Love: Classified (23 page)

     “I want to make love to you right now,” he said huskily, “But I have a feeling I’m going to need to have my wits about me for this storm.”

      I agreed. Gum nuts were pelting down on Matty’s roof and the whole van shook in some of the gusts of wind. We could topple at any time, I thought.

     “Did I tell you that Peta and Josh are back together?” I asked him a few minutes later, hoping to pass the time and distract ourselves with conversation.

     “No you didn’t. It’s great news, specially for Bree.”

     “Yeah. She needs both of them, more than ever.” I chuckled. “I wonder how we’ll cope with a teenager? We’ll be ancient then and probably a lot less tolerant than we are now.”

     “We’ll be able to keep order by battering him or her with our walking frames,”
he joked.

Two hours later we were almost disappointed to realise the tempest was blowing itself out.

     “We’re lucky Matty wasn’t damaged,” Magnus said.

     “Don’t speak too soon!” I warned as we heard the dangerously close crack, hiss and sizzle of a massive fork of lightning. It was so bright it lit the dark interior like a neon light, throwing our taut, anxious faces into sharp focus. Silence followed, then terrible sounds, outside, of an animal in anguish.

     “What could that be?” I asked, horrified.

     “Sounds like a horse,” Magnus answered, his voice low, his head on one side to listen.

     “We have to go and help,” I said, springing to my feet.

     Magnus stood too, wrapping the puppy in a blanket and leaving her on his mattress. He took a torch and we stepped down from the van into the drizzle.

     The wind had d
isappeared, leaving an unnatural calm. Even the lightning was diffident and the thunder was a mere growl in the distance. It was if Mother Nature was ashamed of herself.

     The horse screamed in agony as we ran towards its cries. I wondered what on Earth we would be able to do if we were able to find it in the dark.

     “Here,” Magnus called. He’d powered ahead with his long strides. He swung the torch so I could find him.

     I reached him, panting, and gasped at the horror of what we’d found. A big horse, terrified of the storm, had dashed itself against the wire fence and was trapped. Its fine legs were streaming blood and there was a long gash across its chest, from which scarlet liquid pumped.

     “What will we do?” I breathed, almost faint.

     “I wish I had a gun,” Magnus said.

     “Could we free it, at least?” I stroked the terrified animal’s nose and knew I was calming it, or it was so weak from blood-loss that it had almost given up fighting against the wire.

    
Every so often though, it made a frantic effort to break free, only causing itself to become more entwined. Its terrified, pained eyes pleaded silently with us to do something.

     I stayed close to the sweating, blood-soaked head of the mare, rubbing her neck in the soft place under the mane, whispering her to be still, assuring her we’d help.

     “I ‘ll do my best,” Magnus said. “But I can’t promise anything. I’ll get my gear.”

     He ran to Matty and I heard him reassuring the puppy that we weren’t far away and telling her to go back to sleep. Then he was back with the van’s tool
kit and a brown leather doctor’s bag. My heart leapt. I hadn’t realised he’d had his bag with him all along.

     “Keep stroking her,
Virginia, you’re doing a fine job,” he said soothingly. “It’s important she stays still. I’ve brought some wire cutters and I’m going to try to release her. Meanwhile, push hard with this towel against that cut on her neck. She’s losing a lot of blood and we have to try to staunch the flow or she’ll weaken and die. Once she’s free, I’m going to stitch her wounds.”

    
He angled the torch from the fork of a tree so he could see what he was doing. Patiently, he cut all the wires that held the horse until at last I was able to coax her out of the tangle that lay harmless under her hooves. By now, the horse’s blood, pumping under the towel, was oozing between my fingers.

    
“Now I’m going to administer some local anaesthetic so I can stitch that bad rip,” Magnus said. “Keep pressing the towel hard against her.”

    
Expertly, he injected her and began to suture the jagged wound while I stroked the mare reassuringly.

    
I was amazed at how quickly and neatly he mended the tear, moving onto several other smaller cuts on the mare’s legs.

    “You’re wonderful,” I whispered when he’d finished and I’d run to the van for a bucket of water for the dehydrated mare. “I’d no idea you had your doctor’s bag here, in Matilda.”

     “I didn’t want to leave it at Daisy’s in case Fergus found it,” he explained. “It was too dangerous not to bring it.”

     “You’re a brilliant doctor,” I said, still stroking the mare. “And you seemed completely relaxed and competent, doing what you just did.”

     “I must admit, a part of me enjoyed it,” he smiled, putting away the last of his equipment in the bag. “I needed to ease her pain. That’s what motivated me.” As he tossed the wire cutters into the tool kit he added in a surprised voice, “Perhaps I’m ready to go back to medicine, after all. But I couldn’t have done it without you being here, Virginia. Have you beside me, calming the horse, calmed me as well.”

     “I’ll always be around, if you want me to be,” I said.

     He grinned, the torch-like making him appear boyish. “I think we’re a good team,” he said.

    
“Definitely. But I’m still worried about the mare. It’s too early to congratulate ourselves.”

     “She can’t stay here in the bush.
She might poison herself by eating zamia palms or something,” Magnus said. “And we can’t turn her loose in the paddock because the fence is broken. We’ll have to find her owner.”

     I tilted my arm so I could read my watch. “It’s after nine,” I said, surprised. “I thought it was much later. I s’pose the owner will still be awake.”

     “You stay with the mare and I’ll run up to the crest of the next hill as there’s no road through the bush. I might see the lights of a farmhouse where I could ask. I’ll leave

the torch with you.”

     He dashed into the forest, where he was soon enveloped in the night. The horse’s warm, hay-scented breath on my hand was reassuring.

After about twenty minutes I heard Magnus’s voice. “There’s a house quite close,” he called. “I’ll go and ask and be back as soon as I can.”

     I was stiff with cold and damp when he returned fifteen minutes later on the back of a quad bike driven by a farmer.

     “Virginia, this is Ron. Ron, meet Virginia, my nurse,” Magnus said, jumping off the machine. “Virginia, Ron owns the mare. Or rather his daughter, who’s at boarding school, does.”

     “The horse is a family pet,” Ron explained, walking tentatively towards her and gasping in shock from the sight of the blood and the many stitches. “Oh you poor girl,” he whispered to her, burying his face in her neck. “Poor darling.”

     “She’s lost a lot of blood but she seems amazingly strong,” Magnus said.

     “I can’t thank you enough for saving her life,” Ron said, turning to us both.
“My daughter’s very homesick and she would have been gutted if anything had happened to this animal. Why don’t you two come back to the house with me, we’ll settle the mare in a warm stable and we’ll all have a drink together? My missus would love to meet you, Virginia.”

    
“Ron’s place is just over the hill, Virginia,” Magnus said. “Why don’t you go on the bike with Ron and I’ll lead the mare. Okay?”

     Ron drove slowly and told me Magnus had said that although the horse had been weakened by the ordeal the fact that she was well-nourished and healthy before the storm came ensured that she came out of it fairly well.

     Magnus and the horse trudged after the slow bike, heads down to avoid the rain. He looked a sorry sight, leading the limping, quivering animal.

     Finally, Ron showed us into a stable where his wife, Judy, was waiting with a bucket of warm mash for the mare. We all took towels and rubbed the horse dry before Judy slipped a blanket over her and we all walked to the house where a fire blazed.

    Magnus and I were urged into armchairs and a whiskey placed in our hands.

     “You’d better not drink that, despite the fact that I can hear your teeth chattering from here,” Magnus said to me with a wink.

     “Oh, you’re right!” I said, thrilled he’d remembered that I might be pregnant and that alcohol wouldn’t be good for our baby.

     Judy, overhearing the exchange, discreetly took the whisky away and promised a hot chocolate in its place. “Have you eaten, by the way?” she asked.

     “I don’t remember,” I laughed. “The storm was so engrossing I don’t believe we have.”

    “I made coq au vin this afternoon,” Judy said. “And there’s plenty left. It takes me a while to re-adjust my cooking once the kids go back to boarding school after the long summer holidays. I’m still cooking for five, although there’s only the two of us. So please have some or Ron and I will be eating it for days.”

     “I think I can speak for both of us when I say ‘yes please’!” I said.

Afterwards, when Ron had driven us back to the van and the hungry puppy who got a special treat of left-over chicken, Magnus and I lay spoon-like on his mattress with Maggie and I said, “It was perfect, wasn’t it? The sense of achievement after saving that poor horse, the great food, the warm fire, the brilliant company. I was thinking, it doesn’t get much better than this.”

     “
There would be something better,” he said.

     “Like what?”

     “Having our own place in the country, our own fire, our own casserole bubbling in the pot, waiting for us. Virginia, what would you say to coming and living in York with me?”

     I turned to look at him
, my heart bursting with joy. It would be the perfect life.

      “Oh, you must be thinking I’m the original male chauvinist,” he said, frowning. “Here I am, making plans, not even considering your career, which you love.”

     “Actually, I wouldn’t mind a change,” I said, hoping not to sound too much of a push-over. “Anyway, I can be the editor of an online magazine from anywhere in the world, or even from outer space. And I’ve always been a country girl at heart.”

     I pulled myself up on my elbows. “What are you thinking of doing in York?
” I asked.

     “Dr Jenkins needs a partner. He and I get on well, as you know. He said he’d take me on. He’s already asked me, in fact, but I turned him down. He said he’d keep hoping. Would you marry me, Virginia, and come and be the wife of a country GP?”

     “I’d have to think about it,” I joked, gliding my lips across his.

     He slid his arms
around me, undoing my bra strap with one hand in a practised move which sent a frisson of jealousy through me. He was so experienced, so used to the whole business of intimacy.

     “What’s wrong?” he whispered, feeling me resist.

     “It’s nothing,” I said, forcing myself to sound normal.

     “Am I rushing you? You don’t have to decide yet.”

     “Give me some more time,” I said, suddenly frightened. I’d never expected to be married, let alone to have a husband who looked like George Clooney. How could I cope with his female patients, who’d definitely adore him? Pin-pricks of envy, of rivalry, would attack me every time he was ten minutes late home for lunch or had to spend all night at the hospital. My insecurities would make both our lives a misery.

     I rolled out of his embrace, curling up on my mattress.

     I felt his strong hand on my shoulder.

     “You’ve given me back my confidence, Virginia. Thank you,” he said.

     But I realised, in giving him his assurance, I’d robbed myself of my own.

Chapter Twelve

I drove back to Perth the next morning, not even turning to wave goodbye to a bewildered Magnus who watched me go with Maggie in his arms.

     “What have I said?” he’d pleaded as I tossed my things into the Micra, which had survived the storm.

     “Nothing Magnus. It’s not you. It’s me.”

     “Can I come and see you?” he asked, his face ashen. “What if you are pregnant? You have to tell me. You have to let me see my child.”