Questions
"Do you like your Aunt Ruth?" Louisa peered over at Martin as they lay in bed that evening.
Martin turned his head to stare at Louisa. He had to force his mind away from the medical journal, where he had been reading a very interesting article about treatment of fungal lung diseases. "What do you mean?"
Louisa bent over the corner of the baby furniture catalog, marking the page on which the cot which she liked was displayed. The cot was white, came with a baby cot and a started set of sheets, printed with yellow flowers and white beige sheep. She flipped the catalog over and rested it over her belly, which made a convenient prop for it; one strange advantage of being pregnant. She watched as Martin's face remained blank, and that meant, she believed, that he was mulling over an answer to what should be a simple question.
Martin cleared his throat. "What do you mean like?"
"Respect then. Or have some affection for. She is your aunt."
"Yes," he said. "I remember a Christmas Day I spent with her, plus a Boxing Day when my father and mother were away. So… we had a marvelous meal, played chess. I think I was eight or nine."
"Chess?"
"Oh, Ruth is very good at chess."
"That's surprising."
"Chess is a game of strategy. She is rather…" he stopped.
Louisa suggested, "Cerebral?"
Clinical might have been the word he was looking for. "That is correct." He screwed up his eyes. "Delving into the intricacies of the human psyche requires… a certain grasp of the various paths a human mind may take, and where or how they may take a bad journey."
Ruth once shared a case with him, when he was a young Registrar ion London, and he had met Ruth for lunch. The patient of her case had stalked a former teacher and had then attacked the woman, all for a low mark that he had been given ten years before. Ruth had managed to ferret out that fact after extensive questioning and finally through role play. The root cause was revealed to Martin when he asked about a red scratch on his aunt's neck as they ate their salads.
"Oh this?" Ruth had touched the spot gingerly. "The result of a role play. I was the teacher and he the student. The man actually reenacted the attack." Ruth had stopped for a sip of water. "He went after me with a Biro, you know." She smiled grimly. "That's the last time I leave a pen handy on a desk for a patient to see and then use."
Martin had been shocked of course, for he sometimes had to tussle with drug or alcohol addled people in A and E. Usually if injured they were compliant as pain flooded their systems, but he'd gotten the occasional punch or slap, but never actually been struck with a weapon.
So, more words to describe Ruth. "She's calm, and matter of fact," he told Louisa.
Louisa put her hand on his elbow and squeezed so Martin stopped speaking. "Martin, we're getting lost in the weeds here. I asked if you like your aunt." She smiled at him. "It's clear that you like Joan."
"Family – they're both in my family." He almost smiled at her. Then he lowered his journal and took her hand in his. "Like you; you are my family."
Louisa lifted his hand and kissed the knuckles. "But they are blood relatives. You married me." She held his hand to her neck, where his fingers naturally cupped the skin under her ear. The baby kicked just then and she jumped.
"What?" Martin asked for he too had felt the thump transmitted through the bed.
Louisa put his hand on the spot where a foot seemed to be thrusting. "Kicking or stretching."
Martin pressed the spot and felt a steady pressure, which then increased as a tiny limb moved. "It moves," he murmured, amazed at the awesome potential of growing life.
"Oh yes. Kicking me all last night. Didn't get much sleep from 4 to 5."
Martin grimaced. "I'm sorry."
"For what, Martin? Getting me pregnant?"
"That wasn't planned." Martin's brow furrowed but he knew that the potential of conception was always optimum around the time of ovulation and looking at Louisa's self-kept records they had gotten lucky, in a way, and the condom clearly had a hole in it. "Um, sorry, for the loss of sleep." He didn't say that after birth neither of them would be getting much sleep with a crying infant in the house.
Louisa moved her catalog aside, then rolled onto her side so she could face Martin. "Planned or not it happened." She put her right arm around his waist, pulling herself close to him. The baby kicked a few more times then settled down. "So…"
Martin put his journal aside, but he did want to read more about the incidence of respiratory fungal balls amongst bird fanciers and banders. He could finish reading the article tomorrow. "So?" He watched as Louisa began to smile; her eyes boring into him. "Family."
"Your aunts, yes. You." She scooted closer to him so her belly pushed against his hip, so he rolled towards her. "This rather large lump downstairs which is giving me heartburn, makes my back ache, have to wee a lot, and I noticed a silver stretch mark." Louisa did not say that being a woman of modest bust line, she was enjoying having larger breasts, which would get even bigger after birth when her milk came in. She sighed with some contentment but damn her nipples were sore. "All part of the process."
"I…" Martin had to stop speaking for his emotions were too close to the surface. "I am glad that we got married."
She looked at him soulfully, and Martin saw her green eyes brim with tears. "Louisa?"
Louisa wiped her eyes. "I'm okay."
"Are you?"
She cleared her throat. "I always wanted to get married, you know; someday. And we did – we are. But I mean the proper situation – man – didn't happen; didn't come by until you came to the village." She shook her head. "I never felt…" she stopped. "No, wrong. I mean to say that I… I… never was in love, Martin, until I met you."
"But not at first," he stated.
She laughed and tousled his hair after kissing him on the mouth. "Of course not."
"Of course not?" he bristled slightly
She grinned. "You were…"
Cocksure, Martin knew, but had been both smitten by, yet wary of the school teacher on the plane who had faced him in the village committee meeting.
Louisa smiled at him. "Sure of yourself. But…" She bit her lip. "I didn't think you were right for us – our village – and a surgeon?" She grinned. "But, Martin, I was wrong. You were, are the proper man for the job." She hugged him tightly. "Proper job, my love." She kissed him on the mouth deeply, her tongue playing across his lips at the end of the smooch.
Martin was silent, as he relished the taste of her cherry tinted, but also greasy, lip balm. She looked at him brightly and in the dim room she seemed to be luminous. His gaze fell from her face to her upper chest, and he could see that the upper slope of her breasts was bulging, with desire he assumed, as she licked her lips. He moved her hand to stroke her skin below her collar bone, feeling the warm breast below.
"So…" pulling him closer, she said, "are you… finished reading?"
He reached over his left shoulder and turned off the lamp on the nightstand. "Appears so."
Louisa kissed his shoulder through his t-shirt. "Yeah, me too."
Martin watched as she unbuttoned her pajama top, exposing her maternity bra (she'd taken to wearing one to bed) then rolled onto him, pinning him to the mattress between her spread legs, her big belly thrust against his flat one.
Smiling, she said to him, "Hi."
"Hello," he said as she kissed him. He was not sure how discussing Aunt Ruth, affections or otherwise and then family led to this moment, but he surrendered to Louisa's romantic ministrations anyway, his arms around her back. He had read that some women, even in the third trimester, enjoyed sexual relations. If that was the case, then he was pleased to aid her to fulfill her needs.
Later, she lay in his arms, one hand playing with his hair. "Proper job, Martin," she murmured as she drifted towards sleep.
"I love you, Louisa," he whispered as he felt her lips quiver against his.
She answered slowly, "Love you too, husband."
As Louisa started making soft snoring sounds, Martin was thinking about not his wife, the enjoyable love they had just made, nor the baby that would be born in eight weeks or so. Instead, he was contemplating the enigma of families and the condescending manner that Ruth had commented about his wife.
School teacher Ruth had said, like a curse word. Why did she describe Louisa that way?
