Douglas Kennedy - A Special Relationship

'No one would believe the "battered wife" thing anyway'.

'Why's that?'

'Because you're bigger than me'.

I managed a laugh, noting my husband's ability to divert me with humour whenever we veered into argumentative terrain, or when he sensed that I was becoming overly exercised about something. But though I was concerned about plenty right now, I was also too tired to start a recitation of everything that was worrying me - from my physical state, to the fear I had of losing the child, to how the Post would react to my extended medical absence, not to mention such trivial domestic details as the state of our half-finished house. Instead, a wave of exhaustion seized me - and I told Tony that I'd best surrender to sleep. He gave me a somewhat perfunctory kiss on the head and said he'd drop by tomorrow morning before work.

'Grab every book you can find', I said. 'It's going to be a long three weeks in here'.

Then I passed out for ten straight hours, waking just after dawn with that mixture of drowsy exultation and sheer amazement that I had slept so long. I got up. I wandered into the en suite bathroom. I glanced at the mangled face in the mirror. I felt something close to despair. I had a pee. The itching started again. I returned to my bed and called the nurse. She arrived and helped me pull up my nightgown, then painted my stomach with calamine lotion. I dropped two tabs of Piriton, and asked the nurse if it was possible to have a cup of tea and slice or two of toast.

'No problem', she said, heading off.

As I waited for breakfast to arrive, I stared out the window. No rain - but at 6.03 am, it was still pitch black. I suddenly found myself thinking how, try as we might, we never really have much control over the trajectory of our lives. We can delude ourselves into believing that we're the master captain, steering the course of our destiny... but the randomness of everything inevitably pushes us into places and situations where we never expect to find ourselves.

Like this one.

Tony arrived at nine that morning, bearing the morning papers, three books, and my laptop computer. We only had twenty minutes together, as he was rushing to get to the paper. Still, he was pleasant in a pressed-for-time way, and happily made no further mention of our little disagreement about the private room business yesterday. He sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand. He asked all the right questions about how I was feeling. He seemed pleased to see me. And when I implored him to keep the pressure on the builders and the decorators (as the last thing I wanted was to walk back into a construction site with a baby in my arms), he assured me that he would make certain they were all kept on task.

When he left, I felt a decided twinge of jealousy. He was heading out into the workaday world, whereas I had been barred from doing anything productive. Complete bed rest. No physical activity whatsoever. Nothing stressful to send my blood pressure into higher stratospheric levels. For the first time in my adult life, I had been confined to quarters. And I was already bored with my incarceration.

Still, I did have one crucial piece of business to get out of the way. So later that morning, I wrote an email to Thomas Richardson, the editor of the Post, explaining my medical situation, and how I would be out of action until the arrival of the baby. I also assured him that this was all due to circumstances beyond my control, that I would be back on the job as soon as my maternity leave was over, and that as someone who had spent all of her professional life chasing stories, I wasn't taking very well to being corralled in a hospital room.

I read through the email several times, making certain I had struck the right tone, emphasizing the fact that I wanted to return to work ASAP. I also enclosed the phone number of the hospital, in case he'd like to speak with me. After I dispatched this, I punched out a short message to Sandy, explaining that Murphy's Law had just been invoked on my pregnancy, and detailing the fun-filled events of the past forty-eight hours. I also gave her the number at the Mattingly. 'All phone calls gratefully accepted', I wrote, 'especially as I have been sentenced to three weeks on the bed!.

I pressed send. Three hours later, the phone rang and I found my sister on the other end of it.

'Good God', Sandy said, 'you really do know how to have a complicated life'.

'Believe me, this wasn't self-willed'.

'And you've also lost your famous sense of humour'.

'Now I wonder how that happened'.

'But don't mess around with this. Pre-eclampsia is serious stuff'.

'It's borderline pre-eclampsia'.

'It's still pretty dangerous. So you'd better stop playing Action Girl for the first time in your life, and listen to what the doctor tells you. How's Tony handling it?'

'Not badly'.

'Do I detect a note of uncertainty in your voice?'

'Perhaps. Then again, he is very busy'.

'By which you mean... ?'

'Nothing, nothing. I'm probably just overly sensitive to everything right now'.

'Try to take things easy, eh?'

'There's not a lot else I can do'.

Later that afternoon, I received a call from Thomas Richardson's secretary. She explained that he was away on business in New York for the next few days. But she had read him my email and he wanted me to know of his concern about my condition, and that I shouldn't think about anything right now except getting better. When I asked if I could speak to Mr Richardson personally after his return, she paused for a moment and said, 'I'm certain he'll be in touch'.

That comment bothered me all day. Later that evening, during Tony's visit, I asked him if he detected anything sinister behind her response. He said, 'You mean, why didn't she come straight out and say: "I know he wants to fire you"?'

'Something like that, yes'.

'Because he probably isn't planning to fire you'.

'But it was the way she said, "I'm certain he'll be in touch." She made it sound so damn ominous'.

'Didn't she also tell you that Richardson said you shouldn't think about anything else right now?'

'Yes, but...'

'Well, he's right. You shouldn't think about all that. Because it won't do you any good, and also because, even if something sinister is going on, there's nothing you can do about it'.

That was the truth of the matter. I could do absolutely nothing right now, except lie in bed and wait for the child to arrive. It was the most curious, absurd sensation - being shut away and forced to do damn all. I had spent my entire working life filling just about every hour of every day, never allowing myself extended periods of good old fashioned downtime, let alone a week or two of sheer unadulterated sloth. I always had to be active, always had to be accomplishing something - my workaholism underscored by a fear of slowing down, of losing momentum. It wasn't as if this desire to keep on the move was rooted in some psychobabbly need to dodge self-examination or run away from the real me. I just liked being busy. I thrived on a sense of purpose - of having a shape and an objective to the day.

But now, time had suddenly ballooned. Removed from all professional and domestic demands, each day in hospital seemed far too roomy for my liking. There were no deadlines to make, no appointments to keep. Instead, the first week crept into the next. There was a steady stream of books to read. I could catch up on four months of back issues of the New Yorker. And I quickly became addicted to Radios 3 and 4, listening avidly to programmes that grappled with obscure gardening questions, or presented a witty and informed discussion of every available version of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony. There was a daily phone call from Sandy. Margaret - bless her - managed to make it down to the hospital four times a week. And Tony did come to see me every evening. His post-work arrival was one of the highlights of my otherwise prosaic hospital day. He'd always try to spend an hour - but often had to dash back to the office or head off for some professional dinner thing. If he didn't seem otherwise preoccupied, he was amusing and reasonably affectionate. I knew that the guy was under a lot of pressure at the paper. And I knew that getting from Wapping to Fulham chewed up an hour of his time. And though he wouldn't articulate this fact, I sensed that he was silently wondering what the hell he had landed himself in - how, in less than a year, his once autonomous life as a foreign correspondent had been transformed into one brimming with the same sort of workaday and domestic concerns that characterized most people's lives. But he wanted this, right? He was the one who made all the convincing arguments about coming to London and setting up house together. And after my initial doubts, I fully embraced those arguments. Because I wanted to.