Girl's Guide to Kissing Frogs (12 page)

‘Poor Kate. It sounds awful. But I suppose everyone’s lives look like torture if you get close to them.’

I wanted to protest that mine didn’t, but we were approaching the tricky turn. I shut my eyes again until we had rolled to a standstill by the front door. Rafe got out and came round to open my door.

‘I shan’t come in. Dimpsie’ll be busy getting supper. Give her my love.’

‘All right.’ He helped me out of the car, put me on the crutches and guided me to the door. ‘Thank you so much for bringing me home.’

This time I did not extend my cheek. He gave my arm a squeeze and got back into the car. I waved as he drove off. His manner was friendly and unconstrained, almost brotherly. Probably I should conclude that he was not attracted to me. Was it just wounded vanity that made me feel for a moment quite disappointed?

I found Dimpsie in the kitchen – from where it was impossible to hear the telephone ring – pounding chickpeas to a slurry.

‘Sorry, darling. I forgot you were going to call. I decided to make some houmous to go with the parsnip pudding.’

My father came in, threw himself into the armchair by the Aga, and picked up the newspaper without looking at either of us. ‘When’s supper?’

‘About half an hour.’

‘Make it twenty minutes, would you? I’m going out and I shan’t be back until late.’

I had heard him come home the night before, long after the household had gone to bed. Presumably Mrs Trumball was getting a thorough medical overhaul. Though I had never met the woman, I hated her.

‘Busy day?’ Dimpsie asked brightly.

‘When am I not busy? The antenatal clinic is hardly a picnic. Fat, ugly women, who haven’t the intelligence to use contraception, determined to add yet more repellent half-wits to the population.’

‘I’m afraid it’s a busy surgery tomorrow,’ said Dimpsie apologetically, though it could hardly be her fault. ‘Have you thought any more about advertising for a receptionist? Of course I’m delighted to help out, but I’m beginning to worry about the craft shop. I’ve had a letter from the accountant. He wants to come and do an audit but everything’s in such a muddle—’

My father turned a page. ‘If you think that flogging a collection of tasteless artefacts to ignorant tourists is more important than the effective practice of medicine, you must be even more stupid than I had previously thought.’

‘Please,’ I said, feeling myself grow hot, ‘don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ My father looked at me for the first time that evening and I sensed that behind the cold, still features there was hidden a smile of pleasure.

‘Don’t bully her.’

‘You have an inflated idea of your own importance. You stay away for years at a time, then the moment you come home you presume to interfere between your mother and me.’

My heart began to pound. ‘One of the reasons I don’t come home is because I hate seeing you being so … so horrible to Dimpsie.’

‘Really?’ His tone was sarcastic. His eyes behind the rimless lenses were keen with enjoyment. He cracked the joints of his
long white fingers, as though preparing to pluck out an inflamed appendix. I knew he had once operated on that very kitchen table and saved a boy’s life when bad weather had prevented even a helicopter from reaching the village. ‘Let me put that intermittently troubled conscience at rest. Dimpsie, do you have any complaints about the way I treat you?’

‘Oh no, Tom!’ My mother paused in the process of chopping parsnips to send him a placatory glance. ‘Of course not. You see, darling,’ she looked at me, ‘when people have been married as long as we have, we don’t need to observe ordinary courtesies. Besides, all that sort of thing’s rather conventional, isn’t it, really? Our relationship is different.’

I recalled with acute pain the image of my mother stretched out on the sofa with the empty bottle beside her. But if the princess doesn’t want to be rescued, it is absolutely no good bolting on armour and taking up one’s sword. There was a ghastly familiarity about the argument. We had had something like it each time I came home. And always my father, with my mother’s collaboration, won.

‘If you really give a damn about your mother,’ my father looked down at his newspaper, ‘you might think of standing in for her at the surgery. It doesn’t require a university degree or even a superior intelligence to answer the telephone and make appointments.’

‘All right.’ I knew it was game, set and match to him. ‘I will.’

It may not have needed a degree, but conducting an orderly surgery was much more complicated than I could have imagined.

Dimpsie took me the next morning to the house in the high street where my father had his practice. We arrived half an hour before the first appointment so I could find out where everything was. There was already a queue of four people waiting outside. I could hear the telephone ringing inside as Dimpsie tried each key in turn of a large bunch. When she found it, the rush to get inside almost knocked me off my crutches.

‘This is the appointments book,’ Dimpsie explained as I seated myself behind the desk. ‘Ten minutes each. Emergencies to be fitted into cancellations or at the end.’

‘How do I know if it’s an emergency?’

‘Well …’ My mother made eyes at me and lowered her voice. She had her back to the four early birds who had already taken their seats and were picking over the pile of tattered magazines on the table as though they were desirable worms. ‘You’ve got to use your judgement. If it’s someone very young or very old, better be on the safe side and fit them in anyway. Otherwise ask a few questions. Use a little psychology.’

‘I don’t think I know any.’

‘Here’s where you make the list of house calls.’ She indicated
a pad already covered with incomprehensible messages in her own flamboyant writing with its Greek ‘e’s and circles over the ‘i’s instead of dots. ‘Remember Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are hospital afternoons. Dr Chatterji takes surgery on those evenings.’

‘Dr Chatterji?’

‘Dr Nichols retired last year. Poor fellow, none of the patients would see him. They insisted on waiting until Tom was free.’ Dimpsie sounded gratified by this mark of confidence in my father’s proficiency, but actually Dr Nichols had been blind, deaf and on two sticks when I had last met him four years ago. ‘They won’t see Dr Chatterji either. It’s very embarrassing.’

‘Is he blind, deaf and lame too?’

‘No, he’s young and healthy. It’s a communication problem. And I have to admit people round here are absurdly prejudiced against anyone … you know, different. He’s Indian. Poor chap, he finds the English winter awfully trying. The patients complain that they can’t understand anything he says and they’re convinced he’s going to prescribe snake juice instead of antibiotics. But no one else wanted to come all the way up here so your father had to take him.’ Dimpsie looked harassed. ‘See if you can persuade some of them to see Dr Chatterji. I’m afraid he must feel awfully rejected.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Anyway, this cabinet has the medical records. You have to find the relevant folders and put them on Tom’s desk before each surgery begins. They’re alphabetical. More or less.’

Less proved to be the case. We hunted through every drawer for Mrs Wagstaffe’s notes, she being the first patient, and found them among the Bs. Mrs Copthorne’s were in the S’s and Mr Darwin’s were in the downstairs lavatory.

‘Sorry,’ said Dimpsie, returning with them in her hand. ‘I remember now I was sorting the notes yesterday afternoon, trying to get ahead, and then I dashed to the loo.’

The telephone had been ringing nonstop while we hunted,
and already I was feeling hot and flustered. Dimpsie picked up the receiver. ‘Surgery,’ she said crisply, then, ‘Oh hello, Brenda. How are you? I was meaning to ring you. Must be telepathy … how are the peg-bags getting on? We ought to have, say half a dozen … oh, I think the patchwork … they seem to be the most popular.’

Brenda replied at length and wittily, judging by Dimpsie’s peals of laughter, while I slowly built up a pile of folders. I imagined small children, who had accidentally run shards of glass into their necks, bleeding to death while the peg-bag question was resolved. Old ladies with heart attacks lying beside the telephone, their lives ebbing away, just able to tap in the doctor’s number with a feeble forefinger only to hear the engaged signal. Just as I discovered the file for the last patient on the list, which had slipped down behind the cabinet, my father came in.

‘I’ve been trying to ring in for ten minutes,’ he said angrily.

I handed him the heap of folders while Dimpsie, looking guilty, put the receiver back on its rest. Immediately it shrilled with what seemed to me bloodcurdling urgency.

‘Deal with that,’ he snapped at me, ‘then ring the nurse on duty and tell her to go to this address.’ He put a slip of paper down in front of me. ‘It’s an oh-two. I’ve put in a morphine pump, tell her. She’ll see what else needs to be done.’ He picked up the armful of files. ‘Coffee on my desk in five minutes with the first patient.’

He went into his consulting room.

‘I think the nurses’ roster is in this drawer.’ Dimpsie burrowed, making a terrible mess.

‘Could this be it?’ I pointed to a torn scrap of paper lying by the telephone entitled
Duty Nurse Tel Nos
. ‘It says,’ I tried to make sense of the several crossings out, ‘
Tuesday
–
Rita
Bunker
.’

I rang Nurse Bunker, explained that I was the new receptionist and that Dr Savage had asked me to give her a message.

She was evidently still eating breakfast. There was a terrific
crunching on the line that sounded like toast. ‘He didn’t say he’d got a new girl. Just as well, though. Between you and me, dear, you couldn’t find a kinder heart than Mrs Savage’s but she’s not much of an organizer to say the least and she has to quench her thirst a bit too often if you know what I mean—’

‘This is Dr Savage’s daughter speaking,’ I said hastily.

‘Ooh! Sorry if I’ve spoken out of turn. You should have said.’

‘Yes, I know. Never mind.’

‘What’s the message then?’

‘You’re to go to a Mrs Hatch, 15, Melton Lane. It’s a case with a number – oh-two, I think.’

Nurse Bunker laughed. ‘That’s it, dear. O-T-W-O. Doctor’s code. It means “On The Way Out”. The poor old thing isn’t going to be with us much longer. I’d better get over there. Ta ta, dear.’

‘Ta ta,’ I said without thinking and got a surprised look from my mother.

The telephone rang the minute I put it down.

‘’Tis wor Jack,’ said a female voice. ‘He’s got the skittors like Niagara Falls. And there’s blood pouring out of his ears. He’s very bad.’

I was alarmed by this description. ‘Perhaps you ought to take him straight to hospital.’

‘He don’t hold with hospitals, pet. He wouldna gan if he was at death’s door. Which he may well be.’

‘In that case I’d better put you down for a house call. Could I have the patient’s full name, please?’

‘Cyril John Chandler,’ said the voice. I wrote it down on the appropriate list. ‘But Doctor needn’t trouble himself to come out. If he’ll just sign a sickie, Jack’ll fetch it up from the surgery this afternoon.’

‘But won’t he be too ill? Surely he ought to be seen before then?’

Dimpsie glanced at my note, then took the receiver from me. ‘Is that Mrs Chandler? I’m afraid Dr Savage won’t give Mr Chandler another sick note unless he comes to the surgery for
a thorough check-up.’ She put the receiver down. ‘Jack Chandler hasn’t done a day’s work for months. They’re always trying it on.’

‘How am I to know these things?’

‘You’ll get the hang of it.’

Dimpsie left soon after that to go to the craft shop which was further down the high street. I limped into the kitchen to make my father a cup of coffee as instructed. I was thirsty myself from a combination of nervousness and the radiant heater above the reception desk, which beat down on the top of my head until I thought my scalp might burst into flames. A bottle labelled ‘lemonade’ in Dimpsie’s writing stood on the draining board. I made three separate journeys between the kitchen and the desk with the glass, the bottle and the coffee. Mrs Wagstaffe, seeing that I was encumbered by my leg, obligingly took the mug in with her.

The telephone rang constantly. I found I was entirely lacking in psychological insight. Every caller wanting an emergency appointment described their symptoms so colourfully that I soon felt sick, imagining streams of vomit, blood-laced evacuations, pus-filled carbuncles and gangrenous limbs. I searched in vain for a means of turning off the fire that continued to sear my brains. I gulped down the lemonade. It had a slightly bitter taste, no doubt produced by the lemon pips which swam about among shreds of pith. Patients not only came to see my father but to make appointments with Nurse Bunker and Nurse Keppel for vaccinations, ear syringing, blood tests and verruca removal. A good many of them recognized me as Doctor Savage’s daughter and wanted a thorough debriefing about my career, my boyfriends, my salary, my health, and my opinion of the north of England as opposed to the south. I quickly learned that any tentative suggestion that there was anything to be said for living in the south, such as less rain or a greater variety of shops, gave grave offence. Meanwhile the telephone screamed incessantly.

A man so thickly muffled in coats and scarves that I could
only see a pair of sad brown eyes beneath his bobble cap muttered something indistinguishable and disappeared into the other consulting room. I gathered this was Dr Chatterji. I remembered my mission to get him some patients.

‘You’ve broke your leg, I see,’ said Mrs Niddercombe, after she had explained in unnecessary detail about her troubled waterworks. ‘All that nasty concrete in London. It’s surprising it’s only the one. Most likely you’ll have a limp. My sister’s eldest boy broke his leg two years ago. Now all the dogs bark at him. Dogs don’t like handicapped people, do they? They sense they aren’t like the rest of us.’

‘Would you excuse me while I answer the telephone? Hello. Surgery. Is it an emergency? We’re very busy this morning. How old is the patient? Four months?
Green
stools? Good
heavens!
Oh, no, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about – yes, all right. Bring him in at twelve.’ I put down the receiver.

‘Are you okay, dear?’ Mrs Niddercombe asked solicitously. ‘You’re looking a bit green yourself.’

I did not feel at all well. The room was going round and I was having difficulty focusing my eyes. ‘I feel … giddy … and a bit sick—’

‘Sick!’ said Mrs Niddercombe. ‘There’s nothing you can tell me about
that!
Every pregnancy I’ve been sick as a gissie! Couldn’t
look
at a cream cake. Them ones with butter cream and chocolate icing with a glassy cherry on top used to be me favourite, but whenever I was expecting just one look int’ baker’s shop window and I’d feel me gorge rise … where are you going?’

I hobbled as fast as I could towards the cloakroom.

‘I’ll answer this phone, shall I?’ she called after me. ‘Surgery. No, Doctor’s too busy to see anyone,’ I heard her say as I leaned over the lavatory. ‘Well, I can’t help that. Give him a dose of castor oil or some senna pods …’ was the last thing that was audible above the sound of my own retching.

Afterwards I felt marginally better. I finished the lemonade,
pressed a Kleenex to my perspiring brow and addressed myself to the task of removing something unpleasantly sticky from the pencil which made writing in the appointments book unnecessarily difficult. It looked horribly like a body secretion. I was relieved to discover later a lidless pot of glue in the drawer from which I had taken the pencil.

‘Hello,’ said a cool voice as I tried to scrape the stuff from my fingers. Standing in front of the desk was a woman wearing a coat of what I thought might be mink. Concealing her hair was a cone-shaped hat of dark brown suede trimmed with matching fur. Her eyes were hidden by sunglasses and her mouth by scarlet lipstick. The waiting room had gone deathly quiet as everyone stared at this modish apparition. Amid the anoraks, cycling capes and woolly hats, she looked like a peacock among crows. ‘You
have
got yourself into a state. Why don’t you answer that telephone before we all go crazy?’

It was Nurse Bunker with a message for Doctor to say that 02 was now 4B and would he pop down later and do the DC.

‘When you’ve finished,’ said the cool voice as I scribbled all this down, ‘I’d like to see a doctor.’

‘Is it urgent?’ I asked.

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Name, please.’ I swivelled round to the cabinet.

‘Marcia Dane.’

Between C and E were nothing but L’s. ‘Address, please.’

‘The Old Rectory. But you won’t find me in your files. I’ve only just moved in. I was rather hoping that I’d be able to register with the local quack if he’s at all house-trained. It’d be a bore to have to go all the way to Carlisle.’

The waiting room pullulated with interest.

‘I’ll take your details.’ I wished I could focus my eyes on her face. Whenever I tried the room seemed to buck and rear in an alarming way. ‘Miss or Mrs?’

‘Divorced. So let’s settle for Mizz. I like ambiguity.’ She laughed, a long peal that descended the scale.

‘I’ll ask Dr Chatterji if he’s got room on his list and let you know. Telephone number, please?’

‘The dhoolie-wallah? No thanks. I hear Dr Savage is competent. But I need to meet him first to see if I like him. After all, I might have to take off my clothes in front of him. One doesn’t want just
any
one exploring one’s secret places.’

A current of excited whispering ran round the waiting room.

I stared up at the black lenses that seemed slowly to revolve. ‘If you’ll wait until the end of – hic – surgery, I’ll ask if he’ll see you before he rows on his grounds.’

The buzzer sounded like an angry bee trapped by a window pane.

‘Don’t bother. I’ll go in now.’

Before the next patient could straighten his arthritic joints she had undulated into Tom’s consulting room and closed the door behind her. I closed my eyes and waited for the explosion. The waiting room seemed to hold its breath. Even the telephone ceased to shrill trilly. Or was it trill shrilly?

‘Marigold? Marigold!’ I sat up with a start.

My father was leaning over the desk shaking my arm. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing … just the heat … if only I could turn off the fire.’

‘I think she’s drunk.’ Marcia Dane’s scarlet lips were stretched wide with amusement.