It's About Time
by Robspace54
The characters, places and situations of Doc Martin, are owned by Buffalo Pictures. This story makes no claim of remuneration or ownership, nor do I make any attempt to infringe upon any rights of the owners or producers.
Thank you for reading and reviews are much appreciated.
Penhale emerged from behind the pillar and shrugged, hands held in the universal symbol of I don't know, which was ironic for Penhale was a moron.
But if he was a moron then I was a fool.
The church was packed, every seat taken, and from the smell of naphtha most of the suits and dresses were out for their once-a-year airing. The chemical odor barely overcame the miasma of too much perfume, hair oil, flowers which seemed all the heavier from the dank air in the stone building.
Penhale rolled his eyes so I turned away to avoid a nonsensical visual discussion but the Vicar was questioning me from up the aisle. As I walked towards him I shook my head slightly from side to side and tried not to sigh audibly.
What was I doing here? I knew, I knew. But still why for God's sake didn't we just go to the Registrar and do this?
So here I stood a fool second time over, waiting for a woman that I was not entirely certain would arrive.
"Fifteen minutes," the Vicar muttered as he peered at his wristwatch. "That's not so long for a bride."
"I know," I answered but my guts were in turmoil.
"Mind you about a month ago, we had a man standing right there… fifteen minutes, thirty, and hour…two hours. I think it hit three before the penny dropped." The Vicar went on in a gallows-humor sort of way. "Apparently she'd run off with the Best Man," he ended nearly chuckling at his own dreadful wit.
Did he think this was funny? I bet he laughed at funerals as well making comments about the deceased ill-grace to have their funeral during his favorite football match.
Now I felt worse. Why was I doing this? Once more putting myself into the public eye of ridicule and comedy. Good old Doc Martin, they'll be saying; once more a groom without a bride. Poor bugger they'll wag their heads but the meaner types will come by and throw verbal brickbats my way. Tosser! What's the matter Doc, Louiser finally realize one try was enough?
"Don't have to worry about that with me, Doc," Penhale stage-whispered.
"Would you please sit down please?" I told him and he sat his face falling.
I dared not look at my Aunt Ruth for she'd cautioned that this might be a horrible idea; that is she didn't quite say that other than asking prying questions of 'Was I sure?'
The Vicar went back to examining his watch, along with most of the occupants no doubt, while I felt more fearful.
Had the taxi had a puncture? Surely Louisa would have called, if she was able. But what it something had happened that she could not call? A dead mobile battery might explain it, if the taxi was delayed. But what if the tax had an accident? The roads were narrow and some of the locals drove like they were at Le Mans. God! That set me to thinking of more awful reasons for her being late.
I'd made her promise she wouldn't use Tommy's Taxis for her transport and she had agreed. I glanced at Morwenna who held James Henry.
Her young face looked back in wonder raising her eyebrows in a silent question, one I am sure everyone was asking.
Where was Louisa?
At best she was nearly here, just got a late start from Morwenna's house, who'd offered her cottage as a staging place for Louisa to change, since I was seeing patients that morning.
A few days before we'd had this discussion about timing and places and it made as little sense to me then as it did now.
"Doc, me and Louisa been talking and I'll come over to the surgery Friday night, help Louisa get herself to my place, I'll take the baby, and then I can help her get ready next afternoon." Morwenna was quite earnest in her speech. "Right?"
"Why can't she get ready here, at our house? On Saturday?" I protested.
Morwenna rolled her eyes. "But Doc! It's bad luck for the groom to see the bride of the wedding day before the ceremony!"
"True, Martin," Louisa said softly. "It'll be fine. I want to."
"But…" I started to say. "It's not like we… uhm… haven't… seen one another; uhm, been together."
James gurgled from his mother's hip one sure sign we were not strangers by any stretch of the imagination.
"It's fine, Martin," Louisa said to me. "Tradition."
"Superstition," I muttered then went back to work.
000
So in a crowded church, surrounded by people I barely knew, I was thinking that she'd flown the coop. That phrase reminded me of my late aunt. Joan had been very upset when Louisa and I did not marry, yet her fallback reaction was when she moaned, "I always said you were chalk and cheese."
Well Joan was dead and buried, James was several months old and here I was; at the altar not for the second time but the first.
My head was now starting to hurt and I felt my heart beat faster. Was this a panic attack? I swiftly monitored my symptoms. No Palmer sweating or blurred vision and no nausea either so it must be nerves; a curious word for without nerves we'd all be dead.
The Vicar inspected his watch again as if he could will it to stop while whistling a little tune and I wished he would stop that. Or he was hoping he'd not taken the pledge after his hip fracture and could have a quick nip of whiskey to carry him through.
In mounting frustration I turned away and walked to the rear of the church feeling too many eyes pitying me as well as condemning me.
I didn't want their pity. What I wanted was just one thing. No I was wrong… I wanted one person.
When I got to the end of the aisle (end of the road part of me thought) I half turned hoping she'd turn up and soon.
The decision to marry seemed fairly straight forward after Mrs. T took James Henry out to Pentire Castle.
Curiously what may have forestalled any harm to him was doing the exact opposite to the clinical advice which Ruth had given. By saying aloud what I felt, in fact that which I'd always known, the baby was returned to his mother.
We'd walked hand-in-hand away from that spot united by two things. The first was that we'd saved our son from a mad-woman by working together, and the second was that we must be together for the long haul.
I did love Louisa and always had if I admitted it to myself. That may have been the thing that held me back for by saying what was in my heart and not my head was taboo in the Ellingham clan. Yet when she kissed me that day, holding our son between us, it was such an intense relief. London? No. Portwenn instead and this lovely creature that I did love deeply and truly.
It was only natural then that we planned to marry, especially when it became abundantly clear that Louisa was even less inhibited than before with regards to our bed.
Nothing kinky along the lines of Edith and her games rather the idea that if we were together we ought to be BE together. Make any sense?
Sense or not the future Mrs. Ellingham made it a point to make sure that the doors were locked, mobiles switched off and the baby well and truly asleep each night when we retired so that our time together was… uninterrupted.
We'd spent far too much time apart. Far too many nights adrift in our separate beds and I had to give credit to Louisa that she was the one who put forward the idea of marriage.
Now I stood at the back of the chilly church, getting sick with worry imagining all sorts of disasters along the way from sheep on the road, to wayward lorries, sudden rainstorms, washed out bridges, and mudslides. Each delay or catastrophe was punctuated in my mind by an image of Louisa pinned in wreckage, bleeding from many wounds, her broken body scrabbling to pull herself out of a smashed vehicle.
Fear of the remembered taxi wreck on the moor kept coming back to me; a miracle she was unhurt only being driven into precipitous labor. More the luck our son was born in a public house.
Yet here I was hanging on a slim hope that if indeed she was unhurt from my mental images of tragedy then a simple explanation would suffice.
Her arrival could not be from an auto accident for surely Penhale would have received a call. I'd noticed he didn't have his police radio but certainly he was carrying his mobile and Police Dispatch would certainly call if there was a road accident nearby.
Makeup issues or a failing hair wave, or some type of wardrobe malfunction would explain her delay.
I tried to keep the ultimate fear that her heart would fail her once more and she'd flee from our appointment.
I'd been given all sorts of advice about marriage; most of it rubbish. Everything from being the lord of the manor, keeping Louisa in hand and under my thumb, to quite the opposite tat bride and groom were equal in all things.
Curiously it was Al Large who said something that stuck with me. "Doc, just be fair, right? Relationships… well look at me what do I know? But do more than meet Louisa half-way. Help in all things, or at least try too." Here he stopped and scratched his neck. "Ifen I'd done that with Pauline maybe she'd a stayed."
I was standing outside the market holding a bag of vegetables and fruit when this exchange happened. Of course it was more of the same rubbish I'd heard too many times.
Al turned to walk off, but stopped. "But you do love her, right?"
"Of course I do," I fairly bellowed.
Al smiled. "Well then, a time to love then, eh Doc?'
The people in the church were starting to mutter louder and more forcefully. I head a few choice comments about fitness or Louisa's and those took the wind from me.
Now my throat had gone dry and my knees trembled for my worst fear must be coming true. She'd not show up a second time - for all the old reasons.
I was incapable of change and so was she and that was the wedge to drive is apart. But we'd said the words to one another that we would try to be less… argumentative… and prickly.
That agreement of ours had cooled tempers in the house and it certainly made the bed warmer.
So then if all was well, where was she?
No, I was a fool once more. Ditched by Edith Montgomery after medical school, abandoned by my parents long before that, stood up by my fiancé once and now twice it seemed.
Fool! Fool! Idiot! I was the fool twice over it now seemed.
I heard a faint step outside, the short stride of a woman wearing formal shoes which were thick soled, half heeled and totally unsuitable for a normal gait.
I lifted my troubled gaze and an angel stood in the door. Shining eyes, chestnut hair, a trim figure despite bearing a child, wearing a white sheath gown and an overly large headdress of tulle.
She smiled sweetly at me and to my vision was radiant surrounded by a nimbus of soft light which filled the doorway.
I took a slow breath filling my lungs with air that brightened my brain and my spirits.
She did come! Thank God! And about time!
