Falling into Place Read online

  Falling into Place

  Pamela Mc Casker

  Austin Macauley Publishers

  Falling into Place

  About the Author

  About the Book

  Copyright Information

  Acknowledgement

  Chapter 1Meeting

  Chapter 2Dressing

  Chapter 3Arrival at Clive’s

  Chapter 4After the Fall

  Chapter 5Meeting Alex

  Chapter 6Meltdown

  Chapter 7Dishes with Alex

  Chapter 8Tango

  Chapter 9Trying to Sleep

  Chapter 10Morning After

  Chapter 11Breakfast

  Chapter 12Clifton Hill Walk

  Chapter 13Telling Suz

  Chapter 14Packing

  Chapter 15Chest of Drawers, Prahran

  Chapter 16Facial

  Chapter 17Post Facial

  Chapter 18Cooking

  Chapter 19Living with Clive

  Chapter 20Meeting the Olds

  Chapter 21Settling In

  Chapter 22Cold Collations

  Chapter 23Conversation in Conservatory

  Chapter 24Alex Arrives

  Chapter 25Snakes and Ladders

  Chapter 26Fliss Arrives

  Chapter 27Fliss’ Sandwiches

  Chapter 28Bonnie Home

  Chapter 29Bonnie’s Room

  Chapter 30Ball Part 1

  Chapter 31Potting Shed

  Chapter 32Alex and Clive Potting Shed

  Chapter 33Cyn Plots

  Chapter 34Ball Part II

  Chapter 35Courtyard Claire and Suz

  Chapter 36Horse

  Chapter 37Leaving Hospital with Alex

  Chapter 38Beach

  Chapter 39Bacon and Eggs

  Chapter 40Cyn at Church

  Chapter 41Post-Church Lunch

  Chapter 42Claire in Library

  Chapter 43Claire Driving

  Chapter 44After the Botanical Gardens

  Chapter 45Mary Comes

  Chapter 46Cynthia, Claire – Will

  Chapter 47Claire and Mary Courtyard

  Chapter 48Storm

  Chapter 49Cyn at Dawn

  Chapter 50Morning After Alex and Hal

  Chapter 51Bonnie Back

  Chapter 52Cooking

  Chapter 53Luncheon

  Chapter 54Bathroom

  Chapter 55Pub

  Chapter 56Mary and Boys

  Chapter 57Walk

  Chapter 58Stew Again

  Chapter 59Meeting

  Chapter 60Café 1

  Chapter 61Café 2

  Chapter 62Hal and Claire

  Chapter 63Claire and Thelma

  Chapter 64Cynthia and Clive

  Chapter 65Claire and Clive

  Chapter 66Fliss Pregnant?

  Chapter 67Alex and Fliss Plot

  Chapter 68Claire and Cyn

  About the Author

  The author is a writer and teacher from Melbourne. She grew up on a small farm in the Dandenong Ranges near Melbourne. She spent several years living in Italy, the UK and California. She currently lives in Bayside, Melbourne.

  About the Book

  Falling in love is easy; remaining in love is harder.

  Visiting her in-laws-to-be in the Western District of Victoria, Claire has an accident. She is abandoned by her busy fiancé and while recuperating in rural Victoria, she finds herself at the mercy of her mother-in-law. At times, her situation seems more desperate than romantic.

  Claire’s new family members are mainly disapproving of her rustic background: her parents run a self-sufficient farming venture; however, when the in-laws’ own financial woes worsen, they expect Claire to throw herself into the battle to save their farm. But Claire must grow up before she yields to the weight of others’ expectations.

  Copyright Information

  Copyright © Pamela Mc Casker (2019)

  The right of Pamela Mc Casker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781528906609 (Paperback)

  ISBN 9781528958325 (ePub e-book)

  www.austinmacauley.com

  First Published (2019)

  Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

  25 Canada Square

  Canary Wharf

  London

  E14 5LQ

  Acknowledgement

  I wish to thank Anthony Ash, Gillian Barnett, Judy Curtain, Julie Drysdale, Liz Gallois, Graham Lacey, Suzanne McCourt, Rosemary Rule, Janey Runci, Eva White, Robyn Jones and Chris Woolven for their advice and encouragement.

  Chapter 1

  Meeting

  As she waits at the intersection of Elizabeth and Collins Streets, Claire lets three sets of traffic lights run through their cycles. To go or not to go? At last her resolve to cross the street firms up. She will ‘WALK’ obediently next time around.

  Fear of crowds is a recent neurosis. One month ago, she left her family home in Wangaratta for good. But do we know, in advance, if any move will be ‘for good’ long term? Melburnians are born to move through crowds; like schools of fish, they are schooled in it. They weave neat parabolic curves. No one collides.

  As a wall of humanity sweeps towards Claire, she steps out boldly enough but the kerb might as well be 30 centimetres high and Claire blindfolded for all her confidence in landing well. She fixes her gaze on the one tall man among the head-bobbing sea of pedestrians. He has substance, an odd impression, as he’s hemmed in by the crowd. She cannot see him in his entirety. But her sense of his solidity persists. Moving forward, her left heel catches in the tram track groove. While wriggling to free herself, she falls.

  Prostrate in Collins Street, her hero emerges from the sea of people to look down at her. She squints up at him. At least he hasn’t evaporated in the way of city men. She feels a fluttery sensation. It’s not her heart in over-drive, just her gored skirt, whose flirty motion makes a mockery of decency in Melbourne’s infamous wind tunnels. A poor choice on such a blustery day. Her man of substance rights her hemline, frees her heel from the tramline, helps Claire up. She’s Cinderella in reverse. Awkwardly caught, not joyously discovered.

  “Phew!” She takes a moment to regain her balance. “Oops! That was embarrassing! Thank you,” she says, “for keeping me decent.”

  “Keeping women decent isn’t my primary aim,” he smiles at her. She can’t help but laugh.

  “Let’s go to the Hopetoun Tea Rooms. I’ll show you what a rake I am,” he offers.

  “Okay, I’m Claire-from-the-country,” she says. They shake hands solemnly.

  “Clive.” He offers her his elbow crook. It’s as if she’s holding a triangle by its hypotenuse.

  They head up Collins Street towards the Block Arcade. There’s a queue outside the tearooms.

  “Bugger! I can’t stand queuing,” Clive says.

  “But you must stand, queuing,” Claire teases. “You can’t sit cross-legged on the pavement.”

  “Well, that’s rich coming from you, a fallen woman! If I have a nervous breakdown, it’ll be on a bad queuing day. Queuing triggers a pathology in me,” he says. “I keep a running total of hours spent fruitlessly waiting. Half my life’s been
decimated!”

  “To be decimated you’d only lose one year in ten.”

  “Worse than I thought, then. A whacking chunk of life – just atomised.” He splays his hands to indicate the empty bleakness of his life. “But stilettos! Killers!” He squats to examine them.

  Does he have bad eyesight, or is he assessing my ankles? Claire wonders.

  “Ever been in the orthopaedic ward of a hospital?” he asks.

  “Every day this week.”

  “A nurse. Then throw them out.”

  Claire loves her shoes, but she nods. Averaged out and rounded up, he’s nice, she thinks.

  Once seated, they order teas, then gaze around admiring their surrounds. The café is situated in a gilded Victorian arcade, its walls festooned with jungle foliage. What a place for romance, she thinks! Claire hates this pre-feminist thought the minute it fires up but it’s too late to censor it. She’s thought it now.

  New in town, and home alone too much, Claire no longer scorns belief in fate. She’s alert to any hopeful sign. Could Clive be her fate, she wonders. How else to explain an encounter with an attractive man who’s only slightly more neurotic than she is?

  Clive tells her he’s a medico at St Vincent’s Hospital. It’s where she’s training as a nurse!

  Convinced now their meeting was pre-ordained, her heart does the beat-skip thing – a predictor of cardiac problems or love. Is Cupid releasing perfumed darts?

  Stop being a romantic fool! Claire berates herself. But Clive is handsome, with a firm jaw-line. A flop of golden hair falls onto his brow a la Robert Redford; his face is well fleshed out, his body too; his solidity is comforting. His ruddy just-back-from-the-country look is wholesome. He’d smell like freshly home-baked bread. Or newly minted bank notes.

  “So, Claire-from-the-bush, do you smoke?”

  “No.” This emerges sharper than intended but he’s insulted her intelligence.

  “Good,” he grins, as if she’d passed a test. “Your complexion’s excellent. A lot of fresh fruit and vegetables have gone into it.” She’s feeling like the product of an organic farming venture.

  “Mm,” she says. “All our food was organic, fresh. I…”

  “…like country girls getting fresh with me,” he says.

  “…juice fruit twice a day,” she says. Oops! They’re doing a talking together tango.

  “Good for you. Ever been hospitalised?” he asks.

  “Only every day!”

  He laughs at that. "Touché!" Claire picks up the menu to fend him off. He takes her hand.

  His palm makes a cushion for hers. “Elegant fingers!” he says. “I see a tall, blond stranger…”

  “You don’t believe in palmistry, surely?”

  “As a man of science, I remain open-minded,” he says.

  He has a slick answer for everything. She laughs. “I stopped believing in star signs at ten.”

  “You sophisticate!” he laughs. “What’s the star sign you don’t believe in then?”

  “Libra slash Virgo.”

  “Gotcha! A non-believer shouldn’t know her sign,” he wags his finger at her.

  “It’s compulsory. Nurses do zodiac and footy talk all day. What’s yours?”

  “Aries.”

  “Ah!” She’s not about to tell him he’s a sex-crazed ram. Their order arrives. They tuck in. Clive eats with frank enjoyment.

  “Are you religious?” he enquires.

  “Not in Melbourne. It doesn’t work here.”

  “Or anywhere. So, have you taken to a life of depravity recently?”

  “No. What about you?”

  “I baulk at doing anything illegal, but I’d love to murder the dill who designed stiletto shoes.”

  Silence falls. Claire usually feels obliged to fill silences. Now she decides to let it run on, to feel the stretch and pull of time.

  “Enjoying your course?” Clive asks, when the conversation doesn’t ignite spontaneously.

  “Yes.”

  “Hospitals are husband-hunting grounds. But you’ll have a boyfriend in the bush,” he says.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Maybe your luck’s about to change.” He grins.

  “It could well be. I’m moving to ob-gyn tomorrow.”

  “A useful department for a woman, obstetrics. Planning a big family?”

  “Ask me tomorrow.”

  “May I call you, then? You’re pretty, willowy, smart. Healthy too.”

  “Healthy?”

  “You’ve a good, high complexion, thick, shiny hair, strong nails. You’ll die young only if you wear ludicrous shoes. I’ll see to it you don’t.”

  “No, you won’t,” Claire says, deciding to assert herself. “So, what do you do at St V’s?”

  “I’m training to be a urologist.”

  “Why that specialty?”

  “Family reasons,” he says. “I like being at the forefront of new research…”

  “But you can’t specialise in the whole gamut of diseases to stay safe.”

  “For a sweet young woman, you’ve a sharpish tongue, Claire. One fears some illnesses…”

  “So, fear’s your primary motivation?” She surprises herself by sounding quite grown-up.

  Clive looks gobsmacked to have encountered such cheek in a half-baked health professional. “I’ll excuse you since you’re pretty. Was that a panic attack earlier?” he asks.

  “No.” She isn’t about to own up to fear of crowds.

  “Hypotensive then?” he chews his lip thoughtfully. “I’ll take your pulse.” He raises the sleeve of her cashmere pullover. She opens her mouth to protest but he clamps two fingers to her wrist.

  Rarely does she wear her best clothes shopping. A lucky choice, she’d thought, until Clive started acting pushy.

  Right now, she’ll only give him a scant six out of ten for conversation – a bare pass. Back in Wang, Claire liked having a good natter with blokes. Her interest now being on the wane, all nervousness evaporates. Bolstered by indifference, she can be herself.

  “So?” she asks, as Clive stares at his watch.

  He ignores her, his brow contracted, highlighting furrows above his nose. At last he pronounces her alive and pulsating.

  “Great. I’d have died if I was dead.”

  *“Were* dead.” He’s agile in deflecting her dig at him. “It’s the subjunctive. Grammar matters.”

  “You’re not an injecting drug user,” he says, having checked her forearms on the sly. “Jolly good!”

  “You utter jerk!”

  “Now, Claire, please don’t ruin your pretty face.”

  “The state of my face is not your effing business.”

  “Naughty, naughty! I don’t like swearing in women. I saved you. I’m responsible for you.”

  “Are you a Buddhist or something?”

  “Confucius say, ‘She lives longest who lies back and submits to favourite physician,’” he says, his eyebrows roaming across his brow in a manner so lewd and self-mocking, Claire can’t help laughing.

  “You’re awful, Clive,” she says, but her shoulders are shaking.

  “Good lungs for laughing! Forthright laughter good for heart and entire thoracic cavity.”

  They are feeling mellow when their second teas arrive.

  Clive raises his cup. “To our friendship and our joint good health!” he toasts.

  “To our good joint-health!” she amends, causing him to fossick in his briefcase for a bottle of glucosamine.

  “Mama believes in it,” he shrugs. “I don’t, but quelle coincidence, hey!”

  They clack china cups. They don’t make beautiful music. Neither worries about ill omens.

  Too bad if they clunk instead of clinking. They believe in science and hard work, not portents.

  “Here’s getting to know you, Claire. What lovely celadon green eyes you have.”

  Chapter 2

  Dressing

  At last Claire’s Melbourne life has started. She’s
been invited on a date with a tallish blondish stranger. They met in Collins Street. They have a whole hospital in common whereas some humans merely share a few minor health deficits!

  Claire can’t help wondering if Clive might have materialised thanks to the workings of fate. But being a sensible girl, proud of her scientific mindset (albeit a novice one since it’s allowed her to cling to certain aspects of her former Catholic belief system), the composition of her beliefs pie-chart looks like this: Science 65%, Catholicism 25%, Fate 10 %, although the latter is in the ascendant currently. The stock-market report of Claire’s beliefs needs re-calculating daily – it varies according to the most recent Astrological Predictions in the Australian Women’s Weekly or whatever celebrity swill mag she’s recently found abandoned in the staffroom and how closely its predictions suit her current needs. When promised a tall, dark stranger, it’s harder to abjure all her irrational beliefs.