Lucy Lamb Doctor's Wife

by Sara Seale

  The return journey was a nightmare passage for Lucy. She did not know how much time they had wasted, or how quickly the tide came in. By now the water that filled the little cove might be too deep for even her to wade, and she could swim no better than she had six years ago.

  Though the rain still fell, the storm had passed when they reached the mouth of the first cave, but the water had already risen high over their ledge of rock and was pouring into the cave. The luncheon basket bobbed about at the foot of the cliffs and there was no beach left.

  “Are we going to drown, Baba,” Pierre asked in awestruck tones. He was, she thought, too tired now to be very much afraid.

  “No darling, of course we won’t drown,” she said, and slipped down into the water to test its depth. Her feet could not touch the bottom.

  “We must stay here till somebody finds us,” she said, when she had climbed back, and saw the water that was well above her ankles was nearly over his knees.

  “Will anyone find us?” he asked, shivering a little.

  “Of course they will,” she said, and of course they must, she told herself. Even though few trippers visited Gannet Cove, they would be missed at home when they did not return in the storm.

  She tried to divert the boy’s attention by telling him stories, even singing the songs he always begged of her; it was an exhausting business. It seemed a long time before she noticed that the water was above the child’s waist, so quiet had he become. She made him climb on her shoulders and sit there, propped against the rock. The water surely could not rise to her own height, and if it did, she thought, with the slow advent of lightheadedness, she would have carried, out her responsibilities to the letter; Bart would have his son, the only being in the world he cared about.

  “So much for the Corn Rock,” she said, her teeth beginning to chatter. “I won’t get my wish now.”

  “What did you wish?” Pierre asked sleepily.

  “You must never tell your wish or it won’t come true,” Lucy said.

  “But you said you would not get it now.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter,” she replied irritably, thinking how ludicrous it was that they should be having such an idiotic conversation at such a moment, when a voice gave a faint hail from the top of the cliff. A man stood there, his hands cupped to his mouth.

  “Wave, Pierre, wave!” Lucy cried, “I’m afraid of upsetting you if I try myself. Wave to that man up there.”

  The boy moved his arms with a weary effort and Lucy shouted and shook her wet skirt, hoping it might serve instead of a handkerchief to attract attention. The man made a gesture of recognition and went off at a run, and the tension went out of Lucy so suddenly that her knees nearly gave under her.

  After that, time became meaningless. They had only to wait for the boat that would surely come, but Lucy’s strength was failing. Pierre seemed a dead weight on her shoulders and the agonies of cramp shot through the muscles of her back and arms. The water had stopped for some time at a level just above her knees, she noted dully, and wondered vaguely how long the tide took to turn and go out again.

  The boat had come round the jutting Corn Rock and into the little bay before she knew it was there. Two men were bent to their oars, while the man standing in the bows waved and shouted. It was without any very great surprise that Lucy recognized Bart. Had he not come to her rescue in Gannet Cove all those years ago?

  The boat scraped against the rock on which she stood and one of the fishermen steadied it with an oar.

  “Papa!” Pierre exclaimed, and showed no surprise either. It was to him, perfectly natural that his father should be at hand in moments of stress.

  Bart climbed on to the ledge of rock, the water washing over his ankles, and lifted his son from Lucy’s shoulders.

  “Take the boy,” he said, handing Pierre to one of the men, then turned to support Lucy, whose legs were beginning to buckle. “I have you, darling. Put your arms round my neck.”

  She cried out as the pain travelled along her cramped muscles and he picked her up and handed her gently into the boat.

  “What be ee a think’ of, missus? Don’t ee know about the tides hereabout?” asked one of the fishermen in mild reproach, then added with a certain rough respect: “Reckon you’m stiff holding up the little ‘un, and you not more than a little ‘un yourself.”

  There were blankets and oilskins in the boat. One of the men saw to Pierre, wrapping him up and stowing him away in the stern where he sat, blinking sleepily at his rescuers, but Bart, after a brief, cursory inspection of his son, devoted his whole attention to Lucy. His face, as he bent over her, was grey and the skin taught against his bones. He looked as she imagined he had looked when the dying Marcelle had cursed him for the birth of her child.

  “How is it you are here?” she asked, reaching up a hand to him.

  “I got back earlier than I had hoped,” he said, and gave her a wan smile. “Do I always have to come home to unexpected shocks, Lucy Baa-lamb?”

  “We were exploring the caves,” she said apologetically. “I never knew the tide could come in so quickly. “I told you Gannet Cove hadn’t finished with me.”

  “So you did. Well, we’ll steer clear of the place in future. If it hadn’t been for the chap who found Pierre’s push-cart at the top of the cliffs—” He broke off, as she snuggled against him, lulled by the rocking of the boat and the strength and warmth of his arm about her.

  “I didn’t know how high the water could get, but I thought it couldn’t get higher than me and Pierre would be safe,” she said.

  “Of all crazy, quixotic things!” he exclaimed, and his voice was unsteady.

  “But he was all you cared about,” she said plaintively. “He was why I’m here.”

  His hands were gentle on the wet head pressed against him.

  “Don’t talk, my lamb,” he said. “Everything can be explained in the morning.”

  “Like everything will be better tomorrow?” she said, and there was a pinched look of pain about her mouth.

  “Yes, everything will be better tomorrow,” he said. “Now rest, my dearest, we’ll be home soon.”

  Afterwards, Lucy remembered very little about the rest of the journey, except that it was she who held Bart’s attention, and not his son. His car was waiting on the jetty and he carried her there, with Pierre trotting cheerfully behind. At Polvane there was unusual bustle, with Smithers sweeping the boy off to hot baths and, doubtless, an orgy of story-telling, while Gaston appeared at regular intervals with tisanes for madame.

  “They are so nasty, but I don’t like to hurt his feelings,” Lucy said, having drunk the third with nausea. She lay on a sofa in the library to which Bart had carried her, and submitted meekly to his professional introduction of thermometer and pulse-taking.

  “They won’t hurt you,” he said, “but bed’s the best place, after a hot bath.”

  “You’re always sending me to bed,” she complained, and wanted irrelevantly, to tell him of the present she had bought him.

  “It’s only the second time,” he retorted. “You shouldn’t get yourself into a state that requires medical attention. Now, be off with you.”

  “My shoulders are so sore,” she said, struggling into a sitting position.

  “I’m not surprised,” he implied, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. “A boy of seven is no mean weight to support on shoulders like yours. Would you like me to carry you?”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling, and he picked her up and felt her arms go confidingly round his neck.

  “You’re doing all right, Lucy Baa-lamb,” he said with a hint of laughter as he carried her upstairs.

  III

  The lightheadedness that arose from shock and strain was not really serious, but he was up with her all night. She got used to his tall figure bending over her bed, or just standing there, contemplating her, when he thought she was asleep.

  He had given her a sedative, but she woke every so often and spoke in rambl
ing, disjointed little sentences. The lamp, which had been left burning, threw strange shadows on the tester that worried her.

  “Is there a braggarty worm up there?” she said once, and he bent over her, putting a cool hand on her forehead.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “An adder. Abel knows a charm against snake-bites: ‘Underneath the hazlin mote there’s a braggarty worm with speckled throat; nine double is he…’ ”

  “There are no snakes in the tester, my silly lamb. Hold my hand and go to sleep again.”

  She slipped a hand into his and knew comfort.

  “Do you remember the charm in that book of yours about lying in another county and knitting the left garter about the right-legged stocking? I can’t remember it; This knot I knit to know the thing I know not yet ... how does it go on?”

  He thought she was wandering and his fingers felt automatically for her pulse.

  “Don’t worry about it now,” he said, and she replied with sudden urgency:

  “But it’s very important ... you say the charm and then sleep and dream of the husband you’ll get ... only, of course I have a husband already, haven’t I?”

  “Yes,” he said, and saw with surprise in the lamplight that her eyes were clear and no longer bright with fever, and he remembered now that she had read out the absurd jingle to him the night he had given her his mother’s pearls.

  “Do you go a lot on charms, funny one?” he asked, because it seemed better to let her talk.

  “I don’t know,” she answered seriously. “Abel thinks they’re important. He told me to touch the Corn Rock in Gannet Cove and I did, but I expect it wasn’t much good.”

  And what does the Corn Rock represent?”

  “Fertility. You wish for children. There! Now I’ve told my wish and it will never come true!”

  “Do you want children, Lucy? Yes, you told me you did. You’d do better to consult your husband on that issue, and not a rock.”

  “Yes,” she said, and gave a little sigh and slept again. He watched her tenderly, absorbing every angle of her sleeping face, the gentle mouth, the delicate veins which lent a blue shadow to her eyelids, the endearing curves of the forehead so much like a young child’s. He had chosen her so lightly, he thought with humility, and had expected, because she had no background of her own, that the home and protection he offered should suffice, like the bone one might carelessly fling to a stray dog.

  He must have moved abruptly, for she opened her eyes and lay blinking up at him in the lamplight.

  “Pierre is safe, isn’t he?” she asked, looking anxious.

  “Quite safe. Shut your eyes again.”

  “I thought you looked worried.”

  “And why shouldn’t I look worried about my wife?”

  “You’ve never thought of me as that,” she said. “Not worried exactly, perhaps—kind of remorseful.”

  “Well, perhaps I have cause,” he said gravely, and she turned her face into the pillow, away from the light.

  “You needn’t be, Bart—dear Bart,” she said. “You can’t help it that I love you.”

  “You love me?”

  “I’m afraid so, but it—it needn’t embarrass you. I had to tell you because that night when I—tried to make you understand, you thought I’d been turned down by Paul. I—I would never have offered you second-best, Bart.”

  “Yet you were prepared to accept second-best from me.”

  “That was different. You had given your love long ago. I would have been content with what was left over.”

  He turned her face gently back to the light again, and she felt his fingers tremble slightly as they touched her.

  “But you know the true story of my first marriage, now,” he said. “Doesn’t that show you that you could be wrong, too?”

  She gave a little sigh.

  “Yes,” she said, “but it was too late.”

  He had to exercise control not to pull her up into his arms and shake the truth out of her. Not since the torment of those months with Marcelle had he experienced such a turmoil of spirit.

  “Too late because I had already lost you, you mean?” he said steadily, and she looked distressed again and suddenly a little hazy.

  “Oh, no, no, never that ... I don’t know what I meant,” she said distractedly. “Everyone resented me, you know. Gaston—Smithy, that first night—and you, even...”

  “The servants only resented you out of loyalty to me,” he told her gently, realizing how she could have misunderstood. “They were afraid I might have made another foolish marriage. Can you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said, and drifted into sleep again.

  He got up to ease his stiff limbs, and walked across to the window to part the curtains a fraction and look out. Dawn was breaking and the mists of early morning were rising everywhere from the soaked earth. In this moment of immense stillness, before the birds began their dawn chorus, he understood, for perhaps the first time, the loneliness of spirit that could fall upon another. He had not tried, even in those moments when she had unaccountably disturbed him, to know his young wife and, in his resolution never to be vulnerable again himself, had shut his eyes to the tender vulnerability in her.

  He turned back to the bed to resume his vigil, and saw that she was sleeping peacefully, the anxious pucker gone from her forehead, the colour soft and healthy beneath the two still crescents of her lashes. She would not wake now, he knew, until this last refreshing sleep had done its work. He stretched out in the chair beside the bed and with the ease of long practice in snatching at rest, slept himself.

  The sun was up when Lucy awoke and Bart was drawing the curtains on another brilliant day. She yawned and stretched, wincing a little at the stiffness in her shoulders. He came and sat down on the bed, his face looking unshaven and a little haggard in the morning light, and her eyes widened in surprise.

  “Haven’t you been to bed all night?” she asked. “I wasn’t really ill, was I?”

  “A little lightheaded, that’s all. I’ll take your temperature now, please.”

  “Did I—did I say anything odd in the night?” she asked, after he had satisfied himself that both pulse and temperature were normal.

  “You talked about braggarty worms and lying in another county knitting garters, if you call that odd,” he replied, shaking down the thermometer.

  “Anything else?” The events of the night were still confused in her mind, and she looked at him a little anxiously.

  “Nothing that will be held against you,” he said with a twisted little smile. “Well, I’d better have a shave and a bath. I won’t be going in to my consulting-rooms today.”

  She looked at him doubtfully under her lashes. A great deal of the night’s conversation was coming back to her.

  “Can I get up?” she asked, wondering if he considered her to be ill since he had stayed up with her all night.

  “Oh, yes, when you’ve had your breakfast. You and I have some business to get down to in the cold light of day,” he replied. It had a slightly ominous sound, she thought, then he suddenly smiled and she knew he was not altogether serious.

  “Will you kiss me good morning?” she said, trying to gauge the temper of his mood, but he only laughed and made for the door.

  “With a chin like this?” he exclaimed. “I must make myself more presentable, Lucy Baa-lamb, before—well, never mind. Have a good soak in a hot bath to take the stiffness out of those shoulders.”

  When he had gone she lay there waiting for Smithers to bring her breakfast, and remembering with sudden clarity the things she had said to her husband in the watches of the night. She had told him she loved him, she had told him she wished for children; she had, she thought, made it embarrassingly plain that she had no pride in seeking favours of him, and he—he had been kind and gentle, thinking her lightheaded, and would, he had just told her, hold nothing against her...

  It was past eleven o’clock when she was ready to come down, for she had lin
gered over her bath and dressing, suddenly shy of the day that stretched ahead, and, at the last moment, could not find the sandals which went with the frock and which Smithers must have taken away to clean and forgotten to return. She went to the kitchen to retrieve them, and Gaston bounced like a round rubber ball to attention.

  “But madame is merveilleuse!” he exclaimed with gratifying astonishment. “And to think that only yesterday you drown holding up the little one!”

  “But I didn’t drown—I don’t suppose the water would ever have reached high enough,” she laughed “Where are my shoes, Gaston, and where is Pierre?”

  “Your shoes, I find them, and Pierre he has gone for another peecneec with Smeety, for the fine weather she will not last long, so Abel say.”

  “Gone for a picnic with Smithy! How very queer,” Lucy said, looking quite startled, and the little Frenchman beamed upon her, holding out the missing sandals.

  “It was m’sieur’s orders,” he said demurely. “He does not, he say, want to be bothered with a child just now.”

  “Not want to be bothered with his son—when this is the first free day he’s had for weeks?” Lucy exclaimed incredulously.

  Gaston’s eyes twinkled.

  “Enfin, he has more important matters to consider, perhaps. He tell me to say he wait for you in the garden, when you are ready.”

  She took the sandals from him absently, but did not put them on. Dangling them by their straps, she went slowly into the hall and out through the flower-room. Her mouth felt a little dry. She did not see Bart where he sat waiting in a bend of the terrace, and he watched her tentative excursion on to the lawn and the quick glance she cast about as if uncertain what to do next. She looked very young in a full-skirted white frock he had not seen before, and she swung a pair of scarlet sandals while her bare feet sketched an involuntary dancing step in the wet grass. He watched for a moment longer, unwilling to relinquish the pleasure of observing her unseen, then he got to his feet.