CHAPTER 64
I have never liked doctors. I don’t mean that I don’t like the people who do the job, as Julian and Charles clearly demonstrated. I just don’t like the places, the smells. That stay in hospital after I had met Susie had been more than enough to be going on with for a very long time.

I sat there, though, in a chair with a vinyl-covered cushion that slowly sagged when I sat on it as air escaped through small holes underneath. Typical of me: I find myself mentally taking things apart, seeing how they work or why they don’t, especially when I’m stressed.

I could see the resemblance in the face of the young girl on the desk, Andy’s nose a bit too strong for her, and she gave me a very steady look when I came in, followed by a gentle smile.

“Take a seat over there, Gerald. Watch the dot matrix for where you have to go”

“Eh?”

“Sign over door there. You’ll see your name and a room number”

I sat down where she’d indicated and tried to read an old copy of Country Life, but it didn’t settle me. Every thirty or forty seconds there would be a buzz, and the sign would change.

“Mr Gerrald Barker to room 11”

I rose, feeling my thighs damp from the plastic seat holding back my perspiration, and walked through the doors. An arrow: ‘Rooms 6-12’…

“Mr Barker?”

She was only young, blonde hair in a ponytail and a wedding ring on her left hand and an accent from the wrong side of the Pennines.

“I’m Doctor Wincer. Take a seat please”

Straight onto a computer screen no bundles of paper to riffle through.

“Ah. Yes. Gerald---you are OK with me calling you that? Yes? Fine. Gerald, how is your urination?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you peeing more often than you used to?”

“Suppose I am, just a little”

“Strong flow? Dribble? Finish and put it away, or have to give it a few seconds to have a second go?”

“Er, bit of all of that, really”

“Ah. Dribble and second go?”

“Aye. Just have to be patient, at my age”

“I’d like to examine you, if I may. Have you had a motion today? Passed a stool?”

“Do you mean number two?”

“Aye, had a dump this morning, emptied your bowels, sat on the doughnut in granny’s greenhouse?”

I realised I could get to like the girl.

“Aye. Always try to be regular in my habits”

“Good. I’d like to examine you, if I may. Nothing weird about this, it’s routine. Just a bit intimate”

I won’t describe what she did, but it was most definitely weird. She got rid of the gloves and washed her hands, and I was glad she hadn’t used the one with the engagement ring on next to the other one. She made a few notes on her computer record, then looked straight at me.

“Enlarged prostate, Gerald. Not hugely so, but it needs a proper look. I am also not too happy with a couple of other things. When you wipe, do you ever see blood?”

“Well, sometimes, but only when it’s a… when what I pass is a bit firm, and then it’s piles”

She muttered something under her breath about ‘Men!’ and turned back to her machinery.

“What I’d like you to do is have a proper examination, of your colon. That’s the large intestine”

I knew exactly what it was, and where, for I’d seen them in Normandy a lot, usually after an artillery stonk. Not now son.

“What does that involve?”

“We put a very fine cable up your back passage. It’s attached to a camera by fibre-optics, so we can have a look-see and check for any oddities there. What colour is the blood when you wipe? Red bright red that is, or deeper, like a ripe plum?”

“Fresh. Bright red. Why?”

“The other colour can sometimes indicate liver problems, among other things. Now BP and pulse…”

She did the stuff I was more used to, then tapped out some more stuff on her computer.

“The colonoscopy will need you to do a little preparation beforehand, which will take a few days”

“What sort of preparation?”

“Um… a strong laxative to clear you out. I’ll not fib, it’ll be messy. Now, I need some dates”

“For what?”

“For us to get you in and have a look up your bum to see if there’s anything nasty there. I’d want to see if I can get a can done, as well, and depending on that a biopsy”

She had another fiddle with her computer, and then started offering me some dates. They were all useless.

“Can’t do any of them. Busy time down yard, and my office manager is away for her own treatment. Might have time later in year”

She rolled her eyes. “Look, at your time of life this is important. We’ll write again, with some dates. I can’t make you take them, but I will be blunt: this is the sort of symptom that could indicate something very, very wrong. Soonest we catch it, soonest we can fix it. It might be note, but we don’t know that, CAN’T know that, without a look see”

She actually did say ‘note’, but I knew what she meant; I just nodded, and got out as soon as I could. I realised as I left that I had just promoted my girl, but in reality she had been doing that job for months.

August came round, and I seemed to have calmed Andrew down at least, for after my visit to the surgery he stopped nagging. I assumed I’d got away with it, but it was simply that his cousin had gone off on holiday.

Susie was packed well before her own appointment, and to my surprise, Pete stepped in again.

“Look, if I take the boy down early he can get used to the place, make it a bit of a home before the term starts”

“Pete, that’s over a month afterwards!”

“Yeah, but she won’t want to be traipsing round a station after, you know, surgery. Anyway, I’ll be driving back up, so I might as well”

We were having a Sunday dinner once more, all three lads joining us at Val’s instead of our usual trip out to the Ship, as it tended to get packed out in the height of the summer. Young Pete was grinning at the exchange.

“Look, gives me a chance to work out where all the best pubs are to get legless in, as well as the ones that don’t have steps”

I couldn’t quite decide if his humour was real or forced, but I went along with it as there was really no alternative.

“Pete, pal, it’s a long way from Brighton to Southampton! I can read a map, you know: one of the things they teach you when you do recon”

The big man just smiled. “It’s not a casual offer, Gerald. I think Susie’s going to want as comfortable a trip as she can get, and, well, seeing the lad off so soon after he’s come back is going to be hard on me. No, hush, son. I just want to make sure you’re fine down there, and I really would prefer company on the trip back. Ashley can handle the regular stuff while I’m gone”

Poor, lonely man. I could see his point, and realised that I was in the same boat. Our house—OUR house—had become a home once more, her presence and force of personality bringing back so much of the warmth my dead love had given to me. It would be hard without her, that was for sure.

Val reached across the table to take the older man’s hand.

“Thanks, love. We understand what you mean, and to be honest, I were dreading getting her back up by train”

She looked around the table at each of us.

“Done my own reading, about what it involves, what needs doing after, and it worries me. She’s going to be very uncomfortable after”

Susie held up a small bag. “Got my doughnut!”

Ever the soul and spirit of clever conversation, all I could come up with was “Eh?”

“Blow-up ring, but like kids use down swimming pool. Keeps new bits from, you know. All in info pack from hospital”

Too much information, and too close to that doctor’s question about granny’s greenhouse. In the end, of course, we accepted Pete’s offer, which was after all a two-way gift that meant he would have company to distract him from losing his boy yet again. The day came, I saw both girls off at the station, along with Andy, who was most definitely not treating Susie as anything other than a girl, and his girl at that. Their display was toe-curling, but in the end the station announcer warned the train was about to lock its doors.

“The couple by Costa Coffee need to uncouple before the train does. Last call for the 12:31 departure for London Kings Cross”