Disclaimer: Doc Martin is the property of Buffalo Pictures. I own nothing except my overactive imagination
The Gravel Road
Chapter 4
Martin left Louisa's room and stomped off downstairs in a foul mood. As he reached the bottom of the stairs and walked into the pub, the landlord looked up at him.
"Leaving already? Got to get back to umm… someone else?" he suggested, with a knowing look and a wink. It was quite obvious to him that Martin was a married man, obviously with a bob or two from the cut of his expensive suit, here to enjoy a bit of hanky panky with his beautiful younger mistress. Seen it time and again he had, and knew all the signs, that shifty look and the stolen kiss whilst ensconced at a table hidden away in the corner. Helped pass the time for him it did, people watching and working out the little stories being enacted in his pub.
"Mind your own business!" snarled Martin, in no mood for innuendo.
"Ooh, lovers tiff eh? If you want my advice, I wouldn't take a chance with a gorgeous woman like that. No, best just apologise even if you've got no idea what it is you've done wrong, otherwise someone else will snap up a beauty like her. You mark my words, I see it all the time. This place is very popular with folk for secret liaisons, if you catch my drift, what with it being so out of the way, and conveniently incommunicado. No, just say sorry, and give her a pretty trinket to appease her, or a nice big bunch of flowers, that usually does the trick in my experience," the landlord told him as he tapped the side of his nose knowingly.
"Shut up, you officious little oaf! Keep your unwanted advice and inaccurate opinions to yourself!" Martin bellowed, as he strode out of the pub and made his way to his car.
The landlord's eyes nearly popped out of his head at Martin's words, as he watched him disappear out of the door.
"I was only trying to help the miserable bugger. She's better off without him, in fact I'd say she's had a lucky escape from that tosser," he muttered to himself as he shook his head disbelievingly at the ingratitude of some people.
Martin sat in his car and rested his head against the wheel for a moment, trying to gather himself together. His emotions had see-sawed through nervousness, shock, disbelief, happiness, desire, ecstasy, hope, and finally disappointment, all in the space of an afternoon. He started to drive, and without really thinking, he found himself pulling up outside Joan's farm.
By now it was early evening and it had got dark. Joan saw the headlights of his car as he parked up and opened the door to him.
"Hello Marty. And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" she enquired, reaching up to peck his cheek as he bent down to greet her.
"Nothing – do I have to have a reason to drop by? Can't I just call in to say hello?" Martin replied defensively.
"Of course you can, but you never do, do you? Oh well, never mind, come on in, I'll put the kettle on. Have you eaten, or can I get you something?" Joan ushered her nephew into the kitchen where he plonked himself down at her table.
"Err no, I've already eaten earlier actually. I had lunch out. With Louisa." Martin tried to say it casually, but Joan wasn't fooled for a minute. She looked at his face to read his expression as only she could. He'd put on a mask of indifference, but his eyes gave the game away to her. She could see that he was deeply upset and confused, that much was plain, so she trod very carefully.
"Oh, I see. How come?" she asked gently as she sat down opposite, bringing a pot of tea and two mugs.
"She rang me. Asked if we could meet up, said we had some things to sort out. So we met up today, in a pub in the back of beyond, miles from anywhere," he explained.
"Right. And how did the meeting go?" Joan prompted, as Martin sat nursing his steaming mug of tea, staring into the distance.
"I thought we just had some paperwork to go through, stuff to give back, that kind of thing," he told her.
"But there was more to it than that, I take it?" Joan enquired.
"Oh yes, there most certainly was. One hell of a lot more to it than that," Martin replied with feeling, but then stared off into the distance again.
"Well what then? Come on, out with it. Spill the beans, get it off your chest for goodness sake!" Joan told him irritably.
Martin finally focussed his attention on his aunt, and heaved a big sigh.
"She's expecting," Martin confessed.
"Expecting what?" Joan hadn't got a clue what he was talking about.
"A baby," Martin clarified.
"Oh Martin!" Joan's hand shot up to her mouth in disbelief, but also joy at the thought of a baby.
"It's not my fault!" Martin protested, as if he was a guilty teenager.
"Oh." Joan was crestfallen, taking this to mean that the baby wasn't his.
"I mean it is my fault, but it's not just my fault." Martin tried to explain that yes, it was his baby, but that they had both been equally responsible for its conception.
"Well surely you of all people knew to use… you know!"
"Of course, and we did. But it would seem that we had a failure. It happens." Martin replied testily.
On the afternoon that he'd proposed to Louisa, after Holly's accident, he'd gone back to his surgery to finish up and put the defibrillator on charge. He'd promised to return to Louisa's as soon as he could, encouraged by her whispered suggestion to 'bring back some you know... protection' with him, which he had from his standard NHS box of supplies that he kept to hand out when required. Of course, bloody cost cutting exercises meant that the latest batch were from a different, cheaper supplier, and it was now apparent that they must have been of a sub standard quality.
"So how do you feel about becoming a father?"
"Me?"
"Yes you Martin! What are you going to do?"
"Well that's rather up to Louisa. I've asked her to come back, to marry me, but she says that she needs time to think about 'things', that she doesn't want to rush into anything. But what is there to think about? Either she wants to come back and marry me or she doesn't. It's quite simple, I'd have said," Martin stated resentfully.
"Oh, right." Joan could see the picture quite clearly now. Martin had obviously expected Louisa to jump at his proposal as she had last time, but she hadn't, so now he felt hurt and rejected.
"Well I expect she's rather confused at the moment, her body's teeming with hormones after all. And she's only just moved up to London, to her swanky new job. Also, no doubt she remembers that you didn't turn up for the wedding either, so you can hardly blame her for being a bit cautious. But she didn't actually reject you outright and say 'no', did she?"
"No, but she told me she hates her new job in London, so it's not as if that's keeping her there. And I admitted that I made a mistake about not turning up for our wedding."
"Did you actually tell her that you love her, Martin?" Joan gently asked him.
"Well, no, not in so many words, but she must know, it's obvious, certainly when we were…."
He closed his eyes as he recalled how only just a short while ago he'd been making love to Louisa, calling out to her as he'd reached his moment of glorious release. He'd never felt that close, never experienced that kind of a special bond with anyone before, and he'd thought she understood that in a way mere words could never express. It hadn't been just sex - not for him.
Joan looked at the expression on Martin's face and guessed what had gone on between the pair of them this afternoon.
"But have you ever actually said the words out loud to her?"
"Oh come on, you know that's not my kind of thing, and so does Louisa. I offered to do the right thing by her and the baby, and all she can say is that she'll think about it, and that I should do the same. She clearly thinks I'd be a bad father to the baby."
"Bollocks! You'd make a wonderful father given half the chance. You know all about bad fathering from your own parent, so you know how not to go about it, thats for sure," Joan insisted.
"Then why is she hesitating?"
"Louisa is actually being very sensible. She has to think about the child's future as well as her own, and maybe she's worried that you might get cold feet about being a father just as you did about being a husband."
"Of course I wouldn't!" Martin protested.
"Well then all you've got to do is convince her of that. Have you ever spent any time or made any effort actually wooing her?"
"What exactly do you mean by 'wooing'?" Martin queried, not liking the sound of it at all.
"For goodness sake Martin, romancing her, showing her how much you love her, spending time together, taking her out to nice places, maybe sending her flowers."
"Oh please, not you going on about bloody flowers as well? What is it about flowers? I simply don't get it! They're full of hay fever inducing pollen, and bacteria, they cost stupid amounts of money and then they just die and make a mess. They belong in the garden, not in the house." Martin stated with some conviction.
"Don't be such an old misery guts Marty – flowers are beautiful and give a lot of pleasure. Do you have a single romantic bone in your body? You're going to have to do something to convince Louisa to give you another chance, because if you don't, I shall never forgive you for denying me the joy of getting to know this baby. Make it your new project, spend some time researching about romance and wooing. And on how to be a good father; show Louisa that you really are serious by reading up about that too. Go on, I know you can do it!" Joan cajoled. She was sure that these two did actually love each other, and that Martin could be a loving, caring father in a way that his own father never had been to him.
"Still don't understand why she can't see that it just makes sense for her to come back here. She knows it's good place for a child to grow up," Martin grumbled.
"So has she gone back to London already? When are you seeing her again?" Joan enquired.
"She's stopping the night at the pub we went to. I said I'd give her a lift to the station tomorrow, that's when she's going back," Martin replied.
"Good, well don't leave things hanging in the air, make sure you set up another meeting before she leaves. Maybe you could visit her in London?" Joan suggested.
"I'm not sure that I have the time to go dashing off up to London. I am very busy, I do have a practice to run," Martin replied rather pompously.
"Make time, Martin. I'm sure the village can survive without you for a day or two, you aren't the only doctor on the planet you know. If you don't make the effort, you may well lose Louisa – and your child – for good." Joan warned him.
"Hmm. I'll think about it," replied Martin. He didn't always like what Joan told him, but he knew he could always rely on her judgement and wisdom when it mattered most. That's why he'd ended up here at her farm this evening. Without him even realising that this had been where he was headed, instinctively he had turned to her in his time of need, as he always did.
xXx
That evening, he spent a long time thinking about the baby that he and Louisa had created. It would seem that it had been conceived on the night that he'd proposed, when they'd made love for the very first time.
Procreation was of course what sex was really all about, despite their feeble attempts to thwart Mother Nature. His DNA mixed with hers. 23 chromosomes from him, 23 chromosomes from her. The sex of the baby, boy or girl, determined by his sperm. XX for a girl, XY for a boy. A little girl, a miniature version of Louisa, so pretty and delicate. Or a little boy, heaven forbid, a miniature version of him – well, he could always have his ears pinned back if they really bothered him when he was older. Or most likely this child would just be a fascinating mixture of the two of them, depending on which were the dominant and recessive genes that they each carried.
That he loved Louisa and wanted to be with her was not in question for him, even if he hadn't been able to vocalise these feelings to her. But he also realised now that he wanted to know his child, to be involved, to nurture his son or daughter in a way that his own parents never had with him. And if it turned out to be a shy, sensitive, bed wetting little boy just like him, then he would be able to empathise with him in a way that no one else could, wouldn't he? No one else would be able to understand him in quite the way that he would.
'Needy' is how his mother had described him - well, isn't a child supposed to be needy? Isn't that the role of a mother, to be loving and caring, to look after those needs? And Louisa would be such a lovely mother, he'd always known that, remembering the time they'd been discussing her neighbours' nasty little boy, Sam Oakwood and his disastrous upbringing. He knew his lucky child would be brought up by Louisa to understand right from wrong, with a firm set of rules and boundaries to live by, and he realised that he wanted to be part of setting those too. He found he really admired Louisa for the fact that she was already fiercely protective of this child, not even considering an abortion for a nanosecond. He couldn't imagine a time in the future when she'd just stand back and idly watch if she were ever to discover that their child was being bullied, as his mother so callously had, considering him to be a nuisance and an inconvenience.
Joan was right. He couldn't risk losing Louisa or their child, so whatever it took, he had to somehow convince her that they should be together, preferably married, but in whatever way he could get her to agree to - even if it meant buying her a sodding bunch of flowers every day until she agreed.