The Doctors of Downlands Read online

  Titles by Claire Rayner

  The Dr Barnabus Series

  First Blood

  Second Opinion,

  Third Degree

  Fourth Attempt

  Fifth Member

  Novels

  London Lodgings

  Paying Guests

  Reprise

  The Hive

  Family Chorus

  The Burning Summer

  The Virus Man

  Sisters

  Lunching at Laura’s

  Maddie

  Clinical Judgements

  Postscripts

  The Meddlers

  Death on the Table

  A Time to Heal

  Dangerous Things

  “Hospital” series

  The Doctors of Downlands

  Cottage Hospital

  The Final Year

  Children’s Ward

  Nurse in the Sun

  The Lonely One

  The Private Wing

  The Performers —12 books:

  Gower Street

  The Haymarket

  Paddington Green

  Soho Square

  Bedford Row

  Long Acre

  Charring Cross

  The Strand

  Chelsea Reach

  Shaftesbury Avenue

  Piccadilly

  Seven Dials

  The Poppy Chronicles

  Jubilee

  Flanders

  Flapper

  Blitz

  Festival

  Sixties

  THE DOCTORS OF DOWNLANDS

  Claire Rayner

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-84982-050-9

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  British Isles

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: [email protected]

  This revised edition, complete with new introduction, first published in Great Britain 1994

  Copyright © 1963, 1994, 2010 by Claire Rayner

  Introduction © 1993 by Claire Rayner

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The moral rights of the author to be identified as author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Rayner, Claire Doctors of Downlands

  A novel in 12 chapters

  e-ISBN 978 1 84982 050 9 January 2011

  All situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  INTRODUCTION

  By Claire Rayner

  Twenty-five or more years ago, I was a young would-be writer, trying to learn how to make my way in the world of books. I was writing for magazines and newspapers and I’d produced a couple of non-fiction books, but story-telling … that was a mystery to me. I knew I liked stories, of course; I’ve been an avid reader since before I was four years old and to this day I’m a pushover for a well-told tale. But how to tell a tale - that was the mystery.

  So much so that it simply did not occur to me that I might be able to write fiction. But I was persuaded to try my hand. And because I knew that it is a basic rule of the learner writer always to write what you know, I opted to write about hospital life. After twelve years of sweat, starch, tears and bedpans as a nurse and then a sister in a series of London hospitals, I had an intimate knowledge of how such establishments work. I also knew that a great many people love peering behind closed doors into worlds they don’t usually get the chance to experience.

  So, I had a go. I started to tell myself stories of hospital life - rather romantic, but none the worse for that - only instead of keeping them in my own head as I had when I’d been a day-dreaming youngster, I struggled to put them on paper. And to my surprise and delight I found that publishers were willing to have a go, and gamble on me. They put my words into books - and I was delighted.

  But also a bit embarrassed. I know it isn’t an attractive trait to admit to, but there it is - I was a bit of a snob in those days. Not a social snob, you understand, but an intellectual snob. I had the notion that stories like these were a bit ‘ordinary’, that what really mattered was Literature with a capital ‘L’ and I knew perfectly well I wasn’t writing that! So instead of using my own name on my first published attempts at story-telling, I borrowed my sister’s first name and a surname from elsewhere in my family. And Sheila Brandon was born.

  Now I am no longer a literary snob. I know that any storytelling that gives pleasure and interest to readers is nothing to be ashamed of and has a right to exist. It may not be Literature, but then what is? Dickens was just a story-teller in his own time, the equivalent of the writers of ‘Eastenders’ and ‘Coronation Street’. Today he is revered as a Classic. Well, these stories of mine are never going to be classics, but I don’t think, now I re-read them, that I need blush too much for them. So, here they are, the first efforts of my young writing years, under my own name at last. I hope you enjoy them. Let me know, either way!

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was all I could do to hear my own voice above the noise of the trains shunting past the nearby platforms, the porters’ shouts, the rattle of mail trolleys, and all the rest of the hubbub of a main London terminus, let alone hear David’s. Which was just as well, really. The whole thing was so miserable and difficult that having to shout at each other made it somehow easier to control the way we were feeling. And I didn’t have to be told in so many words how David was feeling - I knew. I knew because I felt the same way.

  It had all happened so quickly. There we had been, jogging along happily, David at University but living at home with Dad, me blissfully happy at the Royal as a paediatric house physician, seeing a lot of Charles -

  And then, the whole word had come tumbling round my ears. The coronary attacks that had snuffed out Dad’s life so suddenly and so cruelly had forced me out of my happy job, forced me to find another one where I could earn more, enough not only to keep myself but to keep young David at University to finish his training.

  “But I’ve got to,” I’d explained to Charles, when he’d told me brusquely that I was being absurd to sacrifice my career for a young brother who probably wouldn’t appreciate it anyway. “My father did it for me, Charles - he worked eighty hours a week, fifty-two weeks a year, running his workshop and looking after us after my mother died. He put me through University, and always swore he’d do the same for David. Well, he started the job, and - and I’ve got to finish it for him.”

  I’d swallowed hard and managed not to cry, because Charles hated weeping women.

  “You must see that, Charles. And David will appreciate it, I know he will. Oh, he’s a bit wild, I know that - but most boys of eighteen are a bit wild - I daresay you were.” Charles had shaken his head irritably, but I’d persisted.

  “Anyway, there it is. Maybe - maybe, later on, once David’s through his course and can earn his own living I’ll be able to - to come back. Back to paediatrics, I mean.”

  And I’d blushed absurdly. Why not admit to him that I was as miserable at leaving him behind in London as at leaving my absorbing job? But I couldn’t, not to Charles, remote and handsome Charles who made me feel so very odd whenever I caught sight of his tall figure striding through the hospital corridors.

  But that w
as something I’d never see again, I thought bleakly, as I leaned out of the train window and tried to hear what David was shouting. And I’d have to get used to the idea somehow -

  “- only a fiver, Flip,” David bawled, looking up at me appealingly, and I sighed, and began to riffle through my handbag.

  “I can’t do this often, David,” I shouted back. “I’ll be sending your board and lodging money to your landlady every week, and I’ll send you some spending money whenever I can, but you’ll have to manage somehow on your grant -”

  David crinkled his eyes at me in that familiar wicked way of his, and miserable though I was, I had to grin back at him.

  “I mean it,” I said, trying to sound severe. “We’re on our own now, feller. Dad - Dad isn’t there to see you through the way he used to, and I won’t have that much to play with - not as a country GP -”

  But I said the last words so quietly he couldn’t hear them, for I didn’t want him to. It wasn’t David’s fault I had to take a dreary job in a dreary town miles from the London I loved, buried in the backwaters of medicine. Dad had made a doctor of me, and I’d promised him, in that terrifying time between his first and second heart attacks, during that brief half hour when he knew he was dying and tried to tell me what to do, I’d promised him that David would be a lawyer, promised him I’d see the boy through. So that was that.

  There was a new and even noisier bustle at the far end of the train, and a shudder ran through it. I leaned out of the window in a madly precarious fashion, and hugged David hard.

  “Take care of yourself, feller,” I said, and I couldn’t help letting the tears drip down my nose. “Call me if you need me, you hear? But Heaven help you if you act the fool and get yourself into trouble - I’ll murder you.”

  And I managed to smile through my tears, and stayed leaning out of the window watching his slight figure dwindle and finally disappear as the train curled away from the platform, gathering speed as it slid past the sooty old houses and dingy factories, the soaring new blocks of flats and tangled ribbons of railway lines, heading for the middle of England.

  The trouble with train journeys is that they give you too much time to think. I sat curled up in the corner of the compartment, glad I had it to myself so that I could repair the ravages to my make-up that my tears had made, trying to read the Lancet and the British Medical Journal.

  But it was no good. I let the heavy journals slide off my lap and stared out at the wintry fields and woods, chilly under the thin morning sunshine of early spring, hardly seeing them.

  Tetherdown. What sort of place would it be? I hadn’t been able to find out. No one I knew had ever heard of the place, let alone been there. Somewhere between Fenbridge and Droitwich, that was all I knew, serving as the market centre for a farming area, but with a small industrial estate on the outskirts that was bringing new prosperity to a sleepy town. That was what Dr Redmond had told me when he had come up to London to interview me for the job as assistant to the practice.

  “It’s a rare treat for me to come up to town, my dear,” he’d said to me over lunch at the Royal. “And an even rarer one to come back here to my own old hospital.”

  He’d sighed sharply and added: “It’s just as well, I suppose. Let an old codger like me loose here, and I’d make a sorry fool of myself, wouldn’t I? I make a good country doctor - I’d really be a fool if I didn’t know that - but here with all these high-powered people - well!” And he’d looked across the dining-room to the table where the senior consultants sat in their lordly seclusion and for a moment looked sad.

  “I’d hoped, once, you know, I’d hoped - pathology, that was my fancy. But it wasn’t meant, so I’m just a country GP -”

  He’d looked at me then, and laughed and patted my hand, and said: “And very glad to be one, and looking forward to having you join us in the practice. It’s worthwhile work you know, very worthwhile, and immensely interesting. So don’t think you’ll be bored, now, because you won’t, I promise you -”

  But his reassurance cut no ice at all with me. General practice was a dead loss, I could see that. The backwater of a career, a waste of ambition. And because of the cruel, heartbreaking accident of a coronary attacking poor Dad’s over-worked heart, that was the backwater where I was to be washed up, where I was to flounder my frustrated ambition away. And a wave of resentment washed over me, making me feel sick with dull anger.

  It’s not fair, I thought childishly. I was going to be Dr Phillipa Fenwick, the paediatrician to whom the profession would look for guidance on all aspects of child health. I was going to be the best damned specialist in the diseases of children there could be. And now what? Dr Phillipa Fenwick, dreary dingy country GP. That was what -

  But then I shook myself, and said aloud: “Stop it, idiot.” It was idiotic to moan like this, to feel sorry for myself. It couldn’t be helped, and anyway - and now a wave of optimism came up and sent the resentment away - anyway, it was only for a little while. Three more years, and David would have qualified, be ready to make his own way without my help. And I’d still be only twenty-seven then - still have time to get back on to the road I’d planned for myself.

  But what about Charles? a secret voice whispered. Where does he fit into all this? Will he still be there three years from now, still be waiting for you?

  I let myself think about Charles, painful though it was. He was such an exciting man, so very much what any young woman would dream about. Already a consultant physician, although he was only thirty-three, devastatingly good-looking with his prematurely grey hair that made him look so distinguished, his tall shapely body, his tapering elegant hands.

  When he’d first noticed me, first asked me to dine with him, I’d been flattered - any girl would be. Me, just a humble junior house physician being squired by the most eligible man on the hospital staff!

  Almost without my noticing it, feeling flattered had changed to feeling excited. It had startled me, the way my heart would lurch when I saw him come into the wards or the out-patient clinics. I had started to watch for him, and when that first dinner date had been followed by another, and another, and then a visit to a theatre, I had found myself slipping fast into a state of bemused adoration.

  And then, only a month ago, just before Dad’s death, there had been that hospital dance. And afterwards he had driven me back to the hospital, and leaned over and kissed me goodnight before opening the car door, and I had melted with delight. He’d said nothing about how he’d felt for me, but I had hoped, perhaps one day - Any girl would have felt the same way.

  But Dad had died, and I’d had to resign from the Royal, seek a better paid job in general practice, and Charles - had Charles really understood? Oh, he’d said we’d meet again, whenever I could come up to town, and said vaguely he’d try to visit me in Tetherdown when he could - but nothing definite had been arranged. So what would happen? Would he forget me?

  I’ll write to him, I promised myself. Just a friendly letter telling him how I am, asking after him, hinting delicately that I miss him - because miss him I knew I would. I did already.

  The train slowed, rattled over points, and slid noisily into Fenbridge station, and I leaned forward to look out of the window, curious to see something of the area. This was the first time I’d been to this part of England. My heart sank as I saw the grim dirty buildings that flanked the big station, smelled the dust and smoke that filled the air. Would Tetherdown be as dingy as this? It was a hateful thought.

  I leaned back in my seat, and stretched my legs wearily. I was tired already. The door of the carriage rattled and opened abruptly just as the whistle blew and the train started to move forwards and, too slowly, I pulled my legs back. Too slowly, because the man who got in fell sprawling across my feet to land with a painful crunch on the grubby floor.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I gasped, and jumped up to help him. The train was gathering speed now, and I lost my balance, so that I lurched and landed against him, just as he was getting awkwa
rdly to his feet - and the poor man went headlong again.

  I couldn’t help it. I sat on the floor beside him in the lurching train and laughed aloud. He looked so silly, sitting there rubbing his head, and I felt so silly sitting beside him with my admittedly brief skirt rucked up, showing a great deal more of my white tights than any respectable doctor should.

  He glowered at me, and got up, making no attempt to help me, and I scrambled to my feet and said again: “I am sorry - but it was funny, wasn’t it?”

  He brushed his hands over his dusty overcoat and scowled at me. He was a big man, with a craggy sort of face and broad hefty shoulders that made his coat look strained across his chest.

  “Is it funny?” he snapped. “That’s a matter of opinion. I find the humour of the situation escapes me.”

  “Brr,” I said, a little pertly and with a mock shiver. “Have I upset your dignity? I can’t do more than apologize, can I?”

  He looked at me with such patent dislike in his face that I began to feel irritable myself.

  “Anyway, it was as much your fault as mine,” I said sharply. “If you planned things better, you wouldn’t catch trains by the skin of your teeth - you’d be able to get on them with the dignity that seems to matter to you so much.”

  He opened his mouth to answer, and then snapped it shut again, and turned to pick up the big briefcase he had dropped as he fell over my feet.

  “Women,” he said over his shoulder, as he pulled open the door to the corridor. “You’re not safe out without someone to keep you out of trouble. If you’ll take my advice, in future you’ll keep your long legs” - and he stared at my brief skirt with sharp disapproval written all over his face - “to yourself.” And he slid the door to with a snap and disappeared along the corridor.