by Lilian Darcy
He looked at her quickly, then looked back along the corridor, as if listening for the girls. He didn’t dare to let his gaze linger on her face for long, Emma realised, because he knew exactly what would happen if they looked at each other again. He’d bend closer, his lips would part, and…
To help him, she began to inspect her fingernails, and tried to make her voice light. ‘Are you looking for a tour guide?’
As he had done, she found herself looking up at him again almost at once, then looking away just as quickly, still feeling the softness in her face, the smile she wanted to give him and didn’t dare.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I’ll pay you in scones and cream.’
She wanted to ask why he was doing this. Why, when he wanted to kiss her and wouldn’t, had he created another opportunity for them to be together? She might almost have asked the question aloud, because his next words answered it.
‘It’s a way of still e-mailing you, Emma,’ he said. ‘Is that OK? It’s selfish. It’s not giving you anything. I just…miss those e-mails. And I miss the sense of peace I had while I was living here.’
‘I miss the e-mails, too,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an afternoon shift on Sunday, but that’s not until three. I’ll be your tour guide at the garden centre with pleasure.’
Their eyes met again. They both watched the kiss hanging in the air, and her face flamed. ‘It’ll be…yes, fun. Can I carry one of the girls to the car for you?’ she asked quickly.
Pete straightened at last, pushing his hand against the doorjamb. ‘Please. They’ll probably wake up. If they don’t, I might just put them to bed in their clothes tonight. Against the rule of good parenting, but—’
‘It’s good to break the rules sometimes.’
‘Let me unlock the car, and we’ll carry them out together.’
The girls didn’t waken.
Later, in her bed, Emma herself didn’t sleep.
CHAPTER SIX
‘CROFT? Peter?’
The older doctor at the other end of the phone line was brisk. Pete didn’t correct the other man’s mistake. His name wasn’t Peter, but of course most people assumed that it was. Generally, since he wasn’t remotely fond of Pentreath—it had been his mother’s maiden name—he let them do so.
‘I thought you’d want a report on Alethea Childer’s surgery,’ Geoffrey Caldwell said.
‘Yes, very much.’ He had hoped to hear yesterday afternoon but hadn’t, and would have called the hospital in Melbourne today if Dr Caldwell hadn’t phoned.
‘It went according to plan, and she survived. There’s still a long way to go before she’ll be out of the woods.’
Dr Caldwell continued with some technical detail that had Pete wincing as he considered what the atmosphere must have been like in Theatre, with the crowd of gowned figures bending over such a pitifully tiny form, using special extensions on some of their instruments to reach and manipulate the miniature chambers and vessels of the malformed heart.
He knew what the baby would look like now, too—attached to a tangle of lines and monitors, spread out on her back like a frog awaiting dissection, twitching with pain or with the effect of the medication that controlled pain, fighting to survive. How must it feel to see your baby looking that way?
‘How’s the mother?’ he asked, when Geoffrey Caldwell had finished. ‘Rebecca. How’s she handling it?’
‘Well, she’s handling it. That’s really all I can say. She’s here. She’s terrified and upset.’
‘Lord, of course!’
‘She needs a lot from the nurses. Sorry, that’s my pager going off…’
Pete knew this was all he’d get for the moment. Geoffrey Caldwell was a busy man. He put down the phone and rang Rebecca’s mother, who was at home. Rebecca had already spoken to her several times since the surgery.
‘You were planning to go down, weren’t you?’ Pete asked, a little surprised that Susan Childer hadn’t done so yet. ‘I thought you were.’
‘You have no idea!’ she said, laughing wearily. ‘I’m going to drive down tomorrow. Would have flown in the aircraft with them, only there was no room and I knew it would have been wrong.’
‘Wrong?’
‘Maybe it’s still wrong. You see, if I go, Dr Croft, is Rebecca just going to hand it all over to me? The bonding, and the worry, and the love?’
‘She might, yes.’ He saw her point now.
‘You know, when you told her about the suspected heart problem, and I wasn’t there,’ Mrs Childer went on, ‘she made the decision to go to Melbourne all on her own. When she has to, she can handle this, and she loves that baby. But when I’m around, she turns into a child again, and wants to dump it all on Mum.’
‘That’s tough,’ he said. ‘I can see what you’re saying.’
‘But I’m that baby’s granny, and I want to see her, so I’m going tomorrow. We’ll just see…’ Mrs Childer would probably need to go on saying those last three words for months to come.
Pete sighed and put down the pen he’d been fiddling with. Time to call in his next patient. His schedule had been delayed by Geoffrey Caldwell’s phone call, and by Pete’s own conversation with Susan Childer. He’d had a late start today to begin with, after visiting the psychiatric ward at the hospital on his way in.
The girls were at preschool again this morning—one of their scheduled sessions this time. Jackie would run them over to the childcare centre after the session ended at twelve-thirty, and he’d pick them up by six when the centre closed. If he was running late, he’d arranged for Vicki Lewis, one of the centre’s part-timers, to bring them home. They’d have eggs for dinner tonight, that was easy, but he couldn’t fall back on eggs or pizza every night of the week.
Meanwhile, the medication Claire had been put on to bring her down from her manic high had pushed her too far the other way, and she’d been sleeping since six o’clock yesterday evening, exhausted by the sleepless energy that had gripped her for days before. At least it meant Pete could see her, and talk to the staff, without unleashing an outburst from her.
By her bed, he’d brushed a strand of hair from her face and found a thin thread of tenderness still remaining, even after the roller-coaster they’d been on for so many years.
More than five years, in fact—since the day she’d told him she was pregnant.
‘You have to marry me, Pete,’ she’d said that day, quite panicky about it. ‘I’m going to be a terrible mother, I know it! I’m not ready for this at all. I hadn’t decided if I ever wanted children, let alone now. We hadn’t even decided if we were serious about each other, had we?’
No, they hadn’t.
He hadn’t.
He’d just been humming along, thinking this was all rather nice and fun, but not looking to the future at all. Claire had been new in town, lively and attractive. And suddenly they were to be bonded together by a baby. Twins, as it had turned out. He’d found out the hard way that the future could sometimes arrive unwanted, all on its own.
Their marriage had been a mess from the beginning, although they’d both done their best for the sake of their daughters. Ending it was proving even worse. How long had Claire’s illness been developing, while he’d already felt so hostile towards her after years of incompatibility that he hadn’t picked up on it?
‘Oh, Claire, I’m so sorry,’ he’d whispered to her this morning, staring down at her sleeping form.
And he’d known he’d been right not to consummate the powerful awareness that had flared between himself and Emma last night.
The time might never be right for that, he realised. The weeks would pass, while the rest of his life was still an unsorted mess. The opportunity would slip away. The intensity of need would subside in one or both of them, leaving only awkwardness. He recognised this danger, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to sort his life out first.
He stood up, left his desk and went out to the waiting room to pick up the topmost file in the pile that was ba
lanced on the edge of the reception desk.
‘Gwen?’ he said to his next patient. ‘Come on in.’
‘I talked to Pete at lunchtime,’ Nell said to Emma over the phone. She was at home, about to leave for an afternoon shift. ‘And I heard from Geoffrey Caldwell directly, too. Thought you might want to know.’
About Alethea Childer, Emma realised.
At first she’d thought Nell might have been talking about Claire. She wanted to ask, but knew she couldn’t. Professionally, it just wasn’t her business, and Nell was the last person to break patient confidentiality. Pete himself might easily be regretting what he’d told her, as he had done before.
‘The surgery took place, and the baby survived,’ Nell said.
One piece of good news.
‘That’s great, Nell!’
There was a pause, then Nell said bluntly, ‘Listen, is there something going on between you and Pete?’ The Hippocratic oath didn’t encompass any scruples regarding interference in her friend’s personal life
‘No. There isn’t,’ Emma said. ‘I mean, I guess you could say we’re friends, but—’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Why, Nell?’
Silence.
‘Look, I know Claire’s in the psych unit,’ Emma said, then she sighed. ‘OK, I—I guess I don’t need to ask why, do I?’
‘I suddenly realised I’d dug myself into a big, fat ethical hole,’ Nell said. ‘I’m glad you know about it. Steer clear. You don’t need the grief.’
The advice sounded callous and cold.
‘Don’t you think he might need some support?’ Emma said.
‘People have to handle these things on their own. No. I don’t mean that, of course. Lord, I sound like my mother!’ With whom, Emma knew, Nell had a difficult relationship. ‘But Pete does have other people he can call on, and I just don’t think you or Pete need an emotional complication of this nature when Claire’s illness has pulled their divorce right off the table.’
‘I told you there was nothing going on, Nell.’ But Emma had to fight to keep her voice steady now.
Of course Claire’s illness changed things. Hadn’t she already understood this herself? She hadn’t considered it quite in Nell’s blunt terms, however, and Nell was right. Maybe there wouldn’t be a divorce at all now. If Claire’s undiagnosed illness was at the root of their problems, or even if it wasn’t.
‘Yes. Right. Good. Keep it that way,’ Nell said. ‘You looked fabulous in that dress the other day. We all told you so. Find someone who’s in a position to appreciate the fact freely.’
‘Nell—’
‘I know. I’m a sledgehammer. It gets results. You’ve put up with it for fifteen years or more.’
‘Because you’re made of fluffy pink marshmallow deep below the thick outer crust, Dr Cassidy.’
‘Not true,’ Nell answered crisply. ‘The marshmallow is, in fact, dangerously close to the surface and the crust is pitifully thin. Which is why I’m saying all this about Pete. You’re a friend, and you need something nice in your life after the years you gave to your mother when she was ill, and to your father and Beryl. You don’t need to get hurt. OK?’
‘Does that prescription require a doctor’s signature, or is it available over the counter?’
‘Now, isn’t that an appealing thought?’ Nell drawled, and they both laughed.
The maternity unit was quiet, both in Labour and Delivery and on the post-partum side, when Emma went in to work. Liz Stokes had her two-bed room to herself, and the three new mums who’d been at yesterday’s baby bathing demonstration had all been discharged, with their healthy babies feeding well.
One fourth-time mother had delivered last night, at around one in the morning, and the baby, the afterbirth pains and a stubborn uterus which wouldn’t tone up as it was supposed to hadn’t given her much rest since. Emma put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on her door and left Mrs Eltham to catch up on sleep that she wouldn’t get once she went home.
Emma wheeled the baby boy into the little nursery next to the nurses’ station and kept an eye on him for the next two hours, cuddling him in the crook of her arm for half of that time when he began to cry. One-handed, she was still able to get through plenty of backlogged paperwork.
In the back of her mind, she wondered if she should cancel Sunday’s arranged excursion to the garden centre with Pete and the girls.
Pete hadn’t kissed her. She’d told the truth to Nell when she’d said that there was nothing going on. A kiss was surely the first step—sweetly melting mouths, warm bodies pressed together. Nothing concrete existed between a man and a woman without a kiss.
Yes, but he’d wanted it. They both had.
In fact, they’d wanted it so badly that it didn’t need to be mentioned and it didn’t need to actually happen. She’d felt him and tasted him in the thickness of the air, in the look in his eyes. So perhaps she was kidding herself. Perhaps intimacy did exist without a kiss.
She could easily phone and cancel the arrangement. There were plenty of potential excuses to do so.
But he very deliberately hadn’t kissed her, as if he knew exactly how wrong it would be, and why. And he’d asked her to go with him to the garden centre as if their awareness of each other and his need for a haven of friendship away from the tumult of his tempestuous, failing marriage were two entirely different things.
If he’d kissed her, she might have been prepared to let him down. Since he hadn’t, however, she let the hours pass, let her shift slip away, let the days go by, and didn’t pick up the phone.
Sunday came, and once again the spring weather was gorgeous. Birds battled with the sound of lawnmowers to make their songs heard. The daphne had been out for weeks, filling the air with sweetness. It was getting past its best, and the soft, semi-translucent red and green shoots on the rose-bushes had unfurled into glossy leaves.
The citrus groves beyond the town were all in flower, and every breath of air was heavy with the sweet, bridal scent they gave off. Garden catalogues landed in people’s letter-boxes, filled with impossibly bright colours and enticing offers of twenty per cent off.
Pete picked her up at ten.
He wore clumpy boots and thick socks and bare brown legs and khaki shorts. ‘I didn’t change,’ he said. He wore a navy T-shirt and an Akubra hat as well, shading his brown eyes.
‘No?’ Emma arched her brows. ‘I’d never have guessed. Thought you’d come straight from surgery.’
His laugh came unexpectedly, like storm rain on a tin roof. It was welcome to both of them. ‘The landscapers finished on Friday,’ he said. ‘I had a load of topsoil delivered yesterday for the lawn out the front. I’ve been raking it out and putting in seed. Got up at six and left the girls asleep.’
‘Earning your Devonshire tea?’
‘Yep.’ He grinned, and some of the strain had gone from his face since Tuesday.
Emma wanted to ask about Claire, even while convinced it must be the last subject he’d want to talk about. She couldn’t let it go, though. It was too important. She touched his arm and asked, ‘How’s everything?’ If he did want to talk about it, he could, and if he didn’t, he could make his answer as vague as her question had been.
The touch was a mistake. She knew it at once, and dropped her hand, but it was too late. The imprint of his bare forearm lingered against her fingertips, bringing an awareness of warmth and hardness and a fine mist of hair.
‘I took the girls in to see their mother yesterday,’ he said quietly. The twins still sat in his car in her driveway, while he’d come by himself to knock on Emma’s door. ‘She was still pretty sleepy. She’d come right down after the full-blown manic state she was in on Tuesday. They hugged her, and she responded, but it wasn’t a great visit. I’m not sure if they’re still thinking about it. Just wanted to warn you, in case we get some odd behaviour from them today.’
‘That’s fine, Pete. I understand.’
‘They’re excited about this
shopping spree, though. I’ll probably indulge them. They want a garden like yours.’
‘I’m not sure if the garden centre sells sixty-year-old hydrangea bushes.’
‘Apparently hydrangeas are back in fashion, according to my catalogues. We’ll get baby ones and watch them grow.’
The girls were a little shy as they greeted Emma, and she didn’t know whether to try and push past it or not. Every instinct suggested caution, but in the end she didn’t have to worry about it. Pete put on a tape of their favourite performers, The Wiggles, and the car was filled with Greg, Murray, Anthony and Jeff singing about Dorothy the Dinosaur and Henry the Octopus, which meant that no one needed to talk.
The garden centre was already busy, and the girls ran around excitedly, examining plants and fountains and statues.
‘Help!’ Pete said. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Trees?’ Emma suggested.
‘I’d like some shade,’ he agreed. ‘But I’ll have to wait about thirty years!’
‘Eucalypts and acacias grow much more quickly than that, but they limit what you can plant near them. A lot of European plants don’t like what they do to the soil.’
‘No?’
‘You really don’t know a lot about gardening, do you, Pete?’
‘Told you I didn’t,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But I’m ready to learn.’
‘OK, then, lesson number one. If you’re going to have Australian natives, it’s best to keep them in one section, away from the rest of the garden.’
They wandered along the paths, examining a huge variety of plants, shrubs and trees and talking at length about Pete’s garden. Then they pushed the twins on the playground swings for a while and talked about it some more.
It was such a lovely safe, easy subject, and they both understood that. No undercurrents. No dark patches to trespass into accidentally and then burn with regret about for the next hour or the next week. It still had meaning, though.
Emma like the way Pete spoke about how he imagined the new garden when time had passed and things had grown. He wasn’t afraid to use extravagant, poetic words. Some men had no descriptive vocabulary beyond the word ‘nice’, and seemed to feel that it wasn’t rugged to talk about light and colour and scent. Pete could barely tell parsley from marigolds, but he had a feel for what he wanted, and if he didn’t know the right word, he invented one.
