by Sue Peters
'Was it bad?' Nan was immediately sympathetic, her vexation forgotten. 'Were you hurt?'
'The car was a write-off, but I wasn't in it at the time.' His voice was bleak, and he gazed straight ahead, the expression on his face telling Nan that he looked at twisted metal and who knows what else besides, rather than the tranquil countryside through which they travelled. 'It's over a year ago now.' He seemed to become conscious that they had slowed to a halt, and that Nan was watching him. 'I haven't needed to replace the car since, I've been working in town so I didn't want the bother of another vehicle.'
'You'll have this one, of course.' Nan felt reluctant for him to take sole possession, she badly wanted that driving practice.
'Oh, I'll get another now I'm settled.' Keir spoke as if he was considering purchasing a new tie, Nan thought wonderingly, and remembered the flawless cut of the suit he had arrived in—as flawless as the fine tweeds he wore now, with a cashmere sweater that she would have dearly loved to team with her own new slacks, except that it would be about three times too big, she thought with an inward smile.
'I'd like a car of my own,' she confessed. 'In fact, I'm thinking of getting one. I suppose I could start looking, while I'm on holiday.'
'Let's help each other choose,' he suggested unexpectedly, and Nan shot him a surprised look. 'What were you thinking of getting? Something low, and sporty?' he guessed.
'On a Sister's salary? 'Don't be silly,' she retorted scornfully. 'No, I'd thought of a Mini, one of those nice bright jewel colours,' she wished wistfully. 'They're cheerful little runabouts, and do a fantastic m.p.g.' She had already studied enough catalogues to know the jargon.
'A bright red?' he suggested. 'No? What about that nice soft green? You've got hazel eyes.'
'Fancy you noticing!'
She did not quite know how to cope with his sudden changes of mood. One moment she could not say the right thing, and the next he acted as if they were old friends.
'What sort of car are you looking for?' She solved her dilemma by turning the question back on to him.
'I'd thought of a Twin Jet.' He mentioned a model which made Nan draw in her breath. This man was not living on a doctor's salary alone, that much was evident. Her uncle was comfortably off, but even he could not rise to the kind of car Raven had in mind.
'I'll certainly help you to choose that,' she assured him fervently. 'If only for the pleasure of sitting in it just once.' She stopped abruptly, realising that her words might be construed as angling for an invitation, but he made no comment, and they ran into the village in silence.
'Welcome to Minster.' She parked by the war memorial green, and waved an expressive hand at their surroundings. 'Church—Manor—you can't see it from here very well, but it's behind that high stone wall. Pub—garage—and with the cottages, that's about all there is. Oh, the front room of the end cottage acts as a Post Office and sweet shop,' she added. 'All the rest of our supplies have to come from Hopminster. Uncle Oliver said he'd warned you it was a sleepy little place,' she smiled.
'I'd have diagnosed a coma, myself,' he retorted drily, his eyes flicking over the deserted street, then seeing her expression change, 'but it'll make a peaceful contrast to London. Where are you going?' he asked abruptly.
'Only to check if Ma's all right before we go back,' she told him shortly, and slid out of the driving seat. Without a backward look she headed towards a small thatched cottage on the other side of the high street, whose tiny windows were half smothered by a late flowering rose, its pale blooms denying that the summer was over, while effectively shutting out most of the light from the dwelling that it graced.
'Ma? It's Nan Durrant.' She ducked under a briar and knocked on the green-painted door, bright with a new coat that the old lady's son had administered before he went on holiday. She would have called at the cottage anyhow while she was in the village, but it gave her just the excuse, she thought angrily, to leave Keir to his own devices for a while, and so restrain her from the sharp retort that hovered on the tip of her tongue.
Why had he come? And if he did not like the place, there was no reason why he had to remain. In fact, if he was going to act in this supercilious manner it would be better for everybody, the patients included, if he was to go right back to London where he belonged. No doubt he would find lucrative employment in private practice, among people whose tastes matched his own, she thought sarcastically. 'Ma?, Are you all right?' There was no answer to her knock, so she lifted the latch and walked in.
'I thought those sort of latches were only used on shed doors nowadays.' She jumped violently as Keir's voice sounded in her right ear.
'Where you come from, they might be, but this isn't a "nowadays" house.' She turned and faced him directly, her temper dangerously higher. 'There's no need for you to come in, you could have stayed in the Land-Rover,' she told him sharply. 'I'm only dropping in during the evenings to see if Ma's all right while her son's on holiday. It isn't a professional call.'
'Just the same I'll come with you. Oh, by the way,' he hesitated and tugged at her sleeve, drawing her back, 'I can't very well call her Ma, she might not like it,' he said awkwardly.
'Her name's Mrs Thomas. Her son George owns the garage opposite.' Nan turned and pointed. 'And if you want to get any co-operation out of her, you'll call her Ma the same as the rest of us do,' she snapped impatiently, and turned away from him, stepping briskly into the tiny, cluttered living room of the cottage, which lay in semi-darkness from the welter of greenery hanging on the walls outside, so that she paused to allow her eyes to adjust to the half light.
'Sorry! You stopped so suddenly.' Keir bumped' straight into her back, and put his hands on her shoulders to save himself and Nan from an undignified tumble. 'Did I hurt you?'
'No, but stand still while I light the lamp.' She reached across to the old-fashioned sideboard and removed the glass from the oil lamp standing on a tray in the centre of a multitude of photographs, pot plants and bric-a-brac that proclaimed their origin from almost every seaside resort in the south and west. 'There, that's better.' The soft light illumined the low-ceilinged room, and a heaving, blanket-clad shape in a rocking-chair beside the hearth that resolved itself into a snow-white head and a shrunken, wrinkled face which turned in their direction and demanded sharply to know who they, were and what they were doing.
'It's Nan Durrant, Ma. And Doctor Raven. I'm showing him round, and we came in to say goodnight.' Nan crossed over to the old lady, and murmured as she passed Keir, 'she's well into her nineties, but she can see and hear as well as you can if she wants to, so be careful what you say.' She did not want him to repeat his sarcastic assessment of the village in front of its oldest and most loyal inhabitant. Ma would never forgive him, and if he had to deputise for her uncle and call on the old lady in his professional capacity, she would not do as he advised her, either.
'I've had a card from me son.' The thin, cracked voice was surprisingly strong, and the bright eyes, so old now that they had almost lost their colour, held an intelligence that belied their owner's years. 'It's on the mantel, at the back of the clock.'
'I'll get it.' Nan reached up above the old-fashioned hearth and fished out a brightly-coloured postcard from among a similar clutter that adorned the overcrowded shelf. She turned it over to confirm the sender's name, then carried it to the lamp the better to read the message. 'Fancy, George says he's been swimming three times. The weather's warm, and the food's good,' she read it aloud to Keir, carefully ignoring his surprised expression that she suspected barely concealed irritation. 'He'll be home on Saturday,' she concluded brightly, 'and he's bringing you a stick of rock and a jar of that honey you liked so much last year. He sends his love.' She gave the old lady the card into her hand instead of putting it back on the mantel. 'Open the door and let Satan out, will you?' she bade Keir, as a large black cat uncurled itself from the folds of the rug about its owner's knees. 'I'll go and fill the water jug and the kettle before we go.' A brisk few minutes at
the pump handle in the back yard served to replenish both, and after making sure there was nothing more she could do, she shooed Keir Out and carefully latched the door behind her.
'We'll wait a minute or two to see her light go on upstairs, I'll, know she's all right then.' She put the key in the ignition, but did not switch the engine on.
'Oughtn't you to have helped her into bed, or something?' Keir's voice was critically questioning.
'Not unless she asks.' Nan was quite decided. 'She's very independent. Even her son has to be careful,' she nodded towards the garage business opposite.
'He shouldn't allow her to live on her own,' he sharply condemned the absent garage owner. 'It's not safe, at her age.'
'She's always lived in that cottage.' With difficulty, Nan kept her voice even. 'She came to it first as a bride, and she's got a right to stay there if she wishes. George has wired alarm bells in all the rooms, and he's across there a dozen times a day, so she doesn't lack attention. Uncle Oliver persuaded him to take his wife away for a week because she's had 'flu, that's why I'm deputising now,' she told him flatly.
'But the place isn't fit to live in,' Keir protested vehemently. 'Pshaw! The air in that room—you could cut it with a knife,' he said disgustedly. 'It smelled of...'
'Damp, Satan the cat, and closed windows,' Nan chuckled suddenly. 'You'll have to get used to stuffy rooms if you stay in the practice,' she laughed. 'Country folk love a good fug,' she told him truthfully. 'They get enough fresh air out of doors, and usually manage to see it stays there,' she gurgled helplessly.
'Just the same, the old lady would be better off in a home,' Keir insisted, not sharing her amusement. 'That was a pump you got the water from, wasn't it?' He hardly waited for her taut 'Yes' that came through teeth clenched tight to prevent the spate of words inside her from boiling over. 'And I suppose there's a—a—thing—at -the bottom of the garden, as well,' he went on sarcastically. 'And as for that oil lamp, it doesn't even give her enough light to read by. The whole place needs pulling down.' He regarded it with disfavour.
'And a block of concrete flats erected there instead, I suppose.' Nan's amusement vanished as quickly as it had come, and she rounded on him furiously. 'You're as bad as the Planning Committee,' she told him bitterly. 'They like everyone neatly pigeonholed and labelled. Oh yes, they want to pull Ma's cottage down. They said it's damp and insanitary, and they're quite right,' she forestalled his rejoinder, and left Keir open-mouthed and silent as she rushed on. 'And there's a privvy in the garden, like you said,' she was too angry now to mince her words. 'It's the regulation distance from the house, and it hasn't been used for years—George fixed up some facilities inside the cottage. Camping equipment can be useful for more than just caravan holidays,' she reminded him, 'and as for needing more light, why should she? Ma never learned to read anyway. Why do you think I bored you with the details of her holiday postcard?' she flashed at him angrily, letting him know she had seen his impatience. 'The old lady was relying on me to read it to her, and she's too proud to ask.'
'I only said—I thought ‑' It was Keir's turn to look abashed. His erstwhile cheerful guide seemed to have turned into an outraged tigress, and he looked desperately out of his depths.
'If you think in those terms you might as well go and join the Planning Committee,' Nan shot back, not allowing him to finish. 'I've no doubt they'd be delighted to have you on their side.' It was her turn to be sarcastic now. 'They not only want to bulldoze Ma's home to the ground, they want to do the same to the Cottage Hospital,' she told him bitterly. 'And Uncle Oliver is fighting them every inch of the way,' she concluded determinedly.
CHAPTER TWO
Her tone told Keir she would fight him if he arraigned himself on the side of the Planning Committee. The knowledge lay like a tossed gauntlet between them, and Nan's chin rose defiantly as she glared at him, her eyes challenging his right to interfere—to go against her uncle's expressed wishes.
'Let it lie.' Keir tacitly acknowledged its presence between them. 'You may be inclined to take it back when you've had time to reflect.'
'I've already reflected, as you call it,' Nan began hotly. 'You're too emotionally involved to see things in their proper perspective,' he accused her, his jaw hardening. 'You've just admitted the cottage isn't fit to live in.'
'Ma's lived in it for nearly eighty years, and it hasn't done her any harm,' Nan flashed back. 'And it would be cruel to move her now. They need only wait another year or two, then they could do just what they liked without upsetting anybody,' she pointed out hardly.
'She's just put her bedroom light out.' The soft glow at the upper window flickered for a moment, then vanished, and with set lips Nan loosed the brake and let their vehicle roll to the bottom of the hill before she switched on the engine in time to take over the momentum of the rise, and pointed the Land-Rover in the direction of Minster House.
'I thought you, at least, would be loyal,' she threw into the silence that lay between them. John Barclay had backed her uncle unreservedly in his fight for the Cottage Hospital, a fight that also included the old lady's cottage, and it came as a shock that the newcomer might not do the same; indeed, openly admitted he agreed with the planners, at least so far as the cottage was concerned. How, then, would he stand about the hospital? she wondered. That, at least, he would be personally concerned with.
'Blind loyalty serves no useful purpose,' he commented mildly, refusing to be drawn. 'And surely planned change, if it's for the better, is preferable to haphazard alteration as and when someone just happens to think about it?'
'Traitor!' she muttered to herself as she put the Land-Rover in the garage, after dropping her passenger at the front door and curtly refusing his offer of help. 'Why did Uncle Oliver have to pick him, of all people?'
Her angry thoughts lay like a cloud between them at dinner, spoiling the succulent lamb and the sweet new peas and potatoes that Rose started to serve dubiously, but cleared away the remains later with a bright smile on her face, pinned there by Keir's obviously sincere compliment when he finished the meal.
'London has nothing to equal this,' he assured his hostess, winning Mary Gray over as completely as he had won Rose, thought Nan sourly, despising him for his tactics, which she had to admit worked.
'He's impossible!' she flared when she was alone with her uncle and aunt after dinner. Keir had gone out to post Some letters which he said he had forgotten on the way down. He looked across at Nan hopefully as he spoke, but she hardened her heart and simply gave him directions how to reach the pillarbox. It was over a mile away along the lane, and the walk should keep him out of the house for the better part of an hour, she thought thankfully, remaining determinedly glued to her chair, to the obvious surprise of her relatives.
'The cottage must look dreadful to a newcomer, particularly one who's used to more modern houses,' her aunt pointed out placidly, when she explained the reason for her outburst. 'If it hadn't been that Ma is so old, I'm sure she'd have been moved by now anyway. You know George had that bungalow built next to his garage, specially for her to live in, but she refused to move, even for her own son.' She smiled, admiring the old lady's stubborn independence.
'If he takes that sort of stand over the hospital, we'll lose that as well,' Nan protested. 'He hasn't even seen it yet, either.' That, too, puzzled her. Oliver Gray had interviewed him in London, but she would have thought Keir would have made a trip to see the hospital at Minster before he took up his new post.
'He couldn't get away at the time,' her uncle leaned back in 'his chair comfortably. 'He told me he was clearing up someone's estate, so I didn't press him. I just explained that we were planning phased rebuilding of the whole place. After all, it is housed in the old workhouse.' He shook his head at the lack of facilities that offered. 'It looks picturesque enough, but all those twisty stairs and corridors are a bit of a nightmare. Now we've got the new maternity block built, the contrast with the rest of the building is even more painful.'
'But it'll all be rebuilt, bit by bit, when you've got the money,' Nan protested. 'The Planning Committee know that, just as they know we need a hospital in the district nearer than Hopminster.'
'Yes, I know.' Her uncle sighed. He looked suddenly much older, and Nan's heart twisted in sympathy. The battle over the hospital was having its effect on him, and she had relied more than she realised on his new assistant taking some of the strain from his shoulders. The public meetings, and the arguments with this official and that Government Minister, were taking their toll, and on top of an already heavy workload Oliver Gray was becoming weary. 'We'll get most of the money by the end of next year, but with this new cutback in spending on the medical services it might not be quick enough. The planning people can see a greater financial saving if they move all the patients into the town hospital. They're thinking of finance, and I'm thinking of people.' He smiled slightly. 'I'll try and talk Raven round,' he promised, 'but in the end it's something he must make up his own mind about.'
'You shouldn't have to talk him round.' Nan's tone was unforgiving, but she said no more, knowing how deeply her uncle's' feelings were involved in this particular project. He had made the hospital what it was, and to see his life's work vanish for the sake of saving a few pounds was more than she could accept and remain calm;
'That's the shortest surgery we've had for ages,' Oliver Gray reached for his coat jubilantly the next morning. 'If you're sure you can manage the calls, Keir, it'll free me for an hour or two in the laboratory.' The time he spent in his small laboratory at the Cottage Hospital was always too short for him, Nan knew, and he had had scarcely any opportunity to work there since his last assistant left.
'If the calls are the ones in the book, I can manage easily enough,' Keir assured him. 'There don't seem many?' His voice held a question.
'It's market day.' Oliver Gray's eyes twinkled. 'People haven't time for feeling ill when they've got produce to sell,' he smiled tolerantly.
