The Little Doctor (4 page)

“Flippancy doesn’t suit you, Jane.” He flung away his own cigarette, turning her to face him, his hands steady on her shoulders as he gazed down into her unhappy eyes. “This hasn’t been an especially pleasant evening for you,
”
he guessed, “and it’s, hardly the time to beg you to marry me, but, sooner or later, Jane, I’d like your answer.”

She thought that she could have given it to him now. It would not have been the answer he wanted, and suddenly she was too tired for further argument.

Slowly, surprisingly, Nicholas bent and kissed her. His lips were warm and strong against her own, but they were in no way demanding.

“Take your time,” he advised. “I know you’ll tell me when you’re quite sure.”

“Nicholas,” she asked when she walked with him to the door, “what really made you ask me about Valerie?”

He paused, shrugging his thin shoulders into his coat.

“I believe I have met her,” he said. “I didn’t connect the names at the time, but it rather seems now as if it might have been Kilsyth’s wife.”

Jane did not ask him if he had liked Valerie. His tone had already answered that question. Nicholas would probably have said that Valerie wasn’t his particular cup of tea.

“I suppose it will be lonely for her in the dale,” she suggested instead.
“
Valerie must have loved Harley Street.”

“Indeed!” Nicholas returned dryly. “But don’t think for one moment, Jane, that life in the dales is just a dull procession of day following day. On the contrary, once you know your way about, there needn’t ever be a dull moment. No doubt our friend, Doctor Kilsyth, is finding that out already.”

In the shaded light of the hallway her eyes flew searchingly to his.

“What do you mean, Nick? What do you know?” she asked.

“Nothing, really. I just had a sort of inkling that things weren’t exactly running on oiled wheels between them. Kilsyth was eager enough to discuss my
Lancet
article with me and any other sort of shop, but as soon as I mentioned Harley Street and Hilton Cromer Browne he sheered off like a shot rabbit. He evidently had no intention of discussing London and his mysterious migration to Kirby Marton.”

“He could have come because of Valerie’s health,” Jane suggested.

“
Could be.” He looked decidedly sceptical. “The dales air should do her good, if that was his reason,
”
he added with very little conviction in his voice, but Jane let him go without further argument.

Whatever the reason for Max’s decision to come to Friardale, it did not, it
could
not concern her now.

CHAPTER THREE

On the narrow, winding dale road the white caravan appeared and disappeared ahead of her as they were travelling on some endless switchback, and Jane eased her foot from the accelerator to
p
ut a little more distance between them. There was no need to
h
urry. It was only half-past one and they had almost reached their destination. Kirby Marton lay somewhere in the trees just ahead.

The past week had been too busy to allow her much time for thought, but all the way up the tree-lined dale her mind had veered away from the practical business of keeping the car on the road to hover nervously over the thought of her destination.

There was no reason to believe—none at all—that just because she was going to Kirby Marton for the first time she was about to meet Max. The Mobile Unit worked very much on its own, carrying its own nurse and doctor and relying upon the district nurse to help out when occasion demanded. The local doctors were sometimes no more than a name on a card to Jane unless they chose to make themselves known.

And somehow she felt that Max would not seek her out. Why should he? They had met again accidentally and parted. That was all. Why did she keep remembering what he had said?
“
You are coming to me
.
” It was no more than an odd turn of phrase. It meant nothing. They could work within a mile of each other, doing the same sort of work, and never meet. Once a week, for a few fleeting hours, she would deal with the children he might have helped to bring into the world, vaccinating, checking progress, offering expert advice, yet without actual contact with anyone but the district nurse. How foolish, therefore, to feel nervous and on edge, as if Max himself might be waiting at the door of the village hall to meet her!

The caravan had disappeared, but Joe always liked to be “one jump ahead of her,” as she expressed it, and the nurse was travelling in the jeep with him. They would have everything ready by the time she arrived. She changed down to second gear to look about her.

It was lovely countryside, deeply wooded where the road wound along beside the river, but rising steeply on either side to rolling hills where sheep grazed contentedly in the bright sunlight. Here and there she passed a lovely old mansion drowsing behind its sheltering wall and glimpsed a hint of stables and a garden through an open gate.

Running away from the road, rough, narrow tracks marched off among the hills to lonely, white-washed farmhouses, outposts of the dale where only the odd tree stood silhouetted against the October skyline.

It was a widely scattered practice, yet she could have imagined Max happy in it if it had not been for the thought of a wasted talent. He had wanted to do such great things, and he had been well-
q
ualified to succeed. Why, then, had he chosen to bury himself in a place like Kirby Marton?

She might never know the answer to that, although it would continue to puzzle her.

The first scattered cottages made their appearance along the roadside. It was the lunch hour, but children were already making their way back to the village school. They were the children she would be vaccinating this time next week, and she watched them with interest as they dawdled in the sun. Fine healthy children from good hardy country stock, but here and there would appear the weakling who would have need of her care.

As always, when she thought about the children, a little rush of warmth and contentment swept over her. Her work, at least, was well worth while. Child welfare had always been nearest to her heart, even in those early student days when everyone made decisions about the future far too soon, changing them as swiftly as they passed from one facet of their training to the next.

But almost from the beginning, when her first professional examinations were behind her, she had known where she was going. The groundwork of hospital and general practice had led, finally, to the caravan and the weekly or fortnightly clinics in these scattered communities in the Yorkshire dales. She loved the work and would not give it up now for a great deal.

Suddenly, behind her, the sound of a car horn electrified the silence, shattering it into tiny fragments, and through her driving mirror she saw a large white car bearing down on her round the bend she had only just negotiated. It was obvious that the driver expected her to draw swiftly into the side of the road, but there was a group of schoolchildren and hastily she wound down her window to wave the oncomer down.

The white car was going so fast that it was level with her before it even started to slacken speed, and there was a vicious grinding of brakes before the driver squeezed past with barely inches to spare. If the Mobile
Unit had been just ahead of her, Jane realized, there would have been an accident.

Feeling cold all over at the thought, she watched the car gather speed again and whip away through the village. The children had looked up, but they had hardly seemed surprised. Perhaps it was not the first time that the white convertible
h
ad crushed them into the side of the road, spattering them with dust or mud as it passed.

For a split second she had caught sight of the driver and there had been a vague suggestion of recognition as the girl in the yellow coat clung to the wheel to force her way through.

Thirty miles an hour, Jane thought angrily, looking at the road sign. It had been more like fifty! The girl was a fool, whoever she was. A mad, reckless fool!

Biting her lip from justifiable wrath, she urged her own car up the steepish hill leading to the market place. On either side of the road a long row of stone-built cottages faced each other with only a narrow pavement in front of them, and here and there the odd small shop offered a variety of goods from postcards and ice cream to household utensils and even the odd item of clothing strung haphazardly at the back of the window.

In the square itself there was a reasonably attractive hotel with a brightly-gilded replica of a sheepskin over the door. It was called the Golden Fleece and seemed to be the meeting
place for the farming fraternity of the surrounding district.

Although it was not market day, several large cars were parked in the cobbled space before the main door of the Golden Fleece, among them the white convertible. It was empty.

Jane turned her own car in a wide sweep, parking alongside the Mobile Unit, which Joe Otley had drawn up in a strategic position beside the village hall. The caravan stood right in front of the door. Joe could place the bulky unit within inches of a given spot and prided himself on the meticulous care with which he calculated his distances. No patient, he argued, should ever get wet or unduly distressed on the short dash between the hall and the unit that housed the doctor’s consulting room.

Joe himself was in the hall putting the finishing touches to his preparations. The “shop” was set up on a trestle table at one end and Nurse Baxter’s baby scales were laid out at the other.

Olive Baxter was a pleasant, dark-haired girl in her early twenties who had joined t
h
e unit three months ago, and Joe worked with her in perfect harmony. It was a great relief to Jane that they pulled together, because nothing could be more distressing than a lack of cooperation in such a small world as theirs. Joe, she had to admit, was sometimes difficult. He took a fierce pride in the caravan, considering it a slight to his own efficiency if anything went wrong with the smooth running of the unit. Nurse Baxter, thank goodness, was almost as keen, Jane mused as she walked across the caravan and got into the spotless white coat which Olive held out for her.

“Everything’s ready, Doctor,” she announced. “We expect about twenty anti-polios and fifteen whooping cough. They’re all mostly second doses, but of course there’s always the odd first comes along. I’ve put the flasks on the table for you.”

“Thank you, Nurse.” Jane put her stethoscope on the examination couch and glanced round the tiny consulting room, which had been hers now for the past two years. “Will you send the first patient in just as soon as you’re ready?”

Inside the caravan all was in order. A clean white towel had been spread out on the flat top of her desk, with kidney dishes and cotton wool nearby. The thermos flasks and the sterile unit were in place. She had perhaps five minutes to wait before her first patient would be shown in. Five minutes in which her thoughts could wander to other things apart from her work. A white car, for instance, driven recklessly along a narrow, winding road, or Maxwell Kilsyth hidden up here in the lonely dale of his choice for some reason known only to himself.

She lifted one of the vacuum flasks, plunging her hands into the chilly ice to unpack the vaccine, and the shock of cold tore her thoughts back to the present. With meticulous care she placed the tiny sealed bottles on the towel, drying her hands carefully before she turned to fill her first syringe.

“Your patient, Doctor.”

The light knock on the door took her back to her desk.

“Come in!”

The woman who entered was obviously nervous, but the child she carried was a healthy enough specimen by the look of it. Jane examined the accompanying pink card for the details she needed before she could begin. They were the ordinary facts she read dozens of times a day in the course of her consultations: the baby’s date of birth, name, weight, any abnormality, and a rough feeding chart. Her glance travelled swiftly down the card to rest on the final item.

“Your own doctor,” she heard herself saying aloud to the young mother, “is Doctor Kilsyth?”

“Yes, Doctor. He’s just come here. He’s new, but he’s very nice.”

Jane turned away to find a swab of cotton wool. Ridiculous not to be able to face this unknown woman with Max’s name on her lips for the first time! Ridiculous to feel her heart pounding against her ribs in slow, sledge-hammer blows, as if Max himself were standing there!

“This is baby’s second dose, isn’t it?” She concentrated on the card. “It was on her right arm last time. We’ll have the left one today.”

It was like that for most of the afternoon. No complications apart from the odd chest cold when the vaccine had to be refused, and always Max’s name at the foot of the cards. He had evidently no assistant.

Yet it was a large practice, or, at least, a scattered one. He must be getting through a considerable amount of work if he was tackling it alone.

The clinic was longer than she had expected. These young country mothers were beginning to appreciate the value of supervision and professional advice, and they came eagerly. The weekly visit of the caravan was something of a social event for them, too, since an elderly member of the Women’s Institute served them with tea and biscuits while they waited. Soon Jane and Nurse Baxter would know most of them by name and a complete patient-doctor understanding would result.

Jane pushed her hand through her hair, welcoming the tea break as never before.

“It’s nice to have the caravan back again,” the woman who brought her tea out to her declared. “We’ve been without it for three weeks and Doctor Kilsyth’s been fair run off his feet. It gives him bigger surgeries and he’s got a fair practice without that.”

So she was helping Max. Not directly, but assisting, all the same, easing a burden of work that was surely far too heavy for one man to carry.

The remainder of the afternoon passed uneventfully enough, but there was still a short queue at quarter to five. It was the overflow she had more or less expected, and she worked on willingly, glad that the vaccine was holding out. She was explaining the position of adult vaccination to a young mother, who had not been immunized against smallpox in childhood, when there was a sharp and rather peremptory knock on the outside door. As it led to the waiting cubicle where Nurse Baxter was busy, Jane took little notice, but when she showed her patient out she was aware of a high-pitched voice in rather off-hand conversation with the nurse. Her final patient was waiting, however, and she ushered the woman in.

An Italian girl, married to a British airman in Germany, she had returned with her husband to his Yorkshire home to have her first child. Her English was limited, but she was a natural mother and Jane soon put
h
er at ease. Her baby was healthy, with an adequate pair of lungs, which he used to effect as soon as his skin was pricked. Giving Jane a disillusioned look out of his large brown eyes, he left with his mother in a flood of tears.

“All right, Buster!” Jane comforted, walking with them to the door. “Everything’s over. You’ll get a piece of chocolate as soon as you get back into the hall!”