Chapter 13 – Adults
I pulled the door closed behind me and stood outside the school, my head barely hidden by the roadbed above. I paused and felt hot tears about to spring from my eyes. I ground my teeth together and pressed a hand against the grimy stone wall. My other hand was striking my thigh.
The emptiness I felt was almost unbearable. Louisa… wanted me to stay away… didn't want any… odd… encounters then. Didn't want me to…
A voice overhead called out. "Hoy, Doc! You ok?"
I looked up and saw one of the shopkeepers. Mr. Tyne was leaning over the railing looking down at me with a concerned expression. "I was just goin' down hill here and saw you stopped there, all quiet like! Everything…"
"Fine!" I shouted. "All fine." I looked away and wiped my face. "I've just finished speaking to the head master. I was … merely… collecting my thoughts."
He looked down. "Well… alright. Say, I heard Miss Glasson is back; teaching again."
"Yes." I breathed deeply and took a few steps up the stairs to the street level, brushing the dirt of the wall from my hands.
"So," the man went on, "what you think about Miss Glasson being back? And a baby as well? I'll bet you're a happy man."
"Fine, it's fine." It took all my willpower to put one foot before the other and walk away, without adding anything other than, "Goodbye."
"We can all be adults about it, right?" he called to my back.
Adults, I sneered, are sometimes just large versions of children. And children can be infantile bullies, vacillating from whinging to shouting. Babies to children to adults, all of them, giant bags of emotional drama! Air blew from my nose, as with clamped mouth I stalked back to the surgery.
But Mr. Tyne's and Louisa's comments struck home. How was I going to cope? How was I going to watch as Louisa's pregnancy progressed and I was left uninvolved?
I'd yearned for her so very much these past months and then as if my wish was granted she returned. What a surprise that was! I heard Pauline describe Louisa as 'Dragging that lump around.' Did she mean a pregnant uterus or me?
The sun shone full on Portwenn that afternoon, and as the patients came and went, I stayed focused on their complaints, symptoms, and treatment. A perforated eardrum was followed by a sprained ankle, an infected digit, a checkup for a new job, an anxious mother whose child would not eat what she served him – paraded before me. Through it all I maintained a professional demeanor, rigid back, straight forward look, and steady hands as I treated the medical minutia of the practice. But part of mind was elsewhere.
What I wanted to do was jump in my car and drive far away, find some deserted headland and scream my rage and disappointment at the sea. The rage would fly quickly, which was passing even as I thought of it. My pulse slowed, my headache had eased, and what came to my mind more and more fully was a very dark mood.
Finally the surgery was empty and Mr. Strain came in to give a urine sample.
The abdominal exam I managed to talk him into was quick and non equivocal. No major findings, but his twitching was.
"You mean you have no idea that you're doing it?" I asked.
"No! How would I? Now don't go on!" he almost shouted.
He then lunged at me and snagged some sort of fluff from my jacket.
"Sit down," I directed.
Strain looked away, hunched his shoulders and marched from my consulting room.
"Mr. Strain? Where are you going?"
My promise of a remedy caught him at the door and he sounded as if he'd come back just as Pauline Lamb barged back in and interrupted the man's moment of clarity.
"Forgot my shoppin'," she explained.
Mr. Strain rushed away, followed by Pauline with a parcel and I was left by myself in the empty cottage. The head master's paranoid ranting about Louisa was very strange and I really should have gone after Strain but assumed I'd get into a tug-of-war with the man.
There was something adrift in him and I was unsure what. More testing would have to be done. I put away his notes, closed the file and stood there for a moment wondering what I should do.
I could work on a clock, read the BMJ, or… there was a bottle of good whiskey under the kitchen sink and it called my name. That would be too easy; far too insidious to consider, too much harking back to the past. I went into the living room, sat on the sofa and waited for the feeling to pass. I was tired and Mr. Strain had well and truly strained me. Far more important in my head were my dealings with Louisa Glasson.
My head fell into my hands and I thought about her.
Louisa would be at the pub, likely eating dinner, trying to make her way through the gossiping small talk whirling about and around her. She'd be smiling, waving, putting up a good front. She'd be acting like an adult while I sat in my house thinking about getting drunk.
Now she wanted nothing to do with me. She made that abundantly clear. Not now and not ever.
I found myself thinking back to our lovemaking, as brief and infrequent as it was. It was dreamy, gratifying, lingeringly wonderful… and raucous. She screamed "Martin!" as I shouted "Louisa!" at the ultimate moment and the whole horrible world went away for a time. Was that the night our baby was conceived? Not that it matters. It was here, on the way, being gestated inside Louisa.
I rubbed my face and felt a small tear roll down my cheek. "NO!" the shout came out. "Martin! You can't dwell on the past. You know that way lies…" my mind finished the thought silently, danger!
Being an adult was fairly easy for me. I could deal with the facts of village life and the maladies of my patients in a very adult, albeit at times, too forceful way. But there at times when I felt less than an adult. The whiskey would be an easy way to end these thoughts, but I knew the aftermath would be terrible.
A sighed leaked out of my mouth as the facts reasserted themselves. If Louisa Glasson wished to live here in her village, and have her baby here without interference from me, then she would have it.
"Yes, Mr. Tyne," I said quietly, "I can be an adult. But it won't be easy."
I returned to my desk and taking down a book on nervous disorders, began to read.