After three days Charlotte felt well enough to leave the bed, and her determination to be a wonderful wife resurfaced. Groceries, milk, bread and meat were delivered to the door, so she didn’t have to face meeting any of the townspeople. She turned down Lochlann’s suggestion of bringing a woman in to help her.
“It can’t be too difficult with just the two of us,” she assured him. “It’s not as if I’ve never seen the inside of a kitchen.”
He lit the wood stove in the morning before leaving to do his house calls. Arriving back at one o’clock he saw a concerned man hovering at the gate wondering if he should rush in with a bucket of water. He found Charlotte standing in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes streaming from the smoke, bewailing the fact she didn’t know what to do. Water in the vegetable and potato saucepans hadn’t come to the boil, and lamb chops were lying cold in the pan. She had forgotten to stoke the stove earlier and had crammed in too many pieces of wood at the last minute, cutting off air from the few embers that remained.
“I’m sorry. I thought I’d watched Cook so often I’d know what to do, but she had a range run on anthracite and this is so different.”
“Never mind. It will only take a minute.” He coaxed back the flame with kindling, an open flue and better placed wood, and was only thirty minutes late for afternoon surgery.
During the next week she shrivelled a joint of roast beef in an overheated oven and burnt two saucepans dry. Potatoes welded to the bottom of one of them wouldn’t soak off, so the pan had to be thrown out. She scorched her hand picking up the metal tongs from the top of the stove, and dropped many slices of bread into the embers while trying to make toast. After a cast-iron baking dish slipped on to the floor and splashed scalding fat over her legs, she told Lochlann she had changed her mind about not accepting help. Lochlann, for safety’s sake if for no other reason, was relieved and employed Mrs Parker who had worked for the previous doctor and was thrilled to be asked. She started with two hours per day, but after adding shopping, cooking and gardening to her cleaning duties, was soon doing a full week.
Every day, after their morning tea and a chat, with relief Charlotte took herself off to the back verandah where she sat on one wicker chair and put her feet up on another. Sometimes she read, but more often she stared at the trees and the blue sky and contemplated her impending motherhood with satisfaction.
Mrs Parker felt honoured to be privy to the secrets of the house and especially enjoyed sharing the midday meal with the couple.
Many people were curious about the doctor’s wife. Only Scottie the mailman, and his wife Jean, had spoken to her since she arrived, and both reckoned she was putting on the dog. Mrs Parker was proud to enlighten them that the doctor’s wife was not putting on the dog. Her accent was genuine, she explained. She was the daughter of a Lord. The reason she didn’t see anyone was not because of snobbishness, but because of anxiety about her approaching confinement, especially since she had been so ill for all those weeks on the trip on the way over. Mrs Carmody, as Mrs Parker called her, refusing to address her as ‘Charlotte’ seeing she was the daughter of a Lord, was ideal to work for as she never interfered or told her what to do. Mrs Parker didn’t add that Mrs Carmody seemed to know so little about running a house she wouldn’t know what orders to give – her loyalty to her employers precluded giving out any negative details.
“Would you like to be my receptionist instead?” Lochlann asked Charlotte, thinking she might be bored. “It would be a good way for you to get to know the townspeople.” The startled look she gave him made him add, “It’s light work. You’d be sitting in a cubicle beside the phone so you wouldn’t have to move about or be on display.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do. I’ve no experience.” Her eyes pooled with tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think anything like that would be expected of me.”
“It’s not. It’s not,” he rushed to reassure her. “It was for your sake I was suggesting it. I thought you might be looking for a bit of diversion since painting has been ruled out.” Her paints and brushes remained unpacked as she said that, in her condition, even the thought of the smell of linseed oil and turpentine made her feel sick. “I already have someone lined up if you’re not interested, so don’t think I’m putting you under any pressure.”
“That’s all right, then. I’d rather not expose our unborn child to infections brought in by shopkeepers and farmers when I don’t have to, if you don’t mind.”
Lochlann told her to think no more about it – he sympathised with her misgivings. The position could now be offered to Marie Dawson, a kind intelligent widow whose children were reared and whose warm personality would be popular with the patients.
Charlotte detected relief on Lochlann’s face after her refusal, and saw him jump the front gate when he returned to the surgery for the afternoon.
“Someone’s in a good mood,” smiled Mrs Parker, watching from the kitchen window. “Oh, for the energy of youth!”