Doc Martin and all characters are owned by Buffalo Pictures; I'm just borrowing them for a while.

CHAPTER FIVE

After a very emotional and tearful goodbye, wherein Joan tried to squeeze enough kisses and cuddles to last both she and Martin for the next three months, she stood at the door waving at her little fellow as Christopher drove down the lane. The last glimpse she had was of him sitting in the backseat, his tearstained face gazing sorrowfully out the back window, his little palm pressed to the glass. Uncle Phil was a bit concerned for his wife and how hard she was taking their nephew's departure. Although she managed to do her chores around the farm as usual, he caught her many times at a standstill, wiping tears from her face. When he came in for his afternoon tea, she was sitting at the table dejectedly with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. He went to her and put his arms around her shoulders from behind, kissing the top of her head.

'Cheer up, love. It won't be long before he's back here with us,' he told her.

'I worry for him, Phil,' she answered somberly. 'He doesn't have a chance in that house. He should have been ours from the start.' Fresh tears began to flow from her eyes.

'I know it feels that way, my dear, and I wish things were different, I truly do. But I guess God has His reasons, even though I can't see why in the world...'

'I don't care about God's reasons!' Joan exclaimed bitterly. She sighed deeply and ran a hand down her face. 'Do you think he is going to be all right?'

'Martin has that Ellingham determination in his blood. He'll be fine.' Phil kissed her head again and went to put the kettle on the stove. Joan sat a minute more, then went to help her husband with the tea. All the while she was thinking about how this would be the longest three months she had ever spent.

XXXXXXX

A few changes had been made at home by the time Martin had arrived. In addition to Ms. Brown, the nanny (whose broken leg had healed up quite nicely), there was now a private tutor for Martin. Daddy had thought it was high time to begin Martin's education; although he was to be enrolled in Infant School in the fall, Christopher was determined his son would be at the top of his class before he even arrived. His ultimate goal was to have Martin begin boarding school at the age of seven, a year earlier than children usually began. He was already hobnobbing on the golf course with the Headmaster of Lord Malvern Hall-considered one of the most prestigious and disciplined boarding schools in the region.

Miss Abigail Murphy was a retired boarding school teacher and the sister of one of Christopher's colleagues at the hospital. She had no children of her own-indeed, had never been married-and had put the fear of God into countless young people over the span of her career. She was of the old school of thought that believed nothing was more effective at keeping order in a classroom than a good hard slipper across the backside. She made it very clear to Martin in the first five minutes of their meeting that she would not tolerate any sort of unruly behaviour, insolence, or poor manners. Martin spent several hours a day writing letters and words, reading, adding and subtracting sums, and most importantly trying his hardest not to provoke the wrath of Miss Murphy. This proved to be somewhat of a challenge, due to his sensitive nature. He would often get upset when he wasn't able to learn something quickly enough, and it didn't help that his tutor was impatient and chastised him for being what she called 'dense'. Consequently, tears were usually shed, which resulted in more belittling comments and threats of punishment. He had been rapped on the knuckles with a ruler several times for his whinging, and it made him even more determined to swallow his tears the next time and not cry for any reason.

Another problem had presented itself to make life difficult for little Martin. When he returned home from the farm, Martin's bedwetting had begun again in earnest. Ms. Brown was usually able to take care of the matter before his parents got wind of it, but sometimes the evidence was impossible to hide. Martin usually spent part of the morning in the cupboard under the stairs on those occasions, after having his bottom spanked by his Mummy. It sometimes seemed to him that she delighted in his failure to control his bladder at night; she almost looked happy, triumphant, when she told him to retrieve her hairbrush from the dressing table in her room. She never would use her hand to spank him, telling him she didn't want to touch a disgusting little boy who liked to wee on himself. The large wooden brush was her weapon of choice.

The knowledge that he had made his Mummy angry again, and that she thought he was disgusting, always hurt Martin much worse than the spankings ever could. He longed for his mother to be proud of him, for the ability to make her smile, to be the kind of boy she wanted to spend time with cuddling and reading stories and talking things over. His entire little life was ever focused on what would make his Mummy happy. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how clever, no matter how well mannered, he always managed to get it wrong in the end.

He couldn't count on Daddy to be there in his times of heartache. His father had been working later and later into the night, and it was sometimes three or four days in a row before Martin saw him at all. Even then it was usually a brief hello, a pat on the head, an admonishment to tidy up his toys. Daddy also carried out punishments for infractions that had made his mother especially cross during the day, such as taking apart the kitchen radio to see where the sound came from. Even though he had been successful in putting it back together again exactly as it was before, Mummy was still livid. His father had whipped him that night when he had gotten home. Indeed, Christopher had quickly forgotten the incident with the knife in his sister's kitchen, knowing there was nothing Joan could say to him about disciplining his son in his own house.

It was at bedtime when Martin felt the loneliest, the most unloved and unwanted. There was no one to talk to about the fears he had inside him. There was no one to sit at his bedside and read him stories, or tuck the covers in around him, or give him a kiss on his forehead. There was nothing that made him feel safe and cozy; mostly, what he felt was confusion, and sadness making a dull pressure in his chest, and the worry of what the morning would bring like a hot brick in his stomach. It was at these times when he would think of his Aunty Joan, missing her so terribly that the ache inside him felt like more than he could bear. He prayed over and over that she would come and take him away, so often that it became a mantra in his head that he unconsciously repeated. After a while, Martin began to understand the futility of his prayers. At the age of five, he had come to this final, grim conclusion: there was simply no one listening.