Chapter 11 – Not a Plumber?

I was taken aback. "Mark?" I noticed he was wearing the uniform of the resort, white shirt with gold epaulets and white cargo shorts, along with white socks and leather shoes. At least that made some sense given the temperatures the resort was subjected to. He also carried a black radio on his belt, and was that a can of Mace as well? I also noted that he had put on a few pounds at his midriff and neck and his fingers looked thick.

"Yep. It's me Doc. Fancy meetin' you here! Was that Louisa I saw as well?" He pronounced Louisa as Louiser in his Cornwall accent.

I pointed to Louisa sitting back on her lounge. She had walked with the mother of the Italian boy to the ambulance, and had just returned. I grimaced. "Might as well…"

"Right," said the former constable who dogged my heels.

"Louisa," I said, peering down at Louisa who was back under her floppy hat and sunglasses, reading.

"Yes, Martin?" she asked keeping her face locked on her E-book. "Seems you never get a break, from the doctorin' do you."

"It was great to see the old Doc back in action," answered Mark.

She looked up at the sound of a familiar voice.

"Look what followed me home," I said disdainfully.

"Hello, Louiser. All this way from Port Wenn and here you are! What are the odds?" Mylow said looking down at her.

"Oh my God!" she answered. "Mark?" She jumped up and threw her arms about his shoulders while I stood there like an idiot, watching my sunblock- slathered, swimsuit-wearing, and ponytailed wife of a week hug the former constable of Port Wenn. "Oh my gosh! This is…" she stammered trying to get words out of her smiling mouth, "just…"

"Peculiar," I threw in.

"What are you doing here?" she asked looking him up and down.

"Workin'. Been here almost two years."

"You disappeared! Just like that!" she snapped her fingers.

He nodded his head and squinted at both of us. "Yes. Yes, I did."

Louisa dropped the hug but kept a hand on his arm. "There were all sorts of rumors…"

Mark laughed. "Port Wenn does that! If there aren't any facts people just make something up! What were they sayin' about me?"

Louisa looked at me as I tightened my lips. "Oh, you shouldn't care about that," she said. "But I would have thought that you'd have let someone know what you were up too. Just dropped off the face of the Earth."

Mark licked his lips. "But I didn't – totally disappear."

"Oh?" Louisa screwed up her face. "Well, what did you do?"

"No, I didn't just take off," he said. "Did I Doc?"

A grunt came from me. "Err… no."

Louisa whipped her pretty head to face me, her mouth open. "You?"

Mark grinned and said, "I wrote to the Doc pretty frequently for a while, not that he answered too often." He punched me lightly on the shoulder and smiled. "But that's just your way, ain't it?"

"I can tell that your sojourn has not improved your vocabulary," I told him.

He slapped his knee. "That's the old Doc Martin. Always makin' jokes."

"I don't tell jokes."

"Oh?" butted in Louisa. "But how have you been and how did you get here? You work here?"

He nodded. "Indeed I do. A bit of security, not that anything happens here, manage the pool cleaners, you know."

"For two years?"

"About, after Julie got her sentence commuted."

"Julie?" asked Louisa in confusion. "Julie Mitchell? But I though her name was…"

"Emma. Emma Lewis. But I call her Julie." Mark squinted at her. "She likes that."

Louisa looked very hard at me. "You knew this, all this time?"

I ducked my head. "Didn't know they were living in Spain, Louisa."

Her mouth fell open. "I can see that Martin…"

Mark chuckled. "Oh, he's good at secrets, aren't you Doc?"

I sneered then nodded. "Patients and so forth."

"Oh, right," sighed Louisa. "I expect I'll get more details, later." She strongly emphasized the word 'later.'

I ducked my head.

"This has been great to see you! You'll have to talk soon; maybe dinner. We have a little place, it's not much…" Mark babbled on. "You'd love to meet our children.."

"You have children?"

Mark nodded grimly. "The girl, Amelia, is two and a half," he coughed. "Our son is just six months. We named him Roger."

Louisa grinned at him. "Roger? Well, that's nice"

"Julie had an Uncle Roger," Mark answered.

Louisa turned to face me. "So you knew all along about…"

"No," I said. "Not all."

Mark took my elbow, inclined his mouth to my ear, and whispered. "Remember what I said Doc? About that sperm test? Only takes one, I said. That's our Roger, our little boy."

I nodded, remembering that conversation. "I see." That was the conversation I told him that his sperm test showed he was sterile. It also developed, or was already developing, that Julie Mitchell as she called herself, was pregnant by someone else.

"Not that you needed to know Doc." He raised his voice so Louisa could hear him. "And Julie's on the straight and narrow, you see. I think she's the woman she really wanted to be back in Port Wenn, that is until the Salvation Army man showed up to find her."

"How's her mum?" asked Louisa. "Wasn't she ill?"

Mark squinted at the two of us. "That was a rum one. Her mum died soon after Julie went home."

"I am sorry, Mark. I was saying to Martin at the time how mysterious it all turned out. Julie, uhm…" Louisa stopped. "I mean, I don't want to stir things up."

"That's all right, Louisa. We all have our nets to pull. You cast them into the sea and can never predict what fish might swim into them. Me and Julie, or Emma, we got married soon after she finished some prison time. That was after Amelia was born. I was in Bournemouth then, and I took care of the little tyke, along with the Public Service help I got. It was hard, with her mum in jail. But we got by. And after…"

Louisa hugged Mark. "You went for it. You totally went for it! And I never could believe the story about becoming you a plumber."

"Me? A plumber?" he laughed. "That's a good one. I can barely turn on a hosepipe, let alone solder or fix a toilet. Right?" He glanced at Louisa's left hand now touching his elbow. "I see that I'm not the only one that's been makin' some personal changes, eh? That's a ring."

Louisa waggled the ring in the sun and it sparkled. "Yes, it is."

Mark smiled. "I always knew there was something between you two."

"Louisa, perhaps Mark has other things to do?" I harrumphed.

"Right you are Doc. Say…" a sly grin grew on his face. "How long you been married?"

Louisa bit on her lip. "Oh, not that long."

I was not comfortable making a full acknowledgment of our personal lives to Mark Mylow in public. "We should let you go."

"Right you are Doc! Better find out where the lifeguard was when this accident happened; that boy falling down and all. I'd hate for the resort to get a lawsuit, considering as I am an employee and all."

Louisa brightened. "Ok then. We'll talk later. So good to see you Mark. Let us know about dinner?"

"I will. I will. Gosh. Fancy all this happening!" Mylow smiled a mile wide and walked away a spring to his step.

"Mark Mylow. Isn't that amazing?" said Louisa.

"Yeah. Smashing."

"And all this time you knew, knew that he and Julie were where exactly?"

"Bournemouth last I heard."

"He does sound quite proud of his family doesn't he? But I didn't hear you telling him about James."

"I didn't hear you tell him either."

She looked at me with a nervous expression. "No. No I didn't. Time for that later."

"Right." I drew her back into the shade and reapplied sunblock to myself. "You should do the same."

"You think that little Italian boy will be fine?"

"Unless his injuries are worse than I thought." I sighed. "Depends as well on the doctors down here."

"Not as good as ours, or you?"

"That's not what I said, Louisa." But it's what I thought.

"Oh good," said Louisa. "Here come our drinks."

I saw the waitress named Alex, the one with the lopsided face, approach. The woman was trying to smile, but her facial issues made it all look quite terrible.

Author's note:

For more details on Mark Mylow and the story of Julie Mitchell, see my Doc Martin fanfic "Mylow's Muddle."