Spring Proposal in Swallowbrook (11 page)

The days were long after that with Hugo keeping to his promise and staying away from her except when on surgery business, and as the evenings dragged on with her overwhelmingly conscious of him in the house across the way, so near yet so far, Ruby sought solace by the lake, either sailing on it, sitting by it or walking beside it.

Spring would soon be making way for summer, she thought frequently, and where would she be then? Job hunting back on Tyneside, or on the dole if all the cuts in health care that were being threatened took place, and it would all be for the sake of a clear conscience.

Yet it wasn’t
that
clear. It would only be completely so if she confessed to Hugo the reason for her strange behaviour, but the thought of the look on his face if she told him didn’t bear thinking of, having to observe the dismay and pity there would break her heart.

The first week of her notice had passed with few comments from the surgery staff but no shortage of strange looks. Yet the patients had no qualms about saying what they thought and one morning Hugo said, ‘Nathan wants me to take you with me when I go to visit Sarah Bellingham. She’s just come out of hospital after a serious hip operation and is causing problems for the district nurse because she keeps refusing to have the prescribed injections of antibiotics into the stomach area to prevent infection.

‘In some cases it’s the standard thing, while in others it’s done intravenously, but Sarah is not the type to be on a drip or tubed up in any way.

‘Apparently you did a house call to her shortly after you joined the practice. She liked you and remembered you from when you lived here before, so we’re hoping you can charm the old lady into letting the nurse do what she has to do.’

It was the first time they’d been anywhere together since she’d handed in her notice and every moment was precious because there wouldn’t be many of them to treasure in the next few weeks.

After listening to what he had to say, she told him, ‘Yes, I went to see Mrs Bellingham when I first came here. She had a chest infection and was too frail to come to the surgery as her mobility isn’t very good, for one thing, but her mind is clear enough.’ And thought it must be if she’d remembered her from all that time ago.

As Hugo stopped the car in front of a typical lakeland cottage she hoped that it had been only her face that the old lady had remembered and nothing else from way back.

The district nurse, who had arrived before them, was waiting at the gate and when the three of them appeared in the sitting room the patient was sitting by the window with the leg that had been operated on in a raised position on a footstool.

When she saw them she said, ‘So Nathan Gallagher has sent reinforcements to pin me down while I have the needle, has he?’

Ruby stepped forward, took a frail hand in hers, and said gently, ‘Even big strong men have been known to go pale at the sight of a needle, Mrs Bellingham, so you aren’t alone in the way you feel, but you’ve just come through major surgery and all of that could be thrown into chaos if you get an infection, so you do need to allow Nurse to give you the injection.’

‘Yes, all right,’ she agreed reluctantly, ‘as long as you keep holding my hand, but before the nurse starts sticking the needle in me I’ve been wondering how that young brother of yours is. Wasn’t he poorly when you lived here before?’

Hugo had been watching the scene before him with a sickening feeling of loss as he’d observed Ruby’s gentle approach to the elderly woman’s problem, and it wasn’t just his own loss that he was contemplating with her departure. There was the loss to the practice too that would result from her decision to leave the village, so with those thoughts in mind he didn’t tune in to the way she’d tensed at the question.

But her smile didn’t falter as she replied. ‘Yes, Robbie
was
poorly, Mrs Bellingham, but he’s fine now.’

It was a half-truth, but the extent of it wouldn’t matter one way or the other because soon she would be gone, taking her problems with her, but the patient had more to say and this time it was with regard to her leaving the practice.

‘They tell me that you’re leaving us, which seems a bit odd as you haven’t been here long,’ she went on to say. ‘I hope you’re not one of these young folk who only care about themselves.’

‘No, I’m not, far from it, but sometimes a situation arises that we have no control over, Mrs Bellingham, and that is how it is with me,’ she told her without meeting Hugo’s glance, and as the nurse was waiting to give the injection the subject was closed.

But only until the two doctors were back in the car and as Hugo was about to speak she forestalled him by saying, ‘I know what Mrs Bellingham said about my leaving is what people are thinking and you especially, Hugo, but my life is my own to do as I will with it, and what I’m doing at the present is the right thing, believe me.’

‘You’re telling me that,’ he said with brows rising, ‘when I’m trying to grope my way through your thought processes like a man in a fog. I think Sarah might have hit the nail on the head when she questioned your motives.’

‘I can’t bear to quarrel with you,’ she said wretchedly. ‘If we can’t be lovers, can’t we at least be friends?’

‘You mean as pen pals?’ he questioned dryly. ‘I can’t see it being anything else with all the miles that will be between us.’

He was pulling onto the forecourt of the practice and adding to her dejection said, ’If you still want to carry on with the charade that we’re both involved in and the apartment is going to be vacant, I suppose I could offer it as a temporary residence to Laura and her family when you’ve left. It would be somewhere for them to stay while the refurbishment of Gordon’s house is taking place.’ And with that final nail in the coffin of her dreams she opened the car door and was out in a flash, hurrying inside before anyone should witness her distress.

Hugo banged the steering-wheel in frustration; he was totally screwing this up! There was just three weeks to go before Ruby went out of his life and during that time he had to make her see that they were meant to be together, that she was his bright morning star, and Sarah Bellingham’s suggestion that she was being selfish wouldn’t have helped much towards that end.

The day progressed like any other, patients coming and going for both the doctors and the nurses, with the exception of Nathan popping in to compliment Ruby on the way she’d handled Sarah, and in the lunch hour Libby commenting how pale and drawn she looked and asking if she was all right while the two of them were lunching in the surgery kitchen.

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she was assuring her, and at that moment there was a voice from the doorway.

‘If ever you want a chat, Ruby, I’m always available.’

When she’d looked up John Gallagher was standing there and she’d wondered how much he knew about her family’s last days in the village.

When Ruby arrived home that evening there were flowers waiting for her at the entrance to the apartment, a beautiful bouquet of lilies of the valley and pink roses with a card attached that said, ‘Please forgive me my negative attitude this morning, Ruby. I’ll be by the lake at eight o’clock in the place where we got rained on if you’d like to hear my apology in person.’

As she arranged the flowers lovingly in a crystal vase that graced the centre of the dining table, the thought was there that he was a generous man, willing to put her needs before his own because all he was getting out of knowing her was frustration.

Why hadn’t Hugo suggested that he would come to the apartment to speak to her, she wondered, instead of them meeting by the lake? It would be more private, yet did she want that? If he so much as touched her she would be lost and that wasn’t likely to happen amongst the crowds down there, so was she going to go? Yes, she was. If only to tell him that no apology was needed.

She’d washed the blue and white dress of the day of the downpour and was tempted to wear it, but common sense warned her not to make too big a thing of the occasion. She could be back within minutes, which might be a good idea under the circumstances, and as the evening sun looked warm and inviting she put on a cotton shift dress and open sandals, and at a quarter to eight walked down to where he had suggested they meet.

It was crowded down by the lakeside, as she’d expected, yet Hugo stood out amongst them as he gazed across to where the windows of Libby and Nathan’s house on the island glinted in the sun and a launch full of sightseers was cutting its way through the water en route to the moorings.

How could it be that someone like Hugo should want
her
? Some other woman with no faulty genes would soon be there in the foreground when she’d gone and why not? Hugo deserved someone better than her to share his life.

When he turned he had no smile for her, just a grave nod above the heads of those milling around them, and he asked, ‘Shall we find somewhere less crowded?’

‘Yes, if you like,’ she agreed, and as they walked to where there was an empty seat in a secluded corner beside ancient crags that had been there for ever she took the opportunity to say, ‘Thank you for the flowers, Hugo. No one has ever done that for me before. They are really beautiful, and before you say anything, I don’t need an apology from you because you haven’t done anything wrong.’

He was smiling now and as she watched it transform his face he said, ‘So dare I ask something of you instead?’

‘Er, yes,’ she agreed uneasily.

‘Will you marry me, Ruby?’ he said softly. ‘Will you put your trust in my making you happy and contented as we build a future together with our children? Can you put to one side your uncertainties of recent weeks and be my wife? We could have such a good life together in this beautiful place.’

She had often wondered how she would cope if this moment ever arose, and as her mouth went dry and she began to shake, now she knew.

‘Is that really what you brought me down here for?’ she croaked, ‘or is it just a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing?’

‘It is something I’ve wanted to say to you almost from the moment we met, but there has never been the right moment, and judging from your expression it would seem that still applies. Does it?’ he asked, and now his voice was flat and remote as he observed her dismay.

‘I’m not intending having children, Hugo. They are not included on the agenda of
my
life as they are on yours,’ she told him lifelessly. ‘So the answer has to be no. I’ve seen you with little ones at the surgery and with young Toby and you’ll make a fantastic father when the right person comes along.’

‘So you don’t love me?’ he questioned bleakly.

‘I didn’t say that. Shall we just say I’m not in the market for bringing children into the world, while you are, and the two don’t mix?’

‘And that is why you’re leaving?’ he said incredulously.

‘I don’t think we need go into that. I’m honoured to know that you should want me as your wife but, as Sarah Bellingham suggested, maybe I’m one of the selfish young generation who want it all their own way.’

With tears threatening she looked up at him and said, ‘If you will excuse me, Hugo, I feel that this conversation has gone on long enough.’

As he was about to protest she touched his lips fleetingly with her fingers and shook her head, then began to walk slowly in the direction of Lakes Rise and the apartment, not daring to turn in case she weakened in her resolve and went back to where she wanted to spend the rest of her life, in his arms.

CHAPTER NINE

S
TILL
reeling from Ruby’s blunt, almost brutal rejection of his proposal Hugo caught her up as she was putting her key into the lock of the apartment in a sudden desperate rush to be on her own after having done the thing that she’d dreaded doing so often to a man of her dreams, saying no when he asked her to marry him.

Heartbreakingly it had been Hugo that she’d had to hurt, Hugo that she had fallen in love with deeply and abidingly. Hugo who wanted children from a marriage, which was perfectly understandable, and she hadn’t been able to face telling him why she couldn’t give them to him.

Instead she’d told him flatly that marrying him wasn’t what she had in mind for both their sakes and had left him to digest
that
, when every word had felt as if she would choke on it, and now he was here, wanting answers, no doubt, and she hadn’t got any unless she told him the unpalatable truth that if she gave him children they might either be haemophiliacs or carriers of the gene.

‘Hold on a moment,’ he said as the door swung back to let her in, and as she gazed at him, eyes wide and anxious. ‘I asked you down there by the lake if you don’t want to marry me because you don’t love me, but you denied that, so what is it all about, Ruby?’

‘I told you, Hugo,’ she said wearily, as the futility of the moment took hold of her even more. ‘Our wishes for the future are not compatible so please go and leave me alone.’

‘I’m going, have no worries on that score,’ he said flatly. ‘If you don’t want children, you don’t. But I can’t remember making that a condition of my proposal. Perhaps I should point out that I’m not looking for a breeding machine. I would just want to have a couple of youngsters with the woman I love and a happy family life.

‘I’ve hoped all along that deep down you wanted me as much as I wanted you, which was foolish of me, I suppose, and I should be grateful that you are letting me off the hook now, instead of me continuing to think along those lines.’

On that last comment he went and she closed the door behind her and went slowly up to bed with the words they’d exchanged going round in her head like a runaway carousel.

It was done, she thought as sleep eluded her. She’d found the strength to send Hugo out of her life. All she had to do now was exist without him and with that thought the tears came, running down her cheeks and soaking the pillows.

In Lakes Rise just a few feet away, where he’d dreamt of living with Ruby and their little ones, Hugo was also relinquishing his dream and deciding that for the next three weeks it was going to be hell on earth until Ruby left Swallowbrook. After that he couldn’t bear to think about, but the fact remained that she didn’t want to marry him.

The lifestyle that he had wanted for them both had not been the same as hers and he was still stunned to know she didn’t want children. But in any relationship it was the woman who had to go through the pain and the invasion of her body to bring children into the world, so she should have the right to say yes or no to having a family. Though he sensed with regard to Ruby it wasn’t like that. She just didn’t want
him
or
his
children.

So where did they go from here? he wondered as he gazed across at the apartment that was all in darkness. She’d been so definite about her feelings he just had to let her go, but in the short time that was left before her departure he had to find an answer of some sort for her reasoning.

She hadn’t given him the chance to talk through the bombshell that she’d thrown at him, but before the next three weeks were up he hoped that the answer he sought would come from somewhere, otherwise he would spend the rest of his life in a state of miserable limbo.

After observing the extent of his sister’s grief at the loss of the husband she’d adored he had vowed never to leave himself wide open to that kind of heartache, the pain of those who loved too much, yet here he was, devastated, not because of a bereavement—Ruby was very much alive and well—it was the death of his hopes and his dreams that was making life seem so meaningless.

For Ruby the rest of the week was an ordeal to be got through with Hugo politely aloof whenever they had to communicate at the surgery and nowhere to be seen in the evenings.

She was grateful for the challenges that each day brought with regard to the job, such as when a pregnant woman who would soon be giving birth came to see her with a bladder problem that she was frantic might harm the baby in some way. An on-the-spot urine test showed blood there without there being any signs of cystitis or something similar, and when the patient had experienced great difficulty in producing even the smallest amount to be tested, she had sent for an ambulance immediately and told her that the surgery would get in touch with relatives to explain what was happening and would suggest that they go straight to A and E.

Then there had been a man from the Forestry Commission who had cut his leg with a saw and got an infection in the wound, which had meant a prescription for antibiotics and antiseptic dressings in the nurses’ room.

His problem had been more run of the mill than that of the pregnant woman, but needed to be watched nevertheless. Her pregnant patient had been diagnosed as having too much pressure on the bladder from a large foetus and she would have to stay in hospital until the birth if the baby didn’t change its position and its weight become more evenly balanced.

There had been no mention so far of the other doctors seeking someone to fill the gap that she was going to leave, and she wondered if Libby and Nathan were expecting her to change her mind at the last moment. She knew there were no such thoughts coming from Hugo, but he was better informed than they were with regard to her reasons for leaving.

It was Friday again, the last working day of what had been a dreary week as far as she was concerned, and in the evening a yearly event was taking place in the assembly hall of the village school, the play that the staff and their young pupils presented after much hard work to parents and friends.

She knew that Hugo had been taking it for granted that the two of them would be going together to see Toby in his first school play and he’d bought tickets a couple of weeks ago, but that had been before he’d asked her to marry him and their relationship had foundered.

Now all the tickets had been sold and she’d given up on the idea of going until on arriving home from the surgery on the Friday evening she found the ticket that he’d got for her on the mat when she opened the door and as she’d stared down at it she decided that she was going to go.

It wasn’t numbered so she didn’t have to sit next to Hugo, she told herself as she bent to pick it up. There would be lots of folk there. They might not even get a glimpse of each other in the packed hall, but that was what she wanted, wasn’t it?

Having felt like a drab all week, she put on the blue and white dress and spent extra time on hair and make-up. But when she stepped in front of a long mirror in the bedroom before walking down to the school she was asking herself why was she was dressing up. There would be no one she wanted to impress at the play. Hugo was out of her life for good, she’d been too cruel and outspoken for him to want to have anything to do with her ever again.

As was sometimes the case with the best-laid plans they went astray and the moment Ruby entered the place she saw Libby waving from a row near the front with Nathan on the one side and Hugo on the other. She was pointing to the empty seat next to him and beckoning her across to sit with them, and short of being downright rude there was nothing she could do but join them.

As she seated herself next to him Libby said, ‘Hugo is here at Toby’s request. Who have you come to clap for, Ruby?’

She was so aware of him sitting silently beside her she could hardly breathe, but with bright colour staining her cheeks managed to say, ‘Er, all of them, I suppose. I used to be a pupil here myself.’

‘And did your brother attend this school too?’ Nathan questioned casually. ‘I don’t seem to remember him.’

‘You won’t,’ she told him. ‘Robbie was just a toddler when we left Swallowbrook. There is quite a difference in our ages.’

So far Hugo hadn’t spoken, but now he broke his silence to ask, ‘Are you packed up and ready to leave in a couple of weeks’ time?’

‘More or less,’ she told him, knowing that she’d never been less ready for anything than she was for her departure from Swallowbrook, but with peace between them she would just about manage to get through the days that were left if there were no further discussions, or touching, or false rapport, and then it would be back to Tyneside and the rest of her life without him.

The play was over, the young performers had taken their bows and while Libby and Nathan went to find Toby behind the scenes Ruby and Hugo were left to wait for them in an uncomfortable silence that seemed never-ending until at last they appeared and as usual Toby came running straight to Hugo and he swung him up into his arms and held him close.

Ruby turned away. It was how he would be with children of his own, she thought achingly. They would be blessed to have Hugo as a father, but there would be no blessings coming their way if
she
was their mother.

He had watched her turn away and it had brought back the hurt that had never left him since she’d refused to marry him, but he wasn’t going to open up that raw wound again. If Ruby had told him she didn’t love him he would have accepted it, but she hadn’t said that. She’d as good as admitted that she
did
love him, but not enough to marry him and have his children.

Libby and Nathan were spending the weekend as they often did at their house on the island and were intending sailing across in their motor launch as soon as the play was over, so there was no cause for Ruby and Hugo to linger, and after they’d all said their goodnights Ruby found herself walking back to the apartment with him and the silence that had been between them as they’d waited for Libby and Nathan to find Toby backstage was back again, until they reached Lakes Rise and as she was about to make a quick getaway he held out his hand in front of her and on the palm of it was a small jeweller’s box.

Mesmerised and shaken, she thought frantically, Please don’t ask me again, Hugo. I won’t be able to say no a second time. But she’d got it wrong. He had no intention of doing any such thing. Instead he lifted the lid and as she gazed wide-eyed at a ruby glowing red in a bright gold setting, he said, ‘As this is no longer of any use to me, you might as well have it. Do what you want with it, Ruby, I don’t mind.’ And leaving her totally speechless he went, bypassing the house so that she would have no chance to catch him up to refuse, or enthuse over the ring, and straight to The Mallard where the conversation would be mundane and easy to handle.

Ruby sat and gazed at the ring with the glowing stone that she was named after for hours after he’d gone and with every passing moment knew she wasn’t going to give it back to Hugo. It was a beautiful thing that he would have chosen with his hopes high, expecting to put it on her finger when he’d asked her to marry him, and now it meant nothing to him.

But to her it would be something to remind her of the only man she would ever love, the one who had taken her to his heart and awakened her dormant passions, cared for her when she was weak and lost on her first night back in Swallowbrook, and now she had something to remember him by that she would always wear. Not on her finger, she had no right to do that, but on a slender gold chain around her neck, unseen by others. Only she would know it was there and be comforted.

Since she had rung home to say she was coming back to Tyneside there had been mixed feelings in the family. There was pleasure because they would see more of her. Robbie was especially delighted while knowing nothing of the circumstances, because ‘big sis’, as he called her, was coming back to live with them.

But there was also anxiety because both her parents knew something that the man who wanted to marry her didn’t, and they ached for their daughter.

Her mother was very quiet with only Ruby’s one cryptic comment about Hugo Lawrence’s love of children to go by with regard to the end of the love affair, and knowing how the reason for it would hurt the woman who had given birth to her, she’d made light of it on the night that she’d phoned to say she was coming back home to live, which left Jess not knowing what to think.

But not so her father. He knew his daughter too well not to pick up on the sadness in Ruby that she’d been quick to deny on the occasions when he’d phoned her since she’d said she was leaving Swallowbrook, and he had drawn his own conclusions.

After the gift of the ring Ruby was consumed with the urge for it to be as near to her heart as possible and the next morning, taking advantage of it being Saturday, she drove into the town to the main jeweller’s on the high street whose name was on the box that it had been in and bought the chain that would hold the ring warm and safe between her breasts.

After a coffee in a nearby café she was preparing to drive back to the village when she saw Laura Armitage and her children also out shopping, if the number of bags and parcels they were carrying was anything to go by.

As the two of them stopped to pass the time of day the woman who was shortly to take over the practice manager position that her uncle had left vacant said, ‘We’ve just seen Hugo chatting to Libby and Nathan with Toby in one of the stores and now we see you, Ruby. The Swallowbrook doctors must have all had the same idea this morning.’