Sidney wavered. He was a complete stranger, but Jacko and Gene had met him, and, should anything dodgy occur, they knew where he lived. Besides, Meredith had hired him, and while her judgement when it came to Jonty might be completely skew-whiff, in all other respects it was as sound as a bell.
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘We’re heading to the field. By the rugby clubrooms. Do you need a lift?’
‘I will follow in the trusty Fielder.’
He indicated a dusty grey station wagon, of a similar vintage to her own car, a battle-scarred maroon hatchback.
‘I’m Kerry,’ he added. ‘Kerry-Francis Macfarlane.’
‘Sidney.’
She turned to face the direction the children had sped off in.
‘Achtung!’ she yelled. ‘Schnell! In the car! Now!’
Honestly, she’d have more chance of being heard if she beamed signals into the Horsehead Nebula.
Kerry shaped his hands into a megaphone. ‘Last one in’s Bobby Zamora!’
And all three children came running.
‘Whoof. Let me rest my weary bones like the old, arthritic man I am.’
Kerry collapsed down beside her on the bleachers, still catching his breath from a solid half-hour of running. His hair wasn’t really ginger, Sidney had already observed, more the russet-bronze of autumn leaves. A touch of sweaty dampness made it almost brown, the same colour as his eyes. It was an attractive combination, and Sidney felt a nip of envy. All through her teens, she’d craved to have curly auburn hair like Anne of Green Gables, but every morning, she’d woken to the same straight, shoulder-length bob, a hairstyle her mother considered neat and becoming (as opposed to fashionable and slutty), in a colour that refused to be firmly brown but which wasn’t light enough to be properly blonde. She’d shaved her head once, when she met Fergal, and started growing it back immediately — ‘Whose head has corners?’ she had demanded of her reflection. She henna-dyed it when they moved to Gabriel’s Bay, but when the boys came, eleven months apart, and Fergal buggered off, she’d had no money or time to faff with dye, and so reverted to the neat bob and her natural colour, which a generous person might call fawn. At least she could trim it herself.
‘Is this the only playing field in town?’
Kerry was taking in the extent of the Gabriel’s Bay rugby club headquarters — changing room, storage shed, scoreboard and the tiered seats beneath them, all wooden, all needing a new coat of paint. The field was end-of-season rough, grubbed up by spiked boots and scuffling men. The three children, and Kerry, Sidney saw, had mud splatters to mid-shin. She hoped the boys would leave their shoes outside without being reminded. Ever-thoughtful Madison she didn’t have to worry about.
He’d been great with the kids, Sidney had to acknowledge, had none of that competitiveness that seems to possess grown men when playing with children. She’d seen one father at the primary-school sports day jostle his own son during the egg-and-spoon race, and then do a shimmy dance of triumph as he crossed the line first, while his eight-year-old followed, sobbing and trailing bits of smashed boiled egg. And that didn’t even come close to the displays of aggression on the sideline of kids’ rugby and netball matches, from both dads and mothers. The latter, Sidney conceded, being the loudest and most foul-mouthed of all.
‘The only other proper field is at the high school in Hampton,’ Sidney replied. ‘The primary school here has a concrete netball court, and some grass that’s used for school sports. But nothing this big. And, as you’ve experienced, the boys do need a bit of space around them. Ideally, something the size of the Nullarbor Plain.’
‘So does this field double for football and rugby?’
Sidney laughed. ‘The only football in these parts is rugby. Try to pollute this hallowed ground with a poofter’s round-ball game and the club members would come after you brandishing full bottles of Lion Brown.’
‘Is that a beer?’
‘Stretches the definition.’
‘But your boys?’ said Kerry. ‘They love football. I can tell.’
Rory and Aidan were taking turns attempting a round-the-world move with the ball, which Kerry had made look easy. To their credit, they weren’t giving up.
‘They’re happy enough to play with each other,’ said Sidney. ‘And Madison, when she’s around.’
Madison, having quietly observed Kerry’s technique, was giving the boys advice. ‘You need to hold it on your foot for longer.’
‘She’s not yours?’
‘No, no, no. Daughter of—’
Olivia wasn’t exactly a friend, was she?
‘—a neighbour. Who—’
Nor could it be truthfully said that Olivia could not mind her daughter because of work commitments.
Sidney decided to change the subject.
‘I hear you’ve taken a job helping Meredith Barton.’
‘Small-town grapevine? Mind you,’ Kerry added, ‘it wasn’t much different at home in Dalston. If you’d had a rough night and suspected you’d done something regretful, you just knocked on Mrs McKegg’s door and she’d confirm it in all its gory detail.’
‘And with glee, I imagine.’
‘Well, it would have been churlish to deprive an old lady of her last pleasures in life.’
‘So — have you met Jonty?’ Sidney said.
‘I have.’
‘Did he acknowledge your presence?’
‘He did. In the sense that he turned over in his bed and faced the wall.’
‘God, that man.’ Sidney fanned her face. ‘I get all het up and furious at the mere mention of him.’
‘You think he’s faking it?’
‘Oh, what do you think?’
Kerry looked out over the field to where Madison was patiently throwing the ball up into the air so the boys could practise their headers.
‘Personally? I’m so constantly at sea about what makes me tick, I wouldn’t presume to understand the first thing about anyone else.’
Chapter 5
Mac
On the whiteboard in Dr Love’s surgery was what looked to Mac like a drawing of a uterus. As the last patient had been a seventy-five-year-old man, it seemed unlikely, but, as always with Doc Love, it would be a waste of time trying to guess.
‘Explaining how insides work?’ Mac pointed to the drawing.
‘The military tactics of German tank commander Heinz Guderian.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Possibly the single greatest tactician of World War Two. Created the concept of Blitzkrieg.’
‘Much good it did them,’ said Mac.
‘Well, for a while there—’
‘You’ve got ten minutes before Mrs Swanson turns up with her menopause—’
‘It and I are old friends.’
‘—so get this down you.’
Mac placed a cup of tea and two pieces of shortbread on the desk, next to the large piece of metal shrapnel that acted as a paperweight and which Doc Love’s father, while fighting in Burma, had apparently extracted from the skull of a dead Japanese soldier.
‘Jacko says Meredith Barton has finally hired some help,’ she told him.
‘Welcome news.’
‘My opinion is it gives Jonty even more of an excuse not to make an effort. Can’t you prescribe some antidepressants for her to crush into his tea?’
‘That would be unethical.’
‘Not much point striking you off, is there?’ said Mac. ‘Not when you’re just about to retire?’
Doc Love gazed at her through his black-rimmed specs, smiled faintly. ‘Am I?’
Curse the man, thought Mac, and his Gandhi-like dedication to passive resistance.
‘Finish your shortbread,’ she ordered, as she headed back to reception. ‘And don’t drop crumbs.’
Sheila Swanson was already in the waiting room. She was sixty-one and had been experiencing menopausal symptoms for twelve years. Doc Love had told a disbelieving Mac that it was perfectly possible, but she remained sceptical. Sheila Swa
nson was single and Mac suspected her monthly appointments with the gentle doctor were as close to intimacy as the woman would get beyond the pages of the Outlander novels. Probably unfair, but still, Doc Love had too many patients as it was with genuine ailments and injuries. He didn’t need his schedule clogged with time-wasters who couldn’t cope with the odd hot flash.
‘Is he in?’ Sheila asked, as soon as Mac sat down behind the reception desk.
‘No, he’s dead. I’m just about to call the mortuary.’
Sheila recoiled, stricken.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, of course he’s in,’ said Mac.
‘That was horrible of you,’ said Sheila. ‘More so than usual.’
‘I’m in an unusually bad mood.’
‘I mean, he’s not as young as he used to be.’
‘Yes, that’s how aging works.’
Sheila was getting all misty-eyed, Mac saw. She might have to be horrible again, snap her out of it.
The front door opened. In came the ten-forty and eleven o’clock appointments, Evan Olsen (fifty-three, obese, badly controlled Type 2 diabetes) and Ngaire Bourke (sixty-eight, emphysema, still smoking like a chimney). Normally, neither of them would turn up early for appointments because they were scared of Mac, who tended to reinforce what Doc Love told them, minus the tact.
‘Ngaire’s neighbour was dropping her off,’ said Evan. ‘Gave me a lift.’
Mac didn’t need to say, ‘The walk would have done you good’. Her expression did it for her. Evan snatched up a magazine, buried his head in it. Brides, Mac was amused to note.
Doc Love’s door opened and he stood there blinking, as if he’d been beamed down unexpectedly from another planet. If Mac hadn’t worked for him for twenty years, she’d swear the man was in the first stages of dementia. What he was doing, in fact, was swiftly and unobtrusively assessing his patients, noting their demeanour, posture, skin colour, any new visible spots or scars — small differences that could signify something much larger. His memory seemed inexhaustible; he could retrieve decades-old information about patients with no apparent effort. His capacity for compassion was likewise enormous. How the hell would they cope without him?
Doc Love smiled and beckoned. ‘Sheila.’
The woman practically levitated across the room, sailing on a pink cloud of pure devotion. Mac ripped open the first envelope of the day’s mail. If it contained junk, it would be sorry.
Information leaflets, from the Ministry of Health. Topics — heart disease and cancer, the two biggest reducers of the country’s already small population. Main causes — smoking, bad diet, alcohol, inactivity. Being a lazy, beer-guzzling, fagging fatso, in other words. Or her husband, Jacko, who was neither fat nor lazy, but who ticked too many risk-factor boxes for comfort. He was fifty-five but refused to get a check-up. What was the point of knowing? was his rationale. He’d rather be like Lemmy from Motörhead, who only found out he had cancer two days before he died of it. ‘Now, that’s my kind of hard bastard’ was how Jacko had put an end to that and any subsequent conversations.
Mac caught sight of Evan’s eyes peering anxiously above ‘537 Ideas for an Epic Wedding’. She must be emitting a sonic boom of irritability. Thinking about Jacko did that, not to mention Doc Love’s refusal to set a deadline for his retirement.
Truth was, the stress was no one’s fault but her own. She was taking on burdens that were not hers to carry. Jacko might be her husband, but his health was his responsibility, his choice. She had the right to express an opinion, but that was it. And it wasn’t her responsibility to find a successor for Doc Love. It wasn’t his, either — it was the town’s. If they didn’t want everyone to have to drive over to Hampton, then the so-called Gabriel’s Bay Progressive Association should get off their arses and advertise for a replacement.
Damn it. Jacko would assume the position for Doc Love before that happened. No, if Mac didn’t take action, no one would.
‘You been—’
Ngaire’s question was put on hold as she coughed up her own lungs and possibly those of two other people. She flapped her hand, indicating she’d be as right as rain in just a sec. Mac sighed, pushed the health information leaflets to one side. Might as well hand the present patients a guide to conversing in Swahili.
Eight minutes later, Ngaire said, ‘You been down the shops yet?’
Mac knew what she meant. Every week, Doc Love gave her a morning off to drive a busload of old people over the hill to Hampton so they could go to the supermarket, visit the library and get their pension money out of the bank, none of them trusting to such new-fangled technology as an EFTPOS card. Once a month she also took a group to the Hampton community hall for Rummikub, dominoes and euchre. The second-hand coach had been bought by Doc Love, and given to the town. Naturally, it had been dubbed the Love Bus.
‘You know we go every Monday,’ she said.
‘I was laid up. Back trouble. ’S why I’m here.’
Back trouble was the least of her worries, thought Mac. As well as emphysema, she had brittle bones and cirrhosis. The worst day of Ngaire’s life was when they banned smoking inside the Bay’s one remaining pub, the Crown. She could still be found there most evenings, in the so-called garden bar — a concrete square out back with a bit of bare trellis and sand-filled plastic buckets for the butts — cadging ciggies off any other smokers desperate enough to sit there.
‘Next Monday, then,’ said Mac. ‘Eight-thirty sharp.’
‘I’ve run out of cash, see.’
‘Uh huh.’
Mac opened a piece of direct mail from a drug company. It had been beautifully designed, had its own special box that held information leaflets and a stylish and probably quite expensive promotional item meant to stand on the reception desk so that patients would see the name of the drug and feel inspired to ask for it. Mac chucked the whole lot in the bin. She did not like clutter.
‘I’ve run out, see.’
‘I can lend you twenty,’ said Evan.
‘You can’t lend it to her,’ said Mac.
‘Well, I—’
‘Lending it implies she will pay you back.’
‘I will,’ said Ngaire. ‘Next Monday, see.’
‘She won’t,’ said Mac. ‘Not next Monday nor any Monday after.’
‘Well …’
Mac could see Evan’s male pride battling with his natural caution.
Male pride won. ‘I could give it to her.’
‘Awww.’
Ngaire clasped her bony hands, thrilled. Evan couldn’t back down now. He tugged his wallet from his trouser pocket — not an easy manoeuvre for a five-foot-ten man who weighed one-hundred-and-thirty kilos — and handed a twenty-dollar note to Ngaire, who kissed it with a wet smack. Evan moved his head to one side, in case she planned to do the same to him. Caught Mac looking at him.
‘It’s neighbourly,’ he said, with a hint of a pout.
‘Don’t have to justify it to me,’ she replied. ‘Your money. Your choice.’
‘I can put this appointment on my account, right?’
‘Again, your choice. I’ll be in touch about your balance at the end of the month.’
Sweat began to bead on Evan’s forehead. He reached for the tissues on the magazine table. Mac waited for them to disintegrate into damp shreds in his hand. She didn’t have to wait long.
Doc Love’s door opened. Sheila Swanson emerged, flushed and smiling. Mac tried to rid her mind of the images that had leapt in there.
‘Ngaire.’
The good doctor’s tone implied he had been counting the hours of her absence. Mac had no idea how he always managed to sound so sincere. Strike that — she knew perfectly well why. He sounded sincere because he was.
‘Forty dollars,’ she said to the pink-faced Sheila. ‘But getting closer to your senior citizens’ discount card every visit.’
‘You won’t stay long, will you, Mac?’
Doc Love stood by the front door, in his hand the Gladstone bag that
had been his father’s, and on his person a military-grey trench coat that dated from the 1970s which, along with his square, black-rimmed specs, was now the height of hipster fashion. All he needed was a trilby hat and a gelled moustache.
‘No, no,’ said Mac, busy at the computer. ‘Last bit of admin. Ten minutes max.’
‘I will lock this door,’ he told her. ‘For my personal reassurance only. I’m sure you’d handle yourself admirably in any crisis.’
‘Good night,’ said Mac, to encourage him out the door. ‘See you in the morning.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ He made it sound as if it were a treat he was looking forward to.
The door lock clunked into place. Mac leaned back in her chair and breathed out.
She could be about to open a super-sized can of worms, but damn it, no one else had a hand up to take this on. No one else was even thinking about how they’d all cope if Doc Love retired. When he retired. No ‘if’ about it; the only question was when, but Mac couldn’t see him lasting more than another year. He was seventy-two, for Pete’s sake, should have been pottering in his garden and painting miniature soldiers for the past seven years. Should have written that history of tank warfare he’d been talking about since she started working with him two decades ago, when she was a thirty-three-year-old mother of two who’d finally gone off to school, which left her craving some productive employment. Doc Love had taken her on part-time, let her job-share with another receptionist, even though that wasn’t the most convenient option for him. Those two kids were grown up now, left home both of them, and Mac had worked full-time for the past five years, except for Monday mornings, when she drove the Love Bus and Doc Love went out on house calls.
For all that many of his patients tried her patience, she knew that they would suffer, not just health-wise but emotionally, if they had no choice but to drive to Hampton. Some of them, especially those in her group of oldies, might find the prospect so intimidating that they would simply refuse. Might put up with whatever affliction they had until the only vehicle taking them over that hill was an ambulance. Or a hearse.
Doc Love listened. He cared. He treated patients as whole human beings, not just a set of symptoms or a problem to be solved as quickly as possible, fobbed off with a scribbled prescription.
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