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It was all too weird, Caroline decided, standing in a little hut not unlike the one they’d shared in Africa—although that one had been round and roofed with palm fronds, not corrugated iron—with Jorge beside her, asking polite questions—exactly as it had been when they’d first met.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE shook off the memory and steeled herself against the attraction that still tingled along her nerves when she looked at him or heard his voice. Best to consider his question—to answer him.
Best to forget the past and all its joy and pain …
‘I work, I come home, and I try to be a good mother. Like all working mothers I feel guilt that someone else spends more time with my daughter than I do, so I probably overcompensate. Then, when Ella goes to bed, there are always business things to take care of, or articles to read or write—you know how it is, keeping up with the latest developments, hoping you’ll find something to help a patient you’ve seen recently.’
He turned to face her so the scar on his cheek was fully visible and it was only with an enormous effort she resisted the urge to lay her palm against his damaged skin, as Ella had done earlier.
‘You said your father left you money. You must have no need to work.’
She smiled at him and waved her hands around the hut, pleased to have such a bland, harmless topic of conversation to occupy her mind and distract it from the suggestions of her body—suggestions like moving closer, touching him.
‘And I’m sure you’re not so impoverished you needed to build your own hut, so you, at least, should understand. A lot of people put a lot of time and effort to train me for the job I do. I wouldn’t feel right to just stop doing it, especially when there are areas where doctors are still desperately needed. I’ve been working in an inner-city practice where patients are a mix of trendy twenties, urban aboriginals, homeless youths, prostitutes, Asian migrants and long-term street people. Probably not unlike this area you work in, although, from the article I read, most of your patients are the indigenous Toba people, so you don’t get the same mix.’
Pleased with herself for answering as if the tension in the air between them wasn’t twisting her intestines into knots, she kept going. Talking was better than thinking. Unfortunately for this plan, Ella chose that moment to knock over a second pile of books.
‘Oh, blast,’ Caroline said as she hurried towards the mess, but Jorge was there before her. ‘I really should control my daughter better.’
The words were no sooner out than she realised how stupid they had been.
‘Our daughter,’ she amended, but knew it was too late. She was kneeling now, directly in front of him, looking into Jorge’s deep brown eyes, eyes she’d once fallen right into and drowned in, losing her heart, soul and body to the man who owned them.
And because she was looking, she saw the pain, read it as clearly as words written in white chalk on a black background.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, though for what she wasn’t certain.
For the lost years?
For him not knowing he had a daughter?
For hurting him by not showing enough love that he could have depended on it four years ago, depended on it enough not to have written that email?
Though surely pride had written that email—his pride, not her lack of love.
She didn’t know.
He stood up without a word, walking back to the kitchen where the mate sat on the small kitchen table. Leaving Ella to restack the books, Caroline followed him, picking up the gourd and taking another sip, trying to get back to polite conversation because anything else was too painful.
‘It must be an acquired taste,’ she said, handing the gourd over to him and hoping he’d think she’d been considering mate, not love and the pain it caused as she’d sipped. ‘And obviously very popular! We saw people drinking it everywhere—walking along the street in the city, even waiting at bus stops.’
‘It is a custom not only in Argentina but all over South America.’
Caroline smiled but she knew it was a sad effort, memories of the past hammering in her head as they both tried gamely to keep the stupid conversation going.
‘Strange, isn’t it,’ she said quietly, ‘that we who talked about everything under the sun should be reduced to tourist-talk? But now that Ella has found her land legs after the journey, perhaps it is time for you to meet her properly.’
She turned, calling to her daughter, who’d selected a book with a red cover, settled herself into a tattered armchair and was reading herself a story from it. As it was almost certainly in Spanish and quite possibly a lurid medical text, Caroline wondered what Ella would choose to make of it. At the moment she was hooked on The Three Robbers, which also had a red cover, so possibly that was the story she was telling herself.
‘Ella!’
The little girl looked up from the book as Caroline said her name.
‘Come over here and meet Jorge properly.’
Caroline pronounced his name as best she could, although she’d never fully mastered the deep-throated ‘h’ sound that was more like an x than the English pronunciation of g.
Ella came to stand beside her, her lips moving so Caroline knew she was trying out the name.
‘Hor-hay?’ she queried, and to Caroline’s surprise Jorge knelt in front of her and politely shook her hand.
‘It is a hard name for you to say,’ he told her. ‘Perhaps before long we can find something else for you to call me, something easier.’
‘My name is easy,’ Ella, ever confident, ever up for a chat, told him. ‘It was my grandma’s name—the grandma I didn’t know. I knew my other grandma but I don’t really remember her very much because she went to be a star in heaven when I was only two.’
The child’s innocent remark made Jorge glance up at Caroline and saw pain whiten her cheeks, the wound of her mother’s death still raw, but the child—Ella—was talking again and he turned back to her, fascinated by the resemblance to his younger self, captivated by a small person who was now telling him about the big plane that had flown up in the sky.
‘Not high enough to see my two grandmas who are stars,’ she explained seriously, ‘but too high to see down to the ground except when we went over some mountains before the plane came down again. Mummy says you used to go walking in those mountains and maybe when I’m a bit bigger I could go too.’
Not all the words were crystal clear but her story still came through, each syllable tightening a band around his chest, the innocent chatter of the child all but suffocating him.
‘Mummy talked about me?’ he asked, though he knew it was wrong to question a child this way.
‘She told me lots of stories about her friend Hor-hay who worked with her in—’
She broke off to look up at Caroline.
‘Where was it, Mummy?’
‘Africa,’ Caroline supplied, and the restraint in her voice suggested she’d have preferred to put her hand over her daughter’s mouth to stop the revelations rather than helping out with the conversation.
‘Afica!’ Ella declared triumphantly, then she pointed at the gourd, still in Jorge’s hand. ‘Can I have some of that?’ He passed the gourd to her, letting her hold it but keeping his hand on it as well. He was vaguely aware of Caroline’s anxious ‘Is it cool enough now?’ but mostly he was swamped by unnameable—even unfathomable—emotions as, for the first time, he shared mate with his daughter.
‘Yuk!’
So she didn’t take to it, but that mattered little. She would, in time, grow accustomed to the taste.
In time?
Was he seriously considering getting involved in this child’s life?
How could he, living as he did, virtually a hermit?
But even as the objection surfaced he remembered that his bare existence in this place where he felt most at peace was coming to an end—and soon. Nine days from now the local government was taking over the clinic, and he was returning to Buenos Aires to be with his father, to live with the man who had first taught him the strength of love.
Ella was telling him an involved tale about a doll Caroline had made her leave at home, but the words barely penetrated, his brain swamped by the revelation that peace might be achievable in other places if the right elements were in place—elements like a wife and a child…
Not without love, common sense reminded him. In his search for peace after the accident he’d tried relationships without love, and peace was the last thing they had brought him.
Impossible, too, that Caroline could love him. Not after the way he’d treated her. Uncertain of his future, thinking he might be an invalid for life and not wanting to tie the woman he loved to him, he’d deliberately worded that email to kill whatever love she’d felt for him, driving a spear of harsh, hurtful words into her heart.
Caroline’s heart ached as she watched father and daughter together. With her usual sunny disposition, once Ella had felt comfortable in the hut she was chatting away to Jorge as if she’d known him for ever. If only she had! If only Jorge had been there to share the early joys and triumphs, though he’d have been there for the bad times too, in that case, the endless sleepless nights, the time they’d battled croup, her mother’s death.
Don’t think about that now—think positive, think forward. There are obviously two bedrooms in this hut, so I will work with him. One month isn’t long but surely it will give me time to learn if what he said was true, or if it was his stupid pride that split us up.
‘Caroline?’
His voice suggested he’d spoken while she’d been lost in her own determined thoughts, but she’d missed whatever question it might have been.
‘Jorge?’ she responded, feeling almost light-headed with the sheer delight of being close to him and saying his name again. Not that she could let such pathetic reactions show. She, too, had pride, and she wasn’t going to fling herself at this man and be rebuffed again. No, time would tell her if any of the fire that had flared between them still existed, and until she’d seen some hint of his, she would have to keep hers well tamped down.
‘I was saying you can’t stay here, but there is a hotel not far away. It is clean, the food is excellent, and there is a big plaza—a park—with a children’s playground just across the road. If you insist on this foolish notion of working in the clinic, there is a bus you can catch each day, a small commute.’
She found a smile, knowing it would hide the hurt caused by him pushing her away, although it was only what she’d expected.
‘No, I’ll stay here,’ she said, picking Ella up to cover her hesitation before replying. ‘The information on the internet said there was simple accommodation for visiting doctors and simple is okay with me. We’ve got a sleeping mat and sleeping bags. We’ll be fine. Also, staying here, eating meals with you, Ella will get used to you and when you have time off, she’ll be happy to be with you.’
Ella joined the conversation at this stage, putting her hand on Caroline’s cheek to turn her face.
‘Are we really staying here, Mummy, in this little house? With the kids outside to play with?’
Jorge heard the words and knew he’d lost the first battle of this war he didn’t fully understand. But looking at the child clinging to her mother, he wondered just how hard it was for Caroline to be parted from the little charmer who was her daughter, to go to work and leave Ella in someone else’s care.
And was he thinking this to stop himself thinking about the pair of them living here, sharing his house, his meals, always there, tormenting him with their closeness? It would be bad enough being near Caroline while they worked, but to have her in his home as well?
A totally inappropriate excitement sizzled to life within him but he ignored it, using the image that confronted him in the mirror each morning to douse it. Most normal women would react with revulsion and although he doubted Caroline, who had seen the worst things people could do to each other, would be revolted, what he feared most from her was pity.
As if to remove himself from his thoughts, he reminded himself it was only for a couple of weeks—nine days to the handover and a few more days after that to settle the new doctor into the clinic. He crossed to the front door.
‘I suppose if you insist on staying I can hardly throw you out. I’ll get your bags.’
But once outside he simply looked at the bags, not wanting to lift them, not wanting to carry them into his home, fighting the anger rising once again at Caroline’s intrusion into his life, for all it was probably justified.
Was his apparent co-operation prompted by a genuine desire to get to know his daughter, Caroline wondered, or was there some deeper ploy behind him giving in?
Whatever! At least he was gone for a while and she could breathe normally again. She gave Ella a hug and set her down, telling her she could go outside and play with the children, but not to wander off. She’d already checked she could see the children from the window, so she could keep watch unobtrusively.
A shadow darkened the doorway and she glanced across to see not Jorge but a younger man, carrying the two backpacks into the hut.
‘Jorge remembered an appointment in the city, he was already late,’ the young man explained. ‘I am Juan, his assistant, a kind of nurse now but studying medicine at the university.’
Politeness insisted Caroline cross the room to shake his hand, but she couldn’t help casting an anxious glance out the door at the same time.
‘Do not worry about the little girl,’ Juan told her. ‘My grandmother is there, she watches the children all day. Some of them, their mothers work, but others just come to play. My grandmother says it keeps her young to be with the children.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ Caroline agreed, ‘but it is a great kindness she does as well, for it’s hard for mothers to leave their children to go to work. I know it!’
Juan smiled shyly and was about to back out the door when Caroline realised that with Jorge gone and Ella happily playing, she was at a loose end.
‘Would it be all right if I visited the clinic?’
Before Juan could answer, Jorge appeared.
‘Did Juan tell you I have to go? I’m sorry, but the appointment is with a government official and I’m already late.’
‘Juan explained, and I was asking if I could visit the clinic.’
She saw the reluctance in his face but as the purpose of the article on the internet had been to attract volunteer doctors to the clinic, he could hardly refuse to let her work there.
‘Your vaccinations are up-to-date?’ he queried, impatience edging the words.
‘Hep A, Hep B, typhoid and yellow fever. We’ve both had them, as Ella was able to handle them now she’s over two, although I’m reasonably sure they were only precautionary.’
Ha! she thought, savouring a moment of triumph that he couldn’t turn them away for health reasons.
Jorge hesitated.
‘Go to your appointment, I’ll be fine,’ she told him. He frowned at her and turned away. He’d probably have liked to growl as well, although in front of Juan.
But when he and Juan had left, Caroline forgot about visiting the clinic and sank down into an armchair, taking a deep, replenishing breath. She was so far from fine she wondered if she’d ever reach such a place again. Physically and mentally exhausted, her body aching with the effort of pretending Jorge meant nothing more to her than the father of her child, she now had to wonder, seriously, if this was not the very worst decision she had ever made.
From the first moment she’d set eyes on him, all the love she’d felt for him had come rushing back. Oh, it had been there all along, in a dull ache somewhere inside her, sharper pain at times like Ella’s birth, her mother’s death, and silly times, like when Ella had taken her first faltering steps, but seeing him again, hearing his voice, watching as he moved his hands in conversation, the longing to go to him and hold him in her arms had been so great she’d only barely managed to hide it.
Or she hoped she’d hidden it.
She closed her eyes but his image was graven in her mind, chiselled as deeply as the gouges he’d made in the door. Thinking back over the encounter—surely there was a more appropriate word for such a cataclysmic moment in her life—she began to believe her doubts had been more realistic than her original excitement. Jorge had shown no sign—not a glimmer—of the kind of love she still felt for him.
So maybe the email had been the truth, not the hurtful outpouring of stupid pride!
Which left her where?
Her determination that Ella would know her father and that he should play some part in her upbringing remained. By working here with him, she, Caroline, could get a sense of the man he had become and perhaps make a feasible plan for the future. Part of her decision to come had rested on the fact that with her mother dead and her small estate finalised, she and Ella had had nothing to keep them in Australia. She’d accepted that if Jorge’s life’s work was here, then here was where they’d have to live.
Oh, she’d hoped for love, hoped she might be able to break through whatever barriers he’d built up to protect himself, but she wasn’t going to beg or plead and in doing so make a fool of herself if his love had been a lie all along.
A sense of utter helplessness brought tears to her eyes, but she’d cried enough for Jorge in the past. Now was the time for action. Ella’s future was more important than her own pathetic need for love, so she would have to focus on that—on finding a way to stay somewhere close to Jorge, so he could be a father to his child.
And you? her heart mocked. You’ll be able to see him regularly and not reveal the love you still feel for him?
She’d have to! That was all there was to it.
And having made the decision, she went to the doorway where Juan had dropped their backpacks. She heaved hers onto her shoulder, picked up Ella’s little koala pack and walked into what she assumed was the spare bedroom, blinking in surprise when she saw the elaborate, wooden, four-poster bed and the polished wooden chest of drawers squeezed in beside it.
Like the old but so comfortable leather armchair, bizarre furnishings for the simple hut Jorge and the young men had built.
Thinking of him toiling in the broiling sun, determination pushing him through the pain of tight healing muscles and recalcitrant tendons, she put her hand against the wall, feeling its warmth and with it the warmth of the man she’d loved.
