Fortunate

JH Sharp Andrew

Description

Beth Jenkins is a young locum doctor and prides herself on helping her patients reframe the story of their lives - nudging them towards more optimistic narratives - but her own story is stuck. Her husband has had a stroke, disastrously altering his personality, and she's trapped in a life of duty and loneliness. Beth is semi-bereaved and will be for decades. On the other hand she knows, in theory, that there are millions of lives possible to live. Could it be that, by a quirk of fate, she's in the wrong life? Should she flee, make a new start? It would have to be somewhere far away, somewhere so out of the way and hazardous that no one would risk looking for her - somewhere like Zimbabwe, where she might find the person (part real, part fantasy) she's named Safari Man. But she has a career, of sorts, has responsibilities and she's twenty-eight-and-a-half - far too old to run away from home. Then she comes across a poem: 'The day comes when they have to declare the great Yes.' She makes her choice...Fortunate is an intelligent, moving and often humorous novel with a gripping plot about lost and re-found love, our relationship to the land we live on, and of how to defy fate. It will appeal to lovers of contemporary fiction, lovers of stories set in Africa, lovers of romance and adventure and lovers of a good read. Andrew has been inspired by a number of authors, including Cormac McCarthy, Michael Cunningham, Arundhati Roy, Anne Tyler and Sebastian Faulks.

Sujets

• Zimbabue
• Contemporary romance
• Zimbabwe

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 14 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783069774
• Langue: English

Extrait

Fortunate
Andrew JH Sharp

Copyright © 2013 Andrew JH Sharp
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This novel is a work of fiction. In the limited appearance of a real individual,
their conversations and actions are entirely fictitious. All other characters
and all establishments and descriptions of events are the products of
the author’s imagination and any resemblance to real establishments
or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Matador ®
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ISBN 978 1783069 774
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Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

For Marietta, who introduced me to Zimbabwe.
Contents

Cover


Also by Andrew JH Sharp


Chapter 1


Chapter 2


Chapter 3


Chapter 4


Chapter 5


Chapter 6


Chapter 7


Chapter 8


Chapter 9


Chapter 10


Chapter 11


Chapter 12


Chapter 13


Chapter 14


Chapter 15


Chapter 16


Chapter 17


Chapter 18


Chapter 19


Chapter 20


Chapter 21


Chapter 22


Chapter 23


Chapter 24


Chapter 25


Chapter 26


Chapter 27


Chapter 28


Chapter 29


Postscript


Acknowledgements


About the author
Also by Andrew JH Sharp
The Ghosts of Eden
Winner of the 2010 Waverton Good Read Award
Chapter 1



Beth Jenkins, locum general practitioner, is about to log off her computer after a late afternoon surgery when her desk phone rings. It’s been a long day but she hopes – she prays – that it’s a request for a house call. Today, the 8 th of November 2007, is the first anniversary of her marriage but she does not want to return home. She’d like to work all evening, all night.
Perhaps she’ll be lucky and it’ll be a call to a time-consuming visit, such as a new diabetic or someone having a prolonged panic attack. Ah, yes, that’s what she’d choose: a case of sweat-soaked, palpitating, adrenaline-swamped panic. A tight tangle of knotted fears to unpick. She’d have no difficulty in empathising. There are, she has strong cause to know, aliens incubating under the skin of even the most ordinary of days and they are always ready – without so much as a warning twitch – to erupt, rending flesh, spilling blood. Her panic attack sufferers are the perceptive ones, the sane ones, although she’d certainly not let on that she knows about the beasts. No, she’d be a good GP and do her best to reassure and soothe.
She lifts the receiver. ‘Hello. Dr Jenkins.’
‘Twicare Nursing Home are on the line,’ says Brenda, the receptionist. ‘I’ll put them through.’
The line clicks.
‘Dr Jenkins here.’
‘Doctor Beth! Ecstatic it’s you. It’s Sean. I’m duty manager tonight. Titanic apologies for ringing late but could you come and take a look at our Mr De Villier?’
Well timed, Sean. ‘Hold on, I’ll bring him up on the computer.’ Beth displays Mr De Villier’s medical record. He must be a new patient as she’s not seen him before which will give her an excuse to take an encyclopaedic past medical history. ‘OK, ready now. How can I help?’
‘He’s had a tickly cough for a while but it’s suddenly got legs. I’d say he’s coughing like… hmm… a goose with croup.’
‘Sounds distressing for him.’
‘Distressing? You’d think so, darling, but he’s not complained himself.’ Sean sighs theatrically. ‘Not about his cough, anyway. I’m sure he can wait until tomorrow but Matron’s worried the other residents will catch it. Don’t quote me on this, but it’s like a kennels in here, someone barking sets off all the rest.’
‘I guess I’d better visit then or we’ll both be in the doghouse.’
It’s easy to slip into a clubby banter with Sean. He was a Ryanair cabin attendant before coming to Twicare and has brought with him a sunny attitude salted with wry asides. This is just like my last job, Beth. I’m flying all my passengers to paradise. She can jolly along airily with Sean, as if crash landings never happen.
Sean calls off and Beth prints out Mr De Villier’s case history although there’s little to it. He’s new on the practice list and ‘a refugee’ but she can find no mention of his home country. His name doesn’t sound remotely Iraqi or Somali. He’s been seen once by Hector Moncrieff, the practice’s senior partner. Hector’s entry starts: In Twicare at expense of the council tax payer. Typical Hector. Double amputee due to smoking related Buerger’s disease. Still smoking. Started on simvastatin 20mg, aspirin 75mg. Reluctant historian. Seems to be bearing a grudge. Does Hector not know that patients can request to see their medical notes?
But… a grudge? Beth’s heart swells with a pleasurable rush of anticipation. That’s more like it. There are only so many minutes that a consultation on a cough can be stretched to. For Hector to have noticed, Mr De Villier’s grudge must be as plainly on show as the absence of his legs. He’ll be loudly disgruntled, visibly embittered. Just the sort of consultation she loves even when she’s not looking for an excuse to stay working late. She sees herself sitting down beside the old man, leaning sympathetically towards him, giving him plenty of time to talk and lay bare the roots of his resentment. She’ll—
The door springs open and Hector bursts in as if she’s set off her panic alarm. She jumps, her fingers striking the keyboard so that she makes an accidental entry in Mr De Villier’s record.
‘Good evening, Bethan,’ Hector says with loud, precise articulation, as if addressing a platoon. He stands – short but stout chested – in front of her desk in his sand-coloured suit and a tartan bow. He’s a man who Beth has never heard say thank-you, but she’s respectful of the fact that he inspires loyalty from the practice staff for his tireless reliability (despite his age of something over seventy) and for the rumour of a tragic lost love four decades ago.
‘Come in,’ she says.’Can I help?’ She tries as always not to let her gaze slide to where a chunk of his forehead is missing – the cause of which she’s never had the courage to ask.
‘I have something to say to you.’ His determined stance suggests someone has provoked him.
‘Of course,’ she offers.
‘I see you were very late – a habit, it seems – in finishing your surgery this morning.’
‘Oh!’ He remains motionless and stiff-faced, looking towards her but through her. She feels herself shrinking in her chair. Soon her feet swing free like a child’s. ‘I seem to have so many depressed and anxious patients. They do need a little more time...’ Hector’s working eyebrow twitches. ‘I’ve not had complaints from patients about being a bit slow.’
‘It’s been on my mind to say something about it for months and there’s no other way to put it: you shouldn’t waste time on… the morose. There’ll be no appointments left for anyone else.’ He raises his voice. ‘Truth is, it’s not what I’m paying you for. Prescribe Prozac. We can’t afford these talking therapies.’
‘Sometimes it’s… I’ll try my best to speed up.’ Dammit! Is he going to dismiss her? Previous locums had not survived more than a few weeks – come to think of it, she’s lasted the longest.
The engorged veins in Hector’s neck collapse and his expression softens with an almost imperceptible relaxation of his jaw as if he’s making allowances for a wayward child. ‘The trouble with you freshers is that you have to drag out the whole saga of your patient’s life story before you can treat the simplest of ailments.’
She offers him a cautious grin and then, risking it, leans forward. ‘If that’s the case, I suppose there’s a chance of helping them rewrite their story… alter their plot, make a better ending.’
‘You’re a doctor, not a bloody author.’
She holds herself from drawing back and says, ‘It’s more like being a co-author. David says—’
‘Dr Green is an ivory-tower highbrow. He’s a theorist, a metaphysician. What does he know?’
She continues, against a warning to herself to shut up. ‘He says listening to patients is like reading a book. You have to inhabit alien points of view, uncover clues and motives, be open to empathy.’ How lucky that her instinctive consulting style happens to be endorsed by academic theory.
‘I see you’re not going to take any advice from a geriatric like me.’ Hector jerks his hand across his chest as if making a move in a martial art and inspects his watch. ‘I’d better get down to the TA.’ With a curt nod, he swivels on the back of his heels and leaves, his stolid shoulders never anything but rod-straight and level. He must have caused the natives to choke on their qat when he did his National Service in Aden and must now be the Territorial Army’s oldest member.
Beth deletes the accidental entry she’d made in Mr De Villier’s record when Hector burst in. She hears Hector stamp off down the corridor. If only she’d been a little less assertive with him, not tried to make excuses. She can’t risk losing her job. No practice will employ a sacked locum. If she has no work, she’ll be stuck in the house. That lonely, becalmed, house. The quiet, barely-furnished rooms. Matt.
She logs off the computer again, snakes her stethoscope into her bag and collects her coat from behind the