Dangerously Healthy  - Copyright © Malcolm Birkenshaw [List all 43 Chapters]

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Chapter 1.

`And if Petch thinks I'm going to just lie down and die he's
got another think coming,' I chuntered as I lurched across the
village square, my stumbles hidden in tonight's dense darkness.

It had been a day to remember, and by hell a day to forget.
Not one in which things had come in twos and threes but more like in
galloping herds of wildebeests.

`Sod him,' I cursed Petch, and aimed for a lone light which
also shone unevenly over part of the front of the pub. `First sort
yourself out, Mytholmroyd,' I said to myself, knees wobbling. `Best
take a rest, upon one of these window sills,' I felt for the solid
support of the stone, and slumped back, glancing at my watch.

Above my head the sign of the 'Jolly Poacher" was swinging
gently in the cool March air. It was only ten o'clock. A welcoming
glow was escaping through the open door and my bottom was cold,
numb, probably pimply and becoming shaped to the grit of the
granite. `Might as well,' I convinced myself, `I look as though I'm
drunk,' and limped into its warmth.

`Martin. Tha can't have multiple sclerosis,' Stan thrust a pint
of beer in my direction before I reached the bar, a pint filled to
overflowing. `Get this down thee. If tha hasn't got M.S. by the
time tha's forty, then tha hasn't got M.S. at all.'

Where on earth had he picked up that idea from? I pondered. A
ponder long enough for froth to spill over the side of my glass, run
down my fingers, drip to the floor and spread out in the form of a
puddle. `Surely my stumble had disappeared?' I wondered to myself.
I had always disguised whatever it was that was wrong with me. How
could he know? - especially since it was only today that I had found
out myself.

`Cheers,' I found my voice, raised the glass, and gulped down a
mouthful, hoping to swallow my surprise. Even I still did not know
what the name M.S. really meant. `Who told you about the ......?'

`Tha Lena 'phoned us. She asked me to run thee to hospital,
tomorrow morning.'

`I can manage,' I spluttered, again taken off guard. `I'll be
all right, thanks,' coughing, propping myself against the bar,
perching one cheek upon a stool, attempting to mask the state of my
legs. `I can drive there myself.'

`Don't be so dateless,' he laughed. - At least I think it was dateless he said
for by now my memory was racing backwards, heel over toe; recollections
as far as this morning beginning to flood through the amber nectar I
was drinking?........


`Come back in the summer,' the specialist had said, what by now was
hours ago. He had been tilting back in his seat, almost tippling over backwards,
when he told me, `And we'll fix you up with callipers until your wheelchair
comes through.'

`Like hell you will,' I had sworn under my breath, whilst remaining
respectful, looking straight ahead, eyes defiant refusing to blink, my
imagination having longed to give his damned reclining chair an up-and-over.

It had not been the first time I had been sent to see him. For
sixteen years I had "cured" myself each time my family doctor
manipulated me into keeping an appointment. That was until today.
This time I had not hoodwinked the consultant.

In fact Petch was like a bull to a red rag. He was a consultant
on the outside looking in whilst I was the rag on the inside looking
out: a rag whose next job was to side-step the disease, walk on
water, a rag who last year had sprinted up and down an escalator
before my limp returned yet again. Well, maybe walking on water
might be a bit optimistic but there was no way in which I was going
to succumb to his prognosis.

`Typical, it had to be me,' I had thought, half smiling
inwardly, half lost for curses, half lost in the chill of a lost
future. Was this the ultimate challenge? Yes, that's it; after a
lifetime of successes, which had usually turned into failure, here
was a chance to turn failure into success and to defy all the odds
for the first time in my life.

`It could be something we call a slow virus, that's why I want
you in hospital for a couple of days,' Petch had continued, though
now he was talking towards Lena, my wife, instead of to me who was
the one he wanted in his damned stupid hospital.

She had remained impassive, sitting, staring straight through
his head at the wall whilst I wondered what she was thinking? Funny
how consultants' studies are often short on the book side, and also
of cobwebs. Attract dirt, they do, I supposed, but on such a dismal
day there was not a speck of sunshine to light up any floating dust.

`Is there a cure?' she asked, her soul grey, yet in hopeful
anticipation. At least I supposed that's what she was thinking. I
could usually tell, that is I thought I could until now, but today
she became as deep as a pond in which fish ceased to swim.

`I'm afraid not. It might only take a few months, whilst in
other cases it can be many years before the patient loses use of
their legs, then arms, and finally their sight,' he replied, still
not bothering with me. So bloody hygienic he was, without even a
bird to crap on his lawn. But there was a spider's web, I could see
one, on the top corner, behind his head, and I sensed his spare eye
waiting to see how I coped when dressing myself.

`Bloody guinea pig,' I swore under my breath, balancing upon
one leg, inching the clean sock over my toes. For years I had known
there was something wrong, despite playing games and looking fit.
Yet whatever the fault I had always shaken it off. For example,
every time I was sent to see him I had first made myself fit, before
turning up. In fact, until today, he had never found anything wrong,
so he could stick his prophecy of doom.

He's part of a conspiracy, I pulled on my other sock, still
dwelling upon the times my G.P. had urged me to see him. Mind you,
that was not very often, Doctor Dodd only trapping me when I was
taking one of the kids to the surgery. I used to nod my head, say
tomorrow, and keep out of her way until next time.

But country doctors have ways and means, Dodd biding her time,
having enlisted the help of my wife to catch me during one of my
downturns. This is why Lena must have insisted on driving the car,
just to make sure I turned up, in the belief she was taking me to be
cured. Little did she realise that it was an irreversible step.
From now on I would never get another job. No, she did not want to
know, I could tell by her face, she thought she could rub it out
like a spelling mistake on her blackboard, preferring to think the
specialist had made a wrong diagnosis.

As we left along his footpath I turned and looked back. `If
there's no cure, why do you want me in hospital?' I challenged,
facing him, full-frontal, exposing his emperor's robes, part of the
cut and thrust of the engagement to come.

He paused, framed in his doorway, taken off guard, having
intended to watch how I walked. `I require the extra tests to
confirm if my preliminary diagnosis is correct,' he cleared his
throat, and blinked, still caught in my stare.

I shook my head, knowing he was probably right, about me having
multiple sclerosis, but bloody-well wrong about the course it would
take. Nevertheless, I was prepared to play his game and be a
guinea-pig before devoting all my time to a study of the disease.
Besides, one day, when someone discovered a cure, at least I would
be on the hospital short list.

`Now then, are you satisfied?' I snapped at Lena, as soon as we
reached the end of his drive.

`What do you mean?' she faltered, stunned by my anger. She had
only been doing her best.

`You've just made us bankrupt,' I continued to rant, Lena
remaining in line for my wrath which should have been saved up for
Petch. (Fortunately my prophecy never came true, though we were not
to know that a buyer for my business would be found, just in time, a
footstep ahead of the bailiffs. However, I was right in that our
standard of living was destined to fall. Still, that was only money,
what is the price of a pair of fit legs?)

We remained silent during the journey home, Lena hurt at my
ingratitude, this lack of conversation suiting me for I needed to
rummage through my thoughts since I was already resigned to sharing
my life with a virus. Mind you, no virus had ever been found, they
were only guessing, but whilst they were looking for it I would
learn to run again, play tennis, play cricket, play hell and stride
into his surgery walking proof of my discovery and of how bloody
wrong he was.

We gazed through the windscreen, two lives apart. A grey April
had fallen upon us; bird-less, slack fields upon which spring would
never shine. `Damn it,' I swore silently.

`Pardon?'

`Nothing,' I countered, my eyes avoiding Lena and looking down
at the floor. `Find the May in your heart,' I continued, this time
without muttering a word. `Think of the past, search for clues,
look upon this experience as a real opportunity to use your degree,'
I smiled. All I had to do was to trawl through my life, recall every
minnow, and build upon the important tides.

With eyes closed I remembered that some attacks of M.S. had
disappeared after a change in my life style, or even simply when
enjoying myself. Finding the cure was not going to be so difficult
after all. Then my smile floated where darker waters lapped up
different ebbs, different attacks. Better think again, and again,
and again and again.

The car meandered along, obeying the tilt of the lanes where
the age of gnarled trees buckled bent verges. I thought of those
times when I placed both hands upon my daughter's tummy, when she
was small, to "Magic Away" her stomach-ache. This treatment had also
worked for other ailments, although I often remained apprehensive,
rarely daring to use it. In any case, it was only for a special
member of the family, or a friend, and even then it did not always
work.

Lena continued to steer the car into and out of the sways,
sometimes jerking, whilst I remained musing, thinking of the time at
university when I once used this "magic" upon myself. Sixteen years
had passed since then, but I could still remember those weeks of
violent headaches, those knives in my brain, and that day when they
forced me to steer my car into a lay-by and stop. How vivid remained
the memory of me holding my palms heavenwards, willing "power" into
them, whilst taking deep breaths, calling upon prayers learned by
rote as a child and cried by the heart when upon the precipice of
death - real or imagined. Yes, that flashback of my hands, full of
energy, pressing down upon my head, still shone as forceful as ever
for the pain had dissolved, never to return.

To hell with the specialist, I would use that "power" again.
My eyes remained tightly screwed, concentrating all my energies. A
daft thing to do, this time there was no headache to cure. Perhaps
if I concentrated differently it might be possible to control all
those white blood cells which were nibbling my nerves?

I concentrated differently all right when Lena swung the car over
the bridge, lurching it onto the slope which dropped down to our
drive. My eyes sprang open, expecting something different, a changed
world, as though in those short hours several months had passed.
Claire and John were not home from school. Claire twelve, John
nine, yet they, like Lena, had never known of the illness which had
been eating at me over the years. Well, you don't say, do you? -
and by believing that I was well they had unwittingly helped me live
a normal life. I owed much of my health to them.

Damn, I tottered out of the car, today's self-healing yet to
show progress. `I think I'll go for a stroll,' I smiled after tea,
first smile for hours, in a hurry to prove the specialist wrong for
daylight would only be with us for a couple of hours more.

`Going far?'

`No, no,' I lied, having determined to take a long walk, smash
myself back into health then, tomorrow morning, swagger into the
hospital obviously cured.

An evening sun broke through, surprising the grass into
revealing a promise of green. Things are looking up, it seems, the
countryside not being so dead after all. I turned right along our
lane, past the abandoned waters of an olde worlde quarry, full and
still, jungled behind trees and shrubs and over which coots scurried
to safety amongst its reeds. `Why is it called the Brick Pond when
only limestone was quarried for Adderton's cottages?' I wondered
with a slow gaze.

`Because,' chattered a blackbird as it hopped through the leaf
mould. At least I imagined this is what it was chattering as I
answered my own questions, `Because they needed the clay to make
bricks to build the kilns to burn the lime to make the mortar to
build their houses once they'd dug their way through to the
limestone.'

Once outdoors, on my own, surrounded by nature, I could see
that life was returning to the hunched trees, undergrowth was
sprouting, and even dull birds were singing in preparation for
spring. Of course I could walk, I struck out, and soon reached the
level crossing. `What's half a mile to a pair of long legs?' I
hummed and leant against the gates. They were closed for an
approaching train. Time to rest and contemplate upon the hill
beyond the tracks. Admittedly the lane climbed steeply once on the
other side, but it was little more than a pimple overlooking the
Vale of York. In the past I had climbed real hills, whenever I
wished to throw off an illness. `If I walk up and down that incline,
several times, surely it will simulate a mountain?'

The hint of a locomotive shimmered beyond the bridge beyond the
incline, before the track began to sing before the rumble before the
roar of a giant diesel shook all before it as it passed. I waved,
to little faces pressed against the passing carriage windows, their
tiny hands happy with excitement. Then the end of the last
compartment, blank and bare, shrank into the distance. The gates
swung open, in well-worn fits and starts, horizontally, just as
gates always used to do. `Time to start the climb.'

It might only be a small hill, but I was left in no doubt that
it was steep, every muscle aching as my legs thrust upwards to the
top. Still, these were like the real pains which cured me when
climbing in Wharfedale, my plan was obviously working. Then the lane
levelled out to sleep its way over a hedge-less landscape before an
even steeper drop on the other side. `Most peculiar,' I thought
aloud, my legs suddenly balking at working correctly, their
reflexes gone, refusing to cope down the incline.

I struggled and stuttered on the balls of my feet until,
marooned half way down, incapable of climbing back, I slumped onto
the verge for a rest. Bemused, befuddled, outwitted, I abandoned my
thoughts. On a clear day you can see York Minster, they say, but
many times in the past I had seen snow on the Wolds that were even
further away. Hell! Yorkshire, the county of broad acres, thousands
of fields and I had to end up sitting on a bloody great thistle. At
least I think it was a thistle, I could not really tell, not with a
numb bum and disorganised muscles leaving me unable to shift, not
without driving the needles in deeper. This is ridiculous, there
must be a way, what if I simply roll over?

An even dafter idea, for where dumb thistles ended live nettles
took over, leaving me with no option but to crawl onto the lonely
lane. Keep death off the road, and numb bottoms too, but all was not
lost for at least it was traffic free. I banked on it staying that
way whilst I hoped to recover, though after half an hour the light
was beginning to fade. `Something will have to be done. Better
make an effort to get home,' I confided with the macadam whilst
rising shakily to my feet. `Try thinking your muscles to walk,' my
next balmy idea. That was even worse, especially after the rest,
leaving me lolloping more or less in a downhill direction. `Try
walking backwards,' I refused to give up, shouting aloud to make my
muscles obey. Well, at last, the odd reflex, albeit in reverse, and
certainly odd, started to work.

But how tiring it was, I took another break, again upon the
asphalt, my nettled behind still numb to the world. `What about
walking in a zigzag?' I concentrated, in desperation, remembering
Wharfedale, and of how sheep descended its fells. It would have to
do, the temperature was dropping, dusk was advancing, no time to
waste, any daft idea was better than none. `It works!' I cried out
with laughter, ignoring what people might think, `It bloody-well
works.' Besides, no-one could see and, in any case, what did it
matter, nothing could look more daft than a man bum-bound waiting
to be run over.

`Is that the last time I shall ever climb a hill?' I mused
through the glass as I supped my last beer. `No, he who limps away
limps to climb another day,' I smiled, still recalling how stupid I
must have looked as I lunged from tree to tree during my tottering
detour back to our village. Thank goodness it had been dark, nobody
could have recognised me, even when I stumbled from tree to wall to
fence, always catching something just in time.

`What's tha bloody grinning at?` Stan dug his elbow into my
muse, bringing me back to the present, `Hurry up. Lofty's waiting.
Tha's got another pint in.'

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

Chapter 2.

`Give us thee glass,' Lofty groaned, landlording his
long-suffering arm towards me from his side of the bar. He also had
four arthritic fingers and a knuckled thumb clasping a burnished
brass pumps handle, an arms breadth away, impatient to serve bitter.

`Why not?' I chuckled, looking down at my legs. `After this
smell of beer on my breath Lena will never guess at the truth.'

Nicotine swirled, pipes puffed, cigarettes smouldered, and a
huddle of locals, demanding more ale, tap-tap-tapped against their
table with upturned dominoes. `Hurry thee sen up, Martin.'

There was neither chrome nor mirror to reflect upon their
demands, for the brewery was yet to inflict modernity identity upon
us. Time and Oliver Cromwell had passed us by, the Jolly Poacher
being a sepia memory of its permanent past with brown wooden doors
to match its yellowed anaglypta-papered walls, a home from home for
rural regulars.

All night long Lofty would serve them beer, swivelling on his
stool, dispensing beer to lounge and tap room without having to get
to his feet, provided nobody brought a wife. Never did like women's
drinks, what with them compelling him to uncoil his seven foot
length, with one hand on knee, back still bent, to furtle amongst
the shelves for a pineapple split or orange crush. Nor did he
welcome bourgeoisie orders that had him buckling his head against
the ceiling, just to serve from his optics, not unless they were
for trebles to make the effort worth while.

`Are you sure, tha won't want a lift?' Stan cut across Lofty's arm.

`Certain,' I nodded, looking down at his glass. `Another pint
for Stan, please, Lofty,' and lined up another as a thanks for his
offer. `I better be off.'

`Leaving already?'

`Up early in the morning, remember,' I grimaced.

Good thing it is dark, I thought, as soon as I left through the
door, a dense wall of black even blacker beyond in the lane,
otherwise folk would think the wrong reasons for my wobble. But,
funny, there now seems to be less lead in my legs? has mixing with
people lifted my spirits?

`I'm home,' I called, letting Lena know that it was me who was
in the kitchen. On the other hand, what if the alcohol is confusing
those things which are doing me harm with others which are doing
me good?

She smiled when I peeped round the door. A transparent smile
which masked what she thought? Perhaps she had expected me to
overreact to the specialist's news, throw myself into the Brick
Pond,.. or was she planning to open a secret savings account in
case I got worse?

Of course not, that was only the joke she had cracked with her
friends, like other people saving up their running away money.
Obviously she was relieved to see me, I could tell, though truly
frightened of me doing something stupid. My fault for being so
idiosyncratic, I supposed, but at least I was home and she chirped
away to make a nice cup of tea.

The condemned man's last supper, I mused, as clinks from the
kitchen heralded that she was also making something to eat. It was
going to be special, I could smell, closing my eyes and sinking even
deeper in thought.

Before she returned I was searching for a cure, having gone
back in time to when I was four. The memory of a tattoo and the
wooden castle front, with soldiers, and a long contraption of a gun,
the biggest on wheels they said, and the first salvo fired, which
overwhelmed me beneath a barrage of terror. I could still recall
the hysteria, being unable to walk, with father and mother pushing
me home, past the lake, past the people, past the gates, sick all
the way. `He's just suffering from shock,' the doctor told them.

Could this have been M.S.? No, I was too young. Besides, shock
has nothing to do with M.S., has it? - The books never said not, but
the books said very little.

`Where should I rest it?' Lena said. She was holding a tray
with mugs and plates steaming, wanted to know where to put them.

`Oh?' I opened my eyes, tried to get up. `Err, anywhere,
thanks,' my muscles finding it almost impossible to shift.

`How far did you walk?'

`Not far, just a bit further than the pub,' I yawned. `Don't
know why I'm so tired. Perhaps we better go to bed, straight after
supper, what with tomorrow?.....'

Her suspicions diverted she agreed, planing to make an early
start in the morning, intending to teach until lunch time and then
slip away from school for an hour. `I've made arrangements with Stan
to take you to hospital.'

`Have you, what time?' I knitted a fib whilst on the edge of
the bed, searching for a sleeve in my pyjamas.

`Ten o'clock. Wilf will look after their farm whilst Stan runs
you there.'

`Oh! What time did you say?' I cast off yet another lie,
having feigned a mental note. `Good night,' and turned out the
light, content about my arrangements with Stan. It's an ill pint
that brings nobody no good.

Next morning the sky again hung grey over Adderton. But the
birds didn't care. Funny things, birds, their chorus started on
time. `Wait until the migrants arrive,' I chuckled, stretching my
legs, thrilled that even my calves had almost recovered, except for
still being numb. Sod it, no miracle cure this time. `I'll do my
own packing,' I called from the bedroom. Lena was getting the
children ready for school.

Whilst sorting the clothes I began thinking again, remembering
school days when my progress lurched. Eventually it lurched so far
the headmaster sent for my parents. `Take your son away,' he waved
my report, red ink graffiti all over it. I was only eleven, but to
avoid the disgrace mother accepted a reprieve and sent me to the
boarding school. Here, away from home and its stresses, I learned
what life was like with lads from normal homes and immediately
revelled in outdoor activities. It was here that I discovered that
climbing hills and fells could throw off influenza. Yet last
night's climb had failed, but this time it's definitely M.S. and not
influenza.

But had it been influenza in those days? For example, when I
returned to the day school, with the same old home stresses, my
fitness deteriorated and my troubles became frequent. But mother's
doctor had diagnosed them as being fluid on the knee, that same
doctor who one day was to practice penicillin dart-board therapy upon
my fundamentum. Yet my legs felt just like they do now, although
today the specialist calls it M.S.! Let's hope he's wrong and it's
only fluid on the thighs, shins and ankles, as well as my knees.

`Have you finished packing?' Lena interrupted, having returned
for a last sortie round the bedroom before leaving for school. She
was dressed for hospital visiting, but for the moment with exercise
books piled under each arm.

`Mmm? Ah, yes, almost,' I mumbled, speeding things up.
`There, done now,' I clicked the case shut. `I'm coming. Just want
to drop in at work before Vanessa arrives.' Vanessa was my
secretary, she would be organising the business whilst I was away.

By ten o'clock Vanessa knew exactly what was to be done. But
that was typical of Vanessa, being capable, whatever the problem, so
it was not the business which seeped through my mind as I set off
for hospital. Best get it over and done with, I thought, especially
since the clouds were leaching a watery sun. Beware the Ides of
April - What kind of omen is that?

I drove slowly, eking out the countryside, making the most of
my last journey as a normal being before being diagnosed as
officially ill. Of course, I was not actually ill, it was just
that, not knowing what to expect, I intended to play their game,
bide my...... The drive was soon over, ahead the hospital car park.
Lined bays for consultants close to the door and a mayhem for
visitors at decorous arm's length. Where to put my car? What to do
with a four litre Rolls Princess?

I spotted an empty space. "Consultants Only". Ideal, no-one
unauthorised would dare to park there, and handy if I changed my
mind and needed an emergency escape. I weighed up the chances,
charged with adrenaline by the risk, especially since my ageing
limousine was second hand. Thank goodness it had been through the
car wash. Better not hang about, though, Lena might arrive, unaware
of me driving here on my own. What will she do when she finds out?

I locked its door, disguised my limp, and assumed the authority
of a visiting specialist. Good job I had crammed the clothes and
effects for my stay into a brief case. The car park attendant doffed
his cap, straightened his shoulders. All well so far, but inside the
main entrance a reception desk demanded attention. It was "manned"
by a woman in white, with hat and uniform larger than the most
senior qualified nurse in the world. `Yes?' she tapped her ball-point
to demand my attention.

`Doctor Petch told me to report to ward twenty one.'

`Did he?' she flicked through her papers. `He hasn't told me.'

`I'll go home then,' I seized the excuse to run away.

`Just a minute,' she lifted her voice, convinced she had
intercepted a usurper. `Wait there,' she jabbed a finger towards a
row of red chairs, her pen dialling for Doctor Petch. `I've got a man
here, called ...... What's your name?' her oyster framed spectacles
glared over the desk.

`Mytholmroyd'

`My,..Myt,..Ma.... You what?' she said, her high-heeled accent
having gone at the welts.

`My tholm royd,' I repeated, one syllable at a time.
`Pronounced My-them-royd.'

My hope of escape disappeared, I could tell by the way she was
nodding that the voice on the telephone was expecting me. `Go
straight along there. Turn right at the end. You can't miss it,'
she exuded resentment, someone else having tampered with her empire
of paperwork.

The corridor was bright and light, a modern wing grafted onto
the old. But its fresh paint could flake off so far as I was
concerned, hypodermics are hypodermics whatever the decor. `Ward
twenty one?' I double checked.

A sister nodded. The junior nurse understood her signal, took
charge of my suitcase, led me to an empty bed, the only one
unoccupied, and drew the curtains before I could glimpse around the
ward. `I'll be back for your case and clothes, in a while,' she
chirped, leaving me to undress whilst she busied herself elsewhere
upon more pressing needs.

Unsupervised, I seized this opportunity for an act of rebellion
and buried my suit within the bed's bedside cabinet. Perhaps it was
really a refusal to accept the gravity of having multiple sclerosis,
though I preferred to think of it as a challenge, cramming clothes
into an impossible space like packing a kit bag when in the army.

Soon I was bored, in freshly ironed pyjamas, lying on the bed
listening to noises, trying to guess what was happening beyond the
curtains inside the ward. Then my nurse peeped back, checking all
was well. `We do not lay on our beds, Mister Mytholmroyd, it makes
the ward untidy,' she chivvied me under the sheets, propping my back
upright against three regulation pillows, before she drew back the
curtains.

Funny that I should have thought about the army. I was fit in those
days. Trained for war in Korea they had sent me to Egypt to
spend eighteen months using killer skills to guard against sand and
flies. Not all the time, of course, for there were days for playing
games, as well as swimming in the Bitter Lakes beneath an
unsympathetic sun, apart from those patrols and military duties.
But, during my second summer, being a sergeant, I knew the short
cuts so there was less to do and a lethargy began to drag me down.
The less I did the more fuzzy my brain. Strange, I only overcame
this by forcing myself to move, play cricket, get my circulation
moving again, work off the heat, go swimming, regain my zest for
activity. `Right then, I want ten more volunteers for the rifle
range.' Must remember this when I get out of hospital - not the
rifles, of course, but the zest and circulation.

A rattling of crockery in the corridor broke into my thoughts
and I detected a stagnant whiff of hospital food. Impossible to
guess what was coming, the whiff was always the same - poached
dishcloth. `No,' a woman in a faded green uniform waddled her
trolley up to my bed, `Yer can't `ave yours in't day room.' One had
to be absorbed into the system, it seemed, to be receiving
treatment, and to have one's recovery assessed on the chart clipped
to the foot of the bed, visible to all and yet forbidden to the
patient, before perhaps qualifying for that privilege.

`Be like that,' I almost swore, a curse intended for the
specialist - though the longer he stayed away the better. Mind you,
at least he had told me it was M.S., so I now knew what I was fighting.

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?

Chapter 4.

`Cup of tea, Mister Mytholmroyd,' sang a voice, but bright
sunlight kept my eyelids closed. It must still be afternoon. `Cup of
tea,' she repeated.

Tea? I pretended to sleep, hoping she would go away. Tea could
wait, there were too many memories yet to uncover.

`It'll be your own fault if it goes cold,' she plonked it down
and trundled to the next bed.

Did my disease really disappear after father recovered? Or did
it remain hidden, an invisible plague? My second business started
to fluctuate round about then, or was that because the Chancellor of
the Exchequer's stop-go economics stopped?

I may never know, for whilst the economy was overheating my
business went up in flames. `What's he doing here?' the police
inspector had quizzed, referring to a freelance loss assessor, the
first person to arrive on the scene.

`I don't know,' I wrapped my dressing gown against the air
which crept into our kitchen in the wake of last night's flurry of
snow. `I've never seen him before.' Behind the inspector a sergeant,
slush weeping from the welts of his boots, started to write notes.
This made me angry. `He told me that he stays up every night, tuned
into your damned radio channels, listening for business.'

`Put your clothes on,' the police appeared unimpressed, anxious
to return to the site of the fire whilst my composure was rattled.
`What's this?' they started looking for wood-worms amongst the
smouldering embers.

`Police?' the insurance company then delayed settlement,
claiming an electric heater had been knocked over.

`That's just a wild guess,' dismissed my solicitor. `It's not a
viable reason for refuting the claim,' he dictated confidently into
his tape recorder. This was a very different solicitor, not like
the wishy-washy one from Whitby, so I paid him a retainer because he
said I had a very good case.

Once my cheque had cleared he was soon on the phone, not to the
insurance company but to me. `Money, what spare money?' I exclaimed.
So much for him not messing around. This sounded uncomfortably like
that lawyer in Whitby, where my previous claim had submerged beneath
uncharted depths of litigation.

`All right, all right. We'll do our best,' he calmed me down, but
after a fiery start adopted a smouldering patience, waiting for the
opposition to flicker. Again the defendants were waiting for me to
run out of money. But this time they were due for a long wait, Lena
was teaching, so we could afford to make them work for their
premium whilst I helped out at home.

`I want you to take these,' my doctor kept me behind in the
surgery after she had treated my son.

`Tablets? I don't need any tablets.'

`I'd like you to take them, all the same. People can be very
cruel when others are in trouble.' I looked puzzled. `They're not
addictive,' she said, whilst writing one three times a day on the
label.

Within a day they had turned my legs into lead. `Lead?' she queried
when I returned, doubting my diagnosis because the manufacturers
claimed their tablets to be side effect free. However, to be on the
safe side, she prescribed an alternative, this time giving me
capsules. My legs seemed to become normal but, after a while, my
health began to deteriorate. No doubt due to being bored, having no
job, I had decided at the time, but all would be well as soon as the
insurers paid out.

Throughout this period the evenings had been lengthening and
the waiting became easier, that is until the T.V. companies switched
to summer schedules. `There's nothing on tonight,' Lena looked in
the newspaper, `I'm going out for something to do.'

`You're right, there's nothing on tonight,' I folded the paper
and went along for the trip. She had joined a tennis class so I
passed my time strolling amongst mottled sunshine beneath trees
heavy with blossom, listening to the chatter of birds, watching them
turning over titbits, looking for worms, grovelling for grubs and
snails, oblivious to the plonk plonk plonk of tennis from another
part of the park.

The plonking petered out, was it time to go home? I hurried to
the court, slid back a bolt, clanged its gate shut, sending a tremor
full circle of its wire-mesh wall.

`No, we're just having a break,' Lena looked up. She was
pouring coffee from her thermos.

`Would you like a knock up, then?' a caffeine abstainer asked me
whilst waving his racket for want of something dramatic to do. He was
obviously a fitness freak, with full-Wimbledon gear and a tilted
yachting cap that was crisp new.

I looked towards Lena. She nodded. It was all right for me to have
a game.

Embroidered on the pocket of his short-sleeved shirt was an
eagle. `Albatross, old boy, wanderer of the oceans,' he flaunted his
badge.

`Gooney bird to proper mariners,' I muttered under my breath – but
loud enough to ruffle his pride. At the same time I was bouncing the
balls, psyching myself up, tapping any duff ones aside, intending to save
and slip them in on second services, where lack of bounce would leave
captain Birdseye flat-footed, and help shorten the odds stacked
against me.'

`Pardon, old boy?' he pretended not to have heard, intending to corner me
into repeating the insult.

`Umm?'

`You mumbled something. Didn't quite hear it,' he raised his tone,
forcing the issue.

`Oh,.. diomedia,' I served up a word behind which I hoped to retreat.

`What's that?' he demanded in pursuit, turning the screw.

`Albatross. That’s its biological name,' I replied, hoping that
if I was wrong he would be in no position to know.

But he carried on as though the word had been a guess upon
my part. `If you look closer you'll see that it's actually an
expensive likeness,' he thrust out his chest, obviously intending
to set about serving aces and slay me.

`Ah! Procellariid, albatross-like,' I replied, hoping to ruffle
his feathers as I started to serve.

`If you go home for tennis shoes we'll let you enrol as a
beginner,' he flatfooted me, pointing his racket at my
non-regulation footwear, and my psyching-up fizzled flat.

`Here, have mine,' shouted member called Fred. `I'm beggared,'
he said, preferring to help Lena sweeten her coffee, and she
seemed only too happy to pretend that her coffee needed sweetening.

Meanwhile, back on the court, my health improved the longer we
played. This is marvellous - I had reckoned at the time, believing it
all being due to taking exercise whilst having fun. `Must come back
tomorrow,' I recalled saying at the time, without reference to Lena.
In any case - I had reasoned without thinking because she said she
was going to be busy.

But now, from my hospital bed, I supposed that I had been a bit
thoughtless, acting as though it went without asking that she would
want me to be healthy. On the other hand, how could she? - Even I
never realised that it was these early exacerbations of MS that were
nibbling my knees.

After several more trips to the club I was fully recovered and my
“peculiar” illness had gone. `There's just an unusual sensation of
tingling left,' I said to my doctor who asked how my tennis was going.

`Are you taking the capsules I gave you?' she queried. And this was
several years ago.

`No,' I had said, shaking my head. `I used them up ages ago.'

`You better have some more,' she scribbled yet another
prescription, still not sure that there was anything wrong.

`All right,' I had agreed, submitting to her treating me as though I
was ill, despite my recent recovery having convinced me that there
was nothing basically wrong. Still, she was a good doctor and, some
day, perhaps in forty years' time, when I may be old and infirm, I had
reasoned that I might need her. But, at that time, my immediate priority
had been to get back to tennis, so it did not surprise me when my
health and game continued to prosper. Yes, those were the days when
I could tell I was well, knew I was well, so there was no need to ever see
her again – at least that was what I thought then.
.
By high summer boredom had set in. Tennis was only twice a week
and my lawn, which had never been my pride, was mown so close its
roots were trying to hide out of sight. I wanted to work, proper
work, but our telephones were still out of order.

`Sod waiting for the insurance company,' I had chuntered at the
time, setting off to stroll past the Village Green - no longer green
but by then buff brown and balding. I waited until the day's haze
and high doldrums had sent all but the distant "put put" of a tractor
indoors.

With nobody to watch me, even birds were hiding, except for a
dog which was flat to the ground, slouching in the shade, watching a
fly buzz round the end of its nose, I climbed up the telephone pole
next to the remains of my business and reconnected its wires.

Good, now to dump the fire-buckled switchboard and saunter back
home then drive to the next village. `Hello, faults? I'd like to
report 603661, it's giving number unobtainable,' I telephoned the
operator and gave her the number of my ex-directory line, the line
which looped over fields connecting the business to my home. I had
planned that with a bit of luck I might speak to an engineer who,
having not heard of the fire, would routinely deal with the repair.
Perhaps if he checked their exchange first, and found something
simple, like a fuse blown, the ploy would succeed?

Later, after lunch, waiting until a different shift was on
duty, I tried again, this time giving our business number. `Hello,
faults? I'd like to report 603658 as being out of order.'

I returned home, assuming that they would never fall for it,
but at least the scam had given me something to do. `Martin,' Lena
looked worried. `There's been a queer dinging on our phone.'

`Hell!' I lifted the receiver, our private number was working
again. I ran out of the house, round to the business, and climbed
back up the burnt pole with a spare telephone strapped to my arm.
Bloody marvellous, they'd also reconnected my business line.

Before I got home our phone was ringing. `There's somebody
wanting to place an order,' Lena handed me the receiver, radiating
displeasure at being called upon to act as my secretary.

What to do now, I wondered, having never expected to find a
customer unaware of the fire? `Yes, certainly,' I scribbled their
address, `We don't have one in stock at the moment,.. but we could
deliver one direct from the warehouse tomorrow.' Better not say
anything about the fire, it might undermine confidence just when
there was a chance to be working again, irrespective of whatever the
insurance company decided to do. As for the telephone people, my
do-it-yourself wiring was making them money, surely they'd turn a
blind ear when they found out? `Yes, yes, it will be delivered
tomorrow.'

Yet here was a quandary. Was the house to become a business or
remain our home?.... Or should I carry on trade half way up a
telephone pole? Pliers, a telephone switch, and a pair of household
steps soon corrected that problem - business in daytime, private at
night. `And you're planning to run a business from our bedroom?'
Lena moaned.

`From the spare bedroom.'

`Spare bedroom? What if mother comes to stay?'

`It's only temporary.'

`Well, I hope it is.'

`I'll use profit from the first orders to patch up what remains
of my business.'

`Business? That shell which the fire left standing looks more
like the front of a Hollywood set.'

But Lena put her objections on hold whilst I made use of the
scrap which was still buried amongst the ashes where the firemen's
hoses had scattered it. `Won't take long, I'll finish it before the weekend.'

And I did, and the business grew, and tennis took second place.
Strange, though, for when I had been repairing the roof, high up, my
balance seemed to be uncertain and that tingling returned. Was I
starting with asbestosis caused by rummaging through the ashes? Was
it something left over from Egypt? `Stop it, you're becoming a
hypochondriac,' I muttered at the time, dismissing my complaints as
being nerves due to stress caused by the business.

But why? My firm was much smaller, being just me, Vanessa and
Ivy - she was my part-time skeleton staff who weighed sixteen
stones. `I don't know how you stand it,' Ivy shivered from beneath
her heap of fur coats, turning up the wick of a paraffin stove, our
only form of heating until the pre-fire electricity bill had been
paid.

My legs turned back to lead. `There's no doubt that it's only
the cold to blame,' I reasoned, especially since they began to get
better when the weather became warmer and the business improved. Or
was it because the business improved and had little to do with the
weather?

All very confusing, especially since my tennis ended in failure
as the new season progressed. Even an old man in grey flannels made
a fool of me! Yet, within weeks, I was playing cricket amongst a
crowd, having fun, without the slightest sign of ill-health, whether
it was cloudy or fine. Definitely all very confusing, though I never
did like that old man.

`Come on, let's have you, it's dinner time,' the hospital meal
lady was shaking my elbow. `I left you this afternoon when I brought
tea round. Thought it best not to disturb you, what with you being
fast asleep.'

`I wasn't asleep, just thinking.'

`Well, if that's thinking, my husband must be blinking
Einstein,' she dolloped a scoop of potatoes onto my plate. `He looks
just like that every night, and in the morning,' she autographed
gravy over my meal with her ladle. `Although, now that I come to
think of it, he always has been a bit of an inventor - spending most
of his life inventing excuses.'

I smiled, turning the meat nearer and the turnips further away,
covering up where my pyjama had been dunked in the gravy. `Blinking
Einstein, he is,' she overlooked my transgression and slopped up a
bowl of pudding before steering her trolley to the next bed. I
relaxed, taking comfort in what the specialist had said,... Only a
couple of days…. That means tomorrow, so at this rate I'll get away
without having injections and suffering pain.

That does not leave much time to discover a miracle cure, if
there is such a thing as a miracle cure. Of course there is. What
about that first day in spring, four years ago, when we went for an
outing to Wharfedale? Not to our secret picnic site by the river
but a new spot, at the foot of a "mountain" which the children
wanted to climb.

They had tried it when little and failed, before even reaching
the heather. Was it too high for them then? I don't know, but this
time Claire was seven, John four, although Lena was apprehensive and
remained in the car with her knitting.

`Are you being serious, will the children be safe?'

`Of course they will.... And we'll wave every hundred yards
during the climb.'

She could relax, wave back, and make a game of it. `All right,
then,' she agreed, unfolding a rug, spreading it upon a grassy slope
amongst the bracken. The grass had been cropped short by sheep which
were now grazing within sight of nervous rabbits. After all, Sunday
was her day of rest.

Where the hell were our two? I looked up, leapt to the chase,
shouting instructions, attempting to halt them. `Wave to mummy,' I
shouted, any excuse to make them slow down. My fault, offering a
cash prize for the first two to stand on the summit.

`Climb and rest, climb and rest,' I stressed once we restarted.
The car and Lena began to shrink. The only rabbits on our slope big
enough for us to see were hopping between tussocks of grass, whilst
gambolling lambs, bleating and white, kept Claire and John going when
the novelty of climbing began to wear off.

`Oops,' we reached a small ridge, a good place to rest and give
a final wave with our handkerchiefs. Lena would never see their
little hands from this distance. `This is as far as we got last
time,' Claire laughed, reminding me of how John had dived off a
rock, done a somersault, and come to rest on a ledge. `Here,' she
pointed. `Where it juts out over that drop.' We never did find out
whether he was copying something on television. I had forgotten all
about it and, hopefully, so had Lena.

The steep face of "Everest" now towered above us. It was time
for a lecture. `John,' I sounded severe, relating his former balmy
behaviour. He didn't know what we were talking about, the memory
gone, he was more interested in the present and wanted to learn how
to climb the most dangerous slopes and get the money I had promised.

I guessed Lena would be click-clicking away with her knitting,
confident that the children would be turning back once the going got
tough, not knowing that they now saw the mountain as a challenge
still to be beaten. Grunting and giggling they struggled against
gravity, the car forgotten; grasping hold of heather, ledges, mud,
or anything on most difficult part, feet blindly feeling for rocks.
John wanted to call it a day, his calf muscles were aching. `So are
mine,' Claire gritted.

`We've almost reached the boundary,' I pointed to a dry stone
wall crowning the steep incline, thirty yards above, every sign of
being the top. He looked down, saw how far he had come, opted for a
rest, then decided to try for the summit.

`You cheat,' Claire was first to the wall and look over. `The
top's miles away. I can't even see it. Can we have half the money
for getting half way?'

`No. The reward's only for reaching Simon's Seat,' the name of
their "Everest", `And we're over half way there,' I attempted to
persuade them. `Wouldn't it be a pity to turn back?' I added,
forgetting that half way on the map meant half way above sea level,
not half way to the top of the hill. There was still a long way to
go.

John remained unimpressed. My encouragement rang hollow for
him. It would be another ten years before cash ran high in his set
of values. Claire was different. `If I get to the top can I have my
money?'

`What about John?'

`Can't we leave him here.'

`I want my share as well,' he grumbled, his sense of fair play
stretched to demand cash without effort. He wanted to sit where he
was, resting, whilst Claire did the climb and earned him the money.
`I'll be all right, it's nice and warm.' True, the weather was
freakishly mild for springtime on the fells, especially for
somewhere so high, and that's why it was too dangerous to leave him
alone. `All right then,' he looked up, `As long as you help me.'

This left me with no option, it was me who wanted to get to the
top, so I lifted them over the wall, in awe at the hillside towering
above us, its peak now hidden from sight. We started the next
section, it being the most severe of the climb, and soon they were
defeated. Our calves ached, our thighs ached, our arms ached, `I
want to go back,' John dug heels in.

`How can you?' I gasped, my arms supporting both of them as we
clung like flies to the slope, our muscles trying to recover. `Give
me your hands, one at a time,' I held out mine, once we were
half-rested, and hauled him up foothold by foothold before working
my way back for Claire.

The manoeuvre was repeated as we climbed higher and higher,
though the horizon remained endless against a blue sky. There was
always more hill ascending before us and their spirits gave up,
worse than being Scott in the Antarctic. Then suddenly the scarp
became a plateau. `What's that?' they reeled back beneath the
majesty of a massive outcrop, a rock fortress built by the Gods.

`That's Simon's Seat.'

Ah, now things were different. Their energy flooded back in a
tide of enthusiasm, setting them off at a scamper, the goal now in
sight. `Stop,' I shouted. They had immediately lost themselves in
their dash through crevasses and giant stones, everything surrounded
by a jungle of heather and sunken in peat. `Stay where you are,' I
caught up and lifted and guided them boulder by boulder until we
reached the edge of the badlands. I still enjoy the memory of John
clinging to my shoulders, fingers clasped round my neck, and the
pride of watching Claire ploughing on, knees cut, new socks ruined,
tears on her cheeks, determined to make it all on her own.

`Not that way, Claire,' a frontal attack on the Seat being
impossible. `That's reserved for mountaineers,' I explained as we
crawled onto its rocks from behind. At last, after twenty years,
this was the high fell I had climbed as a schoolboy to sweat
influenza out of my system. That is if it was influenza.

I sat on a rock, musing, whilst they played on the roof of the
world, running along tracks, eroded, filled with sand. Far below
were limestone Kails, once coral islands in primeval seas, beyond
which grit-stone fells fingered their way along far horizons. How
well I felt, as though every one of those Kails could be dismissed
aside with the lightness of a mustard seed.

But Claire and John returned, breathless, to relax armchaired
amongst the rocks, to listen to tales of yellow dogs and devil's
bridges which haunted the valleys below. Yet their little legs
soon began to itch, their stomachs telling the time, time to go
down, down to where a picnic and Lena were waiting.

We used a sheep trail, slithering steeply until, with car in
sight, we reached a field and burst into a sprint down its slope.
`First to the gate,' I laughed, blood surging into my legs, the
mysterious trouble gone. Stress, I always knew it was stress. I
raced past them, vowing never again to work on Sundays, never again
be unfit.

That had been all very easy to say at the time, and I meant it.
But look at me now, in hospital, lying on my back, even last night's
pimple of a hill near our village being too much. Still, I had
climbed Simon's Seat then, so I intended to do it again.

Chapter 5.

`Good morning, Mr. Mytholmroyd,' a young nurse rolled up my
sleeve. I opened one eye, lifted my head. Hell, a hypodermic
needle, kidney bowl, and... `Just a small prick,' she sounded damned
jolly.

`Ouch!'

`There, that wasn't so bad, was it?' she pulled back the
curtain and left with my blood.

It was all right for her, I searched for the damage,... but not
even a scar to take home. Well, at least, today's the last day so my
blood test is over and done with. Now, where was I, last night,
before going to sleep? Ah, yes, I had found the cure, but should I
keep it to myself? If Simon's Seat becomes as famous as Lourdes its
peace will be gone for ever: cafes and memento shops everywhere,
maybe even reopen the railway line.

Hang on, it can't be that easy, I started to sip the day's
first cup of tea. There must be something else besides simply
climbing a hill, otherwise the cure would have worked on Adderton
Hill. Nor could it have been exhaustion to blame, the hump at the
end of our lane is little more than a mound. So why am I in here? Is
it only a cure when a mountain is climbed? Was it like Moses going
for his prescription of tablets?

`Breakfast, Mister, er, Mylo-therm..?' bustled a meals lady,
this one starched in a fresh-washed green.

Don't they ever leave patients alone? I chewed the porridge,
wanting to get on with my thoughts.

`Do yer want me bacon?' the man in the next bed offered a lank
rasher skewered to the end of his fork. `Open yer eyes, lad, and
cheer up.'

`No thanks,' I smiled, shaking my head.

`Not going to cheer up?' he became depressed.

`No, no, I didn't mean that. `I'm not glum. Quite happy, in
fact. Just thinking.'

Another patient accepted his offer, leaving me free to
concentrate upon the problem of Adderton Hump. It was then that I
remembered that climbing Simon's Seat was not always good news. For
example, last year, when we attempted it yet again. Things
had kicked off very similar, being a Sunday, parked on the same
track, near the same patch of grass, but this time it was autumn,
not spring. I had sniffed the air before we started, deciding that
the clouds were warm enough to hold back the rain. Again Lena
stayed behind, though this time she preferred romantic paperbacks
instead of knitting whilst the children and I were climbing.

Something else was also different. John turned back to keep
Lena company, leaving Claire and me to continue alone. Was it that
he had spotted that old farm house in the valley with an ice cream
sign nailed to its roof?

It left me disappointed, and almost immediately my legs began
to ache. Not like last time, but more like jelly-aching jelly. How
peculiar, having to use my arms to haul myself even before it became
steep. Was this because Claire was older, stronger, giving me less
of a rest than before? She hung back, kindly, as though waiting for
the old man,... or somebody ill? I was not, of course, yet by the
time we reached the plateau I was floundering and falling, our roles
reversed in less than four years.

Perhaps this is what getting old is like. `You go on, Claire.
I'll catch up,' not wanting her to witness my condition as I
staggered and lurched those last hundred meters. She was waiting,
when I crawled onto the summit, the sun having broken through, her
legs dangling over the rocks, dipping her fingers in a fissure of
warm water. God, the climb had been painful, but everything would
be worthwhile when I recovered like last time. I looked down, again
the same Kail, same fells, same valley, same everything.... except
that the same faith needed to move a mere mustard seed was now
missing. `Don't think I'll see this lot again.'

`Pardon?' Claire heard. My silent whisper was not silent enough
in the quiet which had settled over the hills.

`Nothing,' I dismissed, making a joke of myself, saying how
strong she was growing. She smiled, reclining back on her rock as
sunlight broke through, turning up her sleeves, and floated on
freedom.

We could have stayed there for ever, time no longer having
meaning but, somewhere in the world, below where clocks still
ticked, there were two spaces waiting, a time warp away, our return
overdue. Lena would be starting to worry, John might be hungry. `We
can always come back another day, Dad,' Claire tugged me to my feet.
I hesitated, touching a rock for the last time, but hoping she
was right.

Our descent was slow, my legs fearful of falling, but once on
the foothill Claire burst into a sprint over grass. `Race you to the
gate,' she laughed, taking me by surprise, probably thinking my limp
was just a ploy. My muscles exploded, determined to win.

`All right, you win,' I gave up, this time not cured. She
suspected a trick and was soon lost from view.

Tired, in a funny sort of way, I lurched along a rough track,
out of sight, as though drunk, blaming myself for my health. But our
car was parked just round the corner so I braced every muscle,
before Lena or the children could see me, and concentrated on
walking next to the wall. Oh, no, my legs broke into a dry-stone
stutter, like a Saint Vitas' Dance. Lena would give me that "I told
you so" look. She would be quick to suspect me of overdoing things
so I crouched, as though looking for specimens, disguising the state
I was in.

But Lena was not as stupid as she occasionally pretended to be.
I did not know our doctor had told her that something was wrong at
the time of the fire, this was the logic behind her now having got
me in hospital. Stupid woman, she expected a cure, without any idea
that it was going to be as serious as multiple sclerosis. Mind you,
at least she would not be opening secret savings accounts in case I
got worse. We had known each other too long for anything like that.

Meanwhile, whilst in hospital, I was preoccupied, thinking of
Simon's Seat, searching for clues. Was it a case of me failing to
pace myself during the second climb, or was it me not being fit
enough at the start,.. or perhaps because on this occasion the dull
hand of Lena had not left that Sunday euphoric?

`Tea or juice wi' yer dinner,' a relief meal-lady's trolley ran
into the foot of my bed.

`Watch it,' joked a patient. `Tha'll amputate `is bloody leg.'

`Er, tea, please, that's all,' I sat up, reluctantly. There was
so much to think about.

`Is tha' sure?' she demanded, swelling with the importance of
an influx of air.

`Better have a meal,' I changed my mind, not wishing to
jeopardize being discharged tonight, even though staying in hospital
provided a constructive alibi for staying off work.

`What about the idea of exercise being linked to improvement
whilst enjoying myself?' I wondered with a silent smile whilst
toying with the peas, stirring them into the gravy and mashing them
into the mash. This is what those different climbs of Simon's Seat
seemed to suggest. Well then, was there ever an example of euphoria
alone being sufficient?

Of course there was. I only had to go back nine months to
August when I was been able to race up and down those escalators on
the Underground, and that was after that terrible climb of Simon's
Seat had gone so awfully wrong.

A strange August it had been, looking for a job, after putting
my business up for sale. There were one or two openings but, being
in my forties, it could be the last chance to achieve something big.
As a result I had ended up being interviewed in London with an
international firm of consultants.

`We would like your wife to accompany you,' they pressed.

Wife? I was unable to see why, perhaps some new American
practice. Lena was even more suspicious but their address in Oxford
Street, close to the shops, and a day away from the children, was
too good to miss.

`Take a seat,' they motioned to us both, asking Lena the same
questions after interviewing me. A quick way of checking my
answers.

`Never again,' she vowed, on the way home, as the train raced
for Leeds where we had parked. `Another of your madcap schemes,' she
snapped, leaving me bemused. `The only reason I came was because of
the shops. You conned me.'

I remained at a loss, wondering whether these comments were
said tongue in cheek, jibes at having missed out on her spending the
business before it was sold? I shelved any reply, hoping that having
missed the train with a restaurant car was the reason to blame.
After all, she wanted me in a secure job with an increased salary,
didn't she? Given time, things will look different and, sure enough,
within a couple of days she encouraged me to return for even more
interviews,.... `So long as I don't have to go with you.'

Three weeks later I was back in London, but this time my stride
was uncertain. It affected my ego, having an imperfection, so I
swelled out my chest and exaggerated the limp, macho style, as
though I had earned an injury whilst playing rugby. Illogical, I
know, for how many eyes would have even bothered to look? But it
straightened my aim of direction until I arrived at the escalators.
Then it was humiliation time, all reflexes in chaos when trying to
get on and off.

Somehow I regained a kind of composure, practicing my disguised
limp before walking into Oxford Street. `You will find some question
papers in the next room,' a secretary welcomed me. The interviews
had become tests, tests that lasted two days.

When the results came through I was summoned back to London and
redirected to a hotel where an industrial psychologist was waiting.
My session with him lasted the whole morning. He was also present
during the afternoon when I was interviewed by the boss, with the
big boss from America by his side. Strange how, when the odds were
titanic, I always rose to the occasion. I suppose it's something to
do with adrenaline, the adrenaline that was put to good effect by my
ancestors when they were being chased across Britain by saber
toothed tigers.

It's unbelievable, the way I raced up and down every escalator
on the way home, ego-boosting interviews having produced a complete
cure. This was a very important memory indeed. No exercise, just
euphoria, plus a different type of stress, the short-term emergency
jungle type, unlike the drip, drip, drip of a long-term depression.
This is more like the good news for which I was looking to help me
when I got out of..........

`Hello,' a voice reminded me of just where I was. Good
gracious, It was Lena, and afternoon visiting time. But why was
she here? This was my last afternoon.

I sat upright. Why the case?'

`I've come for your clothes.'

`Clothes, what clothes? I'm coming home today.'

She blushed. `Sister says they've been busy. There's still one
or two more tests left, and they won't be finished before tomorrow.'

`Tomorrow!'

`Shush, not so loud,' her embarrassment blushed.

`How long have you known?'

She did nit reply, but looked round the ward.

`How long have you known?' I raised my voice.

`Yesterday,.. afternoon, on the way out, Sister told me.'

`Pull the other one.' Visitors' heads were eagerly turned,
enjoying the row as I threatened to get out of bed to find Sister.
`Don't expect me to be so naive as to believe that you've turned up
with a portmanteau of a suitcase, just for one day.'

`I brought it yesterday, to take your clothes home. You're
breaking regulations. Did you persuade a young nurse to hide them?'

It was no longer a joke. Was this that type of hospital where
tomorrow never comes? But best to smile and divert her attention, I
might be glad that I have a suit in the locker if need to escape.
`She's off duty,' I lied, increasing the deception, assuming she
would not risk wishing to be shown up in front of Sister.

`You are so childish,' she assumed the high ground, whilst
still on the bottom step, loosing her temper and hurrying from the
ward, blushing even deeper as though other patients had X-ray eyes
and could see that the case she carried was empty. The ward doors
swung back and forth in her wake.

Before I could settle a woman doctor appeared. She was young,
in a pristine white coat, with a stethoscope fresh to her neck and
began to search for a patient. She started at the end of the ward,
moving nearer, definitely very attractive. Oh, hell, it was me she
was looking for. `Mister Mytholmroyd?'

Damn, even the most beautiful rose can prick deep. With
reluctance I nodded, failing to cover over my name.

`Could I have you lying on your bed, please?' she withdrew some
tools from her pocket. I stretched, looking for any sign of painful
implements. `Just a few tests,' she took hold of my arm.

`That's what they all say.'

She smiled, selecting a tuning fork, wanting to test my
awareness of touch. That's a relief, I've seen them before, several
times. In fact I know all of them so well that I know the answers
off by heart. I can easily make myself look healthy.

Ah, something different, she came up with a new test. `I'd like
you to stand to attention, and close your eyes,' she pointed to a
spot well away from my bed. `It's all right, don't worry, I won't
let you fall.'

Won't let me fall? I chuckled. She must be confusing me with
somebody else. Doesn't she know that, apart from my temporary
inconvenience, I am the one who runs up and down hills and plays
games? `Oops,' it came as a shock when I toppled into her arms.
Quick, a joke, say anything to cover up failure, `Can we do that
test again, doctor?'... But she swiftly gathered up her
instruments. `If it bothers you, we could close the curtains,' my
voice followed her. Pity, she was gone, evaporated in a haze of
self-consciousness.

Ah, well, with that little interlude over I can put on my
thinking cap. What about diet? Nothing special there although,
during the past year, Mother has commented upon my complexion,
inferring that Lena was not feeding me properly. `Here, Willie,' she
would pass Father his pocket money. `Go to the chemists, get Martin
some vitamin tablets.'

Funny, every time they seemed to make me feel even healthier
than normal. That pleased her, she was sure they made me look
better. Probably just her imagination, particularly since experts
said that ordinary diets contained everything that a normal person
needed. But animals are given dietary supplements, I remembered,
and multiple sclerosis is not normal. To heck with the experts, I've
got nothing to lose, I'll take multivitamins when I get out. `You a
vegetarian?' shouted a hospital orderly, short coated and new to the
job, pointing his clipboard towards me. What a coincidence, almost
as though he knew I was thinking of food. Was that a mustard seed
speaking to me?

`No,' I shook my head, ignoring fate's whisper. `Don't like
pastry.'

`Knew you didn't eat normal food,' he searched for a column to
tick, then made a note before moving on in search of other abnormal
patients.

After dinner I continued to think about tablets. This time
those strange ones my GP prescribed, the ones which had got rid
of the tingling in my legs during those weeks following my fire. I
had continued to take them for a while, but forgot them when the
business reopened. Trade grew so quickly we were able to afford an
inexpensive holiday with friends. It was a good holiday, every day
playing games, my health blooming by the time we returned home.
Yet, whilst we were there, my legs jarred each time we zigzagged
down the path to the beach. A bit like fluid on the knee, I thought
at the time, vowing to use those strange capsules the following
year.

Sure enough, next summer, when we returned to Bournemouth, that
holiday was just as good, probably even better considering that my
knees no longer jarred since I had remembered the capsules.
Goodness knows what the doctor had prescribed. Yet is that why I got
into the habit of taking them again? Don't think it's very
important though, I thought, and turned onto my front, ready for
sleep, burying my head under the pillows away from the ward's chorus
of moaning and groaning.

The next thing I knew someone was poking me. `Silly sod,' I
swore, uncovering my head, only to find a nurse breathing a sigh of
relief. Being tall and thin I had merged into the bedding. `I
always sleep like this,' I dismissed her worry that she thought I
was missing.

`Perhaps you do,' she snapped, `But not any more. Last week we
had a suicide escape down the fire escape. We'll have you sleeping
in a normal position, where we can see you,' she tucked in my sheets
tightly, pinning me down to the mattress.

Subdued light daisy-ringed in pools onto the floor, away from
patients, leaving a dim veil of darkness sufficient for each still
to be seen. I closed my mind, almost got used to the moaning, then,
`Have you? ....Grown `em yourself?..... Have you shown
Mother?..... I would, .....,' started up the man in the next bed.
`You'll win..... Definite,..... Get first prize.....'

`Nurse,' I whispered, next time she passed. `How long does this
go on for?'

`All night, that's why we offered you a sleeping tablet, like
everyone else.'

`Why don't you give him one. Then we can all have a sleep, and
look at the money you'll save on tablets.'

`Can't. He's too poorly.'

To stop me from asking more questions, provided I promised not
to run away, she allowed me to turn onto my front, even with a
pillow covering my head.

`Fool,' I thought, before falling asleep, `What did you swear
to yourself after being cured, following that climb of Simon's Seat,
"I'll never let myself become ill again"?..... And what did you do,
work yourself stupid until you've ended up here?.... Well,
remember, next time you return to health, after harnessing that
faith, faith no larger than a mustard seed - don't waste it, it
might be your last chance.'
_

Chapter 6.

`Morning, Mister Mytholmroyd,' sang the sweet siren song of
suffering when, yet again, I was woken by a nurse. She had arrived
like the khamsin, that warm wind which blows with predictable
regularity in Egypt. She was also warm to the touch and, like the
searing desert air, cheerfully intent upon doing me grievous bodily
harm.

`Someone took a sample yesterday,' I protested, hiding my arm,
suggesting that she check with central records. `Besides, I'm not
supposed to be here, the specialist said I was going home
yesterday.'

`There's not just me,' she cheerfully rolled up my sleeve,
uncovered the kidney dish containing another damned hypodermic,
`We'll be coming back for more.'

`More!' I complained, when "We" finally arrived. "We" was not
that pretty young thing but a medieval vampire with bloodstained
white coat, evidence of having feasted upon earlier victims, her
array of syringes ranging from prick size to elephantine. `One or
two tests!' I protested. `No wonder my wife wanted my clothes.
They won't fit by the time you've finished emptying my arm.'

`Stop complaining.'

`A castaway, marooned in a hospital I'll be, having been sucked
away into your statistical system.'

No sooner was I left alone and, `Mytholmroyd,' barked a porter,
before I had chance to inspect the damage she had done.
`Mytholmroyd,' he repeated, with hands on hips, as though claiming
the ward doorway, scanning our faces, sadistically exploiting the
silence. I happened upon a subterfuge, intending to send him away,
but that would only make things worse, delay my discharge, so I
nodded.

`Right,' he storm-trooped his theatre trolley towards me, with
steel-tipped boots clicking over the polished floor and halted at
the records by the foot of my bed. `You got any special medical
equipment?' he recited a list without waiting for answers, jacking
up my bed onto its wheels before steering me out of the ward,
leaving his trolley behind. `Those your own teeth.'

Phew, what a relief, I was only going for an X-ray. Hurrah,
hurrah, that was soon over, but why was I being dashed towards the
operating theatres? No, thank goodness, steel-heels was changing
direction whilst running his finger down a list of instructions
before stopping dead, swivelling my bed ninety degrees, then ramming
it through twin plastic doors, each with a little round window. `Why
are we here?' I found the courage to ask, everything being so small
and narrow. Whilst my head was being X-rayed he must have taken a
vow of silence because he merely ticked his list and departed.

Unsupervised, now free to raise my head, looking for clues, I
attempted to hazard a guess. No instruments, that's a relief;
although its walls, green tiled, looked antiseptically ominous.

Time went, passed, and came again; only threatened by
footsteps, sometimes pausing, never entering. Then it dawned, one
test they could do in a room this size was a lumbar puncture and
draw fluid from my spine. This is where I escape. Damn, nowhere
to hide, and on the cusp of my exit a nurse arrived with a trainee
in tow. `Back onto here, please, Mister Mytholmroyd,' she patted
the examination couch, like training a dog whilst checking the
records. `Multiple sclerosis,` she read, looked up, panicked, and
hurried to give me a lift, supposing I should be unable to manage.
Blast, why did I agree to hospital in the first place? Was I always
to be treated as an invalid for the rest of my life? `Onto your
side, please,' she pressed me into the foetal position.

Left with no alternative I gazed at the green tiles, ceiling to
floor, floor to ceiling. There was a sparrow wiping its beak
against the treatment room's high window. Lucky sod, free amongst a
world of noise whilst in here it was wall-to-wall silence, the nurse
expecting a doctor, with her pretence at being casual to keep the
patient at ease, not knowing that I knew what she knew. More staff
arrived, moving silently. I tried to guess at numbers from the
hushed rattle of instruments behind me. This was no joke, keeping
me waiting whilst an audience was ushered in just to watch my lumbar
being punctured. There was so much bloody secrecy, as though they
were keeping me docile like a cow in an abattoir. Then a nurse moved
into vision. Different one, standing before me, something to look
at besides those winter-green tiles.

She smiled, sweetly, suggested I take hold of her hand,
whilst I feigned innocence before asking, `Why?'

`Well,.... you know,' she coloured, finding herself faced
with the quandary of having an uncomforted patient about to have a
needle stuck into his spine and not being permitted to tell him.

`Not now. Later,... perhaps, at the pictures,' I smiled, as
though attempting a seduction, `When there's not so many people
standing behind me.'

How did he know? the thought flashed through her eyes, whilst
the doctor, out of sight, was losing his patience. `Please remain
still, Mister Mythomthloyd,' he implored in an Indian accent. His
fingers searched my spine, locating the vertebrae. `Just a small
prick.'

`I've heard that one before.'

`You vill hardly notice it at all,' he continued disjointedly
whilst he concentrated his attention upon my spine.

Even the nurse felt the tension, having no hand to hold, as the
needle felt its way in. I joked about the quantity of fluid being
taken to deflect from the dull pain of a spike being forced steadily
into the trunk of a tree under local anaesthesia. `I can feel my
brain shrinking, doctor.'

Somewhere someone bit back a snigger.

`Oh, no, no, no, Mister Mythomthloyd. Definitely not. The
volume of spinal fluid I am taking vill definitely have little
effect not upon the size of your brain, whatsoever.'

`Oh, aye. Well how much longer are you going to take?' I
whispered, `My voice is disappearing.'

More stifled sniggers.

Eventually he finished. The audience gathered around him as he
held up his syringe to daylight and showed them what once had been
me. I was ignored. Sod this, I left for my bed in the corridor,
but not before turning to declare in the doorway, `Where do I get
paid? This is a theatre, so I expect to receive Equity rates.'

Uncontrolled giggling.

`Oh, no, no, no. Ve definitely pay nothing at all, definitely
not.'

`Score: hospital four, Mytholmroyd four,' I turned my back
again as he struggled to establish the group's decorum.

`Get this patient into that bed,' barked a sister in full flow
to the auxiliary who was lolling over my pillows. She had come to
find their missing patient, dinner having been served, the space
left by my bed making the ward untidy again.

After the meal I dozed and started to count the number of
occasions when having a good time coincided with an improvement. I
got to fourteen when something disturbed me. It was Lena, pulling a
chair to my bedside. `There are enquiries to purchase your
business,' she glowed, unable to hold back her joy, adding almost as
an afterthought, `The children are well.' She also had messages from
friends. `And they're letting you go home tomorrow, so I'll have a
word with sister before I leave.'

Because she thought my face was less drawn she was also full of
hope in the medical field, confident that it was not multiple
sclerosis. Ten minutes later, after speaking to sister, she went
home demoralised, her plans in disarray, to spend that evening
touring friends, not knowing what to do next, complaining, `If only
he'd remained in teaching we'd have had a pension.'

Such thoughts had never entered my mind. Never mind the money,
what about my blasted legs.... I was more concerned with beating the
disease and getting a different job. Things didn't seem so bad, now
that I knew what had been troubling me all these past thirty years.
Whilst in hospital I had worked out what to do, what to avoid, so I
was going to stop the disease in its tracks.

As I drifted during that evening my mind went back a few weeks
to Easter. Claire was away on a school exchange in France when,
without warning, Lena took a week's holiday, her destination secret.
But it must have been planned in advance because, `I'm coming back,'
I had heard her whisper to John in his room before she left, not
giving us chance to scramble out of our beds before she was gone.

John, finding just the two of us suddenly alone, must have felt
lost. That in itself I found stressful. I did my best to occupy
him, staying at home, neglecting work, taking him to a football
match in the kind of cold which bleaches bones. We never got there,
had a puncture, jammed in traffic, all on top of seven days being
starved of exercise. Was it this culmination of every condition
upon which M.S. thrives that resulted in me ending up in hospital,
no longer able to disguise the disease?

`She's gone to sort herself out,' I had convinced myself,
whilst wondering whether her flirtations were more than just that?
Was she in Scarborough, with that divorced man who sowed the seeds
of doubt where none existed? No, not with him, his former wife was
her best friend. Questions and doubts continued to pop up for each
day she was missing, persuasions hung like the leaden skies of
this cold, cold Easter.

I turned over to sleep, for the last night in hospital,
finalising plans to put the ill wind of my diagnosis to good use.
`Sod it.' The green eye sitting snug on my shoulder had whispered an
answer and that broken chain of conclusions suddenly joined up.
`It's that bloody divorced Vincent, they'll have been staying at the
St. Lucifer hotel.'

Chapter 7.

Great, my car is still where I left it on Monday, parked
amongst the limousines belonging to senior consultants. I took a
deep breath, slammed the door, fingers crossed, and it started first time.
The security guard saluted my suit, presumably thinking I must be
important to have had such a prime parking bay for a whole week. He
continued to salute all the time whilst he directed my reversing. I
nodded an acknowledgement and engaged forward gear, drove onto the
road, the engine and life feeling sweet after a week of squeaking
ward trolleys and knees out of action.

Precious lanes, unchanged since yesterday, such precious lanes,
so much brighter than the memory, what hand of kindness had stroked
them thus? And home smelt like home, like no-one else's, timeless,
with a warmth. Then the children,.... no emotional welcome for the
returning hero. Just coy smiles, Father was back.

Earlier that morning, after digging out my suit ready to leave,
there had been a flurry of activity, last minute blood tests
overlooked. `Tha'll have to take it easy from now on,' an old
patient had tugged at my sleeve as I attempted to hurry, commenting
on my scurrying limp. That clinches it, I had thought, my walk
having deteriorated after only five days. It's just as important to
keep moving as it is to avoid overdoing things.

Might as well make a start, now that I'm home, deciding to put
more coal on the fire. Flames flickered and I remembered aloud.
`Vitamins!' almost swearing, having intended to buy some on the way
home. Claire suppressed a smile, expecting to hear Father use words
she already knew. I castigated myself, stabbing the coals with a
brass-handled poker. The newspaper fell from my knee. `Damn.' But
as I picked it up an advert leapt from its classified columns: MAIL
ORDER HEALTH PRODUCTS. its address slotted between Private
Services and Condoms by the Gross.

Might as well, it can't do any harm, particularly since experts
give sufferers no hope. `At least if they sell vitamins it will be
worth it,' I showed it to Lena.

My stubborn refusal to accept the doctor's prognosis failed to impress
Her. She preferred to think I would be better off looking 
after my health than wasting the price of a stamp.

`Don't get your knickers in a twist,' I tried to leap to my
feet. `I'll buy my own stamp.'

`Take it easy,' she panicked, realising her mistake. `I'll post
it for you.'

`No, thanks, don't bother,' I shook my head, promising to pace
myself on the way to the village post office, planning to avoid
being trapped into gossiping and standing too long. I had a second
letter in my hand, addressed to the Department of Health and Social
Security. Was it this which was responsible for her change of
attitude?

`Just two stamps, please,' I asked when I got there. `Two
stamps, please,' I repeated, three times.

`Yus, I `eard `ee,' Ogram replied, breaking his inertia,
pondering whether to overloading me with pamphlets in an effort to
keep his post office open. The more villagers he could drum up
to claim pensions and benefits the better.

`And two of those Easter eggs,' I said, pointing to his
out-of-season chocolates which were available on discount before
being unfit to sell. I wanted them for Claire and John, and any
excuse to distract Ogram from filling my pockets with leaflets.

Though I returned in one piece perhaps was Lena still
apprehensive? `I'm all right, look,' I assured her. `But tomorrow,
when we go to Leeds, I'll try to get some tablets to last until the
catalogue arrives.'

She nodded, accepted my plan, suggesting that she could save my
legs by looking for health foods whilst doing her shopping. Too
many tablets would be better than none, we agreed. `Come and sit
down,' she moved a cushion for us to relax, watch television, until
the nine o'clock news. By then she was tired, after all her hospital
visiting on top of a week's work, and was soon off to bed, but I had
been on my back since Monday. I could do with another short walk.
Not very romantic, but she was already asleep, and there was still
time for a pint at the local, a chance to mix amongst healthy folk.

`Did the judge give the bail?' Stan guffawed as he carried a
drink for me to the nearest table. Last night Lena had told his wife
of the hospital's diagnosis.

`I'm fine, really,' I showed him by standing on one leg with a
pint of beer in each hand. It was great to be amongst healthy folk.

Next morning was glum. I was all right, it was the clouds that had
a hangover. No wonder the Vikings had pillaged and burned, they
would need a good fire after rowing from Norway in weather like
this, I mused through the window. Surely things could only improve?
`Are you ready?' Lena called from the kitchen. She was waiting,
ready to go.

`Oh, oh,' I replied, unable to think of anything better to say,
dragging on clothes, rushing round the bedroom. Yet my confidence
had recovered by the time we reached the first chemist's shop. It
also sold multivitamin tablets. `Good,' she said, crossing tablets
off her list. `I'll drop you at your parents' whilst I do the rest
of the shopping.'

`It's a pity you didn't get M.S. when you were in the army,'
Mother greeted me. `They'd have given you a good pension.'

Pensions! Are pensions all that women bloody think about? I
thought, slighting half humanity whilst giving Father a knowing
look. `Good idea, a pension,' I smirked, `Provided I wasn't shot in
Egypt, or Cyprus, or Kenya or Aden or Borneo or...'

`You're as bad as your father,' she clicked her tongue and
slammed on the kettle in the kitchen. `You don't deserve to be given
good advice.'

I gave up, Father returning my knowing look. This was the same
Father who had capitulated three years ago, giving her free rein to
pursue that accountant who was dealing with his cousin's will.
Whether she got any more money after reporting him to the Society of
Chartered Accountants we never found out, but he died, stress having
brought on a heart attack. `Justice was done,' she proclaimed,
triumphantly, when she returned with the tea, guessing what we had
been thinking about, `And don't stir your cup that way, Wilf.'......
Eventually Lena rescued me and we had lunch at her mother's.

Not much happened over the next two weeks. Even spring flowers
remained hidden, chilled in the earth. Little chance of me getting
any exercise. But at least I avoided stress by cancelling all the
newspapers, dodging television news and all other depressing
programmes. `That doesn't leave much else for you to watch,' Lena
muttered.

`OK, then. I'll play the hi-fi, put on something which makes
me feel good, perhaps that'll stimulate something.'

She left for school, leaving me to concentrate upon each
record and will my physical recovery, using some kind of untutored
meditation. Did it work? Did it fail? As yet I could not tell, but
the leaning tower of Pisa did not begin to lean in a day. Yet I did
not intend to be leaning for ever and soon a brochure arrived. Page
after page, they sold everything, including a Peking extract which
promised everlasting sex. No wonder there were two billion Chinese.

Do they really? My mind boggled, eyeing one illustration from
every angle, and in so doing caught sight of a small advert in the
opposite corner for Doctor McDougal's gluten-free diet - leaflet
available upon application. It claimed that, particularly when used
together with multivitamin mineral tablets, his diet could offer a
wide range of benefits, even to people with multiple sclerosis.

Within a week of having sent a cheque one month's supply of
tablets and a copy of the diet arrived. "Use only gluten-free
foods," it insisted. "No wheat, no barley, no oats, no rye." Suits
me, I thought, never did like Christmas cakes, pork pies or scones,
so from now on I have a valid excuse to always say `no thanks'.
Trouble was, it also banned goodies like jam tarts and biscuits. Was
it the sweetness of these which disguised their harmful ingredients?
Pity, but the loss is small if it helps me to recover.

In less than a month my gut disorder was cured. Things began to
make sense. It was possible to link the start of my digestion
troubles to those times in the lab when I worked long hours without
meals, existing on biscuits and tea.
That's it. I'm allergic to gluten. The leaflet calls it a
coeliac condition. Even the Greeks knew about it, "fatty diarrhoea"
they named it. I read on, to discover that the condition rendered
patients unable to absorb foods like unsaturated oils. Did these
include the essential fatty acids which were vital for health? Were
they even more essential for the nerves of M.S. sufferers?

Spurred on by my early success I wrote to the Coeliac Society,
requesting a list of gluten-free foods. Their response was instant.

`This Society is only for people who have been medically
diagnosed as having coeliac condition....... I am unable to help you
with literature....... I suggest you write to the M.S. Society.’
The letter was printed. How many others with M.S. had previously
sought their help?

The reply from the M.S. Society came even quicker, plus a
telephone call from their local branch secretary. `Don't you do
anything,' he instructed. `And don't be taken in by any quack
remedies. When there's a cure we will be the first people to know.'
Until then he expected me to sit back and wait.

`Like hell I will,' I crashed down the phone, and got a
hospital dietician to smuggle a list of gluten-free foods.

`It won't work for the majority of sufferers, it can't if
they're not allergic to gluten. But if you're allergic to anything
at all it's worth trying to do something about it.'

True, as forecast, the diet was not a miracle cure but, with my
diarrhoea condition cleared up, at least my body was not starving to
death. As the weeks passed, plus taking the vitamins, people said
how much better I looked - too many for it not to be true. I also
felt better, and I reckon that feeling better actually helped me get
better, but not when I started to walk.

All this pottering about doing nothing. My muscles had been
wasting away. Damn it, I must persevere, to hell with those people
who think my tottering makes me look like Noddy. Trouble was, after
a hundred meters my spine started to ache, just where that lumbar
puncture had been, each pace increasingly spastic. How the hell can
I exercise muscles without putting weight on my spine? `John's
bike. That'll do it,' I tumbled into the kitchen.

`You'll fall off,' Lena said, aiming to dissuade me.

`Maybe, but it won't be the first time,' I grinned, taking a
rest before going outside where I adjusted his saddle.

`Your sense of balance is faulty,' Lena followed, attempting to
save me from myself.

She was right, of course, but only when I had my eyes shut -
except at night when I needed a light or something to focus on.
`I'll be all right, it's daytime. Besides, this bike's only a
compact model.' It did not have a cross bar, thus I would avoid the
unkindest cut of all. `It's also low, so there's not far to fall.
And if I do my legs won't feel it,' I added as a joke, a touch of
bravado to help boost my confidence. `Anyway, people never forget
how to ride.'

At first I nipped round the corner, out of sight. I had
forgotten how to get on! But a row of eyes soon changed windows,
attracted by the crashing and tinkling of the cycle overturning. I
picked it up, pretended not to notice, and failed again. Ha-ha, I
grinned, as though this was just fun. Ha-bloody-ha, after the third
attempt. All right, then, wheel it to where the drive slopes down to
the house. Eyes scuttled back to the living room, watching for my
next disaster. I pushed off, freewheeling whilst each foot trod air
until it found a pedal, and rode past to the family's applause.
`What's he going to do when he reaches the garage door?' John
chuckled, urging Claire to rush for her camera.

I closed one eye, guessed my speed, and wobbled into a turn -
closing one eye was probably half an act of cowardice rather than
that of a whole marksman sighting up his cycle, just missed the
hedge of thorns and emerged pointing back up the drive. `Magic!' I
steered in triumph onto the lane, aiming into the village, intending
to go once round the Green and back.

But my legs were working so well I rode on, along a lane of
hedge-less hedgerows, overtaken by a surge of euphoria until after a
mile my calves began to talk back. How heavy they were, time for a
rest. Decisions! decisions! Which foot to put down? Decisions,
decisions, put both of them down, you're not riding a big racer.

The wheels spun slowly as I looked down, up at the sky, none of my
necessaries grazed after having tippling onto the verge. A sea gull
or something had a laugh to itself. Perhaps at me who, like a dead
chicken, had both legs pointing upwards. `Haw-haw`. Damn thing, still
white against blue despite it having spent its morning scavenging
around the council refuse quarry. `Haw-haw.` It's probably never even
seen the sea. Or is it an albatross, like the badge on the shirt of
that man who played tennis, that man I still hated. That game was
less than four years ago, I lamented; but only for a moment for I
remembered last autumn's interview after which I was able to sprint
up and down escalators - so much hope from such a small seed.

That was then, what about now, did anybody see me making a fool
of myself? I peeped with goat-like curiosity between the disentangled
machine. Slowly, stiffly, a precautionary scan of the lane showed
it to be lifeless, I was still looking upon M.S. as some sort of
failure. Trouble is, there was a chill breeze blowing puffy white
clouds. Must get myself free, and hauled upon my elbows until legs
lifeless had trailed me out of the frame. Better wriggle into that
ditch, shelter from the wind, lie back and rest in the warmth of an
occasional sun.

A farmer, planting potatoes in a field just outside squinting
distance, stopped work, trying to make out what was going on.
Motionless, the landscape, his tractor, and his workers all waited.
I feared at the trespass I might be committing when he began to
approach. `Oh, it's you. We thought you were the Social Security,'
he grumbled with relief. `Sneaky buggers, they are, spying on
honest folk without jobs what are forced to cheat on the dole just
to make ends meet.' The ditch? It weren't his to bother about. He
turned, signalled, all this talk was costing him money, and the
canvas came back to life. A farmer with a conscience who left his
Mercedes back home.

Again on my own, except for birds building nests in the only
scrap of hawthorn left in the lane, I settled back as though for the
day, blood tingling, all feeling returning, the Spring interlude
ending when Adderton's sky curtained over, long before nightfall.
Things could only get colder. Now for the test, can I get home? I
stood up, stretched my legs. Wonderful, things felt wonderful, no
need for a slope before pedalling off this time. I arrived home
stronger than when I set off. Funny how cold did not interfere with
my improvement.

Next day was a school day, with me left in the house. `Will you
be all right?' Lena remained apprehensive, fearing I'd go out and
break more medical advice.

`Of course, I shall.' I was looking forward to being alone,
able to carry my experiments further. `I'll wash the pots after
breakfast,' I called, as she closed the car door, not making mention
of my intention to borrow John's bike once again.

She had no need to worry, for I was cautiously feeling my way
to recovery, and took a short rest whilst the dishes drip dried,
then put on thick clothes to soften the tumbles before pointing his
bike up the drive. Just my luck, nobody to watch when I'm not
falling off, only an audience when I'm making a fool of myself!
Even the wobbles soon disappeared and I covered yesterday's ride,
there and back, all in one go, euphoric at not having to stop.

Breathing deeply, I leant against the kitchen wall and decided
to call it a day. `I could do with a cup of tea, how about you?' I
spoke to the handlebars. `But this time a rest before putting down
my feet.'

When I did risk grounding my legs they were stronger. The
regime I had dreamed up in hospital was working. Not yet a miracle
cure, not like our first climb up Simon's Seat, but still an
improvement built upon exercise.

The third day's ride was even better, taking me three miles
without having to brake, a good enough reason for buying a bike of
my own. Besides, Claire and John were beginning to make hints about
charging me rent.

Chapter 8.

`It's a lightweight model, Sir,' the salesman said over his
shoulder, legs crabbing edgewise between stock as he withdraw a
cycle out of his window display.

`You're joking,' I exclaimed. The man was trying to palm me off
with a racing model on special offer.

`They've got extra gears, and are much easier to pedal, Sir,'
he stepped off his brown baize, balancing the bike single-handed,
stumbling upon loose laces as he hurried to reassure me, knotting
himself up in a demonstration of back-pedalling between counters
without moving forwards. His sonar detected a reluctant doubt in my
eyes. `The racing handlebars can be changed,' he recast his nets,
adjusting the bait. I prodded the saddle. Thin, mean, hardly
something one would wish to sit back upon when cruising over holes
in the lanes. `We'll change that at the same time,' he dipped behind
the till, his hands appearing like those of the daughter of Neptune
holding up alternatives until his counter was covered. `We'll
deliver the machine to your house tomorrow, fully customised,
without extra charge,' he resurfaced red-eared and winded.

Could we afford it, would Lena agree? But could we cope with
the alternative, me in a wheelchair, a millstone for the whole
family?

Next morning, just after Lena and the children left for school,
a van backed down our drive with the bicycle. He was in a rush
before opening his shop and was gone before there was chance for me
to give his delivery a test. `That's dangerously optimistic,' I
muttered, measuring my leg, marking its length on a broom handle by
licking my thumb before comparison against the height of the saddle.

I walked round, puzzling the problem, wondering how best I
could mount. Climbing on was impossible, but if the cycle was
tilted I just might get my leg over. Several bruises later these
efforts met with a partial success, except that my foot was treading
on air in search of a pedal. `Find it, you rotten bugger.'

Amazing how my contrived anger released adrenaline, or
something, which battered the M.S. into a fleeting retreat:
another discovery, and before it wore off I shoved off from the

garage against which I'd been leaning. Oh, no, the lessons learnt
on John's bike didn't apply, these pedals turned through only half a
rotation before refusing to go further, with me lifted high in the
air, straining to pedal a millimetre further, standing fully upright
to make use of my weight, much higher than the hedge and the
sparrows and the robins and,.. and wobbling and....

BANG! I rolled out from between the crossbar and spokes. `How
the hell am I supposed to get this damned thing out of top gear if I
can't get started in the first place?' I sat grinding for answers,
bum numb to the drive. `You'd think they'd deliver them in bottom
gear,' I chuntered on whilst the air moved as a flock of starlings flew
overhead, a maverick peeling off on its own only to peel back in
when the rest did not follow...... but for another maverick they
did. I wished to know why, rubbing my bruises, overlooking that
proper cyclists never had M.S. There must be a way, I searched the
instructions, but nothing, no hints for disabled people, let alone
any instructions of how to set off on one's own

Becalmed in the kitchen, whilst drinking a cup of tea, I
thought of a way. Find a gentle hill, like Chapel Street, where
thanks to Newton and gravity the bike would start on its own. The
bumblebees were out, first time this year, too busy to be concerned
with the world outside their world as I wheeled through the village.
Is this a good omen or does fate still have a sting? Ah, here's
a good place, I leant, pacing myself, resting against a stone wall
before mounting - at least I'd worked out how to mount on the tenth
attempt whilst still back in our drive. A quick scan all around,
nobody looking, and shoved off down the slope. This time my legs
managed to pedal, but it was only a gentle hill, too slow, too slow,
the front wheel locked in a wobble, aiming straight for the kerb.

`Is thee all right?' Two villagers within hearing were startled
out of their gossip.

`Yes, fine thanks,' I shouted back, bugger Newton, righting
myself, upending the frame, pretending to make adjustments whilst
hiding the pain, taking sore comfort in the knowledge that at least
some nerves were working, transmitting pain, numb though my legs
were.

`Does tha want an `and?'

`No, no problem, thanks,' I squeezed a smile, anxious to keep
them away to avoid being rushed, needing time to recover. The last
thing I required was for someone to realise what state I was in -
how could I explain, how could they understand?

`Just give us a shout, then, tha knows where we are,' they
returned to their exchanging of tales, face to face, as bright
sunshine bounced off the walls, mulling the spring air, whilst I
used imaginary tools, carrying out mock repairs, waiting for the
pain to subside before making another attempt. This time I'll start
where the hill is much steeper.

The cycle wobbled, yet again, Newton's bloody apple, once,
twice,... and then it gained speed. Good old Isaac, right after
all about objects in motion and I recovered control of the steering,
smiling, with a supreme mantle of confidence, passing the gossipers
who were lost in their world, tongues busy as the bumble bees,
oblivious of me changing the gears to demonstrate that I was well.
Perhaps I would always be weak, I wondered, never able to start in
top gear? I could have asked my neighbour, saved myself a lot of
pain. He knew all about bikes.

By the weekend my improvement had continued so dramatically
that, `How about a ride to Ouseby Hoff?' I asked John. He smiled,
cautiously, hoping to have a turn on my racer.

Perhaps his fragmented joy was because, though the Hoff
remained one of his favourite hills, great for adventure, he was
assessing the distance involved. It was much further than he had
ever cycled before. Yet, in my mind, there was an obsessive desire
to do something different and the Hoff was the only tree-covered
hill within striking distance, a giant sandstone hump, a geological
prank in the middle of nowhere, great for adventure, ideal for
playing hide and seek and pelting each other with cones.

True, but those games had been in the days when we drove there.
This time our view of the countryside was more leisurely, me leading
on large wheels, seeing over walls into gardens and between two
weeping willows that draped over the dike, John's little legs
whirling to keep up. `It says no entry,' he panicked as a pair of
wrought iron gates loomed larger.

`That's only for trespassers.'

He looked bemused, long enough for us to ride one abreast
through a side gate.

`Keep your voice down,' I hushed, we were cycling along the
main drive to Ouseby Hall, part of its grounds regimented with
wooden huts, wards of a convalescent hospital. `By the time they
realise we're not visitors we'll be out the other side.'

`What if they have guard dogs?' his worries persisted for these
huts had been built during the war as a prisoner of war camp.

`They won't, not now, not if they make a habit of leaving that
side gate wide open,' I pedalled faster, changing a gear, down
twice, three times, my legs loosing strength the more they strained
to race past the huts. Their patients, sitting outside, taking the
air, with pyjamas and bare ankle slippers and post-nuptial dressing
gowns, turned their heads and followed our slowing progress, letting
their rough folded newspapers hang lifeless or slip. At last the
drive curved, dipped, and we coasted past the mansion, pretending
not to see the Senior Administrator's office. `Don't stop, not
until we're through the tradesmen's entrance.'

`My legs are aching,' John puffed, hurrying to reach safety
beyond the last slope.

`Mine aren't,' I lied, urging him on, until they seized up once
outside the back entrance, not knowing their purpose in life. I
grabbed for the fence, hung on, recovering, unable to dismount.

`Hurry up,' he called, already running amuck amongst the pines
in the wood.

Time heals, so they say, and instead of getting off and pushing
I struggled on in bottom gear. It worked, I persuaded myself, only
to tumble pride over jockstrap into a sandy bank, eroded and gritty,
defenceless against his stockpile of cones.

`Just a minute, I need a bit of a rest,' I propped myself on an
elbow, in search of a strategy with this challenge to spur me,
rolling over to squeeze dry an exhausted oasis for energy,
collecting sufficient to pick up his sighting rounds.

Hauling myself over the bank my first salvo projected the cones
forwards whilst I went back, back, back down the bank - Bloody
Newton again, him and his third law of motion. I looked up to see
John revelling in his new-found power, Father dependent upon his
mercy, until his ammunition was spent. `Boring,' with me out of the
game he disappeared up the hill, inventing much more interesting
games.

Ages seemed to pass before I felt strong enough for the return
journey. `Time to go home,' I shouted, cupping my hands. Perhaps his
stomach heard the message for he zoomed down the Hoff, arms spread
out, as though going to bomb me again.

`The sun's be to the south, Jim m'lad,' he emerged from the
trees, doing a Long John Silver with a dead pigeon balanced on his
shoulder.

He was right, it was due south, where steam towered motionless
above the concrete cooling towers of a distant power station. `Put
that dead bird down.' How the hell did he know where south was, or
was it what they said in an advert? Anyway, it meant that two hours
had passed, we'd better get a move on.

The lane was downhill, a different route, avoiding Ouseby Hall.
But when we reached the bottom we steered full-faced into a prevailing
wind, cheeks billowing each time we breathed. Fool, no wonder this
morning's ride had been easy, apart for the slope past the hospital,
a stiff breeze had been giving a push to our saddles. `You go on,
John,' his legs able to whirl, whatever the conditions, turning our
climb of Simon's Seat five years ago on its head. The big wheels on
my bike were irrelevant as I persevered in bottom gear until his
outline merged into the distance. He was gone, I stopped, resting,
three times. Faith's all right, but I must be thoughtful about
scattering mustard seeds in the future for much of my topsoil of
health is still shallow.

`Your meal's been kept warm in the oven. It'll be burnt by
now,' Lena complained, her patience having been eked beyond
reasonable medical bounds by the time I stumbled in through the
doorway.

`Yes,' I agreed, `it was a bit stupid, forcing myself.' I
was anxious to retain her approval for my exercise regime. `Won't do
it again.' Gradually, in the future, I'll build up stamina, I mused,
and if there's a wind I'll cycle against it, outward bound, and be
blown back when I am tired.

Thank goodness my fears proved to be groundless. A bit tired
next day, but feeling good, though the cold air was back. Would
this spoil my enthusiasm for exercise?

Only way to find out is to try it, muffled beneath layers of
cast-offs, business suits now being a thing of the past. `I suppose
I should show my face at work, see how the sale of the business is
going,' I muttered, whilst pedalling. `But not until I'm fit.'

Several weeks of the same three mile circuit, passing and
barely noticing the dike onto which I had tumbled - the limit of my
range first time out. Coward,' squawked the sea gull, so I
contemplated upon the state of my mustard seeds. It can't be so much
of a risk, not now, not after so much exercise, so I continued onto
the main road, aiming for the house four miles away where Tom and
Ola lived.

They were watching a TV programme about captain Oates when I
cycled into their drive, against all odds, chuffed at having taken
just thirty minutes. It was nothing to a proper cyclist, of course.
But I had paced myself, easing off every time my muscles started to
ache, not daring to dismount for fear of being unable to get back
on.

`Come in, have a cup of coffee.' Several cups, and two hours
later, I levered myself out of a comfortable armchair, ready for the
return journey.

`We'll take you,' they were anxious to see me home
unsquashed by the heavy traffic.

`No, it's all right, thanks, I'll take care,' success again
having gone to my head. My legs might look a bit groggy, but Tom's
pleas were in vain. Yet, to be on the safe side, and to avoid making
a fool of myself, I took it easy, during the past weeks having
cycled past enough frogs on Brickpond Lane, their silhouettes
permanently Michelin and Firestoned into the asphalt. Forty minutes
later I was home. Another eight milestones on my road to recovery.


I have used a lot of Yorkshire dialect in “Dangerously Healthy” – an autobiography written under my pseudonym because some of the protagonists were still alive at the time, and also in a novel “Don’t You Dearest Me”. If any Themestream reader wants to contact me I should be pleased to translate any puzzling words . In fact, does anyone think I should produce a list of words and phrases for the series? If so, your e-mail would be welcome.

Chapter 9.

`We've been worried.' The royal we. Lena still doubted my
judgement.

`I phoned,' I said, whilst prickling inwardly. I had been doing
my best to get better.

`That was ages ago,' she retaliated. Tea was ready. We were
both hungry, and food ameliorated where words would have been better
and their effect last longer.

I flopped onto the settee as soon as my meal was ingested. Had
oxygen been diverted whilst digestion took place?.. or perhaps
exacerbated by today's cycle ride?.. or the huge size of the meal?
This had never happened before my M.S. was diagnosed, even though I
now knew that my M.S. had been keeping itself invisible throughout
most of my life.

Sod it, I'm more bothered about my spine and that damned lumbar
puncture. Best lie on my front, ease the discomfort, sort of getting
to know the carpet from a dust mite's eye view. `B-o-r-i-n-g,' I
drew pictures with my finger in the pile, `A dust mite's lot is not
a nappy one,' and turned onto my back to see if gazing at the
ceiling was better, humming from Gilbert and Sullivan for want of
nothing better to do. `When will that be redecorated? I used to
emulsion it myself, will I ever again?' I mused, trying a cushion.

`Can't you remain still for one moment?' Lena complained, tired
of my shuffling, as she stood offshore from my island. `We're
popping through to Leeds this evening,' she sighed. `Do you want to
come?'

`Might as well,' I grudgingly accepted what sounded like a
reluctant invitation. Yet even the seat in her car had a crippling
effect until I got out at my parents'.

`Do you think you would like to see my physiotherapist,' Mother
laid down a recommendation which mere mortals dare not decline.
`He's very good,' she remained sitting, Czar of her kitchen table,
fingering the pepper pot lest anyone should doubt.

`All right, then,' I nodded, anything for peace, grasping at
chaff let alone straws. He used to ease her neck from time to time,
each easing session demanded when she and Father were not seeing eye 

to eye - which they never did in any case on account of him being
small.

The physiotherapist was also a little fellow, officially
retired, yet with a full appointment book and an undeclared income
tax advantage. `I think we'll try you on here,' he shuffled me onto
a medical couch, his diddy legs diddling away out of sight beneath
his long white coat, jacking me down to a convenient height for his
hands. `Just here?' he placed two pads, one either side of my spine,
right on the spot, without the lumbar puncture having been
mentioned. I watched suspiciously as he wired me to a microwave
machine. Not the kitchen type, more a black box, switched to low
heat, to a sort of medical simmer. Then he disappeared, closing the
Edwardian panel door behind. Goodness knows how many more customers
he had cooking away in other rooms throughout his rambling home, a
rude stone house with a dispirited garden without a single rambling
rose. Truly a widower's refuge.

Even before he returned to massage my back there was a tingling
in my thighs. `It's as though blood is flowing more freely.'

`Of course it is. There's got to be a blood supply,' he slapped
me down for trespassing upon his expertise.

`I know that, I read physiology at university. I was just
trying to describe the sensation.'

`Oh?' he paused, taking stock, adjusting his persona, all the
time his hands manipulating my back. `Perhaps there's a restriction
in the flow to your legs,' he remembered our earlier conversation.
`Which was overcome by circulation when you climbed,... what did you
call it?'

`Simon's Seat.'

`Ah, yes, that's right, Simon's Seat. I remember the area
well.'

He was partially right, circulation being important, but he was
forgetting that it was my central nervous system which was under
attack.... I only went once more to see him, my improvement in
walking eroded upon the drive home. Probably the sitting.

`I wonder if an infra-red heat lamp would work?' I settled back
after cycling to Tom and Ola's again.

`Would you like to borrow ours?' They once owned an early 
model, if they searched through their loft, the creaking and
groaning of joists threatening that Tom's feet were about appear
through the ceiling any moment as he picked a way between junk and
the joists.

When I got it home it was almost as effective as the
physiotherapist's microwave. Better, because of not sitting down to
drive home I walked even further in a straight line. Ought to see
how the business is going, now that my recovery is well under way.

`How long before the business is sold, Vanessa?' I entered the
office.

`It's not... Although we've got a potential buyer, but the
audit's not ready.'

That's just what I wanted. Stress to upset my recovery.

`So, it's not ready?' Mother fed pepper into her blunderbuss
when she found out.

`Good afternoon, Mrs. Mytholmroyd. I'm terribly sorry to hear
about your son,' the accountant fawned down the telephone. `Except
for the grace of God, there go I,' he poured syrup over spice before
she had time to attack. `You can rely upon us, it's our intention to
do everything within our ability to help.'

He was going to help, all right - help himself in case I should
die by locking my papers away as soon as she put down the phone,
demanding to be paid in full for audit work before they'd consider
even releasing a paper-clip. Stress, stress, stress. But there was
more to come. `Another problem's cropped up,' Vanessa looked up
when I got back from his office. `I've kept everybody in the
picture. They've all very been understanding, except for Yorkshire
Factoring, they immediately issued a writ.'

`Can't wait? That probably means they're going broke,' I said,
my spirits sinking, stress, stress, stress, playing havoc with my
cure.

Outside the birds had stopped chirping as a grey air seeped
from the east - that blandness borne off the North Sea you can feel
without feeling. The stone wall from which I made my first proper
cycle ride was sunless and dead.

On hearing of these Mother dipped into their savings, just in
time to stub the sheriff officer's fingers before he distrained on 
goods and chattels to clear the amount due. `I'm only doing my
job,' he dismissed the effect on my health, his sterile face hiding
behind words, its sallow complexion a dead parchment within which he
now lived.

Was this man once a child? No, it was cloned within a bleak
mortuary or upon a lifeless steppe. `Sieg Heil! That's what
Hitler's Gestapo said,' I saluted. `Wanted, dead or alive, cash..
and here it is,' I pushed our petty cash tin towards him, especially
filled to the brim, making him count it pound by pound. But it
troubled him not. He'd probably been thumped many a time when not
having a bailiff to hide behind.

Apart from Yorkshire Factoring all the main problems were
created by the slippery pen brigade - tax men, the solicitor and the
accountant who, like renegade vultures, were not prepared to wait
for their prey to be dead.

Thank goodness much of the rest of the world remained filled
with silent compassion, showing patience until the business was
sold. Without their kindness and understanding I might never have
recovered, yet my back still caused pain. `Why don't you try a
sun bed?' Lena looked up from the clothes she was mending, making
our income stretch now it was one.

`Good idea,' I smiled, bringing one in from the garage where it
hung from a nail between seasons. `That's better,' I relaxed,
having brushed off the cobwebs - good news for the flies, bad news
for the spider, angling it towards the television so as to watch the
programme in comfort. Trouble is, it provided an assault course for
everyone else. Lena said nothing, merely looked. From then on I
used it only when they were out, after exercising - though that was
infrequent for spring had withdrawn beyond the far far-icy currents
from the Bering Sea... and the trees said nothing.

What else can I do, my mind churned, remaining restive,
impatient for progress? `If you think a new mattress will help, why
not?' Lena yielded to us swapping our expensive model for an
orthopaedic type. Hard, solid, no chance of one's back or anything
else sagging. It brought further improvement, though she could have
complained at this loss of luxury, `It's all right,' she accepted,

`So long as it does you good.'

But cures do not grow in the dark like forced rhubarb and my
ideas began to run thin, with boredom returning. `Don't forget
Egypt, and don't forget Easter,' I reminded myself when my eyelids
grew closer together, mindful of that week in hospital when
inactivity limped hand in foot with this creeping condition.
`Occupy your mind, find other activities whilst the weather is bad,'
I chuntered, pacing round the house, determined to prevent my nerves
and muscles from degenerating again.

`Must find something to do in lieu of that daily bloody bike
ride whilst it's so blustery,' I grumbled at� Gardeners' Question
Time‘ on the radio whilst watching the sky racing past, grey, a
hundred miles thick, leaving me cautious after that fiasco when I
trailed behind John's bike all the way back from Ouseby Hoff like a
legless prune. But today, unlike then, the trees were no longer
silent but tussling, hanging onto their leaves in the slipstream of
a gusting wind. `Sod it, to hell with being tied down, barred from
town just because of the traffic. I'll drive there, then work out
how best to cope.'

How faint were my memories, less than ripples in the sand after
only a couple of months, two months when ideas had stormed through
my brain leaving normality obscured beneath a foaming of flotsam and
jetsam. `So this is what roads are like,' I had forgotten, standing
back from the curb, judging its width like a river flowing by,
having spent too many weeks cycling along quiet lanes. What to do
now, step into the traffic to tread water with lame feet.

`Bugger off, you stupid sod,' poetry elbowed from a taxi's
window as its driver tried to hasten by in a hurry.

Perhaps I looked too fit, because of the vitamins. Did he
really think I was drunk? To hell with him - but watch it, cast
your mustard seed amongst that lot and it will wither faster than
his wheels can burn their tyres into the asphalt. Best wait for a
climatic change - like now, whilst the lights are red and against
them, before the next bore of vehicles bears down.

I developed..... not quite a hop, skip and a jump..... more a
kind of hop, hop and hope. Bloody stupid, but it got the adrenaline
flowing, that kind of adrenaline which was not good news for a
stress-related disease. 
`I've done the shopping.'

`Have you?... Wonderful,' Lena was amazed with my progress.
`There's a village buffet dance this weekend,' she had brightened up
no end. `Would you like to go?'

`Magic. Of course I would. I'm already proficient at dancing
across roads,' I grinned, reading the fine print on the ticket.
`And the food won't present much of a problem, it's a buffet, I'll
be able to pick out what suits.'

Dim lights, low ceiling, urging band, uninhibited music. `The
turkey and salad will be fine. But what do you think's in those
bowls, Lena.. Any flour?'

`There's no flour in any of these,' a callow youth from the
catering agency butted in, his chef's hat for the evening wilting
over his eyes. `They're just as they were when we took them out of
their tins.'

`But what did it say on the tins?'

`You what?' he hesitated, his hat wilting further.

`What are their precise contents?'

He remained, bemused. `Russian salad, potato salad, and ....'

`It's all right,' I stopped him, before the hungry line
threatened to grow longer, and withdrew to the start of the queue.
This time I settled for Turkey breast, green salad, and a bottle of
sparkling red burgundy.

The band started again, its rhythm and bubbling wine driving
zest through my veins. `Like to dance?' I asked Lena, pushing the
lettuce to one side so we could edge past our table.

She hung on, at first helping to lead, as I avoided the more
adventurous steps. But soon the past began to return - my health was
making progress together.

`There's not much wrong with him,' sniped a member of the
Women's Friendship Circle, still waiting for someone to ask her to
dance.

Chapter 10.

`I think it's getting warmer,' I opened the kitchen door, the
prodigal sun having suddenly returned with its sky as blue as the
night had been black, in tow a southerly breeze collected whilst
away in distant lotus groves, the weather clock now swinging full
circle after a month of dishcloth grey. All too often Yorkshire
springs are like that within the lee of a North Sea into which the
Arctic thaws.

`Tha doesn't often see a sky like that, does tha'?' Stan
greeted me loudly as he passed in the lane by the end of our drive,
walking his cows back after milking, poking the nearest with a
broken off branch when it took into its mind to browse away from his
meandering herd, all doing their own thing, a chorus of discordant
udders. `Tha ought to get thyself away on thee bike `afore it rains
again.'

`Are you thinking of making a fool of yourself?' Lena spoke
from the kitchen, its door wide open to the weather, suspecting I
needed little excuse to go further afield without encouragement from
Stan.

`No. Just thought that I might call on Tom and Ola again.'

`Oh,' her brow relaxed, that would fit in nicely with her
arrangements since she always took Claire to ballet on Saturday.
`Lunch will be late. Maybe two o'clock. There's some shopping I
must do.

Must?...... it must be for herself. `Cheerio, then,' my voice
pursued her as she chivvied Claire to get ready and, whilst the
nagging grew louder, I collected a pullover in case the weather
forecasters were wrong, again.

Leaving them arguing upstairs I accelerated out of the drive,
front wheel wobble being a thing of the past, racing at the hill in
top gear, not easing the pace until out of the village. `Phew,' I
freewheeled beyond the church, talking to nature, `It's only a few
weeks since I used to fall off.'

The lane widened and merged with a wider road at the next
village, just by its war memorial, the dead corner where local
farming boys grew up before generals blew their bugles and reaped 
their naked harvest, a cross of foreign marble a Somme amongst the
moonscaped corn, three faded wreaths their past summer.

And where the road wiggled, to the curve of a stream, a
courting couple from last night, or starting early, had parked
behind a hay stack which was leaning in precarious sympathy. All
right for some, I mused, and pedalled some more, waving to the local
garage man. He ignored me, no petrol sales this morning, my bicycle
running on bacon and eggs.

Again the highway squeezed, this time through another village
of dozing cottages. Bugger being run over, I steered onto the
footpath, safe by inches from cars and wagons which were jostling
for space. `Want a push, mister?' two kids had wound down a window,
earning a clip for disturbing dad's driving.

`Serves them right,' I wryly smiled, only to have my wry smile
swiftly un-smiled and bruised by my saddle for not watching the curb
ahead. `Pay attention, traffic lights coming up,' I winced,
checking my watch,... four miles in twenty minutes! Bubbling with
euphoria, now dangerously healthy, I changed my plan, turned left -
the ride to Ola and Tom could wait, for today was the chance to add
to my four mile record ride.

`Somewhere near here there's a short cut,' I turned through a
neglected yard, past the farm sign, juddering over its cobbles and
round a tractor laid to rust, scattering a quagmire of ducks amongst
chickens to emerge, on an unfamiliar lane, racing between hedges,
slightly downhill, my wry ever more bruised than before. `I bet I'm
doing twenty miles an hour, at least,' I gasped, raised up on the
pedals for comfort, biting the air, gripping the steering, leaning
into a bend, getting up speed for the gradient ahead. Down a gear,
down a gear, down a gear until, in the lowest gear of all, I ended
up standing, standing right up, standing up straining, wobbling to
avoid falling off, muscles at loggerheads with gravity into which
they had ground.

`Bloody hell,' I swore and the brown eyes of heifers,
glistening with unfathomable innocence, inquisitively looked on
beyond a three-barred fence, chewing their cud’s, my legs out of
control, spastic, but to them I could be a Martian. I lurched to
the verge, what had gone wrong? Things were like this after cycling


to Ouseby Hoff and that second climb of Simon's Seat,.... but now it was worse, and I did
not know why.

Even more confusing was, when after a rest, how everything
became fine, almost as good as before, but what if it ever happened
again? Heifers I could cope with, swear at, yet never did I want
people to see me making a fool of myself, locked in my mind this
disease remaining some sign of failure. `Better find out if I'm fit
enough to ride home,' I pushed my bike up the hill. This is
ridiculous, my walking had recovered, why not risk just another
mile?

One mile? - After two there was still no sign of me being tired
again. Ever a genius, I had overlooked that I had been riding
mainly downhill, concentrating on road signs which had bragged that
I was already half way to my parents'.

How about giving them a surprise, show them how well I am
doing? - forgetting about Isaac Newton and gravity and the gradient
ahead. In any case, even if he had poked a spoke into my wheel of
thoughts he never made mention of bicycles, preferring to bugger
around with apples. Besides, the road ahead ran, more or less, plus
or minus a hump or two, near what was once a horse drawn railway
line. It was now disused, the horses long dead, the lines smelted
down but, parallel with a gradient against which one horse could
pull heavy trucks surely I could at least push a bicycle?

True, the road followed the line, more or less, so far as the
map was concerned but, when it came to ups and downs, it had rather
more humps than less. I plodded away on the road, changing gear each
time my legs ached, the old track, overgrown, lost in the woods.
This is bloody ridiculous, being overtaken by a man walking his dog.

`Want a push?' he offered, genuinely, smiling. I shook my head.
Why do people always offer to push? Anyway, he would never
understand why I wanted to do it alone, nor why I was riding so
slowly despite being dolled up in a cyclist’s shorts. Better look
casual, as though not trying, and if he doesn't disappear I'll
pretend to have a puncture. Better not, someone else might offer to
help and want to know what's wrong with my legs.

Why not stop, admire the countryside, alternative solutions
occurring with each tortuous turn of my wheels? Damn! not here, the 

village sewage plant is just over the fence. Hold your breath, try
harder. Hell, my legs are turning to jelly, but not much further to
go. Try taking turns, pedalling one leg at a time, resting the
other. Right - ugh, right - ugh, right - ugh; left - ugh, left -
ugh, left - ugh.......

At last, a place to fall off, clear of the village. Forty
minutes passed and still I was knackered. Yet I must get up, nature
calls. But where? That haystack over there, in a field, only a
road's width away. Damn! What do I do now, too weak to stand?
Robert the Bruce said try, try, and try again. Sod his spider, I'm
trying all right, clever-Dick Bruce, my legs trying to behave as
though they were eight, gyrating, overbalancing, all twenty at the
same time. Yet despite the uncalled-for insults I hurled at his
haggis his spider turned out to be right and, with mind over
bladder, I took aim for the field. Bloody gate, it's locked.....
Quick, muck or nettles, and I forced a gap in the hedge where no gap
had been - at least not by the look of my knees.

Time and tide wait for no man - so it is said, and I just beat
high water. Better return to my belongings, perhaps find a spare
bale where I could rest with the bike back in sight. `I say, you
there, this yours?' a man with a colonial moustache out for a walk
pointed his stick.

`Please don't let this be his straw,' I hoped, nodding with
flimsy commitment. But no,.. no, he was more bothered, as a good
citizen, about a wheel poking from behind the back of the haystack
and, with a cough, strode on with purpose deliberate.

I held my ear to my watch.... Still ticking, and yet only half
an hour gone, but the air had become colder. Better be off before he
returns with the militia, I creaked to the vertical, muscles not
fully relaxed, but at least ready to go, like a car about to rely
upon its reserve fuel supply. How on earth did the specialist's
"slow virus" work and, why this exhaustion?

Solving those problems can wait. For the moment I'm too far
from home, marooned, so where to go now? ...... I need more time to
recover, the intended road to my parents' now being too risky -
Leeds is bad enough for normal cyclists let alone one with limp
legs. How about to Molly's and Seth's? They're old friends, don't 

live far away, and know of my M.S. From there I could telephone
Lena, tell her that all was safe and well, then recover at leisure
ready for the ride home.

`Take it easy this time,' I spoke sternly with my legs, riding
them close to the kerb once on the main road where traffic raced
whether it had somewhere to go or not, radiator grills whining past
in either direction. `First right to Molly and Seths'.... but how,
without wings against this flow? If I go now I'll be killed, but if
I wait until the tide turns Lena will be certain I've met with an
accident.' I shut my eyes and wished upon my mustard seed and, lo
and behold, like the Red Sea parting, an improbable gap appeared.
`Quick, somebody up there is telling you something,' I swerved with what,
a second sooner or a second later, would have been foolhardy timing
onto the quiet lane to Wake.

`Silly bugger,' blared a horn, its owner objecting to his road
having been fouled by a cyclist. I breathed a sigh of relief,
timing my pace, pedalling with care, hedgerows strolling past,
preparing myself ready for a dash at an incline where the lane cut
into a hillside. `Don't ask too many favours,' I changed my mind,
conserving my mustard seeds, intending to dismount where the cut
started.

But to balance the equation Saint Sod was perched on my left
shoulder, encouraging a car to rev its engine in the wake of my
mudguard - and it was an awful slow wake that I could do nothing
about. `Overtake,' I shouted, unable to give hand signals whilst
hanging onto the handlebars, pumping away. `Hurry, stamp on your
accelerator, there's nobody coming,' my legs were starting to ache
and we were long past the place where I had planned to start
walking. `Overtake, overtake.'

But all he did was race his engine, as though his irritation
would spur me to try harder. `Better do something,' I spoke to
myself, `Otherwise it looks like squashed Mytholmroyd is on today's
menu,'- in a few moments it might be too late to do anything.
`Better bale off, and hang onto the bike.... If that gets bent I'll
be stuck here for ever.'

My mustard seed had fallen upon shallow soil for, with fields
poisoned by pesticides to the left, and a lethal lane of asphalt to 

their right, the last thing the animal inhabitants of a steep
hedgerow expected was for a human elbow to be dumped into their
front room. But whatever they were, rat, rabbit, or blackbird, they
certainly scuttled when I tippled onto it. `Why don't I invent a
parachute for cyclists?' split-second lunacy serving to plaster a
smile over my humiliation as the car angered by.

Remounting was pointless, the lane being so narrow that even a
protruding big toe would have been dangerous. `I can't remain here,
though, and I'm certainly not backtracking,' I righted the bike and
pushed with dragging feet to the top. `Was it? ... Is it? ... Am
I hallucinating?' Straight ahead, in the middle of nowhere, relaxed
into a grass verge, perching on the bend of a curve, was a park seat
painted green! So near, and yet so far, yet by pausing after each
pace I remained upright until almost there when I lunged, landing
half-cocked grasping hold of one of the seat's wrought iron arms.

Well, at least the spare mustard seeds had kept me safe, I
looked skywards, and as a result saw that a ceiling of clouds had
blocked out the blue, it looked as though it was going to rain.
`Lightning can strike for all I care,' I muttered, with nothing
better to say, for it was now becoming colder; and as a debilitated
spider might make a pig's ear of its web I struggled into my
pullover, each arm feeling down the wrong sleeve before working the
shrunken roll-neck over my head. When my eyes reappeared, looking
straight down the hill that I had nearly crawled up, there was a
cyclist, muscle-bound, with cap turned backwards and short white
socks, about to go racing past. Damn it, how did he do it, he was
still in top gear?.... What a waste of time, why did I bother?

Depression displaced the euphoria of recent weeks. What did I
care whether the cyclist looked twenty years younger? That was
irrelevant. Until now I had always made the specialist's prediction
look stupid, apart from the odd hiccup. Damn it, is today's distance
a measure of my recovery? Sod it, better make a move before being
moulded into the seat, it's slats were beginning to stick to my
chilled sweatless thighs, the sun had obviously gone for the day.
But must manage this last half a mile, somehow or other.

With heavy heart and leaden legs I leant against the bike,
unsure of how long it would take my feet to reach Molly and Seths'. 

Yet once their house came into sight, guilt, vanity and
determination rumbled within me (some call it bloody-mindedness) for
their drive was downhill. I worked myself back on the saddle and
managed to freewheel, head held high, trying to look like a cyclist.

`Come in, what are you doing on that?' Molly flung open their
door.

`I cycled here,' I smiled, beaming with pride.

`Where from?' she laughed.

`Adderton.'

`I'm not that stupid.'

`Telephone Lena, if you don't believe me.'

She watched for signs of my face cracking whilst dialing the
number. `Hello Lena, I've got your husband here, he says he ......'
her expression changed.

She replaced the receiver, pushed their dogs aside to make way
for a chair, shoved a glass in my direction. `Seth, pour him a
sherry.'..... Lena arrived several drinks later, by then the world
was warm and rosy again.

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

1  

Dangerously Healthy  - Copyright © Malcolm Birkenshaw

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