The Village Doctor's Marriage

by Abigail Gordon

  ‘I accepted you back because of the practice. It was a case of working with a stranger or an estranged husband.’

  ‘And you saw me as the lesser of two evils?’

  ‘Mmm. Possibly.’

  She sounded totally disinterested and his heart sank, but as a warm sun shone down on them and friends and acquaintances stopped to have a peep at the baby and shake hands with him, he put the uncertainties of the future to the back of his mind.

  When they’d eaten the fish and chips and Sallie had bathed and fed Liam and settled him down for the night, Steve disappeared into the spare room.

  He needed time to unwind, he told himself. How could he have let the opportunity pass to tell Sallie that she was the reason he’d come back? That there was no other. That he’d ached to see her again so much there had been times when he’d actually set off to drive back to the place where he’d left his reason for living, but each time his stupid pride had made him turn back.

  Leaving her was the cruellest, most irrational thing he’d ever done, and he’d told himself a thousand times that he deserved the misery it had brought him. And that was how it had been until one day an acquaintance had told him that Colin Carstairs had been trying to get in touch with him and he’d gone cold with dread.

  There had to be something wrong with Sallie, he’d thought. Colin wouldn’t be looking for him otherwise, and even as he’d thought it he’d been pointing the car towards Cheshire. It had never occurred to him that it might be connected with the practice and when he’d discovered that it had been, he’d grasped the chance to be near her with both hands.

  That had sorted out his working life. When it came to his marriage it was another matter. He might be back under his own roof, but he wasn’t back in his own bed, or likely to be in the near future, and yet he’d had a chance to do something about it as they’d walked through the village. But because he was afraid to take any chances with the frail bond that was forming between them, he’d let Sallie think that he’d come back just for the job.

  As he gazed sombrely out of the window he saw that the garden at the back of the surgery was full of weeds. In that other life he had grown vegetables there, and as he observed the unkempt plot he was glad in a strange sort of way. Tidying it up would give him something to do in the evenings instead of being in Sallie’s space. On impulse he changed into a pair of old jeans and went down there.

  He stayed out until the sun went down and as he put the spade away and turned to go back inside she was there behind him, and he almost knocked her over. He reached out to steady her and as his hand gripped her bare arm she became still in his grasp.

  It was the first time they’d touched in three years and he had to be holding her with a grimy paw, he thought miserably, and released his grip.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said flatly. ‘I didn’t know you were there.’

  She smiled and, trying to keep her voice steady, asked, ‘Are you ready for a coffee?’

  Still shaken by the contact, he nodded. ‘Yes, please. I’ll be up as soon as I’ve changed my shoes and got cleaned up.’

  There was silence as they sat in the sitting room with their coffee-cups a few minutes later and Steve wondered if that brief unromantic moment had affected Sallie as much as it had him.

  It appeared not, as she looked up suddenly and, breaking into the silence, said, ‘Laundry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to put the washing-machine on. Can I have your laundry?’

  ‘Er…yes,’ he said woodenly. ‘I’ll go and get it.’ So much for imagining that she’d been as aware of him as he’d been of her. But, then, he was forgetting his place.

  Nothing had been said about him being back in the apartment for good. Sallie might be expecting it to be a temporary thing, for all he knew.

  When he’d finished his coffee and produced the washing that she’d asked for, he said, ‘I’m off to bed, Sal. It’s been a long day, stepping into Colin’s shoes in the practice that I used to know so well and renewing my acquaintance with the villagers.’ He didn’t think it wise to mention that the most stressful part had been being so close to her physically but so far away mentally.

  He paused outside the door of the spare room. ‘Shall I get breakfast in the morning?’

  She shrugged. ‘Whichever of us is up first can get it started. I’m usually on the go about six.’

  He nodded and, feeling that she saw him more as an encumbrance than someone to assist, told her, ‘Fine. We’ll take it as it comes, then.’

  She’d watched him digging from the window and been stunned. Was there no end to this strange day? She’d thought. Steve hadn’t been back five minutes and he was attacking the wilderness down below. Maybe he’d had enough of the chill she was giving off and, momentarily repentant, she’d gone down to ask if he would like a drink.

  When he’d grabbed her arm she’d wished she’d stayed inside. Touching wasn’t in the deal as far as she was concerned. Yet when he’d apologised she’d felt like weeping, as he’d merely been trying to stop her from falling.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE feeling of being an encumbrance was still there when Steve heard the baby crying in the middle of the night. It wasn’t his normal lusty howl. It was a fretful cry and his first instinct was to leap out of bed and go to Liam, but would Sallie want him interfering?

  He groaned. If it had been the old days, he would have already been there, not across the hall. At that moment the door flew open and Sallie was there, with Liam in her arms.

  ‘Steve! Are you awake?’ she cried. ‘Liam has just brought up his feed. He’s been sick all over the cot, himself and me.’

  He was beside her in a flash, taking the fretful infant from her and cradling him to his chest. ‘He feels as if he has a slight temperature, but that will probably disappear once his tummy settles down,’ he told her.

  She looked at Liam anxiously, ‘Do you think he’s sickening for something?’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll have to keep an eye on him. He’s calm enough now and ready to go back to sleep, but first he needs changing. Find me some clean clothes and I’ll wash and change him while you attend to yourself. Once you’re out of the shower you can hold him while I strip the bedding off the cot.’

  Steve was sitting by the bed, gently rocking the baby in his arms, when Sallie came out of the shower with a towelling robe fastened tightly around her and she felt tears prick. If he was like this with someone else’s child, how would he have been with their own? she thought. And almost as if he’d read her mind, he looked up but didn’t comment.

  She looked scrubbed and clean, he was thinking, but why had she got the robe fastened so tightly? Was it because she was aware of the countless times he’d held what was beneath it?

  ‘I’m so thankful that you were here,’ she told him as she looked down at the now sleeping child. ‘Those are the kind of moments when a helping hand makes all the difference.’

  ‘It’s nice to know that you haven’t written me off entirely,’ he said with a quirky smile, and saw her expression change.

  ‘I was the one who was written off, Steve,’ she said quietly. ‘I adored you, loved you more than life itself. When you went, you took away my reason for living. For months, years I went through the motions, attending my patients and then coming home to this place where every inch of it reminded me of you.’

  ‘I knew how much you were hurting, but so was I. Each day it became clearer that having only me wasn’t enough for you. You couldn’t just be grateful that Tom Cavanagh had made you well again. You had to have the full package, and when it wasn’t available you gave up on us.’

  Still holding Liam close, he got to his feet. ‘Don’t you think I know that? It’s what I’ve had to live with for the past three years.’ He held the baby out to her. ‘Here, take Liam while I change the cot.’

  When that was done he said, ‘You know where I am if you need me again.’ And immediately thought it had been a tactless thing
to say when there had been such a long time when she hadn’t had the slightest idea where he was. ‘So goodnight. I’ll see you both in the morning, and, Sallie, if I said I was sorry a thousand times, it wouldn’t be enough to cover my regrets. My only excuse is that I was in total despair and couldn’t face your kindness any more.’

  As the door closed behind him she groaned. Every word of what she’d said had been true, but she’d missed out one thing. She hadn’t told him that under her pillow was a shirt that he’d worn the day before he’d left. There’d been the smell of him on it, and ever since she’d held it while she slept. It was fortunate that he had left her to change her own bed or he might have seen it, and what would he have made of that?

  As she emptied the washing-machine and filled it again with the soiled linen and nightwear, she was thinking that the difference in their characters had been what had attracted them to each other in the beginning, and in the end it was what had driven them apart.

  In the traumatic summer of three years ago he had soon recovered physically from the operation, but mentally there had been scars that were not healing. His moods had alternated from brisk normality to being totally unapproachable. Loving him as she did, Sallie had understood, but had still felt bound to remind him that Tom Cavanagh had said there was no reason why he shouldn’t father children. That his other testicle was perfectly healthy.

  But as time had gone by and no babies had come along, with Sallie menstruating on the dot and Steve always as prickly as a hedgehog, she had begun to feel the strain. It had all come to a head on a dark winter’s day when he’d said that if she’d agreed to them trying for a family when he’d first suggested it, they might have had a child by then.

  ‘How dare you switch the blame onto me?’ she’d cried. ‘There’s nothing to say I would have become pregnant if I’d done as you asked. No one is to blame, and just in case you’re so wrapped up in your own self-pity that you can’t think of anything else, there are lots of couples in our situation.’

  ‘I was merely making a comment,’ he’d said tightly. ‘We both know who’s to blame, me, because I no longer have the full equipment. You’d be better off without me. So I’ll do you a favour.’ And as she’d watched aghast he’d slammed into the bedroom, packed a case, grabbed his car keys and had been behind the wheel of his car before she’d gathered her wits.

  She’d run out to try and reason with him but it had been no use and even as she’d pleaded with him, he had driven away into the night and out of her life.

  When Sallie woke up the next morning after Liam’s stomach upset she was aware of a shadow blotting out the light, and when she raised herself drowsily onto one elbow she saw that Steve was standing beside Liam’s cot, looking down at him.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, relieved that the shirt was nowhere on view.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘I was just checking on Liam. He’s still asleep and looks fine. I knocked on the door and when you didn’t answer I thought you might have overslept after his little upset.’

  She lay back on the pillows and looked up at him, with the events of the middle of the night crystal clear in her mind. It had been the old Steve who had helped her with Liam, brisk, businesslike and caring. Yet no sooner had she thanked him than she’d given him an angry version of her side of the break-up, without any reference to the misery he had endured during those long childless months after the operation. And now he was reduced to knocking on her bedroom door.

  She wasn’t to know that Liam wasn’t the only one he’d been looking at. He had also been observing his wife, her cheeks flushed with sleep, hair splayed out across the pillow, the globes of her breasts rising and falling inside a thin cotton nightdress. He had told himself that he must have been out of his mind to have left her. But he’d been so full of hurt and anger because he’d been unable to give her a child that there had been no reason in him.

  ‘Take your time,’ he told her. ‘It’s only a quarter to six. I’ve made some tea. Do you want a cup?’

  ‘Yes, please, but, Steve, before you go, thanks for sorting out the mess that Liam and I were in.’

  He flinched. If only Sal could hear herself, he was thinking. It was as if she was talking to a stranger. But, then, maybe that was what she saw him as now. He bent and perched on the side of the bed and she inched away.

  ‘You don’t need to worry,’ he told her. ‘I’m not going to come on to you while things are how they are between us. If ever that happens again, it will be because you tell me you want me to.’

  He was getting to his feet again and before she could reply he went into the kitchen and came back seconds later with the mug of tea. At that moment Liam awoke and lay smiling up at him.

  ‘You do well to smile, young man,’ he told him gently. ‘Who was it that had us up and about when all decent folk should be asleep?’ He lifted him out of the cot and held him close. ‘You don’t care, do you? All you are bothered about is a dry bottom and a full stomach.’

  Liam’s bottom lip was beginning to droop. He was about to start grizzling and they both knew why. The stomach in question was empty after the night’s events.

  ‘Shall I change him while you see to his breakfast?’ Steve questioned.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, and you don’t need to keep asking if it’s all right. I’m grateful for your help.’

  He smiled. ‘Having Liam around is a bonus. The last thing I expected was the two of us being involved in this sort of thing when I came back. Is he all right for clothes?’

  ‘Those that Melanie left are getting a bit small,’ she told him.

  ‘So why don’t we go shopping at the weekend?’

  It was Sallie’s birthday the following week and he knew he was going to have to tread carefully. Maybe if they went into the town together, he might see something to match up with what he’d brought with him.

  She hadn’t said yes to his suggestion of going shopping for Liam, but neither had she said no, so he would bide his time. If there was one thing his lonely exile had taught him, it was patience.

  His first patient on that second day was Jack Leminson, the builder who did most of the repairs in the village and rarely had cause to step over the threshold of the surgery. But today it was a different matter. He was pale and drawn and when asked what the problem was said, ‘I’ve got the most awful pain in my loin, Doctor. My mates at the pub have been telling me it’ll be a kidney stone, but where would that have come from, and if it is, how do I get rid of it?’

  ‘So why come to me if you’ve already been told what’s wrong with you?’ Steve said dryly.

  Jack managed a weak smile. ‘They were only guessing.’

  ‘They might have been right, but I prefer to have some evidence before we start making guesses. If you’d like to go to the nurses’ room, they’ll give you a container for a urine sample and once that’s sorted we’ll send it off for analysis.’

  When the patient returned, he confirmed to Steve that he’d had trouble passing urine.

  ‘So, what’s wrong with me?’

  ‘There are signs that it is a kidney stone, Jack, but it could also be an infection.’

  ‘But why? I’ve never had anything wrong with my kidneys.’

  ‘Maybe not, but kidney stones can be caused by extreme dehydration. Have you been perspiring a lot lately? Not drinking enough perhaps?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Jack thought for a moment! ‘I’ve been working near a boiler house in a factory and it’s been roasting. I’ve been like a grease spot.’

  Steve nodded. ‘I’m going to refer you to hospital for X-rays and you may need specialist treatment. In the meantime I’m going to give you some painkillers. Go home to bed, take the tablets as prescribed, and get plenty of liquids down you.’

  ‘It’s the pain I want to see the end of as much as the stone,’ Jack said, wincing as another spasm gripped him. ‘Those at home won’t believe it when they see me in bed. I’ve never had a day off work in my life.’


  ‘So you’ve earned one,’ Steve told him. ‘Go and make the most of it. By the way, how’s business.’

  Jack smiled. ‘Not bad, not bad at all. I’ve been doing mostly new properties of late. The factory job was a one-off. And speaking of new properties, would you happen to know anybody who’d be interested in buying a piece of land with planning permission to build a detached house on it?’

  ‘Er…I might. Who does it belong to?’

  ‘Me. It was my father’s and he never did anything with it.’

  “Where is it?’

  ‘On Bluebell Lane by the riverbank.’

  At that moment Steve knew he didn’t want Sallie and himself to live in the apartment for any longer than they had to. It might be convenient, being above the surgery, but the place that Jack was talking about was only a couple of minutes’ walk away. Yet he would be taking a huge risk if he bought the land and had a dream house built on it. Would she see it as a bribe, a peace offering or the fresh start that they both needed?

  ‘I could be interested,’ he told the builder, and for a moment Jack forgot the pain.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said in surprise. ‘It’s a gem of a spot. Have a walk down there and see for yourself. I could build you something really special on it.’ As another stab of pain reminded him of why he was there he added, ‘But I’ll have to go home to bed. Keen as I am to make a living, I’m in no fit state at the moment.’

  ‘There’s no rush,’ Steve told him. ‘I’ll go and have a look at it and get back to you. Is there a for-sale sign on the land?’

  ‘Yes. You can’t miss it.’

  ‘Fine. So don’t sell it to anyone else until I’ve viewed it.’

  ‘I won’t. I promise.’

  The thought of building a new home hadn’t occurred to him until the builder had asked if he knew anyone who wanted to buy a plot of land, and immediately he’d seen the merits of the idea. What Sallie would think about it he didn’t know, but the more he thought about it, the more it appealed to him.