Thanks to everyone who is still reading and reviewing: this fic should probably be renamed Timothy Turner and the Interminable Epic now!

Timothy had expected not to sleep. Too much had happened that day: the end of term, the glorious report and the start of the holidays' two weeks of happy idleness. The next would be one of a handful of days which would always stand as a landmark upon the map of his life. Alert as he went to bed, he was eager to learn as much of the speech as he could, practising the inflections Uncle Kenneth and Constable Noakes had suggested. By the second read through, however, he was slower, the words soporific sludge. In the middle of the third reading, he folded the pages away and curled onto his side for a quick, ten minute nap from which he would not wake until morning.

Downstairs, a convivial fire-side chat, whisky in hand, was drawing to its close between the brothers, both Patrick and Michael feeling guilt that they had allowed it to be so long since the last time, as they always did when reminiscing over their past and sharing their present. Both knew claims of busyness or the disparity between one's family life in the city and the other's rather dreary bachelor existence in small town Hampshire were weak reasons for letting slide a fraternal affection which had always been sincere. As they finished their drinks, both felt renewed determination not to leave it so long next time, knowing how unlikely it was that they would manage it.

Another convivial fire-side chat was just beginning. David Watson, having worked late, returned to find only one person in his house still awake, a gangly individual lolling in his best armchair and offering him a glass of brandy. "Sun's over the yard arm?"

"Or so far under the yard arm it can't be seen," replied David, strolling into the room. "Given it's my brandy, it would be rude not to! Besides, always time for a trip down amnesia lane." Taking the glass from Kenneth, he took the opposite chair. "How's Patrick? Has it hit him yet?"

Kenneth took a sip. "Not really. A bit 'hearty'. Very Patrick."

This unintelligible observation was entirely understood. "He's fine then. What about Timothy? How's the famous speech?"

"He's done awfully well. A couple of things we cut – Patrick would be embarrassed – but very good, all told. You're going to hate it, though," he mused.

"Why?"

"Two reasons. Firstly, it's funnier than the one you did."

"Not saying a lot. What's the second reason?"

"Secondly, unless you're more honest than I think, you'll be spending the car journey home explaining to the boys why playing truant is legitimate if it's see Don Bradman batting at Lords."

David spluttered violently, depositing half a mouthful of his drink over his tie. "How on earth has he got hold of – ." He stopped, mouth open, as he looked at his companion, now comfortably settling himself with Cheshire Cat smug satisfaction against a well-padded cushion. "It was you." Kenneth chuckled impishly and placed his pipe in his mouth. "You utter blighter, Ken."

"I take it the boys are still in the dark about that one?"

"Forget the boys, Louisa's still in the dark about that one!"

Kenneth hooted. "'Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive.'" As David scowled, his laughter only grew. "A toast? Patrick and his Shelagh?"

David raised his glass, grinning. "Patrick and his Shelagh."

In Nonnatus House they were used to irregularity. Telephone calls, arrivals and departures broke the stillness with random expectedness; the pattern of night did not change. An exodus to a new place might cause Sister Julienne to gather with the head of her order and Sisters Teresa and Evangelina to discuss the future, while a wedding would take her to the room of a beloved friend to share final confidences. Nonetheless once the call to Compline was made, it was answered; then the Great Silence fell and with it the contemplation of an infinity against which these upheavals, so seemingly overwhelming, were merely ripples. Whether she slept when she retired only she would know.

Rob and Elspeth slept distractedly, startled by the eruptions of city sound. Agnes, in a fold up bed in the corner of their room, was more peaceful, despite her head's odd angle, positioned in the one comfortable spot which accommodated the pincurls Jenny had fixed for her. Next door Jamie lay staring at the ceiling, thinking not of the wedding, but his own predicament. He had taken Patrick's advice and talked to Shelagh that evening, accepting her suggestion to talk to his parents, remember he was still very young and take his time deciding where his life lay. There had been moments of turmoil when he thought of the choice: he loved the farm and it was a part of him, but science and the art of healing fascinated him. He had no answers, however unburdening himself to those unlikely rebels, Aunt Shelagh and Uncle Patrick, made it easier.

Shortly before midnight Shelagh pattered downstairs in her dressing gown, her hair loosely braided and her face pensive. Reaching the bottom, she entered the chapel. Since her return she had often gone there, listening to the offices or more frequently praying when no-one else was there, inconspicuous in the back pews away from the familiar seats she used to fill; a shadow worshipper. Alone now in the hushed house, she walked to the altar itself, knelt down and began to pray.

She loved him and she needed him, yet she had hurt him. Although she had not heard what he muttered while he was closing the front door, she had seen his face and knew that what had been a joke, a tease designed to infuriate Trixie and Jenny, had unwittingly left him riven with doubt.

There was no textbook or medical journal from which she could learn how to minister to his needs. There was no mentor to train her like her years at the London, acquiring theory, observing, practising under supervision and finally given the power of life and death over others. In her private devotions in the previous two months she had returned obsessively to Proverbs 31, in praise of a noble wife, but it did not teach her how. It set a standard and one which terrified her.

"Oh God, come to my assistance. Oh Lord, make haste to help me." The old petition fell from her lips like soft spring rain, the preface to her prayers: tearful thanksgiving for the man who wanted, loved and needed her, then supplication, baring each anxiety and pleading for wisdom; and it was then that she heard the singing.

It was a gentle, intimate croon, the sounds wandering like exotic birds, melodious and unfettered by key, and the words indistinguishable. Lured by the music, she followed it.

Chummy was sitting in the kitchen, feeding Little Fred. "What ho!" she said as Shelagh appeared. "Did we disturb you? I'm awfully sorry. I came down hoping not to destroy the peace!"

"You didn't. I was in the chapel. What were you singing? It sounded wonderful."

"Really? Gosh. My music mistress at prep school always asked me not to sing. She said frogs were more jolly at holding a tune." Despite the humour, it struck Shelagh as desperately sad. "It's a lullaby I remember from when I was growing up in India."

"Is it in Hindi?" Chummy nodded. "I thought I couldn't make out the words. What do they mean?"

Chummy translated. "'Baby likes his swing very much. Keep quiet my child, darling of my heart. Don't fill your eyes with tears, I'll make you sleep on a cot of comfort'." Her voice instinctively dropped as she uttered the words, falling into a lullaby's cadences, while she pulled the baby closer, speaking to the darling of her heart. "It's silly, really, to sing to him in Hindi. Not much need for songs about crafty snakes or cheeky monkeys in the East End! My ayah sang this to me when she put me down for the night and I'd always know she was there even if I couldn't see her."

They were different words but Shelagh was transported back to the golden sunlight of childhood: held by her mother, listening to 'Flow Gently Sweet Afton', secure that no harm could ever come to her. "I remember my mother doing the same thing before she died."

"It must be awfully special to have memories like that of your mother," said Chummy. She busied herself with detaching Fred from her breast and wiping milky dribbles from his mouth, however the note of longing was clear within the chord.

"They've very precious to me. Like the ones Fred will have of you."

"Do you really think so?" asked Chummy bashfully.

"Yes," said Shelagh, sitting down beside Chummy and, like his mother, indulgently watching Fred. Not quite sated, he gurgled and blinked at them, his lips close to the turn Peter claimed was smiling. "What a bonny little boy you are!"

"He is rather, isn't he?" said Chummy tenderly. Delicately moving him from one arm to the other, she settled him to suckling contentedly again. "My marvellous little bean."

"As exciting as tiger hunting?" Shelagh had thought it amusing when Jenny told her about the analogy; now she thought it apt.

"Gosh yes, seventy times seven better! How odd," she reflected, "that I thought of it like that."

"Things are frightening when they're unknown."

From the corner of her eye, Chummy watched Shelagh carefully before she replied. "Yes. I was bally terrified. We didn't have any of things we needed and I couldn't even imagine what half of them were and what all we'd have to do. Peter's ma and pa are wonderful, but they could hardly come rushing from Walton-on-the-Naze every time their great galumphing daughter-in-law needed help. And then I started destroying Cynthia's family heirlooms. I even had this ghastly nightmare where I accidentally tried putting Baby's cardigan through the drying mangle when Baby was still in it.

"Then Fred actually arrived, his own little person."

"And it's everything you hoped, not everything you feared?"

"It's completely marvellous!" She was entirely serene, as a mother should be at Christmas.

"Do you remember the first time you saw him?" Shelagh asked, then felt immediately the question's inappropriateness, given the horror of the birth and Chummy's slow recovery.

Chummy, however, was keen to tell her. "Absolutely! Everything else is appallingly vague but I remember Peter's voice, the same as when he's telling me I've got my 'all in' look, and him handing me Fred and even though all I could see was the top of his head, like a great big ping pong ball covered in fluff, I was besotted." She stroked the baby's hair, its fine and delicate down.

Shelagh's eyes were still fixed on the happy baby as she very quietly spoke. "Chummy, were you nervous before you got married?"

A small select group of patients – Lynette Duncan, Betty Smith, Brenda McEntee – would instantly have recognised the compassion abundant on Chummy's face. She knew more about the marriage than Shelagh knew, but all from Timothy's guileless indiscretions and the child approached the great change with the cavalier enthusiasm of one who considered it a glorious adventure as easy as breathing. Her reply was full of gentle empathy. "Scared stiff. Terribly happy, but it wasn't until we were actually leaving the church that I stopped panicking that something would go horribly wrong. A bit like teams being picked for lacrosse at school and just when you think you're about to be chosen, the captain changes their mind. And everything had been ghastly when Mater visited. I'd hurt Peter so dreadfully." Briefly Shelagh met her eye. "It was lovely to know that was finally behind us, all packaged up and put into the forgetfulness box."

Shelagh opened her mouth, diffident and uncertain whether to speak. The teacher now become the pupil as, resolved, she spoke. "I hurt Patrick today."

"He seemed tremendously happy this afternoon!"

"It was after that," she said. "Only for a wee moment and he was fine when we said goodnight, but I still hurt him." As I have done before, she thought: barely civil when he was preparing to face the board, hiding from his letters, not replying to them, letting him suffer.

"It's a frightful feeling," said Chummy. She did not want to deflect the conversation to herself, yet it was no-one's place to know what Shelagh was referring to but Dr. Turner's. "After we were married, when we were preparing to go to Africa there was something Peter didn't tell me about because he didn't want to upset me and I reacted appallingly when I found out. I felt ghastly afterwards. What kind of wife could treat her husband in such a way, especially when it was about carrying out God's work? Sackcloth and ashes would have been too good," she concluded.

As Chummy had hoped, Shelagh gave a slight chuckle. "He loves you very much, Chummy. He'll have known it wasn't intentional and forgiven you a dozen times if he even remembers."

"Yes," said Chummy looking directly at her. "He does and he did." A wave of realisation spread over Shelagh as sure as any fierce blush, starting with a blink behind her glasses, a small bite of her lower lip before final, visible self-consciousness. "I don't know why," Chummy continued, "but I'm incredibly, wonderfully grateful."

Shelagh looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. "What did it feel like," she began, "suddenly being married?"

Chummy paused and when she spoke, it was shyly. "I'm awfully sorry if I shouldn't ask this and do tell me not to be such a terrible nosey parker if you'd rather not answer: has Dr. Turner ever taken your glasses off?" Shelagh shook her head. She had taken them off herself once or twice in front of him and sensed him trying to absorb her face without them, but he had never removed them. He knew she was entirely dependent upon them, blind and vulnerable without them. The idea made her catch her breath and Chummy knew she understood. "For me, it felt like that, as though I was letting Peter take my glasses off and the only thing to do was trust."

"I see," said Shelagh, half to herself. "How can you prepare for that?"

Freddie gave a tiny, sleepy, indignant squall, perhaps disturbed by his mother's mild ripple of laughter. "The night before our wedding, I paced up and down my room practising my vows like billy-oh until I knew them inside out and upside down. I practised so much, I bally nearly rushed through them all in one go in the ceremony without waiting for the rector!" They both smiled at the tone of mock horror, before Chummy lowered her voice, as serious as Shelagh had ever seen her. "It is a tremendous thing to know that the vows you are saying are in front of God."

Except, thought Shelagh, I have made vows in front of God before. And I renounced them. I did not break them and was certain God's path for me had changed, but I renounced them. Unceasingly, the thought ran through her brain.

"They're the most important thing. So I practised my vows until I knew them just like the Lord's Prayer!" Although the comment was brighter, Chummy was still earnest. "And after I'd practised them, I said the Lord's Prayer."

Shelagh felt the wisdom of the advice, that the reality of the future lay within words she had already memorised. "Thank you Chummy," she said humbly. "You've been so kind." Chummy started to mumble self-deprecatingly and she stopped her. "You have been, with everything you've done to help for tomorrow."

"Today," replied Chummy. She gestured to the clock. It was a quarter past midnight. "It's your wedding day." Despite every anxiety, for a moment all Shelagh felt was joy. Her hand stole to her mouth in disbelief, but it could not hide the smile steadily emerging behind it, which grew radiant as Chummy beamed at her. "And it's going to be spiffing!"

As she returned to the chapel, Shelagh heard Fred's lullaby start again, issuing from the happy wife and ecstatic mother who had been so lonely and out of place as a girl, the dream of her own future inside its peaceful notes. She would practise her vows to Patrick when once again in her room, but now she resumed her prayers. "Let me continue in your grace, Lord. I can do nothing without it. Grant me wisdom and courage. Let me be a good wife and mother and a blessing to them both. Father God, help me to keep these vows." Opening her eyes, she fixed them upon the cross, knowing that earlier that night when she had asked Him for assistance, it had been given to her.