Yet More Tales of a Country Doctor

By Paul Carter

Yet More Tales of a Country Doctor is the third in Carter's trilogy of stories drawn from his much-loved rural practice, where he served the local community as their doctor for thirty-three years. The stories, which are all drawn from true events, reflect the very personal, as well as equal, relationships which are a feature of country life. Lik

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Jun 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781648950483

Book preview

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge the privilege of living and working in a community whose members have been generous enough to allow me to share their stories with a broader audience. Also, Dr. Jos de Jong for his help with Reata’s Dutch, Dr. Lu Zentner and Helen Mee for reading and commentating on the manuscript, Angela James for her ever-thoughtful editing, and Stratton Press for supporting me create what is now a trilogy.

I also wish to acknowledge the wonderful support of my wife, Gillian (Helen in the books), who almost invariably cheerfully puts up with spending hours on her own while I have my head stuck in my PC writing, and who is a seemingly bottomless well of great suggestions and advice when called upon.

And finally, I would like to pay tribute to Robyn Needham for teaching me everything I will ever need to know about the power of unconditional forgiveness.

Contents

Chapter 1. Zigzag

Chapter 2. Skegs Ferry

Chapter 3. Honeysuckle Cottage

Chapter 4. Miss Milroy

Chapter 5. Lincoln

Chapter 6. Reata

Chapter 7. Austins

Chapter 8. Lynn

Chapter 9. Best in Show

Chapter 10. Wake

Chapter 11. Lone Ranger

Chapter 12. Irish

Chapter 13. Tying the Knot

Chapter 14. Jean-Marie

Chapter 15. Weed

Chapter 16. Swinging Seat

Chapter 1

Zigzag

That Sunday morning when Linda found Amy in her cot changed everything. Before, there had been three of us, a house full of love and laughter and even enough in the bank to do just a little better than simply get by. Then there were just the two of us, like ducks caught in a rip. We might have still been able to keep our heads above water, but underneath we were paddling like mad just to stay afloat. We knew that if we were to avoid going under, we needed a new beginning.

We had no idea what sort of new beginning would best suit us, but then, by accident, we fell in with a group of Australian doctors at the north London hospital where Linda was working. They were a really good bunch, and they were just our cup of tea. They were loud and funny, they were compassionate and caring, they didn’t care what school anyone had been to, and they were bloody good doctors. They made us laugh again, and we decided that if other Australians were the slightest bit like them, then a new start on the other side of the world, far enough away to leave our sadness behind, was just the ticket we were looking for.

So we packed up all our things, gave away lots of clutter to everyone we knew, and moved from London to Melbourne. For a while, everything went well. We loved Australia and, in those first few years, had a great time making new friends and exploring our newly found continent. After a while, however, when the excitement of moving across the world had died down a little, things weren’t so good. We realised that we had brought much of our sadness across the world with us, and that we were still paddling just as hard as ever. We learnt that wherever you go, you always take yourself with you, and that maybe it is simply not possible for a relationship to continue to flourish when both people are sucked back into the past every time they even look at one another.

Little by little, over the months and years that followed, Linda and I drifted apart. So slowly, in fact, that it was barely noticeable at first. Passion faded, and, instead of catching up at the end of the day, we started watching the television while eating our evening meal. Whenever cracks appeared, we simply papered over them by forever working harder and priding ourselves on our dedication to our profession. Eventually, when things reached the point at which even we could no longer deny the slide in our relationship, we did make some changes. We dined out more often, and we went on a few romantic weekend getaways. Those times were all very pleasant, but the glue that had held us together had lost its sticking power, and eventually we just quietly went our own separate ways. No fighting, no acrimony, no bitterness, no lawyers, no others. Just sadness and loss and a sense that there was no longer any point in hoping for the past to somehow miraculously change itself, or for life to suddenly and unexpectedly become fair or just.

On my own, quite apart from the inconvenience of having not the slightest idea how to perform any of what in the medical profession are called the activities of daily living, life became a repetitive drudge. That first night I was on my own, I realised that, pampered at school, college, and in various hospitals, I had never actually cooked a meal from start to finish in my life. Linen stayed on the bed for weeks at a time, clothes were worn creased, and there was never anything in the fridge. A long exhausting day spent advising others how to make healthy choices would be followed by picking up a takeaway on the way home, pouring myself a couple of glasses of scotch when I arrived there, falling asleep in the armchair in front of the television, waking up stiff and uncomfortable at one o’clock in the morning, slumping onto my bed in my clothes, and then getting up at six thirty and doing it all over again. I knew I was in an unsustainable rut, but I just didn’t have the energy to find my way out of it.

Then two things happened. The first was that on my way to visit some friends for dinner one evening, I saw a sign outside a church that made it clear that if I didn’t change my direction, then I would finish up exactly where I was headed. I was stuck in traffic at the time and had time to reflect on how little room for compromise the message implied. I certainly didn’t like where I was currently headed, and by the time the traffic moved on again, I determined that a change had to be made. I didn’t have the faintest idea what that change would look like, but as I slipped my vehicle back into gear, I pledged to make sure that one would happen.

It is surprisingly hard to come up with a radical life change, which is perhaps why most of us spend much of our lives doing the same thing over and over. I considered quite a few possibilities, such as opera singing, becoming a professional sportsman, or sailing a yacht single-handedly round the world. In the end, however, I dismissed them all as impractical, financially imprudent, or overtly dangerous. Not that I doubted my abilities, mind you, but they all had longer lead times than suited my purpose.

The second thing happened when I least expected it, and handed me the answer on a plate. It came from a patient I had known for some years, and who to this day doesn’t even know that it was she who showed me the way. I had only ever known her as a depressed and downtrodden soul who seemed defeated by life. One day, however, she bounced into my room, bright eyed and beaming from ear to ear, telling me she had just come to say Goodbye, and thank you, but I won’t be needing any more of your pills anymore. It turned out that she had sold her house in town and was moving to the country. She couldn’t stop talking about it. She hadn’t even made the move yet and she was already reinvented and invigorated. And as I listened to her enthusiastic chatter, it was as if the fog in my head was blown away by a cool, clean breeze.

This could be my answer too, I said to myself. And as I listened to her excitedly talk about her plans, I silently decided that I would follow in her footsteps and move to the country also.

Luckily, before fully plunging myself headlong into countrification, I was able to put a toe in the water and test the temperature. It so happened that, a week after listening to Fran talk about her planned escape to the country, I came across an advertisement in a medical journal looking for a doctor to fill in for two weeks in a place called Skegs Ferry, a small country town a couple of hours drive north of Melbourne. I immediately applied for the post and, to my great pleasure, was duly appointed.

I had a wonderful time during those two weeks. Everywhere I turned, I was greeted with warm friendship, and there were never any worries about communication, as the wind-up phones still in use were on a party line, so that everyone knew everyone else’s business before even they did. Apart from the usual clinic work, I stitched up wounds, plastered broken arms, attended emergencies out on farms, dined on the endless meals left at the surgery by the locals, and got invited out to meetings and dinner parties every evening. Eventually, I even got the hang of the medical records, which had been created over many decades by the practice principal in tiny writing on concertinas of cards stapled together according to the family tree. My breakthrough with the records was realising that one had to let the concertina open all the way down to the floor before starting a consultation, and then turn it back and forth until you found the right branch of the family.

I also shared my bed with Maxwell, a curly-coated water spaniel who was left in my care when his owners handed over the keys of the practice and went on holiday to Sydney to see their son. At first, I wasn’t particularly keen on sharing my bed with someone so hairy, but Maxwell insisted that this is what he was used to, and who was I to argue.

By the end of the fortnight, I knew beyond a doubt that a move to the country was exactly the change I had been looking for.

It may have taken me some time to decide exactly how to lift myself out of my unhealthy suburban rut, but it was harder again to decide exactly which bit of the country to move to. Over the next year or so, I spent my weekends travelling the length and breadth of Victoria looking at properties and exhausting a string of perfectly pleasant real estate agents who felt that I was being way too fussy about what I wanted. But this was to be my new life, and I had developed a clear picture in my head of what I was looking for. On visits to various galleries, I had seen many beautiful paintings of rural scenes, and I thought that something between a Hans Heysen and an Arthur Streeton would suit me very nicely. I tried to explain my vision to those who took me around at weekends, but in the end, they all threw their hands in the air and gave me away—all, that is, except for the tenacious Mike, who phoned me one Saturday morning, long after everyone else had stopped calling, and told me that he had found exactly what I was looking for. I had been told that many times before and mentioned that I was sceptical. He promised to do my shopping and laundry for me if he was wrong, so I went with him anyway.

When we arrived at the property he had organised for me to see, it was love at first sight. Even as we drove up the driveway, I knew Mike had hit the bull’s-eye. The paddocks looked exactly like something Hans would have painted, and the hills in the background were something that would have had Arthur scrambling to get his brushes out. Woongarra it was called, and it was perfect. It sang to my soul. It was everything I had been looking for, and I never looked at another property.

Later, after I had moved in, of a night time when I wasn’t ready for bed, I would spread out a blanket on the lawn to keep the animal kingdom at bay, lie on my back, and look up at the sky. I had never seen stars like them before, and I would lie in wonder as they blazed back at me in their eternal beauty. The Milky Way was the new incomprehensibly complex roof over my head, and I had to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t all just a dream.

Shortly after my move to Woongarra, when out shopping one morning and not even thinking about medical matters, I accidentally bumped into Felix, the local doctor, and finished up having a cup of tea with him. With great sleight of hand, or so it now seems, he must have placed a shilling at the bottom of my teacup, for without even being aware of taking part in any due process, by the time I set off for home, I realised I had agreed to join him in his practice. Joined might be an overstatement, however, at least to start with, for Felix took the opportunity of my impressment by immediately taking off for what he saw as a well-earned break. On his way out of the door the following morning, he pointed out the X-ray machine, the slit lamp microscope, the box of rolls of plaster of Paris, and the operating table. He handed me a list of house calls he hadn’t got around to doing prior to leaving, another list of those who were extremely heavy with child, got into his car, and left.

I was not so much pushed into the deep end of rural practice as thrown off the ten-metre board. I splashed about a fair bit at the beginning, but I didn’t go under. Over the months that followed, and with the guidance of Felix when he finally returned, coupled with the enthusiastic help of the local populace, I not only learned to swim, but I also got to see what I was swimming in.

There is a story about a young fish swimming along a river who meets an older fish coming the other way.

Good morning, says the young fish to his senior.

The wiser older fish returns the greeting and then adds, And how are you finding the water today?

After a pause, the young fish frowns and says, What water?

Before commencing practice in Dixon’s Bridge, I was that young fish. And it wasn’t just that, up to that point, I hadn’t noticed what I had spent my life swimming about in, but that I hadn’t even noticed that I hadn’t noticed. I’d been swimming through life without ever being truly immersed in it.

But when I did come to notice the water, I loved it. I had grown up in the blue-collar industrial midlands of England, and then gone on to attend a medical school in London where many of my co-students were dropped off for their day’s studies by a chauffeur in the family Roller. I had never become totally comfortably connected with either of those worlds. Dixon’s Bridge changed all that. I’d had a taste of connectedness in the locum I had done at Skegs Ferry when, at his insistence, I shared my bed with Maxwell, but it was in Dixon’s Bridge that, for really the first time in my life, I felt part of a community. I was invited to dinner parties, barbeques and art shows, Rotary and Lions, CFA rehearsals and Budburst. I was also invited to line dancing, golf days, and cooking lessons, though I have to admit that those invitations all fell away when my total incompetence in these areas became apparent.

Have you ever line-danced / played golf / cooked before? I would be asked.

Not exactly as such, I would reply. But I’m keen to learn.

Well, here’s a better idea, they would say. Why don’t you just stick to doctoring?

I suspect that it would have been the same for ironing afternoons and knitting groups, but I never got invited to those.

I did once get invited by a group of liberal-minded adults to join them for an evening of unrestrained fun and videos, but I turned that down. Not least because in my job I have come to realise that most people look better with their clothes on.

In a surprisingly short period of time, the locals became far more to me than patients. Through seeing them at the surgery, through home visits, through working with them on my farm, and through social contact, I got to know them all as individuals as well. Individuals who started confiding in me and telling me their secrets, so that it was just as well that I also learned how they were all related. Over time, many of them became not only friends but even my new family.

Apart from one small hitch, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my new life. The only hiccough was that I accidentally acquired the completely undeserved reputation of being a dog hater. I rescued a dog in appalling condition from an abusive situation and somehow got blamed for his previous mistreatment. Aso, at about the same time, whilst doing a house call, I was attacked by the family dog and naturally defended myself as he lunged at me. Just for once, my timing was spot-on, and my foot stopped the dog in his tracks. Unfortunately, however, when I accidentally connected with the dog so firmly that he did a back somersault off the front deck of the house, landing heavily on the lawn below, the episode was witnessed by the dog’s entire family. They then blew the whole thing ridiculously out of all proportion and shared the story with the rest of the town. Within a week, everyone knew for a certainty that not only did I not know how to look after my own dog, but that I had cruelly tried to kick Rodney and Marianne’s dog to death.

Not even the care I gave Hardy, who I nursed back to full health, made any difference to anyone. He was appreciative, but my Good Samaritan act cut no ice with anyone else.

Still got that sickly dog? people would ask.

I certainly have, I would smile back. But he’s fully recovered now.

Well, just you look after him properly, they would reply. And remember, no kicking.

And I did look after Hardy properly, and there never was any kicking, and for many years, he was my bestest of best friends. We did everything together, and we would end the day by having long chats by the fireside. Then one day, I came home to find him desperately ill. I drove him to the animal hospital, but even they were unable to save him, or even explain why he died, so now he is under the walnut tree in the garden.

On my way to collect the eggs from the chook pen in the farmyard each day, I walk past that walnut tree and still think of him. His unexpected going left a big hole in my life, and I missed him dreadfully for a long time. Over the weeks and months that followed his death, I realised, for the first time in many years, that I was lonely.

I think I need another dog, I would say to people mournfully.

Nonsense, I was told. What you need is a human companion, one with two X chromosomes, and with that, the entire community set about finding me one.

As a result, I was introduced to everyone’s sister, niece, daughter, and even, on one occasion, mother. They were all lovely people, but they were not what I was looking for. As with my search for Woongarra all those years before, I was again stuck with paintings in my mind. Bouguereau’s Aphrodite or perhaps Romney’s Circe were what I was looking for, and I decided that either one of those would do me very nicely. So yet again, a search dragged on, with everyone muttering that I was being too picky. Once more, my band of initially enthusiastic would-be helpers gradually fell away. Even I had more or less given up hope, when the wife of a surgeon friend of mine unexpectedly took matters in hand, and I met Helen.

Remind me exactly what you are looking for, my friend’s wife had asked over a curry in an Indian restaurant one night.

Intelligent, funny, beautiful, elegant, sensuous, creative, kind, gentle, master chef, domestic goddess, and of course, with a figure to die for, I replied. Oh, and perhaps wearing a cape and able to fly.

What is it with you bastards? My friend’s wife laughed as she shook her head. You’re impossible, she said, but then, unexpectedly a few weeks later, she phoned me up and told me that maybe she had found what I was looking for, gave me a telephone number, and I finished up going on my first and only ever blind date.

It was a wonderful evening. Helen knocked Aphrodite and Circe into a cocked hat. Apart from not wearing a cape and having to walk on the ground like everyone else, she ticked every box on my mission impossible list. I spent the entire evening dribbling down my chin, splashing food on my shirtfront, and knocking over my water glass in my distracted enchantment. And I found out later that Helen drove the whole way home getting honked by other motorists. Initially she wondered how they all knew she had been out on her first date in some years, but then she realised that she had forgotten to turn her lights on.

We started seeing one another as often as I could get away from the surgery. We went to concerts, we went to the opera, we met for coffee, and we had picnics in the botanical gardens. It was all wonderful, and during that time, I couldn’t have been happier. Then out of the blue, Felix had to leave the practice to look after his increasingly infirm wife, and Helen left for Paris to look after her desperately ill sister-in-law and nieces.

Oh, and one last thing, Helen smiled at me as I sadly drove her to the airport, you will look after Chanel for me while I’m away, won’t you?

Life without Felix was ridiculously busy, and life without Helen was lonely, but it was looking after Helen’s pampered poodle that caused me to dig into my very deepest reserves. Chanel was terrible. She bit me, she chased everything on the farm, she shat on my kitchen floor, she turned up her nose at whatever food I gave her, she showed not the slightest atom of remorse about any of the above, and she spoke only French. Although I had studied French at school, I am not a natural linguist, and communication was difficult, to say the least.

I spent many evenings wondering how I could do her in and get away with it. Then one night when a mob of my cattle broke through the front fence and got onto the road, Chanel unexpectedly rounded them up and saved the day, bravely scoring a Purple Heart in the process.

After that, our relationship thawed considerably. She threw away needing to be a princess, started behaving like a proper farm dog, and began answering to the name of Nel. For my part, I stopped getting annoyed by her poor English and let her spend evenings by the fire at my feet and nights on the end of my bed. Within a few months, like Hardy before her, we had become best mates and indeed have remained so to this very day.

Looking back, it seems obvious now that fretting over the absence of Helen, combined with the ridiculous amount of clinic work I was doing and sleep that was forever interrupted by emergencies, was always going to take its toll. I did try to take a break, but I had to cut it short after only one day because the locum put in to replace me managed to kill a patient, set fire to my house, and stab himself with syringes full of narcotics from the clinic’s locked box. Consequently, about six months after Helen departed for France, and totally exhausted, I fell ill and finished up in hospital. As luck would have it, another perfectly normal locum was found to look after the practice while I was away, and I had the luxury of being able to take a few weeks off to fully recover.

Back at the practice after my convalescence, and feeling refreshed and well, things went smoothly for some months. I was still missing Helen, but somehow accepting of it as something I couldn’t do anything about. Then, when a patient I had come to know well died on the day of the wedding she had dreamed of for years, I realised how quickly time can slip away and decided it was time to act. I realised that passively waiting patiently for something to happen was unlikely to achieve the outcome I wanted, so I simply took some more time off and flew to Paris.

It was only on the plane that I realised that I hadn’t got around to telling Helen I was coming.

Perhaps she has another bloke, I thought. Or perhaps she has forgotten me.

But it wasn’t like that at all. She jumped three feet off the floor when she saw me and then threw her arms round me, kissed me, and introduced me to her nieces. That evening, the two of us dined on a boat on the Seine. I proposed under a canopy of Bastille fireworks, and after a midnight walk back through Paris streets to Helen’s apartment, I’m pleased to say that the rest of the night also worked out exactly as I had hoped it would.

Sadly, Helen’s sister-in-law did not survive her illness. After the funeral, Helen and I, and the two girls, headed back to Australia, where, determined not to let Helen slip through my fingers again, I decided to nail the relationship down, and spent the next few weeks in a busy whirl of wedding arrangements. The appointed day dawned as one of those perfect Victorian spring days, and there, in the garden at Woongarra, with Nel as the ring-bearer, the twins as bridesmaids, and before our assembled friends, Helen and I pledged to spend the rest of our lives together.

Later, back from the honeymoon, and with life returned to its normal round, I was sitting quietly one evening on the back patio with Nel. After her poor start, she now spent her days glued to my side twenty-four hours a day, and she had even learned to speak quite good English, albeit still with her silly Allo! Allo! French accent.

’Appy? she asked.

You betcha, I replied as I sipped on my drink. In fact, everything is just perfect now, though it’s certainly been an interesting journey getting here.

I really like those books you wrote about ’ow it all ’appened, she eventually replied. Even the bits about me being a pain in the derriere, she added after a pause.

Well, I said as I ruffled her ridiculously large ears, "you were a bit of a princess to start with, and, to be fair, I was honest about myself as well."

Really? she asked with mild incredulity.

Yes, for instance where I mention getting, completely unfairly, labelled as a dog basher.

I did hear something along those lines, she replied after a slight pause. Which is why, of course, I always keep a bit of an eye on you.

What!

Jus’ kidding. She smiled and then changed the subject. Ever think of writing any more stories?

I have thought about it from time to time, I replied.

Good, Nel said. I shall look forward to them. She paused for a while and then continued, I know the stories you’ve written so far pretty much happened one after another as they appear in your books, but you’ve often said you left out a few tales along the way. Why not tell those ones?

That’s not a bad idea, I said.

And why don’t you include the story about that lady with the rather famous American name? she asked. I often think about her.

Lincoln? That’s a really good idea, I agreed. You don’t think that her story would be too much in people’s faces? I asked after a pause.

But isn’t that just the point? she replied.

Well, yes, I suppose it is, I agreed.

We were quiet for a bit, and then I said, Do you reckon that anyone will mind that these stories aren’t in any special order? You don’t think readers would find it all a bit swirly?

Let them swirl, Nel looked up at me and said. And don’t forget to change all the names and jumble things up like you did before.

Do you reckon it would be okay if I added in a few bits of my own in again?

Of course. As that famous cat once said, ‘Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.’

And what would I call the book? I asked after a pause.

I don’t know, she said, "but think of something a bit jazzier this time for heaven’s sake. If you are going to tell