Free Another Kind of Country by Kevin Brophy Page A

said five past seven: it was just possible that his father was still at the surgery. He turned up the collar of the navy school gaberdine coat and dashed across the street. A car horn blared angrily; through the falling rain he had a glimpse of the driver’s face, pale, bespectacled, the snarled obscenity silent behind the thumping windscreen wipers.
    He sprinted downhilltowards the football ground. His schoolbag bounced against his sodden back. The lights on the ring road were against him but he made a dash for it. Another horn hooted in anger. Rainwater sluiced from the black tarmac over his shoes.
    Even in the rain the brass plate on the tall gate pier seemed to shine:
Roger Miller, Obstetrician/Gynaecologist
. Patrick drew the gate shut behind him and stood under the big tree beside the garden path. He shook the rain from his dark hair, loosened his collar, swung the schoolbag from his shoulders.
    The bay windows of the big double-fronted house were in darkness. The fanlight over the door glowed yellow but Patrick knew that the light in the hallway was on a time switch.
    Patrick grimaced. Sodding dentist. Bloody bus. And the rain falling more heavily than ever, splashing through the bare branches of the sheltering tree.
    The door of the surgery swung open. Mrs Oliphant’s huge bulk filled the lighted doorway. From his earliest childhood, on one of the rare occasions his mother had taken him there, Patrick had taken his father’s receptionist’s name to be Mrs Elephant. It was impossible not to smile in the presence of Mrs Oliphant. Your smile was begun by the flabby roundness of her huge body and the smaller roundness of her head; your smile lingered in the warmth of Mrs Oliphant’s kindness and good humour.
    Her round head was covered in a white see-through rainhat tied under her multiple chins, like a football encased in a plastic bag. Patrick watched her turn her head to the dark skies. He imagined her nostrils twitching, her small eyes twinkling. He smiled as she took a firm grip on the red shopping bag and raised the big black umbrella in her other hand.
    Mrs Oliphant squealed in delightwhen Patrick dashed up the path.
    ‘Patrick! Dear, dear, you’re drenched!’ She stepped back into the surgery hallway, furled her umbrella and regarded Patrick with a kind of bemusement.
    ‘You’ll catch your death, whatever will your father say?’
    ‘Is my father still here, Mrs Oliphant?’
    She went on tut-tutting about his wet hair, about the threat of pneumonia. He had to assure her that it wasn’t necessary to fetch a towel for him. He had to ask again if his father were still there.
    Mrs Oliphant’s round head bobbed up and down. ‘Poor man, he’s with his last patient, Mrs Stafford. I told him I’d wait but he insisted that I go – it’s my bridge night, you know. We were running on time until Mrs Cole’s appointment, she had twins last month, you know, and you know what your father is like, forever helpful, forgetful of the clock when he’s with his patients . . .’
    Patrick had grown used to Mrs Oliphant’s songs of praise of his godlike father. He tuned out. To Patrick his father was a remote figure who wore bow ties and only rarely used his pair of season tickets to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Which was good news for Patrick and his pals.
    Mrs Oliphant finally reminded herself again of her bridge night and said that she must go. She didn’t think that Dr Miller would be much longer with Mrs Stafford and anyway Patrick knew his way around the place and if he liked he could make himself a nice cup of tea, it would warm him up while he was waiting.
    Mrs Oliphant drew the door shut behind her with surprising softness. Dr Roger Miller’s surgery premises seemed tomblike after her departure, as though she had taken with her into the wet night all trace of energy, of vitality.
    Patrick stood for a minute in the darkness of Mrs Oliphant’s reception room, the walls filled with shelves of manila folders, the