City Doctor, Country Bride

by Abigail Gordon

  At that moment the children came chasing into the kitchen, having heard the car pull up, and Kate went on her way, leaving Henrietta even more curious about the man who had become part of her life with what she sensed as some degree of reluctance.

  ‘Henny!’ Mollie cried as she flung her arms around her favourite aunt and smothered her with kisses. ‘Guess what happened at school today.’

  ‘Er, let me see. You went swimming? Or had a picnic lunch?’

  As Mollie shook her head, Keiran giggled, ‘She wet her knickers, Aunt Henny.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  ‘Not like that!’ Mollie cried, red-faced and indignant. ‘I fell in a puddle on the playground. Miss found me a dry pair.’

  ‘And where would she have got those from?’

  ‘Someone had left them behind after PE.’ Guessing what was coming next, she added, ‘They were clean.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad to hear it,’ Henrietta said, hiding a smile as she thought of what her sister’s reaction would have been. Matthew’s comments about Pamela came to mind. It was clear that somewhere along the line she had rubbed him up the wrong way.

  When she’d eaten Henrietta put every other thought out of her mind and spent some time with the children, swimming in the pool and playing Snakes and Ladders. Then it was bedtime and as she tucked them up Keiran said out of the blue, ‘Mummy says that it’s time you got married and had some children, Henny.’

  Henrietta raised her eyebrows. ‘Does she? Then I’ll have to see what I can do, won’t I?’

  ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ Mollie wanted to know.

  ‘No. I’m afraid that I haven’t.’

  ‘Who would you like to marry?’

  ‘No one at the moment.’ Putting an end to their childish curiosity, she kissed them both goodnight and drew the curtains.

  Once downstairs on her own, the day’s events came crowding back. The Mrs Carradine mystery, Matthew’s lack of cordiality towards the vet and, standing out amongst the other house calls they’d made, Daniel who’d lost the use of his legs.

  Then there was the half-tale that Kate had told her about Matthew’s wife, and as the day’s grand finale, the children’s chatter at bedtime. Their innocent questions regarding what wasn’t happening in her life. She sighed and thought, Out of the mouths of babes.

  Tonight she wasn’t as in awe of the palatial bedroom as she’d been on her first night in it and she was tired, so sleep soon claimed her. She awoke suddenly to strange noises below her window and as she listened she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Throwing back the bed covers, she padded to the window and gaped at the scene before her.

  In the light of a full moon, cows were happily munching away at Pamela and Charles’s beautiful front lawn, and hoof marks were appearing right and left in the smooth green turf.

  As she stood rigid with dismay two small figures appeared beside her at the window, eyes round as saucers, and she asked of them urgently, ‘Children, is there a farm near here.’

  They shook their heads and Keiran said, ‘Not so near, Henny. It’s up on the hill behind us.’

  ‘Do you know what the people are called?’

  Again there was a shaking of heads.

  ‘Where do Mum and Dad keep the telephone directory?’

  There were only two people she knew well enough in the village to ask for help, and there was no way she was going to pass her dilemma on to Kate, so it was going to have to be Matthew. She cringed at the thought but it was what she was going to have to do.

  When the phone rang at long past midnight Matthew rolled onto his side and glanced at the clock. When he saw the time he groaned. Night calls weren’t passed on to him under existing arrangements. The Doctors’ Voluntary Cooperative in the next town dealt with them, so who was it at this hour?

  When he picked up the receiver a voice said, ‘Matthew, I need your help. You’re the only person I know to ask.’

  ‘Is that you, Henrietta?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ she told him urgently. ‘Can you come over to The White House? I’ve got a big problem here.’

  He was already pulling on his clothes and slipping his feet into his shoes as he asked, ‘So what is it that you have to drag me out of bed at this hour? It’s not anything to do with the children, is it?’

  ‘No. It’s cows. They’re on the front lawn and making a mess of it.’

  ‘Cows!’ He was laughing. ‘Where have they come from.’

  ‘You tell me. You’re the country boy.’

  ‘Can’t you just shoo them off?’

  ‘No. I can’t! I know nothing about cows. They need to go back to where they came from.’

  ‘All right, I’m coming,’ he said placatingly. ‘I see there’s a full moon out there. You don’t think they’ve jumped over it, do you?’

  She wasn’t amused. ‘Every moment you’re delaying getting here is adding to the desecration of the front lawn, and I have been left in charge of this place, you know.’

  ‘OK, I’m on my way. Don’t do anything rash until I get there.’

  ‘I’m not likely to. Just hurry. Please.’

  If she wasn’t happy about the bovine invasion the children were no such thing. They thought it was exciting and were running from window to window, watching the docile creatures as they munched away.

  When Matthew’s car pulled up in the drive Henrietta began to calm down. With shouts of encouragement and prods from a stick he’d brought with him, he drove them out on to the lane outside the house within minutes, and then came inside to ring the farm on the hill and ask them to come and pick up their animals.

  ‘They’re having a bad time at Gorse Hill farm at the moment,’ he told her when he’d made the call. ‘Bill Bradley, who owns the place, is in hospital, having a hip replacement, and his son is coping on his own. Paul’s only twenty and he lost his mother last year in a road accident. When he arrives I’ll go back with him to make sure that everything is all right up there.’

  ‘How do you know the cows belong to that particular farm?’ Henrietta asked, with the children wide-eyed beside her.

  ‘I recognise the herd, of course,’ he told her, his glance taking in the three of them, Mollie and Keiran flushed and excited in their pyjamas and the new doctor anything but her cool self at that moment in a long silk robe thrown over a matching nightdress.

  He knew they weren’t her children, but for the uninformed it would be easy to believe they were. The scene before him spoke of families and closeness. He turned away. If Joanna had survived they probably would have had children by now. The drab semi would be filled with laughter and light.

  But the last thing he wanted was that this leggy woman who had come into his life should tune into his loneliness. So when he turned back to face her he had himself under control, and as a mud-spattered Land Rover appeared at the bottom of the drive at that moment he was spared further heart-searching.

  When Paul saw the lawn he groaned. ‘Oh, no, I’m sorry. There’s so much to do. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. I must have left the door of the shippon open.’

  ‘I’ll come back with you and help get them back where they belong,’ Matthew offered.

  ‘I’d be glad of that Dr Cazalet,’ Paul said gratefully.

  ‘And I’ll get the gardener to sort the lawn out,’ Henrietta volunteered. ‘So don’t upset yourself about that.’

  Paul smiled. ‘You people are something else.’ He turned to the children. ‘Why don’t you ask your mum to fetch you up to the farm? You can see the animals and I might be able to find you some new-laid eggs for your breakfast.’

  Henrietta could tell by their expressions that they thought that this middle-of-the-night excitement was improving by the minute, and there seemed no point in explaining to the young farmer that she wasn’t their mother.

  ‘Lock up when we’ve gone, Henrietta,’ Matthew said, adding to the children, ‘Back to bed now, kids, or you’ll miss the school bus in the morn
ing if you oversleep.’

  Henrietta smiled. ‘And I will be late for the surgery, and we can’t have that.’

  It wasn’t until Henrietta had the children cuddled one on either side of her in the king-size bed in her room that they went back to sleep, but it wasn’t the same for her.

  She’d dragged Matthew out of bed in the early hours without so much as a ‘would you mind’ or ‘could you possibly’ and now he was on his way to the farm. It wouldn’t be surprising if he was thinking that she was more of a liability than an asset.

  Sleep did come eventually and she was smiling as she slid into it. She’d coped with down-and-outs, drunkenness, people who lived in penthouses and council house tenants without getting into a flap, but a herd of cows was a different matter.

  They didn’t oversleep the next morning. The children caught the school bus with time to spare and Henrietta was on time at the practice. The one who was missing was Matthew, and just as she was about to call in her first patient he phoned.

  ‘I’ll be with you shortly,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just got back from the farm and need to get cleaned up. I stayed on to help with the milking as things up there are a bit chaotic.’

  ‘So you’ve had no sleep.’

  ‘Er…no. But that’s no problem.’

  ‘I’m sorry that I dragged you out of bed.’

  ‘Don’t be. If you hadn’t done so, I wouldn’t have known that the lad needed some help. Did the children get off to sleep all right?’

  ‘Only after they came into my bed. Once they were cuddled up to me they soon nodded off.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘I can’t help but feel it is fortunate that your sister wasn’t around last night.’

  She laughed. ‘You could be right. I’ve already asked the gardener to sort out what needs to be done to restore the lawn back to its former glory, and have told Mollie and Keiran not to mention it when their mummy phones as she might be anxious.’

  ‘And what about the invitation to the farm?’

  ‘They’re not likely to forget that. It was the first thing they mentioned when they woke up.’

  When Matthew arrived at the surgery a short time later he said, ‘I forgot to tell you during our midnight rendezvous that the owner of Goyt Lodge rang me again last night to say that Mrs Carradine’s memory is much improved and the unfortunate son-in-law is off the hook. It was a haematoma and while she was waiting to go down to Theatre she began to remember what had happened.

  ‘It appears that she was in the habit of going for an evening stroll that took her past what used to be the lodge of the old hall. The people there have two really big dogs, mastiff types that have been trained to keep trespassers at bay. They charge at passersby quite fiercely and it was one of them that jostled the poor lady backwards into the treetrunk.

  ‘Needless to say, the owners will be in trouble for allowing a dog like that to be off the leash. However, what happened did do some good. Mrs Carradine’s son-in-law has been to see her and now they are at least on speaking terms.’

  ‘And there was I thinking that the village was having a mini crime wave, when all the time it was the animals making their presence felt,’ Henrietta said. ‘Dogs, cows, what next?’

  ‘I’ll take you and the children to the farm the first chance I get,’ he offered. ‘I’m going to be helping with the milking until Bill is back on his feet, so maybe we could combine the two.’

  He was letting himself get involved with Henrietta and the children, Matthew thought as he summoned in his first patient of the day. Did he want that? He’d got used to the solitary life and though it wasn’t a very happy one, at least it didn’t come with any heartbreak.

  Daniel Robertson’s mother, Joan, was one of those waiting to see him. She’d been on antidepressants ever since her son’s accident, and though to everyone else she seemed to be coping admirably, only he knew the depths of her despair at Daniel’s condition.

  Her husband Mike wasn’t much help. He was a caring father, but inclined to only see the surface of things, and was convinced that soon Daniel would be walking again. In fact, the only member of the family to be thinking normally seemed to be Daniel himself, as his mother was sick with apprehension when she thought about the future, and his father in denial.

  ‘So how’s it going, Joan?’ he asked, as she seated herself on the edge of the chair opposite.

  ‘No different,’ she said dispiritedly. ‘I’ve come for a repeat prescription, please.’

  ‘Is the medication helping?’

  ‘Yes, a bit. I’m not so much in a state of dread as I was.’

  ‘Daniel won’t want you to be like that, you know,’ Matthew said gently. ‘He is an amazing young man who could set us all an example. When I called the other day he said he intended getting involved in paraplegic sporting activities, and I can’t think of anything better to keep him fit and happy.’

  ‘Not even being able to walk?’

  ‘Of course not. That would be the answer to everything. Joan, life isn’t like that. Sometimes we have to take what is on offer and do the best we can with it.’ He squeezed her hand and smiled. ‘If I had a son I would want him to be like that lad of yours, brave and clear thinking. Go home and count your blessings. At least you’ve still got him. He could have been killed in that fall.’

  Joan managed a watery smile. ‘Yes, he could have. You’re right, of course. Thanks, Matthew, for taking the time to hear my woes.’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for,’ he told her, and imagined that her step was lighter going out than coming in.

  When she’d gone he sat staring into space. ‘If I’d had a son,’ he’d said. and thought if that young idiot, the Martin boy, hadn’t been clowning about on the edge of one of the biggest drops in the area he might have had one, or a daughter like young Mollie up at The White House.

  But the fact remained that he hadn’t. Joanna had been taken from him in the cruellest way and life had to go on, and a big part of it was centred around his patients, anxious to tell him about their aches and pains. As he called the next one in he had a smile for them.

  When Henrietta arrived home that evening Kate said, ‘The children have been telling me about the cows last night. Good job their mother wasn’t around. She’d have thrown a fit. You sent for Matthew, I believe.’

  ‘Yes. I was panicking. He was brilliant. Had them off the lawn quickly, but I felt dreadful afterwards, as he got involved with helping out at the farm. When I saw him this morning he hadn’t been to bed.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry about it. He’ll soon let you know if he’s got any complaints. There’s no beating about the bush with that nephew of mine. I wish sometimes that he would soften up a bit.’

  That would make two of us, Henrietta thought, but she’d had no fault to find with him last night. It was a shame that he didn’t want to move on and find himself a new wife who would give him children. She’d seen the way he looked at Mollie and Keiran. But if Matthew was determined to spend his days between the surgery and his house, with little or no social life, he wasn’t going to meet anybody that way.

  She was resigned to her own social life being pretty restricted during the coming months, with the job, the house and, even more important, the children to care for. But in her case it would be from circumstance rather than choice.

  Matthew rang late in the evening and when she heard his voice her spirits lifted. ‘I’ve just had a call from Jackie Marsland’s husband,’ he said. ‘She’s hanging in there with the baby. They’ve told her that she has to have complete bed rest until the bleeding stops, and will have to take it easy all the time during the pregnancy, which is catastrophic for the café.

  ‘But her husband’s family are rallying round now they know the score, and they’ll manage somehow or other. I’m sorry to break into your evening, Henrietta, but as she was the first of our patients that you were involved with, I thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she told him, touched by
his thoughtfulness. ‘I’ve been wondering how things were going for her. I have a feeling that she might still miscarry, but do hope I’m wrong.’

  ‘You’re not alone in that. I think the same, but the hospital seems optimistic, so we’ll have to see how it goes. Are the children asleep?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what are you doing?’

  ‘Adjusting.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Adjusting to country life, cows and all. I love it, Matthew, but then I always knew I would.’

  She didn’t tell him that finding a man like him as part of the package was going to make village living even more pleasant.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IN THE week after the episode with the cows, Matthew said one morning, ‘Paul Bradley at the farm has reminded me that the children have been invited to see the animals.’

  ‘So he meant what he said?’ asked Henrietta.

  ‘Yes, and so did I. I’ll take the three of you up there. How about Saturday afternoon before I get involved with the evening milking?’

  ‘Are you sure that you want to do that?’ she asked, picking up on something in his tone.

  Matthew hesitated. If he told her the truth, it would be that he wasn’t. Not because he didn’t want to be with her and the children—far from it. But because for the first time since losing Joanne he was dropping his guard. Letting the new doctor at the practice and her two enchanting charges make him feel human again, which was all very nice, but supposing it didn’t last. That the moment her sister came back for her children Henrietta would be gone. The novelty of living in the countryside might have worn off by the time Pamela and her husband came back.

  But he wasn’t going to admit he was having those sorts of thoughts to Henrietta. She could easily think that he was presuming too much, so he told her, ‘Yes, of course I’m sure.’

  ‘You’ve been spending a lot of time at the farm, haven’t you?’ she said wryly. ‘And it’s all my fault.’

  He smiled. ‘Why? Because you sent for me in your hour of need? I would have been upset if I hadn’t known about the lad struggling on his own up there. You did us both a favour.’