A Baby for the Village Doctor

by Abigail Gordon

  This is unreal, Georgina thought as Ben brought in a perfectly cooked lasagne and a bowl of salad, yet she had to admit it was nice to sit down to a meal that was ready to eat after a busy day at the practice.

  ‘So what is there to do in the evenings in this place?’ he asked as he served the food.

  ‘Well, you already know the Pheasant in the village, which is the centre of the night life. Everyone congregates there to drink and chat in the evenings. Willowmere is a very friendly place, a small community where everyone cares about everyone else.’

  ‘So you go to the pub every night, then?’

  ‘I didn’t say that was what I do. My evenings are spent clearing up after my meal and then taking a short walk. This is a beautiful place. I either stroll along the river bank or to Willow Lake, which isn’t far away, and contrary to life in the big city, I’m meeting people I know all the time I’m out there, not just because I’m their doctor but because that’s what village life is all about.’

  She didn’t tell him that it had been her lifesaver in the lonely months when she’d first come to live there, when the feeling of no longer being part of the life that she’d once thought would be hers for ever had been unbearable.

  ‘After that I come home, have a hot drink and go to bed,’ she concluded.

  ‘So maybe you’ll show me around some of these places that you’re so fond of,’ he said equably, as if not appalled at the similarity of their lives where there was work, lots of it, then coming home to an empty house and a scratch meal, and in his case, watching television for as long as he could stand it before going up to the bed they’d once shared.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said noncommittally. ‘I suppose you think my life here sounds dull, but it is what I want. I don’t ever want another relationship with anyone, Ben. Any love I have to spare will be for my baby.’

  ‘Our baby!’ he corrected, as his spirits plummeted.

  ‘Yes, indeed. I’m sorry, Ben. It will be ours, yours and mine,’ she agreed, ‘but don’t have expectations about anything else.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he told her steadily, and steered the conversation into other channels. ‘You haven’t asked me what I’m going to do jobwise while I’m here.’

  ‘No, I haven’t, though I have wondered.’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself. I’ll find something. Do you need any help at the practice or are you fully staffed?’

  She gazed at him, open-mouthed. ‘We do have a vacancy, but that would be coming down a peg, wouldn’t it? I’ve seen your name mentioned a few times regarding paediatric surgery. You’re a high-flyer these days, aren’t you?’

  ‘Some people might think so,’ he replied dryly, and thought that though he might be good at his job, when it came to coping with grief he’d fallen flat on his face. ‘It was just a thought. But if you don’t want me around during your working day, just say so. What sort of a position are we talking about?’

  ‘We need another doctor.’

  ‘I see. Interesting. But don’t be alarmed, Georgina. I’m not going to crowd you.’

  ‘Not much!’

  ‘You mean my moving in next door?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘I’ve rented the place so I will be close at hand if you need me when the baby comes.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What? Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ she said. ‘I’m sure on some wakeful night on our child’s part I will be grateful to have you near, but don’t take me too much for granted, Ben.’

  He didn’t reply. Instead he said, ‘Shall we take our coffee into the deluxe sitting room of my new accommodation?’

  They spent the rest of the time together talking about the village and when he mentioned the practice again, and the part she played in it, she answered his questions warily.

  ‘This James Bartlett sounds a decent guy,’ he remarked. ‘I’d like to meet him. Is he married?’

  ‘James lost his wife in a motor accident five years ago, just a few weeks after she’d given birth to twins. Pollyanna and Jolyon are in their first year at the village school.’

  ‘And he’s never remarried?’

  ‘No. James and the children live next door to the surgery with an excellent nanny and housekeeper to help out. His sister, Anna, was a nurse in the practice until she married a locum who was with us, and now they’ve left and gone to work in Africa, leaving James with two replacements to find.

  ‘He’s found someone to fill the gap of practice nurse but is hanging fire with the doctor vacancy, saying that he might wait until Glenn Hamilton, his sister’s new husband, comes back from Africa to offer him a permanent placing, and in the meantime employ someone on a temporary basis as he did with him originally.’

  ‘It puts more strain on you both, doesn’t it, leaving the gap unfilled?’ She was getting up to go, feeling they’d talked about the practice enough, and he said, ‘You’ve missed your walk tonight, haven’t you? I’m surprised that it takes you by the river. I would have thought it the last place to appeal to you.’

  She turned away, thinking that she might have known that Ben would still be out to give her memory a nudge given the chance, and was tempted to tell him that she needed no reminders of what had happened to Jamie and never would.

  ‘A river only becomes a dangerous place because of the elements above and the actions of those of us at its level,’ she said in a voice so low he could only just hear it.

  If he’d wanted to reply, he didn’t get the chance as she was opening the door and telling him, ‘Thanks for the meal, Ben.’ Then she was gone, out into the spring dusk and back to the place where she’d felt content until now.

  Ben watched her go from the window and felt like kicking himself for his apparent insensitivity. He hadn’t meant it to be a hurtful comment. It had been said more out of consideration for her feelings, but in the past that hadn’t always been the case and he couldn’t blame Georgina for freezing up on him.

  He’d been congratulating himself that he’d been making progress in getting to know his wife all over again but he’d blown it. Resisting the urge to go after her he turned away from the window, deciding that he’d already been guilty of one moment of bad timing—no point in risking another.

  An owl hooted eerily and when Ben turned to look at the clock on the bedside table, it read 2:00 a.m. For most of his life he’d slept with the never-ending sound of London traffic in his ears, but not tonight. Except for the owl, there wasn’t a sound out there.

  When he raised himself off the pillows and padded across to the window, the moon was shining down on Partridge Lane and he saw the burnished brown of a fox’s coat as it slunk along beside the trees on the opposite side.

  To a city dweller like himself the rural scene outside his window was strange enough, but stranger still was the thought that next door Georgina was sleeping with their child inside her. Ever since he’d discovered that he was to be a father again he’d been throwing off the mantle of grief that had been heavy on him for so long.

  Georgina saying that she wanted no commitments of any kind was something he would have to take in his stride. It was only what he deserved, but he was not going to give in easily. What they’d had before had been very special and he’d cast it and her aside and lived to bitterly regret it.

  But now the fates were being kind. He’d found her, and not only was there joy in that, they’d made a child on that August afternoon, and his heart rejoiced every time he thought about it.

  Georgina wasn’t too happy about the way it had been conceived, but surely she realised that those moments had been more about hunger than lust, a coming together out of the lonely places that they’d found themselves in.

  The fox had gone, the owl was silent, and for the first time in years, he was looking forward to what the next day would bring as he went back to bed.

  In the cottage next door Georgina was also finding sleep hard to come by. The baby was moving inside her and it was n
othing like it had been before when she’d been pregnant.

  In those days Ben would have been beside her, sharing in the wonder of the moment by placing his hand gently on the place where the movements were coming from.

  Tonight he was nearer than he’d been in years, but still far away in every other respect, and she told the little unborn one, ‘Your father is next door and I don’t know what to think about that. He didn’t know about you until he came, and now he’s going to stay. What are we going to do?’

  * * *

  There was no sign of Ben when she was ready to leave for the surgery the next morning, and Georgina was thankful. She needed a clear head for what she was going to be faced with during the day, and it was more than she’d had the night before.

  The shock of his arrival in the new life that she’d made for herself wasn’t as acute today and she intended to keep any thoughts of him at the back of her mind until such time as she could view everything more sensibly.

  It was another bright spring morning, the kind of day that didn’t lend itself to sombre thoughts, and a quick glance at the number of patients waiting to be seen as she passed by to get to her consulting room indicated that the village folk must be feeling the same, as for once, there weren’t many.

  On being introduced, she found Gillian, the new practice nurse, to be a pleasant, robust-looking woman who seemed to have hit it off with Beth straight away. As James had mentioned, she lived not far from the Quarmbys on the Derringham estate, though in a more prestigious house, her husband being the estate manager, and Georgina was reminded that tomorrow Christine would be keeping the first appointment that she’d made for her at St Gabriel’s with her anxious husband by her side.

  As she settled behind her desk she could hear the church bells ringing out across the village and thought that Edwina Crabtree’s results on the possible stomach infection should be back soon.

  The sound of the bells was also a reminder that though there were the sights and sounds of new life all around, for one family in the village it was going to be remembering a life that was past as they buried an elderly relative that morning in the churchyard not far away.

  That same family had just celebrated a birth and old Henry Butterworth’s dying wish had been granted when he’d held his new great-granddaughter in his arms the night before he’d passed away peacefully in his sleep.

  When she’d gone up to the Butterworths’ remote farm on the fringe of the moors to sign the death certificate, Georgina had been met with a mixture of emotions from those there. There’d been delight at the safe arrival of the baby, grief at the passing of the old man, and relief that Henry had been spared further suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease.

  As she’d driven back to the surgery on that day a week ago she’d been aware once again of the close family ties of the people in Willowmere. James and Anna had been a prime example of that in the way they’d cared for his motherless children, and Anna would never have left Pollyanna and Jolyon if she hadn’t been sure they would be properly cared for by those that James had appointed to take her place.

  It made the split between Ben and herself appear a poor example by comparison, but none of those she’d been thinking of had lost a child. Her family had ended up as two grieving strangers and how she wished with all her heart that it hadn’t been like that.

  There’d been no bitterness in her towards Ben. She’d understood his suffering and had felt just great sadness that it had driven her away from him into lonely exile when it should have brought them closer.

  Of one thing she was sure, she could not go through that again, no matter how much they loved this new child when it came. But today the sun was shining in a clear blue sky, there was birdsong up in the trees, and as Timothy Lewis seated himself across from her in the middle of the morning, Georgina asked the man who owned Willowmere’s secondhand bookshop, ‘What can I do for you today, Timothy?’

  He was a quiet, unassuming fellow who loved his books. As well as the literary treasures on the shelves of his quaint shop, he prided himself on stocking something for everyone, and whenever she had a moment to spare, Georgina would call in to find a book for bedtime, as sleep wasn’t always easy to come by even when she’d had a busy and tiring day.

  ‘I keep having the most awful headaches,’ Timothy said in reply to the question. ‘A couple of times a month I’ve been having them and when they come, I can’t bear to lift my head off the pillow.’

  When she checked his blood pressure, it was only slightly above normal and she asked, ‘You haven’t had a blow to the head at all?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Do you feel sick when the headaches come, or have trouble with your vision?’

  ‘Er, yes, both,’ he replied. ‘I sometimes feel better when I’ve been sick, and with regard to my eyes I always get flashing lights in front of them as the headache is coming on.’

  ‘It sounds as if you have the symptoms of migraine,’ she told him. ‘They are easy enough to recognise. What isn’t easy in a lot of cases of migraine is to discover what brings it on. Anger, excitement, stress are all factors, and so is diet.’ She took some leaflets from a desk drawer and handed them to him. ‘These have information on identifying possible triggers and managing the condition. For example, there are some foods that should be avoided, in particular chocolate and dairy foods such as cheese. Also red wine and citrus fruits can trigger it. How long do the headaches last when you get them?’

  ‘It was a few hours at first, but the last time it was a couple of days and I had no choice but to shut the shop, which is my living going down the drain.’

  ‘If they get any worse, come back and see me,’ she told him sympathetically. ‘In the meantime I can prescribe something to alleviate the pain, and make sure you get plenty of rest. And, Timothy, how about getting someone to help in the shop so that you don’t have to close when they occur?’

  ‘I suppose I might have to,’ he agreed sombrely, ‘but I’m used to my own space. When customers come in, I just leave them to browse. If they want to buy, fair enough, and if not so be it.’

  ‘Come back if the headaches persist or get any worse,’ she said as she showed him out. ‘And in the meantime try to avoid stress.’

  When he’d gone, Elaine, the practice manager, appeared with a message that James wanted a short meeting of staff and would she be free for half an hour first thing next morning before the start of surgery?

  Elaine was facing the window and before Georgina could reply, she said, ‘Wow! Where has he come from? Do you think he’s just visiting or has come to live here?’

  Georgina swivelled round in her chair and saw Ben strolling along Willowmere’s main street in the direction of the shops.

  ‘I know where he’s from,’ she said flatly as she waved her privacy goodbye. ‘And I know why he’s here in Willowmere.’ Elaine looked at her questioningly. ‘His name is Ben Allardyce. He’s my ex-husband and he’s moved into the cottage next to mine.’

  ‘Really!’ Elaine exclaimed, adding in quick contrition, ‘I’m sorry, Georgina. I wouldn’t have commented if I’d known.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Georgina replied. ‘You couldn’t be expected to know he was connected with me, and if you’re wondering about the baby, Elaine, it’s his. Ben is the father.’

  Elaine was devastated to have been the cause of the reticent dark-haired doctor having to bring her private life into the open, knowing how she would feel in similar circumstances, and she said hurriedly, ‘What you’ve just told me won’t go any further, Georgina, I promise.’

  ‘I know it won’t,’ she said wryly, ‘but someone will put two and two together sooner or later, knowing village gossip, so there isn’t much point in me pretending that Ben has nothing to do with me. Strictly speaking, he hasn’t, not now. It’s three years since we divorced, but there’s nothing to say that he won’t tell people what the connection is if they see us together. And about the practice meeting, yes
, that is fine by me.’

  When Elaine had gone back down to her office in the basement with her usual composure missing, Georgina thought that she couldn’t imagine the petite blonde ex-accountant, in her late forties and who was the epitome of efficiency, ever having to admit to a failed marriage and an unexplained pregnancy. That, until Ben had come back on the scene, had been her affair and only hers.

  She didn’t see him come back from where he’d gone. There was too much going on with the patients for there to be time to stand at the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of him to confirm it hadn’t been a dream the night before when they’d eaten at the same table in his cheerless rented house.

  She wasn’t surprised that Elaine had noticed him on the street. He’d always been a man that women took note of, though it had never made any impact on him. He’d only ever wanted her until they’d lost Jamie and then he’d withdrawn into his own grief-filled world and wanted no one.

  As she drove home at the end of the day, Georgina was keen to see Ben again. If he’d been in her line of vision at any time during the day, she might have felt differently, but it was almost as if now that he’d entered her world, she had to keep registering his presence to make sure she wasn’t imagining it.

  She wasn’t aware that he’d watched her drive off that morning from the front window of his cottage and had wished that they were going to spend the day together instead of him being left to his own devices, even though he’d known it was a vain hope.

  Apart from the fact that Georgina had her commitment to the practice to consider, there was the way she’d reacted on first seeing him. There had been dismay in the dark hazel eyes meeting his, rather than delight, and it had been there again when he’d suggested he might help out at the surgery. But when last had he given her any cause to feel different?