The Country Doctor: Captivating tales from a young GP's case notes Read online

  That the woman was emotionally disturbed was obvious. But was there something in the story about Betty Danbury? Well, she’d soon know.

  But she didn’t. Betty was adamant that no one had assaulted her in any way, whilst her mother was equally positive that she was lying to protect Foster. But the fact remained that the girl had been found by her mother in the middle of the orchard, collapsed under a tree, and again there were angry red marks to be seen.

  Linda examined them closely and frowned.

  On her way out she came across the boy Dick and took the chance to discourage him from further violence ‒ even to avenge his sister’s honour. ‘After all,’ she pointed out, ‘you may have hit the wrong man.’

  ‘Ma said he did it,’ said Dick Danbury simply. ‘And my sister Betty’s a good girl.’

  ‘And she says he didn’t, doesn’t she?’

  The boy gave a defeated grunt, stuck his hands in his pockets and made off towards his ferret hutch.

  During the next two weeks Linda drove past the Orchards several times on her way to see patients. There were many people in them now, for the apples were being picked. Lorryloads of the rosy fruit nosed their way from the fields to the presses and by the end of the fortnight the trees were stripped of their harvest.

  Linda heard no more of the Danburys until Betty brought the baby into surgery with a slight tummy upset. As she was going, Linda asked her whether she’d had any more fainting fits.

  ‘No I haven’t, Doctor. And wasn’t Ma silly? But it’s all blown over now. Mr Foster sent to ask whether he could give me a basket of Cox’s as a sort of peace-offering – and Ma’s said yes. So everything’s all right.’

  ‘Good. I’m finished now. If you hang on I’ll give you a lift back. I have to go out that way.’

  ‘Oh thanks. It’ll be an hour before the bus comes.’

  When they were driving by Mead Orchards, Betty looked up sideways at Linda.

  ‘It would save time if you put me down here,’ she said.

  They pulled up. It was true. There was Roseberry Cottage in sight through the trees.

  Linda grinned. ‘Right. But I’ll walk you across. I’ll never be able to face your mother again otherwise!’

  Together they crossed the orchard, discussing matters concerning the baby, which Betty carried tenderly, its downy head pressed to her cheek. At the gate they parted.

  But as Linda turned back she caught sight of a figure hovering behind a tree. It was Mrs Foster, and her face was a mask of venom.

  As Betty went indoors, the woman turned away and walked off. Linda was glad the girl had not seen the blatant malice in the woman’s eyes.

  It was only a matter of hours before Linda was once more hurrying towards Roseberry Cottage. She did not need to knock on the door, Mrs Danbury ran down the path to meet her.

  ‘He’s poisoned her! Poisoned her!’ She hustled Linda inside, pounded upstairs to the bedroom and flung out a dramatic finger. ‘Look what he’s done!’

  Betty was certainly in a bad way. She was flushed and breathless and had vomited several times.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Linda, feeling for the girl’s pulse.

  ‘I just ate one of the apples,’ panted Betty, ‘and I came over queer.’

  ‘It’s because she won’t have nothing to do with him!’ cried Mrs Danbury.

  ‘Oh Ma!’ Betty’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Now calm down, Mrs Danbury,’ said Linda sharply. ‘There are several other possibilities. It’s far more likely Betty has some sort of allergy. That apples disagree with her.’

  ‘Oh no they don’t,’ argued Mrs Danbury. ‘She’s always eaten them before.’

  Linda looked at Betty, who nodded.

  ‘I’ve always liked them very much,’ she admitted.

  ‘We’ve never had this palaver before. Those apples have been tampered with.’

  ‘Where are they now?’ asked Linda.

  ‘Gone back where they come from. My Dicker threw the lot back into Foster’s yard.’

  That’s helpful, thought Linda.

  She made Betty comfortable and took various specimens for testing; then made her escape from Mrs Danbury ‒ with a parting warning to that lady to keep Betty undisturbed.

  Back in her consulting room, Linda settled down to write some letters. There was a tap on the door, and Mrs Perry entered with a cup of tea.

  ‘Would you like a sandwich, Doctor? It’s getting on for evening surgery and you’ve had no break.’

  Linda smiled gratefully. ‘No thanks I’m nearly through then I’ll slip back to the flat.’

  ‘There’s a very heavy surgery. You do know?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Perry.’ Linda matched the impersonal tone. ‘Would you send off these specimens from Betty Danbury for analysis, please.’

  Linda watched her go, then began to pen a note to her parents. They’d made sacrifices to put her through Medical School and she tried to send frequent field messages back to the small, old-fashioned dairy in the East End of London, where her career was being so anxiously followed.

  ‘... Mrs Perry is playing it very cool,’ she wrote, ‘but she knows her job. I think it may be harder to win her confidence than Doctor Cooper’s! He seems to like me, but his brows beetle rather ominously. If I do something really stupid (which mercifully I haven’t yet) I fear his wrath could be a bit flattening. But right now I know I can go to him for advice when I need it ‒ and that’s a comfort.’

  Later, when her last patient had departed ‒ and there had been a vast queue, Mrs Perry was right of course ‒ Linda found herself seeking out Doctor Cooper for some of that advice.

  They went through to the lounge and sank into easy chairs, and he passed her a glass of sherry as she described Betty Danbury’s condition.

  ‘Have there been any similar cases in the area, Doctor Cooper?’ queried Linda.

  ‘You’re thinking of a toxic spray.’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard of. But it’s a possibility. Have you got any of the apples?’

  ‘No. They were thrown away.’

  ‘That’s helpful.’

  Linda smiled.

  ‘You shouldn’t have allowed that, Doctor Ford.’

  The smile slipped sideways and off.

  ‘Check with Foster what he doped his apples with this year.’

  Linda nodded. She’d planned to do just that.

  ‘Could be something new ‒ or used too strong in quantity.’

  ‘Mrs Danbury’s convinced it was done on purpose,’ said Linda.

  ‘What’s she been reading, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?’

  ‘She’s serious. And Foster’s been cast as the wicked witch, which is hard, since he seems to have a home-grown one of his own.’

  ‘Doctor Ford ‒’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I never saw such a fiendishly jealous woman. The man’s life must be a misery.’

  ‘He hasn’t complained, Doctor, and it is not our business to make judgements.’

  Linda took the rebuke. It was true. One had to remain objective.

  The next morning, Linda telephoned to Foster and he offered to look out the remains of the pesticide he’d used on his trees. He was very concerned about Betty’s illness and worried at the thought of any chemical he’d used being the cause. Linda passed this fact on to Mrs Danbury in an attempt to mollify her, for Betty was still quite ill.

  Patiently, Linda put it to her that although there could have been a dangerous liquid sprayed on the apples it must have been by accident.

  ‘It was no accident,’ maintained Mrs Danbury. ‘Nobody sends poisoned apples to someone by accident. He’s got it in for her that’s clear. But just let him wait till Betty’s man comes back!’

  Linda attended to Betty without another word. Detachment. That’s what Doctor Cooper had recommended. But Betty looked wretched and it wasn’t only because she wasn’t well.

  As she left the house, Linda was aware of Be
tty’s brother emerging from the landing and trailing her downstairs. On the path to the gate he finally stepped in front of her, took a deep breath and blurted out a statement that made Linda grab him by the shoulder and drag him back indoors to his mother.

  ‘Mrs Danbury! Listen to this, please! Young man, repeat what you just told me.’

  Dick Danbury avoided his mother’s eye but he obeyed the command.

  ‘They weren’t poisoned, Ma. I ate a couple of them before Betty did.’

  It must be an allergy. Linda was now convinced. She drove straight to Foster’s. At least it would put his mind at rest to know there was nothing wrong with the apples.

  It did; and his relief was considerable ‒ and more significant than Linda had realised.

  ‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘I thought ‒ I wondered whether ‒’ His eyes went to his wife, who was sitting in the garden with her back turned to them.

  ‘I’ll still take a sample of that pesticide, Mr Foster.’

  ‘I’ll get it ‒ but it’s only one in common use.’

  The sound of their voices had reached Mrs Foster, and as her husband went off towards an outbuilding, she rose and came straight to Linda.

  ‘You’re here again, are you?’

  ‘Your husband’s helping me with an enquiry.’

  I sound like a policeman, thought Linda, but what did one say to those accusing eyes.

  ‘Did you know my husband sent that girl a basket of apples?’

  Did she not.

  ‘Presents now, you see? He’ll have his way yet, you see. She might as well have given in when he tried it on in the orchard!’

  ‘Mrs Foster, how can I persuade you you’re wrong. Listen, your husband did send Betty some apples ‒ and she ate one and is still ill from it. The girl’s recently had a baby. That can be quite an upheaval to the system, do you understand? I think she may have developed an apple-allergy. There was nothing wrong with that fruit yet she’s been violently sick. And that’s why, I think, she was overcome in the orchard. She wasn’t attacked or assaulted. She was alone! It was the apples themselves. She had a dramatic physical reaction to them.’

  ‘It won’t wash you know.’

  ‘Mrs Foster, I assure you it’s absolutely possible. And tests will prove ‒’

  ‘I’ll be surprised if they do. You’ve got a short memory, haven’t you? You went across that orchard yourself with that girl. She didn’t get “overcome” that time did she? I know she didn’t. I saw you both.’

  It was a fact. Linda suddenly remembered. But there was something ...

  Foster was coming towards them. His wife at once whirled round on him and her voice began climbing into hysteria. Recriminations and abuse flowed in a wild tirade.

  Foster’s face was white and drawn. ‘Will you go, Doctor, I can manage her better alone.’

  ‘Would you like me to ‒’

  ‘Please. It’s all right.’

  Mrs Foster’s scene reached its climax. ‘I’m going! I’m going! I don’t have to go on living with a man like you! I’m leaving!’ She rushed into the house.

  ‘She’ll change her mind,’ said Foster, and followed her.

  But a few days later Linda heard from Elsie Peach, who was a better source of local information than the Gazette, that Mrs Foster had indeed departed, but not before she had broadcast her reasons, and stirred up quite a bit of local feeling against Foster.

  ‘Have they got a sex maniac loose up there?’ asked John Cooper quizzically.

  ‘I hope not,’ said Linda earnestly, ‘but how do you tell?’

  ‘You get better at it as the years go by ‒ but there’s always the surprise that confounds you.’

  He was handing Linda the name of the Consultant who would decide whether to test Betty for an allergy.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ she said. ‘Though I’m not sure whether it’s worth her seeing him now.’

  ‘What about the analysis you had done?’

  ‘Negative. I must confess, both the toxic spray and anaphylaxis theories seem knocked on the head.’

  ‘Very thwarting.’

  ‘Yet I had such a feeling ‒’ she stopped.

  She felt he’d disapprove of that line of thought.

  Instead he said, ‘Intuition can be very valuable, my dear. Don’t discount it.’

  Encouraged, Linda went on, half to herself. ‘It’s exasperating. Four times that girl came in close contact with apples. Three of those times she was seriously upset. Once she ate one and was ill; straightforward enough. Twice she was found unconscious under the apple trees in the middle of the orchard. But why didn’t she faint when I was with her?’

  ‘Tiresome of her.’

  With an effort Linda dismissed the puzzle from her mind, and turned her attention to a case history about which John Cooper was giving her some information.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he was saying, ‘it has occurred to three separate members of this particular family with identical symptoms. Whichever name I had picked ‒ if, for instance, I’d picked ‒’

  ‘Picked!’ Linda interrupted him. ‘That’s it! Picked! I’m sorry, Doctor Cooper, I didn’t mean to make you jump. But it’s the answer. When Betty and I went through that orchard it was after it had been picked. There were only a few windfalls about ‒ not enough to affect her. Ha! Where’s that name? We’ll make an appointment for Betty to see the Consultant immediately! I was right! Right!’

  ‘I hope the jubilation isn’t because it’s a rare occurrence,’ remarked Cooper.

  Betty’s tests proved positive, but in a week she had fully recovered from her attack, and now knew to avoid the troublesome fruit for the time being. A course of immunisation injections was suggested, if the reaction did not subside of its own accord.

  It was only a minor victory but Linda’s self-confidence got a little boost. She believed in herself as a doctor but she knew it would take time before she inspired the trust she recognised in the faces of John Cooper’s patients. But when Mrs Danbury stopped her in the street and said awkwardly: ‘I apologised to that Foster. I thought you’d like to know, Doctor’ Linda was touched.

  She saw Betty herself two weeks later, making her way down the lane with a load of shopping, and gave her a lift to the orchard gate. As they drew up, Foster was stepping through it. He remained holding it open for Betty.

  ‘It’s safe right now,’ said Betty. ‘I mean ‒ while there’s no apples.’

  ‘Safe till next summer then,’ he said.

  They stood for a moment looking at each other. Linda realised that they were meeting for the first time ‒ these two whose lives had been so entwined by circumstance.

  Then they both smiled ‒ very tentatively.

  He took the shopping bag and, with a distance of four feet between them, they walked across the orchard. Slowly. Not speaking. There was no hurry.

  The radio contact signalled to Linda.

  ‘Mrs Jameson phoned, Doctor Ford. Can you go to Weatherlands.’

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘Yes. It’s Upchurch Green and you go by Dampton Mill and ‒’

  ‘I know, Mrs Perry. It’s that lovely National Trust property isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. You should look over its gardens some time, Doctor.’ The voice was friendly now. That very morning, Linda and Mrs Perry had discovered a mutual attachment to African Violets. Linda’s uncle had grown them in his bedroom and Mrs Perry had a whole greenhouse devoted to them and promised Linda one or two for her flat. It was like finding the key to a locked door.

  The setting sun was reflected in the millstream by the time Linda finally left Weatherlands.

  I could put down a root or two myself, she thought later, sitting on a rug by the fire and gazing at her reflection in a copper jug on the hearth. But I’d better not. This is the clever young Doctor Peter’s scene, when he chooses to take the stage.

  She reached for a magazine and an apple. An apple! Ye Gods! She sank her teeth into it recklessly.

>   Chapter Two

  OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD

  Linda knocked a third time on the weathered cottage door. Charming people! she thought, calling urgently for the doctor then calmly going out. Yet the voice had sounded anxious enough on the phone, too agitated in fact to give her proper details. Linda hoped this wasn’t going to be the habit of many of her new patients.

  She raised her hand to give the door another buffet. There was a movement at an upstairs window. Linda stepped back and looked up. The small white face of a young boy stared down at her with frightened eyes, then quickly withdrew.

  So someone was inside. Linda felt irritated, then alarmed. ‘An accident!’ the voice had said. She pushed against the door, and as she did so, saw the rusted hinges and yellow spider-eggs. It couldn’t have been opened in years! Then she remembered something Doctor Cooper had said when she’d first joined his practice. ‘In some of the remoter parts round here they never use the front door. You go round to the back.’

  Linda started down the side of the house, picking her way along a brick path and between an outcrop of sheds. Drips from a recent shower spattered her from corrugated roofs and the yard at the back of the house looked like Flanders Field.

  Beyond the property stretched green fields, decorated with a vast moving pattern of white hens and dotted with orderly nesting-houses. A dog saw Linda and began to bark. At once a woman appeared from an outbuilding, carrying a bucket. She put it down and hurried across.

  ‘Are you the doctor?’

  Linda nodded. The woman led the way into the house, slipping off her heavy shoes in the doorway. Probably a pretty woman when she smiled, Linda thought, but now she was drawn and distracted. Too distracted to give Linda the usual glance of appraisal which, as the new young woman doctor in the district, she had come to expect.

  They went into a small sitting-room, where a man was lying back in an armchair, his large frame covered with a blanket. His shoulder was thickly swathed with sheeting.

  ‘I made him as comfortable as I could,’ said the woman, going straight to his side and taking his hand.

  ‘What happened?’