Talking to Strange Men by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

a physician he was no better and no worse than the other doctors in the practice and less well-qualified than his own wife, but he was much better liked than any of them.
    It was on account of his pleasing personality and reputation for being easy to get on with that the City Board of General Practitioners had appointed him their representative on a particularly awkward mission. This was to call on an eighty-two-year-old woman who still had a medical practice and still saw patients and explain to her in the gentlest and most tactful way that it was time she retired. Old Dr Palmer had been making mistakes in prescriptions which, though no harm had yet been done, might one day result in disaster.
    She lived in one of the north-eastern suburbs, three or four miles away. Fergus had been worrying about this visit and what he would say to her, not just for the whole of Saturday but Thursday and Friday as well. In the event – as was so often the case in the event – things turned out perfectly satisfactorily and with the minimum of pain. Almost the first thing Dr Palmer said was that she was glad to have an opportunity to talk to him alone because she was thinking of retiring and would like to hear his views. Driving home again, one anxiety removed, instead of relaxing, Fergus perforce allowed the worry which the Dr Palmer business had temporarily displaced to return.
    What was he going to do about the surgery extension?
    If the city council’s planning committee allowed the extension there was no problem but he could not know forthe next three weeks whether permission would be granted. In the meantime a building that had been specifically constructed as a private clinic had come on to the market. In a moment or two he would pass it, it was up here on Ruxeter Road. The asking price was seventy thousand pounds, rather less than the extensions were going to cost. He would have to take out a mortgage anyway, there was no question of anything else. His boys were at present costing him and Lucy the maximum, with Ian at university and Angus and Mungo both at their public school. And he would prefer to keep the beautiful old building in which the practice was currently housed. The top floor, for instance, would one day make an excellent flat if any of the boys should want it.
    While he waited for planning permission it was most likely that the clinic building would be sold to someone else. The estate agent had told him as much. He was passing it now, and stopping at a red light, turned to look at it. That stark sixties architecture, that box construction and plate-glass windows weren’t to his taste but how much did his taste matter? It might so easily happen that planning permission was refused and this building simultaneously lost to him.
    The lights changed. It was as Fergus was moving off that he caught sight of his son Mungo walking along the opposite pavement in the direction of a row of derelict houses, condemned to demolition and boarded up, and a public house called the Gander. Since Mungo could scarcely have any business at the condemned houses he must be going to the pub. Because of his great height he could easily pass for four years older than he was. Fergus very much disliked the thought of his youngest going into pubs at the age of fourteen but he didn’t know what he could do about it. He drove on with a fresh worry in reserve.
    On one side of the wide road were row upon row of little poky shops, opposite them a bingo hall and the old Fontaine Cinema. All those houses awaiting demolition didn’t improve matters. But when they were demolished and new blocks erected, what then? He could offer for that clinic building and proceed with negotiations while he was waiting to hear if planning permission had been granted. And then, if he got his permission, withdraw from the purchase. It would bedishonourable and underhand and Fergus knew he couldn’t do it.
    But suppose he lost both? What would happen