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 anyone 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.
My father picked up my glass and took an experimental sip of the pips and pith that lay in the bottom. ‘Mm. Lemonade. Heavily laced with vodka. Where did you get it?’
‘I found it in the kitchen.’ I stared miserably at a pile of glue-bound paperclips, feeling sick again. Wherever I looked, those red lips hovered in the middle of my vision.
To my surprise, my father began to laugh. His eyes crinkled, his mouth opened, his face was convulsed with amusement. For the first time I understood why women found him attractive. With us, at home, he was always cold and sarcastic. But when he was in a good humour, he had a vitality that was alluring.
Marcia Dane tapped on the desk with a long red fingernail to attract my attention. ‘Make me one of your little folders, darling. I’ve decided to sign on.’
My father took me home after surgery without waiting for Dimpsie.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said. ‘I never drink spirits so I didn’t recognize the taste. I suppose it’ll be the talk of the village.’
‘Oh, for a while.’ He shrugged. ‘Let them. Little minds.’
We drove the rest of the way in silence apart from the noise of the engine as the gearbox coped with the hills, the squish of tyres on the slushy snow and the sound of my father humming. Despite my abysmal failure as a receptionist, he seemed in an excellent mood. He took the dangerous turn with precision and pulled up beside the front door. ‘Go to bed.’ He handed me a bottle of pills. ‘Take two with water. They might help the hangover.’
‘Thank you. I’m awfully sorry,’ I said again as I leaned into the back to get out my crutches.
‘I may not be in for supper. Tell your mother to leave something in the bottom oven.’
He put the car into reverse to turn round. I just had time to draw back my plastered foot before it was crushed by the back wheels.
The next morning I arrived at the surgery a full hour before the first appointment. With the aid of a crutch I directed the bowl of the heater to reflect its fire into the centre of the waiting room. I sent Dimpsie off to the craft shop to do her accounting, made myself some tea and settled down to sorting the medical notes into alphabetical order. After a good night’s sleep my head had ceased to pound and the whites of my eyes were clear. Filing is easy mechanical work and I quite enjoyed it. By the time the telephone woke up I had already worked my way down to the third drawer.
‘Surgery,’ I said briskly.
‘Hello, Marigold,’ said a man’s voice, ‘you do sound efficient. It’s Rafe.’
Surprise sent a shot of adrenalin to my heart.
‘How did you know I’d be here?’ I may have sounded a little defensive.
‘I rang your house just now and got Tom. Why? Is it supposed to be a secret?’
‘No. It’s just that yesterday …’ the door opened to admit the first patient of the day. I dropped my voice. ‘I can’t talk now. I’ll ring you later.’
‘Why don’t I pick you up from the surgery and take you out to lunch? Nothing grand. I know a nice little pub not far from here. One o’clock be all right?’
I saw him running athletically from the back of the Centre Court to pulverize a lob shot, driving it into the ground and winning game, set and match for England.
‘That would be lovely,’ I said primly.
He rang off just as Dr Chatterji arrived. He was wearing a red ski mask and a Chinese Army hat with the flaps tied under his chin.
‘Good morning, Dr Chatterji. Lovely day, isn’t it?’ I said brightly.
A pair of reproachful brown eyes blinked several times before he went into his consulting room to take up his lonely vigil.
Excitement was dashing through every vein in my body. I was going to have lunch with the man with whom I had been in love practically all my life – well, anyway, for long periods, if not actually continuously. It was true that I had hardly given Rafe a thought in recent years, but only because it had never occurred to me that I had the remotest chance of seeing him again.
‘Excuse me.’ A woman wearing a tweed glengarry addressed me in a tone of belligerence. ‘If I might have your attention, I’d like the next available appointment. If it’s not too much trouble for you.’
I dragged my thoughts from an inspiring picture of Rafe in a peaked cap, duffel coat and white polo-necked jersey, with binoculars slung round his neck, on the conning tower of a submarine, the surrounding sea pockmarked with exploding shells. ‘Is it an emergency?’
‘I cut myself on a rusty tin two days ago. Probably it’s tetanus. I can feel my jaw seizing up as we speak and pain shooting up my arm.’
Before
