“Yes, Your Excellency?” said Tull, who was reading the list of names with great happiness.

“Did you close the druggists?”

“I asked them to close,” said Tull. “I asked them very nicely. Hester made a cake. It is June Week. Everybody should have a holiday in June Week.” He looked up, entirely untroubled. “Mr Spratt told me last night about Dr Kemp’s permit. He thought I should know. He is very thorough.” He went back to the list. “Is it not lawful, Your Excellency?”

“It is entirely lawful.”

“I thought it was,” said Tull. “I asked Hester, and she said it was, and she is generally right about these things.” He found a name on the list and smiled. “Abramowitz. Mr La Guardia’s boy. He is first. Is that not nice?”

---

La Guardia was not ill.

Pershing found that out at a quarter past eleven, when he came out on to the porch of Government House and found the whole of the party gathered on the lawn under the big magnolia, in the shade, in a state of high and various emotion. La Guardia was sitting on a bench with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up and his collar open, looking at his own stomach with an expression of betrayal. Dr Kemp was standing over him with two fingers on his wrist and a watch in his other hand and his eyes closed. Warren was sitting on the grass at their feet, in his shirt, without a hat, and his face and his neck and his forearms were the colour of a boiled crab. And beyond them, on the far side of the lawn, by the railing, keeping a precise and equal distance from each other and from the bench, stood Spratt, with his black book, and Voss, with his grey one, both writing.

“Twenty-two,” said La Guardia, as Pershing came down the steps. “Twenty-two oysters. On the dock. Out of the barrel. Thin and milky and not very nice. I watched every one of them go down. Pulse?”

“Seventy-two,” said Dr Kemp, opening his eyes. “Regular. Strong. You’ve got the constitution of a mule.”

“I’m from East Harlem.”

“So you keep telling me.” Dr Kemp let go of his wrist. “You’re not ill, Fiorello. You’re not going to be ill. I could have told you that before you ate them. Nobody’s ever ill from a June oyster, it’s an old wives’ tale, they’re just bad.” He looked down at Warren. “This one’s ill, though.”

“I’m not ill,” said Warren.

“You’re burned to a cinder. Where’s your hat?”

“I left it on the windowsill. With my shoes.”

“How long have you been out in this?”

“Since about seven.” Warren looked up at his father, a little guiltily. “I was on the State House steps, sir. Watching the druggists. Mr La Guardia asked me to tell him when Lowndes opened. Only he never opened. Mr and Mrs Tull came round with the cake and he put a sign in the window instead.” He touched his own neck, and winced. “It said GONE CRABBING.”

Dr Kemp took Warren’s chin in one large hand and turned his face to the light, and looked at it, and at his neck, and at his forearms, and made a small professional noise.

“That,” he said, “is a bad burn. That’s going to blister by tonight. That’s going to keep him awake.” He looked up at the Governor-General. “Your Excellency, with your permission. I’d like to prescribe.”

“Prescribe what?”

“Whisky,” said Dr Kemp. “Applied externally. With a soft cloth. Cold. It takes the heat out. My grandmother swore by it and so do I.” He was already opening his black bag. “It’s in the pharmacopoeia, more or less. It’s a perfectly proper medicinal use under the Act. A pint.” He took out a pad of forms and a fountain pen. “Name?”

“Warren Pershing,” said Warren.

There was a silence on the lawn of Government House.

La Guardia had stood up. He was looking at Dr Kemp’s pad of forms, and at Warren’s red face, and at the Governor-General, and something was happening in his own face, a kind of slow dawning joy, the look of a man who has spent all morning trying to open a door and has just noticed that the window is open.

“Externally,” said Pershing.

“Externally, Your Excellency.”

“Not served. Not drunk.”

“God, no. He’s sixteen.” Dr Kemp was writing. “Applied with a soft cloth. To the neck and arms. By an adult.” He tore off the form, in triplicate, signed all three, and held them out, and then, because Warren was sixteen and the son of the Governor-General, did not quite know to whom to hand them. “To be filled by any licensed druggist.”

“They’re all crabbing,” said Warren.

“Then it’ll have to wait till Monday,” said Dr Kemp, “and you’ll have to wait with it. Cold water and a wet towel and stay out of the sun.” He looked at the form in his hand, and then, with an air of slight embarrassment, held it out to the only man on the lawn whose authority over a sixteen-year-old boy was not in question.

Pershing took it.

He looked at it. Spiritus frumenti, one pint, for external application, Rx Warren Pershing, aet. 16, sunburn, A. Kemp M.D., Eutaw St, Baltimore, permit no. 4471. It was the first prescription for liquor that had ever been put into his hand.

On the far side of the lawn, Voss wrote something in his grey book. Spratt wrote something in his black one. Then each of them looked at what the other was writing, from twenty feet away, with deep suspicion.

Pershing folded the prescription once, and then again, and put it into his breast pocket, behind the programme and the place card, where it would stay, unfilled, for the rest of the weekend.

“Mr La Guardia,” he said.

“General?”

“Governor-General. That prescription is in my custody. It is for my son’s neck. It is not to be filled.”

La Guardia looked at the Governor-General’s breast pocket for a long moment, and then at Warren’s neck, and then up at the sky, where the sun was coming up toward noon with no mercy at all, and he laughed his sudden high laugh, and put his jacket back on.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “I’ve still got twenty-two oysters to think about.” He picked up his hat. “What time are the commissions?”

“Two o’clock.”

“I’ll be there,” said La Guardia. “Abramowitz is first,” and went off across State Circle in the white blaze of the morning, toward the dock, with his hat on the back of his head, whistling, and Voss, after a decent interval, put his grey book in his canvas bag and went after him.