Read Online A Passionate Man by Joanna Trollope - Free Book Online

described him as a refugee from an A. J. Cronin novel which Archie thought, on the whole, pretty accurate. He also knew, without complacency, that diagnostically and in human terms he was the best doctor in the practice. His colleagues, with varying degrees of good and bad grace, knew this, too, and would in consequence emphasize their own additional roles as, for instance, anaesthetists at local hospitals. Archie had no wish to be anything other than a rural general practitioner and, when it was pointed out to him that he was bound to get the fidgets at forty, he said he was planning a really big break-out then, so as not to disappoint them. The pharmacist at the health centre had overheard him say this once, and had endured several terrible nights subsequently, plagued by impossible fantasies of which she was later ashamed.
    Because he was early, on account of the incident at breakfast, Archie paused at Stoke Stratton post office. This was run by Mrs Betts, a formidable widow from a Southampton suburb, who used it as a power-base from which to shape and control the village. She was secretary to the Women’s Institute, founder of the rambling club and organizer of the village fête. She had also revived a gardeners’ group and was Clerk to the Parish Council. Tall, solid and handsome, Mrs Betts had brought to Stoke Stratton a very clear idea of what English village life should be like and a strong determination to impose this vision on the few hundred people who came to buy stamps at one end of her shop and throat lozenges, birthday cards and potting compost at the other. Progress, in Mrs Betts’s view, meant power in the hands of the bourgeoisie and the neatening of sloppy agricultural ways. On her counter stood a homemade advertisement enticing her customers to sign a petition asking the local farmer not to drive his tractors down the main street of the village. As the farm lay above Beeches House, and the lane leading to it was usually liberally strewn with succulent chunks of mud, Mrs Betts was very pleased to see Archie as an early customer.
    He asked for a dozen first-class stamps, some brown envelopes and a packet of peppermints.
    â€˜And you’ll sign my petition, Dr Logan.’
    â€˜Sorry, Mrs Betts. No go. I’ve no objection to mud.’
    â€˜Come now, Dr Logan. Think of Mrs Logan. I saw her and her sister coming down your lane yesterday with the greatest difficulty.’
    â€˜It’s a natural hazard of country life—’
    â€˜Only because no-one has thought to do anything about it. Where would we be if we all just accepted things? Dr Logan, there are seven old footpaths now open again round this village thanks to me and my ramblers.’
    Archie folded his stamps and slid them into his wallet.
    â€˜Richard Prior is a good neighbour to me, Mrs Betts. I’m not going to provoke him and I don’t mind his mud.’
    Mrs Betts laid her large capable hands on the counter.
    â€˜Dr Logan, it’s you professional people who must take the lead. It’s not like the old days when there was a squire to turn to. It’s up to people like you and Mr Jago now to preserve our heritage.’
    Archie gave her an enormous smile.
    â€˜Do you know, I think mud is part of our heritage.’
    In the road outside, the Vicar was parking his car behind Archie’s. Colin Jenkins was a narrow, pale man in his thirties with a passion for committee work, who was to be seen driving into Winchester for diocesan meetings of one sort or another far more often than around his parish. On the rare occasions when he and Archie had coincided at a sickbed, Archie had felt strongly that, should the patient die, Colin Jenkins would regard his soul as one more convert to the egalitarian and socialist bureaucracy which was his evident notion of the hereafter.
    â€˜You can’t talk to him,’ an unhappy patient of Archie’s had once said. ‘When my son was killed, I