CHAPTER 45
The receptionist pleased me, because she wasn’t some dolly-bird but a woman in early middle age, with a little computer screen on her desk and a ready smile.

“Yes? How can I help?”

Valerie stepped past me. “Susie Lockwood to see Dr Hemmings”

“Oh yes. Please take a seat; Dr Hemmings is in consultation at the moment, but I have updated his agenda”

Susie must have caught something in my expression, and whispered “Computer, Gerald. There’ll be a screen or something in the doctor’s room, and a hot key to---you are glazing over! Look, let’s just say that she just has to push a button and it tells him we’re here, OK?”

There were very good reasons I left all that electronic stuff to her. The door opened after only ten minutes, and I realised, as nobody emerged apart from what was clearly Doctor Hemmings, that there must be a back way out. That impressed me, for it spoke about an ability to keep a confidence, a desire to protect the privacy of a client, and that was surely important for people like Susie.

Men and women like Susie. Women like Susie.

The doctor strode forward, hand out to Matthew, and in a gentler way he took Rodney’s hand before looking at me with a twinkle.

“Now, I do believe I actually recall this young chap from the recent unpleasantness. Red hair, not so?”

The usual howl from Matthew. “Just so, dear boy! Julian Hemmings, Gerald ‘Ginge’ Barker!”

He took my hand then, and something moved behind his eyes. “A true pleasure to see another comrade still upright after all these years. Now, I do believe you are not my concern here, my friend. Shall we all decamp to my consulting rooms?”

I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I wasn’t disappointed. A smaller room to one side held the usual examination bed, but the main room was equipped with armchairs of a particularly expensive-looking kind, as well as a desk with one of those computer screens on it. Susie had obviously been right.

“Good-oh. Be seated, all. Now… I will take some general information at first, but then I will ask most of you to depart. Emily will provide refreshments, but first, young lady, how comfortable are you speaking to me in a crowd?”

Susie looked round at each of us in turn, gave a little smile and shook her head as if to clear her thoughts of cobwebs.

“Doctor Hemmings, I have only known Matthew and Rodney a short time, but I see them with Gerald here, and well, happen this is family, if you take my meaning. Mam, obviously, but Gerald here is a lifesaver, and these two gentle men—aye, that’s how I meant it. Men, and gentle. No, no problems with family being here”

“Charmingly put, my dear. I shall require their absence at some point, for I shall need to examine you. Until that point…?”

Susie nodded, and he began.

“Young lady, and with no prejudice, I can see how new that is. Matthew has given me some background, so pray complete the picture for me”

Her mother reached for her hand, and Susie gave her a flash of a smile.

“I were christened Darren, but that were never me. I knew it was wrong, right from early years. I mean, I don’t mean I were that clear about it, it were just that I never felt right in my skin. Took a while to get it straight in my head, and then…”

She looked at her mother for encouragement and answers.

“Mam, remember when I were getting bashed all the time at school? They all said I were a puff?”

Valerie nodded. “You were in a real state some afternoons. Doctor? I wanted police called, but her Dad, like, just said he needed to grow up, be a man, like, fight back”

The doctor sighed. “Not the most useful of advice, my dear. And where is he now?”

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, years since, Doctor.”

“Young lady? Pray continue”

“Aye. It were one day, Ronny Taylor were having a go, him and his crowd, and he said something about being a big girl and, well, thought were just THERE, and I knew, like a flash bulb going off, that was what it was messing me up, and I looked past him, and there were girls and I realised it weren’t just GIRLS it were OTHER girls, and that were a mistake, for I stopped looking at Ronny so I couldn’t duck the punch”

Taylor, I thought, wondering if it was the same family. Seemed likely, given the behaviour.

“Susie, what were little bastard’s dad called?”

“Ben, I think. That were name of his big brother as well. Ronny’s brother, not his dad”

Matthew gave me a very sharp look. “Dear lady, I rather suspect Gerald here left the boy’s grandfather in some severe discomfort a little while ago. What a very small world we inhabit. Beg pardon, Julian”

“Not at all, dear boy. Now, my dear, following your revelation, did you act upon it? I should explain that there are a number of stages to the process we are embarking upon, and much of this discussion will be proper to Charles, but I must have a basis to work from”

Susie carried on with her story, and I found myself watching Valerie rather than her daughter as admissions emerged of dressing up in items borrowed from Valerie’s own wardrobe.

“So I got through college, got my certificates and everything, and then, well, I got job in furniture shop, still as Darren, aye? And I moved out, got my own room in city, and I thought, far enough from Mam, aye? And… and I had a friend, she were married but not that way, so she could get Pill on NHS…”

She dig out a hanky. “Soon as I changed my name, Mam blew her top. No, that’s how it was, Mam, and soon as I put on first skirt bastard landlord slung me out, and then furniture shop boss told me to fu—sacked me. I ended up at shop counter”

Valerie was crying now, openly, and Susie handed her a pack of tissues just before the doctor produced a box of full-size ones. My girl gave her mother another little smile.

“Took up with lass for a while, girl on the other bus, like”

Dr Hemmings made a little note. “A lesbian?”

“Aye. Carol were her name, and, well…”

She sat staring into the distance for a few seconds. “That didn’t work out. Didn’t end well. Then boss at new place got the hump, too many people reading me, like. Went from shop front to back office to shelf bloody stacking, that or dole, and… And I went home, and Mam had big problems with it all, and I grabbed her pills and ran off”

“Contraceptive pills?”

“No, Doctor. Valium. She were on them for a while when Dad, well, I knew where she kept them. And I got myself up as nicely as I could, and….”

She started sobbing then, and Valerie held her as the doctor went out for a few minutes, returning with a tray of tea. I was certain I had seen him wipe an eye as he left us/ Susie composed herself over her cup as the doctor waited quietly. Finally, he simple indicated the rest of us. Susie smiled.

“Family, doctor. Family. Anyway, where was I? Oh aye. I’d been to my own GP, like, and he were no help at all, looked at me as if I were something you’d flush down toilet, but he still says to me, nothing for people like me in City, and by ‘people’ he obviously meant another word, like ‘perverts’ or vermin or---”

“Slowly, now. I am not that doctor”

“Sorry. Anyway, all he could offer, if you can call it an offer, were to go down to London, and that were impossible, and, and then it were around Valentine’s, and with Carol, and, well… So as I said, I did myself up as nice as I could, best shoes, aye? And I went to nicest place I could think of, by Lendal Bridge, if you know it?”

“I am aware of it, yes. May I ask once more: do you wish to continue in private?”

“No thank you, Doctor. Anyway, by river, obvious what I were planning. Take as many of the little pills as I could stomach, get into water, well, stop pain”

“And what held you back?”

Susie looked at me for permission, and I nodded it back to her.

“It were Gerald here. He went into the water before me, and, well, we rode in ambulance together, and we had a bit of a chat and… Gerald, love, do you remember bit about rifles?

That brought my own smile back. “Good memory, lass. Doctor, I said about stacking rifles, how you need at least three otherwise they fall over. That were idea, that we would be there for each other”

“Are you there for her then, dear boy?”

Susie’s smile answered that question, and the Doctor nodded in satisfaction.

“I will assume therefore that suicidal ideation is no longer present. Ahem: that you see a life ahead of you, am I correct?”

“Absolutely. That’s what these men have done for me, Doctor. A future. It’s there, now”

“Fine. That is one major worry removed. Now, are you still self-medicating with contraceptives, and if so, have you brought me a sample? Good—thank you”

He glanced briefly at the blister pack she handed him and made a note.

“Might I ask that the others depart? I wish to make a physical examination, and it will of necessity be rather thorough. Oh, and I have asked Charles to stop by in an hour”

Matthew rose first.

“Thank you, dear boy. There is a case with Emily”

“My thanks, old man. Now, if you would be so kind?”

Emily did indeed have refreshments for us, and a room in which to consume them, and Susie was with us in twenty minutes before once more departing for an interview with yet another elderly man. I wondered how she was feeling, surrounded by white-haired pensioners rather than people of her own age, but Valerie was clearly in need of some support. Rodney was attentive, explaining that he had already arranged with his staff for a simple evening meal.

“I rather assumed that we would be in need of some comfort this evening, my friends, and therefore we shall have steak and kidney pudding with the usual accompaniments. A quiet evening, I would propose, one to allow us to digest what will most certainly have been rather a full day for our charge”

I couldn’t argue with that, and when she reappeared neither could Susie. We returned to Rodney’s ‘little place’ by black cab, and she sat in silence throughout the journey. It wasn’t until we had finished the rich gravy of our meal that she produced the long envelope from her handbag.

Charles had given his diagnosis, in a remarkably short time. We found a post office the next day, a photo booth inside it took our money and the application went off to the Passport Office that afternoon.