‘No.’
‘So when this fire is over and the road’s cleared, you’ll go back to your husband.’
There was only one answer to that. ‘Of course I will.’
The old lady’s look was steady. News must travel fast in this town. Everyone was really well informed. Frighteningly well informed. ‘They say you were fighting with your husband at the dog show. They say he’s a creep and a bully. And he left our Kim for dead.’
‘No one here knows my husband,’ Rachel said steadily.
‘First impressions…’
There were places Rachel wasn’t prepared to go. No one needed explanations. ‘No one here knows him,’ she said again.
‘Stay out of her space, Sheila,’ Don said sternly. ‘Or you just might get iodine on those legs.’
Sheila’s eyes narrowed. She stared at Rachel for a moment longer and then gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Oh, sure. I guess it’d serve me right if I do. But it’s not just me who’s curious. She wants to know about our Dr McInnes as much as we want to know about her.’
‘Then tell her.’ Don was in his fifties or maybe a little older. He looked contented, Rachel thought. He looked like a nurse who’d spent his life caring for people in a small town-and who was content to do so for as long as he could.
The feeling was suddenly…nice. Living in Cowral would be a good life, she thought. She’d never considered country medical practice. Maybe she…
Maybe after…
No.
‘Our Dr Hugo made a bad marriage,’ Sheila told her, and Rachel forced herself to concentrate. Not that that was very hard. Sheila was right. She really did want to know.
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t have much of a home life, our Doc Hugo,’ Sheila said. ‘His mother was a right little cow-only after what she could get. She lit out for the city as soon as she could and we never saw her again. But Hugo used to come down here. Old Dr McInnes had been here for as long as anyone can remember, and whenever his mother wanted to get rid of him-which was often-Hugo used to come down to stay. He loved his grandpa. Then the old man had a stroke soon after Hugo qualified as a doctor, and Hugo came for good. I don’t think he had much choice. He came because he loved the old man and then he was sort of stuck.’
So he hadn’t come through choice…
‘He was really unsettled at first.’ Don took over the tale then. They were a pair, Rachel thought-the nurse who looked like he’d be more at home on a logging truck than in a nursing home, and the ancient lady whose bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. And…mischief? ‘The old man was ill for a couple of years,’ Don continued, with only a sideways glance and a twinkle to show he knew exactly what Rachel was thinking. ‘Hugo was here, helping him. It must have been a huge shock after practising medicine in Sydney.’
‘But then he met Beth,’ the old lady chipped in. ‘Christine and Beth. They came down here to paint. Their parents were divorced. Their father had a fishing shack here so living was cheap. They had nothing to bless themselves with, but they thought they were the best thing since sliced bread. Their mother has a studio in New York and that’s how they dressed-like they’d just walked off the streets of Manhattan. They complained because no one knew how to make decent coffee.’
‘They were exotic and they were gorgeous,’ Don added. ‘They were also really, really expensive. Their paintings were incomprehensible and pretty soon they latched onto the idea that one of them should marry our doctor.’
‘And of course he was so bored that he fell for it,’ Sheila told her. This was a story told in tandem. The fact that there seemed to be some urgency about it was strange, but that was the way Rachel was hearing it. Maybe it was the way she was meant to be hearing it. ‘He was feeling trapped by the needs of this community-by the needs of his grandfather. Beth was gorgeous and reminded him of a life he’d left behind. And after his parents’ example I don’t think he knew what a decent marriage was. So he married her. And had Toby.’
‘Damned stupid…’ Don shook his head. He looked sideways at Rachel as if figuring out how much to tell-and then obviously decided that, unprofessional or not, he was going to tell anyway. ‘It was never going to work. Beth married Hugo for all the wrong reasons and personally I don’t think Hugo knew the right reasons to marry, either. Neither of them really knew what marriage was. Beth filled that house with all that weird stuff. She spent a fortune but still it didn’t make her happy. She left him twice. Then, when she found she was pregnant, she walked out for ever. She wanted an abortion but he hated the idea. She compromised by leaving him. No, I know it doesn’t make sense but, then, Beth didn’t make sense to herself. She wasn’t living with Hugo when Toby was born. She was living with some painter up in Sydney.’
‘But still bleeding him dry,’ Sheila added.
‘And then she died.’ Don looked sick at the memory. ‘She had eclampsia. Apparently she and the guy she was living with were drinking too much. She didn’t care about the baby-but it wasn’t Toby who ended up suffering. She ignored the symptoms until she was far gone. Toby was born by Caesarean section but it was too late and that left our Hugo feeling dreadful. Guilt. He hadn’t tried to make her come home. And Christine made the guilt worse.’
‘Christine,’ Rachel whispered.
‘Of course, Christine.’ Don shrugged. ‘She stays on in this town because that’s where she owns a house but she hates the place. Her paintings don’t sell. She spends any money she gets on stupid things. You’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t so damned…superior. She’s got no money of her own. She lives here and she won’t let anyone forget Beth. She makes Hugo’s guilt worse. ‘‘My Beth’’, she keeps saying as she shoves that shrine of a house down their throats. ‘‘We must never forget Toby’s mother.’’ The fact that they fought like cat and dog when Beth was alive…’
‘She wants to marry Hugo.’ Sheila was totally absorbed in her tale. Her ulcers were almost completely bandaged now but the old lady had a captive audience until they were finished and she wasn’t letting go. ‘And little by little she’s wearing him down. Hugo has to let Toby spend time with Christine. It’s the only contact the kid has with his mother’s family. And she guilts him into keeping that house just as it was…’
Enough, Rachel thought, beginning to feel just a little desperate. The bandages were in place. This was entirely improper-doctor gossiping about another doctor with that doctor’s patients and a nurse. Rachel rose to her feet and tried to look determined.
‘I’m sure I need to see someone else.’
‘No matter who you see they’ll tell you the same thing,’ Sheila retorted. ‘Our Dr McInnes is being railroaded into marriage with another like the first. And she’s not even a decent artist. What she does is horrible.’
Rachel was left wondering what was horrible. The thought of such a marriage-or Christine’s artwork?
Maybe she knew.
‘How did it go?’
Hugo collected her half an hour after he’d said he would. He’d been delayed by a minor crisis, he told her, but the look on his face told Rachel it hadn’t been minor. He looked strained past endurance.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, but he shook his head. Whatever it was, he didn’t intend to share it.
‘How did you manage at the nursing home?’ he asked, changing the subject with more bluntness than tact.
She hesitated but his face was shuttered. This was a man accustomed to working on his own, she thought. He carried the responsibility for this town’s health on his shoulders alone.
She could share but only as much as he wished her to share, and maybe it wasn’t fair to push when she was here for such a short time.
So she concentrated on now. On the present.
‘I love your oldies,’ she told him. ‘I now know not only their medical histories but also the history of everyone in Cowral.’
He managed a smile at that. ‘Including mine?’
‘Of course, including yours.’ She settled into the passenger seat of his comfortable old family sedan and smiled across at him. She wanted him to smile. She wanted to take that look of strain away from around his eyes. ‘How can you doubt it?’
‘So…’ He grimaced. ‘Have they worked out your love life yet?’
