by Anne Durham
NEW DOCTOR AT NORTHMOOR
by
ANNE DURHAM
For one reason or another, Doctor Mark Bayfield had managed to get on the wrong side of every member of the Kinglake family before he had even started his new job at Northmoor Hospital. So wasn’t it going to lead to trouble when he turned out to be the only doctor who could get to the bottom of young Gwenny Kinglake’s illness?
CHAPTER I
Gwenny Kinglake jumped off her bike and pushed it the last few hundred yards up the rough track to Mrs. Yeedon’s cottage. Mrs. Yeedon was one of Gwenny’s mothers’ names on her list. She came under the heading of ‘over seventy, alone, unable to shop or sew, tenacious—won’t go into Old Folks’ Home—and to be watched over’. Mrs. Kinglake had seven such names on her list and all her friends had only six. So far Mrs. Kinglake hadn’t really noticed that going to all the other names because the way was not too hard on the tyres of her new car allowed her daughter to practically lift her precious seventh name from her.
Gwenny liked going to Mrs. Yeedon’s. The cottage wasn’t a period one, so it wasn’t one of those tiresome things that for some unknown reason attracted the tourists to the district, so Mrs. Yeedon really was alone, and Gwenny could do things for her and have long, long talks with her at the same time. With Gwenny, Mrs. Yeedon dropped her act of being a little odd and very hard of hearing, and discussed the ladies of the district with a spicing of malicious humour that Gwenny appreciated. She made cowslip wine that was out of this world, in Gwenny’s inelegant language, and she was teaching Gwenny to tat.
‘Best not let your mother know,’ Mrs. Yeedon observed that hot August afternoon, as Gwenny at last arrived at the cottage.
Gwenny carefully propped the bike against the whitewashed wall of the cottage and stood back to look critically at it. Bike and wall blended charmingly because both were stained with weather and time. The bike didn’t matter, it could be replaced. But something would have to be done about the walls of the cottage.
‘I’ll speak to Ted Meakin,’ Gwenny said, half to herself. ‘He’d come up and give it a coat of paint one week-end, if I asked him.’
‘Never mind the walls of my cottage,’ Mrs. Yeedon said severely. ‘White they may not be, but you are white, miss—a sight too white for my peace of mind. That’s what I say—best not let your mother know how it knocks you up, pushing that bike up my hill.’
‘It’s not a hill, it’s only an incline, and it’s a hot day, and if you let my mother know I look a bit washed out, you and I will fall out,’ Gwenny said, but she swayed a little.
The old woman took her into the cottage. Mrs. Yeedon was surprisingly strong for one who was considered to be small, bent and infirm enough to be ‘put away ‘in a place where there were plenty of people to give an eye to her. ‘I’ll make you a tisane,’ she said firmly. ‘None of my wine for you today, my lass. You need something to do you good.’
She stood over the stove, brewing up the kettle and mixing odd-smelling things in a curious pot with a close—fitting lid.
‘You’re going to poison me,’ Gwenny said, with a faint sound that resembled a choking giggle.
‘Aye, you can laugh,’ Mrs. Yeedon continued. ‘Time was when they come to me for herbs and such to cure their woes. Then time was they’d have called me a witch—some did! That was when they began to get free doctoring. Aye, there’s some as ‘d rather go and sit in the waiting-room all morning instead of setting a slow—cooking casserole for the children’s dinner, and a-cleaning up of the house. Lazy, some of these women nowadays.
Aye, well, child, drink this up, and you’ll feel better. And don’t tell your mother.’
Gwenny drank it and felt better. ‘Of course, I want my head searching, don’t I, for letting you brew things for me? I mean, it’s mad, isn’t it, with a doctor in the family—well, there are some who might be rather rude about my brother Laurence’s skill as a doctor—but still, they wouldn’t like it at home, but I feel much better, and deliciously wicked.’
‘You look better, ‘Mrs. Yeedon said critically. ‘You’re perking up. I can hear. Got plenty to say for yourself all of a sudden. Well, tell me this much. What made you look so miserable before you started climbing my hill?’
‘You were looking at me through your field glasses,’ Gwenny indignantly accused.
‘Of course I was. Living here all by myself, I always look through my glasses to see who’s coming. What’s troubling you, lass?’
Gwenny was silent.
‘Is it your mother, and that list of hers? Don’t mind her, my girl. Every woman needs something to do, once her children are grown up, and your mother’s very good to old people, in her way. Generous, too. And it’s not all the old ones as are awkward, like me, about accepting help from others,’ she finished, with a grim smile.
‘It’s not my mother especially,’ Gwenny admitted.
‘Then it’s that sister of yours,’ Mrs. Yeedon pronounced.
‘You don’t like my sister Priscilla,’ said Gwenny, trying to sound indignant but not managing very well. Priscilla hadn’t treated the old lady right, and Mrs. Yeedon was unforgiving.
‘I always said that sister of yours would never make a nurse ‘she began, but Gwenny cut in fiercely.
‘Yes, she has. She’s passed her First Year exam, anyway. Well, she got through,’ she added, honesty struggling with loyalty, and winning. ‘It isn’t that. Oh, I’ll tell you. Perhaps you can give me some advice. It’s a sort of ... well, a feeling in the air at home. It’s rather peculiar, really. They’re all pretty angry, for different reasons, and yet, it’s funny—it’s all against one man.’
‘Which man?’ Mrs. Yeedon grunted, busily feeding her bird.
‘He’s a doctor. In London. At least, I think. Priscilla’s furious with him. I can’t quite make out whether she showed too plainly that she liked him and he coolly snubbed her ‘
The old woman broke in with a dry chuckle, ‘Sensible chap!’
‘—or whether she got into trouble with him because she was doing something she shouldn’t.’
‘Could be,’ the old woman commented.
‘Well, you know how vague Priscilla is, when she’s telling people anything. And she twists it so much to suit herself that I get the feeling that there isn’t much of the original story left. Aren’t we different, Priscilla and me? There’s only eighteen months between us, but sometimes she makes me feel she’s so much older than me. She’s really sophisticated and experienced.’
‘Too smart,’ the old woman said. ‘I always told your mother that letting that girl go to London was the worst thing she could do. Never told your mother anything else after that, because she thought I was getting past it. Ah, you can say your mother and her friends don’t think I’m in my dotage and ought to be put away. I know they do.’
‘Of course they do,’ Gwenny scolded, ‘because you pretend it’s so when they visit you. You only do it for fun, but they don’t think it’s fun. You’ll be sorry one of these days.’
The old woman grunted. ‘Well, much good may it do me, either way. Didn’t help over that sister of yours. Is that all you’re worrying about?’
‘No, not actually. No one would have taken much notice of it really—I mean, Priscilla’s always falling out with some man. Only—and this is odd—this man, this doctor, has also upset our Laurence.’
‘Has he?’ Mrs. Yeedon dropped what she was doing and came to plump herself down on a hard-backed chair and stared at Gwenny. ‘Know why, my lass?’
‘Ye-es, I think so. Something to do with preventing our Laurence from getting a job. At least, I think so. Again he’s awfully vague, and I get the feeling, too, that Laurence’s new girl-friend is something to do with
it. Queer, isn’t it? You just mention this doctor and everyone jumps and gets all fierce. I’ve never known them to be like that before, over anyone else.’
‘Jealousy,’ Mrs. Yeedon commented. ‘I wouldn’t think another word about it.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Gwenny objected. ‘Laurence is very nicely fixed up at his hospital, I would have thought. And even you can’t say my father was ever jealous of anyone, now can you?’
‘No, I’ll say that for your father. The doctor is as nice a fellow as ever I come across, allowing for him being for all these here new-fangled drugs and all against my herbs.’
Gwenny hid a smile, and turned the conversation to a subject they both liked discussing—the possible sale of Fairmead.
‘If I had a lot of money,’ Gwenny began, settling cosily on the old chair bedstead with the black cat and the six new kittens, ‘I’d buy the whole place, just as it stands, I think. I’d give it to myself for my eighteenth birthday.’
‘You say you want the pictures, but it’s the stables you’re hankering for,’ the old woman accused.
‘A bit of both,’ Gwenny admitted. ‘Anyway, I’d spend an awful lot on making over the stables, and an awful lot on the inside of the house ‘
‘What about the woodworm?’ the old woman asked sourly.
‘You don’t know for sure that there’s woodworm, and you could get in awful trouble for saying so.’
‘Not me,’ Mrs. Yeedon said stoutly. ‘Who’d bother to sue me? I’ve not a penny piece to bless myself with, so where would be the sense of running up court fees? Besides, everyone knows I say what I think, and there’s none to stop me. And I say if there isn’t woodworm, there’s dry rot, and it’s my belief that they’re just hanging on, over at Fairmead, to see if someone wants to buy them out lock, stock and barrel. Folks reckon there’s a lot of money in selling out for development nowadays.’
‘Don’t you listen to them,’ said Gwenny. ‘My friend Willy—’
‘Oh, ah, that fancy estate agent your mother doesn’t like. I know him,’ Mrs. Yeedon said scathingly.
‘He’s very nice, and he’s sensible, and his uncle is training him in the business, and I like him,’ Gwenny said indignantly. ‘Anyway, he says that it’s only the builders who make a lot of money, because they’re the ones who put up the little houses. It’s the new houses, and not the land, that fetches the money. Anyway, if I somehow miraculously got hold of Fairmead, I wouldn’t let it be pulled down. I’d ask you to come and live there.’
‘Not me,’ Mrs. Yeedon said, in alarm. ‘I wouldn’t go and live there.’
‘To be my housekeeper?’
‘No, not for nothing. It’s haunted.’
That set Gwenny laughing and the colour rushed back to her cheeks. Under cover of pretending to scold about the old house whose pale green roof could just be discerned through the trees, on the other side of the valley, she watched Gwenny, and allowed herself to feel relief. Yes, the child looked better now. It must be just the heat. Queer, though, the way she suddenly became that funny waxen hue every so often.
Gwenny Kinglake had a young, tender look for her years. Although her eighteenth birthday was only two months away, she looked no more than fifteen at times, and Mrs. Yeedon worried about her. She worried far more than Gwenny’s own mother.
It wasn’t as if one could call Gwenny frail. It was not as easy as that. She had a slender boyish figure, it was true, and fine-cut features, and the pale colouring of hair and eyes all added to the illusion that Gwenny was delicate. Yet she did a fair amount of walking and cycling, and anyone who could dance the hours Gwenny did with that young Willy, the estate agent’s nephew, must surely have resilience. Yet there were times when Gwenny’s spun gold hair and brilliant blue eyes seemed to hold all the life in her, and there was no colour left anywhere else, no vitality. That was it, Mrs. Yeedon told herself: as if something invisible was sapping that girl’s life blood.
‘When did you last have one of them fancy check-ups the medical men are always talking about?’ she suddenly demanded.
Gwenny looked startled. ‘What did you ask that for? You were talking about Fairmead.’
‘I’m getting old. I have to say things when they come into my head, or else I forget them,’ Mrs. Yeedon said hardily.
‘Well, my father sees to it that I get my two-yearly check-up,’ Gwenny said evasively.
‘That wasn’t what I asked you; I wanted to know when the last one was,’ the old woman insisted.
‘It’s almost time for another,’ Gwenny said shortly, getting up. ‘I’m going now, before you scold me any more.’
‘Where are you going? Home?’
‘It’s no use telling you yes, because you’ll watch me through your glasses and see me going to Fairmead,’ said Gwenny, pulling a comical face. ‘I shan’t be long there. It’s on my way home, actually, if I go round that way.’
There was nothing Mrs. Yeedon could do to stop her, yet she had a queer presentiment that if Gwenny went to Fairmead this day, it would alter the whole course of her life.
She did watch Gwenny through the glasses, as far as she could. She lost her at times through the trees, then the girl’s fair head would appear over a gap in the hedge again, as she cycled along quiet subsidiary roads that were little more than lanes. Mrs. Yeedon felt the anxiety gripping at her. Dr. Kinglake would be out on his rounds somewhere, probably bringing on that Winnick girl’s baby, at Four Ends Farm. Mrs. Kinglake would be at one of her committee meetings. The old woman scowled as she thought of the rumour, that Mrs. Kinglake was searching around for suitable property for an old folks’ home, so that she could be the permanent boss of it, the old woman told herself wrathfully.
Priscilla? She wrinkled her forehead and remembered that the nurse member of the Kinglake family had just gone back to her hospital. Northmoor District and General Hospital could well do without that saucy baggage, the old woman told herself fiercely. As to young Laurence Kinglake, he had probably returned to his hospital in London, where he was supposed to be doing his year as house physician—and Mrs. Yeedon pitied the patients. There was a playboy, if ever there was one. He’d never have a penny in the bank to bless himself with, she told herself wrathfully. Anyway, who, in that lot, could she hope to talk to about Gwenny? Two doctors and a nurse, and a mother who had been a part—trained nurse before her marriage, and not one of them could see that all was not right with young Gwenny.
Gwenny was out of sight now, so Mrs. Yeedon went back into her kitchen to make some jam, and to remember mistily the people who had once lived in Fairmead, when she herself had been young.
That was a favourite trick of Gwenny’s, and as the girl cycled up the rough track and through the broken iron gates, she pretended to herself that she was alive fifty years ago, the young mistress of the place.
It wasn’t easy to pretend. The drive was overgrown, and in places she had to get down off the bike and wheel it through a patch of bushes and undergrowth that had intruded right across the one-time neat gravel. Old storms had beaten soil across the drive, and now moss and weeds were everywhere.
She should have gone the back way, she thought ruefully; the way the present owners used. She wondered if old Mrs. Walker would be at the top window watching her difficult progress, as had happened last time she came over here.
She thought of things to say, to suit the expression on the old woman’s face. If Mrs. Walker looked tetchy, then Gwenny would say something like: I’ve only come to see if I can do some weeding, Mrs. Walker, and then the old woman would be mollified and tell Gwenny that it was nice to meet one young person at least who didn’t mind offering her services, and that before Gwenny started the weeding she must have a nice cup of tea and some seedy cake. Not that she would let Gwenny do any weeding—they would settle down to a nice chat, the weeding forgotten—but Gwenny was always hopeful. She knew just where she would start—in the old strawberry bed by the warm rosy brick wall that was beginning to crumble, just outside t
he morning-room window.
If the old lady looked smily and welcoming (unusual but not impossible) then Gwenny was prepared to have a nice long chat with her about the possibility of selling the place to someone other than her family, who only wanted it for old people. A prick of doubt assailed Gwenny about this. It now occurred to her that Mrs. Walker might like her mother’s idea—indeed, Mrs. Walker might be so eaten up with loneliness that she might sell on condition that she become the first inmate. People were funny. They changed. Gwenny felt personally that if she owned Fairmead, nothing would induce her to sell the old place to someone who would instal a lot of old people. Old people ought to go in a new and bright dwelling with ceilings that didn’t swoop away up into the shadows with a lot of cornices and twirly bits to collect the dust. Anyway, big gloomy rooms made people feel even more lonely, Gwenny decided.
Then she stopped short. Mrs. Walker was not at any of the windows. Gwenny stood there, her slender boy’s figure and frank open face belying her age, so that the tall young man who stood back in one of the top rooms thought, with a nettled frown, that this was just another schoolgirl in from one of the surrounding villages, with some excuse or other to spend time on the property. He had already had two of them, and as their excuses were respectively collecting butterflies and collecting material for an essay on crumbling property, he had had some difficulty in persuading them to go.
With a resigned sigh, he went down the shallow but quite lovely main staircase to the front door and stood staring at the girl.
She saw him and walked towards him, quickening her pace with the realization that all was not well, for someone like this to be here.