18 September 1959

"Just don't do anything stupid, all right?" Maureen told the Doctor as she led him back to the kitchen where Mrs. Beazley was waiting for both of them.

She liked the Doc, really she did. Liked him better today than she had yesterday, for she had only just this afternoon caught a glimpse of the man he must have been when he was alone with Mrs. Beazley. Not the Doctor, urbane, worldly, rich, and unconcerned with anything other than himself, not the man Maureen had always thought him to be, but Lucien, who was gentle, and kind, who had fallen in love with a whore. It was no wonder he'd made Mrs. Beazley happy, for however brief a time, if he had spoken to her the same way he'd spoken to Maureen in the car, but he'd also left her sad and lonesome, and Maureen wouldn't soon forget it. She hoped he'd keep his mouth shut - though he had already proven that silence was not his forte - and that he would not further grieve Mrs. Beazley by pleading for a second chance she would not give him.

In a moment they were in the kitchen, and Mrs. Beazley was waiting for them, in her neat white blouse and perfectly pressed skirt beneath her favorite blue apron, her chin held high though she'd crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive sort of way.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Blake," she said as Maureen and the Doctor drew ever closer to her.

To his credit the Doctor remembered his manners and swept his hat from his head with his free hand now that he was inside Mrs. Beazley's home, and his voice was soft when he answered her.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Beazley," he said.

There was the briefest of pauses, then, as they looked at one another. Maureen was not much concerned with romance; life had been unkind to her, and with the notable exception of Mrs. Beazley she had never met a single person who didn't disappoint her. Even here at the pub, where she had lived for nearly seven years, even the girls who were as good as her family could not be entirely trusted; they never stayed long, and the good ones took a piece of Maureen's heart with them when they left. There had been a few bad apples, over the years, and Mrs. Beazley had always dealt with them deftly, but it was the ones Maureen least suspected who hurt the most. Even Lorraine, who was funny and sweet and always found some reason to laugh, had betrayed Mrs. Beazley's trust when she'd told her soldier about Doctor Blake's appointments, and she'd done it again now, had not stood up for herself and put every last one of them at risk in the process. The men were even less reliable than the girls; even Doctor Blake, who seemed so good, had broken Mrs. Beazley's heart. No, Maureen did not believe in love, for she had never found a love that did not wound.

Mrs. Beazley was another story, she knew. Mrs. Beazley loved with her whole heart; she loved every girl who came to her door and every baby born beneath her roof, loved her sons, loved her nephew, had loved her husband like something out of a romance novel, and she'd loved Doctor Blake, too. What Maureen saw now was the aftermath of that love, written on both their faces, Mrs. Beazley and the Doctor looking at one another with hurt in their eyes, suddenly awkward in the presence of a person they'd once cared for, both of them a little lost, a little broken, both of them at a loss for words.

And she could not bear it. She could not bear the silence, or the way the Doctor fidgeted with his hat, or the shine of Mrs. Beazley's bright eyes. She could not bear the weight of all the words they both left unspoken, the accusations Mrs. Beazley no doubt longed to hurl at him and the apologies he no doubt longed to make for whatever had precipitated their falling out. When Mrs. Beazley had left to spend the weekend with him Maureen had not believed for a second that she really meant to end things with him, but she had, and she had returned so dejected that Maureen had known at once the Doctor must have done something to force her hand. What it was Mrs. Beazley would not say, and Maureen was not so callous as to ask. She had given this woman she loved as dearly as a mother the space to grieve in silence, but now the source of that grief stood in the kitchen with them, and Maureen could see Mrs. Beazley's sorrow in every line of her face, an open wound.

Someone would have to move things along before either Mrs. Beazley or the Doctor said something they were liable to regret, and so Maureen took care of that herself.

"Lorraine's just upstairs, Doctor," she said.

It was as if her words had woken them both from a trance; the stillness and the silence were shattered, and Mrs. Beazley moved at once, wiping her hands absently on her apron.

"I'll go in with you if that's all right, Doctor Blake," she said. "Lorraine's a bit nervous about doctors and it might help her if I'm there."

"Of course," he said, and so the three of them left that place, Doctor Blake graciously allowing Mrs. Beazley to take the lead, following her without question or complaint, and Maureen bringing up the rear, thinking grim thoughts about the fairy tale of love, and the havoc that it wrought.

Jean's presence had been a balm to his frightened patient, and they had between them managed to keep her calm enough for Lucien to carry out his examination. It was syphilis, of that he was certain, and he was glad he had already brought all the supplies he needed in order to treat it. Jean held the girl's hand while Lucien administered the first of course of the medication, while Lorraine wept and cursed her own foolishness. Though Jean had been adamant that Lorraine could not see another customer until Lucien had pronounced her disease-free she had been kind, too, had reassured the girl with all the tender understanding of a mother, promised her she would not lose her place in Jean's home over this offense. It was a kindness Lucien would not have expected of another madam, keeping on an employee who could not perform her duties, but it was exactly what he expected of Jean, and his heart ached with love for her, for her gentle kindness and compassionate spirit.

The moment he was finished Jean ushered him from the room; Maureen had been waiting for them in the corridor, and once they stepped out of the door she stepped through it, going to sit with her friend, closing the door behind her and leaving Lucien alone with Jean for the first time in a month.

He half-expected her to show him out with all due haste, to rush him from her home and remind him that he was not welcome, but she did nothing of the sort. Instead she sighed, and once more crossed her arms over her chest, and regarded him for a moment with an inscrutable expression on her face.

"How far advanced do you think she is?" Jean asked him then.

Though Lucien wanted, very much, to talk to Jean about what had happened between them, to apologize and beg her forgiveness, to tell her that he loved her, he could see at once that she had the right of it. It would be better for both of them if they stuck to the matter at hand, and did not go poking about in old wounds.

"Not very," he said. "The rash only just appeared. You'll need to find out from her when she first suspected that something was wrong, and then we'll need a list of the men who've been with her in that time. I'll need to see them all, and we'll need to find out if any of them have been with any of the other girls."

Jean blanched as he spoke, no doubt displeased by the potential disaster Lorraine's illness posed for her business. If word got out that Jean's girls weren't as clean as everyone thought, the damage might well spell the end of the pub. Lucien had always wished that Jean might find a better life for herself away from this place but he could not be glad that she was threatened under these circumstances, and his heart broke for her, knowing how worried she must have been, and how she had no one to turn to for support. Well, she did have Maureen, he reminded himself, and that counted for something.

"It might be rather a long list," she said dejectedly. "Strange, how something so small we can't even see it could spread so quickly and cause so much harm."

"Yes," he agreed sadly, thinking less of disease and more of how a few thoughtless words from him had spelled an end to their happiness and shattered all his dreams for the future. "It's treatable, though," he assured her. "We can fix this, Jean. It may be a bit difficult, in the beginning, but there doesn't have to be any lasting damage."

And we could fix ourselves, too, he thought, if we tried. It would be damn near impossible, he knew, for Jean to forget her pain, for her to realize that whatever she feared love was not beyond her reach. You're the same as all the rest, and as far as you're concerned I'm just a whore. Those words floated through his mind now, as he stood looking at Jean and recalling the hurt in her eyes as she'd left him. She had never been just a whore to him, had been everything to him, but she was too accustomed to disappointment and he was too reckless to reassure her. If only there was some way, he thought, some way for him to show her the truth of it all, some way for him to give her a glimpse of what he really saw when he looked at her, how he really felt. If only there was some way he could prove to her that she was worthy, and that he adored her.

"Ever the optimist, aren't you, Doctor Blake?" she said with a sad little smile, as if she had read his very thoughts.

In fact no one had ever accused Lucien of anything of the sort; his life had been full of loss and chaos, and he dealt in the business of death every day. There had been a bleak period after the war when he'd thrown himself whole-heartedly into danger, knowing he might die and almost longing for it, longing for an end, unable to see any sort of hope for the future. Even when he'd first come to Ballarat he'd found it miserable and grim with nothing at all to recommend it, had felt himself a shell of the man he had been before the war, the man he wanted to be. It was Jean who made him hope. It was Jean who made him feel like himself for the first time in decades, Jean who made him smile, and reminded him of the joy that could be found if only he shared his heart with another. If he was an optimist, it was only where she was concerned, and only by the grace of her gentle hands.

"Guilty, I suppose," he said.

"Come on, then," she turned, already making her way towards the stairs. "I'll show you out."

Lucien knew a dismissal when he heard one, and so he followed her down the stairs, across the dining room, to the back door. When she said softly good-bye, Doctor Blake, he answered her as gently as he could, and then he stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine. As he made his way across the carpark his thoughts were racing, and by the time he settled behind the wheel a plan was already forming in his mind. Jean would not let him back into the pub except in his role as physician to the girls, and he did not doubt that if he tried to press his case under those circumstances she would mistrust him. But he had to tell her how sorry he was, had to prove to her that the love they had begun to cultivate together deserved a chance to bloom. If she would not speak to him, then, there was only course of action left to him.

He would write her a letter.