Christmas Knight

by Meredith Webber

  But as they drove home, quietly discussing the various theories the rescuers had offered about the cause of the accident, they passed the place where the emu had run into them and saw the fallen body with its long frilled feathers lying beside the road. And beside it, another emu, peering down at the lifeless form, poking at it with its beak.

  Once again, Kate felt her heart swell with sadness, and this time she didn’t try to stem it, letting it wash over her as if empathy with the big bird might relieve some of her own pain.

  ‘It must have been its mate,’ she murmured, the words catching in her throat, coming out far too huskily. ‘Emus mate for life. Did you know that?’

  She glanced at Grant, but he was looking fixedly ahead, as if piloting her car back to town took all his concentration.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GRANT went to the hospital while Kate, knowing the badly injured victims had been taken straight to Craigtown, checked with Tara that the baby was still sleeping, with Mr McConagle that he had everything he needed, then headed for the surgery to tackle the backlog of patients.

  Having heard about the accident, those waiting were understanding but anxious to hear details and reports on young friends, so every consultation seemed to take for ever. Stopping to feed Cassie put her further behind. Eventually Grant arrived and, using the treatment room for consultations, helped her through the session.

  Kate thanked Vi, but as she carried the baby back to the house she felt the emptiness of deep disappointment.

  Was it simply that she’d wanted to talk over the accident with him—to talk it out of her system—or was she missing him already, knowing he’d soon be gone? She phoned the hospital and found all but one of the children seen there had been discharged and the one remaining was asleep, his mother by his side. Still edgy, she phoned Craigtown hospital, where medical staff assured her that the bus driver and three children were all resting comfortably.

  ‘And you’re not much company,’ she told the sleeping Cassie. ‘It’s night-time feeds you’re supposed to sleep through now you’re getting older. Not the daytime ones.’

  She slouched about the house, getting in Mr McConagle’s way until he started to dismantle a wall and shooed her off, telling her to take the baby out for a walk until he was finished making a mess. Maybe a walk wasn’t such a bad idea, she decided, lifting Cassie into her stroller and slapping a wide-brimmed hat on her own head. She’d get paint for the walls of the small bedroom. After all, Grant had said he’d help her paint it, though she could hardly paint it while he was sleeping in it, paint fumes being what they were. She’d have to wait till he was gone.

  The brightness of the day failed to lift the weight of depression that settled more firmly on her shoulders with this thought, but then her daughter, waking to smile at her as they walked towards the town, reminded her of why she’d shifted to Testament and of the commitment she’d made when Cassie had been little more than a fist-sized foetus.

  ‘We will be happy here,’ she promised the wide-eyed baby. ‘And you and I will make a wonderful life together. For a start, we’ll buy some Christmas decorations, things we can keep from year to year, making a tradition for our little family. We’ll get a special tree that can be packed away and little ornaments to hang on it, and bright tinsel for the walls. Or is tinsel tacky?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Grant’s voice startled her out of her determinedly cheerful conversation. He’d emerged, again, from Codger Williams’s bakery.

  Confused by the rush of physical sensation his appearance had caused, Kate took refuge in business, looking pointedly at her watch before saying in a remarkably controlled voice, considering how edgy she was feeling, ‘I thought you’d be back at the surgery by now.’

  Grant’s smile, which had, understandably, been missing all day, twitched about his lips, but all he said was, ‘I’ve five minutes before I’m due to start. I think I’ll make it back by then.’

  And with that he was gone, striding away, leaving Kate with the lost sensation she’d felt on returning home to find him gone.

  ‘He’ll be gone for good before long,’ she reminded herself, ‘so you’d better get used to it.’

  She pushed on resolutely towards the shops, focussing her mind on Christmas decorations, wondering how one cooked a turkey—were they much more complicated than chickens?

  Which reminded her of the emu and she sighed.

  ‘You know, Cass,’ she said softly to the baby, pausing in the shade of a peppercorn tree to adjust the stroller so the sun didn’t strike the chubby limbs, ‘I think I might be like the emu. I’m beginning to think things didn’t work out with Mark because he wasn’t my mate for life, and deep down I knew it. Though, if I’d never met Grant again…’

  She couldn’t go on, knowing with a deep conviction that infiltrated every cell in her body that he was her mate for life.

  And he belonged to someone else.

  ‘I guess that happens to hundreds of thousands of people,’ she told Cassie, although the baby had drifted back to sleep and probably hadn’t been following the conversation too well. ‘They don’t meet that one person or, if they do, it’s the wrong time or place or circumstances.’

  On that gloomy note, she pushed the stroller into the newsagent’s and with a total lack of excitement or enthusiasm surveyed the array of Christmas decorations the shop had on display.

  ‘I need a tree, and things to go on it, things that will last but nothing poisonous if the baby sucks it, and probably nothing too fragile that will break if she clutches at it, and some tinselly stuff—though she might eat that, mightn’t she…?’

  Young Jill Ellis, who’d come to serve her, frowned at these requests.

  ‘Won’t Grant Bell still be working for you over Christmas?’

  ‘Yes, he’s here till the New Year,’ Kate replied, annoyed with the young woman for offering a reminder she didn’t need. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Well, he’s just bought a whole heap of Christmas decorations, including our top-of-the-range tree. He asked Dad to deliver them to your place and we guessed he was helping you set up.’

  Jill hesitated, then lifted her fingers to her lips as if to take back the words, adding, ‘Gosh, it was probably a surprise for you, and I’ve gone and put my foot in it. But it seemed silly, both of you buying trees.’

  ‘Yes!’ Kate said, then she wheeled the stroller around, ready to march out of the shop and back down the street to the surgery, where she’d demand to know what Grant Bell thought he was doing—buying her Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, the stroller wheel caught a turntable displaying Christmas cards and the flimsy structure toppled, spreading cards in all directions.

  Cassie, jolted awake, began to cry, and by the time Kate had comforted her and helped Jill collect the cards, much of her anger had faded.

  Though Grant still had a cheek!

  The morning’s accident meant some patients had switched from the morning to the afternoon surgery session, so it was late by the time Grant crossed the garden and pushed through the back door of the house.

  The house was quiet and he found Katie sitting on the lounge, an assortment of boxes and plastic bags in front of her. As she heard him come in, she turned, then shook her head.

  ‘I went up to buy them and Jill told me you’d already done it.’

  Her words were so bleak he hurried over to her, squatting in front of her and taking her hands in his.

  ‘I’m sorry if I spoiled your fun,’ he said, massaging her cold fingers, ‘but I was up there and I couldn’t resist.’

  She shrugged as if it didn’t matter, confirming this when she said, ‘I don’t think I’d have found it as much fun as confusing.’

  ‘So what else is wrong?’ he asked, resting his free hand against her cheek.

  Another shrug.

  ‘Nothing. Everything.’

  She twisted her head away and removed her fingers from his other hand.


  ‘I suppose you know about cooking turkeys as well.’

  ‘Of course, and I’ve ordered one,’ he said, standing up and dropping a kiss lightly on the top of her head. What he really wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her close and promise her everything would be all right, but he wasn’t certain that it would be. Not yet. ‘So stop fretting about Christmas, and don’t start on that perfect mother thing again because Cassie needs love, not perfection, and you’ve got love by the bucketload, Katie Fenton.’

  She looked up at him as she spoke, and the confusion in her eyes proved too much for him. He took her hands in his, drew her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her body, drawing it in to feed warmth into it from his own.

  ‘You’re the most generous, sharing, caring person I know,’ he said, murmuring the words into her ear. ‘And Cassie is the luckiest girl in the world to have you for a mother.’

  He tilted up her head and looked deep into her eyes.

  ‘Believe me?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, but it made me feel better.’

  Then she pushed away from him, but not before he saw the sadness still lingering in her lovely eyes.

  Grant grabbed her hands and drew her close again.

  ‘I love you, Katie Fenton,’ he said quietly. ‘Can you hold that thought until I come back?’

  She spun away again, glaring now, obviously unaffected by his declaration.

  ‘Come back from where?’ she demanded.

  ‘Sydney,’ he said, grinning at her wrath. ‘Well, Brisbane first and then Sydney. You did say I could have the weekend off, didn’t you? And Dr Darling’s visiting some old friends and has agreed to fill in for me for the morning sessions tomorrow and Friday. Codger’s giving me a lift to Craigtown in the morning and I’ll fly to Brisbane, then go on to Sydney Friday afternoon. I’ll be back Monday afternoon so, if you could get Tara to mind Cassie and do that morning session, I’ll do the evening.’

  He paused, then couldn’t resist adding, ‘I do hope it doesn’t interfere with your date with Brian.’

  ‘It’s not a date and don’t tell me how to organise my practice,’ Kate snapped at him, hurrying into the kitchen before his too-perceptive eyes saw her despair. ‘How did you know about Dr Darling? And is he qualified to practise still? He’s got to be about a hundred.’

  Kate knew her anger was misdirected, but she had to release it or go mad, so she fumed on, blaming Vi, blaming anyone, when all along her heart was breaking because she knew exactly why Grant was going back to Sydney. He was going to see Linda.

  He might love Katie Fenton—as a friend he’d known for a long time—but Linda was his lover, his fiancée…

  His mate for life?

  The thought hurt so much she had to close her eyes for a moment, willing tears she no longer shed so freely to remain at bay and the painful thudding in her chest to subside.

  With hands that barely trembled, she peeled vegetables for their dinner, put lamb chops under the grill, even made a salad.

  You knew all along he’d be going, she kept telling herself, but the desolation in her heart, over his departure for just a few days, suggested she’d been subconsciously harbouring the most ridiculous hopes and dreams.

  Somehow they got through the meal, conversation about patients covering an underlying tension so brittle Kate wondered their words didn’t crackle in the air. Grant excused himself to pack—she wanted to ask how long it took to pack four Hawaiian shirts and three pairs of board shorts—and she washed the dishes, then willed Cassie to wake up so she’d have an excuse to disappear into her bedroom.

  He was gone by the time Kate got up in the morning, leaving a note with his mother’s address and phone number in Sydney ‘in case you need to contact me about a patient or if there’s anything you’d like me to pick up in the city.’

  Angry and frustrated because she knew she had no right to be, Kate tore the note up, then had to retrieve all the pieces with the number and sticky tape them together in case she did need to contact him about a patient.

  Mr McConagle arrived and because it was going to be a sawdusty day, she packed up what Cassie would need and took her down the road to Tara’s.

  ‘I’ll just see Dr Darling has all he needs, then be back to feed her,’ she explained to Tara. ‘Then I suppose I could take her for a walk uptown. Honestly! I’d have been better off doing all the surgery sessions myself. I don’t know why Grant got Dr Darling to come in.’

  ‘Because the old fellow loves to keep his hand in,’ Tara’s mother told her, ‘and the folk in town who knew him love to see him again. He’s always done a few sessions when he’s been visiting.’

  Kate left their house, grumpier than ever. Why hadn’t she known that?

  And if Dr Darling liked to do a bit of locum work, why hadn’t Vi contacted him instead of Grant?

  The puzzle prodded her into asking Vi, who merely smiled at her, shrugged her shoulders, then said, ‘Grant was available and, though you mightn’t realise it, he needed help as much as you did, Kate. Needed to get away from the city for a while as well.’

  Kate was about to point out that he had been away from the city at the time, but Dr Darling arrived at that moment, greeting her with a warm hug and assurances that he could still remember most of the medicine he’d learnt.

  ‘I’ve got old, Katie, not stupid,’ he said, smiling delightedly at her. ‘Now, where’s this baby of yours? When am I going to meet her?’

  He was so like the kind and loving man she remembered that her bad mood subsided and she found herself inviting him to come to lunch—to see the house and what she was doing to it and to meet Cassie.

  Collecting Cassie from Tara, she returned home, tidied up and prepared salads for their lunch, trying desperately to keep her mind off planes winging towards the city and a certain passenger on a certain plane…

  The day dragged slowly by. She phoned Brian. He’d been so hurt when she’d turned down his offer of a loan and had accepted the bank loan instead that she hadn’t liked to cry off the dinner-dance. But now she did, using Grant’s absence as an excuse to avoid the Christmas party, but in her heart knowing Grant had been right—it would have been a date, and to go on a date with Brian, now she realised how she felt about another man, would have been unfair.

  The weekend brought its usual spate of minor accidents, and the casualties coming into the hospital kept her busier than usual. So much so that as she sank, exhausted, into bed on Sunday evening, she reminded herself to contact the Health Department. If they didn’t have a doctor starting at the hospital in the New Year, she’d have to rev up the board and community and organise protests and petitions to the local members of parliament.

  At least, she thought, smiling wryly into the darkness, it would keep her mind off Grant’s departure, and the heartbreak and loneliness she knew would follow it.

  On Monday morning, she left Cassie at Tara’s place again so Mr McConagle could hammer and saw without thought for the baby, and as she walked back to start surgery she looked around her, recalling the joy she’d felt as she’d walked these streets when she’d first returned, remembering the certainty that had told her she’d done the right thing.

  Now Christmas decorations flapped on telegraph poles and Christmas lights were strung across the street, and though she knew that every day she spent with Grant would make his final departure that much harder, at least she’d have his company for Christmas and memories of that special day to hold in her heart for ever.

  Morning surgery seemed to go on endlessly, and by the time it finished she was so anxious about Grant’s return she collected Cassie from Tara and walked up to the bakery, casually asking Codger, as she bought a loaf of raisin bread, if he was picking up his friend from Craigtown.

  Codger looked startled, then shook his head.

  ‘Hell, I hope not! I’m sure he didn’t mention it—and if he did, I’ve forgotten. The Monday flight comes in at about eleven.’

 
; He frowned at Kate, then added, ‘Actually, I was under the impression he was driving back.’

  More confused than ever, she walked home, realised Mr McConagle was still hammering and, after a quick lunch, sought refuge in the surgery, Cassie sleeping in her basket there while Kate caught up on some paperwork.

  So when the strange car pulled into her drive, she had a good view of it—and a vague impression of someone in the passenger seat. She moved to the window to get a better view. Grant was driving and there was definitely a woman sitting beside him.

  He’d brought Linda back with him!

  Kate’s heart faltered so badly she had to put a hand against the wall to steady herself. Of course he’d want to spend Christmas with his fiancée, she told herself, but the aching emptiness of unacknowledged love drained all the energy from her body and left her so weak she wondered how she’d get through the rest of the day, let alone another fortnight of Grant’s presence in the town.

  Then she steadied herself and straightened up, stiffening her spine and tilting her chin. For a start, he could shift to Vi’s. She’d tell him she needed to decorate the small bedroom for the baby.

  Then she needn’t see him at all. He’d do some sessions, she’d do others, and their paths needn’t cross.

  But he was going to cook the turkey, an inner voice wailed. And you were waiting until he returned to put up the decorations.

  ‘He can damn well take them to Vi’s as well,’ Kate muttered to herself, then she leaned closer to the window, realising for the first time that he had a trailer hooked on behind the car. A loaded trailer covered by a grey tarpaulin.

  Maybe it was another motorbike—maybe Linda rode one as well.

  A light tap on the door, then Grant was there, opening his arms to her as he had on the day he’d first arrived.

  ‘I’m back,’ he said, smiling so broadly he seemed to shine with an inner radiance.

  ‘So I can see,’ Kate said crisply, determined not to let the radiance thing get to her—or to reveal her own devastation.

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to kiss me?’ he asked, holding out his arms again.