The Little Doctor (10 page)

“Nobody in their right senses would come out in this,” she said, folding her stethoscope away.

Joe looked slightly worried.

“I hope we’re not going to have flooded roads,” he remarked. “D’you remember the job we had getting the caravan out when we were in a ditch last time at Appleton Meirsk?”

Jane could remember in fullest detail. It had taken them until after midnight to get the wheels of the heavy unit back onto the road, even with expert help.

“I think you ought to push off as quickly as possible,” she advised.

“But what about your car?” Joe asked. “Doctor Kilsyth’s borrowed it, hasn’t he?”

“He’ll return it at five and I can wait in the Fleece with a nice cup of tea while toasting my toes at the fire!” Jane said.

“
You sure you’ll be all right coming back down the dale?” Joe persisted doubtfully. “A flooded road
’
s no joke, especially in the dark. If you ask me, there’s more rain to come.”

“I won’t leave it too late, Joe,” Jane assured him. Joe was another person who took great care of her. Joe and Nicholas! “I should be home by six.”

“What about the morning?” Joe asked.

“Appleton Meirsk, isn’t it?” Jane smiled broadly. “I hope it’s not an omen of disaster! I’ll see you and Nurse there at ten o’clock,” she added. “At the school.”

When the caravan had gone lumbering down the road, she crossed the market place to the hotel, drinking tea and trying not to watch the hands of the clock. When Max put in an appearance it was quarter to six.

“I can’t begin to apologize,” he said. His voice was rough and she noticed how wet his clothes were, as though he had walked a long way in the rain. “I should have been back before five—I have a surgery at six—but I had to find Val and bring her home.”

The last few words were uttered more as a conviction than a statement, and somehow he did not seem the calm, assured Max she had always known. The look of strain on his face was more marked than ever, so that she was forced to say:

“Max, is there anything I can do?”

“There’s nothing anyone can do.” In an unguarded moment of weakness the words rushed out, “I’ve tried everything—”

Abruptly he turned from her to the window, staring out, battling for control of an emotion that had proved too strong even for him. Then he continued, still with his back turned.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. I’ve no right. Our ways separated long ago.”

His words cut deeply into her heart, but she waited. There was undoubtedly more to come.

“Perhaps I did the wrong thing, bringing Val up here,” he continued, “but London became impossible. It
’
s like a disease, this insatiable thirst she has for admiration and adventure. Her father knew about it. I was well warned, but it didn’t seem to matter— beside the other issue.”

He turned, his eyes haunted, but there was still that look of reluctance about him to confide in her fully.

“Today it was that horse of Jakes’—a vicious brute that he had no right to let her touch, never mind ride! Even if she wheedled until she was blue in the face. She couldn’t handle it. No woman could. If I hadn’t got there just in time—”

He left the sentence in mid-air, burying his face in his hands. Jane held her breath for a moment before she could trust herself to cross the room to his side.

“I ought to have done something,” she blamed herself. “Gone with her in my lunch hour, or something. She was so keen to see it all, especially when she couldn’t take part. She’s so eager, Max. I don’t think there’s anything silly, about Valerie. It’s just a tremendous zest for living.
”

He drew back, as if she had struck him.

“I know,” he said, his face suddenly ashen. “I know all about that, Jane, and I’ve got to refuse her. I can do nothing—nothing to help!”

She’ll settle down in time.” Even in her own ears the words sounded trite. “It might only be a case of waiting a little longer.”

He turned back to the window, gazing through the closely-drawn net curtains to the wet cobbles of the market place where he had parked her car, but he said nothing.

The minutes ticked away, marked by the brass hand on the old grandfather clock in the corner behind them. It seemed to be ticking away something precious in both their lives. Jane moistened her lips.

“Perhaps if she had a child it would be different.”

He swung around.

“No,” he said. “No, that would be impossible.”

Crushed by the utter vehemence in his voice, Jane could only stare back at him in dismay.

“I’m sorry,” she ventured. “I shouldn’t have interfered.”

He gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes bleak, his mouth twisted in a bitter expression she could not understand. There seemed to be no kindness left in him. He looked drained of everything, except despair. Then, suddenly, he drew himself up to his full height.

“I can’t expect you to understand all this,” he said almost in a tone of dismissal.
“
Try to forget about
it, Jane, if you can.”

The old Max was in command once more. If there were burdens to be carried, he could very well shoulder them alone.

She dared not offer her help a second time. She could only say rather bleakly that she must be getting back to Allingham.

Max walked her to the car, deliberately steering the conversation away from the personal.

“I had a difficult ten minutes with our friend Norbert Tinman yesterday,” he told her. “He’s on his feet now and very aggressive. I’ve been keeping in touch with him since his accident, visiting him when I’ve been down at the hospital.”

“I heard that,” Jane said. “Nicholas Pell keeps me in touch, too. Thank heavens it wasn’t too serious, after all!”

“I don’t know if I ever said ‘thank you’ properly for what you did that afternoon, Jane.” They had reached the car and he opened the door. “But you must know how much I appreciated it.”

She looked up at him in the half dark with the rain slanting into her face.

“I think I do, Max,” she said.

Speeding back down the dale road she was aware of a terrible emptiness. It seemed to stretch for miles, with its core in the depths of her own heart. A wind had risen, driving the rain before it. It tore down from the hills in a fury of destruction, shaking the car and breaking off twigs from the swaying branches above her to fling them against the windscreen as if it were activated by some personal vendetta against her.

Unnerved, she slowed down to second gear, rounded a bend and pushed her foot down hard on the brake just in time. The great trunk of a fallen tree lay across her path. Like a living thing it seemed to shudder and quiver in the wind, as if it had only just been slain, and she supposed that it could not have been there very long. There was no approaching traffic on either side.

Trained to emergency, her first thought was to give warning of the danger to following cars, but although she drove back right along the way she had come there was no sign of any other traveller on a night as wild as
this.

At Kirby Marton she sought out the policeman, who went into immediate action.

“Your caravan must have got through all right, Doctor,” she said. “But what about yourself? Even if we get a volunteer gang on the job it’s going to be an hour or two before we can clear the road. It’s a wicked night. Could you not be staying safely in the Fleece or somewhere? The tree must have brought the telephone line down between here and Allingham, but there’s enough local labor to make a start.”

“I suppose I’d better see what the Fleece can do for me,” Jane decided. At least till the road is cleared.”

There was no urgent reason why she should get back to Allingham. She had no ties. There wasn’t even the prospect of dinner with Nicholas, who had gone to Leeds.

The way to the Fleece led her past Max’s surgery. It was a narrow house with a flight of stone steps leading directly from the pavement, and on this wet and gloomy night the lights in the hall and waiting room shone out warmly. She had left her car in the market place because parking was easier there and she walked rather slowly past, reading the familiar name on the brightly-polished brass plate.

Long ago, before he had earned the right to put these letters after his name, they had stood before a similar plate in a Scottish university town and Max had said with his solemn, boyish smile: “One day, Jane, I’ll have a plate like that—big and brassy, with Maxwell Kilsyth, M.B., Ch.B., in the largest lettering it’s possible to get! And then—” His hand had tightened over hers, and although he had never finished the sentence he had begun, Jane had known what he had wanted to say. She had vowed in her heart to wait for him. A few years! It was nothing. They would both be qualified then. They could work together!

But when the day of Max’s graduation had come along, Valerie, not Jane, had been by his side. Valerie and her father. Sir Francis had looked proud, as if Max had been his own son. He had done so much for him.

Swiftly she looked away from the house. Sometimes the memory of the past was almost unbearable.

A door behind her opened.

“Good gracious, Jane!” a familiar voice exclaimed. “I thought you’d gone home ages ago. Max said—”

Jane turned to find Valerie framed in the lighted doorway.

“I did set out,” she told her. “Only I didn’t get any farther than the Hassocks farm. There was a tree down over the road there. It’s completely blocked, so I came back to report it.”

“Well, come on in.” Valerie held the door wider. “Max hasn’t much trade this evening! We can make some coffee while we’re waiting for him to finish surgery.”

“I ought to slip along to the Fleece and ask them if they can put me up
fo
r
the night,” Jane protested. “The storm doesn’t seem to be getting any less.”

“
Why would you go to the Fleece when we’ve oceans of room at Marton Heights?” Valerie demanded. “Max would be furious if he thought you had even contemplated it. Anyway, come in out of the rain and we’ll argue over our coffee!”

There was nothing to do but obey. Valerie closed the heavy door behind them and the warmth of the lovely old house surrounded them. Jane followed Valerie into a small sitting room, which was sparsely furnished but comfortable and was obviously used by Max for the odd midday meal when he was too busy to go back to Marton Heights.

“I’ll get the coffee,” Valerie said. “We have a kitchen of sorts at the back.”

Left alone, Jane stood in the center of the room, feeling very near to Max and his work. Valerie
could
have made her home here. It was a lovely old house, mellowed by time and so much a part of the village and its life that it seemed the ideal place for the village doctor. Marton Heights was too remote, too distinctly removed from the people Max served.

Valerie came back with a hastily-arranged tray.

“I’m in the dog-house!” she remarked flippantly. “Max was furious with me this afternoon, so I came down to make amends. He likes me fussing around here, I think, and Brenda has gone to Allingham to have a tooth out. Brenda Parkins is his receptionist,” she chattered on. “She’s massive and most frighteningly efficient. She’d never make the mistakes I make. I’m not a good doctor’s wife, Jane.”

“You’ll learn,” Jane said, helping with the coffee.

Valerie lifted her cup.

“I don’t think I ever will,” she reflected. “Trouble is, I hate to be tied down. I’ve got to be free—free to do as I like.”

Jane said: “You’re married to Max. You can’t be free—in the way you mean—ever again.”

“I suppose not.” Valerie went on stirring her coffee and looking at her with an odd intensity. “It’s only that Max is so dreadfully strict,” she said. “It’s like having Father there in the background again. I don’t like having to account for everything I do, and I
could
handle that horse this afternoon! I expect Max thought it was going to throw me, but that was stupid. Eddie knew I could ride it or he wouldn’t have left word with the groom to let me take it out. I have frightful luck, Jane,” she muse
d
. “Max saw my car when he was visiting the Fieldings. Their farm is on the Whinstanley estate. The hounds had led away over open country and I got bored following. I knew they would break up early because of the weather, so I went up to the hall. I only took the wretched horse out for half an hour.”

Jane thought it best not to mention that she already knew about her visit to Whinstanley Hall, that Max, in an unguarded moment of bitterness, had confessed his anger and despair.

“If you had waited, Valerie—if you had asked Max, he might not have been so angry.”

“I knew it wouldn’t be any good
asking,”
Valerie pouted. “I love horses, and I think,” she added with an odd, slow deliberation, “that I also love danger. Anything fast, anything exciting!”