by Rebecca Lang
Actually, in a perverse sort of way, she welcomed the depressed mood, because it somehow enabled her to withdraw, to stop straining after something that might never happen. It brought a relaxation of sorts, even though she was not exactly enjoying it, and enabled her to live in the moment. Whatever happened next, even if it was to be a non-happening, would have to come from Joel, because she was not going to take any sort of initiative. Already she had said all that she really needed to say.
If Joel wanted only a sexual relationship with her, then so be it, she had decided. He had his own reasons for not wanting more, while she loved him and would accept what he had to offer.
That decision was a great relief, because it seemed to her that she had spent the last ten years or so trying to put something right, as she saw it. Sometimes there was a peace to be found in living in the moment only.
Since Joel's revelation to her, they had reached a tolerable stalemate. They had walked together with Alec and the dogs, had managed to be pleasant to each other. What had not changed was their enjoyment in Alec, and Alec's obvious delight in the fact that he now had two parents. As time went by, she could see father and son becoming closer.
At work there was a gentle consideration in him towards her, which sometimes left her feeling tearful, so she would excuse herself quickly. Sometimes he would sit with her in the cafeteria and, apart from an acknowledging glance, she said nothing to him, could not think of anything to say that would not bring with it an unwelcome burst of emotion. She feared making a fool of herself in public. No doubt she would eventually get over it.
As head of department, John had an office in the unit, in a quiet side corridor. Once inside it, he shut the door firmly and got straight to the point.
'I've been talking to Joel,' he said. 'In fact, he approached me first, although I certainly wanted to talk to him. It seems that I got the wrong end of the stick, so to speak, about you two getting married, so I want to apologize again. He also told me that he'd had testicular cancer. That certainly puts a new complexion on things.'
They had been standing by the door, so he motioned her to sit down. 'You'll forgive me, I hope, for getting personal, but I do feel that I have a certain interest. Is there any chance that you could change your mind about us?'
'No,' she said, with her new-found courage, of which she did not know the origin, unless it was just that she had reached a point of not wanting to take more of the same. 'Whether there is any future for myself and Joel, we have more or less agreed to share parenthood of our son. It's about time Joel was in Alec's life. That's about all there is to it, John. Is this going to affect my or Joel's job?'
'No,' he said, and she believed him.
'You're going away on holiday in a few days' time, aren't you?' he said.
'Yes, I'm looking forward to it. When we get back, it will be time for Alec to start a new school year.' Nell stood up. 'I must go, John, I've got so much to do.'
'If I can help you in any way,' he said, 'don't hesitate.'
'Thank you.'
As she walked quickly away from his office, she interpreted his last remark as meaning that if she changed her mind about him he would be available.
The next few days were hectic, during which she concentrated wholly on her job. It was not possible to avoid Joel, of course, and they both were at pains to try to seem normal in front of their other colleagues. At home, she prepared for their holiday at her parents' country cabin on a lake. During her separation from Joel, she would have time to think. Before going away, she would have to take Alec to buy a new school uniform for the academic year, plus some textbooks, so that when they came back he would be more or less ready.
'Is Dad going to come on holiday with us?' Alec asked her one evening.
'No. He hasn't been in this job long enough to be able to take holiday time,' she said. 'I suppose he could if he really wanted to, but it isn't usual to do that. Maybe we can go somewhere hot in the winter, just the three of us.'
'Great!' he said.
It was with a sense of letting go that Nell and Alec drove out of the city a few days later, heading north and a little east, to go to the country where her parents' cottage was. Her parents had already left two days before with her two Dalmatians in the back of their station wagon. The separation from Joel was something that she both dreaded and welcomed—they both needed a respite from the heightened emotions that they experienced when together. No doubt she would, perversely, miss him intensely.
She drove automatically, not stopping until they were in a small country town and could stop for lunch. The temperature was in the high twenties, yet very soon there would be a quick change in climate and the cooling breezes of Indian summer would be upon them, fading into autumn, very welcome in the city. Already, it seemed to her a very long time ago that she had met up again with Joel and her life had been changed.
The time at the cottage went by very quickly, enjoyable and relaxing as always, even though both Nell and Alec missed Joel. 'I wish Dad was here,' Alec had said to her pensively on more than one occasion.
'He'll be waiting for us,' she said.
On the evening of the day they returned to the city, after she and Alec had eaten supper at home, out on the sunny back patio, there was a ring at the doorbell. A delivery man from a courier company stood there, holding a large object wrapped in Cellophane. 'Dr Montague?' he said.
'Yes.'
'These are for you,' he said, carefully proffering the object, as well as a smaller wrapped package. 'Would you sign for them?'
'Hold these, Alec,' she said to her son, who had followed her out, 'while I sign.'
In the kitchen they unwrapped the large package to find a terracotta bowl, simple in design, containing many exquisite red roses. As soon as the wrapper was off, their scent filled the room.
'Wow!' Alec said. 'There're one, two, three, four...' He counted the roses. 'Twenty-five! Wow! Are they from Dad?'
'I don't know,' she said, her fingers fumbling to open the small envelope containing a card, overwhelmed, in spite of herself, at the beauty of the roses. These were no supermarket roses.
When she opened the card there was a single word written on it in black ink, in Joel's handwriting, which said, 'Forgive?'
'Yes, it is from him,' she said, keeping her voice neutral. So far, her son did not know that there was any bad feeling between them, although he was sensitive to mood and maybe knew more than he let on.
'That must mean he loves you,' Alec said, with solemn authority, 'because red roses are for love.'
'Is that right?' she said, finding that she could smile at her son in the midst of the depression that had lingered since before her holiday, which had been too brief.
'Yeah, everyone knows that,' he said. 'What's the other thing?'
Nell turned her attention to a small box that was in a Blanes bag. 'I expect it's Vicks VapoRub,' she said.
'What, from Dad?'
'He has a weird sense of humour,' she said.
Carefully she tore off the wrapping and opened the box. Inside that was a velvet-covered box in a deep blue colour and when she opened it she gasped in surprise. 'Oh, how beautiful,' she breathed.
Nestled in dark blue velvet was a large and solid-looking, beautiful engraved and filigreed gold locket, with a chain. It was an oval, burnished as though it was an antique, which she suspected it was. The letter 'N' had been engraved on the front.
'Is that from Dad, too?' Alec was incredulous.
'I expect so, but there's no card with it.'
When she opened the locket, there was the answer to Alec's question, for the locket contained both a photograph of her when she had been sixteen and one of Joel when he had been twenty-four. At that time they had taken photographs of each other often, they had not been able to get enough images of each other. He had cut these photographs from larger ones, just head and shoulders.
Nell swallowed a lump of emotion in her throat, wanting to cry again. If this was his way of say
ing sorry, he could not have chosen a nicer way, yet the underlying sadness persisted in her as she put the locket back in its velvet bed. She had as much to say sorry about as he did.
'Are you and Dad going to get married?' Alec asked perceptively.
'I don't know, Alec. We've got to get to know each other again. That takes time. And, as I've said to you before, if someone doesn't love you, you can't make them love you.'
Her son looked at her very seriously and chose to say nothing. Perhaps, she thought, he was frightened of what she might tell him.
When Alec went off to read in the room off the kitchen, Nell moved the bowl of roses to the centre of the kitchen table and sat looking at them. Even as she admired their beauty and mulled over what they could mean, she still felt that underlying depression that she knew had a lot to do with Joel and something also to do with the horrendous workload that she had taken on in recent weeks, the nature of the emergency cases that she had dealt with. A short holiday had done little to dissipate that. Usually they took a longer holiday in the winter.
Upstairs she ran a bath for herself, put in some musky-smelling bath salts, lit an incense stick and a few candles. Knowing, rather vaguely, that her mood was too low to be healthy, she also knew that she had to pamper and nurture herself for a while, something that she didn't do very often. The holiday had rested her body sufficiently, but not her mind. She closed her eyes and relaxed back in the pleasantly hot water until her cellphone, which she had on a stool beside the bath, rang.
'Hi, Nell,' Joel said.
'Hi.'
'Just got back from the lake?'
'Yes.'
'How was it?'
'Good. Not nearly long enough.'
'How are you?'
'I've been better.'
'Where are you?'
'I'm in the bath. Until you called, I was relaxing. Is there a problem at the hospital?' she asked, hearing and applauding the hint of impatience in her own voice. 'I'm not available officially until tomorrow.'
'No, nothing like that,' he said soothingly, after a moment or two of silence, in which she sensed that he was picturing her in the bath. 'I wish I could be there with you. I've missed you and Alec.'
'Oh, yeah?' she said, borrowing a phrase from Alec.
'You got my flowers?' he asked, a hint of humour in his tone.
'Yes, they're very beautiful, and the locket... lovely. Thank you.' What was he playing at?
'Nell, I want to woo you,' he said, as though in answer to her silent question. She was so surprised that she almost dropped her expensive cellphone into the water.
'Good luck to you,' she said.
At that, he actually laughed. 'At least, you're getting your sense of humour back.'
'Am I?' No doubt he wondered what she was playing at. Well, she would tell him. 'That's not humour, Joel, it's depression. I reckon I'm suffering from a severe case of burn-out, brought to a crisis point by overwork and your general attitude to me, the lack of trust, and all that, so don't be patronizing. Up to now, I wasn't aware that I needed wooing, as I'd more or less thrown myself at you. Well, maybe you're right, because from now on I'm giving up, to save my sanity. So you run the risk that it won't get you anywhere.'
'Nell, could I come to see you...now?'
'No.'
'Why not?'
'I did a lot of thinking while we were away. As I just said, I'm giving up...and it feels good.'
'I missed you,' he said again.
'I missed you...a lot. But so would I have missed my dogs if they hadn't been with us,' she said, wondering where the words were coming from.
'So I can't come over?'
'No.'
'Can't you say anything other than that?'
'How about "Goodbye"?' she said, and switched off the phone by the push of a button.
Nell slid down into the bath water so that it was up to her chin and closed her eyes. As she lay there she had to admit that his gesture with the flowers and locket was very sweet, somewhat out of character, as he was a practical and pragmatic person.
Fifteen minutes later he called back, just as she was drying herself. 'I'm going to come over there to see you,' he said, 'because I'm concerned that you're depressed.'
'No. If you come, I won't let you in.'
'Alec will let me in. I just spoke to him and he would like to see me, and I him,' he said smoothly.
'That's despicable.'
'I'm actually in my car on the street outside your house. I'm hoping you'll let me park in your driveway,' he said.
'No. Bugger off,' she said.
'As your old English granny used to say?'
'Precisely.'
'In that case, I'll walk. I'm part way along the driveway now, in any case, approaching your front door and... Ah, yes, Alec is just opening the door for me, as I asked him to, so that the dogs wouldn't bark.'
Nell put down her phone and ran out to the upper landing, clad in a large bath towel, her feet leaving wet splodges on the polished wood floor. 'Alec! Alec!' she shouted down the stairs. 'Don't let him in.'
It was too late. She heard Joel's voice in the hall, and then there he was, bounding up the stairs towards her. 'I must talk to you,' he said. 'Please.' There was no trace of the humour of moments before. 'I've been as worried as hell about you, especially as John said you seemed depressed, a bit odd, before you went away.'
'Oh, he did?' she retorted, clinging to the towel that threatened to slide off. 'I thought he was a bit odd.'
'Be serious, Nell,' he said, coming forward and putting his hands on her bare shoulders.
'I am...deadly serious,' she said, feeling, at his touch, tears gathering in her eyes again. 'I wish that I didn't have to be.' She knew that excessive and uncontrollable crying was a symptom of a nervous breakdown. She didn't think she was having one as she was competent at work, but maybe she wasn't far off.
'Don't,' he said gently. He led her into her bedroom and shut the door. Awkwardly she held onto her towel while he put his arms round her.
'What's Alec doing?' she mumbled, using one corner of the towel to scrub at her face.
'I suggested that he should get on with unpacking,' Joel said, 'and that I would help him with anything a bit later on.'
'Is this part of the wooing?' she said.
'I was very worried about you,' he said, choosing not to answer.
'That's nice,' she said flatly. 'I find that at this moment I don't care about anything very much, except my son.'
It was nice to be held by him. Not that she was going to let him know it, having already revealed to him all of herself.
'Mum! Mum!' Alec was calling up the stairs. 'Is Dad going to help me with stuff?'
'I'm coming,' Joel called back. 'Listen, Nell, I'd like to spend the night here if I may, in your spare room. I don't want to leave you alone.'
'I suppose you brought an overnight bag,' she said tartly.
'As a matter of fact, I did.'
'Please yourself,' she said.
Later, when Alec was in bed and the dogs asleep, Nell got into bed, after locking her bedroom door.
Over the next two weeks, Joel slept in her spare bedroom every night, during which time they were civil to each other and she told herself that she was living in sublime indifference. Funnily enough, she didn't really question why he wanted to be there, just accepted it. Alec was delighted at the unexpected male company and chatted non-stop at breakfast time, which was just as well, Nell thought, as she and Joel did not have to talk much. Sometimes she drove Alec to her parents' place after breakfast, from where her mother would drive him to school later, or sometimes Joel would drive him.
There was a certain soothing quality to his presence, especially as he helped with childminding and cooking. It was often said that you didn't get to know someone until you had lived with them. Often when she was at home she found that she just wanted to sit, sometimes in the garden, and gaze into space, not doing anything, just thinking, or its opposite—trying to
clear her mind of pressing thoughts. Sometimes she tried to meditate. Sometimes Joel would sit silently with her, or watch her from the kitchen window.
* * *
One day during an outpatient clinic there was a call from the emergency department for Nell. 'Shall I put it through to your office?' the unit receptionist asked.
Please,' she said. 'I hope it's not another factory explosion, or similar.' Her thoughts went to Ida Rowley, who was now up and about most of the time and learning to walk again on her damaged feet which they had managed to save.
'Dr Montague? This is one of the nurses in the emergency department. We have your son here. Don't be alarmed, it's nothing serious, but he's had an accident falling off a skateboard at school and he's here with his grandparents. It's mostly cuts, scrapes and grazes, but we're going to X-ray his arm because he says it's painful...maybe a sprained wrist. We'll do a skull X-ray as well, just to be on the safe side.'
'Oh, my God,' she said.
'Everything's under control, Dr Montague, so don't worry,' the nurse said soothingly. 'Can you come down? He's asking for you.'
'Yes, I'll be there right away,' she said, rising from her desk.
It took her only moments to arrange for one of the other doctors to take over her duties, then she was hurrying along a corridor towards the emergency department, which was on the same level but on the other side of the large building. As she walked, she strove to calm herself. As a mother, she had been fortunate that Alec had not so far been seriously ill or been in an accident, other than the usual scrapes. She hadn't even known he had a skateboard at school.
In the emergency department she saw her father, Dr Montague senior, who was standing in a corridor obviously looking out for her, as he waved. In his professional capacity as a GP he sometimes met his patients in the department when they needed hospital care and wanted him to be there as well. Otherwise, it was not his milieu.
'Hi, Dad,' she said. 'I'm very glad you're here. What happened? I didn't know he had a skateboard at school.'