Chapter 5
349
'Are you sure you don't want me to come Carol? You know I would much rather be there with you, and without the car how will you get there?' her mother said in a voice that couldn't hide her genuine concern.
'No thank you Mum, I think I'd prefer to be alone, at least at this stage. It's early days yet and it's quite likely the whole thing will just prove to be a false alarm. I know how hard it is for you to get a day off, especially at such short notice, and the 349 bus goes right to the door. Anyway I'm planning on going to see that movie afterwards, you know, the one you said you didn't like the sound of.' Carol replied with an attempted smile.
'Well be sure to ring me, you know I'll be worrying, even if you want to pretend you're not.'
'OK. Now you'd better get a move on or you'll be late.'
A look of resignation replaced the worried frown that had previously creased the older woman's face and she hurriedly moved the last few items from one handbag to another before bending to kiss her daughter goodbye, leaving Carol alone with her thoughts while she finished her toast.
The brave front she had been putting on for the few people she'd told was finally tiring and it was a relief to know that before the end of the day she'd at least have a time-table to add to her other all too often weakening defence mechanisms. Her doctor had outlined what she could expect from the specialist, then what procedures would follow if the worst came to the worst. But of course what he couldn't do was give her precise time-scales for each step she'd be taking and in some ways it was the indefiniteness itself that was at the heart of her concerns. She felt certain that once she had a series of dates she could mark on the calendar the whole thing would somehow become much more bearable.
But the timetable wouldn't help her with Martin, quite the reverse. She still wasn't sure just why she had excluded him from the short list of people she had confided in, so had been unable to answer that question when the others realised he didn't know. Each had in their own way told her how supportive they felt sure he would be, how certain they were that it was precisely times like this when she most needed to allow his all too apparently sensitive nature to come to the fore. Assuring her she'd feel better equipped to deal with whatever eventuated if she let him cosset and care for her.
What they didn't know, because she hadn't yet told them, was that she and Martin had an unresolved issue of their own, and she felt sure that he would, at least subconsciously, see this as yet one more reason why she was still unwilling to do as he'd suggested. And as at that stage they had been sexual partners for nearly a year Carol really didn't know exactly why she was unwilling to agree to move in with him.
Seeing him several times a week and nearly always having sex was fine, going away together or stopping over at his place for the occasional weekend was too. She enjoyed their lovemaking, but actually moving in implied a quite different commitment, at least in Carol's mind it did, and there was something, something as yet indefinable, that made her hold back.
Perhaps this morning provided her with a good opportunity to seriously think through just why she was having such a problem with making the decision. There was the bus trip, then the probably lengthy wait in the consulting rooms, and right then the idea of using that otherwise time of foreboding to think about something other than the possible outcome seemed like a very good one.
That decided; she cleared away the breakfast things, made a final touch-up to her make-up, collected the referral letter and her x-ray, then headed out the door and walked to the bus stop.
It gave her an usual feeling to be standing on the opposite side of the road to where she would have been normally, to be heading away from the city rather than towards it. From that position even her view of the all too familiar street was somehow strangely disconcerting, almost foreign. Not only were the selection of shops different but their frontages seemed oddly misaligned, and even the street signs and the advertising hoardings' content were unfamiliar. Then of course the frequency of outbound services was minimal by comparison with those going the other way and Carol found herself wondering where those missing buses actually went to. When there were so few heading out of town what actually happened to the almost continuous stream still heading into it. Was there perhaps some subterranean parking area where they spent the working day, waiting.
As her thoughts seemed to prefer idly wandering it took a positive effort of will to make herself concentrate on what she had earlier decided she should do, consider what reasons might be preventing her from doing as Martin had suggested.
Not only her mother but also every single one of her girl-friends said she'd been incredibly lucky to meet him; he was kind, considerate, undoubtedly affectionate and seemed to think she was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He was intelligent, already had a very good job and felt confident there were excellent prospects of early promotion that would give him an even better income. Although they didn't agree about everything in life they had both already proved they were each quite capable of tempering their attitudes to things where they did differ.
So what was her problem? What held her back from giving him the answer he wanted? After all it wasn't as if he had asked her to marry him, to make that strong a commitment - though she felt sure that would follow in due course.
And on top of all that, why hadn't she told him about this appointment, why had she confided in others, but not him?
But she was no closer to resolving even the simpler of the two questions when she finally caught sight of a bus coming towards her and having confirmed it was going the way she needed it to she gladly put the vexatious issues to one side while she stopped and then boarded it.
There were very few people travelling but those who were had scattered themselves amongst the seats and as she searched for one where she could sit on her own she found her eyes caught by a young man who was already blatantly staring at her from the very back of the bus. Although pale his blue eyes were so bright they gave the impression they were lit by some internal light, and his gaze was so fixed that even from that distance it gave her the feeling he was attempting to see down into her very deepest thoughts.
Perturbed and unsettled she hurriedly looked away, but as she turned to sit down several rows ahead of where he was she found her brain had still retained an image of more than just those piercing eyes. His general appearance and choice of clothes would normally have meant she wouldn't have even noticed him; the short, spikily gelled hair and garish T-shirt branded him as exactly the kind of male she wanted nothing to do with. Even being close to someone like that in a queue or confined space always made her uneasy. Yet even as she glanced out of the window at the increasingly quickly passing buildings she found herself unable to dismiss either the latent image, or the sensation that those eyes continued boring their way into the back of her head.
Those feelings continued to disturb her all through the luckily relatively short ride to where she needed to get off and as she rose to ring the bell Carol forced herself to resist the temptation to give a quick backward glance to see if in fact he was still watching her. But as the bus began pulling away she weakened and turned to look up at its back window, she was more than surprised to find that the rear seat, the one where he'd been sitting, was in fact totally empty.
With a strong sense of unease she swung around to see if he'd actually had the impudence to get off after her, but no, she was alone. Puzzled, she even checked to see if he'd covered his intentions by crossing the road, but again, no, other than a pair of young women pushing their prams into the small park, there was nobody.
Giving herself a mental shake Carol walked the short distance to the clinic but even once inside, after the administrative formalities had been completed and she had the time to do what she had originally intended, to think through her problems with the Martin decision, Carol found herself instead still perversely recalling the image of the young man at the back of the bus.
The most disturbing aspect of her involuntary recall of his image was just why it should be so firmly imprinted, why his vaguely menacing likeness should be virtually haunting her. There was nothing about him, except perhaps those piercing blue eyes, that triggered anything but unease, and she could not remember a time when any other all too brief memory had become so firmly stuck.
She forced her thoughts out of that rut and did her best to concentrate on Martin instead. Sweet Martin. She couldn't imagine him ever causing any woman the sort of anxiety that the young man on the bus had created in her. Martin still believed in those now old-fashioned values; opening doors for women, all too ready to give up his seat on public transport, and not just for women but even obviously frail, elderly men, and still peppered his language with many 'please' and 'thank-you's'. All in all he was a caring, kindly considerate man, and although he might not actually spark lustful emotions in most of her friends, he quite obviously adored her and they certainly envied her relationship with him.