The Doctor's Girl

Which it did, and far more rapidly than he anticipated.

Waiting for him when he reached his rooms on the following morning was Miss Priss, his receptionist-secretary. She was a thin lady of middle years, with a wispy voice and a tendency to crack her knuckles when agitated, but nevertheless she was his mainstay and prop. Even in her agitation she remembered to wish him a good morning before explaining that she had had bad news; she needed to go home at once—her mother had been taken ill and there was no one else…

Dr Fforde waited until she had drawn breath. ‘Of course you must go at once. Take a taxi and stay as long as you wish to. Dr Gregg will be back today, and I’m not busy. We shall manage very well. Have you sufficient money? Is there anyone you wish to telephone?’

‘Yes, thank you, and there is nobody to phone.’

‘Then get a taxi and I’ll ask Mrs Betts to bring you a cup of tea.’

Mrs Betts, who kept the various consulting rooms clean, was like a sparrow, small and perky and pleased to take a small part in any dramatic event.

Miss Priss, fortified by what Mrs Betts called her ‘special brew’, was seen on her way, and then Dr Fforde sat down at his desk and phoned the first agency in the phone book. Someone would come, but not until the afternoon. It was fortunate that Mr Jackson, in the rooms above him, was away for the day and his secretary agreed to take Miss Priss’s place for the morning…

The girl from the agency was young, pretty and inefficient. By the end of the next day Dr Fforde, a man with a well-controlled temper, was having difficulty in holding it in check. He let himself into his small mews house, tucked away behind a terrace of grand Georgian mansions, and went from the narrow hall into the kitchen, where his housekeeper, Mrs Duckett, was standing at the table making pastry.

She took a look at his tired face. ‘A nice cuppa is what you’re needing, sir. Just you go along to your study and I’ll bring it in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Have you had a busy day?’

He told her about Miss Priss. ‘Then you’ll have to find someone as good as her to take her pace,’ said Mrs Duckett.

He went to his study, lifted Mrs Duckett’s elderly cat off his chair and sat down with her on his knee. He had letters to write, a mass of paperwork, patients’ notes to read, and the outline of a lecture he was to give during the following week to prepare. He loved his work, and with Miss Priss to see to his consulting room and remind him of his daily appointments he enjoyed it. But not, he thought savagely, if he had to endure her replacement—the thought of another day of her silly giggle and lack of common sense wouldn’t bear contemplating.

Something had to be done, and even while he thought that he knew the answer.

Loveday had gone back from the hospital knowing that it wasn’t much use looking for work until her eye looked more normal. It would take a few days, the casualty officer had told her, but her eye hadn’t been damaged. She should bathe it frequently and come back if it didn’t improve within a day or so.

So she had gone back to the basement room with a tin of beans for lunch and the local paper someone had left on the bench beside her. It was a bit late for lunch, so she’d had an early tea with the beans and gone to bed.

A persistent faint mewing had woken her during the small hours, and when she’d opened the door into the garden a very small, thin cat had slunk in, to crouch in a corner. Loveday had shut the door, offered milk, and watched the small creature gulp it down, so she’d crumbled bread into more milk and watched that disappear too. It was a miserable specimen of a cat, with bedraggled fur and bones and it had been terrified. She’d got back into bed, and presently the little beast had crept onto the old quilt and gone to sleep.

‘So now I’ve got a cat,’ Loveday had said, and went off to sleep too.

This morning her eye was better. It was still hideously discoloured but at least she could open it a little. She dressed while she talked soothingly to the cat and presently, leaving it once more crouching there in the corner, she went to ask Mrs Slade if she knew if it belonged to anybody.

‘Bless you, no, my dear. People who had it went away and left it behind.’

‘Then would you mind very much if I had it? When I find work and perhaps have to leave here, I could take it with me.’

‘And why not? No one else will be bothered with the little creature. Yer eye is better.’

‘I went to the hospital. They said it would be fine in another day or two.’

Mrs Slade looked her up and down. ‘Got enough to eat?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Loveday. ‘I’m just going to the shops now.’

She bought milk and bread and more beans, and a tin of rice pudding because the cat so obviously needed nourishing, plus cat food and a bag of apples going cheap. Several people stopped to say what a nasty eye she had.

She and the cat had bread and butter and milk pudding for lunch, and the cat perked up enough to make feeble attempts to wash while Loveday counted her money and did sums. The pair of them got into the chair presently and dozed until it was time to boil the kettle and make tea while the cat had the last of the rice pudding.

It was bordering on twilight when there was a thump on the door. The cat got under the divan and after a moment there was another urgent thump on the door. Loveday went to open it.

‘Hello,’ said Dr Fforde. ‘May I come in?’

He didn’t wait for her to close her astonished mouth but came in and shut the door. He said pleasantly, ‘That’s a nasty eye.’

There was no point in pretending she didn’t know who he was. Full of pleasure at the sight of him, and imbued with the feeling that it was perfectly natural for him to come and see her, she smiled widely.

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘I saw you at the hospital. I’ve come to ask a favour of you.’

‘Me? A favour?’ She glanced round her. ‘But I’m hardly in a position to grant a favour.’

‘May we sit down?’ And when she was in the armchair he sat carefully on the old kitchen chair opposite. ‘But first, may I ask why you are here? You were with Miss Cattell, were you not?’

‘Well, yes, but I dropped a vase, a very expensive one…’

‘So she slapped you and sent you packing?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why are you here?’

‘Mrs Branch, she is Miss Cattell’s cook, sent me here because Mrs Slade who owns it is her sister and I had nowhere to go.’

The doctor took off his specs, polished them, and put them back on. He observed pleasantly, ‘There’s a cat under the bed.’

‘Yes, I know. He’s starving. I’m going to look after him.’

The doctor sighed silently. Not only was he about to take on a mousy girl with a black eye but a stray cat too. He must be mad!

‘The favour I wish to ask of you: my receptionist at my consulting rooms has had to return home at a moment’s notice; would you consider taking her place until she returns? It isn’t a difficult job—opening the post, answering the phone, dealing with patients. The hours are sometimes odd, but it is largely a matter of common sense.’

Loveday sat and looked at him. Finally, since he was sitting there calmly waiting for her to speak, she said, ‘I can type and do shorthand, but I don’t understand computers. I don’t think it would do because of my eye—and I can’t leave the cat.’

‘I don’t want you to bother with computers, but typing would be a bonus, and you have a nice quiet voice and an unobtrusive manner—both things which patients expect and do appreciate. As for the cat, I see no reason why you shouldn’t keep it.’

‘Isn’t it a long way from here to where you work? I do wonder why you have come here. I mean, there must be any number of suitable receptionists from all those agencies.’

‘Since Miss Priss went two days ago I have endured the services of a charming young lady who calls my patients “dear” and burst into tears because she broke her nail on the typewriter. She is also distractingly pretty, which is hardly an asset for a job such as I’m offering you. I do not wish to be distracted, and my patients have other things on their minds besides pretty faces.’

Which meant, when all was said and done, that Loveday had the kind of face no one would look at twice. Background material, that’s me, thought Loveday.

‘And where will I live?’

‘There is a very small flat on the top floor of the house where I have my rooms. There are two other medical men there, and of course the place is empty at night. You could live there—and the cat, if you wish.’

‘You really mean that?’