STEVE had engaged an architect to draw up the plans and he had been told that Sallie’s description of how she would want it to look must be followed to the letter, along with a couple of other things that she’d mentioned when she’d driven past and seen that the land had been sold.
‘Someone has bought the land in Bluebell Lane,’ she’d told him. ‘I hope they will build something really beautiful on it.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, like I said before, and with a garden room maybe, or a veranda, and a mooring stage by the river-bank, for canoeing or rowing.’
‘Sounds fantastic,’ he’d said. ‘Maybe you should have gone into house design instead of health care.’
She’d smiled. ‘Those are just my preferences. They wouldn’t be everyone’s, but it would be sacrilege if someone built something ultra-modern on it.’
‘We’ll have to see what develops, won’t we?’ he’d said as if only mildly interested, and the discussion had ended there.
The day before Steve signed the papers that would make the land in Bluebell Lane his, was Sallie’s birthday and as it had approached he hadn’t been sure how the gesture he wanted to make would be received.
In the years before their separation it had always been a very special day in his calendar, with a beautiful gift beside her breakfast plate on the morning, a special meal in the evening, sometimes followed by a show, and then to finish off the day they had made love, wrapped around with the special magic that they created for each other.
This time it would be very different. They had spent her last three birthdays apart and he knew that thought would be uppermost in Sallie’s mind on the morning. There had been no gifts from him during that time and he was going to try to make amends.
She was in the kitchen, preparing Liam’s breakfast, when he appeared, and while she was thus engaged he placed four packages beside her place at the dining table.
‘It’s a special day today,’ he was telling the baby when she came in with baby rice in a bowl.
‘Happy birthday, Sallie,’ he said quietly, without moving. ‘I hope that it will be happier than some you’ve had.’
Her glance was on the gift-wrapped packages. ‘I would rather you hadn’t bothered going through the motions,’ she said stiffly. ‘Especially when I think back to what my birthdays used to be like.’
She had put the bowl on the table and was looking down at his gifts without attempting to open them.
‘I never forgot your birthday,’ he said in the same quiet tone. ‘What you see there are my gifts to you for years one, two and three while we were apart, and the fourth is for today. Every time it came round I set off to bring your present and ended up turning back when I thought of what I’d done to you.’
At that moment Liam decided that breakfast was a long time coming and raised his voice, so Steve picked up the bowl and began to feed him. When it was empty he looked up. Sallie was weeping silently with the unopened packages still there in front of her.
He was by her side in a flash, desperate to comfort her, but she shook her head and told him, ‘No, Steve. Just leave me alone. I was hoping that today would go by unnoticed like the others, and now that it hasn’t I don’t know whether to be happy or sad.’
‘If you could be just a little bit happy, maybe,’ he said gently.
And as the floodgates opened again she sobbed, ‘I can try.’
When he came out of the spare room dressed for the day ahead, Sallie had just lifted Liam out of the bath and he was lying pink and perfect in a soft white towel in her arms.
‘Liam is all yours,’ she said. ‘His clean clothes are out and there is some juice for him on the kitchen table. I’m going to get dressed.’ Walking across to the table, she picked up the still unopened presents and carried them into the bedroom.
Steve gazed after her sombrely. He was getting just what he deserved, he thought, and hoped that if she ever did open the boxes inside the gift wrap she might realise the sequence of them. How after the first year of his absence the presents he’d bought had been follow-ups of the previous one.
In a flat velvet case was an amber necklace lying smooth and beautiful on black satin. It had been for the first of her birthdays that he’d missed. The second case held a matching bracelet, and in the third an elegant amber ring. To complete the set were the earrings that he’d bought when they’d gone shopping together. Whether any of them would ever see the light of day he didn’t know, but at least Sallie had picked them up.
He’d chosen amber to match her beautiful hazel eyes and the dark gold of her hair, knowing instinctively that the pale cream of her skin would show them off perfectly. Now all he could do was wait.
He hadn’t booked a meal anywhere, deciding that it would be best to wait and see how his gifts were received, but he’d asked Hannah if she could come at short notice to take care of Liam if the opportunity was there. So far it looked as if he wasn’t going to be troubling her.
Until Sallie came out of the bedroom with the ring on her finger and the earrings in her ears. She didn’t meet his glance. Instead, she began sifting through the post that he’d just brought upstairs, and he got the message that she didn’t want any comments. Yet it didn’t stop his spirits from soaring.
In the lunch-hour he said, ‘Hannah has said she’ll come back this evening to take care of Liam if you would let me take you for a meal somewhere. Would you like that?’
Yes, she’d like it and, no, she wouldn’t, Sallie thought. She was alone with him for hours on end when Liam had gone to bed, but in the apartment it was easy to keep at a distance. Beneath soft lights, with sweet music playing in the background, it wouldn’t be so easy. Steve would be thinking that because she was wearing some of the beautiful jewellery he’d bought her, all was now right between them.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he told her, ‘and you’re wrong. We don’t get much time to relax with the practice and Liam to care for. A night out would be a pleasant change. You wouldn’t be committing yourself to anything.’
‘Yes, all right, then,’ she agreed. ‘Fix it up with Hannah.’
Concealing his elation, he said, ‘Sure. No problem. Where would you like to eat. Town or village? I’m out of touch with wining and dining in these parts.’
‘Village, I think. I don’t want to be too far away from Liam. There’s a big hotel about a mile away. I’ve never been there but have heard it highly recommended for dining out.’
‘I’ll try them now,’ he said immediately, and by the time the lunch-hour was over Hannah had been asked to come back in the early evening and a table had been booked at the Kestrel Hotel.
As they drove there that night Sallie was aware of the strangeness of the occasion. She felt as if it was some sort of charade they were involved in, raking up old ashes that had been too long dead.
Yet she’d dressed with care in an outfit that Steve had always liked, a long cream silk dress, low cut, with a straight skirt that flared at the bottom, and over it a short black jacket. She’d hesitated about wearing any of the jewellery he’d given her, thinking that with the clothes and the jewellery he might forget that it was just a friendly night out, and she wasn’t ready for anything else. So the amber collection was returned to the drawer.
He’d presented her with a corsage of apricot-coloured roses that would have blended beautifully with the jewellery if she’d worn it, and when he’d bent to pin it onto her jacket she’d said, ‘When did you get this?’
He had raised his head slowly and as their glances had met he’d asked, ‘Why? Does it matter?’
‘It does if you had already bought it before I’d said I would dine with you.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Sal!’ he’d exploded. ‘I get your meaning. I’m not going to take you for granted. You need have no fears on that score. I take nothing for granted these days. But do feel free to remove the corsage if it would make you happier. I went to the florist in the village in the lunch-hour after you’d agreed to dine with me and asked them to make it up. I popped out to collect it while you were still seeing your patients. Does that satisfy you?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry,’ she’d told him, and had thought how far away they were from how they used to be. And now, with the vibes of that little episode hanging over them, they were about to spend the whole evening together, and it was like being on a first date.
He reached across and took her hand. ‘No, I’m sorry, Sal. All I want is for you to have a brighter birthday than those of recent years. So let’s relax and enjoy ourselves and forget about all the side issues in our lives for tonight,’
They did that by enjoying the food and keeping the conversation light, not letting each other see how much they were aware of one another.
At eleven o’clock Steve said, ‘I think we should go, Sallie. Hannah is a good soul and I don’t think we should be keeping her up until all hours.’
She smiled across at him. ‘I agree, and then there is a certain baby that we’ve been away from long enough.’
When he stopped the car in front of the surgery, she said, ‘Thanks for a lovely evening, Steve…and for remembering my birthday.’ She reached across and kissed him on the cheek and he became still. As she drew back into her seat he said, ‘You do know that I never stopped loving you, Sal.’ And waited for her response.
‘Yes, I know,’ she replied, and that was all. Nothing to cling to regarding how she felt about him.
The plans had been passed after weeks of waiting and now Jack was ready to start building. When Steve had asked him how long it would take, he said, ‘If the weather keeps fine, about three months. That’s if we don’t get any hold-ups with materials and so on. We’ll soon be into autumn so we need to get the shell finished before winter sets in.’
‘You haven’t forgotten that it is still a secret from my wife,’ Steve reminded him. ‘I want to present it to her when it’s finished as a complete surprise.’
When Steve called to see Philip Gresty one afternoon the sick farmer said, ‘I’m told that the land that was for sale on Bluebell Lane has been sold. Do we know who’s bought it?’
Rather than tell a lie, Steve shrugged and said, ‘No doubt everyone will soon find out.’
The physiotherapy was giving Philip some relief, and on that particular day he was in good spirits because his daughter was soon to be married.
‘Who is the lucky man?’ Steve asked.
‘Dale Barraclough from Moorend Farm. I’ve said he can take over here when I’m gone, but because he’s got an earring and has his hair down his back, Anna isn’t so sure about him. I’ve told her as long as he can plough a straight furrow, he’ll do for me.’
Harvesting time had come to the village. The farmers were gathering in their crops. Neat bales were appearing in the midst of fields of golden grain, and fruit was being plucked from trees laden with ripe apples and pears.
Some of the hardier folk went daily up onto the moors where the wild windberries were now ripe for picking to make tarts and preserves, and as the two doctors watched them plodding upwards to where the fruit grew close to the ground, they knew that the ‘bad back’ season was about to commence.
It was a painstaking task, gathering the berries one by one. It meant bending for hours on end, and there was always someone who overdid it at the thought of gorging on the succulent fruit of the moors.
On a Sunday morning in late September, Sallie, Steve and Liam joined the villagers inside the ancient church in a service of thanksgiving for the harvest that had been gathered in.
Anna Gresty always baked a huge cob in the shape of a sheaf of corn for the event and it was placed in a central position below the pulpit. Then the farmers appeared with gifts from whatever produce they had grown, and last but not least came the children, carrying their own small offerings of fruit and vegetables, which, like the farm produce, would be distributed to the needy after the service.
As the children paraded around the church with their gifts, Sallie glanced at Steve. He was holding Liam, looking down at him in his arms, and she wondered just how much he was hurting inside. Was he thinking that everyone had a child except them? Because Liam belonged to someone else.
He looked up, their eyes met and he shook his head as if to say, Stop worrying. It’s sorted.
They had Liam’s pram with them and after the service Sallie said, ‘Let’s take a walk down Bluebell Lane to see how that house is coming along.’
‘Sure,’ he said easily, knowing that the builders wouldn’t be there, it being Sunday.
They were up to the roof now, but he already knew that as he made the opportunity to drive past each day now that he and Sallie weren’t doing the house calls together.
It was all going to plan. The local stone, the big windows and the green-tiled roof, which he was hoping wouldn’t give the game away. It didn’t. When she saw it she said, ‘Someone, somewhere has got the right idea.’ He hoped she would still be of the same opinion when it was completed and he asked her to live there with him.
He had a call from Anna during the following week and went out to the farm straight away. He found Philip looking pale and exhausted. It appeared that at the time of Anna’s call the muscles of his throat had not been functioning and she’d been afraid he was going to choke, which was one of the distressing features of the illness. But by the time he’d got there the problem had eased off.
The Grestys were envied by some of the village folk as everything they touched seemed to prosper. Only he and Sallie knew that Philip was not to be envied at all.
When he’d become Philip’s GP again Anna had told him that the motor neurone disease had first manifested with muscle cramps, followed by weakness and involuntary movements of the legs. He had gone for extensive tests, including measurement of electrical activity in the muscles and a myelography, an X-ray of the spinal cord. In the end, after weeks of worry, had come the dreaded diagnosis.
And now Philip, who should have had many good years ahead of him, was having to take stock of what the future held and it was not good. Slow, painful deterioration was on the cards.
‘Why us, Steve?’ Anna said tearfully, just as he was about to go. ‘We’ve always worked hard and minded our own business. Helped others when we could. And now Philip has got this terrible illness that affects only one or two people out of a hundred thousand each year.’
‘I can understand how you feel,’ he told her, ‘but in Philip’s case it’s a genetic thing. I believe he had an uncle who had it.’
She stared at him aghast. ‘Do you mean his Uncle Jim? I remember him being in a wheelchair, but he died before we were married, so I didn’t know much about him. Is Philip sure about that? He’s never mentioned it to me.’
Her face crumpled. ‘And I know why. We have a daughter, haven’t we? What about Janine? Is she likely to get it?’
‘Not necessarily,’ he reassured her gently. ‘There is a fifty per cent chance she may have inherited the faulty gene, however. Anna, there is support available and I can refer you and Janine for genetic counseling, if you wish, to discuss your concerns and any tests available!’
“I don’t know,’ Anna said dismally. ‘Maybe it’s better not to know. What can we do if she’s got it?’
‘Why not let her decide? She’s getting married soon, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, she is. This is a nightmare.’
‘I know, but I’m here to support you,’ he told her. ‘Let me know what you decide about genetic counselling, and remember this, Anna, they are both fortunate to have you. It makes all the difference when suffering from a serious illness to be able to rely on the love of those nearest to us. I know. I’ve been there and I walked away from it.’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘You have no idea how glad I am to be back where I belong.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Philip asked when Anna came back from showing Steve out and he saw her stunned expression.
‘Did you know that Stephen Beaumont left Sallie because he had a serious illness?’
‘You’re kidding!’ he exclaimed weakly. ‘Steve is as strong as a horse.’
‘Was maybe.’ And kissing him gently on the brow, she began to straighten his cushions.
‘Did Colin know that Philip Gresty’s illness is genetic?’ Steve asked that evening as he fed Liam while Sallie was preparing their meal.
She looked up from chopping vegetables and observed him questioningly. ‘Why? Is it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ he said sombrely. ‘He told me the first time I saw him after I came back, but as Anna didn’t know, and Colin hadn’t discussed the chances of Janine getting it, I’m wondering if Philip has kept quiet about it to everyone except me, to prevent more anguish for his family.’
‘Colin didn’t always discuss his patients with me, or I mine with him,’ she said, returning to what she’d been doing. ‘And with regard to Philip, Colin might have thought that as he was a great friend of yours, it would upset me to talk about him.’
‘And would it have done?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Why should it? On the odd occasion I spoke to the Grestys while you were away, it was clear they knew nothing of our affairs.’
They do now, he thought, and could imagine the disbelief on Philip’s face when Anna told him what he’d said. He hadn’t been able to tell Maisie Milnthrop, but the Grestys were a different matter.
The six months of Sallie being in charge of Liam would soon be coming to an end and that same night Melanie rang to say that she’d fallen in love with an American and intended taking Liam back there once her contract was up.
It was Steve who answered the phone and he said immediately, ‘Really? I’m known for making hasty decisions, but not when it comes to a child’s future.’ He sighed. ‘Look, you’re Liam’s mother and can do what you want, but are you sure that’s the right thing to do? To take him away from all he’s ever known? Sally adores him, you know.’
He wasn’t going to go into details about his own feelings for the baby. It was better left unsaid in the present climate. But he was angry at Melanie’s attitude and she could tell.
‘I would never do anything to harm my baby,’ she said defensively. ‘The guy I’ve met knows I’ve got a child and doesn’t mind. He’s in the show. Another dancer like me.’
‘And what happens to Liam when you are both offered another contract?’
At that moment Sallie came into the room, carrying the child in question.
‘Who’s that?’ she asked, taking note of his expression.
‘My niece,’ he said heavily and turned back to the phone. ‘When are you coming to get him?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I’ll ring again when I know what my plans are.’
‘Yes, do that,’ he agreed dryly, dreading what it would do to Sallie if Melanie did what she was thinking of doing.
‘What was all that about?’ Sallie asked, and when he told her she clutched the baby to her as if Melanie was going to appear at that moment. Yet what she had to say didn’t fit in with that instinctive reaction.
‘Melanie won’t do anything to harm Liam,’ she said gravely. ‘She loves him, and after one bad relationship she won’t risk another. But you were quite right to be concerned that she is doing the right thing. She’ll ring again soon. You’ll see…and, Steve, thanks for caring about us. Melanie, the baby and me.’
‘You’ve got it in the wrong order,’ he said lightly, his temporary annoyance having abated.
She didn’t take him up on that, just passed Liam to him and said, ‘Do you want to put him down for the night while I clear away after the meal?’
‘Of course,’ he said, looking down into their charge’s unblinking blue gaze, ‘That was your mummy on the phone, Liam. She wants to take you to live in America.’
‘And we have no say in the matter,’ Sallie reminded him, but he pretended he hadn’t heard.
Melanie rang again the following night, as Sallie had said she would. It was Steve who picked up the phone again and if what she’d had to say the previous night had been surprising, this time it was even more so.
‘I’ve thought about what you said, Uncle Steve,’ she told him, ‘and of course you’re right. We’ve talked about it and agree that Liam needs a more settled life than Rick and I could offer him as dancers. So…could you find us somewhere to live in your village when our contracts are up? It’s the perfect place for Liam to grow up and we’ll look for employment locally.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said immediately. ‘Sallie will be delighted. She’s just settling Liam for the night, I’ll go and get her and you can tell her your plans yourself.’
He hadn’t been wrong. Sallie was delighted. ‘We’ll be able to see Liam grow up,’ she said happily, ‘and as you are Melanie’s only relative, you’ll be able to keep an eye on her and the baby. As for the new man in her life, if he’s willing to put his career on hold for their sakes, he must be genuinely devoted to her.’
She sighed. ‘But it won’t be easy to find them somewhere to live. It’s rare that anything small and reasonable comes up for sale in the village, and even if it did, they won’t have that kind of money.’
‘Somewhere to rent would be the best thing,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘or rent-free, if such a thing exists.’ He was thinking that he knew just the place, but it would depend on a couple of things How soon the house was ready for occupation and if Sallie wanted to move into it with him. If by some miracle she did, Melanie and Rick could have the apartment rent-free. He and Sallie owned it, so there would be no problem there.
They were both in high spirits for the rest of the evening, but beneath the lightheartedness Sallie was wondering just how much Steve really had accepted their childlessness. It had been upsetting enough during those fraught months after his operation when no pregnancy had been forthcoming, but he’d made it ten times worse by creating a three-year break in their lives.
Something had changed, though, in recent weeks. He might be wary of putting a foot wrong, but she sensed some sort of purpose in him. A kind of controlled excitement. Sometimes in the evenings he went out for short periods without explaining where he’d been, and there was no way she was going to ask. She knew that he visited Philip regularly, but didn’t think it was to the Gresty farm that he went on those occasions.
The next morning, Steve went to visit Philip and found him lying on the sofa in the sitting room. Philip tried to raise himself to a sitting position when he saw Steve but had had to give up.
‘How are you today?’ he’d asked.
‘Not good,’ Philip said. ‘Some days are worse than others.’
Steve nodded. ‘So let’s have a look at you to see what’s been happening since I was here last. But before I do that, have you spoken to Janine about the genetic side of your illness?’
‘Yes,’ he said sombrely. ‘She’s out giving a riding lesson at the moment, but is due back any time and wants a word with you.’
‘How did she react when she knew that your uncle had the illness?’
Philip gave a grim smile. ‘She’d already worked it out for herself. My daughter is no fool. She’d read motor neurone disease up in various medical books and knew the score.’
‘So what about her being tested to see if she has the rogue gene?’
‘That’s what she wants to talk to you about. We know what she’s decided, but she wants to tell you herself.’
At that moment Janine came striding into the sitting room, dressed in riding clothes and looking the picture of health.
‘Can we have a word outside, Dr Beaumont?’ she asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ he replied, and with a smile for the man on the sofa said, ‘I’ll be back shortly, Philip. Don’t run away.’
‘That will be the day,’ he grunted, and waved them out of the room.
‘Your father has told me that you are aware of the genetic implications of his illness,’ Steve said once they were alone
‘Yes,’ she told him calmly. ‘I’ve known from the beginning, but I’ve only just found out that his uncle had it. It would seem that you were the only person who knew that.’
‘That is so, but I didn’t know that and mentioned it to your mother. She was immediately very concerned on your behalf.’
‘Yes, I know, and when she told me I wasn’t exactly over the moon either. I’ve thought about it long and hard and have discussed it with the man I’m going to marry, and he and I are agreed that what we don’t know about we are less likely to fret about.
‘I wanted to call off the wedding. Didn’t think it was fair to Dale to marry me with something of that sort hanging over me, but…’ Her composure faltered for the first time and there was a wobble in her voice as she went on to say, ‘He says if he doesn’t marry me, he won’t marry anybody. So that’s what we’ve decided. We know the risk. Yet there are lots of people in Dad’s family and no one else has been struck down with motor neurone disease so far.
‘I might change my mind about all this when, or if, we want to start a family. I wouldn’t want to bring a child into the world if I had the gene and might pass it on to my baby. But we’re not bursting to become parents for a long while yet.’
‘I can see the sense in your reasoning.’ he told her. ‘Out of those who do have the illness, it is only a small percentage who develop it from genetic sources. The trouble with motor neurone disease is that no one knows where it comes from. If they did, the medical profession might be able to do something about it. Yours will have been a difficult decision to make and I can tell that it hasn’t been made lightly.’
When he went back into the sitting room Philip looked at him anxiously and Steve said reassuringly, ‘Janine has told me what she’s decided and I will respect her decision. She might want to change her mind at some time in the future and the opportunity to know for certain will still be there.
‘And now what about you? I can see that your breathing isn’t good. How’s it been since I saw you last week?’
‘Difficult,’ Philip wheezed. ‘I never go upstairs these days.’
‘How about a stair lift?’
‘I suppose we could get one fitted. Though I want to be as little trouble as I can for Anna.’
‘Pressing a button to send you upstairs isn’t going to cause her any problems.’
‘All right, we’ll see to it,’ he promised. ‘And by the way, I believe you told Anna that you were suffering from a serious illness when you left the village, yet you never said anything.’
‘That was because I didn’t want to talk about it. I had cancer.’
‘Cancer? Oh, no!’
‘Oh, yes, I’m afraid. I had to have one of my testicles removed. I’ve been clear ever since, but it seems as if the operation has made me infertile, and I was so desperate for a child I just couldn’t cope. The guy who did the surgery said my other testicle was perfectly healthy, that I should be able to father children, and apparently it still is. But the chances of me ever making Sallie pregnant are doubtful.
‘All our efforts to make a baby in the months after the surgery came to nothing and suddenly I snapped. Sallie was there for me every step of the way, but I just couldn’t stand any more kindness. And there you have it.’
‘And we never knew!’
‘Nobody knew, except Sallie and Colin. I was so knotted up with hurt pride and frustration I wasn’t fit to live with, and in the end I took myself off.’
‘And you came back because of the vacancy in the practice?’
‘Yes, in a way. I’d wanted to come back for a long time, but wasn’t sure what sort of a reception I would get from Sallie. When Colin asked me to take over from him, it was the answer to my prayers—the chance to come back with some dignity, even though I didn’t deserve it. When I look at you, and think of what I was like then, I could die of shame.’
‘You shouldn’t feel like that,’ Philip said firmly. ‘For a man who desperately wanted children, it must have been a nightmare.’
‘It still is, but I’m not here asking for sympathy. I’m here to see you. Now, tell me exactly how you feel with regard to breathing, swallowing and mobility.’