The next morning he said to Miriam, ‘I’m thinking of interviewing Kate Barrington for the position of a third doctor in the practice, and I’d like you to be there.’
‘Really?’ she said stiffly. ‘Since when?’
‘Since I have found her to be an intelligent and knowledgeable young doctor. Do you have any objections?’
‘If it reduces my workload, no. She has worked here before, you know.’
‘Yes. So I believe. What was she like then?’
‘Young, enthusiastic. Eager to learn, I suppose.’
‘So why didn’t she stay?’
‘The pull of hospital health care where she has been employed until very recently, I believe.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ he agreed, ‘but I think that Kate has given up on that and wants to be more home-based. So how about I ask her to come in tomorrow after we’ve finished the home visits?’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said in her usual flat tones, and went to start her day.
That was one hurdle crossed, he thought when she’d gone. He had not been sure of how Miriam would react, but it seemed as if Kate had been highly suitable when she’d worked in the practice before, so she was already halfway to being taken on. He just wished that she was of a similar age to Miriam and just as unexciting, then she wouldn’t take over his thoughts so much.
He rang her in his lunch-hour to tell her about the interview time. She’d still been asleep when he’d left, but now she was up and about and happy to know that things were moving.
‘What did Miriam say?’ she wanted to know.
‘She seemed to approve of the idea.’
‘Oh, good! I’ll keep my fingers crossed, then, and, Daniel, whether you offer me the position or not, thank you for being so good to me.’
There was a moment’s silence at the other end of the line and then he said stiltedly, ‘Yes, well, thanks for that. The truth of the matter is that I’ve felt I owed it to your mother to look after you. Ruth has been very kind to me. You are very fortunate to have her in your life.’
When he’d replaced the receiver Kate wondered why she felt as if she’d been warned off. There was no reason why she should, but the feeling was there nonetheless. Maybe it was why Daniel was alone. There was something of the ‘don’t butt into my life’ about him.
Yet he seemed to get on fine with her mother and the villagers seemed to all like him. Perhaps it was just her that he was wary of. But why? She certainly hadn’t got any designs on him. Her heart was bruised and aching from what Craig had done to her. Yet, she thought with wry amusement, Daniel was the only man whose underwear she had ever laundered, though he’d made it clear at the time that he’d rather she hadn’t.
She decided that tomorrow she wouldn’t put a foot wrong. If nothing else, she would get a smile out of Miriam.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN Kate arrived for the interview Daniel’s first thought was, Wow! The young doctor from A and E was out to make a statement, he decided. With hair brushed into a smooth gold bob, light make-up accentuating her delicately boned features, and dressed in a smart black trouser suit with a white silk shirt and black leather shoes with medium heels, she looked more like a young executive than a country GP. It would be interesting to observe Miriam’s reaction when she saw the prospective newcomer to the practice, he thought. As for himself, he just wished that Kate would stop weakening his resolve, though he had only himself to blame for that. He was the one who’d asked her to come for an interview in spite of not wanting to get too close to her.
But turning up looking so stunning wasn’t going to get her the job. It would depend on how knowledgeable she was about general practice work. How much she remembered from when she’d been employed in the practice before, and most of all how good a doctor she was, though he would only discover that when he saw her in action.
He knew she wouldn’t be short on enthusiasm. There had been nothing lukewarm about her interest in young Billy Giles, who had now been seen by the neurologist and pronounced to be suffering from Sydenham’s chorea.
Kate was that kind of person. He’d discovered in the short time he’d known her that there was nothing negative about her. The disposal of the wedding dress was proof of that, though he still wasn’t sure that she should have been in such a rush, and he hoped that whoever bought it wouldn’t be walking down the aisle of the village church in it.
When he glanced around Reception she was sitting there, waiting patiently for him to call her into his consulting room, but Miriam, who was usually back first from her house calls, hadn’t yet returned and he wasn’t going to start without her.
She arrived in due course. The interview commenced, and as it progressed Daniel knew he would be crazy not to take Kate into the practice. Her appointment would have to go through the usual channels with regard to admin, but he couldn’t foresee any problems there. She was bright, intelligent and should be no mean performer after working in A and E for quite some time.
Even Miriam was smiling. Though that could be for a variety of reasons, self-preservation being top of the list, and maybe she was pleased at the thought of another woman doctor in the practice. He still had concerns about his colleague and wished she would open up to him about whatever it was that was making her so unhappy. Maybe she would confide in their third member once she’d settled in.
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he told Kate when it was over.
She was smiling. ‘In person, or through the post?’
‘As we are more or less living on top of each other at the moment, I think I can safely say it will be in person.’
He could have told her on the spot that he wanted her in the practice, but he had to make sure that Miriam’s smile was because she was in favour of Kate joining them, and that it wasn’t for any other reason.
‘Yes,’ she said when his landlady’s daughter had gone. ‘If you’re happy about taking Kate on, so am I.’
Still in her smart clothes, Kate was walking down the main street of the village about to do some food shopping while she was out. As she strolled along, uppermost in her mind was the interview that had just taken place, and when the window of the charity shop suddenly loomed up beside her she wasn’t prepared for what she was about to see.
Totally unmissable in the centre, with lover’s knots and pristine white satin arranged to the best of their ability by Mrs Burgess and her ladies, was her wedding dress.
She began to shake. All the bottled-up hurt and disappointment was hitting her with full force, and tears that so far hadn’t seen the light of day began to pour down her cheeks.
The shop closed at four o’clock each day when the staff went home to their own devices, so her grief was unobserved from inside. But to Daniel, driving past in answer to a phone call from a home for the elderly a couple of miles out of the village, there was no mistaking the slender figure in the black trouser suit standing in mute distress where someone might come across her at any moment.
He pulled up quickly and was out of the car in a flash. Taking her arm, he said gently, ‘Get inside, Kate. I’ll take you home. But I’ve got to answer a request for a home visit first. They’ve just been on the phone from Furzebank. One of their old folk is really poorly and they’re very concerned.’
She nodded, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and huddled down in the seat beside him as he drove off. When they reached the gates of a big stone house that had been converted into a home for the elderly, Daniel said in the same gentle tone, ‘Kate, I did warn you that it could be a bit hasty, sending your dress to the charity shop so soon after your return to the village.’
Still without speaking, she nodded again and he thought that the smiling and confident interviewee of not so long ago was red-eyed and hurting and the same concern that he’d felt when they’d walked home from the pub was there.
He wanted to comfort her, hold her close, tell her that one day a man would come along who would love her as she deserved to be loved. Someone who was
n’t wrapped around with memories of the past, and he, Daniel, would envy him.
He hadn’t held a woman in his arms since he’d lost Lucy. That way he was able to keep to the commitment he had promised himself, so he just patted her hand and said anxiously, ‘Promise me you won’t budge while I’m in the home. I’ll try not to be too long but can’t be sure.’
‘I’ll be here,’ she promised. ‘Don’t rush on my account, Daniel. Patients come before personal matters in the life of the GP during surgery hours.’ And when he glanced at her sharply she managed a smile. ‘I know I’m not a GP yet, but I’m hoping.’
It was Elizabeth Ackroyd, the oldest inmate of Furzebank, that he’d been summoned out to see, and when he saw her Daniel’s expression was grave. She had been a highly intelligent woman and still was to some degree in spite of her ninety years.
She had sacrificed the chance of marriage or a career to look after younger brothers and a sister when they’d lost their mother while only young, and she had outlived them all.
Elizabeth had been at Furzebank four years and until recently had been well and happy. Until an elderly widower that she had become very close to had died suddenly and the will to live had left her.
The first time Daniel had been called out to her, he hadn’t been able to find anything organically wrong with her. Helen, the sister-in-charge, had nodded her agreement, and told him that Elizabeth had said to her that she’d found the love of her life seventy years too late, and that she would die of a broken heart.
Today Elizabeth was very poorly. Her pulse and heartbeat were irregular, her breathing laboured. But she looked peaceful enough, and he said to Helen, ‘She might go during the night. Just keep her comfortable and try to get some liquids down if you can. Ring me if you need me, Helen, and I’ll come straight away.’
‘It won’t be the same when she’s gone,’ she said regretfully. ‘I thought Elizabeth would have seen a hundred. But love can be a painful thing, can’t it? It can bring joy like no other, and it can also deprive life of its meaning.’
Daniel nodded. He wasn’t going to disagree with that. He’d been there.
Kate was where he’d left her, as she had promised she would be, staring into space and taking little note of his presence in the car once more until he said, ‘So aren’t you going to ask me about the patient that I’ve just been to see? If I’m not around, you could be called out to her the next time.’
Slowly raising herself upright, she turned to face him and asked, ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
‘Mmm. When can you start?’
‘Oh!’ she cried, with spirits lifting. ‘Daniel, you are offering me the perfect antidote to keep the blues at bay. I’m sorry about earlier. It was the shock of seeing the dress in all its glory in the shop window. It was a bit like the dream I had. As if it had come back to haunt me. Love can be very hurtful sometimes, can’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed, and thought that made three of them who had come to that conclusion. Elizabeth, who had lost the will to live. He himself, who had been going in that direction when Lucy had died, until he’d taken himself in hand, and Kate, who from the sound of it might have had a lucky escape.
And now he was going to see her safely home before he went to take his share of the late surgery, and once that was over he hoped to find her still in a happier frame of mind than when he’d found her outside the charity shop.
Kate’s rise in spirits was still in evidence when he returned to Jasmine Cottage in the early evening. He found her standing over the cooker poised to make omelettes and didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that she was organising their evening meal once more.
He knew that he ought to be grateful, and that it might be the last time she was available to have a meal ready when he got in as soon they would be equally busy with the affairs of the practice.
Offering her the position wasn’t going to alter his intention of keeping their relationship impersonal, but he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to stand by and do nothing during moments like those outside the charity shop when she needed him.
Kate was going to be like an enthusiastic and efficient breath of fresh air in the village’s practice and that was what he was looking for. Hopefully working together would seem less claustrophobic than living in the same house.
Regarding that, he was just going to have to play it as it came. Be friendly but not too friendly, helpful but not too helpful, and in the meantime he was going to keep pushing the builder to get his house finished.
A phone call just as he was finishing his meal wiped every other thought from his mind. Lucy’s only living relatives were her fifty-year-old father, Tom, and her eight-year-old brother Alex. Her mother had died some time previously from a similar illness to her daughter’s and Tom was bringing Alex up on his own in a town in the Midlands.
Lucy had adored young Alex, who had come into the world when her mother had been menopausal, and he had been just five and a half years old when his big sister had been taken from them.
She’d said to him once as the illness had taken over her life, ‘You’ll help Dad with Alex if I don’t get better, won’t you, Daniel? It won’t be easy for either of them.’
‘You don’t need to ask,’ he’d whispered tenderly. ‘Of course I will.’ And had wondered how he would be able to bear being with her father and brother, while knowing that she was gone for ever.
But he’d kept his promise and gone to see them every couple of months, taking Alex out for the day to give Tom a break. He loved the child and saw him as the nearest he was ever going to get to having a family of his own.
Tom was coping brilliantly, having gone onto part-time hours with the building firm where he was employed so that he would be there during out-of-school times and holidays, and until a few moments ago Daniel had had no worries about them.
When Daniel heard Tom’s voice at the other end of the line he thought that Lucy’s father had rung for a chat, as he sometimes did, but he was wrong.
Tom rarely lost his cool, but today his voice was hoarse with anxiety and it soon became evident why.
‘I need your help. Daniel,’ he said. ‘You are the only person I can ask.’
‘What’s wrong, Tom?’ he questioned.
‘I’m in hospital. I’ve had an accident at work and fractured both my knees. I’m going to need quite a bit of surgery over a period and could be here for a few weeks. I’m in A and E at the moment, waiting to go to Theatre to be put together again. I’m hoping that I’ll have more luck than Humpty Dumpty,’
‘Tom, I am sorry,’ Daniel said, his voice full of concern for the man who had so nearly become his father-in-law.
‘Tell me about it!’ Tom groaned. ‘I’m ringing to ask if you can have Alex until I’m mobile again.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Daniel said immediately. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help. Where is he now?’
‘He’s here with me, and Social Services have just arrived to sort something out regarding his care while I’m in here. They’re talking about fostering and it’s breaking his heart. Doesn’t want to leave me, which is not surprising as I’m all he’s got.’
‘You are not all he’s got, Tom,’ Daniel said steadily. ‘He’s got me. Will he let me bring him back here if I come for him now?’
‘No problem,’ he replied, his voice lifting with relief. ‘When I said I was going to ring you he was all for it. I can’t let him go to strangers, Daniel. He’s had enough to cope with already in his young life.’
‘Tell Social Services I’m setting off now,’ he said. ‘If the roads are quiet it should take me a couple of hours, and once we’ve been to your place to pick up some clothes and his toys, I’ll bring him back here for as long as it takes.’
‘Thanks. I knew I could count on you,’ he said raggedly, and that was that.
Daniel put the phone down slowly, knowing that he’d just made a rash promise that he would keep, come hell or high water. But he didn�
�t know how he was going to do it.
He was living in someone else’s house as a lodger. He could hardly bring an eight-year-old boy to Jasmine Cottage, unannounced and without permission.
He’d left the dining table when Tom’s call had come through and had taken it in the hall. When he returned to the dining room Kate observed him questioningly. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing,’ she said, ‘and it sounded like trouble.’
‘It is,’ he told her flatly. ‘Someone I know is in hospital with two shattered knees and is going to be in there for some weeks. He’s a widower with a young son and has asked me to look after him until he is well again.
‘I’ll be setting off for Gloucestershire in the next quarter of an hour and need to ask if it is all right if I bring him back here for the night. I know it’s an imposition as you’ve already got me on the premises, but first thing in the morning I’ll sort out somewhere else for Alex and I to stay. His father has asked me because there is no one else he could turn to.’
‘Poor things,’ she said softly, and in the next breath, ‘You don’t have to move out, Daniel. The little boy can have the smallest of the two guest rooms. We can look after him together. Just go and get him.’
He smiled. ‘You are something else, Kate. Thank you. I hope that your mother won’t mind when she hears about this.’
‘Mum would only mind if I hadn’t made the offer,’ she told him calmly. ‘So off you go, and while you’re gone I’ll get the room ready.’
It would be nice to have a child in the house, Kate thought as she put fresh sheets on the bed and found some pictures to adorn the walls which she’d had in her room when she was small. But the circumstances of it were sad.
Who were these people? she wondered. Daniel had just said it was someone he knew, which didn’t sound like a relative, but the person obviously felt they could rely on him in a crisis.
He’d referred to the boy as Alex and in the absence of any toys in the house she found a fancy box and filled it with goodies, then wrote on the outside ‘For Alex’ and next to it she placed a glass of fruit juice.
Country Doctor, Spring Bride Page 4
