Chapter 20 #3
‘You. Drink. Tea?’ the woman said close to her face, making big shapes with her mouth, miming drinking from a cup and saucer. She didn’t stick around for Alice’s answer.
Another woman, smaller, slightly younger, but very much like the first, magicked up a tray in an instant, placing it on the very top of the big stove. Mugs, a teapot, sugar cubes glistening, milk and something that looked a lot like frosted carrot cake.
‘Look after her, Cary,’ she heard the woman say, putting a gentle pat upon his shoulder.
Cary didn’t say anything for a moment, only resigning himself to the impromptu fireside tea party. He reached for the pot like this was all perfectly normal.
He poured two half-mugs of tea, adding the milk and ignoring the sugar lumps in the bowl. Had he remembered she’d bragged about not eating refined sugar at that meeting?
He turned the handle of her mug so it faced her and lifted his own.
Alice thought vaguely how she had never in her life been around anyone so tranquil. Cary was reaching for his plate and cake fork, observing her in a pleasant, neutral way as though she hadn’t just accused him of being pulled into a clock and disappearing.
She scoffed at herself now, but when she glimpsed over the room towards the clock, she shuddered too and had to look away, feeling like a child at their mother’s bedside after waking from a nightmare, unsure of what was real any more, the residual bad dream still haunting her.
She made a show of taking a drink, trying to stop her hands shaking. Putting her own plate on her lap, she blew out a deep breath, telling herself she was indeed awake. Snap out of it, Alice in Wonderland.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Cary cut a big wedge with his cake fork and ferried it swiftly into his mouth.
‘Is it good?’ she asked shakily. Her lips felt tight when she spoke. Her voice sounded unnatural.
He nodded.
She copied him, a big forkful straight in. She closed her eyes to chew.
‘I know,’ he said, and she wondered if she had exclaimed aloud at how delicious it was. Cary took a slurp of tea.
The act of eating was grounding her, bringing her back to herself. This was no high street coffee chain carrot cake, chilled from the fridge, dense and bland. This was somehow fluffy and light, bursting with spice and zesty citrus, with the sweetest whipped cream cheese topping.
She took bite after bite and the world around her came back into view. Her body regained its gravity and sank heavily in the chair the way it should. Cary must have been able to tell because he asked if she was feeling better now.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said, still not quite over the shaky feeling of wanting to cry.
‘Whatever it was, I’d say you can forgive yourself.’
He said it so serenely, so simply, it made her gaze back at him in wonder. He was happily eating once more.
Neither spoke for a time, and Cary didn’t seem to feel the need to fill the silence.
Had Bastian been here, he’d have been loudly proclaiming about the wonders of repair initiatives, how the ethos fitted his own green agenda, how it was simply marvellous places like this existed and doesn’t it just go to show, someone must use them.
A small memory of getting ready for a night out together with her old friends early in their dating history, hoping he wouldn’t embarrass her, made its way back to Alice now. Maybe her tolerance for being shown up had increased over time and in the end, she hadn’t felt it quite so much?
A pang of guilt struck coldly inside her. She had to be misremembering him? Exaggerating his less endearing traits? And yet why had she had so many similar moments since coming to Scotland when she seemed to be able to see her old life in a new light? It made her feel like a traitor to herself.
‘Eat up,’ Cary was saying, banishing the memories of Bastian’s brashness.
Alice tasted the cake again.
‘You know,’ she told him, feeling a deep need to reconnect herself to the here and now, to Cary.
At her words, his face switched in intensity, gently captivated.
‘Back on the wards everyone would bring in their baking and biscuits and big tubs of chocolates. We’d literally live off them on nightshifts.
After a while I dreaded going into the staff room, or the nurses’ station, even the reception, because there was always something somebody had baked or it was someone’s birthday, and you couldn’t very well say no thanks to whatever they’d brought in.
We shared everything we had, if that makes sense?
Trying to keep each other going. When I finished with my foundation rotations, I realised the sight of sweets and cakes and biscuits made me feel nauseated.
I couldn’t eat another one. Is that silly? ’
‘Course it isn’t.’ Cary’s bright expression told her he wasn’t here to judge. He licked his fork and put it down on his empty plate and Alice was surprised to find her own cake gone as well.
‘But that was amazing, actually,’ she said, settling back in the chair with her mug, wanting to close her eyes.
‘I think you had a tough time, at work?’ Cary said, so softly she might have missed it.
She looked at him, seeing the way he crumpled his mouth in sympathy. No one else had ever seemed to understand the toll her training had taken on her.
Cary topped up their teas, right to the brim this time.
She could have slept there, even with the background noise and movement, if someone would just put a blanket over her, but a realisation jolted her upright.
‘My printout!’ she said, looking all around her on the floor and feeling her coat pockets before realising Cary was trying to show her that he had the sheet of paper she’d been carrying when she arrived as well as her stethoscope box.
He must have brought them over here with him when she’d turned dizzy.
She sagged with relief. ‘Thank you! Carenza would kill me if she knew I hadn’t practised this yet.’
‘What is it?’ Cary asked.
She showed him the printed text. ‘This. It makes zero sense, and she wants me to read it at the Burns supper tomorrow night, because apparently that’s the job of the town doctor.’
‘The “Address to the Haggis”?’ Cary said. ‘We had to learn all about Burns at school, for the Burns competitions? We’d memorise and perform his poems and songs, for prizes.’
‘You’re all obsessed!’ She shook her head in astonishment. ‘That would be like us memorising Shakespeare or Jane Austen and having a little talent show.’ Actually, she thought, that might have been quite nice.
‘He’s a big deal all over Scotland, even if some of his, ahem,’ he mock-cleared his throat, ‘attitudes and behaviour might irk us now.’
‘Well, he irks me, all right. How am I meant to read this out loud in front of a room full of people? I don’t understand most of these words. I don’t have the right accent, even. I’ll balls it up for sure, and everybody’s going to think I’m dishonouring their favourite poet on purpose.’
Cary was smiling. ‘I’ll help you, if you like? Here…’ He straightened out the page, running a fingertip along line one.
Alice falteringly read it. ‘Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race! I mean, what does that even mean? Somebody’s pleased about a pudding?’
Cary laughed. ‘Aye. Your job is to praise the massive haggis they’re going to pipe in to the supper table. You’ll stand over the thing and tell everyone it’s the chief of the pudding world, best thing you’ve ever seen. Then you get to cut it open, spilling out its guts.’
‘Oh, God,’ she gulped, pulling a queasy face, only partly to make him laugh again, and partly because the idea of haggis made her tummy churn. ‘But what does this bit mean?’
‘Fair fa’? I think that’s just a greeting, a welcome?’
‘Oh, all right then, makes sense. Hello there, haggis! And what about this bit?’
‘Sonsie face?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Sonsie? It’s, uh, bonny. Pretty.’ His eyes met hers for a fraction of a second before he whipped them back to the page.
Cary cleared his throat for real this time. They both sipped their tea until whatever that was had passed.
‘I’ll try to find an annotated version online,’ she told him, folding the paper. ‘Thanks for trying to help.’
‘I’m sure you’ll do it brilliantly,’ Cary said, and something about his tone told her their tea break was coming to an end.
‘Are you going to the Burns supper?’ she said, as she placed the stethoscope box in her bag, finding she wanted to detain him a little longer.
‘Hadn’t planned on it.’
Why had she asked him that? Now he’d think she was angling for him to go with her.
‘I’ll probably do my party piece then bolt as soon as the food’s served,’ she quipped.
‘I doubt you’d get away with that.’
‘Oh, yeah. Carenza.’
Cary had said her nemesis’s name at exactly the same moment she had. They both smiled at that.
‘Cary? Repair for you!’ came Sachin’s voice from the triage desk all the way over by the entrance.
Someone, Alice didn’t know who, immediately shushed him and hissed, ‘Can you no’ see he’s busy!’
The spell, however, was broken. Cary’s expression had changed. He was brushing away crumbs, making to stand up.
‘Are you going to the surgery today?’ he asked. ‘Sure you’re up to the walk back?’
‘I might just go home and take a nap. Day off, and all that.’
She was on her feet now too, hating the feeling of leaving the fireside. She could have stayed there all day.
‘Good thinking. And you’ll be back here at nine tomorrow morning for the tree planting and the garden project launch, right?’
Alice shook away her surprise. ‘That’s tomorrow? Of course! It had slipped my mind, what with the Burns stuff, and everything.’
There was a pause, during which Alice couldn’t remember how you’re supposed to act when leaving a friend after they’ve given you a present and taken you to tea, and you’ve had a spectacular panic attack right in front of them.
‘Cheerio, then,’ she tried, in her best Cairn Dhu accent.
Cary’s lips spread into another lovely smile.
‘We’ll make a local of you yet!’ came a voice. One of the café ladies was back to clear the tray. She handed Alice a bag. ‘Macaroon bar, for later,’ the woman said with a conspiratorial air and a pat of Alice’s hand.
‘Thank you, Ms…’
‘Senga Gifford,’ the woman said, lifting the tray.
‘You looked fit to drop back there for a wee minute. What you need is some home baking and a good night’s sleep, by the looks of you.
’ The woman’s appraising eyes took her in from her head to her boots.
‘A waif!’ she said, not entirely sympathetically.
‘Mind you, we’re a haven for waifs and strays of all kinds here, aren’t we, Cary? ’
She didn’t give him time to answer, talking over him. ‘On that subject, can you not convince yer man here,’ she bobbed her head, indicating Cary, ‘to take on one of the stray puppies they found last week, down at the hotel?’
Alice had heard all about the pups from Gracie. She wasn’t sure how to take the ‘your man’ thing and didn’t think it was polite to protest about Cary being no such thing. Luckily Cary had found his voice.
‘Ms Gifford, I already told you, I can’t take a dog home. Dinah would go spare. She doesn’t like dogs.’
Senga tutted and hobbled away with the tray and Alice suffered a moment’s confusion when she could have sworn a stab of jealousy was lodged in her chest at the mention of this Dinah.
But why on earth should she mind if her new friend had someone at home, probably a nice homely woman who could have as many of Cary’s apples and pretty wood carvings as she wished for?
It was definitely none of Alice’s business what this man got up to in his private life.
‘Dinah’s my rescue cat,’ came Cary’s clear, calm voice, dissolving away her runaway thoughts.
‘I guessed that,’ she lied, wishing she wasn’t like this.
‘Did you want to pop in and see the puppies?’ Cary said, suddenly. ‘They’re in the mill house kitchen.’
‘Well…’ She’d have feigned a glance at her watch if she’d been wearing one.
‘Maybe just for a minute,’ and she added a nonchalant shrug as if to say she could take puppies or leave them, while deep inside she thought there was nothing else she’d rather do, just so long as the gentle Cary Anderson kept talking to her.
As they left, a muttering line of disappointed locals queuing up at Cary’s workstation watched them go.