Unfathomable

by robspace54

Doc Martin is owned by Buffalo Pictures. The fevered thoughts below are purely my own and nothing more.

There are SPOILERS to the denouement of Doc Martin Season 5 below… just so you know.

Chapter 1 – Understand

"My God, Martin! I can't believe you did that!"

Martin looked sharply at me. "I had to do something!"

"Well, yes, I know, but right then?"

He cleared his throat. "It seemed the appropriate thing to do at the time."

"Oh, really?" I turned my head and looked sharply at him with a raised eyebrow.

He held up his hands in surrender. "I give in, Louisa. Might as well. Already have."

"Right." I crossed my arms as I was cold. "But why right then?"

"It was automatic," he grumbled. "Look, Mrs. T was holding our son hostage! What was I supposed to do?"

"You told her you loved her!"

"You're not going to let me forget that are you?"

I sighed and stretched a stiff neck. "No. I'm not. Not for a very long time. You'll have to make it up to me."

He turned up his nose. "Louisa, must we talk about this right now?"

"No."

"Oh." Martin looked over at James Henry asleep in his cot. "He's asleep."

"Yes, poor lamb. Thank God that nothing happened."

"But it did happen! Mrs. Tishell kidnapped him! Silly woman dosing herself…"

I stopped him by putting my hand across his lips. "Martin. I don't want to talk about Sally Tishell."

"Right," Martin said. He looked at me across his bedroom, no our bedroom at the surgery. He cleared his throat. "So… what shall we… uhm… do now?"

I shook my head in disbelief. We'd had dinner and the night was now falling. "Martin Ellingham, sometimes, I just can't understand you."

000

"Al, listen, there's that noise again. Don't you hear it?" Bert looked across the kitchen at his son.

"No, dad," Al Large sighed. "I don't."

"Well, it does fit it with the Haunted Portwenn Outing I'm leading tonight!" Bert tip-toed across the restaurant kitchen, got right behind Al and started to make the sounds of imagined ghosts. "Wooo, wooooo!"

Al pushed him away. "Stop it Dad! You know I don't like that stuff."

Bert laughed. "You always were scared of the ghosts and demons, weren't you? I remember the time you was dressed up as a pirate, about seven or eight I suppose you was, at Halloween and one of your friends came as a headless ghost." He bent over and held his sides as he laughed loudly. "You almost jumped out of your skin!"

Al whirled around with an eight-inch long chef's knife in his hand and held it out threateningly. "Dad! Stop it!" He drove the point of the blade into a cutting board on the table between them.

Bert held his hands up in surrender. "Boy! Son? Don't get all nervous like. I was just fooling!"

His son wrenched the knife from the board and waving it at his father slowly advanced towards him.

"Son! Al! Stop!" Bert yelled anxiously. "I was just tricking you!" He started to back up.

Al's face held a snarl and he took two slow steps, as his father backed into a table and stopped in alarm. Al broke into a laugh. "Ha ha! Gotcha!"

Bert held his chest. "God, Al! I thought I was a goner. Thought you'd cut me up and feed me to the fishes!"

"Naw," said Al. "I figured I'd cart all the bits up on the moor for the Beast to devour!"

Bert's face got serious. "The Beast?" He shivered and waved his hands in alarm. "Now you know, Al, the Beast is not something we joke about!"

"Good one dad! Another one for the tourists; all those emmets. And you charging them a tenner apiece for a walk in the dark!"

Bert's face fell. "No son! We don't joke about the Beast!"

Al laughed but Bert rolled his eyes to heaven, pressed his hands together and prayed aloud. "Oh Lord, forgive him!"

"Give it a rest, dad! I heard that story about a million times." He turned back to cutting potatoes for their dinner, the restaurant being closed that night. An easy meal, just for the two of them.

Bert crossed the room to his son and tapped his arm. "Al! No!" he said seriously. "We NEVER joke about the Beast!"