Melting the Argentine Doctor's Heart

The child—Ella—surely would, though an unmade bed should mean little to her.

‘We’ll have mate, a kind of tea. Have you had time to try it?’

Now he sounded like a tourist guide, and though she was walking behind him, little Ella at her side, he knew Caroline had heard the falseness in his voice and was smiling as she replied, ‘We’ve come straight from the airport so we’ve not had time, although I’ve heard of it.’

She’d answered like a polite tourist, although when she added, ‘Of course, you used to tell me about it, Jorge, and long for a taste of it,’ her voice was soft and he could almost believe.

Believe what?

That after four years she still felt something for him?

Imbécil! Was he so stupid that he was thinking this way?

They’d reached his hut. His hut? He’d thought of it that way since the project had begun but it was never destined to be his for ever, or even for much longer. Soon it would house volunteer doctors.

Volunteer doctors! The board set up to run the clinic had agreed they would still accept volunteer help when it was offered, as well as paying a permanent doctor. Caroline must have made the arrangement through the board and somehow dates had become mixed up, which would explain why he hadn’t received notification.

He shook his head at the bureaucratic bungling that had thrust him into this situation and continued towards the hut.

At least now it had a front door, though not much of one, cut from a bigger, thick timber door one of his helpers had found in a second-hand yard. Cutting the door, like the other tasks he’d undertaken in building his hut, had reminded him how little he knew about manual labour—how easy and privileged his growing up had been.

‘Great door!’

Caroline was smiling at him, running her fingers along the rough edges where the plane had bitten too deep into the wood.

‘All your own work? ‘

He fought the urge to smile back—and the even stronger urge to put his fingers over hers. To smile at her would be to lose, to touch her would be to surrender, and although he wasn’t sure of the battle taking place, its rules or even the battleground, he wasn’t going to lose.

‘I built the hut with some of the unemployed young men in the area, so we could all learn the traditional way of building. We try to reuse wood where we can. We cannot stop deforestation taking place, not only here but in so many rainforest areas throughout the world, but at least we should be aware that we need not add to it.’

Her smile grew softer, gleaming in her eyes where anger had been earlier, and his heart bumped once again in his chest.

Danger—that was what the bump meant. It was as good as a flashing sign saying, Beware! He straightened up, feeling the skin on his body tighten and momentary pain. Pain was good as it reminded him that he couldn’t let a smile breach his defences.

‘Did the building project help the young men get work?’ she asked.

She was worming her way into his confidence but he couldn’t let a smile divert him, any more than he could let Caroline’s apparent interest in his building project distract him from the fact that she was here to disrupt his life.

Yet politeness meant he had to answer.

‘For some of them, it led to work.’ He kept his voice carefully neutral, and looked at a spot over her shoulder as he spoke so he didn’t have to see the so-familiar curve of her cheek, the blue of her eyes, the silver of her hair, but he’d lost her attention anyway, the child coming dangerously close to the piles of books.

‘Don’t knock them over!’

Caroline’s cry diverted his attention from battles, danger, smiling eyes and building projects, but it had come too late to stop Ella spilling one of his piles of books.

‘Not reached the bookshelves-page of your how-to-build book?’ Caroline teased, kneeling to help Ella rebuild the pile.

And this time, perhaps because she was kneeling and might not see it, he did smile.

‘Furniture is a different world, far too complex for an amateur like me to tackle,’ he said, amazed he was able to have this ordinary conversation when his insides were churning and his mind battling to reject that this was happening. ‘We were gifted some furniture, not a lot, but enough.’

Caroline finished tidying the spilt pile of books and stood up, leaving Ella wandering around the stacks in much the same way as a child might play in a maze. Although every sinew in her body was tight, the tension in the room palpable, she had to keep pretending—to keep up her end of what was really a bizarre conversation, given the circumstances. She and Jorge together after four years and they were discussing building projects!

Better than arguing, she told herself, but at the same time her heart ached for the time when she and Jorge would have laughed together over this strained and formally polite behaviour.

Laughed, hugged, kissed, made love?

But it was her turn to talk, not think!

‘Is there a big unemployment problem in the area?’

She left Ella with a warning not to touch things and crossed the room to the little kitchen nook, where he waited by the single gas ring for the kettle to boil. Picking up the gourd in which he had put the chopped-up leaves—were they called yerba? She tried to remember—for the tea, she turned it in her hands, cupping it and appreciating how snugly it fitted her hand, stirring the chopped dry leaves with the metal straw.

Eventually he answered, taking his turn in this painful pretence.

‘It’s a problem among the young people—the ones who choose not to go on to higher education,’ Jorge replied, though his inner reaction to her closeness and his fascination with the movement of her hands had delayed his reply too long. ‘In the beginning, working with the boys to make the mud bricks for the walls, I found it was a more satisfying form of physical therapy than working out in a gymnasium. Gradually it became a challenge to all of us, to build something with our own hands—something we could feel pride in. Yes, the hut is rough, the door is rough, but it is our hut and our door, and I, for one, cannot open it without a sense of perhaps not pride but satisfaction that I could, with only a little help, make myself a shelter.’

‘You started by making the bricks?’

Disbelief and admiration warred in her voice but the shrill whistle of the kettle stopped the conversation. He took the gourd from her, turning it upside down a couple of times to move the finer leaves to the top, then tipping it from side to side. That done, he poured in cold water to saturate the leaves and let it sit a minute on the table. The mechanical movement of his hands as he made the mate gave him time to think—time to tell himself her admiration wasn’t personal. She would be equally admiring of any man she knew had built his own dwelling.

Any man she knew?

He glanced at her left hand, certain he’d see a wedding ring.

No jewellery at all, but, then, she’d always shunned what she called fripperies. And if she’d married, Ella would have a father figure in her life, and there’d have been no reason for her to come.

He tipped the gourd once more so the leaves settled on one side of it, and carefully added the boiling water.

And while it steeped he shrugged off her admiration, making light of what had been a mammoth task.

‘It’s how people used to do it, and I cannot spend all my spare hours reading.’

‘Spare hours,’ Caroline replied. ‘I remember them, though the memory is hazy.’ She looked towards her daughter, then added, ‘Not that I’d swap Ella for even one spare hour.’

The remarks bothered Jorge, for all he was trying to do was keep the conversation determinedly neutral—coolly polite, nothing more. She’d sounded wistful, as if genuine regret lurked somewhere behind the words.

‘You have so little time?’ he asked, dropping a silver straw into the mate then pausing for an unseen guest to try it before handing the gourd to Caroline.

She lifted the gourd, and sipped through the straw, grimacing slightly at the taste, or perhaps the heat of the drink.

‘I pass it back to you, is that right?’ she said, and, knowing she’d remembered something as simple as the mate ceremony of sharing made his heart go bump again, but though the barriers he’d erected around his heart were as rough as the walls of his hut, he knew he had to keep them intact, heart-bumps or no heart-bumps!

His mind tracked back to the previous conversation—the question Caroline hadn’t answered.

‘You have so little time?’ he asked again.