CHAPTER 72
That was a profoundly different experience to our earlier trip, and not just because the only real comrade I had with me on the second visit was Ernie. There was far more ceremony for starters, the two mayors seemingly trying to outdo each other in matters of sash and chain, and we were almost marched down the main street behind a brass band apparently made up of firemen. I didn’t think there were actually that many people in the village.

It was still a sweet moment, though, when we met new friends who were already old ones, and we got fed properly again, with an endless series of toasts. There was a plaque to be uncovered, some sort of town-twinning affair, and to be honest it all flew past me as the wine and beer were poured, and poured again. The filming, though: that hit home.

It wasn’t a bad morning, a lark singing through my hangover and wrens shouting in the hedgerows under what Susie had once told me were called ‘fair weather cumulus’, fluffy white clouds with flat bottoms sending shadows scudding over the land in the light breeze. The BBC had found a couple of odd vehicles for us, little eight-wheel things that looked like a cross between what Ian called a shuggy boat, a plastic kid’s toy car and a miniature DUKW. I was actually grateful for it, because the thought of trekking over the hills around our little ambush point was almost too much for me. They drove us up to the top of the little hill we had worked out THAT shot had come from, and Rom let us speak.

It an odd feeling, unlike the day in the studio, because we were standing out in the open, the camera and sound people all around us, and we had to try and make it sound natural. It was Chalky, in the end, who got it going properly.

“Down South it was all hills, Gerald. The Argies had them, we had to take them. Surprised your Ruperts didn’t have this one occupied”

Ian was shaking his head. “No, not here. Look at the line of the ridge. Jerry comes rolling along there in strength, anyone sat here would have to scarper downhill sharpish. Easy targets. Gerald, is that the house you laid up by?”

“Aye, with the oak just to left of the gate. We were behind the hedge, in that dip you can just see”

“Good spot, mate. Nice sight lines. Chalky, the way I heard it everything was happening double quick, krauts really moving. That right, mate?”

“Aye. Happen we had a screen out, and they came back in a hurry. Plan were to do what they always did to us, draw them onto gun line. We didn’t see that bit…”

We had already done a little piece for camera, laying a wreath at Wilf’s grave, Tom explaining that he would rather tell the story as what he called a voice-over rather than open up old wounds that would ever remain raw. Chalky was nodding, though.

“Bloody good position, Gerald. Ian’s not wrong there”

“Aye. We were lucky, me and Ernie, in our skipper. Bob Wainwright, really knew his stuff. He were the one pulled us out of tank when it were knocked out”

Get his name in there, Ginge. Make sure it’s on the record.

Ernie put a hand to my shoulder. “Aye, Gerald’s not wrong. Bob had been right through North Africa, up into Italy. Had a real feel for tactical positions, almost like he had a map in his head. Never picked a spot for us without having the next one sorted first”

Tom opened his mouth, and I held up a hand to shut him up before he said anything I’d have to answer. “He’s next to my wife and daughter, in York. Looking after them for me”

The other lads looked at me, Joe giving a sharp nod of understanding before saying his own piece.

“We’d got over there, just by that little hut on stilts. Fire-watch thing. Our boss, Mr Allsop, he says don’t be daft, no rubbish about whites of their eyes. See one of the bastards, shoot him. Fall back by sections, he said, fire and movement, low and fast. Get them moving our way. Then the Yeomanry went past, like shit off a shovel, and Lenny Crook, he sees first sod and he’s on money, but they’re good, they are. Got a Spandau going at us in no time, so it’s like the boss said. Bang off five rounds, retire by section, or what’s left after a few runs, till we get round shoulder of hill. Ian’s right on that one; if we’d been here, we’d not have got away. And they had tanks, Panthers I think, moving just behind their own infantry screen”

He turned away from the hill, looking down towards the house.

“That bridge, there. We got down to it, took it at a rush…”

His voice faltered, just then, eyes in the past.

“I can still hear the sound, you know. There’s all hell breaking loose, bullets going past, rattle of small arms, that fucking ripping sound of the Spandaus, AP rounds screaming to left and right, and it’s hobnails I remember. Hitting the road, over the bridge, the sound of our boot nails”

He paused again, shook his head as if to dislodge a fly.

“Lenny went just by that little recess thing there, place to get out of way of traffic. Shot through back of head, brains all over my smallpack. Left him there; no use doing owt else, he were obviously a goner”

Ernie laid an arm over his shoulder as he wept, and Chalky stepped round to pull him into a proper embrace. He was silent for about half a minute before stepping back from the Marine with a nod of thanks.

“So we got through the treeline, those of us who were left, and Mr Allsop, he was just like your mate Bob, Ernie, Gerald, he’s had us digging slit’uns day before, so we just tumble into them and catch our breath before giving the bastards shit again, but it’s different now, and that’s another noise I can still hear, and it’s the crack of a 17-pounder doing to them what they did to us so many times, and after we’ve brewed up enough of the bastards the boss is back. Fire and movement, lads, low and fast, and back at them”

Tom interrupted, obviously for the benefit of future viewers. “So after you had retreated, Joe, you went straight back out?”

Joe had obviously recovered his edge. “Aye. And we didn’t fucking stop till Denmark”

There was more, of course, more discussion of terrain, Ian and Chalky explaining how different it was in the Falklands bogs and on Yemeni desert hills, but that speech from Joe was clearly going to be the core of the finished show. Tom looked very happy indeed, a true tomcat and cream expression on his face, and after an evening of leave-taking with our Belgian friends we were back at the airport and flying home to Leeds-Bradford, where Val and her daughter were waiting for me. I felt utterly drained, and not just from the emotion of the moments on the hillside. I was getting old, obviously, but somehow I wasn’t finding the zip I had had.

There was post waiting for me, racked in the little wooden holder my Tricia had bought on our honeymoon, so many years before. One of the letters had an NHS postmark, so I slipped it into a pocket for later, sneaking it out to read when I went to the lavatory.

Another bloody appointment.

Three days later and I was back in the surgery, and it was a woman doctor, family obviously from somewhere in Africa or the Caribbean, and she had all sorts of stuff on her desk.

“Sit down, please, Mr Barker”

“Gerald”

She grinned, teeth startlingly white in her dark face. “I would feel I was being disrespectful if I called you that, Mr Barker! Now…”

The grin vanished as if it had been a camera flash, and she picked up the first of a number of very large envelopes.

“Mr Barker, we have a problem. These are the results of your endoscope examination as well as those of your MRI”

“My what?”

“Big noisy machine. Earphones, music?”

“Oh. Aye. Rubbish music, by the ay”

“I agree. By the way. That’s not the point. I need to speak to you about the results, and I would like you to go for some more tests. In fact, we need some bloods from you today. Do you have a note of your calendar, your diary, with you?”

She was talking around things, avoiding the point, and suddenly I felt I had had enough. Andy’s pushing and nagging, the memories from Belgium, even the letter rack and what that brought to mind, it was all too much.

“Doctor, get to the point. Please”

She looked away, shuffling her papers with a muttered ‘damn it’.

“Gerald, you want the straight dope?”

“Beg pardon?”

“You have cancer, my friend. Your issues with using the toilet, feeling out of sorts, fatigue? That is why. Sorry to be so blunt”

It knocked me back, to say the least, so I sat for a minute to gather my thoughts.

“Er, what and where, Doctor?”

She tried a smile, but this time it didn’t work.

“Prostate, Gerald. And colon. It’s got you coming and going—sorry, that was dreadful. Look, this is difficult to do, so I apologise if I am coming across as flippant”

I fought down the panic that her words brought. “What are the options, Doctor?”

I watched her, and she was breaking, and so I did what Chalky had done, rising to step round to her side of the little desk, to hold her, give the comfort she couldn’t offer me.

“Thank you, Mr Barker. You’re very kind. Now, please—I need to tell you some things, and I will be better saying them to your face rather than into your chest”

I sat again, and she rubbed her eyes.

“We had suspicions after your back passage examination, which is why we did the MRI. We need another MRI, of different areas, in order to check out what we suspect is happening”

Steady, Ginge. Sit up straight and do your job. Bob’s voice was clear in my head.

“Secondaries, Mr Barker. We haven’t established which part of you went wrong first, but we suspect it was the colon, and there has been what we all metastasis. That is where other parts of you sort of come out in sympathy. We have no idea as yet where and how much. That is why we need another scan, and why the blood sample”

She looked out of her window, then back at me.

“This is the bit where you ask me how long you have. I’m not going to lie to you, because if the cancers have gone as far as we suspect then there is nothing that can be done”

One more, she tried to smile, but it still wasn’t in her.

“That means that anything we find out different will be good news. We’re at a crossroads, my friend. We need to see how deep the shit is in which you are afloat. If it is too deep… Well, there are therapies involving chemicals, radiation and so on, but, well, I will put no false gloss on the picture. We may simply be looking at palliative care”

“Sorry?”

“Making you comfortable, Mr Barker. As comfortable as we can, until, well. Until”