by Penny Jordan
Of course Liz was excited about this conference, about the new life opening out in front of her, but her excitement, her opportunity was in such direct contrast to his own fears that he felt that it would be impossible for her really to understand… And besides, he didn’t want to burden her with his fears; he didn’t want to spoil things for her.
‘Barbara has her own key,’ Elizabeth told him, referring to the young single mother who came in to clean for them twice a week. ‘And when I shop I’ll get in a couple of ready-made meals you can microwave…’
‘For God’s sake, Liz, I’m not a child. I can put together a meal if necessary, you know. Besides, you’re only going away for a couple of days, not a couple of months… I’ll probably eat at the hospital anyway…’
‘The hospital? I thought you’d want to get some golf in…’
‘I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on,’ Richard told her.
The budgets. He had seen the tiny frown in Brian’s eyes the last time he had mentioned them and he had made himself a vow that despite his aversion to the whole principle of turning the National Health Service into a cost-effective exercise he would prove to David Howarth that he was perfectly capable of running his department just as efficiently financially as anyone else.
Just so long as that efficiency didn’t prejudice the health of his patients.
‘In fact I might do a couple of hours’ work this evening,’ he added.
‘Oh, Richard, no,’ Elizabeth protested. ‘We’re supposed to be going over to see Sara this afternoon. You can’t have forgotten… It’s weeks since you last saw your grandchild.’
He had forgotten, and watching the expression on his face made Elizabeth suddenly feel illogically anxious. It wasn’t like Richard to be so irritable and withdrawn.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?’ she persisted.
For a moment Richard wavered, tempted to tell her, but what could Elizabeth say to him that he had not already said to himself?
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he repeated, turning to leave the bedroom.
Elizabeth frowned as she watched him go. Something was bothering him, she knew that. Why was it that all men, even the most mature and well-adjusted of them, insisted on retreating behind this wall of protective male silence? What was, after all, really so threatening about simply saying what was on their minds?
She saw it time and time again with her clients, and sympathised with their female partners in their baffled frustration at their men’s refusal to accept that being open about their feelings made them and their relationships stronger, not weaker.
But she understood how important the new Fast Response Accident Unit was to Richard and how hard he had worked to try to ensure that it was sited at the General.
Thoughtfully she went downstairs. Richard was in the kitchen making them both a cup of tea. Quietly she accepted his peace offering.
‘I forgot to tell you—Brian and his wife are giving a dinner party to welcome our new psychiatrist and introduce him to everyone.’
‘Is he anyone you know?’ Elizabeth asked him.
‘No. From the sound of it working at the General is going to be a bit of a step down for him. According to Brian he’s been working in the States for the last few years, although he is British, but now, for family reasons, he wants to come back and doesn’t mind taking a drop in status and income in order to do so… Brian was full of the innovative measures he’s implemented at Johns Hopkins; apparently he believes in the psychiatric department working alongside the medical and surgical departments where necessary, treating the patient as a whole, not as a separate collection of needs. It seems that he’s very keen on ensuring that medical and surgical patients get proper counselling to help them overcome any trauma they might be suffering…’
‘Mmm… well, the two of you should get on well, then. That’s something you’ve been campaigning for for years. You’re always complaining that far too many patients come to you totally unprepared mentally for the effects of their surgery.’
‘Brian and David seem to have a very high opinion of him. He’s only thirty-eight…’
Elizabeth put down her tea, puzzled by the note of resentment she could hear in Richard’s voice. He had always been a man who was very open to other people, but now, for some reason, he sounded almost truculent.
‘He’s done very well, then,’ she commented. ‘He must…’
‘Why is it that everyone today is so obsessed by youth? What is it about being on the thirty side of forty that earns a man praise while being on the fifty side of it condemns him to the scrap heap…?’
Elizabeth gave him a startled look. ‘You were the one who brought up the subject of his age,’ she pointed out.
‘But as far as Brian and David are concerned you’d think it mattered more than his professional qualifications. There was a time when a surgeon wasn’t even considered experienced enough for a senior post until he had been operating for at least twenty years; these days if you haven’t made it by the time you’re thirty you might as well forget it.
‘Do you know what David’s trying to get Brian to do now? Bring in obligatory medicals for anyone over fifty…’
‘You’ve often said yourself that more than half the operations you do might not be necessary if only people would give the same time and care to having their bodies checked out as they do their cars,’ Elizabeth reminded him gently.
‘Taking sensible health precautions is one thing,’ Richard told her fiercely. ‘Deliberately trying to make out that anyone over fifty isn’t fit…’ He stopped abruptly, shaking his head.
Brian’s memo advising him that from the end of the quarter he intended to institute a system whereby everyone over fifty would have to undergo an obligatory medical test to prove that they were fit to do their job had been sitting on his desk for the last three days unanswered.
The arrogance of David Howarth! Did he really think that Richard would dream of operating on anyone if he thought that he wasn’t competent to do so?
And no matter what David might think, being a good surgeon involved more than perfect eyesight and a steady hand. Those assets, no matter how good, were merely physical, and could not compensate for lack of experience, for the awareness, the knowledge that came with time, for the sixth sense one developed only with age.
Elizabeth sighed under her breath. No matter what David did, Richard would dislike it, because he disliked the man himself. Not that she could blame him for that—she didn’t like him very much herself.
‘It’s time we left,’ she told Richard. ‘I promised Sara we’d be there for five…’
* * *
‘And with the new funding we’ve been able to set up our own X-ray unit and take on a couple of extra nurses so that we can offer our female patients a specialised clinic, not just for routine smears, but for a variety of other aspects of their health as well, from a counselling service for teenagers wanting contraceptive advice right through to older women going through the menopause and wanting advice on HRT.
‘Bernard’s even talking about setting up a mini operating theatre. After all, we’ve got the space now that we’ve got this new purpose-built clinic up and running. You’ll have to watch it,’ Ian teased Richard. ‘If you’re not careful we’re going to be putting you out of business altogether… You’ll be able to take early retirement and spend all day on the golf course…
‘Have you thought about taking early retirement?’ Ian asked him. ‘I know my father is considering it. My mother says she wants them to have some time together while they’re still both young enough and fit enough to enjoy themselves.’
‘Oh, Mum won’t want Daddy retiring yet,’ Sara informed her husband. ‘Not now that her own career is just starting to take off… How are you going to manage while she’s at this conference?’ she asked Richard with a grin.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sara, I’m an adult, not a young child, and I’d appreciate it if you’d try to remember that…’
‘I’m not cross, Katie,’ Richard assured her, giving his daughter an apologetic look. ‘I’m sorry, Sara,’ he apologised gruffly. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that…’
‘It’s OK, Dad. We all know how worried you are about the new unit. Have you any idea yet when you’ll know who gets it…?’
‘No…’
Across the table he saw the looks his daughter and son-in-law exchanged, and he wondered if Ian had heard the gossip on the medical grapevine that the Northern was favourite for getting the unit. He liked his son-in-law and got on well with him, but his loyalties lay in a different direction from Richard’s own, and Richard was reluctant to discuss the General’s budgeting problems with him in case he inadvertently mentioned it to his partners, who might in turn pass it on to their contacts at the Northern.
Not that he would be telling the Northern anything they did not already know, he acknowledged sourly. He suspected that David had already made it clear where his support really lay and why.
‘Grandpa. You’re really, really old, aren’t you?’ Katie suddenly piped up.
‘Katie!’ Sara protested.
‘But he is,’ Katie insisted. ‘Because all grandpas are old… Will you soon be dead?’ she asked Richard cheerfully.
‘Not as soon as you,’ Ian told his daughter threateningly.
Somehow Richard managed to laugh along with Elizabeth as she insisted to Ian that no doubt to Katie at four years old they did both seem ‘really old’.
* * *
‘Mum, what on earth’s got into Dad? I’ve never known him be so tetchy and irritable.’
Richard paused outside the kitchen door as he heard his daughter’s voice.
‘He’s worried about this new Accident Unit,’ he heard Elizabeth responding.
‘No… it’s more than that,’ Sara protested. ‘You don’t think… well, you don’t think he’s put out about your success, do you…?’
‘Put out…? Jealous of me, you mean?’
‘Well, yes…’ Richard could hear the discomfort in Sara’s voice. ‘Well, it can’t be easy for him, can it…? He’s always been used to having you at home and now here you are going off on conferences, making an independent life for yourself…’
‘Oh, Sara, no. I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Elizabeth answered. She said the words firmly enough, but Richard caught the note of uncertainty that underlay them and it hurt him.
He was proud of Elizabeth, proud of her and pleased for her, and if he had started to contrast the upswing in her career with the threatened downswing in his own it wasn’t because he was jealous of her. Surely she knew that, even if Sara didn’t?
He could hear Sara walking towards the half-open kitchen door, and quickly he stepped back from it. The last thing he wanted now was for his daughter to realise he had overheard what she had been saying.
He could tell that Elizabeth was surprised when he cut their visit short and said that he was tired.
* * *
‘You were very grumpy this afternoon. I think Sara was hurt by the way you behaved.’
Sara was hurt… Richard paused in the act of removing his shoes.
Elizabeth was already undressed and ready for bed. Unlike his, her hair was showing little signs of greying. Wrapped in a towel, with the light behind her as she padded round the bedroom, she looked almost as young as Sara.
She paused, bending to open the drawer and remove a clean nightdress.
‘Richard…’ He could hear the tension in her voice as she closed the drawer and then turned round. ‘This… this grumpiness… it isn’t anything to do with me, is it… with the fact that I…?’
Angrily Richard threw down the sock he had just removed.
‘With the fact that what? That you’re an up-and-coming successful career woman while I’m just an old has-been, fit for nothing other than being pensioned off?
‘What are you trying to ask me, Liz? If I’m jealous of you… Is that what you think?’
‘No, of course it isn’t.’ He could hear the shock in her voice. ‘Why on earth should I think anything like that?’ she asked him.
‘I overheard you and Sara talking in the kitchen,’ he told her flatly. ‘It’s almost a classic case history, isn’t it? Ageing husband’s jealousy of his dynamic independent wife, his fear that her independence will mean that he loses control of their relationship, his inevitable decline through anger to depression and then impotence as his wife’s power and authority rises. Odd, isn’t it, how sensitive a barometer a man’s sexual organs are of his sense of self-worth and his status in a relationship, in society itself?’
He felt the bed depress as Elizabeth sat down beside him. ‘Richard, what is it? I know you’re not jealous of me…’
‘Do you?’ He turned to look at her. ‘Liz, I heard the doubt in your voice this afternoon when you were talking to Sara…’
‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘but the doubt wasn’t because I thought she was right. I know she isn’t.’
‘Then what was it for…?’
‘Good old-fashioned female guilt,’ Elizabeth told him ruefully. ‘I know how worried you are about the new unit and part of me feels that I should be here beside you, worrying with you, just as part of me felt guilty because I couldn’t be with Sara twenty-four hours a day worrying alongside her when Katie was ill.
‘It’s one of the things that being a woman is all about… Our emotional barometer, if you like—the thing that tells us we can’t be truly a woman unless we’re “there” for people we love… unless we can somehow wave a magic wand and make life perfect for them, take away all their pain and anxiety; that’s how we judge whether or not we’re successful,’ she told him softly.
‘The doubt you heard was because I was asking myself how I could be a good wife and still go away knowing how much you were worrying… and knowing too that you didn’t want to share your worry with me…’
‘Because I didn’t want to spoil things for you. I know how much this conference means to you…’
‘So there is something else, apart from the unit?’ Elizabeth asked him quietly.
‘Yes,’ Richard admitted. He paused and then told her, ‘I think David is trying to get rid of me…’
‘Get rid of you? What do you mean? Sack you? But he can’t do that…’
‘No… not sack me. It’s no secret that he’s already got rid of most of the more senior men. I’m coming up to sixty…’
‘You’re fifty-five, that’s all,’ Elizabeth protested, ‘and they opted to take early retirement…’
‘Did they?’ Richard asked her wryly.
Elizabeth stared at him.
‘He’s beginning to make me doubt my own judgement, Liz… to make me wonder if perhaps I am getting past it. I keep telling myself that fifty-five is no age, that, when I first started out, a surgeon wasn’t considered to reach his peak until he was close to sixty; these days…
‘He wants me out, I know that… All this rubbish about budgets is just a smokescreen. And I don’t want to retire, Liz… I’m not ready for it. I don’t want to be ready for it. Oh, I know it’s always been there, an inevitable fact of life, but somehow it’s always been safely in the distance… something that happened to other people.
‘I don’t want to retire… don’t want to spend the rest of my life playing golf and reminiscing… waiting for death.’
‘Richard!’ Elizabeth protested.
‘Well, what else is it? Limitless free time… empty time with nothing to fill it. It’s a curse, not a gift. When I think of what it means, of what my life will be, I break out in a cold sweat. The thought of it fills me with panic and revulsion… I’m afraid of all that empty time…’
‘Why haven’t you said anything to me before…?’
He could hear the pain in her voice.
‘It’s never been an issue before… I didn’t even realise how I felt about it myself until David began to drop unsubtle hints about my age. I suppose I ignored it because I didn’t want to think about it.’
‘But it needn’t be the way you think,’ Elizabeth told him. ‘There are things you could do… consultancy work… part-time surgery… you heard what Ian was saying about them looking for a surgeon for the practice… Community work…’
‘Doing what? Pushing wheelchairs and then in turn being pushed in one myself? Oh, hell, Liz, I’m sorry,’ he apologised when he saw her face.
‘It’s all right,’ Elizabeth told him.
His retirement was something they had never really discussed; the years had rushed by so quickly since Sara had left school, their lives had become so busy, and, like him, if she was honest, she had somehow assumed that his retirement was something that was still far away in the future.
She knew how much his work meant to him, but the feelings he was expressing to her now, the sense of fear and emptiness… She discovered that for all her training she was at a loss to know what to say to him.
‘Do you know, I always used to feel sorry for men who dropped down dead in harness? The fatal heart attack, robbing them of their right to a well-earned retirement… Now I almost envy them…’
‘Richard!’
‘Oh, it’s all right… David Howarth, for all that he thinks he’s so damned powerful, can’t make me retire, not even if he does bring in these damned compulsory medicals…’
He saw the troubled look she was giving him.
‘But one day you will have to retire, Richard… You can’t…’ She stopped speaking.
‘I can’t what? Run away from the inevitable?’ He smiled grimly. ‘Do you think I don’t know that? I should be making plans, thinking constructively, addressing the issue positively and confronting its challenge… that’s what our new psychiatrist would undoubtedly tell me. My God… I’ve seen them up at the golf club, waiting to die, living on their memories.’