New Doctor at Northmoor Read Online Free

postman and the travelling shop) and the patients in her father ’ s own surgery, to say nothing about her mother ’ s whist drives and women ’ s meetings. It put any hospital grapevine to shame, but still it hadn ’ t picked up this essential bit of information about this stranger who had such an unsettling effect on Gwenny.
    She hated him. She hated him for discovering with such apparent ease that all was not well with Gwenny Kinglake, a thing she had successfully hidden from everyone so far except the perspicacious Mrs. Yeedon, who was, on her own admission, half a witch. She also hated the stranger for making everything seem different all of a sudden. Home seemed different, for a start, and it had seemed to begin with the fact that there was no plate outside and the hedge needed cutting.
    Well, she could remedy that, she thought angrily. For a start, she could go and get a pair of shears from the tool shed and clip the worst bits off, even if she didn ’ t feel she could finish the job. (If only she didn ’ t get so beastly tired and terrifyingly hot, every time she tried to do a reasonable job lately!) But on investigating the tool shed, she found she couldn ’ t get the door open. One hinge had broken, and someone had tried to yank the door open, but it now hung drunkenly and had jammed. Gwenny couldn ’ t move it. Frustrated, she looked in the window, and in a space in the middle of the film of cobwebs she could see that the shears were broken, anyway.
    The two halves lay where they had been flung, on a pile of sacks in a corner.
    Well, that was that. She could do nothing about the hedge, she supposed, but she could do something about the house. Mrs. Otts would be out for two hours. Gwenny could do a lightning rip-through, tidying the place. Mrs. Otts often said that cook she could, and straight-clean she would, but more than that she would not bring herself to do, which meant, in clear uncluttered English, that Mrs. Otts didn ’ t consider it her duty to make beds and tidy the place when there were at least five able-bodied people in the family to do their individual share.
    There was reason in that, Gwenny supposed. Her father didn ’ t pay Mrs. Otts as much as she would have got in a town, doing a similar job, but on the other hand, it suited Mrs. Otts, whose family was scattered about the village. Mrs. Otts, since her husband had died, now had no home of her own, and on her nights off she descended on her various relatives in turn, but the rest of her life was spent safely under the doctor ’ s roof. Mrs. Otts, they all considered, had very little to grumble about.
    Gwenny went slowly upstairs. Mounting the stairs did peculiar things to her, too. Her head went tight and she could see flashing little lights. She rested half way, then went up the rest, rather cross with herself. Anyone would think she could cope with a bit of liver trouble, wouldn ’ t they, without going all to pieces like this? Daddy had already recommended a glass of hot water sipped slowly, but Gwenny never had the patience to try it out.
    Upstairs, she was disheartened at once. Her mother, to be sure, made her own bed rather beautifully, but the doctor ’ s bed was merely covered. Mrs. Kinglake always said it wasn ’ t worth making it. He was in and out half the night bringing babies into the world at inconvenient times, and he lay down on it during the day whenever he got a chance, when other men were mowing the lawn or pruning the trees. So the doctor ’ s bed was permanently untidy.
    Laundry was scattered around the room. Mrs. Otts ’ sister-in-law obliged with the washing and should have collected it all today and taken it away, but Gwenny knew for a fact that Mrs. Otts ’ sister-in-law had one of her ‘ attacks .’ The screws, it was called, and she did appear to be in pain, and the only thing that ever reduced the pain was a trip into Uxmarket on the two-thirty bus every Wednesday for Bingo at the old cinema in Market