(6/13) Gossip from Thrush Green Read Online Free PDF

Winnie. 'Are you just off on the rounds?'
    'In a few minutes, but no great hurry. Any trouble, Winnie?'
    'It's Jenny. She's been off her food for a week or so, and had a horrible cough. But you know Jenny. She won't give up, and says it's nothing. Do come and have a look at her, John dear.'
    'I'll come now,' said the young man, picking up his stethoscope. 'There's a particularly vicious flu bug about. It may be that.'
    Together they returned to the hall, and thence to the kitchen, where Jenny stood at the sink peeling potatoes. She was unusually pale, John Lovell noticed, but her eyes were inflamed, and her forehead, when he felt it with the palm of his hand, was very hot.
    'Sit down,' he directed. Jenny obeyed, but cast an accusing look at Winnie.
    'Mrs Bailey,' she croaked. 'There wasn't no need to bother the doctor.'
    'Unbutton your blouse,' he directed, arranging his stethoscope, 'and open your mouth.'
    Gagged with a thermometer, and immobilised with the stethoscope dabbed here and there on her chest, poor Jenny submitted to a thorough examination.
    When it was over John Lovell pronounced sentence.
    'Bed for you, and lots to drink. You've a fine old temperature and your lungs are congested.'
    'But I'm doing the potatoes!' protested Jenny.
    'I can finish those,' said Winnie. 'You must do as Doctor Lovell tells you. Up you go, and I'll bring you a hot water bottle and some lemon barley water.'
    'I'll go back to the surgery,'John told Winnie, 'and let you have some inhalant and pills.'
    Jenny departed reluctantly, and Winnie looked at John.
    'I don't think it's much more than an infection of the lungs, but it could be the first stage of something catching. I suppose she's had all the childish ailments?'
    'I'm not sure. She was brought up in an orphanage, you know, until she came to her foster-parents here. She was about ten or twelve, I think. No doubt she had all the catching things at the orphanage, but I'll find out from her.'
    John went to fetch the medicine, and Winnie put on the kettle for Jenny's bottle.
    Later, with two pills inside her, a hot bottle at her feet, and the jug of inhalant steaming on the bedside table Jenny tried to remember if and when she had had whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles, chicken pox, and all the other horrid excitements of childhood.
    'I can't honestly recall all of them,' she confessed. There was always something going the rounds at the orphanage with so many of us. I know I didn't get ringworm,' she added, with some pride.
    'Anyway, don't worry,' said Winnie. 'Let me drape this towel over your head, and you get busy with the Friar's Balsam.'
    'Is that what it is?' said Jenny, from beneath her tent. 'I thought it was some new mixture of Doctor Lovell's.'
    'It's probably got a long and different name,' agreed Winnie, 'but I wouldn't mind betting it's basically dear old Friar's Balsam.'
    'Well, that can't harm me,' agreed Jenny with relief, and bent to her task.
    ***
    The next day was one of those windy blue and white March beauties when great clouds scudded eastward, and the sunshine lifted everyone's spirits at Thrush Green.
    Everyone, except Albert Piggott.
    He was wandering morosely round the churchyard, billhook in hand. If challenged, he would have said that he was busy cutting away the long grass which grew near the tombstones and the surrounding low wall. In fact, he was killing time until ten o'clock when the pub opened.
    A small van drew up near him on the other side of the wall, and Percy Hodge, a local farmer, clambered out.
    'Ah, Albert!' he began. 'D'you want a little job in the garden?' Occasionally, Albert obliged' locally with odd jobs, but latterly he had preferred his leisure to this extra drinking money. Still, Percy was an old friend...
    'What sort of job?' he enquired cautiously. 'I don't mind telling you, Perce, I ain't the man I was since my operation.'
    Nothing too heavy,' Percy assured him. 'But I've been given a sack of seed potatoes, and I ought to get 'em in.