Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit

by Meredith Webber

  By now Clare was looking distinctly embarrassed, and when she muttered something about a skirt and top being more practical because she could get more wear out of them, it made him wonder if maybe she had no going-out clothes because of financial restraints. He had no idea how much she earned, certainly less than him, and with school fees and uniforms and riding lessons and rent…

  ‘Try on the other things and show me, then we’ll decide.’

  ‘Try on the brown spotty dress first,’ Emily put in, then she came and sat beside Oliver on the arm of the chair. ‘She never buys anything for herself,’ she confided to him. ‘She says it’s because she doesn’t need to, that she has enough clothes for work and weekends and that’s all she needs. Mum’s idea of dressing up is putting a jacket over her jeans and polo shirts.’

  It was an artless conversation but Oliver was struck by the enormity of what had happened because his mother, out of pure spite, didn’t forward on a letter. For ten years Clare had struggled on her own, or with whatever help her mother could give her, while he’d never hesitated to buy the latest laptop, or a new Italian suit, or take a skiing trip in the Alps.

  He wanted to buy her everything in the shop, to fill her life with the things she’d been denying herself. He wanted to marry her and take care of her for ever so she never had to scrimp and save again.

  She came out in the brown dress with the white spots, and he stopped thinking altogether, his mind numbed by the vision in front of him. The dress was probably fairly ordinary as dresses went. It was made of some silkily soft material so the skirt swirled softly around her long legs, while the V-neck of the top showed the shadow of her breasts, the whole effect breathtaking.

  ‘Told you it would be super,’ Emily said, leaping up from the arm of the chair to dance around her mother. ‘It is super, isn’t it, Dad?’

  Oliver found it hard to respond. It was indeed super, but the beauty of this woman had taken his breath away and his mouth was too dry for words.

  ‘Well, that’s okay, but I can’t buy it anyway. I can’t wear black sandals with it and that’s all I have, so I’ll get the skirt and top which are more sensible anyway. I can wear the two pieces separately, mix and match.’

  ‘With your jeans!’ Emily groaned in a long-suffering voice, rolling her eyes in mock disgust at the same time.

  ‘Well, the top would look good with jeans,’ Clare said crossly, and she disappeared back into the changing room.

  There she sat down on the little stool and tried hard not to cry. The brown dress was so classically cut and elegant, she’d felt a million dollars in it, but it was the look in Oliver’s eyes when he’d seen her in it that had really struck deep into her heart. He had looked at her as if she was beautiful and for a moment she had felt beautiful—something she hadn’t felt for a long time.

  And wanting that feeling to last, she really wanted the dress, wanted to walk beside him in it…

  Being maudlin will get you nowhere, she told herself sharply, standing and carefully removing the dress, returning it reluctantly to its hanger. She put on her own clothes, then carried the skirt and top out of the changing room to find her daughter and Oliver had disappeared.

  ‘They said to wait,’ the store attendant said. ‘I’ll just get the dress from the changing room.’

  ‘I’m not taking it—just these two things,’ Clare told her, but the woman bustled away, returning with the dress and putting it down on the counter.

  Emily’s excited voice told Clare the others were returning, her daughter bursting through the door with three pairs of sandals in her hands.

  ‘Try these on, Mum,’ she insisted. ‘Dad said the least he can do is buy you a pair of sandals when he hasn’t been con—’

  She stumbled on the word and Oliver put in ‘contributing’ for her, so Emily could finish her explanation.

  ‘—contributing to my clothes or school or anything. If you get a pair of sandals you can buy the brown dress which looked super on you.’

  Emily hustled her to the chair Oliver had used earlier and knelt to slip off her mother’s sneakers, replacing them with delicate, strappy sandals.

  ‘Perfect,’ she said, and Clare had to laugh—her daughter a saleswoman at nine.

  ‘Try on the others as well,’ Oliver advised. ‘You might like one of the other pairs better, or you could have all three.’

  ‘No-one needs three pairs of white sandals,’ Clare objected, and now the saleswoman got involved.

  ‘Hush your mouth!’ she said sternly. ‘You’ll be struck out of the fraternity of women if someone heard you say that.’

  Clare smiled as a happiness she couldn’t remember feeling for a very long time welled up inside her, bubbling like a spring freed from some obstruction.

  ‘I’ll take this pair,’ she said, choosing the sandals she’d first tried on, then she looked up at Oliver. ‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ she told him, but all she got in reply was a short shake of his head before his attention turned to Emily.

  ‘Come on, kid,’ he said. ‘We’d better get these back to the shoe shop and pay for the ones we’re taking.’

  He turned aside to speak to the saleswoman, while Emily gathered up the shoes, keeping the discards in one hand and the pair they were to buy in the other.

  ‘Back soon, Mum,’ she said, then she dropped a kiss on her mother’s cheek. ‘Isn’t it fun having Dad around?’ she whispered, and suddenly the spring of happiness wasn’t bubbling quite as high.

  Clare knew Oliver’s reasoning behind the gift of the sandals and—it appeared when she went to pay—of the clothes, and though she felt awkward about accepting such things, she would do it graciously. But Emily’s whispered comment had hurt her in a way she didn’t fully understand.

  She knew it wasn’t jealousy she was feeling, but disappointment of some kind—disappointment that the life she’d been providing for her daughter hadn’t measured up…

  ‘Hey!’

  Oliver had returned and was standing beside her, and his hand rested lightly on her waist as he murmured the word.

  ‘We’re going forward, remember. Just enjoy Emily’s delight.’

  Clare nodded, wanting so much to be a full participant in this new family of three, but knowing it could never be, not the way Oliver wanted it.

  They returned to the flats where Clare changed into her new finery, eliciting cries of delight from her daughter.

  ‘You need my pearls, the ones Gran gave me,’ Emily declared as she inspected her mother for the last time. ‘Wait here.’

  She ran off to her bedroom and returned with the pearls that had been her great-grandmother’s, making her mother sit on the bed so she, Emily, could fasten them.

  ‘There,’ she said, ‘you’re beautiful. Dad will surely want to marry you now.’

  Clare knew the words were nothing more than childish enthusiasm, but once again the joy of the morning dimmed, and despair wormed its way into her heart.

  How could she resist if it became a matter of two against one?

  How could she deny her daughter life in a family situation—two parents living together, not in separate flats?

  She shook her head, knowing she couldn’t resist or deny, yet knowing she couldn’t marry Oliver either.

  Chapter Nine

  THE afternoon at the races was an unqualified success. Emily was fascinated by the patterns on the horses’ rumps and totally infatuated by the beautiful thoroughbreds.

  Clare felt like Cinderella, decked out in fancy clothes, knowing all the time the ball would end and she’d be going back to the reality of her life with only minor changes.

  ‘I don’t intend to talk to you about things tonight, with Emily around,’ Oliver said to her when they returned home after eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant near the racecourse. ‘But tomorrow night—we’ll sort it all out then.’

  He paused, possibly listening for sounds from Em’s bedroom, for the little girl had been tired enough to head straight
to bed.

  Then he continued, ‘She asked me if we’d get married, did you know that?’

  Clare stared at him, unable to believe Em had spoken that way to a man who, for all he was her father, was still virtually a stranger to her.

  ‘She’s only nine. It probably seems to her the kind of thing adults do. She’s no idea what marriage really means, or what being married might entail for the two people involved. All she wants is a mum and dad at home like other girls at school, although statistically speaking there are probably as many different home situations as there are girls in her class.’

  Oliver studied the woman he’d decided he would marry, the woman he’d been so proud to have by his side this afternoon, the woman who appeared, on short acquaintance, to have done an excellent job of bringing up his daughter.

  ‘We’ll see you in the morning,’ she said, telling him the conversation was over for this evening, but his thoughts stayed with him as he made his way into his own flat.

  He knew Clare still had feelings for him. He’d seen it in her eyes from time to time, when she thought he wasn’t watching her, yet she held to this stubborn resistance against their marriage.

  It wasn’t lack of attraction—that still ran strong between them, so strong that even standing close to her he could feel it thrumming in both their bodies.

  So why?

  Because she felt the failure of her first marriage was her fault?

  Because she was afraid she’d fail again?

  The Clare he’d known had been afraid of nothing. Well, maybe snakes, but a lot of people had an atavistic fear of snakes. But she’d had no emotional fear, throwing herself into love as wholeheartedly as she’d plunge into the ocean on a hot day.

  Ah! Was it his fault? Had their split made her cautious about loving again? Had he hurt her so badly she feared to love again?

  Useless speculation! They’d talk tomorrow evening, after they’d dropped Emily back at school, and in the meantime he’d read about a great restaurant on the rocks beside the beach at Bondi, not far from where they lived. They could all three go for breakfast there, then wander through the Sunday markets, have a swim and be home in time to do whatever Clare had to do to get Emily ready for her return to school.

  He pulled out his mobile and dialled Clare’s number, telling himself he was phoning her to make these suggestions to her, not because he wanted to hear her voice just one more time before he went to bed…

  Togetherness crept up on you, Clare decided when once again they were in Oliver’s car, heading for Emily’s school. Em was chatting on to Oliver about all the things she’d have to tell her friends when she arrived, turning to ask Clare if she could invite one of the country girls home next weekend and to remind her to phone the school about Rod coming to talk.

  The wonderful breakfast at the beach, the walk, the swim, had all left Clare so pleasantly tired she agreed with everything, although she knew when she got back to the flat she’d have to write herself a note about phoning the school—about Rod and about the boarder coming to visit.

  When she got back to the flat.

  Would they have to talk?

  Could she plead exhaustion?

  She thought not, although it would be real enough. She was usually tired after a weekend with Em because they always tried to pack as much as possible into it, but tonight it was emotional exhaustion.

  It weighed her down and dogged her footsteps as she walked from the car to the front door of the house, then up the stairs, making every step an effort.

  ‘Too tired to talk?’ Oliver said when they were both on the landing.

  She nodded, then shook her head.

  ‘No, let’s not put it off any longer,’ she mumbled, tension twining through her body as she said the words, tightening as she led him into the flat where she dropped onto the couch, but in the middle so he couldn’t sit beside her.

  Not that it stopped him. He sat and edged her along, then put his arm around her.

  ‘Of course we can put it off,’ he said, so gently she felt like weeping. ‘There are better things for lips to do than talking anyway.’

  And with that he kissed her, so softly at first it was barely the brush of skin on skin, the touch of a rose petal.

  But it was never going to be enough, his mouth moving against hers, testing and tasting her lips, his tongue exploring, not delving yet, but teasing her so she responded with her own tests and tastes, melting against Oliver’s body, revelling in the feeling of being held not tightly but securely in his arms.

  The heat she’d been trying to hold at bay crept through her body once again, and desire so strong she wondered if it would overcome all else sang in her blood. His lips devoured hers now, hungrily seeking deeper and deeper responses, responses she was happy to give.

  Mindlessly she floated on a sea of sensation—being in Oliver’s arms, kissing Oliver and being kissed by him—time and troubles fading into oblivion while remembered bliss tweaked her nerves and coursed through her body.

  Oliver had gripped her hair, tugging gently so her head fell back and his lips could find her neck.

  Did every woman have erogenous zones along the line of the blood vessels in the neck, or was it only she who shivered with delight when his lips pressed against her skin, and his tongue delved into the hollows where neck and torso joined?

  His mouth was moving lower, buttons sliding open on her shirt, her hand against the back of his head, feeling the roughness of his hair.

  Oliver!

  She was twenty-five again—no, twenty, when all of this was new and exciting, when kissing Oliver was an exploration of a whole new world of sensation. His tongue slid into the deep cleavage between her breasts, increasing the longing in her body, so she pressed against him, nibbling at his ear, sucking on the lobe, sliding her tongue into the hidden whorls, feeling his reaction in his hardening erection.

  It would be all right, she told herself. This was Oliver. She was safe. It would be fine. She needed love; she wanted it, wanted him.

  Wanted him?

  The words began to echo in her head and were blotting out the wonderment kissing Oliver had provided.

  ‘Oliver!’

  She breathed his name, and although she knew it must have taken a superhuman effort, he pulled away from her, still holding her, but not tightly, to him—not kissing her.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse and her body shaking. ‘I’m not teasing you—I thought I could, but I can’t.’

  He sat there, looking at her, no expression at all on his face.

  So many explanations, none good, were racing through Oliver’s mind he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t react at all. Something was very badly wrong here and until he knew what it was he couldn’t begin to think about it, let alone do anything to make it right.

  His immediate reaction to this second rejection had been anger, but that had been his libido talking. One look at Clare’s face told him every word she said was true. She couldn’t do it!

  And there was no need to be coy about it and pretend he didn’t know what ‘it’ was. They’d both been so worked up sex had been all but inevitable.

  All but.

  He took her hand in both of his and looked into her beautiful and unutterably sad and weary face.

  ‘Can you talk about it?’

  She shook her head, then bent it so her hair hid any expression from him.

  ‘I thought I could do that as well, but now…’

  So what to do?

  She needed him—or someone. He knew that as surely as he knew he loved her, though why that revelation struck him right now he didn’t know. He could hardly say it at the moment; she’d think he was using it as a weapon—something to force the issue of whatever it was she was hiding.

  So he sat and held her hand in his, waiting, barely thinking, but willing to sit there all night if that’s what was required.

  So her movement startled him. She snatched her hand away, straightened u
p and looked directly at him. Then, holding his eyes, she ripped open her shirt and wrenched her bra aside, revealing her full and beautiful breasts, as proud and upright as they’d been when she was ten years younger, but—

  Scarred?

  He stared, unable not to, at small white lines like snail tracks, and bruised knotted tissue.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ he whispered and took her in his arms again, holding her, not knowing what to say or do, except to hold her, murmuring now of love, telling her—talking, talking, talking, while her silent tears soaked his shirt.

  Had she really stripped off her shirt and bra? Shown Oliver her scars? How could she have done that? How utterly embarrassing? How on earth was she going to face him in the morning?

  Worse, how had she ended up in bed? Her last memory was of sitting on the couch, saturating Oliver’s shirt with stupid, senseless tears, while the poor man talked of love, no doubt to try to stop her crying.

  Clare clambered out of bed, pleased to see she was wearing her knickers, though nothing else, and headed for the shower, hoping to wash away the disjointed memories and get her mind into work mode once again.

  But as she stared at the toast she’d made, and tipped her coffee, untasted, down the sink, her stomach squirmed at the thought of seeing Oliver again, working with Oliver today, pretending that nothing untoward at all had happened between them.

  She left the flat, escaping. As far as she remembered Oliver was doing a PDA today, the same operation Emily had had, tying off the little duct that before birth carried blood between the arteries but after birth was supposed to close. No heart-lung machine required, but she wouldn’t be at Jimmie’s anyway; she’d been asked to assist at a hospital across town where a complicated adult operation was taking place.

  Following the instructions the perfusionist at the other hospital had given her, she caught a train to town, changed there to another line, then felt a surge of delight as the second train took her on the famous bridge across Sydney Harbour, the wondrous sight of the Opera House down below. She’d been promising Emily a trip to the centre of the city to take in these sights, but they’d finally decided to leave it until Em had Christmas holidays so they could possibly stay a night in town.