DANIEL, Clare and George waited until the ambulance came so that they could help install Charlotte and her parents for the drive to the hospital. In a few minutes the ambulance set off again, followed by the senior Fuller in their car.
It was almost twilight and a bluish haze hung over the moor.
Clare voiced the feelings of all of them as they drove back over the twisting track. ‘Isn’t it strange?’ she said. ‘I feel as if I’ve known the Fuller family for ever, instead of a couple of hours.’
They were all quiet for a moment, thinking of the desperately sick child who was on her way to hospital. It was almost certain that Charlotte did have bacterial meningitis, not the less dangerous viral strain.
‘What are her chances of getting over it, Doc, without brain damage or anything?’ George asked, after they had driven a couple of miles.
‘Quite good,’ replied Daniel. ‘There have been huge strides made in treating meningitis, even in the last few months. And she’s well nourished and cared for, that always helps.’
‘Yep, that’s what I told the grandfather when we were having a cuppa in the kitchen,’ said George. ‘Not surprising they all feel so strongly about the kid. Her mother has had several miscarriages over the last few years, and eventually had to have an hysterectomy. And on her side, there isn’t any family left except for her elderly mother. The rest were all wiped out in one of them Balkan wars.’
‘So that explains the accent,’ said Clare, ‘and Bella’s reluctance to disagree with her mother over Charlotte’s treatment. How awful not to have anyone of one’s own to turn to in a crisis…’
Her voice trailed away as reaction set in. This last surge of activity on top of an already physically and emotionally draining day, with her near sleepless night before, now took its toll.
The hum of the engine and the sounds of George’s and Dan’s voices faded away. She became curiously disembodied, not awake but not asleep. All she could think of was the desire she had felt a little while before to scoop up Charlotte’s hot little body and smother it with kisses, willing each kiss to give her strength. Never in the whole of her career as a nurse had she been so moved. Was it because she wanted a baby herself so much? Were her newly awakened maternal instincts that powerful? Yes, apparently. But how cruel that it could never be. Though she saw with perfect clarity in midst of her confusion that there was only one man for her, she also knew that their match would always be star-crossed…
Then, cutting through her dreamlike state, she distinctly heard Dan saying commandingly, ‘Pull over here, George! Yes, here.’
Even as she blinked and tried to clear her befuddled thoughts, the surgery rolled to a halt. Dan caught hold of her hand and practically dragged her out of the cab.
They had stopped in the lee of a small tor, a rounded granite mound as old as time pushing up through the dense, close, sheep-cropped carpet of moor grass. The sun was being swallowed by a purple haze creeping over the horizon. The cool fresh evening breeze filled Clare’s lungs and cleared her head.
Dan’s grip was so hard it almost hurt her wrist, yet she let him lead her, unprotesting, away from the surgery until they stood in the shelter of the lichen-mottled boulders jumbled about the base of the tor.
He swung her round so that he faced her, gripped both her hands in his. His eyes burned with a fierce inner light that she had never seen before. The fading red-gold sunlight set her hair ablaze so that it was reflected in his pupils.
‘What is it?’ Clare managed to say at last, recovering from their hectic dash.
‘Wasn’t that the most terrible and wonderful thing you ever saw?’ Dan asked fervently.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Fullers. Seeing them has put it all into perspective for me. I really understood something fundamental about life for the first time. Their absolute agony when they thought Charlotte was going to die, then the perfect joy when she started to pull out of it.’
It was the strangest way of putting it, but Clare realised with a shiver that he was right. It fitted in exactly with the flow of dream-like thoughts she’d had only moments before, even though she had never thought of using such words.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said simply. ‘Terrible and wonderful.’
He clasped her hands more tightly. ‘You talked about taking a leap of faith. Well, now I know having children is just that sort of a leap. You risk everything. It’s the greatest reward or the greatest loss. I think it must be like setting out on the most dangerous journey you’ll ever make but with a fabulous treasure at the end.’ He hesitated. ‘And the thing about a journey like that is that you can’t make it alone. You have to have the right companion. And I’m sure now that there’s only one person who’ll do for me. Clare, I’m ready to take that leap if you’ll make it with me.’
The moorland seemed to become misty about them, but it was only tears springing into Clare’s eyes. She wiped them away with a trembling hand and tried to master the sudden racing thud of her heart. It was so perverse in the face of Daniel’s new-found certainty, but suddenly she was the one stricken with doubt.
‘Oh, Daniel…I want to…But what about these misunderstandings that keep happening between us? Perhaps…there’s something deeply wrong between us. I couldn’t bear it if we kept parting like that, so coldly.’
‘We’ll make sense of what happened,’ he said. ‘We’ll sort everything out.’
Clare managed a half-laugh. ‘What, just like that? Right here and now? We might keep George waiting a long time.’
‘We’ll make a start. Ask me anything you want to know. Anything.’
Clare’s head spun for a moment, their weeks together spinning through her mind in a crazy montage. She groped for something tangible.
‘The time I got tipsy on cider and you walked me home,’ she said at last. ‘I said something foolish and you just went off and left me. It was like a switch was thrown inside you.’
Dan sighed. ‘A legacy of my break-up with Bee. I think most of my problems stem from that. She’d drink too much sometimes and then flirt with other men. She thought it was funny afterwards, I didn’t. What you said was just the sort of thing she used to. It just all came back to me then. I couldn’t bear to see a beautiful woman making an exhibition of herself again.’
‘Do you think I’m beautiful?’ Clare asked.
‘Very,’ Dan said with feeling. ‘Haven’t I mentioned it before?’ His arms slipped around her waist and he drew her towards him. She didn’t resist. Their lips met. Their first kiss was passionate and unhurried.
‘Oh, I’ve wanted to do that for so long!’ Clare admitted, when they finally, reluctantly, came up for air.
‘Me, too,’ said Dan, grinning hugely. ‘Think of the time we’ve wasted.’
‘But it might not have been right before now. It probably would have gone wrong, like the silly joke. I promise I’ll keep clear of your local cider in future. No more drunken jokes.’
‘But plenty of laughs,’ Dan said.
‘Oh, yes, plenty of those.’ She searched for another question. ‘Why didn’t you like it when I thought you were pretending you were short-staffed to test me? You walked out so abruptly.’
‘Simple. When things started to go wrong between us, Bee accused me of playing tricks and spying on her. You have to believe me when I say I did no such thing. I know now I should have handled it differently, coming from you, but it’s hard to break a reflex. It may also be why I was rather stiff that day when I came to see you about Marjory Jessop’s bequest of Alice. I was worried you might make a fuss. Messy divorce settlement, arguments over who got what. You understand?’
Tears were flowing back into Clare’s eyes as she nodded and kissed Daniel again.
‘You poor love,’ she said at length. ‘You were hurt more than me. That sort of thing might have put you off women for ever.’
‘It also made me doubt my own judgement on personal matters,’ Dan said. ‘That was worse. I fell head over heels for Bee and couldn’t see any of her faults or our basic incompatibility. If I had sooner, we might have been able to work it out. Anything else?’
‘Nothing I can think of. Do you want to ask me something?’
He smiled. ‘A million things. But I’ll settle for just one for now. When we were working on old Cath Hopkinson, you did lose your concentration for a moment, didn’t you?’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d noticed. Yes, I had a little wobble.’
‘I thought you were going to faint, you looked so pale. What happened?’
‘Oh, Dan. I don’t know, and that’s the truth! I still don’t know. Maybe I had a twenty-four-hour bug or something. I tried to cover it up because it seemed so unprofessional. A nurse going faint while she’s helping with some stitching! How could you trust anybody like that? Do you forgive me?’
‘Of course. You’ve told me now, that’s all that matters. Let’s have no secrets between us. At least, none that matter.’
‘No secrets,’ Clare agreed.
‘Then I think we can leap over your “little wobble”. It wouldn’t take any faith or commitment if everything was worked out to perfection first. It’ll be good practice. We’re bound to stumble once in a while—but we’ll have each other to help keep our feet.’
‘Like we’re holding each other now?’ she asked.
He hugged her closer. ‘Something like this,’ he said. They kissed again.
When they drew apart again, Dan looked about him in surprise. ‘Good Lord, it almost dark. George will be sending out a search party if we stay out here any longer.’
‘We can’t have that.’ Clare giggled.
Hand in hand, they turned back towards the road. Suddenly Dan smacked his other hand to his forehead.
‘I almost forgot! It’s just a formality, but…’ He turned to Clare again and dropped down on one knee. ‘Will you marry me, Nurse Summers?’
Clare took a deep breath. ‘I will, Dr Davis.’
George looked at them closely as they climbed back into the cab of the mobile surgery. He took in the broad grins on their faces and the hands which they clasped as soon as they were seated.
‘About time you sorted yourselves out,’ he said. ‘I was almost beginning to give up on you two.’
‘Was it that obvious?’ Clare asked.
‘Only to the trained eye,’ George assured her solemnly.
‘George,’ Dan said, ‘we’d like you to be the first to know. Clare and I are engaged.’
‘But don’t breathe a word,’ Clare said quickly. ‘I want to tell my parents personally.’
‘I won’t say anything,’ George promised as he started the engine. He grinned. ‘But it won’t take a detective to work out what’s going on if you go round the place with those soppy expressions on your faces.’
‘It’ll only be for a couple of days,’ Clare said.
‘And we can look as soppy as we want till we get back home,’ Dan said.
‘If you don’t mind,’ Clare added.
‘Don’t mind me,’ said George, ‘I’m just the driver.’
‘And amateur matchmaker?’ Dan suggested. ‘From the very start you made a point of leaving us alone wherever we stopped for lunch, didn’t you?’
George said nothing, but in the backwash of headlights reflected from the road they saw him grin broadly.
Clare had a vigorous shower as soon as she got back home. Dan would be coming round later and she wanted to be perfectly fresh for him.
She sat in front of her dressing table and towelled her short corn-gold hair dry. The ‘soppy’ expression George had commented upon was still there. So that was what it looked like to be in love. Goose-pimples sprang up and down the length of her arms at the thought of Dan even as her stomach did a little flipflop. She couldn’t wait to see him again even though they’d only parted half an hour before.
‘This must be the real thing,’ she said to her reflection. ‘Everything’s got to be absolutely right tonight.’
Daniel was so different from the various men who’d briefly dominated her life, only ultimately to leave her feeling either miserable or confused and always a little less trusting.
They had all been on the tall and handsome side, with plenty of superficial charm, although Larry’s had been rather of the brooding kind. They had all been lean and conscious of their bodies. But now she realised that Daniel—her reflected smile widened—her Daniel had the kindest eyes of any of them. And he wasn’t tall but rather stocky, and thought too much about other people to give much thought to himself.
Except that he did love dressing up when the occasion demanded, she recalled with a chuckle. ‘And,’ she added aloud, ‘he makes me feel all gooey inside, as if I were fourteen and not thirty-four.’
From George’s unbiased evidence it seemed that she had the same effect on him, which was exactly as it should have been. It was wonderful to hope…no, to know that she could give Dan the same gift in return and restore his confidence in women. The awful bleakness that had blanked the smile from his eyes when they had suffered those awful misunderstandings would be gone for ever.
Clare glanced at the clock. Time had fled while she’d been day-dreaming and now she would have to hurry. Make-up didn’t take long, she didn’t wear much, but tonight she wanted it to be perfect.
Well, Daniel had seen her with swollen, tear-filled eyes this afternoon and hadn’t been put off. She slapped on moisturiser and a matt top cream, then a hint of eye shadow. No mascara tonight, it was too warm. Lipstick? Blush rose to match her dress, and dabs of perfume applied carefully to the classic places.
She slid herself into minuscule pearly pink panties and a bra that just cupped her full breasts, then stepped into her long pink shift dress and drew it up to loop over one shoulder. It had been years since she had bought it to wear to a hospital theme ball. It was a Roman-style gown, and had been eye catching then, she’d been told. Was it right for tonight?
Cautiously she inspected herself in the old-fashioned pier mirror that was part of the furnishings in the main bedroom. After a minute’s scrutiny she let out her held breath with a sigh of satisfaction. If anything, her fuller breasts made the filmy chiffon even more alluring today.
She stopped for a moment to breathe in the scent of a posy of sweet peas and rosebuds that she’d placed on the dressing-table between two candles in silver holders.
‘This is all for you, Daniel,’ she whispered. ‘I hope you appreciate it, my love.’
Clare had just finished preparing a simple meal when Daniel arrived. His expression as he looked her up and down told her she’d not wasted her efforts.
‘You look good enough to eat,’ he said, with lustful hunger in his eyes. ‘Later on I may nibble you here and there to see if I’m right. But there’s one last piece of business to attend to first. Something we have to know…’
He rang the hospital to find out how Charlotte was doing.
‘Well, she’s had her lumbar puncture,’ said the registrar to whom Daniel spoke. ‘We’re waiting for the results to come back from the lab, but from the severity of the symptoms I’m pretty certain it is bacterial meningitis. But because you got to her quickly and pumped in that dose of antibiotics and brought her temperature down a bit, I thinks she’s in with a very good chance.’
The news cheered them immensely. Daniel phoned George to report what they had heard.
‘Thanks for letting me know, Doc,’ George said. ‘I’ve been worrying about that kid ever since I got home. About the whole family, in fact. They’re working flat out to make a success of that farm. They deserve a bit of good news.’
‘They do indeed,’ Dan said.
When he put down the phone he found Clare looking at him with a joyous expression in her eyes.
‘It’s just struck me. Do you realise that if you hadn’t struggled all this time to get the mobile surgery up and running, we wouldn’t have been where we were all kitted out to give medical support? Little Charlotte would probably be dead by now if it wasn’t for you. I think the Fullers would call you a hero if they knew. I know you’ll always be my hero.’
The night was perfectly still. The candles that Clare had put on the parapet of the pond to illuminate their food burnt straight and steady. It was easy to exchange confidences in low voices.
‘You said,’ murmured Clare, ‘that I need a baby. Now I know you want one just as badly.’
‘I’ve wanted children for years in a general sort of way,’ Dan said simply. ‘I didn’t realise that it was the last thing on Bee’s agenda. We’d fallen in love and got married without ever talking about it. In fact, we never really talked. Once the chemistry had worn off there was just one big gap between us.’
‘This falling-in-love business is pretty hazardous, isn’t it?’ said Clare. ‘I’m still a little frightened about getting it wrong.’
Dan leaned forward and she could see the light from the candles reflected in his eyes. ‘Promise me, love, if ever you have any doubts, talk to me about them. Don’t, please, don’t hug them to yourself. Hug me, never shut me out.’
‘I will if you’ll promise to do the same. Let’s follow the old saying and never go to bed in wrath. That’s what my mother used to say. Always talk things over at the end of the day, even if it takes all night to do it. Then have a kiss and a cuddle and make up.’
Dan smiled and nodded and kissed her.
‘Now, what’s for dessert?’ he said.
‘But you’ve had dessert,’ Clare exclaimed, then blushed as she understood. ‘Oh, you mean that sort of dessert…’
Dan looked her up and down. ‘Now, where shall I begin…?’