He was smiling. He did not look so coarse or ugly now, the smile had softened his blunt features; in a way he looked kindly. Oh, what had she done in jumping to conclusions?
‘I’ll never forgive myself…I…’
‘Now, now, now, forget about it. That’s an order, a doctor’s order.’
He turned sharply from her and went down the room, and she followed him, not only to the hall door but to the top of the steps, from where she watched him go towards the yard before turning to go back into the house, her hands gripped tightly at her waist and her head down.
As Harry approached the barn he heard Fred growling and when he entered he saw the dog standing to the side of the trap. As usual he was following a pattern and staying by Bessie, but he usually sat whilst doing his guard. The boy Bailey was at the far end of the barn, but the dog was looking towards him and growling.
‘What is it?’ When he stooped down and touched Fred’s head the animal barked, a high angry bark that he kept for intruders, and he looked again in the direction of Nick Bailey.
Harry now called down the barn. ‘What’s the matter? He’s not usually like this, have you been teasing him?’
‘Me?’ The young fellow advanced some way towards him, a rake in his hand. ‘Me?’ he said again. ‘Why no, doctor. Me, I like dogs. One back home, but different from him; he’s a mongrel, huh!’ He laughed and disclosed a gap where three teeth were missing in the front of his mouth. ‘Mongrel of mongrels I should say, bad tempered an’ all?’
Harry stared at the lad before turning abruptly and ordering Fred up. Then mounting the trap he drove out of the barn, across the yard and into the drive. But there he stopped and, pulling Fred’s hindquarters round to him, he examined his haunches. There was another puncture with blood coming from it.
He looked in the direction of the barn and his teeth ground one over the other. For two pins he’d go back there and wipe the floor with that halfwit. But there’d been enough trouble in that house for one morning. ‘Well’—he nodded down at Fred—‘there’ll be another time, boy, another time. We can wait.’ Then patting the dog’s head, he took up the reins again and made for home.
Three
As it had promised the river rose. Fields and roads were flooded, and outside the town low-lying cottages had to be abandoned. For eight days most of the roads were impassable; then, as if spring had forgotten what time it was supposed to arrive, there were two days of sunshine, so bright that it gave warmth, and it was on the first of these pleasant days that Harry saw Martha again, although she didn’t see him.
He had called in at the bookshop to order a medical book, second-hand if it were possible, and he was browsing in front of a shelf in the corner of the shop from which led a door into what he surmised was the office when he heard her voice. As he said to himself with a wry smile, there couldn’t be two people who spoke like her when she was on her high horse, and apparently she was mounted at this moment for she was saying in a tone that he recognised only too well, ‘I accept your resignation, Mr Ducat. You may terminate your employment one week from today, and I shall expect you to leave everything in order.’
‘As you say, Miss Crawford.’ The voice replying had a deep sneer to it and he recognised it also as belonging to the smarmy fellow who ran the shop, and he cocked his ear attentively as it went on, ‘And for your information, Miss Crawford, I can tell you that Mr Cunningham is offering me three shillings more and with the promise of a further raise, which will assist me to view the prospect of marriage with some certainty.’
In the moments that followed Harry kept his attention on the book in his hand while still awaiting her reply, but it didn’t come. The next sound he heard was the rustle of her gown as she passed within a yard of him. However, she didn’t see him for she didn’t turn her head, and he only just glimpsed her profile edging her bonnet, but her walk spoke plainly for her feelings.
Now what was all that about? That man’s tone had been spiteful and familiar at the same time, and he had put strong emphasis on the word marriage. Surely there hadn’t been something between them. Oh no, not her and a nincompoop like him! Still, you never knew women, especially when they had turned twenty, victims of their emotions all of them.
And he said so across the dining table half an hour later after relating the incident to John Pippin. ‘Women are fools,’ he said, ‘and the ones who are not fools are knaves. I can never understand why that word is applied solely to men.’
John Pippin stared at the lowered head and he chewed slowly on a piece of tender steak before saying, ‘You haven’t a very high opinion of women, have you?’
‘I give them their due.’
‘Yes, no doubt you do, but it all depends upon what you consider their due. In our line of business it pays to add to their due, put up the interest on their assets as it were, it never does any harm. For instance, the person in question, what do you think Martha Mary’s due is?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I say. You’ve come in contact with her a number of times, battled with her by the sound of it. Well, how would you assess her?’
How would he assess her? His chin went out, he nipped on his lower lip, then slanting his gaze at the old man, he said, ‘As a perfect specimen of the tradesman class, lower middle, at least I should imagine her early upbringing could have placed her in that category. Even now when she’s forced to be jack of all trades she still retains the false outlook that she and her sisters are a cut above ordinary folk.’
‘Well, but apart from that what about the girl herself? She’s intelligent.’
‘That may be, but what has she done with her intelligence? Likely she can sew, and play the piano, and no doubt they having a bookshop, she’s read a bit; and yet I wouldn’t say to any depth, her outlook is too narrow for that.’
‘You don’t like her?’
Harry now gave a short laugh. ‘I neither like her nor dislike her. No, that isn’t the truth. After our first meeting it would have been nearer the mark to say I loathed the sight of her.’
‘And so you set out to bring her down.’
‘What do you mean?’ Harry’s eyebrows were straining towards his hairline now in genuine surprise. ‘What! Me bring her down? Miss Martha Mary Crawford!’
The old man put his head back and laughed. ‘Mentally, mentally, man, you set out to show yourself to be the superior male. Oh, don’t deny it.’ He now lifted his hand and wagged the knife it held towards Harry. ‘You hate to be bested by anyone, but to let a woman try it, never! And don’t look like that as if I were accusing you of rape. Which reminds me, the Bailey girl is about due. There’s a household for you. The two eldest lasses dropped within a year and not a thing done about it. There’s an open case of incest if ever I saw one, and fourteen already to his credit in the family. Sometimes I think it’s a pity the gibbet’s out of fashion. There’s only one thing to be said for him, he won’t let them be born in the workhouse.’ Doctor Pippin now looked towards the window and ended, ‘I’m glad the sun’s shining, that’s one blessing to be grateful for, for I’ve got to gird my loins and get over to The Hall this afternoon; that young girl isn’t well at all, I doubt if she’ll weather it this year.’
‘How long has she had consumption?’
‘Oh, since she was young. It’s in the family, on both sides I should say. But I don’t suppose they’ll worry too much about her going. It isn’t as if it were young William; they’d both go mad if anything happened to him, Sir Rupert’s last link with posterity. Oh my! Nothing must happen to William.’ He gave a chuckle. ‘I think he’s arranged it with the Almighty. He seems on very good terms with Him; at least, he’d have you believe so.’ He now took a deep mouthful of wine, swilled it round his decayed teeth, then swallowed before saying abruptly, ‘To get back to what we were saying earlier, you feel settled?’
Harry paused before answering, ‘If you mean with the practice, yes.’
‘Not thinking about flitting b
ack to the big city where the money is?’
‘No, our arrangement was for two years, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, yes. I know what our arrangement was all right, but you’ve been here seven months now and…and I just wondered how you’re viewing the set-up since I put more and more work onto you.’
‘That’s as it should be, and that’s what I want, more and more work.’
‘Yes, yes, you would. You’re a type. You know that, Fuller? You’re a type. I should say you’ve got a constitution like a horse, and a quick judgement of you would be to say that you have more brawn than brains. But that wouldn’t be right, would it?’
‘No, it certainly wouldn’t.’ Harry’s voice had now a grim note to it, and the old man laughed again and said, ‘That wasn’t meant as an insult but as a compliment. A good constitution is a doctor’s standby, without it he’s no good. You must have come from good stock somewhere, strong farming stock I should say. Anyway’—he turned his head towards the door—‘here’s Annie with the pudding. I like pudding. Put it down there, girl. Ah! That’s nice.’ He looked at the steaming plum-duff dripping with syrup. ‘That’s the style, sticks to your ribs…You were saying, doctor.’ He looked over his glasses as he divided the large suet pudding into two.
‘I wasn’t saying.’ Harry took the plate from the old man’s hand and they eyed each other for a moment, as if each was reading the other’s mind; one amused by what he read there, the other not. Paying compliments indeed! If that was his way of paying a compliment he hoped he was never insulted by him, yet at the same time he admitted there was truth in his summing up. But one did not always view oneself through the eyes of truth. No matter how brusque his manner, no matter how ordinary his appearance, and it wasn’t so ordinary as all that, he had a good sturdy body on him, a fine head of hair. All right, his face had no claim to good looks, but on the other hand it didn’t scare children.
But then in the next moment it could have scared Doctor Pippin had he been a nervous man, for when changing the topic abruptly again, as was his way, he said, ‘You should marry. It would be nice to have a woman about the house, an intelligent one that is; there’s plenty of room upstairs that could be made into an apartment and I’d then take you on right away as an assistant with a view…half partnership, or a third, whichever you…’
‘Doctor, let us get this clear.’ Harry was now standing leaning slightly forward across the table and he repeated, ‘Let us get this one thing clear now and for all time. I have no intention of getting married again ever. If you want a partner with a wife then you’ll have to look elsewhere.’
There was a significant pause as they again eyed each other; then Harry turned from the table and walked towards the dining room door. But before he reached it Doctor Pippin’s voice stopped him as he shouted down the room, ‘I’ll forget about the partnership then?’
Harry was facing him now as he said grimly, ‘You suggested at our first interview that after two years we would discuss that point.’
‘Oh aye, aye. Well, two years is a good way off, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, as far off it would appear as my marriage.’
When the door closed behind Harry, the old man sat back in his chair, pulled a long face, nodded first to one side of himself, then to the other, before picking up his spoon and wagging it as he had done his knife previously and saying to an imaginary listener, ‘There goes a man who thinks he knows his own mind. And who’s to blame him for that?’
When a moment or so later he heard the front door close none too gently he rose from the table and, limping to the window, he knocked on it, then gesticulating to the figure crossing the yard towards the coach house he beckoned him. Thrusting up the lower part of the window, he now bent forward and said, ‘On your way out of the town you could look in on Mrs Armstrong.’
‘Anyone else?’ There was a note of sarcasm in Harry’s voice and John Pippin, ignoring it, screwed up his face as if raking his brains to find another patient to add to his assistant’s list. He thought a moment, then said, ‘No, I don’t think there’s anyone else today.’
‘I’m glad of that, otherwise I’ve little chance of getting beyond the town.’
As Harry turned away the window was pulled down with a bang. What was he doing? Trying to nark him? He had six patients of his own to visit before he could make for the outskirts and Bailey’s cottage, and he didn’t relish that visit …
And he was relishing it less as he stood over the girl with a distended stomach lying on a filthy bed in a corner of the small room, and as he looked down into her grinning face and saw the head lice crawling on her hair he again wondered why it was that this type always seemed to breed like rats, whereas back there in the town there were three women on his list alone who had gone into decline for the simple reason they hadn’t borne children. They were nice women, decent women, and had at one time, he supposed, been sprightly, but two of them spent most of their time now lying on a couch.
‘I should imagine it will be another day or two before it arrives.’ He coughed now to get the fug out of his throat.
‘D’ya think so, docta?’
As her grin widened he felt sick. There was no pity in him for her. Her face had never seen water for days, her hands were ingrained with dirt. The place stank. He looked about him. The mother would appear to be ignoring his presence for she was sitting huddled over the fire stirring something in a kale pot, while four children, their ages ranging from two to six, scrambled around the floor in pursuit of a hen, which left its droppings for them to crawl through as it ran. Oddly the fowl was not squawking as a hen usually would, but running silently and using all its faculties to dodge their clutching hands.
The whole place looked a shambles and smelt like a pigsty, yet strangely this wasn’t a house without money for Bailey himself was not only in work but had five sons and two daughters bringing in their wages, one of the sons, that lout at The Habitation, and more strangely still he paid his debts. Doctor Pippin said he had never left the house without getting his two shilling fee, and should Bailey himself not be in at the time he would never forget what he owed.
He thought about this as he left the house and breathed deep of the fresh air, that was when he had got past the middens. There were strange quirks to human nature. Perhaps if the man had married a normal woman, because it was definitely from the wife’s side that the mental abnormalities sprang, he might have acted differently. But would he? A man who would take his own daughters!
The next house he visited seemed to be at the other end of the social scale, although there was poverty here too, except in the wealth of books to be seen in the house. Samuel Armstrong was a self-educated man and perhaps his lowly state was due as much to his buying of books as to his inability to obtain work connected with them.
Samuel Armstrong was sixty-two, but he appeared seventy-two until he spoke, then you forgot his age for his voice had a vital ring to it. He had been unemployed for the past six months and they had lived, or barely subsisted, on what his wife earned from giving music lessons. It was as well she could sit through her task and didn’t need to talk much for at times she was greatly troubled with bronchial asthma.
It was as Harry listened to the rumbling in her chest that an idea came to him, which he dwelt on for a moment or so while he returned the instruments to his bag. He spoke a few professional words to Mrs Armstrong, drew on his gloves, picked up his hat, then followed Samuel Armstrong to the door; and there he looked down on the small man and said, ‘Has anything come up, any prospects?’
Samuel Armstrong shook his head slowly. ‘No, no, nothing, doctor; I travelled the streets of the town most of last week. Even if I could do manual work I’d find it hard to come by; as for the shop assistants, in the tailor’s, the haberdasher’s, the hatter’s, they’re all clinging tight to their posts. And who’s to blame them?’
‘How would you like to work with books?’
‘Are you teasing, doctor?’
‘No, no, I’m not teasing, and I’m not promising anything positive either, only I think there’s a position in the town coming vacant and it’s to do with books.’
‘But I was everywhere last week, doctor, in every shop in the town.’
‘Well, the position wasn’t vacant last week. Anyway, I don’t know as yet if it’s been filled, or if the owner has anyone in mind, but I’ll be seeing her tomorrow and if you wish I’ll put a word in for you.’
‘If I wish it, doctor?’
There was a thick moisture in the eyes looking back into his, and when he felt his hand gripped, he became embarrassed by the emotion the older man was showing, and he took his departure hastily now, saying, ‘Well mind, there’s nothing sure, but I’ll do my best,’ and Samuel Armstrong’s voice followed him to the trap, calling, ‘Thank you. Thank you a thousand times, doctor, whichever way it goes. Thank you.’
And the next afternoon it did go well for Samuel Armstrong, that was after Harry had used a little diplomacy, lied a little, and made an effort to curb his temper…but only just when he found Peg dressed and in the kitchen.
He had gone in by the back door and his entry had startled them; perhaps because of the high wind that was blowing and the empty pail that had been bowling across the courtyard as he drove in they hadn’t heard his arrival.
Martha was at the table. She was wearing a large apron over her faded calico dress; her sleeves were rolled up past the elbows, and like any ordinary housewife she was kneading bread. The occupation was one in which he had never imagined to see her engaged, and so it was she took his attention for a moment until he became aware that the other occupant of the kitchen was Peg, fully dressed and in the process of arraying loaf tins along the fender. She was doing this by the simple process of keeping her fingers straight and lifting the tins with the palms of her hands.
Miss Martha Mary Crawford Page 15
