The Unbegotten Read Online Free PDF

involved in international affairs, and—’ Rees broke off, as if astounded. ‘Good God!’
    â€˜Good God it is,’ agreed Maddern, soberly.
    â€œThey’re afraid it could have international repercussions!’
    â€˜Could be,’ conceded Maddern.
    â€˜I wonder what the hell is going on?’ said Rees, helplessly. They walked through the little copse towards their parked car, some cars moved off. A stink of petrol exhaust fouled the air, and Rees waved his hand in front of his cars. Several engines were already turning, car doors were slamming, his face grimaced. ‘Damned stink,’ he complained. ‘You’d think that they could at least take the stench out of petrol fumes, wouldn’t you, even if they can’t stop us from being poisoned. Oh, well!’ His car was near Maddern’s. ‘Must be off, I suppose. Don’t seem to have much more leisure, even though we haven’t any anxious mothers to look after.’ He climbed into his car, and called across, ‘I forgot—you still have a mother and child, haven’t you?’
    Rees roared with laughter, and drove off, the blue fumes from his exhaust billowing about Maddern’s car with an unpleasant stench.
    Maddern went off on his rounds, visiting the old and the young, the slightly sick and the dangerously ill, the convalescent and the nigh unto death. Everything was normal, except that there were so few mothers and infants-in-arms. He finished his calls a little before one o’clock and felt a strange sense of anticlimax. Rees was wrong in one way: there was considerably less work, and so more leisure, if one chose to use it. Until early evening surgery he had nothing to do, unless he made a few calls ahead of time, or there were some urgent messages at home.
    He preferred to be busy.
    How busy he had been when Lilian had been alive! How seldom he had had a free afternoon, and how excited he had been whenever he had been able to get home for an hour before evening surgery. He pulled into the creeper-covered garage at the side of the cottage and let himself in. There was no sign of Bertha, but several messages were in the wooden bowl on the chiffonier.
    Would he telephone Mrs. Duyman? She’d had an attack. That assumed a heart attack, of course, and was a normal call from a neurotic woman. There wasn’t much the matter with her body, only with her mind. Would he call and see Josiah Davenport, an old man who often wanted no more than a chat and deserved it. And finally: would he please wait at home until Dr. Palfrey had called to see him—about two thirty.
    â€˜What on Earth does he want with me?’ Maddern said aloud. The message brought back to mind everything that had happened and been said at that meeting, and he shrank from much of it.
    He had a cold lunch, left out by Bertha who always went to her sister on Monday afternoon, stacked the dirty crockery on the draining board and as he looked out of the leaded window saw a girl in the garden among the apple and pear trees. She was young and very slender, and for a moment he wasn’t quite sure it was a girl. Then she turned round, and he saw her sideways on so that there was no doubt.
    She was looking upwards.
    Puzzled, he stood watching. The fruit was plentiful but wasn’t ripe enough for eating, and in any case why should a girl pick apples in the middle of the afternoon? He was even more puzzled when she darted a quick glance towards the house, as if fearful of being seen. He was hidden by a curtain, and apparently she did not see him.
    Next moment she leapt upwards, arms outstretched, gripped the bough of a tree and hauled herself out of sight. It was done with such speed and grace that it was almost possible to suspect he had dreamed it. But that had been no dream! He moved away from the window, cautiously, then went upstairs to the room immediately above this: the spare bedroom. It had a clear view of the orchard,