Ken McClure: Tangled Web

Dr Tom Gordon looked down from the top of the hill behind Felinbach, the small North Wales coastal village that had become his home over the past two years. Out in the Menai Strait, the wintry sun was setting over Anglesey and a clear sky suggested that there might be a frost tonight but it was fast approaching the middle of March so he took comfort from the thought that spring could not be far away.

Weather was an important factor in the life of a GP in rural North Wales and he felt he’d just about had enough of coaxing his Land Rover over icy roads and up snow-covered mountain tracks for one year. Today it had taken him longer that he had anticipated to get through his outlying calls because of a sudden fall of snow on the Llanberis pass, but he had still managed to complete his list and get back on time for evening surgery. Not that this would have been a major problem because his colleague and senior partner, Dr Julie Rees, herself a native of Snowdonia, understood the vagaries of travel on local roads in winter only too well: she would be ready to cope on her own if need be.

The sun was now very low and its glow was reflected off the calm sea, bathing the village below in a pleasing orange light. Felinbach was home to some fifteen hundred inhabitants who lived in a variety of houses clinging to the steep hillside leading down to the harbour. Main Street boasted six shops and two pubs — one at either end — and a third pub nestled down by the harbour wall next to the yacht chandlers. There were two bus stops on Main Street, one on either side depending on whether you wanted to go to Caernarfon in one direction or Bangor in the other.

The village had a primary school, two churches and a chapel, all of them built in Victorian times. In fact, the sepia-tint photograph of the village, displayed in the post office window and taken in 1898, showed Main Street pretty much as it looked today apart from the lampposts. The harbour area however, had changed out of all recognition in recent times, with the construction of a modern marina to accommodate the smart yachts belonging to wealthy visitors. Where once, grimy barges had filled their holds with slate from Welsh quarries, sleek catamarans with quirky names now nestled in safety while their owners enjoyed the hospitality and laundry facilities of the local yacht club.

A white baker’s van drew up alongside Gordon’s vehicle and a plump, red-faced man wound down his window to ask, ‘Everything all right, Doc?’

‘Fine thanks, Glyn,’ replied Gordon. ‘Just stopped to enjoy the view for a couple of minutes.

‘You’d be hard pushed to find a better one,’ agreed Glyn Morris, the local baker.

‘Outside of Scotland, that is,’ said Gordon, tongue in cheek.

‘Oh, I’d quite forgotten you were a Scot,’ exclaimed Morris with a smile. ‘You’ve been here a while now.’

‘Two and a half years,’ the young GP told him.

‘Can’t be that bad then?’

Gordon answered with a grin and Morris put his van into gear. ‘See you around, Doc.’

Gordon wound up his own window and prepared to move off. He supposed what Morris had said was true. It couldn’t have been ‘that bad’ or he wouldn’t have stayed so long. But was that entirely true he wondered? People often imagined that they did things out of personal choice when that was rarely the case in his view. Most people tended to move with the flow of events in and around their lives. People singing the pub anthem, ‘My Way’ were taking harmless liberties with the truth. Doing things the government’s way, the family’s way, society’s way or even the Church’s way, was usually a much more realistic appraisal.

Gordon had originally come to Felinbach to work as a locum in general practice after the trauma of divorce back home in Edinburgh. He had seen the advert for the job in the British Medical Journal and it had come up at a time when he had felt the need to be away from the trappings of his old life. He wanted to take a look at things from a distance before even thinking about making any plans for the future. North Wales had seemed like a good idea at the time.

The fact that he was still here over two years later was down to changing circumstance. He’d only been at the practice for four months when the senior partner, Dr Glyn Williams, the man who’d taken him on in the first place to help smooth his own passage into semi-retirement, had collapsed and died. Dr Julie Rees, his married daughter, had taken over the running of her father’s practice and had surprised him by offering him a full partnership if he agreed to stay on. He in turn had surprised her by agreeing almost without a second thought.

He supposed on reflection that there might have been an element of not having quite got over the pain of divorce at the time but on the other hand he had been sure that he liked Julie and felt they’d get on, as indeed they had. He also liked the village and loved the area with its breathtaking scenery. He’d come to love the mountains of Snowdonia as much as he used to love the Cairngorms and the Cuillins of home. In many ways North Wales was like Scotland in miniature. Only the great tracts of featureless moorland were missing, a blessing that rendered everything more accessible.

At the age of thirty-two, he supposed he should be thinking more about the future than he actually did but there was a certain comfort to be had from just living each day as it came. Realistically, it would be very difficult for him to return to hospital medicine after having been away for such a long time: the competition for jobs was so fierce. He had more or less resigned himself to a career in general practice but this was no great problem; he enjoyed it a lot.

There was no serious love interest in his life at the moment but mainly because he didn’t want there to be. He had enjoyed an occasional dalliance with discrete young ladies in the area and hoped that he might do so again but the scars left by his divorce made him steer well clear of anything resembling commitment. Besides, thirty-two wasn’t old; there was no need for him to rush into anything. He was six feet tall, athletic and blessed with looks and a quiet charm that women found attractive. They tended to seek him out rather than the other way around. This of course, in a small community, held certain dangers in that many of them were liable to be his patients. It was something he was acutely aware of and constantly on guard against.

Felinbach Medical Centre was situated in a small side street to the north of Main Street and stood next door but one to the Methodist chapel. It stood on the corner of a hill that led down to the marina. The only thing modern about it was the sign designating it a ‘medical centre’ when everyone still knew it as the ‘surgery’. Like the other buildings around here, it was built of Victorian stone, darkened by time and the elements, although it did have a concrete extension built onto the back, something that had been added in the sixties.

Gordon parked his Land Rover in the space next to Julie’s Vauxhall Frontera and entered the building. A pleasing warmth engulfed him and he saw that Julie had lit the butane gas heater in the hallway to augment a central heating system that often created more noise than it did heat. He could see that Julie already had a patient with her so he did not announce his return but instead, looked into the waiting room where he found some eight people sitting there, reading magazines of varying antiquity. He smiled and said, good evening before going along to his room in the concrete extension and taking his coat off. He settled himself behind his desk and pressed the buzzer to summon his first patient.

A small woman, dressed entirely in black came through the door and gave a half-hearted smile as she sat down. The wrinkles on her face spoke of a life that had been none too easy.