This wasn’t helping. I tried a different tack. ‘We all have to charge people. How would you feel if I asked about your decision to buy your way into your present practice? You must have done it, after all, on the principle that you would make a reasonable rate of return?’
It was an utterly foolish thing to say. I made him laugh. Then he countered cheerfully, ‘My whole livelihood is about to be adjusted to make things easier for people who have every need of my expertise but no means of paying the fee, just as soon as the new National Health Service comes in.’
It was at times like these that I felt very much the newcomer to this town. I didn’t know this man very well and I didn’t know how honest I ought to be. Particularly when, to him, I wasn’t myself, as such. I was clearly being cast again as Mrs Lucinda Peuse, typist and telephonist and present representative of Kershaw and Kathay Book Press.
I said more sensibly, ‘I’m sorry. I’m doing a terrible job of explaining how our style of publishing service is truly very valuable. In no small way, it is testimony to my uncle’s commitment to his work that the effects of the war have never made him miss a step. Our authors come to us because we still care to make the special books that mightn’t sell in the thousands but still are absolutely valuable to the reading world at large. I think Miss Prichard’s manuscript is set to become one of those special books.’
And it was then that I realised that it sounded as though I had just reduced Miss Prichard’s effort to the level of frivolous nonsense. Only it wasn’t fair because I always seemed humbling myself at the moment and discovering that I didn’t know my job. I had thought that the feeling might be because I was a woman and I often seemed to be justifying myself to men. But actually, in this instance, the issue of gender was clearly irrelevant because in the next breath the doctor proved that he wasn’t trying to ridicule me. He betrayed his true interest. He was concerned about Robert.
The doctor gave a brief smile that lightly bared his teeth. ‘You have to understand that I’m just trying to be a good friend to my landlady. But this Mr Underhill. He isn’t even a book man is he? He only joined your uncle’s business in the spring. He was going to be a doctor and then he was a prisoner of war. You can’t tell me that the Germans ran an extensive library in their camps. So how is a man like that even qualified to tell a person how to write a better book?’
I didn’t like to say that I didn’t know how Robert had got the job either; that I didn’t even know the practicalities of how he had met my uncle.
Instead I replied, ‘That is probably why he’s so good at it, shouldn’t you say? He experienced all that and now he’s here. And I can ask you about bookishness since you really are a doctor. Didn’t you have to do an awful lot of reading when you were a medical student?’
‘Oh,’ said Doctor Bates. I saw it pass across his mouth – that urge to pursue his cause, followed swiftly by a certain degree of gratification for the compliment. That mouth conceded, ‘Well yes, I did have to read extensively. Great volumes of studies and all sorts of journals and so on. Medicine is a language all in its own right, you know. In fact, I’m sure you do know, Mrs P, because you’re observant. But …’
I caught his sideways glance. Flattery could be applied as a counterattack too it seemed. Then he gave it up. He abruptly looked at the road ahead and used it as a cue to set his hat upon his head.
In a voice that was suddenly brisk and undisguised, he remarked, ‘We’re coming into Stow. Thank you for answering my questions. Will you tell Mr Underhill that I’ve advised Miss Prichard to take another look at the offer she might have from Nuneham’s? Let’s help the old lady along a little at the very least, shall we, you and I?’
‘I thought you’d encouraged her to submit her work to us in the first place?’ I was thinking of that vague insinuation Robert had made.
But the doctor only said, ‘No. She didn’t discuss it with me beforehand. So, what about that rival offer – will you tell him what I said?’
The bus was swinging to a fearsome stop in a small town that seemed even colder and greyer than Moreton. And then he was rising to his feet and I was putting out a hand as if to check him, only to have to use it instead as a brace against the rim of the furthermost seat in front of me as the bus lurched towards the kerb.
I was saying quickly, ‘Just a moment. Since we’re speaking of helping people, can you tell me if I need to worry about the health of my aunt or uncle?’
It was only afterwards that I realised my plea had sounded like a barter for assistance. A trade of his particular knowledge for mine.
Then his answer came, and it was given so crisply that it released me once again, even to the extent of giving me a reproof. The doctor told me with absolute decision, ‘I’m bound by certain rules of privacy, Mrs P. I can’t discuss my patients, not even with you.’
The bus stopped. I sat back in my seat, disappointed and absurdly conscious of just how much I was worrying about them.
He must have seen. I thought he had stepped away down the bus but then I felt his gaze upon my face. Without straying back into that peculiar territory of obligation, the man beneath the smartly brimmed hat somehow drew my eye and said steadily above the clatter from the departing passengers, ‘I can suggest that there are no serious conversations you need to be having with your aunt and uncle on that score, in the immediate future. Will that do?’
My heart jerked once in my chest.
I gave a nod. ‘Thank you.’
‘And we might meet sometime to discuss the rest, if you like?’ He wasn’t offering a trade. And it wasn’t only a remark on our respective cares for aging people – or the way his concern for his landlady and mine for my aunt and uncle might unite us after all.
But before I could flounder into deciphering what he was offering, he’d allowed himself to be swept at last into the tide of descending passengers.
As he went, his final words were, ‘In the meantime, you will tell him about Nuneham’s, won’t you? Good. Goodbye Mrs P.’
As I say, he didn’t really give me time in those last moments to react to the fact that I might have just been courted a little. Realisation would come later, with a useless little flustered bolt of recollection at about half past four in the afternoon as I caught the second of three buses homewards.
Instead, at this moment, while the present bus was pulling away from the stop and rattling on towards Cirencester, I was mainly preoccupied with the other strange things he had said. I was thinking about his parting request to pass on the news about the rival publisher to Robert. And I was thinking about the less obvious detail which had come a few seconds before, when the doctor had made it thoroughly clear that he was duty-bound to safeguard his patients’ private records.
He couldn’t tell me about my aunt and uncle’s health because, as a doctor, he would never discuss his patients.
It was a contradiction of the memory I had of yesterday, when the doctor had felt free enough to hint an awful lot about his views on the health of another man; my uncle’s war-damaged second-in-command.
Now I was supposed help the doctor while he negotiated a better offer for his aging landlady. But I thought the doctor’s remarks about Nuneham’s were more specific than that. He really wanted Robert to hear our rival’s name.
Christmas in Jacqueline Dunn’s house was edging its way in more swiftly than it was at my aunt’s home. Or in my attic, for that matter. I suppose it was because there were school children here. The window ledges and any high shelves were lined with fir cones and handmade characters from a nativity scene crafted out of old newspaper.
The