Her eyes widened at the endearment, if that was what it had been. It didn’t describe her, though, did it? She wasn’t ‘sweet’. These days she was more often sour, and whose fault was it if she was more of an acid drop than a bon-bon?
It was exhilarating, just the two of them in the swaying seat as it rose higher and higher above the fairground. She could have stayed in it for ever, and when it got to the highest point it looked as if that was going to be the case as the seats all came to a standstill.
As the minutes ticked by and there was no further movement Rob said whimsically, ‘It would seem that we have a technical fault. What does it feel like to be marooned up in the sky?’
‘Wonderful,’ she said softly. Her green eyes pleading that he might feel the same.
‘If I’d wanted to take you somewhere away from the eyes and ears of the world, I couldn’t have chosen a better place, could I?’ he teased.
Nina looked over the edge of the seat. ‘I’d say we were pretty much on view.’
‘Maybe, but not so much as who we are…and what we’re doing.
‘Why, what are we doing?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
Rob laughed and it had a carefree, boyish sound to it. ‘Nothing yet. But given time…and space…’
He was leaning forward and taking her hands in his. Then, carefully pulling her towards him, he said, ‘I’ve never kissed a beautiful woman at this altitude before, and in a rocking wooden seat…’
It’s working! Nina thought triumphantly. Rob was accepting that there was this thing between them that couldn’t be ignored. He felt it just as much as she did, and she didn’t care where they were, up in the sky or at the bottom of the local pit, the fact that they were together and he wanted her was all that mattered.
But something else was working, too. The great wheel was turning again, and as they began the downward descent Rob released her hands and sat back in his seat.
‘So it’s been sorted out,’ he said unsmilingly. ‘We’re on our way back to ground level…and sanity.’
‘It’s clear to see that you’re hugely relieved to have been spared from making a fool of yourself,’ Nina snapped as hurt and disappointment gave way to anger. ‘If your mind was as quick to sort out what’s going on in there as the fairground staff were in getting the wheel in motion again, I might feel less used and confused!’
They were now at ground level, and when he reached out to help her out of the seat she pushed his hand away and strode past him.
‘Hey! What’s all this, then?’ he asked as he caught up with her.
‘As if you need ask,’ she cried. ‘Why is that every time you succumb to the attraction between us, you act as if you’ve escaped a fate worse than death when the moment is interrupted?’
‘You underestimate my feelings,’ Rob said with a chill in his voice to match her own. ‘I don’t feel as if I’ve escaped an unpleasant fate at all. It’s more like having had to pass by the entrance to heaven.’
‘Then why—?’
‘You know why. I’ve already told you.’
‘The trouble with you, Rob,’ she flared, ‘is that you’re too blinkered to see what’s staring you in the face. You’re letting the past threaten the future! I’m going home…and don’t offer to come with me because I don’t want you to.’
When she got to the end of the road Nina looked back. The huge wheel, now revolving smoothly, was silhouetted against the night sky.
What would have happened if the fairground staff had taken longer to repair it? Would she and Rob have reached a stage where all the rules he’d set himself had been swept away? Or would it have been as before—just a case of her being ready and available?
When she got in Nina found Eloise lying on the couch in the sitting room. The tan she’d acquired from her two weeks by the sea had faded, and in that moment she looked frail and weary.
‘What is it, darling?’ Nina asked anxiously, her own problems immediately put to one side.
‘Nothing,’ Eloise replied in answer to Nina’s concern. ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a stroll around the garden and then came in here.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
Eloise shook her head. ‘No. But what you can do is tell me what sort of an evening you’ve had.’
Nina pulled a face. ‘Good up to a point, then disappointing.’
When she explained about the mechanical fault on the wheel her stepmother said laughingly, ‘Are you sure you didn’t slip them something to have it break down when it did?’
‘Surprisingly, I never thought of it,’ she confessed wryly, ‘or I might have done. Not that it would have made any difference. Every time Rob and I are together he gets all moral. As if he’s the epitome of wisdom and I’m a complete scatterbrain.’
‘How old is Dr Carslake?’
‘Thirty-five.’
‘So there is a small gap.’
‘Hmm. For what it matters.’
‘I’m sorry that he’s in no hurry to return your feelings,’ Eloise said gently, ‘but give him time, Nina. The man has just had an unpleasant experience with a rather callous woman.’
‘Who I think now wishes she hadn’t been so eager to jump into bed with someone else. Bettine still wants him. I can feel it in my bones,’ Nina said wretchedly.
‘What! And she’s carrying this other fellow’s child! She hasn’t a chance,’ Eloise consoled. ‘Rob Carslake is nobody’s pushover.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Nina groaned. ‘But enough of my affairs. What about you? Are you coming to bed?’
Eloise shook her head. ‘No. I’m going to spend the night down here on the sofa. It’s cooler. You could get me a glass of squash if you will, in case I’m thirsty during the night. And, Nina…you know that I’m seeing the consultant again on Friday?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And that the news could be good…or very bad?’
‘Yes. I know that, too. The thought is always at the forefront of my mind.’
‘Mine, too,’ Eloise said solemnly, ‘and I want you to promise me something in these few quiet moments together.’
‘What is it?’ Nina asked with the familiar feeling of dread that never left her.
‘If anything happens to me, as it does to lots of folk when the chemotherapy is stopped or hasn’t worked, I want you to promise not to grieve. I can only depart this world peacefully if I know that you accept my going without devastation.’
Nina’s face had blanched. She knelt down beside the wasted figure of her stepmother and took her hand. ‘How can I not grieve, my darling Eloise? You mean everything to me.’
The sick woman stroked her hair with a gentle hand. ‘Yes. I know I do and that’s why I’m asking this of you. If and when the time comes, be glad for me, Nina. So that I can go in peace.’
‘Don’t talk like this,’ her stepdaughter begged. ‘I can’t bear it.’
‘I have to, Nina. It’s the sensible thing to do.’
‘What about Dad?’ Nina asked desperately. ‘What’s he going to be like if ever anything happens to you?’
‘Abrasive, demanding, bewildered, but domesticity never did suit him. He was happier in a man’s world and he’ll cope. His army training will be of more use to him then than it’s ever been.
‘You’re the one I’m worried about. I wish to goodness your delightful doctor would get his act together. But I haven’t gone yet, have I? Who knows?’
As Nina went slowly up the stairs she was thinking that the way things were going between Rob and herself he was going to end up a crusty old bachelor and she would be the hanger-on, waiting for the occasional crumb that he might throw. But what did all that matter compared to what might happen to Eloise?
‘I want to talk to you,’ she told him first thing Monday morning.
Rob was going through the mail and his head came up sharply at the sound of her voice.
‘Oh! So we are on speaking terms, then?’
She couldn’t be bothered to answe
r him. For the last two nights she hadn’t slept a wink for thinking about Eloise, and if there was one person who might be able to calm her tortuous thoughts it was he.
He was observing the shadows beneath her eyes and the weary droop of her mouth, and when he spoke again there was no flippancy in his voice.
‘What’s wrong, Nina? You look dreadful.’
‘Eloise is talking about dying. She goes to see the consultant on Friday and doesn’t seem very hopeful that there will be good news.’
‘Why is that, do you think?’ he said slowly. ‘They said the last time that the cancer was stable.’
‘Yes. I know they did, and I don’t know whether it’s because the chemo has made her feel so weak and ill that she’s thinking on those lines, or if she has a premonition.’
He was frowning. ‘That isn’t an unusual situation with cancer patients. The weeks spent on treatment must seem like a frightening limbo. The thought of it being fatal will always be there no matter how positive their thinking.’
‘Yes, you’re right, of course. Thanks, Rob. Just talking to you has helped,’ she said tearfully.
He held out his arms and she went into them like a ship into harbour. ‘If I could ease the burden for you all I would,’ he murmured with his lips against her hair, ‘but they’re doing all they can at the oncology unit…The rest is in the lap of the gods.’
They were as physically close as they’d ever been in this quiet moment before surgery, but it was a time for comfort rather than passion and, releasing her, Rob said gently, ‘Go and get a cup of tea before the day starts or you’ll be the next one I’m called out to.’
As the daily procession of the sick and suffering came and went with its mixture of the serious and simple in health care, Nina was grateful for the concentration required.
Over the weekend there had been nothing to occupy her mind but Eloise’s problems, but now, back in the surgery, and with Rob only a few feet away, her resilience was returning.
Their relationship might not be going anywhere, but he’d been tender and caring earlier when he’d seen her distress, and it had meant a lot.
The old man who’d been coughing up blood was one of her first patients of the day. The results of the tests that she’d asked for had come through, and Reception had phoned to ask him to come in without delay.
‘So what have I got, Doctor?’ he asked, with the resignation of the old who knew they weren’t going to live for ever. ‘Was I right about the gallopin’ consumption?’
Nina nodded. ‘Yes. You’ve got tuberculosis, if that’s what you mean.’
‘So they’ll be sticking me in a hut on some mountainside then, while me lungs recover?’
She smiled. She liked this down-to-earth, elderly man, but he’d been a bit sparse with information on his first visit.
‘No. We’ve moved on a bit since those days,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be prescribing a strong course of antibiotics.’
‘It’s what they did to me before,’ he persisted.
‘What?’
‘Stuck me in a cabin on a mountain.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’d had it before?’
‘I did.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I said was it gallopin’ consumption.’
‘And I was supposed to deduce from that comment that you’d had TB before? I’m not a mind-reader, you know, and your notes don’t go that far back.’
‘It was a long time ago. I caught it when I was in the army, just after the war.’
‘I see. Well, the X-rays that you had at the hospital showed up the scars on your lungs from before and, as can happen, even after many years, the illness has flared up again.’
‘So do I need to start putting me affairs in order?’ he asked with a twinkle in his eyes.
‘Not just yet. But do make sure that you take the medication.’
He was followed by another senior citizen, this time accompanied by her daughter. Dorothy Desmond was an amazing woman. Ninety-nine years of age, and mentally as sharp as a needle, the old lady was beginning to fail physically now.
On a recent stay in a care home while her daughter had a holiday, she had slipped and fallen and was now complaining of severe pain at the top of her leg and around the hip area.
‘I wouldn’t mind, but it’s my good leg that I’ve hurt,’ she said. ‘I reached out for the buggy that I lean on when I’m walking and it tipped over. What do you think of that?’
‘I think that it’s most unfortunate,’ Nina told her. ‘I’m going to examine you and then I’m going to ask Dr Carslake to come in and have a look at you as I’m still training and may not be qualified enough to make a judgement on just how badly you’ve hurt yourself.’
As Dorothy’s daughter helped her off with her tights Nina saw that both Dorothy’s legs were bandaged. Pointing to them, she asked, ‘Are those injuries from the fall?’
The old lady shook her head. ‘No. It’s my skin. It’s that old it’s like tissue paper. The slightest knock and it breaks.’
It was clear that Dorothy was in a lot of pain, but the fact that she could walk seemed to cancel out any fractures and Nina went to find Rob.
‘I think that we need to send you for X-rays, Mrs Desmond,’ he told her. ‘You appear to be mobile enough, but I’m not happy with the amount of pain that you’re experiencing.’ He turned to her daughter. ‘Do you have transport?’
‘Yes, I do, but my mother, being in the state she is, can’t twist round to get into the car.’
He nodded. ‘Yes. I can see that could be a problem.’ To Nina he added, ‘Will you ask Reception to phone for an ambulance, Dr Lombard?’
Today was antenatal day again, and Bettine, who was in charge, was at her most officious. By the time they were ready to start seeing the patients she’d snapped at the community midwife who was assisting them and weighed herself twice, stepping off the scales with a face like stone.
That had brought forth smiles from those assisting her and a whispered comment from the affronted midwife that those who didn’t want a bump at the front shouldn’t play with fire.
Bettine had also complained that there weren’t enough disposable sheets for the pregnant women to lie on, which might have been the case had they been the clinic of the town’s main maternity unit but as there were only six mothers-to-be present Nina was hard put not to challenge Bettine’s counting capabilities.
She hadn’t mellowed much by the time the clinic was over and if Nina had liked her better she might have sympathised with her situation.
There was young Miles for whom she was responsible up to a point, her grieving mother-in-law in the background and a husband who couldn’t possibly match up to Robert Carslake…plus a child on the way that had been conceived in surreptitious circumstances.
As Rob had held Nina in his arms and stroked her hair before surgery he’d been acutely aware of the fine-boned slenderness of her and the tangy smell of her perfume. But more than those things he’d been conscious of the need in her.
There had been the wetness of tears on her cheeks. Every line of her beautiful, coltish body had been crying out for comfort. Flippant she sometimes was, over-confident, even stroppy on occasion, but there was a great capacity for love inside Nina Lombard. It was there in the way she felt about Eloise. It would be there for the man she married one day. But that was a subject that he chose not to dwell on at the present time.
The problem was that having made that decision he was finding it very difficult to keep to it. Nina was a tantalising young witch for one thing, and for another her stepmother hadn’t actually spelled it out but she’d dropped some heavy hints that she would like to see her married before anything happened.
That he’d been cast in the role of bridegroom had been plain to see and he would have been furious if the prompting had come from anyone else, but Eloise Lombard was a different matter.
Feeling restless and on edge, he went up to the flat when morning sur
gery was over and as he went in his glance went to where a half-finished oil painting lay on his easel.
The green eyes looking out at him from there were clear and sparkling. The dark russet mop framed a laughing face, a far cry from the tearful girl who’d made him feel weak with tenderness when he’d held her in his arms earlier.
He sighed. Instead of being his usual playful self, Zacky was snapping around his ankles. He’d had to take the Border terrier to the vet over the weekend to have an infected foot treated, so there were no rainbows on his horizon either.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS November. The nights were drawing in, the mornings decidedly chilly, and where usually the changing seasons rarely bothered him Rob knew that he wasn’t looking forward to this winter.
He’d handled the attraction between Nina and himself all wrong, and now he felt that anything else he might say in mitigation would only make matters worse. Which meant that dark days, coupled with bleak thoughts, were making him feel less than cheerful.
Whenever he heard anyone mention Christmas his gloom increased. Would the Lombards have Eloise with them for Christmas? he wondered. He hoped so. There’d been nothing worse to report on her last check-up, and he prayed that in spite of the fact that she was feeling weak and ill and was having gloomy premonitions, the forthcoming consultation would have no less progress to report than the last.
The staff were getting ready to put up the Christmas decorations in the surgery and there was much talk of pre-festive shopping, but he noticed that although Nina listened, she didn’t join in.
He hated to see her sparkle missing, but he would have thought less of her if it hadn’t been. There were times when he felt that she was maturing before his eyes, yet it was sad that the way of it should be so painful for her.
Gavin had finally given up on her because she was proving such poor company. The blond charmer preferred the lighter side of life, and in his eyes Nina Lombard was about as exciting as a church jumble sale these days.
Rob was keeping his distance, too, but for very different reasons. He’d made sure that Nina knew he was there if she needed him, both as doctor and friend. He felt that any other approach would neither be wanted nor in good taste.
The Elusive Doctor Page 11