LITMIR.BIZ

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saw Sir Arthur yesterday,’ Elizabeth told him now.

      Sir Arthur Lawrence was the chairman of the hospital board, an ex-army major, rigidly old-fashioned in his views and outlook, with whom Richard had had so many clashes over the years.

      ‘Oh, did you? What did he have to say for himself? More complaints about overspending on budgets, I suppose,’ Richard grunted.

      Elizabeth laughed. ‘No, as a matter of fact he was very complimentary, praising you for all the work you’ve done to help raise money for the new Fast Response Accident Unit.’

      Richard grunted again. ‘You should have told him not to count his chickens. We need government funding if we’re to go ahead with it, and we haven’t heard that we’re going to get it yet. The Northern is putting up a pretty good counter-claim to ours. They maintain that they’re closer to a wider range of motorway systems than we are …’

      ‘And we’re closer to the centre of the region and we have better access to the motorway,’ Elizabeth reminded him. ‘And you’ve got a much better recovery record.’

      ‘Mmm … well, that’s no thanks to Sir Arthur; you should have heard the objections he raised when we opened our recovery ward …’

      ‘Admit it, you enjoy fighting with him.’ Elizabeth laughed.

      Richard pulled a face. ‘He’s twenty years behind the times … more … Hell, is that the time? I’ve got to go. You’re at home today, aren’t you?’

      ‘Yes. I thought I might drive over and see Sara. She sounded a bit down when I spoke to her yesterday.’

      ‘Yes, it’s no picnic being a GP’s wife—nor being a GP, either.’ Richard kissed her, smiling at her as he suggested, ‘Why don’t we go out for dinner together tonight … Mario’s? Just the two of us,’ he added.

      ‘Just the two of us,’ Elizabeth responded, emphasising the ‘just’. ‘Mmm … that would be lovely.’

      ‘I’ll get Kelly to book us a table,’ he promised her as he picked up his briefcase and headed for the door.

      After he had gone, Elizabeth made herself a fresh cup of coffee and picked up a buff folder from the dresser. The dresser had been an antiques fair find, which she and Richard had stripped of its old paint, a long and laborious job which she suspected had cost far more in terms of their time and paint-stripper than had she bought the ready-stripped, polished version from an antique shop.

      There was a sense of satisfaction in having done the work themselves, though, and she had enjoyed those hours in Richard’s company. They had reminded her of the early days of their marriage, when it hadn’t seemed so unusual to see him wearing old clothes and getting dirty. ‘You’re so lucky, you and Richard,’ her friends often told her enviously. But their marriage had suffered its ups and downs just like any other. Where they had been lucky perhaps had been in that both of them shared the same deep commitment to their relationship, so that, at times when both of them might have viewed their individual roles within it from opposing and conflicting viewpoints, their joint desire to keep their marriage alive and functioning had continued to survive.

      She had not always experienced the same contentment in their relationship, the same pleasure in being herself as she did now, Elizabeth admitted. There had been times, when Sara was young, when she had felt Richard growing away from her … when she had felt threatened by and resentful of not just the claims of his work but his evident involvement with it.

      It had been an article in the local newspaper absently flicked through in the hairdressers which had initially sparked off her interest in community work. With a twenty-year-old degree and no professional skills whatsoever, she had humbly approached the local community liaison officer, explaining that she would like to give her services and that she had time on her hands with her daughter living away from home, but that she had no skills she could put to use.

      ‘No skills?’ the other woman had queried. ‘You run a home, you’ve brought up a family, you drive a car. Don’t worry, we’ll soon find something for you to do!’ And so they had.

      Elizabeth smiled to herself now, remembering how terrified she had been that first day, manning the reception desk at the Citizens Advice Bureau, and then six months later when she had been asked if she would like to train as a counsellor. She had protested that she was not experienced enough to give advice to others, that her life, her relationships were very far from perfect, and certainly did not justify her handing out advice to others.

      ‘The more problems our counsellors have faced in their own lives, the better they are at listening compassionately to the problems of others,’ she had been told crisply.

      She sat down and opened the folder.

      She had recently attended a national conference on the effects of long-term unemployment and redundancy on people. She frowned as she read through the notes she had made. They were certainly getting an increased number of people coming to them for advice on how to cope with their unemployment—women in the main, anxious not just about the loss of income but the effects of their husband’s redundancy and consequent loss of self-esteem on the men emotionally, and on the family as well.

      If the gossip going round following Andrew Ryecart’s suicide was correct in suggesting that it had been caused by financial problems with Kilcoyne’s, it seemed likely that the town would soon have more men out of work. The company was one of the town’s main employers, one of the last light engineering companies left in the area. There would be no alternative jobs for people to go to.

      Elizabeth nibbled the end of her pen. She had suggested at last week’s general staff meeting that it might be an idea to put together a special package formulated specifically to help such cases. People were individuals, of course, with individual problems, but …

      ‘It’s a good idea,’ her boss had agreed. ‘But we simply can’t spare anyone to work on it at the moment, unless …’

      ‘Unless I do it at home in my spare time,’ Elizabeth had offered wryly.

      ‘I’m sorry, Elizabeth,’ her boss had apologised. ‘But you know how things are: we’re all suffering cutbacks and underfunding, just like everyone else.’

      That was true enough. Richard had been complaining that the hospital now seemed to employ more accountants to watch over its budgets than they did nurses to watch over its patients.

      ‘Richard, have you got a minute?’

      Richard paused, frowning as he glanced at his watch.

      ‘Barely,’ he told the hospital’s chief executive. ‘My clinic starts in half an hour and I’ve got a couple of phone calls I need to make first.’

      ‘I really do need to talk to you, Richard,’ the other man insisted. ‘We’ve got a committee meeting coming up soon and we still have to go through your budgets.’

      Richard grimaced, suppressing his instinctive response, which was to say that he was a surgeon, not an accountant. It was pointless losing his temper with Brian; he was just as much a victim of the financial cuts being imposed on them as he himself was.

      ‘Look, let’s go into my office,’ Brian suggested, taking advantage of his silence.

      Irritably Richard followed him, shaking his head when Brian offered him coffee. ‘No, I forgot for a moment—you’re a tea man, aren’t you?’

      ‘I drank too much coffee when I was a student and a young intern,’ Richard told him. ‘They talk about working long hours now, but when I first qualified … Still, we didn’t have the same pressures on us then that they do now, nor the huge diversity of skills and facts to learn. These days there seems to be a new drug on the market every day and a new set of complications to go with it, never mind all the new operating techniques, and then of course there’s the paperwork …’

      Brian Simmonds watched him sympathetically. He had remarked at last month’s meeting to the new area

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