The Doctor Calling

by Meredith Appleyard

  ‘I knocked several times, then I tried the door. You shouldn’t leave it unlocked.’ He quirked an eyebrow. ‘Anyone could wander in.’ He walked into the room, looked around. ‘What are you going to do?’ He scuffed at the bare floorboards with a booted toe. ‘Leave them exposed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you done this kind of thing before? Don’t you need a sander or something?’ he asked. He wasn’t going to be put off by her curtness.

  ‘Yes, and yes.’ She stood up, surveyed her handiwork. ‘I’ll paint the ceiling, walls and woodwork before I sand the floor.’

  When she turned to him he searched her face. There was no welcome in her steady blue gaze, but nothing to say he should get lost.

  ‘So, what do you want?’ she said.

  ‘I wanted to make sure you were all right.’ It was partly true. Mainly, he’d needed to get out of the old man’s house for a while. He stepped over the rolled-up carpet to peer out of the single sash-window. ‘You were as white as a sheet on the verandah this morning. I thought you were going to pass out.’

  ‘I’m good. There was no need for you to bother checking up on me,’ she said. And then, with a wry quirk of her lips, she added, ‘But thanks anyway.’

  He felt inordinately gratified. ‘You’re welcome.’ Right now she looked anything but pale, her face flushed with exertion, dirt streaked down one cheek. He couldn’t stop his gaze dropping briefly to the front of her grubby, washed-out t-shirt, and then right on down to the denim jeans that clung lovingly to those gorgeous legs. ‘Do you want a hand to drag the carpet out?’

  She pursed her lips, glancing at him and then at the carpet, and then back at him. He could see wariness in her expression.

  ‘Thanks, that would be terrific.’ Practicality won.

  Together they finished rolling it up, then dragged it out into the passage and through the front door, dropping it onto the verandah in a cloud of dust. Laura sneezed.

  ‘Bless you.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll get Gavin to pick it up and take it to the dump.’

  ‘Gavin?’

  ‘Gavin O’Driscoll, local handyman, jack-of-all-trades. I couldn’t have got this far without him,’ she said and pulled off her gloves. ‘He used to look in on the place while it was empty, after Great-aunt Dorrie died.’

  Jake’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘Name sounds fam­iliar. I reckon I was at school with him.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, her eyes sweeping him from head to toe. ‘You look about the same age.’

  The dog sniffed up and down the carpet, tail arced upwards. He started to lift his leg and then scuttled off when Jake told him to git.

  ‘You need a hand with anything else?’ He could be handy when the mood took him. Just ask Neill.

  Her eyes took in the front yard. ‘No, I’m okay for now,’ she said. Her face brightened and he was glad his need for a distraction had taken him to her doorstep.

  ‘Come on then, Skip,’ he said. The dog reappeared. ‘We might as well head off to the pub for a real beer.’

  ‘Okay,’ was all she said and he was halfway down the path when he paused. She was standing on the shadowed verandah watching him. She cut a sad, even lonely, figure. When he’d asked, his old man hadn’t known how old she was, but he’d figured she was well over thirty. He’d noticed the fine lines in the corners of her eyes and reckoned he’d spotted a grey hair or two when he’d been standing close to her that morning. And he’d smelled her spicy, cinnamon scent which, with surprise, he realised he’d liked a lot.

  ‘You’re welcome to come with us,’ he said. ‘You look as if you could use a break and a cold beer.’

  She straightened, threw a quick sideways look at the open front door and he held his breath, hoping she’d say yes and pull it shut and come with him.

  ‘Thanks, but no, thanks,’ she said, and he let out his breath, disappointed. Was it regret he’d heard in her voice?

  ‘Suit yourself.’ He whistled up the dog and unlatched the gate. ‘But remember, all work and no play makes Laura a very dull girl.’

  His words sent anger coursing through her. If she’d had something in her hand she would have thrown it after him. But as quick as it came, the anger evaporated and she went inside and closed the door, plunging the passage into musty gloom.

  Had she been caught up in her own misery for so long she’d forgotten how to have fun? Had she become a very dull girl? She shook away the uncomfortable thought. What did it matter, anyway?

  Pushing Jake Finlay out of her mind, Laura scanned the empty room and imagined the walls with a fresh lick of paint. She would make them brighter, lighter, and would restore the Baltic pine floorboards to their honey-gold richness. It would transform the room. Just removing the dark and dingy carpet had already lightened the space.

  She straightened her spine. She could do it, she would do it, room by room, until the whole house was transformed. The years of neglect would disappear under layers of fresh paint and varnish. But as quickly as her positivity came, the warm feeling dissipated. If she kept up the extreme pace she’d set herself, the renovation would be finished in a few months. What then? What would she do to keep herself busy and keep the demons at bay?

  As she dragged her great-aunt’s vintage vacuum cleaner into the room, Jake Finlay’s parting words wormed their way back into her consciousness. She bit her bottom lip until it hurt. Damn the man. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone out and had fun. She pictured herself walking to the Junction Hotel with Jake, pulling up a stool at the bar and having a drink, just because she could. Yeah, right, dream on. She plugged the vacuum flex into the power outlet. So she’d never been the life of the party – that was her sister, Alice – but she’d certainly never thought of herself as dull. Diligent, disciplined, dedicated to her work, devoted to her family, maybe . . . but that didn’t make her dull.

  She flicked the switch. What life had dealt her in the last two years had changed her. There was no point pretending otherwise. She wasn’t the same person she’d been before. She felt older, sadder, like an essential part of her had been ripped away, leaving her hollow and unsure of who or what she was. And although she kept reminding herself that what happened would have changed anyone, she missed the person she’d been before.

  The roar of the vacuum cleaner did nothing to drown out her thoughts; they just got louder. Would she ever get back to the place where she’d be able to drop everything and go to the pub for a beer with someone, an attractive male no less, who she barely knew, and without giving it a second thought? She snorted. Get real. She’d never been the type to drop everything and rush off on a whim, attractive male or not. Who was she trying to kid? Her relationship with Brett had been a slow burn; there was nothing impulsive or reckless there. What had started as a business acquaintance had developed into a tentative friendship, and then they’d fallen in love and been married, and she thought it was for life.

  How wrong you could be. How cruel fate could be.

  Down on her hands and knees vacuuming along the skirting boards, with her thoughts a cacophony in her head, things started to blur. Laura felt as if her heart were being squeezed by a giant hand. She stopped, concentrated on her breathing. She turned off the vacuum cleaner. With precise movements she removed her gloves, climbed to her feet and went to the kitchen and filled a large glass with water, sipping slowly and staring sightlessly out the kitchen window.

  It had been weeks, almost months, since she’d had an anxiety attack, and she wasn’t going to have one now. No matter what Jake Finlay said, or implied, about her, and where she’d let her thoughts take her as a consequence. She tilted her chin forward and stood tall. Each day she did feel better, stronger, and more like the self she remembered. Some days she even felt normal, whatever that was, and she wasn’t about to let Jake Finlay, or anyone, barge in uninvited and undermine her painstaking attempt to reclaim her life. She just could not let that happen.

  She finished the water, focussi
ng on its coolness on her tongue, the slide of it down her throat, the fullness in her stomach. She thought about paint colours and brushes and where she was going to hire a sander. Then she rinsed the glass and went back to the front room. She flicked on the vacuum cleaner, let the roar of the motor fill her head, smother everything else. Without another thought she snatched up the hose and set about sucking up the decades’ worth of dust and dander.

  When she emptied the vacuum cleaner bag into the wheelie bin, the last of the day’s sunshine was slanting across the verandah and into the kitchen window. She filled the kettle and lit a gas jet on the green enamel stove. The stove had been there as long as she could remember, squatting in the corner on its stumpy, curved legs. Waiting for the kettle to boil, Laura took in the cluttered, homely kitchen, which was almost uncomfortably warm in the late-afternoon sun. It was a special space, the atmosphere was so steeped in memories it was almost tangible.

  It was the room she best remembered from their holidays with Gran and Great-aunt Dorothy; she recalled the smell of Anzac biscuits baking, the clink of teaspoons against fine china teacups, and the love and the laughter. The same ivory lace cottage curtains, frayed from years of washing, hung at the windows, and the same large, rustic dresser stacked with crockery and odd-looking knick-knacks stood against the wall. The scrubbed pine kitchen table was, as ever, adorned simply with a bunch of colourful flowers in a chipped stone jug. The only difference being these flowers had come from the supermarket, wrapped in plastic, not picked fresh from a carefully tended garden. A Westinghouse refrigerator, circa 1960, rattled away, fitting in with the ambience of the room. With summer on its way she’d need to do something about the afternoon sun beating in on the back of the house. Perhaps a blind on the verandah would do the trick . . .

  It hit her as the boiling water swirled onto the tea bag that few of the things in the house were her own personal belongings. They’d all belonged to her great-aunt. With an unexpected pang of longing, Laura realised for the first time since moving there that she missed being surrounded by her own things. Most were in storage because she’d leased her house in Adelaide to a schoolteacher. But there were half-a-dozen striped Cheap as Chips bags crammed with clothes and shoes languishing in her sister’s spare room. Laura paused, the tea bag suspended above the cup. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought about the accoutrements of her previous life. Or missed them. A slow warmth filled her. She was healing.

  She sat at the kitchen table, sipped tea and watched the shadows lengthen in the backyard. Her eyes drifted shut, she concentrated on the rhythmic movement of each breath . . . and then she was watching the shadows lengthen from the deck of their home in the suburbs, a home that she and Brett had lovingly renovated. She was sipping wine, Brett had a beer in his hand and they were watching the sun sink over the sea. Brett’s arm was slung around her shoulders and her head was resting against him . . . Her Brett. Tired and dusty, still in his work clothes and teasing her about something she’d said to a patient she’d seen that day.

  She jumped, jolted back to the present by the screech of her mobile phone. Hot tea splashed onto her hand. Laura blinked and let the door shut on the memories, promising herself as she picked up the phone that she’d go back to them again soon. It was getting easier. Time was a slow and stealthy healer.

  The yip of a dog and a scraping sound on the front verandah had Laura throwing off the bedclothes and grabbing her robe. It was after eight. What had happened to the alarm? She flicked back the lace scrim at the window and peered around the edge of the blind. Jake was dragging the roll of carpet down the path, Skip was digging a hole under the native hibiscus, and Neill was leaning against an early model white 4WD ute. His washed-out flannelette shirt was tucked into stiff denim jeans that gathered at the waist. His belt was pulled to the last notch. He watched his son.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She stepped outside barefoot, hurriedly knotting the tie of her robe.

  The carpet hit the footpath with a dull thud and a cloud of dust.

  ‘Getting rid of your carpet,’ said Jake. ‘The dump’s open tomorrow morning. We’re cleaning out Neill’s shed, and with your dead tree we’ll have a load, or two. Thought I’d put the carpet on the back of the ute first.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, blinking into the sunshine. ‘Do you want me to help?’

  She lifted her arms and swept her hair into a bunch, twisting it into a knot at her nape. He was watching her and her face flooded with colour when his gaze suddenly dropped to the gaping lapels of her robe. She hastily pulled the edges together.

  ‘Nice,’ he murmured, and she would have had to have been dead from the neck down to miss the meaning in his challenging stare. Her cheeks burned and then he winked at her, slow and sexy, and she felt as if all the air had been sucked out of her lungs.

  ‘Good morning, Laura,’ Neill called, cutting through the moment. He wheezed his way to the gate. ‘I hope we didn’t wake you.’

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ she stammered, folding her arms tightly across her chest. ‘It’s good to see you up and about. My alarm, I don’t know what happened . . .’

  He pushed open the gate and stood back as Jake manhandled the carpet through.

  ‘Don’t worry, the dog didn’t miss out on his run. He went with Jake.’

  She walked down the path, the cement cool and gritty underfoot. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, fair,’ he said, leaning heavily on the fence post. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do much, don’t reckon I ever will again.’ He gave a self-deprecating laugh that segued into a rattling cough, then he spat into a wad of tissues dragged from his pocket. He caught his breath before going on. ‘Good thing Jake turned up when he did – we’re clearing out the garage, taking the rubbish to the dump, tidying up the yard.’ He paused, his breath coming short and sharp. ‘Can’t do it myself and, well, the son-in-law . . .’

  ‘Sounds like you’re keeping Jake busy while he’s here.’

  ‘He won’t be around for long and I’m not one to miss an opportunity.’ He looked over at his son. ‘And a rare opportunity it is.’

  ‘Then there’s no need for him to worry about my tree. He said he’d cut it down this morning. I’ll get Gavin to do it sometime. There’s no hurry.’

  Jake finished loading the carpet and came to stand beside his father, dusting off his hands. ‘I’ll be back in an hour and we can do that tree,’ he said, ignoring their conversation. He whistled and the dog appeared and jumped up onto the back of the ute. ‘Come on, let’s get more of that junk loaded.’

  He was already walking away and swinging into the cab of the vehicle before Laura could open her mouth to protest.

  Neill rolled his eyes and followed, waving away her offer of help and heaving himself into the passenger seat. He slammed the door. The window rolled down. ‘Don’t worry, lass, it’ll burn off some of that caffeine and sugar he’s got running about in his system. It’s all the coffee he drinks. Sorry we woke you.’

  She lifted a hand to shade her eyes from the sun. ‘Don’t worry, and thanks,’ she said, peering past Neill to Jake just as the engine rattled to life and the vehicle moved away from the kerb.

  Jake, a man of his word, was back in an hour. After he’d reversed the ute into the backyard, as near to the dead quince tree as he could get, he lifted an old but well-maintained chainsaw out of the cab.

  ‘Tree comes down and then I get coffee. They’re my terms and conditions,’ he said with a brief lopsided grin.

  ‘Okay. Sounds fair.’ Laura pulled on leather work gloves.

  He slipped on safety glasses and twisted earplugs into his ears and, with one almighty heave, brought the chainsaw to life. He was chuffed that it started on the first pull. He’d spent an hour that morning fuelling it and sharpening the blades. Funny how the things you learned as a teenager never left you. That was one thing about the old man, he’d been a patient and thorough teacher.

  It wasn’t a huge tree, just a load of dead limbs, a
nd when he suggested she stand back, Laura watched from beneath the Hills Hoist until the stump was the only thing left sticking out of the ground.

  ‘You’ll have to get Gavin to grub the stump out for you,’ he said as he pulled the plugs out of his ears and stowed the chainsaw. ‘You could probably do it yourself, it wouldn’t be too hard. It’s riddled with borers, which is probably what killed it.’

  ‘I’ll see how I go,’ she said, and together they began piling the branches onto the ute, on top of the carpet.

  Out of the corner of his eye he observed the way she worked, steadily and methodically. She was taller than average and, although slim, the muscles in her upper arms were well formed and he figured it was from all the manual labour. She didn’t come across as a gym junkie.

  ‘What brought you to this godforsaken place?’ he said when they’d almost finished.

  She looked up and their eyes met. ‘I suppose I needed a break,’ she said, picking up the last branch. With a grunt she threw it up onto the tray.

  He grabbed a rusted rake that was propped against the shed and began dragging the remaining twigs and dead leaves into a pile.

  ‘So, where are you and what are you doing when you’re not having a break?’

  She stopped, planted her gloved hands on her hips and gave him a narrow-eyed look. ‘What is this, twenty questions?’

  ‘Only two. Just making conversation.’ He leaned on the rake. He was curious, that was all, and she wasn’t getting away until she’d answered some of his questions. He waited, making like he had all the time in the world.

  ‘Well, let’s say for the sake of conversation that I’m between jobs and homes at the moment, and taking a break in Potters Junction.’

  She scooped up an armful of debris to dump on the trailer and he saw the flash of something in her eyes. It could have been anger.

  ‘Helluva place to have a break,’ he said with a shake of his head. She stared at him and he went back to the raking, feeling strangely satisfied. Anger had to be better than the haunted sadness he’d seen lurking below the surface.