Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit Read online

  Attraction, that’s all it was. He could cope with it, ignore it. And tomorrow he had a full day of appointments, no operations, so he wouldn’t see her. All he had to do was walk her home, say goodnight and that was that.

  Except that Hamish was sitting in her front yard on the discarded yellow couch!

  Admittedly Juanita was beside him, but still Angus felt the anger rise inside him.

  ‘You should be in bed,’ he told his son, his voice stern enough to make the child slide closer to his nanny.

  ‘McTavish is sick,’ Hamish whispered, and the woman Angus was ignoring reacted far more quickly than he did. She knelt in front of his child and took him in her arms.

  ‘It’s probably just the water here in Sydney,’ she assured him. ‘I get sick when I go to different cities and drink different water. But the sickness doesn’t last. It’s always over in a day or two.’

  Was this why children needed a mother?

  Because women reacted more instantly—instinctively perhaps—to a child’s misery?

  His mind had gone to McTavish’s health, to wondering what could be wrong with the dog. And to the other puzzle Hamish’s presence presented. He went with that because it was useless to speculate about the dog’s illness.

  ‘And just why does that mean you’re sitting in Dr Armstrong’s yard, not at home in our living room?’

  ‘Because Kate has a car and she said I could call her Kate!’

  For a very biddable little boy there was a touch of defiance in the words and Angus found himself frowning, though at Juanita this time.

  ‘What exactly is going on?’ he demanded.

  She shrugged her thick shoulders.

  ‘It’s as he says. The quarantine office phoned to say McTavish wasn’t eating and there was nothing for it, but Hamish had to visit him, although I told him we couldn’t see him tonight. He insisted he come and wait for his friend, sure she’d take him to see the dog.’

  Angus could imagine what had happened, and understood that if Juanita had tried to insist on Hamish going to bed, the little boy would only have grown more upset, and with the move, and missing his dog, he was already emotionally out of balance.

  But knowing how this had come about didn’t help him in deciding what to do, although now Kate Armstrong seemed to have taken things into her own hands. She was sitting on the couch beside Juanita, holding Hamish on her lap.

  ‘Juanita’s right,’ she was telling Hamish, ‘we can’t visit McTavish at this time of night because if we did all the other dogs and cats and birds and horses there would be disturbed and upset and they would want their owners to be visiting them, as well. But your father can phone them and ask them how McTavish is now. Perhaps he can tell them what McTavish’s favourite food is, and the people who are minding him can try to coax him to eat a little of it. They have vets—animal doctors—at the quarantine centre who will be looking after him, just as your Dad looks after the babies at the hospital.’

  ‘My mother died.’

  Angus’s heart stopped beating for an instant and a chill ran through his body. He’d never heard Hamish mention his mother, but it was obvious the little boy assumed Jenna had been ill before she died, and now he was thinking McTavish could also die. He knelt in front of his son and lifted him from Kate’s knee.

  ‘McTavish won’t die,’ he promised, knowing the assurance was needed, although he also knew he couldn’t guarantee such a thing. ‘Kate’s right, let’s go inside and phone the quarantine centre and tell them that he really likes—’

  What did the dog really like?

  ‘Biscuits,’ Hamish told him, his fears forgotten in this new excitement.

  ‘Not exactly a dietary imperative,’ Angus muttered, but if biscuits could coax McTavish to eat, then he’d certainly suggest them.

  He carried his son towards the house, pausing for Juanita to catch up with them and to nod goodnight to Kate. But the image of her sitting on the old yellow couch, his son in her arms, remained with him long after his conversation with the quarantine office and the reassuring return phone call that, yes, McTavish had eaten some biscuits and even eaten some of the dried dog food the carers had mixed in with the broken biscuits.

  The image of her accompanied him to bed, aware of her in the house next door, so close, too close.

  Any woman would have comforted Hamish in that situation, he told himself, but some instinct deep inside was telling him she wasn’t just any woman, this Kate Armstrong. She was special—special in a way no woman had been since Jenna.

  Which was another reason he had to avoid her…

  It proved, as he’d known it would, impossible, for the teams met regularly. He operated with her, and discussion of patients was inevitable. But he managed to avoid her out of work hours until the day he came home early enough to attack the hedge around the garden gate.

  Kate had been sensible in suggesting that if Hamish wanted to adventure he do it in her backyard, so freeing the gate had become a necessity. He’d bought a pair of hedge trimmers at the local hardware store and, some three-quarters of an hour of reasonably hard labour later, had cleared his side enough to push the gate open. Now all he had to do was trim her side.

  Should he phone her first to ask if it was okay to come in and do it?

  Phone her when she lived next door?

  Well, he wasn’t going to go over and ask; just seeing her each day at work was enough to tell him the attraction was going to take a long time to die.

  He was debating this when Hamish returned from his job of stacking all the cut-off hedge branches in a pile near the back fence.

  ‘Oh, look, we can get into Kate’s garden.’

  He ran through the gate before Angus could stop him, calling back to his father in even greater excitement, ‘And here’s Kate, she’s right up a ladder!’

  Right up a ladder?

  A child suddenly calling out?

  She could be startled!

  Fall!

  Angus dashed through the open gate to find his son confidently climbing up a very long ladder, at the top of which stood the team anaesthetist, a measuring tape, a pen and a notebook clamped in her hand.

  She was peering down uncertainly, no doubt partly because Hamish’s enthusiastic attack on the ladder rungs was making it wobble.

  ‘No, Hamish dear,’ she said gently. ‘You can’t have two people on a ladder at once. It might tip over.’

  Once again the first thought, beyond the anger fear had wrought in his chest, was that this woman would make a wonderful mother. She was always fair. She always explained in a common-sense way that a child would understand.

  Although, Angus realised a little belatedly, the child in question hadn’t taken much notice and was still six rungs up the ladder and teetering there a little uncertainly.

  Angus rescued him, set him on the ground, then looked up at the woman above him.

  ‘And just what are you doing up there?’

  He’d meant it as a neighbourly question, but it came out as a demand because the ladder seemed old and highly unstable and she was at the roof level of a two-storey house.

  ‘Possums,’ she replied, apparently not taking exception to his tone. ‘I wouldn’t mind the little beggars living in the roof if they’d just stay in one place, but it seems they live on one side and feed on the other so they’re galloping across my ceiling in what sound like hobnail boots all night.’

  ‘Possums?’

  He realised there’d been a lot of conversation after that, but his mind had stuck on the word.

  ‘Little furry animals, big eyes and long tails, cute as all get out but not much fun if they’re living in your ceiling.’

  ‘Oh!’

  The word was obviously inadequate but Angus wasn’t certain where to take the conversation next, and the uncertainty was only partly to do with the fact that Kate appeared to be wearing very short shorts, so from where he stood her pale legs went on forever and he found it hard to focus on anything else.
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  Fortunately Hamish was less inhibited.

  ‘Possums!’ he shrieked. ‘Can I see them? Can I, Kate, can I?’

  ‘Later,’ she said. ‘Just let me finish here and I’ll come down and explain.’

  Angus found himself wanting to order her down right away—wanting to tell her he’d do whatever it was she was doing—but having no notion of possums’ habits, nor of what she could be arranging for them, he knew he’d be making a fool of himself if he said anything at all. So he stood and held the ladder steady, and not, he told himself, so he could watch her as she climbed down it. In fact, he turned resolutely away, determined not to have his resolve weakened by long pale legs in short shorts.

  Kate told herself that of course she could climb down a ladder that Angus was holding; after all, hadn’t she been successful in avoiding him these past few days, limiting their encounters to purely work contact? But her legs trembled as she came closer to where he stood and it took an effort of supreme will not to climb back up the ladder and perch on the roof until he grew tired of standing there.

  ‘What exactly were you doing?’ he asked as she passed him, very close—close enough to see a beard shadow on his cheeks and lines of tiredness around his eyes.

  Wasn’t he sleeping well?

  She wasn’t exactly enjoying night-times herself, finding it hard to sleep when images of him kept flitting through her mind.

  He was so close…

  ‘There’s a hole,’ she said, reaching the ground and backing away from him, lifting a hand to stop him moving the ladder. ‘That’s how they’re getting in and out. I had to measure it.’

  ‘So you could make a door for them?’ Hamish asked, dancing around with excitement at the thought of a possum door.

  ‘Not exactly,’ Kate admitted, ‘although I suppose you could call it a door, but I intend to keep it locked.’

  ‘You want to lock them in?’ Angus asked. It must be something to do with the air in Australia that so many of the conversations he had with Kate had a feeling of unreality about them. Battered savs came to mind…

  ‘So I can keep them out,’ she replied, speaking to him but squatting down so her face was level with Hamish’s. ‘There are plenty of other places the possums can live, think of all the trees here and in the park. That’s where possums should live—in holes in the trunks and thick branches of trees. Once I fix my hole, they’ll find somewhere else very easily.’

  Hamish nodded his understanding, then asked the obvious question.

  ‘But how will you get them out?’

  Kate smiled at him, though Angus imagined there was sadness in the smile. Was she hurting for her own lack of children? Were they so very important to her?

  Maybe one child would do her?

  Hamish—

  The thought shocked him so much he straightened his spine and clamped down on his wandering mind, thinking he’d go and cut the hedge on this side, departing forthwith, but she was talking again, explaining to Hamish, and Angus couldn’t help but listen.

  ‘I’ve been feeding them every night since I came back here to live,’ she told Hamish. ‘Are you allowed to stay up until eight o’clock because that’s when it starts to get dark and they come out of the roof and down here to the garden to eat the fruit I put out. There’s a whole possum family—a mother and a father and two little ones that sometimes ride on their mother’s back but who are learning to climb themselves now.’

  ‘Can I come and see, can I, Dad?’

  The excitement in his son’s voice meant Angus had to look at him, really look at him, something he usually avoided as Hamish’s resemblance to Jenna was like a knife blade going through his skin.

  And the excitement in Hamish’s voice was mirrored in his little face. Seeing it, Angus could only nod. He even found himself smiling.

  ‘You’ll come and see them, too?’ Hamish persisted, and Angus lost his smile, knowing for sure he’d have suggested Juanita take the little boy to see the possums. It wasn’t that he didn’t love Hamish dearly, but with the move and settling in to a new routine, the bond between himself and Hamish had seemed to weaken rather than strengthen. Besides which, more out-of-work hours’ proximity to Kate Armstrong was something he needed to avoid.

  ‘Of course,’ he responded, suddenly aware that it was selfish to refuse—a kind of self-protection because Hamish looked so like Jenna.

  Angus didn’t sound overly excited by the idea, Kate decided, but then she wasn’t so chuffed, either. She wanted to see less of Angus McDowell, not more.

  ‘Eight o’clock, then,’ she said, and headed for the shed where she hoped she’d find a piece of timber the size she wanted. Unfortunately the gate was in that direction so Angus fell in beside her, while Hamish raced excitedly back to his place to tell Juanita about the possums.

  ‘Just what do you intend doing about the hole?’ Angus asked.

  Ah, easy question!

  ‘I’ll cut a piece of timber to fit over it and nail it in place. From the look of it, someone’s tried to fix it before using some kind of magic glue to stick fibro over the hole but the possums were too cunning for that. They just ate the glue, or got rid of it some other way.’

  She realised Angus had stopped walking and turned back to check on him. He was standing stock-still, staring at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked, although she knew what was wrong with her. Just looking at the man raised her heart rate.

  ‘The way I figure it, you wait until the possums come out, then you go and cover their hole, that right?’

  Kate nodded.

  ‘Up that rickety old ladder, and in the dark because they won’t come out ‘til dusk? You were going to do that yourself, telling no-one who’d go looking for you if you fell, asking no-one for help?’

  Kate nodded again, although she was starting to feel peeved. It was none of his damn business what she did, yet he was sounding like a father admonishing a wayward teen.

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you how dangerous that was?’ he demanded, and she forgot peeved and smiled.

  ‘Angus,’ she said gently, ‘this is the twenty-first century. Women do these things. They take care of themselves, and if that includes minor repairs to their homes, then that’s part of it. Actually,’ she added after a momentary pause, ‘they’ve been doing it for centuries. I bet it was often the woman who climbed on top of the cave to move dirt and stones over places where the rain got in. The men would have been off chasing bears and wouldn’t have considered a bit of water over the fire an inconvenience.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about sexism or what women can or can’t do. There’s a safety issue,’ he countered, but something in the way he said it didn’t ring true.

  Kate, however, went along with him.

  ‘The ladder might look rickety but it’s perfectly safe,’ she assured him, but he didn’t look any happier than he had when the whole stupid conversation had begun.

  They parted, Kate leaving Angus hacking at the hedge while she continued on to the shed, not thinking about oddments of timber at all, but about a little warm place inside her that seemed to think Angus’s concern might have been personal.

  Fortunately it turned out to be one of those afternoons when the sensible part of her brain held sway. It seemed to laugh so loudly at the thoughts of the emotional part that she knew she’d got it wrong.

  Which was just as well, she told herself, although a heaviness in her chest told her she did not believe that at all!

  Chapter Five

  THEY came, the tall man and the child, as dusk was falling, filling Kate’s backyard with shadows. Urging Hamish to talk softly, she led them into her kitchen and lifted him onto the bench beneath the window.

  ‘See,’ she said quietly, ‘just there under the lemon tree, I’ve a little table with cut-up apple and banana and some cherries on it.’

  She had the outside light on, knowing its soft yellow glow didn’t disturb the nocturnal animals.<
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  Holding Hamish steady on the bench, she was aware of Angus moving up behind her, aware of the warmth of his body close, and even the scent of him, citrusy yet still male. It was some primordial instinct that had her body responding, she told herself, trying hard to concentrate on Hamish in order to blot out the effect Angus was having on her hormones.

  ‘Listen,’ she whispered to Hamish, ‘can you hear them scrabbling down the tree?’

  Hamish nodded, his little body rigid in her hands, though she could feel excitement thrumming through him. The longing for a child—her child, family—zapped through her like an electric current, shocking her with its intensity. It had to be because she was holding Hamish, because normally the longing was no more than a vaguely felt dull ache.

  Well, at least it had shocked her out of focusing on the man behind her.

  ‘Look, Dad, look!’ Hamish said excitedly, and Kate was happy to yield her place to Angus so he could hold his son and share the excitement as the small furry animals with their pointed noses and big bright brown eyes landed on the fruit table, the older pair looking around, checking their safety, while the two youngsters began to eat.

  ‘Oh, they’ve got little hands!’ Hamish cried as one of the possums turned towards them, a piece of apple in its paws, sharp white teeth nibbling at it.

  ‘They’ve got wonderfully expressive faces,’ Angus said, a note of genuine delight in his voice as he turned to smile at Kate.

  ‘I know,’ she agreed, ‘and I love them to bits, but they are not going to continue living in my ceiling!’

  They watched in silence, broken only now and then by Hamish’s exclamations of wonder and delight. Then, the feast finished, the possums leapt into the branches of the lemon tree and, from there, scrambled into a jacaranda, scurrying up the trunk, then out along one of the top branches, from which they leapt into a eucalypt.