Doctor on Loan

by Marion Lennox

  ‘I love you, Hugo,’ she whispered, and she tilted her face to kiss him on the lips. ‘I love you, but you need to leave. Whatever you’re trying to figure out…don’t bother. We both know we belong in separate worlds, that you’ve really been a temporary loan on borrowed time. There’s no answer for us. But…it’s been great.’

  ‘It has,’ he said heavily. ‘Christie…’

  ‘Hush,’ she told him, and placed a finger on his lips. ‘Hush, now, Hugo. It’s time to leave. It was great—but now it’s over.’

  There was nothing left to say.

  And at six the next morning Hugo Tallent boarded the twin-engined Cessna and left the island.

  For ever?

  ‘He’s not Hugo Tallent.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Mary-anne was beside herself. She came whooping into the ward where Christie was checking Liz’s stitches, waving a newspaper as if it were a flag of triumph. ‘He’s not Hugo Tallent,’ she said again, and plonked herself down on the visitor’s chair, exhausted. ‘I was reading last week’s papers over breakfast—they came in on the plane yesterday—and the story of Hugo’s capsize and rescue is all over them.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Christie reapplied the dressing and pulled down Liz’s nightgown. ‘And you might have knocked—Sister.’

  Mary-anne took the reproof in the manner in which it had been intended. She grinned at Liz. ‘Hey, Liz and I used to go swimming in the altogether when we were five years old, and I’ve had babies myself. There’s nothing she’s got I ain’t seen a million times before. You want to be modest, Liz, or do you want to hear my news?’

  ‘I forgot modesty the first time I was introduced to pap smears,’ Liz said sourly. ‘And after pregnancy and childbirth, I’m past caring. Bring in your TV cameras—I’m available.’ Her grin returned. She had her baby, all was right with her world. ‘So tell!’

  ‘You remember that Ellie sent the news of Hugo’s accident to the mainland reporters?’

  But Christie didn’t want to talk about Hugo. ‘I’m busy,’ she said. ‘You tell your news to Liz.’

  But Liz’s hand came out and grasped hers. ‘Don’t you dare pretend indifference, Christie Flemming. We know better. Tell us, Mary-anne.’

  ‘Our Hugo’s an author,’ Mary-anne said breathlessly—and sat back and waited for a reaction.

  ‘An author,’ Liz said at last, dubiously. ‘You mean, he’s not a doctor? How do you reckon he gave me an anaesthetic, then? It sure seemed to work for me.’

  ‘Oh, he’s a doctor, all right,’ Mary-anne breathed. ‘But only part time. In his other life he’s Hugo Mainwaring.’

  ‘Mainwaring…’ Liz lay back on her pillows and stared at her friend in astonishment. ‘The Hugo Mainwaring?’

  ‘How many Hugo Mainwarings are there?’ Mary-anne demanded. ‘Look.’ She held up the paper and there it was, in black and white. FAMOUS AUTHOR SAVED FROMCERTAIN DEATH! It’s him all right.’

  ‘Famous author,’ Christie said blankly. She was filling in Liz’s chart, but she was working on automatic pilot. ‘Like…how famous?’

  ‘Oh, Christie, don’t you know anything?’

  ‘Nope,’ Christie agreed equably. ‘I don’t.’ The last few years had hardly given her time to keep up with literary matters. It was as much as she could cope with, keeping up with essential medical journals.

  ‘Hugo Mainwaring is only the world’s best author of medical thrillers,’ Mary-anne breathed. ‘They’re brilliant. They’re full of forensic pathology, medical murders and gruesome details that make your hair curl. And the plots! They’re truly brilliant.’

  ‘I love what he does with his research,’ Liz added, awed. ‘He never gets anything wrong. He writes about things as if he’s done them. The simplest experience—everything—comes to life when you read his stuff…’

  Like…like operating on a dog, Christie thought blankly. Or catching an octopus by the toe…

  ‘He writes one book a year,’ Mary-anne went on. ‘He’s paid a fortune. His publishers—his readers—want him to write more, but he won’t because he loves his medicine. He says he’s a doctor first and an author second. But the publicity…It must drive him nuts. Why someone didn’t recognise him here?’

  But Christie’s mind was going in all sorts of directions. His notes. His wide knowledge…So this was the source of the money. This was why he wrote and wrote…

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ Liz was saying. ‘In the women’s magazines. I’ve seen him! Why didn’t I recognise him? I guess he’s been in suits in the publicity photos—not second-hand fisherman’s clothes. He goes out with all the models…They say he’s one of Australia’s most eligible bachelors.’

  ‘Yeah, and that’s what he’ll stay,’ Mary-anne jeered. ‘Where does he find the time for a love life with all that on his plate? Heaven help any woman he ever married. Medicine and fame! Now, there’s a combination for a good marriage—I don’t think!’

  But Liz was looking at Christie strangely. ‘If a woman loved him, it wouldn’t put her off,’ she said softly, and her gaze was assessing.

  ‘Oh, yeah, right,’ Christie said mockingly. ‘Are we talking about me here, Liz Myers? Fat chance. I’ll fit in a bit of compact love life on a Thursday afternoon in two months’ time when he comes to visit his father—if he comes—shall I?’

  ‘Christie…’

  ‘Leave it, Liz,’ she said heavily. ‘I knew I was being a fool, and all I know now is that I was an even bigger one than I thought. Hugo Mainwaring…. Well, well. When I fall, I sure know how to fall hard!’

  And that was that! After such a confession, her friends didn’t broach the subject again. After all, she was right, wasn’t she? They couldn’t see a happy ending any more clearly than she could. Hugo had left.

  All that was left was his memory.

  And his father, who the islanders promptly took to their hearts.

  It was as if Charles Tallent was one of them, Christie thought wonderingly a month after Hugo had left. He was an intelligent, erudite man of the world, and yet he met the islanders on their own terms, whatever those terms might be.

  With Christie’s grandfather he discussed the books they’d read, he played chess, he drove down to the harbour and stood on the jetty in the sun and gossiped for hours.

  With Alf, the man who was repairing his boat, he showed he understood every step the boat-builder was taking.

  He met Ben as a friend, and man and boy got on like a house on fire. Christie would often drive past the harbour and see the pair sitting on the jetty, discussing the state of the world. Ben was a different child to the sulky boy of the past. He was running the local Nippers lifesaving club, he was doing excellently in school and Christie could only wonder at the change. How much was due to Charles? Or…Hugo?

  Clued up by Hugo, Charles took a personal interest in Mandy’s exam results, and when she achieved the ones she needed to attend vet school it was he who organised the party.

  And that was the other amazing thing. The man could cook! The wonderment was still in Christie’s head every time she thought about it. Tired and heartsick, the day after Hugo had left, she’d returned to the cottage at night, expecting to cook for two old men, but had found a note which had directed her next door. Ready and waiting, there’d been a chicken pie to die for, followed by raspberry soufflé…

  ‘This is my thanks to you,’ Hugo’s father had told her. ‘As many dinners as you want for however long you want them. For saving my son.’

  ‘He’s cooked all over the world,’ Stan had told her gleefully. ‘In the best restaurants…’

  ‘It’s never made me a million, like my son’s writing,’ Charles had said ruefully. ‘But I love it.’

  ‘So…’ There were so many things she didn’t understand. ‘Why did you end up in Brisbane?’

  ‘My wife and I had to settle on one place for the boy’s schooling,’ he told her. ‘My wife loved Brisbane, and it was great for her arthritis. It’s not Paris as fa
r as the restaurant scene goes, but it was good enough for us. And then…’ His face grew grave. ‘Our Peter got himself into one financial scrape after another and somehow there was never enough money to think of moving on. Once my wife died…’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, the boys are my life. But now Peter’s gone and Hugo’s busy…’ He smiled and shrugged again. ‘Enough. For now I have two friends to feed, and who could ask for more?’

  Hugo telephoned from time to time, Charles told them, and he was always lit up after such a call. But more and more he didn’t wait for the calls. More and more he assimilated into island life.

  So it was a happy-ever-after scenario for everyone, Christie thought drearily as one month stretched to two. Even Gloria seemed content. To her amazement, Christie saw her on the beach one night—throwing balls for Scrubbit! She couldn’t believe her eyes.

  Happy ever after was everywhere, she thought bleakly. Happy ever after was for everyone, except her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  MABS WASJARRA died late on a Friday night, almost three months after Hugo had left.

  Christie had sat with her all day. At the end Mabs’s pain levels had risen. She’d needed a constant infusion of morphine and she’d loathed the thought of dying in hospital, so for those last few days Christie and Mary-anne and Glenys had taken it in turns to keep watch. At the end it had to be Christie. She had been adjusting Mabs’s medication every hour or so, enabling the old lady to stay wakeful and pain-free until the end.

  And finally she died, at peace, with her people around her, and if there were tears on Christie’s face as she emerged from the old lady’s cave for the last time, well, who could blame her? They weren’t tears of grief for the old lady whose time it had been to die. They were tears for something else far, far deeper.

  It was dusk. Christie stood and stretched her stiff limbs as she looked out over the island, and a sense of desolation welled up within her to such an extent that it threatened to overwhelm her.

  Why? This was destiny, she thought bleakly. An old lady’s destiny.

  As hers was. She, like Mabs, had made the decision to stay with her people.

  She closed her eyes for a long, long moment.

  When she opened them Hugo was there.

  He must have been there all the time, she thought blankly. He’d risen from where he’d been sitting on a rocky ledge to the side of the cave entrance. He’d been watching for her. For…for how long?

  Christie could only stare as he came towards her, and she was so stunned she couldn’t move.

  ‘It’s over?’ he asked softly, and she nodded.

  ‘Yes.’ There seemed nothing else to say.

  ‘Dad told me where you were—and what was happening.’ He gestured inside the cave. A soft keening was coming from within as the Koori daughters bade their mother farewell. ‘She died peacefully?’

  ‘She did.’ Christie tilted her chin. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ He turned and gazed out over the island where the sun was setting over the horizon. ‘I can’t think of a place I’d rather die.’

  ‘It is lovely.’

  Silence.

  Then, into the silence, as if it was the most natural thing in the world—as if it was an extension of what he’d just said—he said simply, ‘Christie, maybe it’s fate that I came back this day,’ he said simply. ‘It feels like it. Life and death…It seems so right.’

  And then he turned to her and took her hands in his. ‘Christie, love, this is where I want to live out my life. It’s also the place where I want to have my children. Christie, will you marry me?’

  It quite simply took her breath away.

  ‘What?’

  As an answer to a proposal it was less than perfect, but for a long moment she thought she must have misheard. But Hugo was gazing down at her and there was such a look of longing in his eyes that she knew, right there and then, that she hadn’t misheard a thing.

  Her Hugo…

  He was dressed as he’d travelled, she guessed. They didn’t match. He was casually dressed, but expensive and neat, while she’d been crouched in a dusty cave all day. Her jeans were torn and her face was streaked with dust. She’d wept a little at the end, and there were tear tracks in the dust on her cheeks.

  She must look dreadful—light years away from this man’s world.

  Still he held her, and his eyes held hers and the look in them said that she wasn’t mistaken at all. However she looked…

  But nothing had changed. Nothing! How could he be standing here and asking her to marry him?

  ‘I’m not asking you to leave the island,’ he told her, guessing her thoughts. ‘I’d never do that.’

  ‘Hugo—’

  ‘Hear me out.’ His grip on her hands tightened as if he was afraid that if he released her she’d vanish into thin air. ‘I couldn’t say any of this before. I couldn’t tell you. It seemed so unfair. But…’ He looked deeply into her eyes and he sighed, as if he read some immutable truth there that couldn’t be denied. ‘You do still love me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. There was nothing else to say. Here on the ledge on top of the world, with the man she loved with all her heart standing right before her, there was room only for the truth.

  His breath came out in a long, long sigh, as if he hadn’t been sure up until now. As if by leaving her, he’d risked all. ‘And I still love you, Christie,’ he told her. ‘I love you more than life itself. From the moment I first saw you I loved you, and it’s grown stronger every minute. But I didn’t know how it could work. I couldn’t say…’

  ‘What?’ Her voice wasn’t making it above a whisper. There was a bubble of joy building within her, and it threatened to burst at any moment. This was like a dream and she might wake. She was almost afraid to breathe. ‘Hugo, what?’

  ‘I told you, I have responsibilities as well,’ he said. ‘I can’t escape them. My father gave up so much for his family. Because of my mother’s arthritis—and her whims—he moved to Brisbane. Because of Peter’s gambling and other troubles, he stayed there. He’s paid and paid Peter’s debts—he’s a poor man because of them and he could have been rich. He could have cooked in the best restaurants in the world. And now my mother’s dead and my brother’s overseas. Heaven knows if he’ll ever come home, so all the family he has is me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘So I couldn’t leave him,’ he said simply. ‘Even though I met this bewitching, wonderful woman who I wanted to spend my whole life with, she lived in such an isolated place that I couldn’t move to live with her. My father’s health is okay now, but in the future it won’t be. If he has a heart attack in Brisbane while I was here, then I couldn’t reach him fast. If there was a storm it could be weeks before I could leave the island.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe it shouldn’t have mattered…’

  ‘But it did,’ Christie said softly, her heart singing as she finally saw. ‘Oh, Hugo, of course it did. I can’t leave the island because of my family, and you couldn’t stay here because of yours. I couldn’t love you if you were any other way. But…’ The sense of unreality was deepening by the minute. ‘You…you’d really want to come here?’ Her heart was refusing to beat. The world was standing still on its axis, threatening to tilt her over the edge. ‘To live?’

  ‘It could work,’ Hugo told her exultantly. ‘It will. Sure, I’ve enjoyed working as an anaesthetist. I trained hard to get there, but since my writing career started more and more I found I didn’t want to specialise.’

  ‘And you really are a writer?’ She knew that now for sure, but she needed to hear him say it. She needed these crazy, wonderful jigsaw pieces to come together…

  ‘I really am a writer,’ he told her lovingly. ‘I wrote my first book for fun, and it’s skyrocketed out of control. Even though it’s still fun, to be honest, I haven’t coped well with the publicity. Maybe I should have confessed all from the start, but it was such a novelty not to be known that at first I let it be. And then,
when I fell in love with you…Christie, my writing was all tied up with what I wanted for my future, and part of that future was you. I couldn’t talk of what I was—without including you.’

  Her world was standing still. She was scarcely daring to breathe and it was as much as she could do to get her voice to work at all. Somehow she must. ‘You still want to practise medicine?’ she whispered.

  ‘Being a doctor is what I am,’ he said simply. ‘Writing’s great, but I’m a doctor first. I want the diversity of general practice and I hate the buzz of publicity. Here—practising medicine with you—building this hospital up, doing the work you’re doing, keeping my writing going…Christie, we could have a great life.’

  ‘We…’

  ‘We,’ he said softly. ‘You and me. And Dad and your grandfather, too.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ She was so confused she couldn’t think straight. ‘Why…?’

  He sighed. He had to make her see. He must.

  ‘Christie, if I’d asked my father to come and live here he would have agreed—as he’s agreed to everything his family has ever asked of him,’ he said softly. ‘But I couldn’t do that. My brother—and to a certain extent my mother as well—used him and used him unmercifully. They took over his life. So I couldn’t ask it of him. Instead I guess I took a risk. I suggested he spend some time here while the yacht was being repaired. And then I left and I waited. And I hoped.’

  Hugo paused. Her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. He was gazing down at her with such an expression she’d never thought to see on his face. It was an expression that told her everything she needed to know about this man, and more.

  ‘Then last week I rang my father and asked if it was time to bring the boat south,’ he said in a voice that was suddenly exultant. ‘And he told me that he’d rather stay put, thank you very much. If I could find the time to visit every so often—if I didn’t mind—he’d prefer to live here permanently because he’d found the place where he’d like to spend the rest of his life.’

  ‘Oh, Hugo!’ She felt as if she’d had all her breath sucked out from her lungs. ‘Hugo…’