New Doctor at Northmoor

by Anne Durham

  Mark was coming towards her at that moment. With a gleam in her eye, Catherine Allen said softly, as he passed, ‘I wouldn’t go in there just yet, darling. She’s putting on a pining act for her rich beau.’

  He stopped. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Catherine?’ he asked, in a dangerously quiet voice.

  Catherine thought better of mentioning the man who was sending Gwenny the flowers, and contented herself with saying, ‘Now she’s contagious again, she’s had to give up all hope of persuading him to come and visit her, so she’s taking it out on everyone else. I was glad to come out of her room!’

  ‘Are you talking about Miss Sansom?’ he asked icily.

  ‘No, darling, Miss Kinglake,’ Catherine said primly. ‘And she’s been pretty cagey about this rich man of hers, I can tell you! And all the time we’d felt sorry for her because she seems so alone. You just can’t tell, can you? They say it’s the quiet ones who are the deepest!’

  Mark knew Catherine pretty well, but she seemed so certain of her facts, and Gwenny had been cool to him, to say the least. Any friendliness had come from him to her, never in reverse. He had to be honest: her own manner had been consistent from the first time they had met on the old drive at Fairmead, and she had shown him nothing but hostility. Hostility for the stranger poaching on her preserves, hostility towards the man who appeared to have done outrageous things to her family; and now she had made it clear that she didn’t like being treated by him and wished she could go home. That much he had gathered, the last time he had visited her. On top of all that, Catherine’s remarks didn’t seem unreasonable.

  He altered his mind and went to see Tilda Sansom instead of Gwenny. Gwenny heard his voice across the passage and waited for him to appear, but he didn’t come. She wanted badly to ask him if he had had any hand in the buying of Mrs. Yeedon’s cottage, or whether it had just happened that for some reason best known to the property company interested, that cottage had been bought and Mrs. Yeedon had been given permission to stay in it for the rest of her life. Of course such things did happen sometimes when there was the possibility of an outcry locally, if it looked as if a big company was going to cause hardship to just one local person who was well-known. Yet it was odd, wasn’t it? She was so worried about Mrs. Yeedon, and Mrs. Yeedon was so fretful about her future—and now it had become mysteriously straightened out?

  But on cold sober thinking, Gwenny had to admit that it would really be no concern of Mark Bayfield’s. He had seemed hardly interested when she had told him about her fears for the old woman and the cottage. All he was concerned with was his personal battle with the pneumonia, not the person who was suffering from it. He had said as much. He had said as much when he had been condemning sentimentality about the patients.

  No, Gwenny thought, he wouldn’t be the one to try and keep the cottage for the old woman, so she had nothing to thank him for. He was only interested in marrying Catherine Allen, and buying Willow House for her. Gwenny loathed her, loathed Mark Bayfield, loathed the whole Bayfield family—and she turned her attention to wondering who could possibly be sending Gwenny Kinglake those expensive daily floral offerings. Who could the rich man be?

  But next day the flowers didn’t come.

  CHAPTER XI

  Now a different phase began. The flowers left a big gap and everyone talked about it. Cosgrove said, ‘Hello, no flowers today?’ and Catherine Allen stared blankly at the space where they had been, and raised her eyebrows as high as they would go. ‘What, has he deserted you, little one? Had a row, perhaps?’ And Sister commented on the stoppage of the flow. Sister had been glad of them. As each fresh bouquet arrived, she took the one from the day before and put it on the wards. Now there were only the wilting ones from yesterday and nothing to replace them.

  Part of the different pattern was that the R.M.O. never came into the room alone, but brought several other people with him—Sister or Staff, Sir Giles, or his own houseman. Gwenny never had a chance of speaking to him personal and private any more.

  Well, she asked herself savagely, why want to speak to him personal and private, since he was going steady with Catherine Allen? Catherine so cock-a-hoop that she practically danced around the place, and didn’t flirt with any man, except the R.S.O. and that, Gwenny considered, was positively indecent. She saw him go to the room Tilda was in (of course, he was still looking after that broken arm of Tilda’s, she supposed!) and Catherine stopped in front of him at the door, and they looked at each other with the special message-sending—message-receiving look of people who were secretly in love. Gwenny had seen it before, and had often wondered what it would be like: what it would be like to look at Mark Bayfield like that, and to have Mark Bayfield look back at her like it.

  There she was again! Dreaming about him, when he was to marry Catherine Allen presumably, because hadn’t he acquired Willow House for her? And Catherine Allen was flirting with Arthur Peake! Gwenny was so angry, she felt like saying something to Arthur Peake about being disloyal to the R.M.O., only she never got the chance. Arthur Peake never came into her room any more, after those first few times which mysteriously coincided with the appearance of Catherine Allen with a water jug or tray.

  She lay staring at the ceiling, feeling at times very ill, and at others almost her old self. It came and went, the fever which she now shared with Tilda, and she often wondered if Tilda hated the onset of the burning fire that raged through her, and the shivering afterwards, the pains in the joints, and the desperate craving to fall asleep and forget everything. But she could get no word to Tilda, nor from her.

  It was into this existence that an event plunged which was to turn Gwenny’s world upside down. It happened with the ambulance bells one afternoon not long afterwards. Cosgrove, at the window, commented, ‘Oh, oh, trouble, trouble. I see all the signs of another little lot from our famous by-pass! Funny, it’s supposed to cut out accidents, not send more of them in to us. Such a lot that by-pass cost, and it’s given us even more work. Oh, that’s funny!’ she said, and her face changed and she broke off, and turned away from the window.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Gwenny wanted to know.

  ‘Nothing. Just thought I saw your brother Laurence get out of that ambulance. Oh, I must have been mistaken. He’s gone back to London, hasn’t he?’

  Gwenny was frightened again. She had had this feeling the day that Tilda came into hospital. ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. I don’t know why he was still down here, anyway. Please find out for me!’

  Cosgrove hesitated. She was feeling decidedly guilty about having mentioned the thing at all to Gwenny. She supposed she ought to try and put it right now, before it was too late, and Gwenny Kinglake relapsed into her usual upset.

  ‘I could ring down to Casualty, I suppose. Your sister is working down there for the rest of the week. I could ask for her. Would she tell me, do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, but try! Try!’ Gwenny urged. Cosgrove came back some time later and said,

  ‘Casualty is in a bit of a state. It seems that your clot of a brother rammed Sir Giles’s car.’

  Cosgrove had no tact at all. Seeing Gwenny’s face, she hastily amended, ‘Here, take it easy! No harm done—at least, not to Sir Giles. He wasn’t in the car at the time. The poor old chauffeur caught it, and he got off lightly, they say. But honestly, what he’ll have to account for! That car of Sir Giles’s cost the earth and Sir Giles will be livid!’

  ‘Laurence! Is he hurt?’ Gwenny gasped.

  ‘No. At least, a few scratches here and there, and a natty bandage round his head, which you’d expect, wouldn’t you, considering it was just a long scratch. Men! They can’t take it!’

  ‘It’s serious, I know it is,’ Gwenny wailed.

  ‘Not so serious that they’re stopping him from coming up to see his girl-friend,’ Cosgrove said calmly. ‘I expect he’ll take the bandage off before he goes in there,’ and Gwenny saw she was quietly laughing.

  The R.M.O. wasn’t laughing,
however, when he came in later. He came in alone, which was odd, and he didn’t even tell Cosgrove to busy herself in the comer. He said, without preamble, ‘Did you arrange for Miss Sansom to go to a vet in Uxmarket on your behalf?’

  Gwenny’s heart sank. That would be Laurence letting that out, she supposed, but why, why? He had been the one who had asked for it to be kept secret.

  She hesitated about admitting it, but Mark Bayfield hadn’t much patience, that was obvious. ‘You must tell me! It happens to concern your welfare as well as hers! I want to know just what happened.’

  ‘I did tell you part of it, didn’t I? Oh, well, I’ll tell you, then. Old Jock’s bird was ill and he couldn’t get to a vet himself, so I asked her to go.’

  ‘Why her? She couldn’t drive, not with that arm and leg!’ the R.M.O. snapped.

  But he was waiting to know just why, so Gwenny was forced to tell him. ‘My brother Laurence wanted to meet her on neutral ground, to explain something.’

  ‘I see. To explain why he was already committed elsewhere, I suppose.’ He was so angry he seemed to have forgotten Cosgrove standing hovering, lapping it all up.

  ‘That’s not true!’ Gwenny stormed. ‘My brother Laurence is in love with her! He wants to marry her!’

  ‘It seems a very unlikely story,’ observed Mark Bayfield.

  ‘I also arranged for someone to drive her there, and to pick up the bird, because I didn’t think she’d like to go into old Jock’s cottage. Well, it’s a bit messy, and she—well, all she had to do was to take the cage to a vet she knows, and my brother said he’d pay the fees.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then my brother was to take Tilda in his car somewhere for the rest of the day and to take her home.’

  ‘I see. Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’

  ‘It’s no use getting angry with me, Dr. Bayfield. Why should I tell you—I mean, what interest could it have for you to know what my brother Laurence wanted to arrange for his girl-friend?’

  ‘No, well, I don’t suppose you would see the connection,’ he snapped, and went out.

  In less than no time, before even Cosgrove could think of questions to frame, in order to get all that out of Gwenny once more, he was back again with Sister, and one of the path. lab. people, and a receiver with a syringe in it, and some evil-looking fluid in it.

  ‘What’s this?’ Gwenny asked faintly. ‘I don’t want that stuff!’

  They proceeded to give her the injection without any more preamble, and she was ‘under ‘in no time at all.

  It was a wonderful release, that time. When she again opened her eyes, she felt so much better than she had done for a long time that she couldn’t believe it.

  She cautiously moved her arms and the joints didn’t hurt, and she tried sitting up, and nothing went swimmy.

  The door had been left ajar, and Sister came in almost at once, and when she saw Gwenny was awake, she called someone, and in a very little while Gwenny’s room was full again: the R.M.O., of course, and Sir Giles, and Sister and Staff, and the junior with the inevitable trolley of instruments, and they all churned round the bed. Then followed more tests and examinations, and Gwenny felt the old depression returning.

  ‘No, I think that’s the answer!’ the R.M.O. said at last, straightening up and looking round at them all, and Sir Giles snorted. Gwenny waited for him to say something about hysteria again, but he didn’t. Instead, he glared at Gwenny, and said heavily, ‘You couldn’t, of course, admit you’d been fooling about with a vulture riddled with disease, could you, young woman? It would have saved a great deal of trouble all round,’ and he stumped out.

  The R.M.O. didn’t look pleased at that. Gwenny said indignantly, ‘I don’t know of any vulture! What’s he talking about?’

  Sister said, ‘It seems, my dear, that you’ve been going to a cottage where an old man keeps a selection of birds that were brought from Central Africa, I believe, and one bird’s bug infected you.’

  The R.M.O. tightened his lips. He was still busy giving Gwenny an injection, so Sister said nothing else.

  Presently they all went out, but the R.M.O. came back, hesitated, and finally offered the information: ‘Your friend Miss Sansom happened to know a vet who had worked in Africa and was interested in this particular bird. You have him to thank for your cure, really,’ and then he went out.

  Gwenny felt crushed. He might have told her about it first, instead of letting other people into the secret and then permitting Sister to tell her. What was the matter with him? He didn’t look pleased or triumphant or anything: just plain annoyed!

  And Sir Giles looked as if he loathed her! But of course, that would be because he didn’t like his theory of hysteria being discarded so peremptorily, she supposed.

  She offered the idea to Nurse Cosgrove later, when she came in to clear up.

  ‘Hello.’ she said heartily to Gwenny. ‘How does it feel to be demoted from the “important” list?’

  ‘Am I demoted?’ Gwenny asked.

  ‘You certainly are, from everything! No longer contagious. And look at me! No more protective garments.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’ve isolated the bug. A series of quick injections and you’re cured!’

  ‘So you’ve hear that I’ll be alright again. Really alright?’

  ‘Didn’t the R.M.O. tell you?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me anything. I think he hates me,’ Gwenny said miserably.

  Cosgrove couldn’t tell her any more, so Gwenny tackled Priscilla when she came up later.

  Priscilla said, ‘Well, you’ve created a furore, haven’t you? Everyone’s seething with the story! Now perhaps you’ll keep out of those filthy old cottages!’

  ‘I won’t give up my friends!’ said Gwenny, looking stormy.

  ‘You may have to! This has opened up a very big field of enquiry. It all started with the vet discovering the bird was diseased all through and he put it down.’

  ‘Oh, no! Poor old Jock!’ Gwenny burst out.

  ‘Don’t be a clot, infant. It was the first sensible thing anyone’s done in this whole miserable business. Then he tried to get in touch with old Jock, in case he had any more diseased animals (he knows all about it, seeing he was in Africa and interested in birds!) but he didn’t know where the owner lived, so he contacted the very formidable grandfather of Tilda Sansom.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Gwenny wailed. ‘He was the last person to know about it! He’s worse than Tilda’s father! Now he’ll know about Tilda meeting Laurence—’

  ‘I know it,’ Priscilla agreed. ‘That’s Laurence’s silly fault. He shouldn’t have fooled about with some other girl (but you know all about that, of course!) and so of course Tilda’s father was livid, and he contacted Daddy, thinking Laurence was home, but Laurence had gone back to London, so Daddy telephoned his hospital and Laurence got a wigging over that.’

  ‘But if Laurence was in London, how came he to ram Sir Giles’s car—’ Gwenny began, but Priscilla broke in:

  ‘Laurence just went to pieces when he heard about the bird! I think he really is serious about Tilda Sansom. I heard just now that the bird nipped her. Lawrence is in an awful state over Tilda. I expect he’ll be in to talk to you about it later.’

  ‘Do you think I could train as a nurse after this? Will I ever be strong enough, do you suppose?’

  ‘I daresay, but you’ll hate the life,’ Priscilla said with conviction. ‘You’ve always lazed about, and you’ll have no chance of doing that here!’

  ‘I only lazed about because I wasn’t feeling well!’ Gwenny flashed. But it was no use trying to explain to Priscilla.

  Priscilla said suddenly, ‘Hello, what happened to all those marvellous flowers someone was sending you?’

  ‘I don’t know. They stopped suddenly.’

  ‘There’s a rumour going round that some rich man was sending them to you. Any use asking you who?’

  ‘I don’t know. I made up the rumour be
cause I don’t like a nurse called Catherine Allen. She keeps asking me questions and calling me “little one”, and that story about the rich man friend settled her. She didn’t like it and she left me alone after that.’

  ‘Oh! Well, I wouldn’t make an enemy of her, if I were you!’ advised Priscilla, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Gwenny said wearily. ‘I know the connection with our R.M.O. and I wish him joy of her.’

  ‘Then that’s all right, if you know the connection,’ Priscilla said on a relieved note, and went.

  Laurence wasn’t at all happy. He bounced into Gwenny’s room and sat down. He looked rather white and shaken still. ‘How are you feeling? Are the injections beginning to work on you?’ he began without preamble, and it was clear that he was only thinking about Tilda, because he didn’t wait for Gwenny’s reply but said at once, ‘Tilda doesn’t seem to be responding to them. That R.M.O. of yours seems to think it’s because she was below par because of her accident previous to going near that wretched bird.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Gwenny objected, thinking of how much below par she herself had got before the disease was isolated. ‘She’s probably worried sick about something else!’

  ‘What, for instance? Because she came into contact with the bird anyway? I’ve got you to thank for that, haven’t I?’

  ‘Well, I like that! You wanted an excuse for meeting her!’ Gwenny protested.

  ‘Yes, but not the sort of excuse that would get her so ill!’ Laurence said unfairly.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my fault that you rammed Sir Giles’s car, and it wasn’t my fault that the bird was full of disease, and you’d better not say any more about it, Laurence, or else I shall tell Tilda about you and that girl!’