CHAPTER 49
“Good morning, Mr Hemming’s office, Julia speaking. How may I help you?”

“Um, my name is Debbie Wells. I was down for an assessment with Mr Hemmings about some surgery”

“Thank you. May I take your date of birth and postcode?”

I rattled them off.

“One moment… Here we are. I have your details now, Ms Wells. How may we help?”

“It’s, well, it’s not me. I’m down to have some work done by Mr Hemmings, and… And I don’t know if he can help, but Mam’s got a tumour, and the NHS say they can’t do anything, and if I cancel my op I’ll have money, and if Mr Hemmings can do Mam, I don’t care about me, and…”

I ran out of steam but not out of tears, as ‘Julia’ waited in silence. When all I had were occasional strangled sobs, she spoke again.

“Ms Wells, please give me your telephone number. I have it on file, but I want to be sure it is the number you are on now. If you have a friend nearby, call them to sit with you, then hang up. Make some tea, or whatever you prefer. I am going to speak to Mr Hemmings and then one of us will call you back. We will be no longer than ten minutes. Can you do that for me?”

“Not the friends bit, but yeah. Can he do anything?”

“Ms Wells, Debbie, I am a receptionist, as well as a nurse. It will be up to Mr Hemmings to say whether or not he can help, but I know him rather well. If he can, he will. Now, cup of tea, whatever, and wait for us to call you back. Will you be OK doing that?”

“Don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Keep that spirit, Debbie. In ten minutes, OK?”

“OK”

The phone clicked as she hung up, and I looked at the crate of beer I could see through the kitchen door. No. Clear head.

Those words started me off again, and I almost missed the phone as it rang only six minutes later.

“Is that Debbie?”

“Yes”

“Charles Hemmings here. How are you, my dear”

“fucking… sorry, Mr Hemmings. I am devastated. No bloody idea what to do”

“Take your time, take it as slowly as you need, and talk me through things. Please. My partner is handling my appointments for now”

I drew in a slow breath, trying to control the shuddering.

“It’s Mam. My adoptive mother, yeah? Been having a few issues, body memory stuff, and so I made her go to the hospital. They’ve got one of those new scanner things. Doctor says it saves her from getting too many X-rays and stuff, and is a lot quicker than the old way, so they get a diagnosis a lot quicker and that”

“I know all about those devices, Debbie. Please. Take your time, but I need some detail beyond the machinery used.”

I lost it again for a few seconds, but he was patient.

“The NHS man said it was a ‘disagreeable little bastard’. It’s a tumour, it’s in too deep to cut out, and he thinks it’s spread. Mam used some word that sounded like ‘metastudies’ or something”

“Metastasised. What is your mother’s background, Debbie?”

“She was a nurse, Mr Hemmings. Psych ward”

“Ah. She will therefore be very aware of the implications. Now, could she travel to my rooms here? In London?”

I stammered something out, and heard him sigh.

“Debbie, I am not a mercenary. I chose my profession… I followed my conscience in my choice of profession because I wish to heal. This is not a time to discuss money. I have an agreement with Bart’s for radiography, and I would like to have them examine your mother using similar devices to those already in play. The reason for this is that I would like them to check for any metastasis, as feared. I need to know all potential problems before I can decide on the viability of surgery or of any other therapies such as radio or chemo. Do not give up hope, my dear”

Slow and deep, girl; breathe slowly and deeply.

“Can you give me any idea of costs, Mr Hemmings?”

“Travel and subsistence, Debbie”

“Pardon?”

“Rail fare and any hotel costs. I will not be charging a fee. The NHS will be offering their services, but I will be carrying out the work. See it as a charitable contribution, see it as part of that sense of vocation I mentioned. See it however you wish, or that makes sense to you”

He sighed, before continuing.

“Debbie, I have indicated previously that I have witnessed events and seen things that encourage me in my wish to improve the world I inhabit. My work is infrequent enough in terms of actual surgeries that I have windows in my schedule. I can arrange my paying work around any necessary work for your mother, and that is the end of that discussion. Speak to your mother, and speak to Julia here. I need two appointments from you”

“Two?”

“Yes. One for your mother to spend a few days in London while we assess—while I and my colleagues at Bart’s assess the problem. The second is to confirm a date for your own adjustments”

“But I thought…”

“You assumed you would need to cancel such work as the money would be needed for your mother? That thought does you credit, Debbie, but such is not necessary. I will see you here for your own work whatever happens. Do we have an agreement?”

“Yes…”

“Good. I will hand you back to Julia now. Please give my best wishes to your mother, and explain what we shall need. I will need to add a caveat, though: I can make no promise other than that I will do my utmost”

“Thank you, Mr Hemmings”

“Not at all. It is merely the performance of a doctor’s duty. I shall transfer you back to my young lady”

I ended up with an appointment for my own surgery in four months’ time, which was something that left me so confused I was almost unable to function. Could I go through with something so trivial when Mam was under a death sentence? I talked it over with them next time they rang. Dad seemed slightly unsure.

“I don’t get why he doesn’t want a load of money, duck. What’s he not saying?”

In a moment of insight, I saw the depth of Dad’s inbuilt suspicion of ‘straights’. The answer was obvious.

“Dad. You and Mam, when you took me in, yeah? You did it because it was the right thing to do, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah! Wouldn’t have been right to leave you like that, would it?”

“Course not. What it is, I think Mr Hemmings is like that. He sees the right thing to do, and he tries to do it”

Another rush of understanding hit me.

“Dad?”

“Aye, duck?”

“I don’t know if I’m right, but, well, I wonder if he’s trying to make up for something. What is it they call that? Atonement?”

“Aye… Could be right. Especially if he was in that place your Mam and me told you about”

“Why, Dad? That was the bloody Nazis’ fault, not his, if he went in when it was captured!”

There was a long pause from him, and when he spoke again, he was a lot softer in his tone.

“Carol will have told you where Mam worked, when me and her met, duck. I know Loz has said a few words about it, so I’m not going into any details, none at all. It’s just, well, sometimes something happens, and you can be there when it does, or a bit after, and you see the shit that’s left, and al the damage, and you know it’s not your fault, and some folk, they see no more than that. Not me, I wasn’t there, all down to that lot on the other side, or whatever.

“Some people, though, they look at the crap, and they say, that was a bad thing, and they decide they’ll do their best to try and stop it ever happening again. Can’t fault that, duck, not like the first lot of handwashers, all turned away, all ‘long way away and people I didn’t know’. But there’s more…

“Sometimes, when the bad shit happens, if you’re there at the time, or a little bit later, and you see the results, and you say ‘never fucking again’, and you make all those promises to yourself and your mates, sometimes there’s more. Sometimes there’s guilt”

“Dad, why guilt? I mean, sticking to that Belsen place, that was all the Nazis, not Mr Hemmings and his mates. Why feel guilty?”

Another long, deep sigh.

“That’s the thing, duck. Nazis aren’t some odd orc or Nazgul thing. People who did the things I saw were just that: people. Nazis were, are people. All that shit, all that evil, it was carried out by people. If you care about others, if you see them as being like you, then you can’t turn round and say some of those others aren’t, you know, just as much kin as the ones you like. Tempting though it is, it would be like those Tory bastards who want lads locked up forever, key thrown away and all that, instead of looking at why they broke whatever law it is they broke. No. Sometimes, you look at shit, like I said, and you say to yourself ‘People did that’, and that’s when you get the guilt”

“What was it for you, Dad?”

“No, Debbie, Just no. Now, what are we going to do about a hotel and stuff in that London?”