Chapter 3 Dangerously Healthy by Malcolm Birkenshaw

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Chapter 3.

`Aren't yer going t' eat yer puddin'?' the dinner lady said,
not reading my lips, anxious that I finish my food.

`No, thanks,' I shook my head, having never liked pastry unless
it was submerged under sweet custard.

`Yer don't want to be doing no slimin',' she ran her eye over
my sliminess.

`I'm not slimming. Just a greyhound,' I joked at the expense of
her frown.

`Maybe yer are, love. But them wi'out appetites never win no
races,' she shuffled her bottom and set off with her trolley...`Nor
get better,' she added, pausing before serving the man in next bed
who was moaning away. She still reckoned that after three weeks of
full plates, if given the chance, she would soon have me cured and
fit to mine coal. `Pickin' at food, I call it,' she niggled, then
started to complain about me having trimmed the fat from my meat.

`Call it what you will,' I said to myself, but if my body says
"no" then "no" it will be. Obviously, if there was to be a cure, it
would have to be a do-it-yourself cure.

Despite the clack-clack-clack of gravid pots being scraped
clean and clattered away my eyelids succumbed. Mind you, there was
plenty to think about, in my own little world, what with memories of
my last time in hospital, twenty years ago, immediately after being
demobbed from the army.

`Straight from the desert into a British November is enough to
give anyone a cold,' my mother had insisted, in her posh voice,
sending for her private doctor. He had started to jab me full of
penicillin, a drug new to him and all good for business since he was
paid by the visit and prescription instead of by the results. It was
then that I became really ill, so he doubled his calls and added
streptomycin to the bill. This made me even worse, so he sent for a
second opinion before his bill was rendered invalid.

`I want him in hospital, today,' the specialist had said,
not letting on, suspecting that he knew the cause of my problem.

Not that he had said anything - well, they don't, do they?
Anyway, it turned out that I was allergic to antibiotics, masking my
real illness, but he wanted to make sure and also take photographs
for his students. `Possibly a rare glandular fever, contracted in
Malta,' he had resorted to his consultant's voice to mask every
uncertainty.

It must have been rare, I thought, and damned hard to find,
going by the quantities of blood they had taken, particularly since
I only ate one meal in Malta, bacon and eggs whilst the plane was
being refuelled. What if it was M.S. at an early stage, difficult
to spot, and nothing to do with glandular fever? Certainly my legs
had felt very much like they do now, or was me being inactive,
confined to bed, also a factor?

Difficult to say, but after he discharged me from hospital I
had started a long convalescence, meandering about, taking things
easy, building up slowly, until fully recovered. `That's worth
remembering,' I said to myself as the corridor echoed to the rattle
of today's pots being trundled away, `Could that be one of the ways
to recover from my present attack?'

Next my recollections moved to another stage in my life - those
long months of recuperation wondering what to do with my `A' levels,
having been barred from becoming a pharmacist because of not passing
in French! But my inability to translate "avais vous le flatulence"
turned out to be an ill wind for I went to university for an honours
degree in endocrinology.

But at the start of my second term that "Rare Glandular Fever"
struck again, at that time leaving me wondering whether studying far
into the night was the wrong thing to do? - nor realising that the
deluge of stresses being disgorged from home might have been a
contributory factor? "Influenza", had said one doctor, "Nerves,"
had said my mother's, actually meaning, "Take this bill three times a
day."

`We thought you'd left,' looked up the Dean, when I returned,
having taken the second term off. Yet I managed to pass by spending
Easter and the first weeks of summer in a panic whilst the early
birds whistled beyond the curtains as they searched for more worms.

Never again, I had vowed at the time, sensing that something
basic was wrong. From then on my life style changed, university
becoming a semi-convalescence of dreaming up jokes, performing in
shows, running dances, and missing all but important lectures. But
that's a different book, and one that left the Dean unimpressed.
How could I have told him that something was wrong when the doctors
said that it was not? Besides, the illness never reappeared, not
until finals when, ignoring my resolution, I resumed long hours, and
this time suffered those violent headaches (Although I was yet to
discover that fat in my diet had been a contributory factor).

OK, again I passed, but the lecturers remained unimpressed.
`Your planning to go into industry?' the external examiner had
raised an eyebrow, having no way of knowing that I thought my days
were numbered and was in a rush to achieve something before the
world left me by.

Nevertheless, they ceded a degree, one which specialised in
physiology and endocrinology. `Electronics! You're starting a
business in electronics?'

I panicked, were they going to take the degree back, just when
my plans for a revolutionary rodent remover had to remain secret.

`Rats! What have you invented, a miracle cheese?' they
dismissed my fascination in published research work. But from other
people's research had come my idea, although first I needed a lab
and a factory. `Nothing expensive. You just want a lab and a
factory?' they had raced to lock up their cheque books.

`Don't worry,' I replied. I had already raised the capital, or
at least felt convinced that I had, and found an empty building in
an old sailing ship port.

`Whitby! You're opening a factory to make rat scarers in
Whitby. Isn't that where Dracula lived? That should frighten the
little buggers away.'

`Let's have things looking a little bit tidier, Mister
Mytholmroyd,' a nurse broke into my thoughts, reclaiming the
mattress to correct any bedding offence, retucking its recidivous
counterpane, straightening the ward before today's afternoon
visitors arrived, her fob watch swinging upside down against a
uniform beneath which she was definitely right-way up. I tried to
think of something to say, retain her presence a bit longer; but
another time, she was busy now, and Sister could always retaliate by
cancelling my discharge tomorrow. `Thanks, nurse,' I closed my
eyes, trying to return to remembering what had happened next.
Ah, yes, I left university, somewhat aggrieved at what I perceived
as their attitude towards industry. They could laugh, but just wait
until my invention made its first million, I had thought at the time.

`Well, it's not quite a factory, Mr Myth.er.lerm.oler.eroid.'

`Mytholmroyd,' I corrected.

`Ah, yes, quite so. Well, as we were saying, it's more a kind
of an emergency centre,' smiled Whitby's town clerk.

`Emergency centre?'

`Not now, of course. In fact it never has been, built last war
as a first aid post but never used. The government thought the
German navy might shell us like they did during the First War.
Anyway, the council is happy to let you have it for a nominal rent
of, say, one pound a week, if you find that acceptable?'

Acceptable! I resisted the temptation to shake off his hand.
Whitby, being an unemployment black spot, was anxious to attract
industry, but I hadn't anticipated they'd be that anxious.

After a frenzied fortnight, going berserk with a sledgehammer,
the emergency treatment rooms soon disappeared, their
decontamination baths, constructed from lead, bringing cash from the
smelters since my capital was fast running out. A kind of alchemy, I
suppose, turning lead into "brass", a "brass" which helped pay for
the factory to open, at first making record players whilst the staff
were being trained, leaving me to complete the supersonic rat-scarer
trials.

Up until daybreak, night after night, tiredness vaporised in
the heat of euphoria as my prototype moved closer to working. Mind
you, there were one or two teething troubles, like when cats and
dogs as well as the rats were driven out of town. But these were
mere details, and in any case their local owners would never know
once their pets had returned. Unfortunately, before any
modifications could be attempted to the "Mytholmroyd Miracle Rat
Remover" the factory was flooded. Who would have thought that a
building, standing like Noah's Ark on top of a hill, needed to be
insured against flood?

This blow was not going to flush my invention away and,
protected by a sou'wester and oilskins, I battled into the rafters,
into the spray, only to discover that a water pipe had burst. Thank
goodness, the evidence was there, it was a plumber to blame, he had
economised on solder just to make himself more profit.

`We'll pursue your claim,' rushed a local solicitor, being a
specialist in maritime law and losses at sea. `It's all the same,
concerned with water,' he blew into a handkerchief, making me
welcome despite his nose having a cold. But he only dictated one
letter before returning to conveyancing and rich people's wills,
filing my claim away, waiting to see upon what course the plumber
would steer.

`Whilst you're hanging on,' boasted Burt, a local councillor,
with time on his hands. `How about joining me in becoming a fishing
boat owner?'

`Fishing boat! I'm broke.'

`Broke?'

`Of course I am, at least for the moment. All my capital is
fluid until the solicitor makes progress.'

`Oh, it's not a trawler. More a kind of,..er,..sort of,..er,
clinker built boat.'

`How much?'

`Twenty pounds. Belongs to a retired poacher, I know him very
well, given me first option.'

Was it boredom which affected my judgement? `More like water
on the brain,' suggested Lena when I forked out ten pounds at the
time for my share in a knackered rowing boat, age uncertain, kept
afloat by layers of battleship paint. Regulation grey, probably
exchanged by a passing warship for a supply of thieved salmon.

But now, as far as fish was concerned, we caught nothing, not
whilst everything tasted of fresh paint. The only thing we landed
was a dry cleaning bill after abandoning the boat before being blown
out to sea. Mind you, we might have hung on, had we known that the
wind was about to change and blow it right back, right back into the
hands of the poacher. The twenty pounds we paid he had spent, just
as the fish were coming back into season and the taste of paint had
worn off. It was also that poacher he knew when the fish were not
biting so he made a habit of selling his boat to silly buggers like
us to keep himself going until they were easier to catch.

`Don't worry,' Burt changed into dry clothes. `I'll run you
home,' he freewheeled an old Austin out of his garage. `It starts
first time, just needs a bit of a push.'....... One mile later he
was still unable to get more than a cough from its engine....and I
was exhausted. `Just one more time,' he called over his shoulder. It
was all right for him, sitting in the driving seat, particularly
when we reached the hill which dropped down towards the harbour.
His car fell away from my arms, picking up speed, its engine fuming
and fusillading with a flatulence before firing first fart. `Sorry,
daren't stop,' he shouted, hanging out through his wide-open door.
I was leg-less, too tired to catch up, and stumbled up to a bench
whilst Burt and his car spluttered away into the night.

Alone, with a rickety street lamp casting shadows behind me,
the black of a harbour lapping somewhere in front, my skin numb,
experiencing strange tingling sensations, legs spastic, all sense of
balance gone, I hung onto the seat. Had a doctor seen me that very
moment he would definitely have diagnosed me as suffering from M.S.
Yet, amazingly, within half an hour I was able to totter home,
crossing the swing bridge with a high tide running threateningly
close. What was more surprising, next morning, I was definitely
back to normal. `If I could do it then, eleven years ago, then I'll
definitely do it again when I get out of hospital.'

`Pardon, is tha reet?'

I opened my eyes, used to the man in the next bed moaning but
not to someone opposite speaking. It was a new patient, bothered
least I was hallucinating or wanted assistance.

`Yes, thanks, just thinking aloud.'

`Tha'll be orl reet, lad, so long as tha learns to take things
easy.'

I smiled, out of the mouths of babes and balmpots, and hurried
back into my memories.

Summer! That year Whitby was lost in a drizzle which swept in
waves from the sea. A drizzle which swirled round our cottage,
soaking it as it hugged to the cliffs, close to the steps to the
abbey, unevenly worn by millions of feet. But the weather did not
matter, Claire was born. `Don't worry, everything's in hand,' the
solicitor sent for me, having got rid of his handkerchief. `The
tide's turning in your favour.'

`Maybe,' I thought, but poverty was lapping up to our necks, we
were desperately broke, so we moved to West Yorkshire where I took a
job in a grammar school, head of a science department. Because of
my research? - No. Because I played cricket and the chairman of
governors was a Yorkshire fanatic!

Still, I had been a sergeant instructor and the examination
results were pretty good. Plus, free from the stresses of business
in Whitby, my health blossomed despite staying those extra hours
behind in my lab, eating tea and biscuits amongst the animals
instead of having lunch. I enjoyed the job and was disgustingly
fit. Mind you, there was the occasional "problem", but I assumed
this to be a recurrence of the trots which plagued everyone posted
to Egypt. Was this relevant to my present condition?

Suddenly a noise shattered my dozing. What was it, where was
it, what's.... ? Bog-eyed I spotted a student nurse shattering the
doors, forcing them shut whilst a pebble or something gouged a rut
in the floor. Even the seriously maimed struggled to sit upright
before peace returned. But the air had been disturbed, visiting time
was approaching, waiting, waiting, like waiting for the arrival of a
delayed train. The first visitors were outside, it was time by the
ward clock. Why were we waiting? `Sod Sister,' someone muttered.
No-one owned up. The second hand overtook twelve and swept onto the
future. Still a delay, some curtains were drawn, a patient needed
special attention.

Faces in the corridor took turns, noses against glass, wide
eyes peering, what was wrong? The foyer swelled further, more were
arriving, watches being checked and rechecked until, at long last,
the doors opened. A tide of humanity burst through, flooding out,
spreading between beds, with relatives leading and friends in their
wake. Hangers-on were left behind to search amongst the patients
once the waves settled. Leaders boasted gifts, whilst followers
tried to hide theirs, and those feeling guilty kept their hands in
their pockets. Kisses, smiles, tears then, just as conversation
settled, an overweight lady, short of breath, red-faced, wheezed in,
having missed getting off her bus at the right stop.

Good gracious, just behind her was Lena, straining, not
expecting to find me. `Hello,' she gave a hollow smile, still
feeling foolish after discovering that Stan and I had made
alternative plans.

`Hello,' I replied, equally surprised, accepting her kiss to my
cheek. `I didn't expect you until tonight.'

`France gave me the afternoon off. He says that a wife's place
is by her husband.'

France? My eyes narrowed. She doesn't even like the man.
Methinks something is rotten in the state of our village. `I've
phoned your parents. They send their love. My mother also sends
hers. Vanessa's coping with the business. She's got one or two
queries, but they can wait,......' Lena trailed on until the
messages ran out. Why nothing about Claire and John? But the nurses
were hovering, they had a backlog of work following the emergency,
so could visitors please leave on time?

Ah well, she could tell me tomorrow, I smiled, waving again as
she slipped away, and wondered why she was carrying my suitcase? I
supposed the nurses wanted all luggage out of the way, even though
my stay in hospital was almost half over. Not much time left, must
hurry if I'm going to analyse the rest of my past before being
discharged. I settled back onto the pillows. What about this
business of stress? Is it only dangerous for heart complaints? Can
it be a serious threat for my condition?

Back, back, back to when I left that job at the grammar school
to seek my fortune in commerce - this time dealing only in products
perfected by others. It seemed a good idea at the time. All went
well until,.... when was it? Damn it, there was no special time,
they just came and went, although one was certainly after my mother
had declared open war upon father.

She was demanding a larger share of his cousin's will. He was
refusing to take legal action. The more he refused the greater the
onslaught until, in order to avoid litigation, he tried to commit
suicide by starving to death. I tried to mediate, but not knowing
how, not when he was resisting whilst mother was prepared to fight
to his death. Day after day Lena and I called, without success. He just
sat there, nodding, in his fireside chair, the fire unlit, mother having
confiscated his matches to "bring him to his senses". Even when Lena
arrived with some food concentrate he still refused, turning his
mouth away. But when Claire and John came his face gave a glimmer of
life. `Are you poorly, grandpa?' He released a faint smile. All
too much for Grandma, she hustled them away into the kitchen for
drinks.

But, `You've got to get better, just for them,' I pleaded,
whilst she was out of the room. `They need their grandfather, they
love him.'

He yielded, a fraction, accepting a token of food, then fell
asleep - mother was free to deal with the lawyers just as she
wished.

When nobody else was in the room, I stood behind his chair, an
act of desperation, willing "faith" into my fingertips, resting them
on his head. Such a cold head, the strands of hair which normally
covered his baldness spreading where the day's fury had left them.
I can't remember it helping, but it seriously drained me of energy.
Was this the start of an attack, perhaps caused by stress?

Perhaps it had been, for during the following weeks a funny
tingling returned to my spine plus a numb itch in the palm of each
hands. At that time these symptoms had been mere curiosities,
imperfections to be kept secret, things to be shaken off, feelings
to hide. Yet why did they go, did I really get better?

Read the following chapters that tell of how Martin "cured" his M.S. and climbed mountains by the following year.

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