Implications
by Robspace54
Doc Martin is owned by Buffalo Pictures. In writing this fanfic story the author claims no monetary or property rights of Doc Martin, its characters, settings, or storylines.
In Series 4…
"It is what happens when you get yourself pregnant!" Mrs. Tishell's uncouth words went through me like a knife.
I sighed and rubbed my throbbing temples. At least I stood up for myself. "I didn't get myself pregnant!" I hissed back. All I'd asked our chemist for was something to help me stop having to go wee every five minutes but what I got back in turn was spite! I'd been back in the village for barely a day and trouble was piling up. First Martin, and then Mrs. Tishell, plus the oddball new Head at school.
"No?" Sally said, glaring at me, her pale blue eyes practically popping from her head.
"No." That was all I could say.
"Then how is our good doctor takin' it? Much as you would have hoped? Not a church wedding I would imagine this time, not in God's house!"
Behind me the door banged open and Mrs. T changed her tune. Her mad eyes glared at me, but she tossed her short bobbed hair in a sign of dismissal. "Not really appropriate; not in your condition."
Joan Norton swooshed in. "Louisa! I heard you were back!" She stared down at my round belly. "Oh, look at you! Oh you're…"
"The amazing exploding woman," I tried to laugh.
"No, no, no, you look beautiful, doesn't she Mrs. Tishell?" Joan asserted, asking Sally for affirmation. Joan hugged me and it felt good to in her embrace.
"Errh, yes," Sally replied in a semi-sweet tone one hundred and eighty degrees away from her smarminess of a moment ago.
"Well it's been months!" Joan gushed, "Thought you forgot all about us. So… how is everything? When do you get your house back?"
I explained the new Head teacher had my house.
"You could come and stay with me?" Joan urged. "Plenty of room… and I could help look after the baby?" Joan was over joyed clearly; the first person in Portwenn, to actually seem glad to see me. No, there was Bert too – good old Bert Large.
I made my escape for I didn't want to live with Joan, fearing she would keep fawning over me, and that seemed awkward. I made my excuses and left.
I heard Mrs. T say to Joan as I went out, "Oh yes, quite a poppet…"
Got myself pregnant… she made it sound like I did it with a turkey baster! Lord. I gritted my teeth as I went to school. The woman's a chemist for god's sake! Of course she would know very well, uhm, well how babies got started.
Mrs. T asked about Martin. No doubt he'd moved on given there was another woman in his life. Edith… and I asked Sally, the new school secretary.
"Dr. Montgomery?" Sally Chadwick asked. "I hear she's some sort of fertility specialist?" She glanced at my belly.
"No," I told her, "this was…" I sighed. "All natural."
"Ah."
"And… well Dr. Ellingham and I were to be married, but we didn't."
"Yes I heard."
Heard? Just what had Sally heard?
I felt a little twinge so I held my belly. "This happened anyway."
Sally looked at me with concern, so unlike the other Sally. This one nodded. "But there you go, uhm are, and just have to carry on."
"Right." Couldn't have said it better myself.
"I see."
Did she? Sally Chadwick seemed nice enough. But when someone says 'I see' like that do they see? Is that short for 'oh, I don't really get it?' or 'you two were really into to things and there you go!' Either meaning is awkward, about as awkward as I had been for the last few weeks with my balance off; balance that kept getting further and further from the norm. Well, I thought to myself, Louisa you always wanted kids, or a kid, so if this is the one then there you are.
I heard a footstep behind me. "Problem?" a critical male voice asked.
It was Mr. Strain the new Head, and his look said that he was very suspicious. "No, just asking about…"
Miss Chadwick smiled at him. "The new school schedule. Here you are Miss Glasson."
I took the sheet she held out. "Good. Right. Better get to it." I squeezed past the man and into the hall. Good lord the man was creepy for he was always sneaking about.
I was in my room checking on the art supplies for the day, when he came in. I sighed and put on a brave face. "Need something Mr. Strain?"
He grinned. "I just… uhm, wanted to know if things are satisfactory."
"Yes, all good."
He grinned. "I imagine you have found the school much as you left it."
"Pretty much."
He put his arms behind him and stood up straighter. "No, advice from the old Head to the new head? Any little tidbits you might care to share with me? Make my performance better?"
I shook my head. "Not my place."
He nodded but then began to walk around the room peering high and low. "All fit here?"
"The students are fine, if that's what you are asking."
He turned away and mumbled something.
"Mr. Strain? What is the matter?"
He stopped his orbiting the room and perched on one of the kid's desks. "You know I went to a school much like this one. Outside Falmouth. Small, insular, not much happened, other than the usual." He shrugged. "The custodian owned a dog which used to wander the halls. Quite extraordinary. Been there for years, both dog and man." He laughed to himself. "A fixture you might say. Dave his name was – the dog. The custodian was Mr. Cubberly."
Now I wondered what this small talk was leading to.
"O-kay."
"The dog died, you know."
Odd – very. "Ah. Well these things happen."
Mr. Strain started to rub an eye. "Yes… yes, they do. Death, life, birth…" He caught himself. "You, I mean, your baby. Miracle of life." He chuckled as he said it.
I moved behind my desk and sat down to put some distance between us. "Yes, it is."
Mr. Strain wiped at his face and I saw he was crying.
"Mr. Strain? Have a tissue."
He shook his head violently. "Why would I need a tissue?"
Tears were clearly trickling down his face. "Well… the… you seem upset."
He rose and laughed. "Good old school days," he muttered. "I'll leave you to it." Then he left, leaving me shaking my head. The man was unusual. Very emotional as well as weird.
The kids arrived soon and the day got off to a roaring start. My new class was much like the ones I had in London, just less well dressed, less worldly, and a lot poorer. But when they peered at me waiting for some wisdom, I felt myself getting a bit weepy myself. Louisa, it's the hormones, get a grip!
"Miss Glasson?" one of the girls asked.
"Yes," I glanced at the class sheet for her name. "Nancy."
What she said came out in a rush. "Where did you go? My mum said you went away but now you're back, and you're gonna have a baby, but you're not the Head teacher anymore, just a teacher and my mum and dad was wondering."
I smiled at her but closed the hall door. I faced the class and sat on my desk. From the looks on their darling little faces chins had been wagging in every home, so best tell some facts.
"Yes, I did leave the village – went up to London for a while, but now I'm back. Plus, yes I am just a teacher but that's fine. I enjoy teaching, not all the paperwork I used to have piled up in my old job. I just as soon teach you math, writing, and history, plus science, right?"
Their little heads nodded, but one of the boys held up his hand. "Yes, Ricky?" At least I was getting some of the names right.
"Robby," he said.
"Sorry. Robby, go on."
"Uhm, you're gonna have your baby this summer?"
I smiled. "I will yes."
"Oh."
I really didn't want to get into the birds and bees with this lot.
He smiled. "My brother said you and Doc Martin made a baby and that's it," his chubby hand waved in my general rotund direction.
I nodded. "Okay. Yes, we… did."
He relaxed. "My big sister made a baby with her soldier boyfriend. He's in Germany or somewhere. That's why I'm an uncle!" he said proudly. "And I'm only eight!"
Time to make a break. I walked to the world map hanging on the wall. "Let's look at Germany, right?" I pointed to the center of the EU. Now here's Germany and France over here…. Now all these countries are part of the European Union." I pointed to the continent. "Now who can help name them?"
A bunch of hands shot up so I had successfully moved our discussion away from human reproductive biology. A close run thing, but they all knew, pretty much, hopefully not the mechanics of it.
Mrs. T had hit it on the head. "Then how is our good doctor takin' it?" she'd prodded and she knew bloody well that was a good question, for he hadn't been pleased when he came to the school yesterday. We had words. I said everything that had been eating on me for months.
"Do you imagine I didn't want to discuss it in London, on my own, in a bedsit, thirty-seven years old, single, pregnant? Do you think I didn't want to talk to the father? Work things out? But what would have said Mar-tin! Hm? Have you considered an abortion Louisa? I'll back you up. Whatever you decide."
Martin had bristled right back. "I'd have backed you up absolutely!"
Would he have? Yes… he would have, but at that point we were practically yelling at each other. The look on his face when we parted was shocking. It was a bland expression that I'd rarely seen. It got to his face after I told him I had already shifted my med care to Truro and having him treating me would be too odd.
I think at first it was shock, and then disappointment, and then resignation hit him. Is it possible I saw all that in just a few seconds? Yes, I sighed in my head. It was what I saw. Martin had emotions – they were there – most frequently expressed by yelling and glowering, but the other ones…
Martin held out his hand, not to touch my cheek, or to embrace me, but to shake my hand. His fingers were cold and limp, and though I took them, there was no flicker of a grip; might as well have been holding a piece of codfish for all the warmth it gave me.
He turned to go and I still held onto his limp fingers. His sure but thick fingers which had caressed me, stroked me, run down my face, lips, body, had made me pregnant by loving me. His green-gray eyes flicked away and he froze, his whole body like a statue for a split-second, and then he turned to go away.
No… God no... don't… wait! But he slipped away and marched out of my classroom. Snap of a finger, fickle Fate laughed, a seagull cried outside, and as I watched his broad back march away in his stiff-legged, ground-eating stride something broke.
Oh Martin, damn. I don't want this, not any of it; not to be so, prickly or worse!
He turned the corner in the corridor and was gone.
I knew we weren't ready for marriage in the Autumn but I felt that at least we might be… what is the word? Okay with it when I came back carrying our child.
The bright and cheery surroundings of my classroom might as well been grays and blacks just then, all draped in sackcloth and ashes, for it hurts when your heart breaks.