Chapter 34 Dangerously Healthy by Malcolm Birkenshaw

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Chapter 34.

`Daft article, doesn't tha know what cordon bleu cooking is?'
Stan chuckled as he carried two pints to our table. `I know it's tha
round, but I weren't `aving thee slopping best ale over customers'
heads. It's a waste of good beer,' he targeted his barb at the
darts team from the next village.

`Of course I do,' I paused, thinking. `It's French cooking.'

`So's bully beef if tha's in't foreign legion,' he giggled and
his overfilled pint ran froth down his chin.

`It's rich food, like what the French aristocracy ate,' Lofty
Wainwright joined in whilst Stan was re-pocketing his handkerchief.
`Cooked in butter and cream and wine and that kind of stuff, isn't
it Ma?'

`How do you know that? I can't see that on your menus.'

`Went on a package holiday.'

`Stan's never been abroad.'

`No, but he'll have had it at one of their Young Farmers'
dinners.'

`Stupid wuzzuck. They have proper food, like beef and Yorkshire
pudding,' Stan stood up, patting his paunch, ready for another pint.
`Nay, it's my sister what's married an estate agent what likes fancy
food. Doesn't suit me, though,' he again patted his paunch. `I'm fat
enough already.'

`I still don't see what you mean. I've eaten in French
restaurants, years ago, and liked it. Bit expensive, though, and
with lots of sauces, but not the kind of stuff you're talking
about,' I ran my finger down the condensation on the side of my
glass, watching the bubbles make meaningless patterns.

`That's what cordon bleu cooking is. The sauces are so tha
can't taste the fat. We had it on that holiday, didn't we Ma?'

Can't taste the fat? I thought, remembering those greasy stews
I had in digs at the University, and how that was the year when I
had all those headaches and attacks of what must have been M.S.,
everything beginning to make sense.

The ARMS diet was right, no animal fats, no dairy products, no
saturated fats of any kind. During the year of Isabel's cordon bleu
cooking I must have been filled up with fat, leaving me vulnerable
to serious damage during a bout of M.S. Perhaps bubbles of fat had
prevented oxygenated blood from getting to the parts of my brain
which were under attack, an attack brought on by that stress when
they were going to send me to prison.

Poor Isabel, she even bought gluten free flour to cook
Yorkshire puddings, not realising the fat she was cooking it in was
poisoning me. And that's why my gluten-free diet cured me, but for
the wrong reason. True, I am allergic to gluten, but by cutting out
flour I had also been avoiding the fat in Christmas puddings,
pastry, suet, sausages and much, much more. All foods which I had
disliked as a child when I used to hide them on a ledge under the
table.... that is until the day when Father's French polisher came
to repair some scratches and he turned our table up on its edge.
Thereafter the aspidistra came in handy until Mother wondered why it
was not thriving.

`Aye, and maybe all that alcohol last year didn't do thee much
good.'

`Keep thee gob shut, Stan. He spends little enough in my pub as
it is.'

`True, true, Lofty, but I never did drink a lot, except for all
that wine at Isabel's. Perhaps alcohol interferes with the
metabolism of essential fatty acids or something, and that's why
heavy drinkers end up with a beer belly.'

`Take thee bloody eyes off me,' Stan breathed in as he downed
another pint. `And you can buy your own drinks,' his face cracked
into a smile.

`Don't worry, I'm going. I've got to be home early lest John's
left on his own now that Claire's living elsewhere,' I said, not
letting them know that she was staying at her mother's because of
torn loyalties. Or was it because the house Lena had bought with her
secret accounts was convenient for the nightlife in Leeds?

I suppose my drinking very little was of help to my health. Not
that I was ever to recover fully, at least not to what I had been
before that last big attack, but spending more time doing my
exercises and playing table tennis with John certainly made me feel
good, my walking much better.

Also to make it easier for me to forget Isabel I sometimes
caught a train to Leeds in the mornings, taking my bike, before
cycling to Mother's new flat from the station. Yes, she had moved
yet again, which this time was convenient for me because on the way
home I could call to see Claire who, besides living at Lena's, was
now out of work. `How are you doing, Sally's always asking?' I
asked when we met in a corner cafe, its single unshaded light bulb
reflecting dimly a price list which was stuck to its walls: a list
advertising teacake, sausage and beans, and spotty Dick with jug of
tea for less than a pound.

`All right, thanks,' she replied, sounding depressed, her
nervous shake showing more than before.

`Sally wonders if she could come to see you?'

`Does she?' Claire brightened a little. They had been friends
since childhood.

`How's Isabel?'

`I don't see her now. She's busy at university.'

`Is it because of me?'

`No, of course not. Actually, to be selfish, my health's much
better now that we've finished.'

`Finished?' Claire mused, twisting her cup, as though reading
the coffee stains. `Dad, we can't sit here chatting all day after
only buying coffee.'

`Do you want another, or buttered crumpet, or something... or
go somewhere else.'

`No, thanks. I'm just feeling cold.'

`Like to leave, then?'

`You don't mind, do you?'

`No, no, as long as it's what you want and there's nothing else
I can do.'

`This is fine, thanks. I've enjoyed it, but you won't forget to
tell Sally I'd love her to call.'

Back to Claire's present station, just in time for the four
thirty from Leeds to Arkston Bash. `Ticket,' the guard fell upon me
as the commuters alighted leaving me the only passenger to board.
`What's this? '

`My concessionary ticket.'

`Disabled? Not when you've got a bike, you don't. That's....,'
he got out his compendium of rules, regulations, timetables and odd
appendices to find the surcharge he was empowered to demand.

`I can't ride it. Just use its saddle bag for pushing my
shopping home.'

`What's supposed to be wrong with you?' he inhaled, more
determined than ever to nail me.

`Multiple sclerosis. Some days I'm paralysed, some days I'm
not.'

He wound the elastic band back round his regulation book,
having found himself half way up a locomotion ladder the rungs of
which were now insecure. Besides, by the way the brakes were now
running, slowing us down for Arkston Bash station, he had his
knocking off time agitating beneath the Third Reich of his cap.

Damn Lena, damn Ransley, damn Vincent I cursed and started to
freewheel my bike down the ramp from the station until the guard and
his train shrank out of sight. Today I passed the same dandelions
that smiled at random between lolling railings, and passed the same
abandoned sidings until the ramp, the same temporary ramp of
slippery sleepers we had walked up as a family less than three years
ago, was behind me. We had been taking an excursion to the coast, a
change from being cooped up in a car, using the family rail tokens
we had collected from Carters' Crunchy Cornflake packet tops. In
fact that temporary ramp had been erected as a stopgap after one of
Hitler's bombs missed the wide tracks and left an inconvenient hole
where the station's toilets had been.

I called in at Sally's before turning left into Brick Pond
Lane. Three days later she went out with Claire, `I'm worried,' she
told me when she got back. `Claire's always tired. She doesn't feel
well, so she's spending next weekend at our house.'

`That's good,' I relaxed, happy that Claire was back with her
friends. I started doing extra exercises, one two three, one two
three, one two three. Perhaps it's time for me to renew old
friendships? I puffed away. Or even make new friends? I mused,
concentrating on breathing correctly. One two three, one two three,
one two three. Maybe join a writers' circle in Middlebeck?

`Damn,' I swore, having strapped my feet into the rowing
machine Stan never used - his wife had bought it in the hope that it
would encourage him to slim - and was just getting into the stroke
of things when the telephone started to ring. `Don't stop ringing,'
I grunted, sending out thought waves whilst wrenching my feet free,
tugging and pulling before hurrying from the privacy of my garage
back into the house. `To hell with the phone,' I exclaimed, with
heart heaving, my legs were breaking into a trot. Admittedly for
only a few steps, but the damage was being reversed. One day I
might play games again?

`Hello, Martin, is that you?' It was Sally's mother.

`Hello, Thelma. Claire still with you?'

`No, she's left, gone on the four o'clock bus. But listen, I'm
concerned about her neck.'

`Her neck, what's wrong with it?' I attempted to hide my
concern.

`Haven't you noticed?' Thelma sounded surprised.

`No, should I have done?'

`I forgot, you see her regularly, you might not have noticed
the change, but I think she's got thyrotoxicosis.'

`Thyro-what?' I said, attempting a quick translation,
remembering that Thelma once was a nurse, `Something to do with the
thyroid?'

`Yes. Even her eyes are becoming enlarged.'

`Her thyroid?' I ruminated, knowing only vaguely what that
might entail. `Could it have anything to do with her hands
shaking?'

`That's another of the symptoms.'

Poor Claire. All this time I had been dismissing her symptoms
as being due to nerves, following the divorce, partially because of
Isabel, and maybe as a result of.... `Can they cure it with
tablets?' I angled in hope.

`Sometimes, as long as she sees a doctor, and the sooner the
better.'

Thank goodness. Please, please, please let it be cured by
tablets, I cast handfuls of mustard seeds in every direction. `Do
you think she'll go?'

`She's promised me it's the first thing she'll do in the
morning.'

My M.S. suddenly lost its importance, except that I really
would have to remain fit and again be her rock whenever she wanted.
It was a good thing Isabel had slipped out of my life after she was
launched into the broad oceans of university life.

Claire took Thelma's advice and went straight to her doctor. He
took one look and immediately sent her home to her mother's to rest.
Next morning the specialist arrived. `I'm sorry, dear,' he also
could tell at a glance, `I think your thyroid might be overactive,'
telling her gently so as not to alarm her, whilst taking samples of
blood, telling her not to worry, and leaving a supply of tablets.
`These will help until the lab tests come through.'

`I think some of the tablets are for my heart, it's
palpitating,' Claire cried to me over the telephone.

Damn it, I cursed, for not spotting that she was ill when her
hands first started to shake. `Shall I pop over, take you to that
cafe, or anything else you would like me to do?'

`No,' she sobbed, not wishing to see anyone, `I just want to
hide from people for ever.'

Damn, damn, damn, I cursed yet again, for not being able to
help. `OK, whatever you say, as long as you know you can contact me
whenever you wish, for whatever you want, at any time of the day.
Nothing you might ask for will be too much for me...... Provided you
don't want a Rolls Royce or something like that,' I added as a joke
in the hope it might help lift her depression, not realising that
her wanting to hide in a corner was yet another syndrome of the
condition.

Another was being impossible to live with. I knew nothing
about this at the time, fate leaving it to Lena to discover just how
stressful coping with someone in this condition could be. Perhaps
one of the mustard seeds from the handfuls I scattered had been
blown off course, landing in one of the ruts Lena and Ransley were
ploughing. They had intended to break up what was left of our
family, yet this can not have been what they planned, the errant
breeze giving Lena much more than she intended whilst making it
easier for me to cope with M.S.

What I did discover was that it was going to be a long job:
although Claire would be well looked after, Mary, Lena's mother,
making damned sure of that, having become disillusioned when her
daughter bought a house with the money, including the children's
holiday money, which she had been stashing away.

But during the time whilst Claire's health was improving
another seed germinated and John left his school, preferring to
travel to college in Middlebeck where he could be grown up instead.
In fact he often stayed overnight with a friend, leaving me on my
own with little or nothing to do. Even the rooks were silent,
perhaps I should start going out again?

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

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