Heartbeat (Medical Romance) (7 page)

The teacher on playground duty wagged a reproving finger when a straying football thudded against the dispensary window. A few swift strokes and he was included in her scene. A group of little girls in bobbing cotton skirts—she judged them to be about seven or eight years old—whirling red and yellow hoops round and round their waists and skinny legs, counted shrilly in English. And a crocodile of tiny tots playing Follow my Leader got tangled up in the older boys' cricket—a game taken very seriously indeed, judging by the protesting cries of the enthusiastic team as the squealing children trundled heedlessly past the stumps someone had painted for them on the school wall.

Paul's handiwork, guessed the amused artist. He'd always been potty about all kinds of sport. No need for a PE master in this school.

Enchanted by the scene, Jenni’s sketchpad slipped forgotten from her lap. The headmaster, a tall African wearing serious-looking spectacles, came out of the school clanging a handbell, and the chatter and laughter ceased on the instant. The children formed orderly lines and marched back to their classrooms. Jenni glanced at her watch. Ten more minutes and it would be time to set up the ante-natal clinic.

The compound settled into a sultry stillness, the doves dozing in the gum trees, just the buzz of a distant motor—probably the bus, running an hour or so earlier today. She stretched and yawned, wriggling her warm toes and rubbing her legs which were still a whiter shade of pale …

Next instant the peace was shattered by a man’s voice, screaming horribly with pain! The noise came from behind the kitchens. Shocked, Jenni shoved her hot sticky feet back into her Birkenstocks and took the verandah steps in one leap, almost tumbling flat on her face. Regained her balance and set off at a gallop. Faces appeared at doors and windows, amazed to see the nurse they had already christened 'the fire woman', her hair tumbling over her shoulders, dashing through the red dust towards Bwana Mac, who was half carrying, half dragging a writhing African whose groans of
'Uchavi! Uchavi!
' echoed round the compound.

Between the two of them, doctor and nurse got the poor fellow into the same treatment room where twenty-four hours ago Jenni herself had received scant sympathy at the hands of Ross McDonnell.

'Stay with him,' barked Ross, striding off to the dispensary where he went into rapid consultation with Francis Mwinyi.

The man refused the treatment couch and squatted in a corner on the goat-skin seat of a native stool barely a foot off the ground, bony legs in flapping cotton trousers bent double and his shirt concertinaed about his middle.

'Uchavi!
' he continued to moan, and Jenni with a cool damp flannel wiped away the pearls of sweat running down into his eyebrows. ‘It’s all right,’ she said over and over again, crouching down and putting her arm across the bony shuddering shoulders, feeling worse than useless but trying to sound as calm and reassuring as possible. 'The doctor—
Mganga
—he will make you better.'

Ross's legs suddenly appeared in her line of vision, an impressive pair of hard-muscled thighs right on a level with her eyes. 'He keeps saying something that sounds like
uchavi
,’ she said urgently.

'He thinks he's been poisoned by the witch doctor—some quarrel in his village with another man. I found him by the roadside, trying to drag himself here.'

'Poison? Oh, good grief!' What antidote could there possibly be for a witch doctor's lethal concoction.

Assuming water was all Ross could offer, Jenni reached up to take the enamel mug from him but he brushed her aside so roughly that a few drops splashed down the front of her uniform. Starting at the sensation of cool liquid on bare skin, she glanced down at herself in some surprise—and with mortification realised why the doctor had rebuffed her helping hand.

'Sorry,' she muttered, fastening the poppers down her front. 'I was sunbathing, that’s all.'

Ross didn't need to comment. His thoughts were writ clear all over his sardonic face.
Daft little freckled Pom, you won't last five minutes out here.
He squatted down beside his patient.

'Dawa ya nguvu!
—powerful medicine!'

Wrong-footed yet again, Jenni watched in silence as their patient swallowed the drink in great gurgling gulps, his hands shaking so much that Ross had to hold the mug to his lips. When every drop was drained, the sick African fell back against the wall, exhausted.

Jenni didn't relish witnessing the dying spasms of a poisoned man.

With surprising gentleness Ross lifted the thin figure bodily and placed him, unresisting now, on the treatment couch. For the next three minutes the two watched intently as the stiff neck relaxed, the head sinking into the pillow, the groans becoming sighs of weariness.

At last the doctor spoke, and his voice was quiet with a relief which Jenni readily shared. 'He'll be OK. We can leave him to sleep it off and then he can go back to his home.'

He opened the door and waited for Jenni. 'Come on, milkmaid, time to get the next show on the road.'

Jenni walked past him with her nose in the air.
I know your game, you’re trying to provoke me so you can tell Paul I don't fit in with your precious team. Well, you're going to be disappointed because I plan to stay cool till I've been here long enough to prove my worth. After that, Ross the Boss, when the time comes I shall ex-plode!

'I
f it’s not a cheeky question' said Jenni at supper that night, 'what exactly is this?'

‘Goat's meat stew,’ said Paul. 'Often on the menu,' he said, adding with a wink, 'unfortunately. Seconds, Ross?’

The doctor was sitting opposite them at the long trestle table. He shook his head.

'It’s bit like eating stringy chewing gum,' muttered Jenni, massaging an aching jaw.

Matt looked up from his laden plate and guffawed. 'Dead right, babe!'

They were serving themselves from a giant stewpot, adding a helping of the thick maize porridge called
ugali
. Matt handed along a dish of sliced carrots and spinach. 'Try this—real good.'

'When I first came out here,’ Paul reminisced, ‘what I missed most was Jenni's mother's home cooking. Ah, those potato soups … and the Irish stews simmering on the Aga.'

‘And the porridge,’ she reminded him eagerly, ‘remember how you loved Mum’s porridge.’

The doctor was listening with acute silent interest, those deep-set steel-grey eyes settling upon her with that heavy gaze.
So Paul was there at breakfast-time too … interesting!
She could just imagine the way his mind was working as he sussed out what was going on in her relationship with the mission priest
.
Well it wasn't as if Paul was a monk who had taken special vows or anything. He could do as he damn well liked, and so could she.

'All credit,' Paul was saying to the table at large, 'to our dear Sisters who've done a terrific job improving the menus. The occasional lapse is good for the soul.'

'Sole!’ sighed Sister Joanna. ‘Oh for a freshly grilled Dover sole with a nice crisp green salad.'

Jenni tittered. Ross McDonnell's scrutiny was making her peculiarly nervous.

Declining the fresh dates, she escaped from the supper table and investigated the small library of paperbacks shelved in a quiet corner of the L-shaped room.

Here was the one place in the Mission which conjured up visions of Old Colonial days with the ceiling fans and spindly bamboo tables. Earthenware pots of tall green palms and basket chairs lined with faded batik cushions. Jenni picked out a dog-eared novel and settled in one of the creaky chairs, her red cotton mini-skirt riding up over her pale freckled thighs. She looked over her book at Paul, admiring his tough physique revealed now he was out of his cassock and clad in the usual bush gear of khaki shorts and shirt, sleeves rolled up over his strong brown arms and his rugby-player legs … perhaps not quite as ‘
wow!
’ as in the old days, but still worth eyeballing.

'What's that you're supposed to be reading?' asked Ross, observant as ever, heavy emphasis on the ‘supposed.’ His hand closed firmly over her own and tilted the book's cover towards the light. He read the title and gave a snort of amusement.

Jenni snatched her hand away and the paperback fell to the floor, cover upwards. “Where Angels Fear To Tread.”

Damn and blast, why hadn’t she chosen the Dickens!
‘You wouldn’t like it,’ she retorted, ‘too many long words.’

Ross laughed and said amiably enough, ‘I brought your coffee over.’ He settled himself with a creak of wickerwork into the chair beside her. Everyone else was out of earshot.

What did he want with her? Why couldn't he leave her in peace?

'Rum do, that
uchavi
business.’

Jenni didn't respond, recollecting the abrupt way she had been pushed aside when they were dealing with the poisoned African. A faint blush pinked her cheeks. Her fingers touched the buttons of her linen shirt, checking that all was secure on the Westcott front.

She was going through the motions of page-turning, acutely conscious of Ross's proximity. He had picked up William Boyd’s A Good Man in Africa, the sprawl of his long legs mere inches from hers.

No, doctor!
considered Jenni, taking a surreptitious glance at his strong profile,
you're not a patch on my darling Paul. But you do have a very unsettling effect on me.

She stared unseeing at the printed page, her thoughts wandering on. They say you work punishingly hard, Dr Mac. Supervising all the ante-natal clinics. Immunising thousands of children against measles. All the African problems come your way—malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, polio, to name but a few. Serious conditions we rarely come across back home. And as if that weren’t enough, you’ve got your eye surgery programme as well.

As hard and as fast as you work, doctor, you can't help more than a tiny percentage. Doesn't it depress you? Does it ever get it you down?

OK, Dr Mac, considering you have to be a Jack-of-all-trades out here, you do a pretty fair job. But secretary of your fan club I shall never be.

'Thought so—I've read it.' Ross dropped the paperback on the table and turned sideways in his chair, leaning an elbow on the wicker arm and rubbing his chin with his thumb. With parted lips Jenni pretended a deep interest in page seventeen, but that didn't deter him from interrupting.

'How did you find it this afternoon, working in that heat?'

'How did
you
find it?' she countered spiritedly, 'I was under cover with the notes and record cards. You were out there for ages, squatting among the women with the sun beating down on you.'

Ross brushed this aside saying brusquely, 'Doesn’t affect me. But with your ginger colouring you’re going to need to take special care.’

Ginger!! … which charm school did this man go to?
Jenni ignored him and very deliberately focused her gaze on Paul, across the room in the midst of a chattering group of Mission workers.

'So Hume's known you since you were sweet sixteen.' Too young then, he observed to himself, but not too young now ...

‘I was never ‘sweet’,’ said Jenni icily. ‘Not with my
ginger colouring
.’

Perhaps though her blatant display of affection for Paul hadn’t been wise. In the single-minded doctor’s view, his ‘unsuitable’ new nurse was in pursuit of the Mission priest. She had come out here to work for all the wrong reasons and he didn’t want her around. No wonder his eyes were wary, focusing on her with disapproval.

Well, what he didn’t know was that in the past twenty-four hours something had happened to Jenni Westcott RGN. Yes, she wanted Paul to marry her - but that overwhelming purpose had already receded to second place. Only one working day and the medical set-up had her gripped. Work was now foremost in her mind. But how could she convey this to a cynical doctor who had her marked down as the weak link in the chain?

There was no urgency any more where Paul was concerned. It's as if, mused Jenni, we both know it's inevitable, it's going to happen, we can take our time, get to know each other again at our own pace. Oh, how I'd love to tell Ross about Paul and the broken engagement to Helen, just to see the look on his face. If he knew our history, he might see me in a better light. But if Paul hasn’t said anything, it’s certainly not my place to …

'That was an odd business, that poor chap who thought he'd been poisoned.'

'Thought? You mean … but you administered the antidote, I saw you do it.'

Ross shrugged and gave her a rueful lopsided grin.

He looked younger when he smiled, less dour, and the steely quality of his gaze was momentarily softened. 'I didn’t have a clue what was wrong with him. It was Francis Mwinyi who got us out of a pretty nasty situation. But I don’t mind telling you there was a tense moment or two waiting to see if it worked ...

'Sorry, by the way, to spill that stuff down your uniform. It shouldn't be a permanent stain. I couldn't risk letting you give the drug and taking the brunt if the man should die. We might well have had the
mchawi
stirring up the relatives by claiming we were the ones who'd poisoned him. And it was far better if any trouble was directed at me.'

‘Oh! I see …’ Her voice trailed away and to hide her embarrassment she put a hand up to her blushing face.
Ross never even noticed your buttons were undone ... he was too busy protecting you from possible repercussions. Jumping to hasty conclusions yet again, hothead Westcott! Let this be a lesson to you.

'And had he been poisoned?' she managed eventually.

Ross shrugged his broad khaki shoulders, scratched the sunburned column of his throat and said that in his view it could well have been a case of extreme hysteria; but to be on the safe side the mug of water had been laced with tincture of opium.

'Did I hear someone mention poison?'

Paul had wandered across to pick up the tail end of this conversation. Ross sketched in a brief account and a chill shudder ran through Jenni's frame. 'I didn't think witch doctors still existed.'

'Sure they do,’ said Paul. ‘But you need to differentiate between the
mganga
or local medicine man—who, it must be admitted, still exercises a very powerful influence within the tribes—and the
mchawi,
or wizards, who practise black magic and are decidedly more dangerous.'