Going Home
In Loco Parentis?
Going home were the new dad and mum.
Though which home(s) and what bed(s) would they come?
Where together in bliss?
Whither Missus or Miss?
A question of 'locus parentum?'
Chapter 7
"You know Martin, living under one roof will be only…"
"Only what?" Martin prompted after Louisa's considerable pause. "What were you going to say?"
"Um- actually I thought I might've heard something. Probably just the wind- unless it's a piskie up to mischief…" Louisa hesitated again. "Gosh, um- what was it I was going to say? Well anyway, I did want to tell you how grateful I am for all your help. Thank you."
"Certainly, you're welcome. Sleep is calling to this little one to lie down again," Martin said indicating his son who was now quite ready for sleep.
Accepting the handover of the tiny bundle, Louisa kissed the baby gently on the head and carefully laid him down into the baby seat. She fastened him in securely and once again covered him warmly. Martin watched the halcyon moment between mother and child before a mass of seabirds flying past the gathering clouds in the distance caught his eye.
"Not that we're in any great hurry to get back, are we Martin? I know we should get going again- but there's still plenty of time before it starts to get dark. It's just that it may be such a good chance to talk some more and well, it seems that maybe some of that has been happening," she said expectantly while catching her breath, "And I wanted to tell you how much, that is if you'd let me- I want to do more than just help you."
"Like how do you mean?"
"Earlier I spoke with Dr. Sanjay about you becoming a surgeon again."
"Ah, did you really," Martin replied icily.
"Really, yes. Well, she described for me how finding a different position as a locum surgeon for the short term may be ideal and would only take a minimum of retraining- and she doubted that you would have to go as far as London."
"Now did she," he hissed his words through gritted teeth. Amongst the unbidden thoughts circulating into Martin's conscious now was how even his own ghastly and narcissistic father had never lapsed in his duty to materially and financially provide for his son.
"She explained the new Modernizing Medical Careers programme to me and how it may complicate lots of other new positions. She also wanted to know, although I couldn't really follow this part, whether you've had dealings with the GMC about your haemophobia."
In the short time since leaving hospital, anxieties and apprehensions had again silently begun accumulating behind Martin's tortuous insecurities. Within those confines he had only just come to grapple with having had no role in Louisa's pregnancy- other than having been there at the start and just barely at the end. He'd been rejected by Louisa as a prospective father standing there numbly on his doorstep whereas six months before, he'd been rejected as her prospective husband. Following that rejection, she had hastily left him in Portwenn to be alone in his wretched purgatory- much as Edith Montgomery had done twenty years earlier, when he had last dared to imagine that he could be in love.
To have been rejected yet again, no forsaken, by Louisa as her doctor when she then returned to the village pained him as the most manifest hurt. It pained his vestigial identity to be reminded what small means he had left to practice any form of medicine at all; the identity he'd once had, the only identity he'd ever known as an esteemed vascular surgeon, had been nearly irrevocably lost when his haemophobia had first erupted. For that ludicrous, Dantesque, bloody failure, Portwenn had become an ideal purgatory in which to condemn himself as an ordinary everyday GP.
"Please Martin, don't be defensive. We were only talking and she thought she could help."
"Help? How does it help to be reminded that, not only do I no longer seem to have a job- not in London and not in Portwenn but I can't even manage to provide a paltry roof over our head! Yet to help with the baby, I'm also supposed to be retraining at the same time for something less than what I have spent my whole life training for in the first place, that I can't do anymore anyway!
"Martin, you said that there were other options still for the Imperial post. Besides, there's time to sort that all out and until then we have my Head Teacher salary."
"Perfect! You'll be doing a job I would never have wanted you to do in the first place with a new baby- as if I need to remind you! All of which promises to provide the village of the damned with a diet chock full of the Recommended Daily Allowance of irony!"
"Martin, please- listen to my voice," Louisa said with the utmost solemnity and a look out the window to the placid moor for encouragement. "Be assured that I'm not going to get angry with you, no matter how much you try to prevent us from talking."
"Then I am entirely sure that the brilliant Dr. Sanjay can inform me of exactly what it is that I should be doing during this time. Perhaps I can entertain the whole bloody village who haven't anything better to do than watch me with their puerile interest waiting for me to bang the Head again- er, bang my head- I mean hit my head again!"
"Martin, we're not waking the baby and I'm simply not going to be getting upset with you- no matter how hard you try," Louisa said unruffled. She took a long, deep breath before continuing, "Now, won't you please tell me what you've already tried in order to overcome your blood phobia?"
"Oh, gawd."
"Have you tried exposure therapies and desensitization exercises? How about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?"
"Yes, I've done it all Louisa. Do you not realize that there is nothing that I wouldn't have tried by now? It's like the bloody Hydra with every challenge doubling with each attempt I make to vanquish it."
"Well, how about talking with professionals like psychologists or a psychiatrists?"
"Psycho-babble rubbish you mean?"
"No…"
"Of course I've tried it! It was as worthwhile as if I were in the middle of open surgery for an abdominal aortic aneurysm and rather than actually fix the problem- all I did was pull off my surgical mask, lean over the open cavity, and speak to the sodding artery about to rupture by beseeching it, 'How does that make you feel?' That would certainly fix it!"
"Honestly, Martin. I get the impression sometimes that the reason you act the way you do is because looking in one of your big, thick medical books for some daunting Latin ailment for 'pain in the, the- buttocks' would reveal your name!" she sighed and then just as quickly wished to take it back. "Please, please stop doing it."
"Well I don't need anybody's sympathy, thank you- especially yours."
The last thing he could ever have from Louisa was her sympathy. Between the identity he couldn't seem to reclaim and the stirring sense that there was some other identity, as yet unknown, there was definitely no place for such sympathy. That place was set aside for his private purgatory and in it, he could neither pursue nor escape from her. And oh what an exquisite purgatory it was, to keep himself deprived of no more than gazing upon Louisa from afar and tormenting himself with his desperate, desperate love for her.
"No Martin you don't. Of course you don't. Just talk to me, Martin. I know it doesn't come easy for you. After all you once compared it to constipation. Haven't we just now spent the last nine months proving the perils of not talking? But I know you need what I need, and it's not simply help."
"How- what- what do you mean?" he asked while finally permitting himself to resume breathing normally.
"Remember how Auntie, I mean Granny, Joan held the baby for the first time in hospital?"
"Well, yes."
"Then you saw how much she loves him. She's going to love him so very much too. Did you notice while watching them together how such a strong, feisty, and thoroughly wonderful woman could melt into a complete and total softie?" she paused with a temporary loss for words. "Joan will move heaven and earth for him."
"I know."
"And she'll do the same for you and me too. I know she's always been more to you than just an aunt- much like she's always been more to me than just a friend. Gosh, even as a little girl growing up in the village, I could feel her looking out for me and not just because- well, you know, my family. Even when I came back to the village from London she never hesitated to welcome me back and to help me in every way she could. Not everyone did you know."
"No," Martin answered meekly while shifting perhaps uncomfortably in his seat.
"We both know that Joan will do everything to help. She'll do anything possible and then some for us and the baby. She already helps everybody in the village; she's a devoted friend to one and all, and she always puts everybody else first before herself. But the fact is, she runs herself so very ragged…"
"I know that too- I've been trying to get her to take it easy for a long time already."
"The thing is Martin, it's always felt to me nonetheless that Joan is so lonely and has been for a very long time- and not because she lost Phil so long ago or that she didn't have children of her own. It's something that she was never able to find- for all the living that she's done. I think whatever it is that is missing for her accounts for her aloneness and mine as well, and yours too. It happens to be the very thing that I want too- and I believe that you want as well. And it's what I think we're supposed to have together."
"And that thing, that missing thing, is something we're going to discover sitting out here in the middle of nowhere before we get back to Portwenn?" he asked.
"No, of course not," she countered and was followed by a long pause.
"So getting married- is that what you want?"
"No! I mean yes. No, I mean- not now, not just 'because'," Louisa paused with a long sigh that she was unable to suppress from becoming a yawn. "Oh, what I wouldn't give for a real cup of tea…"
"Well, if you're getting tired we should get going," he said precipitously whilst turning to start the car.
"Bugger that! I don't want to be tired and I don't want to get going!" Louisa snapped.
"Louisa, there's no need…"
"I'm sorry, Martin. It's okay, I'm not angry with you. I just don't want to be tired again or to give in to being tired again. But I am tired of not resolving things. Back in hospital I made myself believe that somehow we'd get around to talking for once without the usual medical emergencies and the usual intrusions from the whole village. But it didn't happen. Then I convinced myself that on the long quiet drive home we'd really have that opportunity to talk. After all, what could possibly intrude on us, right? And for once, I couldn't imagine either one of us actually storming off mad- unless of course you're now planning to throw me out of the car?"
"No! No, of course not, Louisa!"
"No- I know you wouldn't. But of course my Martin I'm still sorry for that time we were together in the taxi- well, you know. Can we just have another chance to talk some more before we go home?"
"What did you say?"
"I just want… I mean, if I just can briefly close my eyes, then couldn't we talk some more afterwards- not a lot, but maybe just a little?" her plea hung in the air. "Oh my Martin, this music- could you please turn up the radio, maybe just the littlest bit?"
"Do you like it?"
"Oh, yes. It's Csikszentmihalyi or Hungarian something or other, isn't it?"
"Well it's Listz actually. It's a favourite called Liebestäume."
"It's so lovely… and I can tell the baby likes it too."
…end of Chapter 7
