‘Is he keen on rugby, then?’ Jamie smiled.
‘Most people are when Crusader fever hits town. Everybody dresses in red and black and everybody gets sick of hearing ‘‘Conquest of Paradise’’. There could be a big game coming up next month if they get through to the finals. You’ll see what I mean then.’
‘Let’s hope Josh and Toni are back in time,’ Oliver put in. ‘Josh would hate to miss a big match.’
Jamie was adding a second spoonful of sugar to his tea. ‘They’re having a long honeymoon.’
‘They both needed a good break.’ Oliver’s glance included both Sophie and Janet, who nodded their agreement. Janet was pleased to notice Jamie’s expression, advertising his understanding of a bond of knowledge between the St Davids staff members that excluded the newcomer. She belonged here, her expression told him. He didn’t.
Sophie was peering into her mug with distaste. ‘I’ve gone right off coffee,’ she announced. ‘I think I’ll switch to tea.’
‘You should go home and put your feet up,’ Oliver advised. ‘You’ve had an awful day and it’s an early flight tomorrow.’ He looked worried. ‘This exam couldn’t be at a worse time for you. Maybe you should ask for a postponement.’
‘No way!’ Sophie decared. ‘All that swotting for nothing? I’ll be fine, Oliver—as long as there’s a toilet nearby. I wouldn’t mind heading home now, though. Do you think you can cope without me?’
‘Jamie’s doing a fantastic job already,’ Oliver informed his wife. Jamie shrugged modestly.
‘You’ve got a great set-up here,’ he complimented Oliver. ‘Your record-keeping is superb and you and Janet have been very helpful with my queries regarding prescriptions and so on.’
Oliver and Sophie exchanged glances. Then Oliver got to his feet. ‘I haven’t given you a proper tour of the place yet. Let’s do it while we’ve got a quiet spell. You’d better see where we keep the life pack and the oxygen and so on.’
Jamie nodded. ‘After your Mr Collins, I think that would be a very good idea.’
‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen very often.’ Oliver smiled. ‘Don’t expect too much excitement at St David’s.’
‘Och, I don’t.’ Jamie’s gaze landed on Janet. ‘But life has a way of throwing a few surprises at you.’
Sophie hadn’t failed to notice the direction of Jamie’s comment. ‘It has, indeed,’ she agreed happily. ‘Good luck for the next couple of days, Jamie. I’ll look forward to seeing you again when I’m back from Wellington.’
Sophie barely contained herself until the men left the room. She nudged Janet meaningfully. ‘Not bad. You must be looking forward to a chance to catch up.’ She wiggled her eyebrows. ‘Or reminisce, maybe?’
Janet rolled her eyes. ‘Give me a break.’ She ignored Sophie’s hopeful expression. ‘Oliver’s right, Sophie. You’d better go home and have a rest.’ She picked up the empty mugs the men had left on the table. ‘And I’d better get on. I’ve got some warts waiting to be done.’ Turning back to collect Sophie’s abandoned mug of coffee, Janet chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Sophie?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Could you ask Oliver …? I mean, could you and Oliver …?’ Janet paused uncomfortably.
‘Could we what, Janet?’ Sophie frowned in concern. ‘Are you worried about something?’
‘It’s just …’ Janet busied herself with the mugs. ‘I’d rather that Jamie McFadden didn’t find out about the twins.’ That was the understatement of the century! Janet glanced over her shoulder to see whether Sophie had read anything more into her attempt at a casual request.
She had. But not what Janet had feared. Sophie’s smile was understanding. The gleam in her eyes was knowing. ‘My lips are sealed,’ she promised. ‘And I’ll make sure Oliver’s are as well.’ She smiled broadly at Janet. ‘They have been known to complicate things in that direction, haven’t they?’
‘Mmm.’ Janet was wondering desperately whether correcting Sophie’s erroneous assumption would complicate matters even more.
‘What was it they called your last boyfriend? A dork?’ Sophie giggled. ‘Dennis the dork. No wonder he took off! Don’t worry.’ Sophie tapped the side of her nose. ‘As far as Dr Jamie McFadden will know, you’re single and unencumbered. It’ll be entirely up to you when you tell him.’
‘Thanks.’ Janet smiled tightly. She had no intention whatsoever of telling James McFadden about her children. It would be a disaster if he found out the truth and it was a disaster that Janet Muir was determined wouldn’t occur.
CHAPTER THREE
‘WHAT’S for tea, Mum?’
‘Bread and water,’ Janet told Adam sternly. She opened the back door of her small car and closed her eyes to the large clod that dropped from Adam’s shoe to be trodden into the carpet by Rory as he bounced into the back seat beside his brother.
Rory’s grin reassured Adam that he didn’t need to believe Janet’s threat of culinary punishment. Adam still looked worried.
‘Put your seat belts on,’ Janet ordered as she slid behind the steering-wheel. ‘Mrs Carpenter told me you were late again today.’
There was a short silence from the back seat. Mrs Carpenter lived only three doors away from their school. As the ideal position for an after-school care-giver, Enid Carpenter’s address had been a large deciding factor when Janet had chosen the older woman to care for the twins between 3 and 5 p.m. on weekdays. Along with the lower than average cost of five dollars an hour and Mrs Carpenter’s availability to care for the boys in the holidays and at home on the odd occasion when they’d been too sick to go to school.
It was an arrangement which had apparently worked well over the last eighteen months but recently Janet had detected less willingness on Enid Carpenter’s part. Janet sighed, slowing down for the roundabout near the shopping centre. The twins were becoming more of a handful for everybody, including herself, and she worried constantly about the level of supervision they actually received after school. Enid provided afternoon tea and was supposed to encourage homework. She was more likely to give the boys free run of her garden or unlimited television when the weather was wet. Janet wasn’t about to rush into criticising the caregiver, however. If Mrs Carpenter threw in the towel the boys would have to go to the same kind of day care facility she had used when they were toddlers and that would cost far more than she could afford. The early years had depleted her life savings to an alarmingly low level.
‘It shouldn’t take you more than five minutes to get to Mrs Carpenter’s house after school,’ Janet reminded the boys sharply. ‘She said it was nearly 4 o’clock when you arrived. She’d been about to go looking for you.’ And that was another worry. Janet would have been out looking for the twins within minutes of their non-arrival. Did Enid Carpenter really care about her sons?
‘We had to stay in after school,’ Adam confessed.
‘Why?’
‘To pick up all the maths counters,’ Rory explained.
‘There were an awful lot,’ Adam added sadly. ‘It took a long time.’
‘Why did you have to pick them all up?’ Janet was sure she already knew the answer but the inquisition was a ritual that needed to be gone through.
There was another short silence, broken by a mutter from Adam. ‘Because we threw them.’
‘Ah!’ Janet murmured significantly.
‘It wasn’t just us, Mum,’ Rory protested. ‘John and Michael and Ben were throwing them at the girls, too.’
‘And did John and Michael and Ben have to stay in after school and pick them up?’
‘No.’ Both twins sounded indignant.
‘Why not?’
‘They said we started it.’
‘And did you?’
‘No,’ Rory stated emphatically. ‘It was the girls that started it.’
‘Yeah!’ Adam supported his brother. ‘They called us clones.’
Janet looked in her rear-view mirror. Two identical little faces could be seen. Two identical mop
s of blond curls, four dark brown eyes. Two matching injured expressions.
‘We didn’t hit them this time,’ Adam said virtuously. ‘That was good, wasn’t it, Mum?’
‘Yes.’ Janet smothered a smile. ‘But you shouldn’t have started throwing counters either.’ Another glance in the mirror revealed the silent communication between the six-year-olds. The trouble they’d brought on themselves had been well worth it. Janet sighed again.
‘What’s really for tea, Mum?’
‘Sausages.’
‘Cool! And chips?’ The boys spoke in unison. A common enough event. Janet had often wondered whether they had some sort of telepathic connection. Like she had … with their father.
‘No.’ Janet’s clipped tone brooked no protest. ‘Mashed potatoes.’ She turned the car into the overgrown driveway and parked under a carport, the roof of which was only a memory. ‘Take your shoes off before you go inside,’ she added warningly. ‘And then it’s time for homework.’
The boys were fighting over the only available pencil within five minutes. Janet was shovelling the cold ashes from the fire into the bucket. It may have been a lovely day but this living room seemed to stay damp and cold in the evenings until midsummer. It was too soon to give up the daily ritual of lighting the fire. ‘Cut it out!’ she warned the twins. ‘I don’t want to hear any more arguments.’
There were the sounds of a continued scuffle then an anguished wail.
‘Adam broke the pencil, Mum! And it was mine!’
‘It wasn’t!’ Adam yelled. ‘It was mine!’
‘I don’t care whose it was,’ Janet snapped. ‘I’m fed up with you two fighting.’ She put the bucket down with a bang. A cloud of coal dust drifted up and clung to the skirt of her uniform. Janet brushed at it with her hand, turning the dust into grimy streaks. It was only then that she remembered about the washing machine.
‘Oh, God!’ Janet groaned. The combined disasters of the day rushed at her like a tidal wave. She could feel tears threatening as the stress of a hard day at work and the emotional nightmare of James McFadden stepping back into her life hit home. And now her children were misbehaving, her only uniform was filthy and she had no way of cleaning it.
‘What’s wrong, Mummy?’ Two small arms were coming around her from one side.
‘Don’t cry!’ Two more arms came from the other side.
‘We’re sorry,’ Adam announced. ‘We won’t fight any more.’
‘We’ll share the pencil,’ Rory suggested brightly. ‘I can sharpen both ends with the Swiss army knife that Josh gave me.’
Janet drew the twins close. ‘It’s not that,’ she explained, trying to steady her voice. ‘I’ve just had a bad day and I’m a bit tired. And I’ve got an awful lot of washing to do and I forgot to get someone to come and fix the washing machine for me.’
‘I think I know what’s wrong with the washing machine.’
Janet sniffed and looked at Rory a trifle suspiciously. ‘How would you know that, Rory?’
‘Well, when Adam and I were playing marbles yesterday, one of my best ones—you know the one with the green and pink blobby bits inside?’
‘Mmm.’ Janet nodded. ‘What about it?’
‘Well, it went behind the washing machine.’
‘And?’
‘And I got the broom handle and poked it out.’
‘Why would that make the washing machine leak?’
‘The stick got stuck on the hose thing,’ Adam offered. ‘And it kind of fell off.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about that this morning?’
‘Because you’d be cross.’
Janet looked down at the matching, repentant faces. If the twins had had blue eyes they would have looked like choir boys. A pair of angels. Instead, they’d inherited their father’s brown eyes—and the temperaments of little devils.
‘We love you, Mum,’ the boys chorused, playing their trump card. ‘We’ll fix the washing machine.’
‘No. I’ll do it,’ Janet said firmly. ‘Thank you for telling me. But even if I do fix it and get the washing done, I can’t get it dry by the morning. You’ll have to wear shorts to school tomorrow.’
‘You could light the fire.’ Rory always had the imaginative ideas. ‘And dry things on the fence.’ He pointed to the fire guard.
‘We could bring in some wood,’ Adam suggested, always the more practical.
‘That’s a great idea.’ Janet gave the boys another squeeze. ‘You do that while I see about the washing machine and getting tea ready. Then I’ll help you with your homework after your bath.’ She halted the headlong rush towards the back door with a firm command. ‘Put your gumboots on before you go out to the woodshed and take them off before you come back inside.’
Somehow the chores got done. Even the painfully slow process of encouraging the boys to attempt their detested reading homework. Essential items of clothing for the morning, including Janet’s uniform, were draped, steaming quietly, over the fire guard. The twins were in their bunk beds, sound asleep. One of the more redeeming features of their full-tilt, find-as-much-trouble-as-possible attitude to life was that they tended to fall asleep the instant their curly blond heads hit their pillows.
For the first time since six that morning, Janet could sit down without the pressure of endless, urgent tasks taking any pleasure away from the break. The dishes could wait. The ironing would have to wait. She could sit in the old armchair which her sister, Liz, had found in a garage sale years ago and watch the washing dry.
Bliss! Janet closed her eyes to enjoy the sensation of peace more thoroughly. A minute later, she was staring at the washing again, a frown creasing her forehead. Relatively speaking, this was perfectly peaceful. As peaceful as the real world allowed for single mothers. But Janet Muir knew what perfect peace actually was.
She had known it—just once—and the memory was as clear as it was disturbing. It wasn’t disturbing because she wanted it again. Far from it. Perfection couldn’t exist in the real world and it was better not to find it by stepping aside from reality. When you did find it, the promise it gave couldn’t be honoured. The only outcome could be betrayal and pain.
But hadn’t it been worth it? That time away from time? The vision of what joy human existence could aspire to? The insight into what a relationship between a man and a woman could actually be? Janet closed her eyes again with a long, long sigh. She could almost feel the same prickle of excitement which the prospect of precisely that period of time had evoked …
The excitement of finally having some time alone together. Janet Muir had been twenty-two years old, working as a newly qualified nurse in Glasgow’s Western Infirmary. Jamie McFadden had been twenty-seven, in his second year on the wards. They’d met the day Janet had started duties in the general surgical ward. The attraction had been instantaneous—and mutual. The first date had been within days—a drink at the local pub, followed by fish dinners which they’d eaten out of the paper bags while sitting on the steps of the nurses’ home. Janet’s 10 p.m. curfew and the conversation neither had wanted to curtail at the pub had left no time for anything more glamorous.
That first date had been two months ago, and both Jamie and Janet had been increasingly desperate to get closer. It had been hard enough to find time to be together. Janet’s shifts had been disruptive and Jamie’s schedule a punishing one. It had been totally impossible to find privacy. Both of them had been living in at the infirmary. Both had had room-mates sharing their cramped quarters. The coincidence of having two days off at the same time had been too good an opportunity to miss. Jamie had persuaded his room-mate to lend them his car. He had been waiting out on the street with the engine running and the passenger door open for Janet when she’d run out, an overnight bag clutched in one hand, an excited grin lighting her face.
‘Where shall we go?’ Jamie asked. ‘You choose.’
‘No, you choose.’ Janet laughed. ‘I don’t care. I’ll go anywhere with you, Jamie McFadden. All the
way.’
‘Be careful,’ he warned. ‘I might take you up on that.’
They both laughed but the long glance they shared was much more serious. This opportunity was what they had both longed for. They both knew it was only a beginning. Having finally won the time together, the urgency seemed to evaporate. They drove north out of Glasgow on the A82 until they reached Crianlarich. Janet studied the signpost.
‘Let’s take the A85 to Oban,’ she suggested.
At Oban, neither Janet nor Jamie felt inclined to stop the journey which had become a pleasure in itself, prolonging the anticipation of what lay at the end. They took the ferry across to the island of Mull. At the end of the wharf was another signpost, the arm pointing to the right indicating the main town of Tobermory. The left hand arm simply said ‘Iona Ferry’.
‘Funny name for a town,’ Jamie mused. ‘Which way shall we go, Janna? You choose.’
‘No, you choose.’
Laughing, they spoke in unison. ‘Let’s toss a coin.’ Laughing even more, they managed the feat again. ‘Tails for Tobermory!’
The coin showed heads. They drove to Iona Ferry and discovered they would have to abandon the car. The ferry was, indeed, a boat and no cars were allowed on the tiny island of Iona. Being mid-week, they had no trouble securing a room at the hotel. A reduced rate was offered on the best room in the establishment—upstairs, with a sea view from the double bed.
It was only twenty-four hours from when they arrived until they had to leave the island. It was twenty-four hours that Janet would never forget. The island was bare and windswept, famous for being the first site for the introduction of Christianity to Scotland, with the arrival of St Columba in AD563. Jamie and Janet explored the abbey and St Oran’s chapel, admired the Celtic crosses and marvelled over the history, with fifty Scottish kings buried in the cemetery.
The magic of the place was more than its isolation and history could account for. There was a detachment and peace that encompassed the visitors from the moment they set foot on the shore. The magic touched the first love-making of Janet Muir and Jamie McFadden. It could have been a ritual that had been pre-ordained. There was no need for haste, and passion only added to the reverence with which they welcomed the discovery of their love. A love that was now complete on all levels.
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