But it’s not so much that. To be honest with you, it’s the loneliness I’m dreading.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘I don’t suppose I should admit to that, should I? Very unmacho of me. We men are supposed to be tough guys who don’t admit to any kind of emotional vulnerability … until we’re somewhere like this. I don’t know how you nurses manage to put up with us. You can’t be left with a very high opinion of the male sex after you’ve heard us crying into our pillows.’
‘It isn’t always easy,’ Sally admitted. ‘It hurts seeing that someone’s in pain and that you know you can’t always do anything about it. Mind you, it’s nothing to what you hear down on the labour ward,’ she told him, trying to lighten his mood. ‘Of course it’s the men who get the worst of it down there. Woe betide any male nurse who tries to tell a woman in the middle of her contractions just to remember how to breathe and everything will be all right …’
‘Yes. I’ve always thought that, when it comes to bearing pain, women are far braver than men and far more stoical.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Sally told him with a grin. ‘I cursed Joel, my husband, to hell and back when I was having Cathy. I swore afterwards that nothing would ever make me go through anything like that again.’ She smiled reminiscently.
‘You’ve got two children, haven’t you?’ Kenneth asked her.
‘Yes. I would have liked another, but …’
She stopped, frowning. It wasn’t like her to confide so easily in anyone, especially a patient.
‘Have you any children?’ she asked him directly.
Although he had talked to her a lot during the months he had been in hospital, he had never mentioned any family.
‘Yes and no. My wife and I are divorced. She remarried and lives in Australia now.’ His expression changed. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t either a good husband or a good father. We married very young, straight out of university. Rebecca was pregnant at the time and she blamed me, quite rightly, I suppose, for the fact that her career was over before it had even started. A termination wasn’t an option in those days and neither really was single motherhood. James, our second son, was born following an ill-timed attempt at marital reconciliation. We separated before he was born. They—my sons—are adults now, and anyway they look on their stepfather as their father, and quite rightly, so it’s ridiculous of me to lie here feeling sorry for myself because I’m going home to an empty house when, in truth, it is empty through my own choice.’
‘Have you no one … no family or friend … who could come in and help you out for a few days?’ Sally asked him, concerned. He was making a good recovery from his injuries, much better in fact than anyone had believed when he had first been brought in, but it would still be several months before he was able to move about easily on his repaired leg, despite what the surgeon might have to say about his handiwork.
‘Not really …’ He shrugged his shoulders, powerfully muscled from the exercises the physio had been giving him. ‘My colleagues at the university have done more than enough already. I can hardly expect them to do any more. I suppose I’m lucky that I’m in a profession where this——’ he touched his injured leg ‘—hasn’t meant that I’ve lost my job. Lucky in fact still to have the leg,’ he added, his face suddenly grave.
‘Yes,’ Sally agreed simply.
When he had first been brought in there had been a danger that his left leg might have to be amputated, his injuries had been so severe.
‘You know, lying here these last few weeks has proved something of a double-edged sword. Once the immediate danger is over and you know you’re going to live, you find that you have time on your hands to think about all those things you’ve pushed into the deepest cupboards of your mind, all hidden safely out of sight and then avoided on the grounds that there simply isn’t time to deal with them,’ he told her sombrely. ‘Having a busy life is a wonderful excuse for not dealing with one’s deeper emotional problems, as I’ve discovered.
‘When my wife used to accuse me of being selfish, of living in my own world, I always felt she was being unfair. After all, I had stood by her, hadn’t I? I married her, provided a home for her and the family. It’s only while I’ve been lying here that I’ve come to realise what she meant … I was selfish.’ He paused, watching the effect his words were having on Sally, but her expression reassured him, the sympathy in her eyes encouraging him to go on.
‘I’m a very orderly man,’ he told her. ‘I like neatness and tidiness. It comes, I suspect, of being an only child. She was just the opposite, and when I complained about coming home to the disorder of a household containing a small child she would point out, quite rightly, that she simply didn’t have the time to do everything.
‘I suspect that part of my irritation stemmed from resentment of the fact that she put the baby’s needs before mine. I’ve always believed that she was the one who abandoned our marriage, who broke faith with it by having an affair with another man.’ He paused and gave Sally a painful look. ‘Oh, yes, she managed to find time for that. No doubt the appeal of spending time in bed with her lover was far greater than that of doing the housework …
‘I shouldn’t be criticising her though,’ he added, shaking his head. ‘I realise now that in many ways I had never properly committed myself to our marriage. The family was a duty, a responsibility I shouldered because it was the right thing to do and then, having been seen to do the right thing in the eyes of the world and publicly, I privately turned my back on them by giving to my work, and consequently to myself, my self-esteem, my ego, the time and attention I should have given them.
‘Will you think very badly of me if I tell you that there were many many nights when I deliberately made extra work for myself rather than go home; that I preferred the quiet calm of my work to the noisy, untidy chaos of our home?’
‘No,’ Sally told him honestly, shaking her head. How could she say anything else, when she too knew what it was like to dread returning home, even if it was for different reasons?
‘We should never have married, of course. We weren’t suited; we didn’t even really like one another. I was never the kind of man she wanted, as she proved when she left me. Her lover was all the things I wasn’t and am not …’
Sally made a soft, sympathetic sound that made him stop and smile ruefully at her.
‘Oh, I don’t envy him … in any way. His type of competitive macho sexuality has never been something I’ve wanted to emulate. There, now I really have revealed my inner self to you,’ he told her.
Sally flushed a little as she looked away from him. He was so very different from Joel—in every way. Joel would never talk to her as openly as Kenneth was doing, never discuss his innermost feelings with anyone, never reveal any aspect of himself which might show him in a bad light. Like the man Kenneth’s wife had left him for, Joel too possessed a competitive male sexuality.
Kenneth’s nature was kinder … warmer. A small shadow touched her face, and, seeing it, Kenneth told her gently, ‘You are all the things a woman should be, Sally. All the things any man could possibly want in a woman …’
Sally made a small protesting sound beneath her breath, but he heard it and shook his head.
‘No, it’s true. And so is something else.’ He turned his head and looked at her. ‘I’m going to miss you and our conversations very, very much indeed …’
