 
FOUR MEN

________________________________________

# Terry Morgan

Copyright © 2020 Terry Morgan

First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by TJM Books.

Website: www.tjmbooks.com

The right of Terry Morgan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

## FOUR MEN:

A satirical tale of four white, middle-aged men struggling with women and other frustrations of modern life and deciding that it's time to fight back.

**Doctor A. Sinnick** with his overbearing woman 'boss', Mrs Pettifer, is the only one with a proper job and money, but Sinnick can only stay sane by writing anonymous letters and poems to annoy those in authority and by talking to his imaginary friend, Freud, who sits at a control panel inside Sinnick's frontal lobe.

**Quentin Kelp** has just lost his seat as a Member of Parliament to a twenty-six-year-old Liberal and teacher of creative writing called Prudence Bottomley who wears a pony tail and beige cardigan. What on earth would such a woman know about running the country? But now Quentin is hurting and needs a new challenge.

Unemployed accountant **Charlie McTavish** is nothing like his rough Hell's Angel looks suggest. If proof was needed that Charlie is in far more need of assertiveness training than either of his two past wives then look no further than his current transport, an underpowered Honda moped and his home, a tiny, windowless room above a Chinese take-away.

And then there's **Paddy O'Brian** , the Irish owner of a struggling fish and chip shop whose wife Maeve took the Ryan Air flight back to Cork as soon as she caught her first whiff of hot chip oil and left Charlie to run the business alone with only his collection of Irish novels and poetry for company.

PART ONE:

Every man should be allowed his private secrets.

Paddy O'Brian's was to lie in the dark in his vest and boxers reading Irish poetry by torchlight.

That he found torchlight spooky was a hangover from his childhood though he could never admit it, even to Quentin, Sinnick or Charlie. But Paddy always looked forward to evenings when he could close his fish and chip shop and immerse himself in a world of leprechauns, smoky peat fires, dark Dublin tenements and pubs reeking of spilt Guinness. In his tiny flat above the shop, though, the smell of hot oil and deep-fried fish was never far away. It wafted up from below and, however much he washed, it seemed to ooze from every pore of his body to remind him of disappointment and failure and his increasingly desperate need for a change in his life.

On that Sunday night, just as he'd pulled the blanket over his head and started on a book of poems by Seamus Heaney, someone threw a stone up at his window.

"Holy Mary. Who the f.......?" he said.

When he looked out there was no doubting who it was. Under the street light, stood Charlie McTavish looking for another small stone to throw. He opened the window. "Can't a man have a night off once in a while, Charlie?"

"Not if another man's feeling hungry and lonely, Paddy."

"You're tugging at my heart strings again, Charlie. You'd better come up and I'll cook you some fish fingers. But take those ridiculous boots off. They tear holes in my carpet."

Muttering 'Jesus wept' under his breath, Paddy plodded downstairs in his underwear and unlocked the front door. Charlie looked at him, up and down. "All your clothes in the washing machine, Paddy?"

"Please, Charlie. Just do as I say and remove your boots."

"And why switch off your door bell?"

"For some peace and quiet, Charlie. I forgot your ingenuity."

Paddy waited as Charlie sat on the lower step to pull off his black boots, then followed him upstairs where he fell onto Paddy's sofa that had, minutes before, been the set for a dimly lit drama in an Irish grave yard. He lay back with his legs wide apart, clad in his tight black leather trousers with his arms outstretched across the back of the sofa. "Trying to save on your electricity bill, Paddy?"

Paddy turned his torch off, switched on the ceiling light and frowned at the sudden brightness and the relaxed, bearded vision before him. "It might help if you removed your dark glasses."

Charlie removed his tints and pulled a hand through his long grey beard. "Ah. Yes. That's better,"

Beneath the black, leather jacket was a bright yellow sweater and a tuft of curly grey hairs showed behind the collar of a crumpled red shirt. He'd obviously walked, though, because there was no sign of his crash helmet. He smiled through his thick beard. "Sorry. I didn't bring any wine, Paddy."

"So, what's that hanging from your pocket?"

"A list of buyers and sellers."

Paddy had been trying to sell his business for months. "That's very thoughtful, Charlie but do I really want it right now?"

Charlie looked downhearted. "I told you I'd sift through the list of clients I nicked before leaving Armstrong and Fiddler. Least you can do is glance at it."

Charlie, out of work but an accountant by trade, was another who lived over a shop though in Charlie's case it was not an accountant's but Fook's Wok, a Chinese take-away on the Midland Road. He pulled the sheaf of paper from his jacket pocket, leaned forward and spread it on the floor. "There. Neat, huh?"

Paddy knelt at Charlie's feet and sniffed. "There's a funny smell. Is it your socks or is it you?"

"All of me. Today it's fried stuffed bean curd with stewed bamboo shoots."

Paddy looked up. "Is that all you've eaten today?"

"And some left-over Szechuan chicken with black bean sauce at 7am."

"Sounds delicious."

Paddy grilled a pack of fish fingers, poured a small tin of baked beans over them and watched Charlie eat as he read through Charlie's list. There was nothing that caught his eye but Charlie had, at least, tried.

But that's how Paddy's Sunday evening passed. Not alone with his torchlit poetry, but with Charlie who mostly wanted to share his thoughts on human rights from the perspective of a divorced, white, middle-aged man living in dire poverty as he tried to get his battered life back on track.

He departed around midnight. "Will you, Quentin and Sinnick be in the Red Lion tomorrow night, Paddy?"

"Sure thing, Charlie. Sleep well. Do you keep a packet of Rennies handy?"

**Doctor Albert Sinnick's secret was Freud.** Apart from Quentin, Paddy and Charlie, Freud was the only friend Sinnick had.

That might have surprised the town's senior citizens, especially the old ladies, who gossiped about Sinnick's long-standing reliability, his sure touch and kind, sensitive words. To them he had always been the figurehead of the town's health service. It may not, though, have surprised the rest of Krupton society.

To the younger members of the community he was a relic of a time long passed when a person's human rights could be ignored. If they'd seen an image of another human with a perfect body on Snapchat or some other site and suddenly felt inadequate, vulnerable and suicidal then who the hell was that stupid old codger, Doctor Sinnick, at Krupton Health Centre to refuse their requests for nips, tucks, breast implants and labiaplasty or for their outdated tattoos to be removed at the public's expense? And if Frankie Cartwright turned up saying he felt like being a woman again today why couldn't Sinnick certify him as of variable gender if he was arrested for wandering into the women's changing rooms at the sports centre?

To Mrs Pettifer, the clinic's office manager, on the other hand, Sinnick was just another staff member to be bossed around and taught the rights and wrongs of modern management.

Sinnick worried constantly about the ways things now were but what could he do? If he expressed an opinion, he was dismissed as an old-fashioned bore with no sense of how life had changed so for his own therapy he would write short, snappy poems and draft long, philosophical and political emails and letters just to get things off his chest. He rarely posted them of course because the writing itself was enough.

Freud liked his poetry, though. It was important to Sinnick that he pleased Freud. Freud found Sinnick's writings honest, philosophical and just about rude enough to make someone's blood boil. Which was, of course. the objective.

Freud understood him. So too, of course, did Paddy, Quentin and Charlie but Freud was the most understanding. Freud was honest, trustworthy and ever present. There was no need to phone or text Freud for he was always there, waiting to respond to Sinnick's moods and privy to his most intimate thoughts.

On that Sunday morning Freud had, as always, accompanied him like an obedient dog, not by traipsing behind, however, but riding high up in Sinnick's frontal lobe before a bank of computers that monitored his emotions and watched his life pass by on a screen that was Sinnick's retina.

Sinnick's pre-breakfast argument with Mrs. Sinnick meant he'd crept out and gone where he always went when trouble brewed on a Sunday: the clinic, where all was quiet and peaceful though a little chilly because, being Sunday, the heating was off. After a quick check that no-one else had also decided to use it as a refuge from domestic matters, Sinnick began on the exercises he'd recently started after realising how high his pulse rate and blood pressure had risen and how his calf and thigh muscles ached after chasing Mrs Sinnick's cat around the garden with a needle and syringe. (Mrs S had been out at the time but clinical trials on animals were no longer as easy to arrange as they once were so one was forced to use whatever was available).

Sinnick's exercise began by lying face down on the office floor by Mrs Pettifer's desk and trying a press up. He'd not managed one yet but he'd always been a determined sort. He was on his third attempt when, right on cue from somewhere inside his head, Freud spoke: _"How're you doing, mate?"_

No-one except Freud would have enquired about Albert's progress to add what he called ' _a few abs to my flabs'_ and _'size to my thighs'_ without a hint of ridicule. Few would have referred to him as 'mate' either, but Freud's skill was in knowing exactly what to say and when. His timing was impeccable and Sinnick knew he wouldn't mind waiting a minute or so for a reply while he fought for air.

The gasping and pain from every part of Sinnick's body from the tip of his metatarsals to his longus capitas was understandable, after all this was only the third Sunday of pre-breakfast arguments and thus his exercises. The real concern was his heart. It had only ever had to deal with heartache, never strenuous exercise. With his hand Sinnick felt his pounding chest and with his fingers his throbbing neck. "Not too bad," he wheezed. "Pulse 105. Blood pressure 162 over 98. It'll soon come down."

" _Are you sure?"_

"Only time will tell, Freud" Sinnick gasped. "By the way, we need a proper medical term for these exertions of mine."

" _What's wrong with press-ups?"_

"It is inaccurate, Freud. These are fuck ups."

" _Woah. Doctors should never swear, you said. It degrades the profession you said."_

"Forgive me, Freud. It's only between you and me but press-ups where the abdomen rises less than an inch above the floor require a more accurate description. But, there's no time for deliberations. In fact...." he paused, turning onto his back in exhaustion, "In fact there's no time for anything. Time no longer marches on. It sprints. Our few moments of honest, man to man discourse, our privacy, our chance to do, say and think what we like without guilt, the need to record them on spread sheets or have them approved by Government-appointed box-tickers will be shattered in the morning. And, of course, there's the inquisition when I return home."

" _By which you mean questions about your red face and breathlessness."_

"A woman's suspicions, Freud. As if I could be bothered, let alone have the energy, to dabble in anything extracurricular other than my honest poetry."

(Sinnick's poetry on subjects ranging from political correctness and feminism to bureaucracy, haemorrhoids and liver disease had become a serious but welcome distraction from Sinnick's day to day monotony.)

He sat up, tried to touch his toes with his fingertips and heard an ominous crack which he thought came from either the L4 or L5 lumber vertebra.

" _It sounds as if it's time to stop the exercises before you cripple yourself."_

"You're right, Freud. Perhaps three days was enough."

He struggled to his feet and collapsed into the chair on which, come morning, Mrs. Pettifer would sit, wave her arms around and dictate the day to day management of not only Sinnick's clinic but Sinnick's life.

He scratched the part of his head, the bare scalp, that lay above the ring of sparse grey hair and groped for the half-moon spectacles that had fallen off earlier. "We need some new medical terminology Freud. The world has moved on since the days of Hippocrates. Greek and Latin no longer mean anything to the man or woman in the street least of all our youth. In our case we need a word that describes therapeutic talking to oneself. It must slide off the tongue and be bandied around as if the user knows a thing or two about medical matters. What the word must not do, though, is make those of us who converse with ourselves appear so dangerous to the public that we aren't allowed out unaccompanied. We are not idiots or perverts, you realise." He paused. "What does it sound like in there, Freud?"

" _There's a loud banging. Would that be the carotid artery?"_

"Very likely. Ignore it. If it bursts, we'll both know soon enough."

And, with that, he lay his head on Mrs. Pettifer's desk amongst her files, spreadsheets, tubes of hand cream and rows of family photos and wondered, for a moment, if some early stage, age-related mental deterioration had set in, obvious to everyone but himself. Not that Mrs. P and her army of female staff would have cared. The priorities to which they were unanimously in favour i.e. ensuring their private lives dominated over paid work, would continue.

Lying there, he had a close up of one Mrs. P's photos. It was close enough to convince him that each of her three sisters had also been born with green eyes with vertical slits for pupils. Perhaps, he concluded, it was not a family at all but a coven.

He returned to his own mental health. He was sure he still appeared, superficially at least, a sane and intelligent man. How else could he have survived the many changes forced on him by the Health Trust, the Government, the increasingly outrageous demands of the general public and Mrs. Pettifer's daily reminders about fairness, equal rights, bullying and the need to recognise diversity and sexual orientation. He raised his head above the debris and, for a moment, spoke in a shrill, soprano voice. _"After all, Doctor Sinnick, we can't be too careful. We must spot signs of abuse before it all ends up in the Courts."_

Freud chose to ignore this but Sinnick, as he always did, trembled for a moment at the thought of being dragged before the Court and struck off. He thought instead about the newest member of Mrs. P's staff, Polly Anne, who he'd recently started calling "Druss". Sinnick's humour was rarely understood by others but unrelentingly therapeutic to himself. He managed a short, evil-looking grin but knew he must go careful. Nick names were no longer an opportunity for an innocent giggle. Banned, along with other innocent habits of a lifetime, they were forms of harassment and bullying and another reason for the involvement of the Courts. "Do my lips move, Freud?"

" _I wasn't sure if I should mention it. Try not to think about it. No-one's here except you and me."_

"So, they move?"

" _Just a little."_

"Are sounds emitted?"

" _Faint ones. I caught two words – sexual and abuse."_

"Any others?"

" _Perhaps I heard misogynist."_

"Impossible, Freud. I never use the word. When Mrs. P used it to describe me, I had to look up the meaning."

Sinnick sighed. Everything had spun out of his control, even the overreaction of Mrs. Sinnick to the cat's change of hair colour. How was he to know that the bottle he thought was water was actually hydrogen peroxide? Didn't anyone teach the thousands of giggling hairdressers that Krupton College churned out in numbers that far exceeded the demand that hydrogen peroxide was H2O2 and not H20?

"It's not schizophrenia, you know, Freud. Albert Einstein talked to himself. He and I are very similar. Just by looking at his facial expression you can tell he wasn't an enthusiastic socialiser. And it's obvious that being photographed made him feel uneasy. Albert preferred his own, more stimulating company. He wasn't schizophrenic. He was above that sort of thing. Schizophrenia onset is typically between ages fifteen and twenty-five. We call it insidious onset, Freud. Did you know that? I didn't start talking to myself until I was forty. What's more I can pinpoint the exact moment. Eleven thirty-six at night on my fortieth birthday at Luigi's and, in the absence of more stimulating conversation, Mrs. Sinnick chose to totally ignore my observations on the elasticity and snapping point of spaghetti despite my generosity in paying for the meal. I thought damn it, I'll test my theory by lining up pieces of spaghetti on the table-cloth and stretching them whilst discussing the experiment with myself and other diners."

" _Did they seem interested?"_

"Amused, Freud. Especially when Mrs. S got up and walked out."

Sinnick smiled to himself. It had been an interesting experiment, each strand of spaghetti snapping at such unexpectedly low points. He'd wondered whether cooking times affected elasticity but there was no way to test it. He'd specially ordered it al dente because it was his birthday.

" _Don't you think you should be going home?"_

"Yes. Perhaps. I'll tell her I took the dog for a walk."

" _You don't have a dog, Sinnick."_

At 'The Firs' on Park Avenue, Quentin Kelp had opted to sleep on the floor in his upstairs office because earlier in the day, he'd upset Mrs. Kelp. All he'd done was to suggest that her crotchety mood might be due to PMT. But then he'd made it worse by adding, "Or is such an event a thing of the past?"

Women were such sensitive creatures, Quentin thought. And it hadn't entirely been his fault. Hector, despite it being midday, was still lying on the sofa in his Spiderman pajamas playing with his phone. He'd barely moved an inch until the row started. "Woss PMT, dad?" The question was accompanied by a knowing smirk and Quentin had thought about hitting him with his Sunday Times but then thought better of it. The boy was too well informed on child abuse.

Instead, he'd tossed the paper aside and watched Mrs. K moving things around, between their feet and above their heads, flapping cloths, spraying lavender from a can, sighing and groaning. Thick clouds of dust particles were visible in the beam from his reading lamp and Quentin, who was convinced he was allergic to dust mites, had yelled at Hector. "Help your mother, Hector."

Hector hadn't moved of course but muttered something about being fully occupied on his astronomy homework. Indeed, he was. Hector was playing something that involved aliens from distant planets. Quentin had often mentioned to colleagues that Hector's list of excuses for doing nothing was far in advance of his age.

So, from that point on, Quentin's day had deteriorated, the howling wind and steady rain outside made worse by the constant, niggling reminder that he was no longer Krupton's elected Member of Parliament with its regular pay cheques, pension and status.

Quentin was an ex politician and, at the rate things were going, a divorcee with an extortionate mortgage caused by a woman's devotion to having a house that matched her status. Her previous status, Quentin surmised.

In his upstairs office, Quentin stared sadly at the ceiling. For five years this place beneath the Velux window had been the powerhouse of Quentin's bid to become Prime Minister. Quentin was a man not from Eton or Marlborough or even from the Train Driver's Union or National Front but a man with his feet firmly on the ground who might be seen pushing a cart amongst all other Saturday morning shoppers and appearing to check milk prices, the real country of origin of English Cheddar cheese and the expiry date on packets of digestive biscuits.

Now, this small area of privacy only served to remind him that it had not been fitted with furniture from craftsmen like Hepplewhite or Chippendale that that obnoxious old Etonian Sir Benjamin Craddock, the Secretary of State for Transport, deemed normal but by a local chippie called Ken with a fetish for Ikea, tongue and groove and cheap plaster board. Quentin's powerhouse was merely a space beneath the roof, a converted attic.

But could it still become the place from which he would rise from the ashes of that freak election result – that dreadful night when Prudence Bottomley, a pathetic Neo-Liberal who taught creative writing at Krupton College and only ever wore a beige cardigan and a pony tail, struck a dagger into the beating heart of dynamic Kelpism with her downright lies and undeliverable promises?

Despite the view of grey sky, streaming rain and the waving branches of the fir tree through the Velux window Quentin sat up, driven by a deep-seated determination to see things through. It was only a setback. One day, he would return. He could even see the headlines: "Quentin Kelp's Truth and Honesty Party - A Landslide!"

And then, just as suddenly, there came the depressing realization that he needed to pay the mortgage and tomorrow he had an interview for a job – as the PR consultant to a London firm of Financial Advisers who, unknown to them, he had once described as loan sharks with a mean streak.

When Paddy woke at 7am, Seamus Heaney was lying in a crumpled mess beneath the duvet. It was a shame, Paddy thought, but it matched the photo of Seamus himself on the front cover. Seamus wouldn't have minded the creases.

As it was another dark and dismal morning, Paddy switched on the bedroom light, reached for his glasses and went to the bathroom to check the fingers and thumb on his right hand. They were still sore from having dropped the newly framed copy of his Food Hygiene Certificate into the deep fryer used for battered haddock fillets. Neither Gabriela or Agnieska had seemed to think it important to tell him the oil was already at boiling point though, to be fair, Gabriela was still using the Polish word for hot and Agnieska described everything above tepid as 'eez ot'.

Burned fingers and hot oil were an occupational hazard in running a fish & chip shop. He'd go to bed stinking of hot oil mixed with fried cod, haddock, battered sausages and chips.

He checked his hair in the mirror. There wasn't much left of the fine, ginger mop he'd been born with but at least the jokes had stopped. In fact, the one about growing old and turning grey being the only thing that ginger kids looked forward to in life had come true.

His short, grey beard was now his main feature, highlighted as it sometimes was by the flecks of green from mushy peas and smears of orange baked beans that stuck to it. Mixed with the white of his hair, this color combination was, of course, very patriotic to a true Irishman and Paddy would often delay washing his beard until the last minute.

That morning, there was no sign of anything other than white and grey but he left it unwashed anyway. Mrs. O'Brian, Maeve, would, of course, have quickly pointed out such unhygienic habits but she'd long since returned to Cork where the air was more refreshing.

Paddy double-checked his sore fingers. "Ah, you're not looking so bad this morning but we'll get Albert to take a look at you tonight so we will."

He brushed his teeth, swilled, spat and then examined a back tooth in the toothpaste-spattered mirror. "Ah, there's nothing to be seen but, by Jesus, sometimes......"

Next, he snipped at a few stray strands of his beard. It wasn't a long, thick beard like Charlie's because, if it was, the Food Hygiene requirements would insist on wearing a mask as if he was performing open heart surgery instead of slicing open a dead haddock. Paddy's beard was a failed, perhaps overgrown attempt at the sort of designer stubble David Beckham might have made instantly fashionable at age sixty-three. The other similarity was with 007.

"Ah, Sean Connery so it is," he said, nodding at his reflection. "Red finger not Goldfinger."

He winked to acknowledge himself and then put the two sorest fingers to his lips sideways on and blew on them. This was not to cool the throbbing heat, of course, but to disperse the gun smoke. "The name's Bond. James Bond," Paddy said winking at himself. "Miss Anders, is it? I didn't recognize you with your clothes on."

In the shower, Paddy just stood and let hot water pour on his head and run like a waterfall over the chalky whiteness of his round stomach. But he was still Bond. "I'm sorry if it's too hot in here with me, Miss Moneypenny, but if the water's too cold the chip oil congeals and blocks the drain, you see."

He paused as if listening to Miss Moneypenny's response. "Yes, I know. Ten years is enough for anyone. I need to sell the feckin' business while we've still got a few customers left. Would you be wanting to buy a fish and chip shop, Miss Moneypenny? Could you live on income that's lower than minimum wage? Ha! Of course. I'd forgotten. You'd jump in bed with Mr. Bond and he'd make up the difference."

Indeed, Paddy O'Brian was at his wits end, desperate for a fresh challenge and well qualified as a member of the Red Lion club with Charlie, Quentin and Albert Sinnick.

Frying fish for a living had not been his idea. It had been Maeve's. She'd watched a TV program about a fish and chip shop that had been bought out by a big chain leaving the owner enough to buy a yacht that he moored on the French Riviera, but when she realized how much she hated the smell of hot oil, Maeve had left Paddy in charge and opted for the somewhat cooler Irish Riviera.

Since then, Paddy often wished for a strong wind from the east that would blow the feckin' chip shop vapors across the Irish sea back to Cork.

'Opening times: 11am to 2pm and 6pm to 11pm except Sundays' it said on Paddy's front door. He had recently invested in two plastic tables and four plastic chairs for those who preferred to dine in rather than walk around town eating with a plastic fork from a plastic tray. The only way Paddy got any time off to do his VAT return, keep track of his losses and share his remorse with Quentin, Albert and Charlie, was to employ ethnically varied occasional staff like Hamid from Istanbul, Gabriela from Gdansk, Agnieska from Bucharest, Joshua from Lagos and Luzia from Portugal.

Paddy had no idea how they communicated with each other especially as they only turned up when it suited them. But, with a bit of help now and again from Emma from Bulgaria and Silvi from Latvia, he could sometimes excuse himself and wander down to the Red Lion for an hour or so of male interaction in a language he understood. The only thing that would disturb him was if the emergency fire service roared by, lights flashing, heading for the High Street.

Paddy dressed himself in his purple trousers and red, checked shirt, went to the tiny kitchen, poured cornflakes into a dish, sprinkled sugar, doused it with cold milk and wandered to the window overlooking the High Street. Despite the rain and wind, he opened it and leaned out.

Being Monday morning, the street hadn't yet come to life, not that the rows of Victorian properties with their faded shop fonts, most of which could be seen in black and white on hundred-year-old photos, ever saw much trade these days. In their wisdom the Council had designated the street as 'traffic free' and 'pedestrian friendly' which meant delivering essential goods to the few surviving businesses was nigh on impossible. Paddy's frozen chips and raw fish were shipped out on a forty-foot truck and then wheeled up the street on a trolley. Tesco, of course, parked their forty-foot truck right outside their warehouse next to their private car park with its space for three hundred cars.

As Paddy munched cornflakes two wheezing old ladies passed below, dragging bags on wheels. They didn't glance up because they couldn't and so had no idea Paddy was watching over them like God from twenty feet above. He saw a spotty-looking youth in a backwards-facing baseball cap who should have been on his way to school clattering on a skateboard and there was the sound of the Council rubbish lorry reversing somewhere. There was a dog lying next to a bundle of blankets in the doorway of the Cats Protection League shop and Angus the postman was shoving bundles of trash mail under the shutters of another derelict shop a few yards up. Paddy sighed.

The view from his window was always like this - as inspiring as if he was watching the Irish rugby team getting thrashed by Scotland at Lansdowne Road.

A damp pigeon then flapped by and landed on the pigeon-shit-covered ledge of the window next door, but at least it bowed and scraped and cooed at him as if he was royalty. Paddy threw it a few cornflakes, but they didn't travel that far in the wind but flew back at him before fluttering down to the street.

Paddy put his empty bowl down and shut his eyes to summon a vision of something better than being the owner of a take-away that only survived by paying money to foreigners who lived in a fog of hash smoke around the corner on Midland Road. And what heavenly vision of the future sprang from behind Paddy's closed lids? Not one. Not even the faintest glimmer of light showed itself even though he squeezed his eyes so tightly that when he opened them again nothing was in focus. He blinked to clear them.

"A four-foot box, a foot for every year." Seamus Heaney had once written in a sad piece of prose that Paddy would read with enforced sniffing. Paddy's words would have been different. One foot forward, two feet backwards. Then the box."

Paddy's mind, in the past the source of so much color, vision and enthusiasm, was a complete blank. It was as inspiring as the brick wall he could see from the bedroom. There was not even a glimmer of light between the back of the Cats Protection League charity shop and the rear wall of the public toilets. Inside Paddy's mind it was as black...... as black as......Paddy struggled to drag something poetic from memory. "Ah yes. As black as the tempest cloud that flies, across the dark and muttering skies," he said, wondering where he'd read that.

But it did something to Paddy's brain. The sudden challenge triggered a flash of other ancient memories. Paddy, at school in Cork, being asked to recite a poem by James Joyce aloud to the class just because he'd taken off his shoes and Tommy Byrne had kicked them so hard and so far, they'd hit the teacher's desk.

"Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots. Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills."

How Paddy would have liked to go blackberry picking without having to rush back to open the shop and breath in the stink of hot oil, vinegar and Heinz tomato ketchup. How Paddy would have liked to sit and read poetry without the guilt of knowing a burned and blackened chip was still lying out of reach beneath the sink or wondering what had gone so wrong that Maeve had suddenly caught the Ryan Air flight to Cork with no discussion and no explanation and only a note with her sister's phone number. Or why daughter Mary had dropped out of University and gone to live with some Canadian guy in Toronto because: "We like each other's accents, Dad."

Jesus wept.

PART TWO:

**At 9.30 am, after hours of forced dozing** , Charlie McTavish finally opened his eyes. He was not, by nature, a late sleeper but, since he'd gone to live above Fook's Wok, he would delay opening his eyes for the horror of seeing where he was.

Charlie's room was too small for anything much more than sleeping so for a while he lay, hairy and naked, on the single, sagging bed and stared up at the water-stained ceiling. Finally, he threw the tartan blanket aside and sat up. This place really was the pits but, over the last ten years, circumstances had taken hold of Charlie's destiny. Surely, a fifty-six-year-old accountant had a right to believe he'd have something left after thirty-five years of hard work? Charlie, though, hated fights and arguments. Despite his ferocious-looking appearance, the thick beard, the biker-leathers and the dark glasses, Charlie was too timid. He was too nice. Charlie would rather hide or run away than engage in bitter arguments and disputes. It had been his downfall.

He took a deep breath. Right now, he felt surprisingly hungry.

Dining on fish fingers and baked beans at Paddy's last night had been like a night out in the West End for Charlie. Paddy had even produced two cans of diet coke. For breakfast, though, Charlie always ate whatever was left lying around in Fook's kitchen downstairs although there was a limit to how many left-over portions of chicken and black bean sauce or cold egg noodles Charlie's stomach could take.

From his bed he looked around his box-like, windowless room. It could be summer, autumn, winter or spring outside for all Charlie knew though the ceiling above his head suggested it was still the rainy season.

His boots sat neatly, side by side, facing the door as if they knew they needed to be ready to flee this dump at any moment, and his leathers were strewn over three boxes stuffed with old accountancy files. He pulled a hand through his beard, scratched his armpits and concluded he needed to visit the downstairs toilet fairly promptly. For washing, Charlie used Fook's kitchen sink, also downstairs, which first meant clearing space, taking out the black plastic bags of garbage and scouring Fook's saucepans and woks. In return for janitorial and other kitchen duties, Charlie had negotiated a rental deal which meant he got the accommodation at less than half price.

He stood, pulled on a pair of Y-fronts and a sweater, went downstairs, did his job in the toilet and then scanned the kitchen scene. He'd seen worse. Fook's Sunday night trade was never as good as Friday or Saturday. He opened one of the polystyrene take-away boxes, found an untouched portion of sweet and sour pork, matched it with a spoonful of cold rice from the rice cooker and ate his breakfast. He scoured the woks and saucepans, threw food, plastic spoons, forks and other detritus into the black bag and carried it outside to find it was, of course, raining.

Outside, under a plastic sheet and propped next to the wheelie bins, was Charlie's Honda motorcycle. It should have been a Harley 1200 Custom but that had proved impossible. Nevertheless, he patted the Honda's dripping handlebars, looked beneath the sheet to check the seat was dry and returned inside. Next, with the sink cleared, he lifted his feet, washed them in Fairy Liquid and then started on the rest. By 10.30 am Charlie, washed, fed, clean and smelling of lemon dishwasher was ready to start work.

He returned upstairs and pulled out his most valuable possession, his laptop, from beneath the bed. He sat on the floor and logged onto the internet via Wi-Fi that came, albeit with unreliable connectivity, courtesy of Fook's Launderette and Dry Cleaners next door. If Charlie could just find one company needing an accountant with twenty-five years' experience or a good business idea that wouldn't need start-up funds or a bank loan he might, at last, be able to move on.

Charlie had never been the most extrovert of men but it explained why he and Albert Sinnick had struck up such an easy-going relationship and how he'd then met Paddy and Quentin. Every detail of his first meeting with Sinnick was fixed indelibly on Charlie's memory.

His appointment at Krupton Health Clinic had been at 9.10am on a Wednesday morning, so he'd sat there in his leathers with his crash helmet on his knee. At last, at 9.35, he'd heard his name called. "Mr. McTavish, Room One. Doctor Sinnick."

He'd got up, his boots and leathers squeaking down the corridor and knocked twice on the door of Room One. Hearing nothing he'd gone inside to find Sinnick staring at his computer.

After standing, nervously twirling the threads of his beard, Charlie coughed, sat down on what he took to be the patient's chair and put his crash helmet on the floor. Sinnick, meanwhile, had continued to stare at his computer whilst tapping his teeth with a pen and muttering something about sneezing and freezing and wheezing. Suddenly he'd jumped. "That's it, Freud - pleasing. Good man."

Then, much to Charlie's surprise, he'd sat back in his chair and looked at him. "Good Lord, have you been there long?"

"Five minutes or so."

"You should have knocked. Right. Let me see." Sinnick had checked his screen. "Harry Smallwood? Maurice Cook?"

"Charles McTavish."

"McTavish, McTavish. Yes, here we are. What's wrong this time?"

"I've only been here once before."

"Well done. So why come today?"

"Spot of bother down under."

"I see. I'll need a fresh tube of KY then if I can't trust your own diagnosis."

"Hemorrhoids."

"Tried everything?"

"The usual. They might need litigating."

"Perhaps you mean ligating?"

"That's it."

"I'll make you an appointment. Got a phone number?"

Charlie had handed over his card. "Charles McTavish: Accountant."

"Accountant?" Sinnick said curiously, scanning Charlie from his black leather boots up to his long grey beard. "Are you sure?"

Charlie nodded. The beard had grown recently but the rest of him had remained unchanged for quite a while.

"Ah well. I'll text you something this afternoon. Everything else, OK?"

"Fine. Just the hemorrhoids."

That had been it. Charlie squeaked his way back down the corridor and went on his way. By co-incidence, though, they'd met again that same evening at the bar in the Red Lion. Sinnick had been sitting in the corner with Quentin and Paddy and it was his turn to buy.

Most people in Krupton knew Doctor Albert Sinnick. They knew him but he often failed to recognize them until they opened their mouths or their shirt fronts or lay half naked behind the curtain on his couch. It was names that eluded Sinnick. On that occasion, though, he recognized Charlie by his beard, the dark glasses, the black leather jacket and trousers and the crash helmet that he'd placed on the bar next to his half pint of lager and lime.

"Evening," Sinnick said with a faint nod, "Do I know you?"

"Hemorrhoids. This morning."

"Of course. Get the text message?"

"Thanks."

And that had been that until a few weeks later when it was the same routine and the same location. On that occasion, though, Charlie had moved his crash helmet to give Sinnick some elbow space.

"Don't tell me - hemorrhoids," Sinnick said barely turning his head. "Cured?"

"Thanks. The litigation worked."

Sinnick nodded, satisfied but appalled by the man's understanding of the procedure he'd undergone. "A quick thank you would have been appreciated."

"Pardon me?"

"What year did they erupt before you decided to pay me a visit?"

"2010."

"Was that when I first saw you?"

"No. Sprained ankle. 2017. Fell off the bike."

Sinnick looked at the helmet and then the leathers. "Of course. I remember the crash helmet. I couldn't hear a word you said."

"Once it's on I don't feel it," Charlie said. "Sorry. I should have taken it off,"

"Still riding it?"

Charlie nodded sadly not wishing to mention that the leather gear and helmet had been bought for a tough-looking Harley not a timid little Honda.

For the first time, Sinnick had looked him in the eye seeing something else: something that didn't quite match Charlie's rough Hell's Angel image. "I'm surprised you haven't been arrested for wearing it," he said with as much kindness as he could muster.

"I was. Barclays Bank. Someone pressed the panic button. Quite extraordinary seeing I was queuing behind a woman in a full burka."

"Tall woman? Red high heels, red finger nails and tight jeans beneath the burka?"

"You know her?"

"Certainly, but I never get too close. Doctor Manley sees her."

That was how the relationship had started. Sinnick had invited hm to join them in the corner. Introductions had been made and it had been Paddy who had started on an explanation of their regular meetings.

"We call it the Red Lion Club, Charlie. For revolution, resistance and revolt against pointless regulations and political correctness. Fighting for a return of respect for white, middle-aged, heterosexual men through counter liberation. Highlighting the overzealous implementation of the rights of women at our expense. Pointing out the sad state of humanity in general and how we men will, unashamedly charged by our testosterone and given half a chance, return things to their former glory. It's not all serious, though. Now and again one of us does a comedy spot. It was Sinnick's turn last week – a poem about a guy with hemorrhoids."

"Tell it again, Sinnick," Quentin had said, raising his glass. "Make our guest feel at home."

Sinnick had paused to take a sip of his orange juice. "Well, if you insist," he said before putting his glass down and adjusting his glasses. "All things rectal are a particular hate. But such is fate. I first asked this fellow about his current state."

Charlie listened, thankful that it didn't seem as if he'd been the inspiration. After all, Sinnick hadn't even asked him to undress and the poem, if that is what it was, described in graphic detail the unfortunate patient with his trousers around his ankles.

"Once he's lying prostrate then you check his prostate," Sinnick went on. "Two in one, that's how it's done."

As it went on Quentin slapped his thigh and Charlie spilt his Guinness until Sinnick announced he'd arrived at what he called the final passage where the words now came from the patient lying in a foetal position on his couch. _"_ Your poetry, Doc, is good by half _._ I like the rhymes and all your lines _._ They sure do make me laugh."

Finally, and perhaps mercifully, came Sinnick's punchline: "Then, for my sake, please, swear on your heart _._ Try your utmost. Do your part _._ Concentrate. Try not to fart _._ "

Sniggers like a group of ten-year-old boys sharing lavatorial jokes spread around the table and Charlie found himself joining in - laughing for the first time in weeks.

"Simple entertainment, Charlie," Quentin said. "It followed a discussion one night about why we no longer find stand-up comedians in the least bit funny."

Charlie nodded though he'd not watched TV for ten years and doubted if either of the others had either.

"So welcome to the club, Charlie," Paddy said and Charlie, like all serious accountants, had asked for the club's terms of reference.

It was Quentin who answered that one. "No rules, Charlie. We don't want to be taken over by bloody idiots, the woke, the liberal do-gooders, the free-loaders, the politically correct and the mad feminists. By the way, you're not transitioning, are you or confused about your gender? You're not about to identify as a woman or desperate to slot in somewhere as yet undefined on the queer spectrum? We don't have to add yet another string of letters to LGBT, do we?"

Charlie shook his head. "I'm just an ordinary bloke," he said. "Is that OK?"

"Splendid," Quentin said. "We'll put you down as a JAOB. What're you drinking?"

Charlie, feeling relaxed for the first time for years, then described his arrest in Barclays.

They'd commiserated and then discussed choice of clothing and religious freedom and agreed that if Charlie had entered the bank in his beard and high-heeled thigh boots matched with a pink and white polka dot dress, red lipstick, a floppy, green leprechaun hat and carrying a copy of the New Testament in one hand and the Koran in the other, no-one would have batted an eyelid. To say or do anything like pressing the panic button would have constituted a hate crime against a confused cross-dresser transitioning between several different genders, ethnicities and religions.

Encouraged even more, Charlie moved on to describing his two failed marriages, his bankruptcy and his decision to retreat into a spare bedroom for fear of being attacked in the street by friends of second wife Bella. Bella's friends, he explained, had believed her story about long term domestic violence when all he'd done was kick Bella's cat that had done its business inside his crash helmet.

For the first time in his life, Charlie was listened to in rapt attention and with much nodding of heads. Cats, it seemed, had had an influence on all four of them at some time, especially Sinnick.

"It was only a short clinical trial, Charlie. Who could have imagined a cat going into anaphylactic shock?"

"Did it survive, Sinnick?"

"Oh yes. It still turns its back on me which is no problem at all but each time my wife threatens divorce she uses the incident to remind me of my insensitivities."

"Ah, 'tis a great pity, Albert," Paddy said with great seriousness. "Whilst I'm a great supporter of animal welfare as a whole, I hate cats. Those slit eyed, prowling, creatures of the night with their deviant habits of loud sex on the top of, or even inside of, my trash bin at night are a menace to decent society."

"There's a poem there, Paddy, but I couldn't agree more," Sinnick said. "My wife claims that because they are forever washing themselves with their tongues, they're ultra-hygienic. When I suggested that I'd stop my morning shower in favour of licking myself all over including my intimate parts she told me I was being absurd. But what I say is if you want to pat and smooth a cat covered in fur that has been washed in cat saliva, feel free. Just don't expect me to do it. And thousands of years of breeding have still failed to remove their instinct to kill anything that moves if it shows evidence of being afraid of them. They'll play with it until it's worn out and dies."

Quentin chipped in. Mrs. Kelp's cat, Tipsy, Charlie then heard, had met an untimely death when Quentin reversed out of the garage.

"Tipsy?" Paddy exclaimed. "It was probably drunk."

"And eat?" Sinnick went on as Charlie sat smiling until the long underused facial muscles behind his beard were aching. "My wife's cats turn their noses up at anything less than poached salmon - boneless of course - or tender pork fillet with cream sauce. They eat better than I do. There's enough cat food in our larder to feed a million destitute refugees for a week but if I'm not home in time for dinner mine gets tipped in the bin."

Quentin shook his head in disgust. "Fish it out again, Sinnick. Scrape it onto a plate, sit down with a napkin tucked in your shirt collar and order her to bring you a glass of wine."

After an hour or so they'd all stood up as if it was time to go home but then sat down again. Charlie liked that as well. After all, he had nowhere to go but the room over Fook's Wok.

"Nothing goes beyond this table, Charlie," Paddy said. "Secrets stop here. Privacy guaranteed. Look at Quentin for God's sake. Quentin has us to thank for every speech he ever made in Parliament. We pre-approved everything he ever said."

"And look where that got me," Quentin said with a soft smile.

"She won't last long, Quent," Sinnick said deliberately not mentioning 'neo-liberal', beige cardigans or Prudence Bottomley by name. "You'll be back."

"And how much better are we as men for speaking the unspeakable and mentioning the unmentionable." Paddy added. "In our company, Charlie, you don't just sit on the periphery of life, you open your bowels. Have a good fart in the company of honest men and spit out the accumulated phlegm of a lifetime of disappointment."

Charlie had never before been invited to join a group of men of his own age and with such different backgrounds but with whom he felt so instantly comfortable and at ease. But he was still uncertain. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"Of course," Quentin said. "No holds barred. No stone left unturned. No embarrassments are too embarrassing to be shared. Your erectile disfunction is our erectile disfunction."

"If you suffer from it, it's entirely due to lack of practice and fresh opportunities," Paddy said. "Right, Sinnick?"

Sinnick nodded seriously. "Yes, indeed. Would you like my theory on that gloomy subject, Charlie?"

Charlie had forgotten that erections had once been as common as sneezing and blowing your nose. He leaned forward.

"Women's magazines love discussing it," Sinnick said. "While waiting for appointments in the clinic their time is spent in titillation. They see or imagine all shapes and sizes of both faulty and fully operational members for discussion amongst their friends. We are the subjects of shame, pity and ridicule, Charlie. The magazines in our waiting room open at pages devoted to the subject but, imagine if you can, a men's illustrated magazine full of similar articles discussing faulty or misshapen female parts. They'd be banned for being pornographic. We'd be threatened with court action as untrustworthy deviants with dirty minds, as sexual predators and for demeaning women. But those magazines in our waiting room never mention the real cause of ED."

Charlie leaned even further forward. Paddy and Quentin sat back. They already knew Sinnick's theory and whether true or false, wanted to believe it.

"ED is caused by over familiarity with one scenario," Sinnick continued. "It's like a repeat of X Factor. You already know what's coming and how and can't get excited. A fully functioning member needs regular maintenance like any other highly tuned machine, Charlie. After a certain mileage it'll need new plugs and a test-run under different conditions. Reset the hardware, Charlie. Oil changes stop the big end from seizing up. Reset the hardware, Charlie. There's nothing actually wrong that a full service can't cure. Look at Quentin. Fit as a fiddle for a man in his mid-fifties."

Quentin was grinning from ear to ear. Paddy was shaking his head in admiration. Charlie sat back. He had already been given a lot to think about and wondered if that was now it - that it was time, at last, to head back to Fook's. But no. There was still more to come.

"Once," Quentin said, "At a time when I felt my political life was in decline, I realised I was getting up at least three times a night to visit the bathroom so I called Albert. It was early one Sunday morning wasn't it Sinnick?"

Sinnick nodded. "I was in the clinic. Trouble with cats."

"Being unwilling to explain things on the telephone in case my phone was being tapped by MI5 we agreed to meet in the Golden Fleece as I know Colin, the landlord and he always kept a few of my cards on the bar.

"As usual the Golden Fleece was empty because Colin's Pitbull Terrier constantly sits in the doorway. Colin's Pitbull is called Frankly, Charlie. Have you ever been there? Colin claims that Frankly is a very good-natured dog and that his exposed teeth are a sign that he is actually smiling at customers. It's a strange sort of smile that Sinnick says reminds him of his wife."

"Anyway, we settled in the corner with our pints and because Sinnick had paid and I was feeling relaxed I explained that I thought I may have early onset cancer in my prostate. In his usual calm and professional manner, Sinnick suggested a quick urine test and internal examination, so we left our drinks on the table, borrowed a half pint glass from Colin and went to the men's lavatory which, in the case of the Golden Fleece, is outside, down a short muddy path and built mostly of crumbling Victorian brick with a leaking corrugated tin roof. Frankly followed us with his tongue hanging out.

"It was also raining and as the half pint glass was already wet before we arrived Sinnick said he would make a suitable allowance for a high, water content in his analysis.

"Once inside this dilapidated shed, Sinnick admitted he had never done such a thing in his life ie accompany another man into a public toilet with a view to one of them taking his trousers down. I admitted that neither had I but after squeezing into the tiny space with Sinnick holding the half pint glass for me to produce my sample, I bent over. Unfortunately, we were then unable to close the door.

"However, he managed to perform his task and we then made our way back to the bar with Colin clearly surprised at seeing Sinnick carrying what looked like half a pint of his best bitter in a glass and a limp rubber glove. Once settled, Sinnick performed a quick dip test on my sample and was also able to confirm that his brief internal examination suggested there was nothing wrong and that the only blockage was due to Frankly barking at the wrong moment."

"It seems we can really talk about anything," Charlie said which felt like an understatement.

"No holds barred," Paddy said. "Men's rights are a popular subject."

"Discussing women's rights is banned because it's being dealt with by everyone else," Quentin clarified.

Sinnick, suddenly suffering from a terrifying image of Mrs. Pettifer in her rain hat with her arms crossed and staring menacingly at him with green slit eyes looked around the bar. No-one was in hearing distance but nevertheless, he leaned forward and whispered, "Misogyny is perfectly acceptable in order to balance the prevailing misandry – especially in the workplace."

Quentin nodded. "Brainstorming of pioneering political ideas is welcome."

"But political correctness is banned otherwise we'll get nowhere," Paddy added.

Charlie sniffed nervously. "Do we talk about each other?"

"Only in a positive light," Sinnick said. "We must promote self-confidence, boldness, courage and self-esteem at all times. Criticism is allowed but can only be made after a complete understanding of mitigating circumstances. The words of good and honest men are too often drowned out by the shrill outbursts of others whose views have recently become fixed in quick setting concrete. In my case, Charlie, the Red Lion is the only place where I can speak honestly. I live in fear of my computer being taken away for analysis. Do you know I have become so nervous of saying something that might upset someone that I often draft notes, proof-read them and only once I'm confident there's nothing contentious or litigious read them out?"

"White middle-aged men have become the most downtrodden and disrespected in the history of mankind," Quentin said. "We are blamed for everything that happened in the past, for every problem of the present and are being lined up to take the blame for anything in the future."

"Never feel ashamed in our company," Paddy said.

"I can even talk about myself? About my feelings? My thoughts? My most personal problems?" Charlie enquired.

"Do it, Charlie. We all see burning issues raging in your soul. Is there anything that tops the list?"

They were staring at him, three pairs of eyes willing him on. What should he say? How could he start to explain how things were?

"Um," he said cautiously. "I need to sort out my life."

It was like a balloon pricked with a pin without even the satisfaction of a pop.

"Nothing new," Quentin said. "Here am I, your once proud representative in the mother of all Parliaments, now reduced to reading how Prudence Bottomley plans to change the world by providing free diapers for everyone over sixty."

"I'm at my lowest ebb ever," Paddy admitted. "I need to move on. Urgently. Frying cod and chips for fifteen years is doing something to my once fertile brain. And I smell like old chip fat."

"The doldrums are where you'll find me," Sinnick added. "Drifting in circles, waiting for a breath of wind to fill my limp and flapping sails."

To Charlie it seemed they had all come from different directions but now found themselves standing, scratching their heads at the same cross roads where all the sign posts had been vandalised.

"I sold my client list to Beggar & Company," he said. "Five thousand quid per client. I should have netted a quarter of a million."

"Should have, Charlie?"

"Patsy got wind."

"Christ Almighty."

"Claimed she'd been my secretary for five years. Then Bella got to know."

"Ye Gods."

"Claimed she was the one who found half my clients."

"Mother of Jesus."

"I already pay maintenance to Patsy and the kids. Bella just messed around for five years. She was a.... what do you call it?"

Charlie's words were always carefully chosen but lacked the polish of a public speaker like Quentin, a physician like Sinnick and a literary academic cum fish fryer like Paddy.

"Nymphomaniac?" Paddy offered.

"Polyandrous?" Sinnick suggested.

"That's it," Charlie said, though he'd never used either word before.

"I know several," Sinnick said. "They're very common."

PART THREE:

Sitting and waiting for the 7.45am train to depart for London Paddington for his interview, Quentin wiped condensation from the window and looked out.

It was raining and the morning was cold, grey and dismal with a fresh wind that, before the rain arrived had blown mixed detritus into a soggy pile beneath the smoker's designated trash bin. Why, Quentin asked himself for the thousandth time, did smokers and gum chewers still top his list of those with the foulest habits and God-awful breath?

The view through the train window was a perfect match for Quentin's mood. He had a headache and had been suffering the most horrendous nightmares of late though, to be fair, Sinnick had warned him about his headaches at their last meeting in the Red Lion.

"What do you expect, Quent? Every night you get yourself in a right state reading the papers. If you insist on reading everything for balance then don't get mad reading about human rights without them once mentioning human responsibilities or worker's rights without even a passing thought about the rights of employers. And all the while your blood pressure's rising, you're stuffing your face with _over-ripe Stilton_ and strong coffee."

" _But how do you explain the recurring nightmare, Sinnick?"_

"You mean the one about the short woman in a pin-striped suit and bowler hat who follows you into the gent's toilet at Paddington station?"

" _That one especially."_

" _Are you sure it's a woman?"_

" _It must be. It's the way she stands next to me and peers over the partition."_

" _It's a man, Quent. He's transitioning."_

"I've seen him before – he was once a short woman in a black mini skirt."

" _Then he's already transitioned but is transitioning back again. You must be more tolerant, Quent. It's her rights."_

" _What about my rights, Sinnick? Don't I have a right to punch his eyes out?"_

"It might be a woman, Quent. Where would that get you?"

" _But she's in the men's room for God's sake. And then there's her really disgusting habit. Do you know what she does? She............."_

"Don't, Quent. Please stop. You described it once before. Bowler hats should only be used as headwear. My stomach is churning already. Just one question. Does she undo her fly buttons to urinate into the hat?"

There seemed no end to stress-related problems. After describing his dream, Quentin had turned to his traumatic election defeat but, as always, Sinnick had shrugged, Charlie told him to get over it and Paddy had agreed telling him to "join the rest of us riff raff."

Oh yes. How quick and easy it has been for the mighty Quentin Kelp to fall. Since his shock defeat, Quentin had, mostly in private, been inconsolable. What on earth was happening to the world? What in heaven's name did the public see in a twenty-six-year-old, female College lecturer with a pony tail and beige, hand-knitted cardigan who taught creative writing? How could anyone called Prudence Bottomley ever have enough ambition to become Prime Minister? And with her plan to provide free care, accommodation and pampers for everyone over sixty whether they needed them or not?

"For God's sake," Quentin had bellowed at a pre-election husting in the Assembly Rooms. "People are living to eighty-five at least. How the hell is the state going to afford bed, breakfast, evening meal and diapers for everyone after they've retired?"

Clearly, though, the electorate had thought it would be very nice to live free of charge for thirty years or more in state-run hotels with all meals cooked by a TV chef. But Quentin now realized his real downfall had come when he announced he'd rather move his Zimmer frame to a tent on the Common and die of frost bite than go and live with Prudence Bottomley and the other gormless zombies he'd been trying to please for the last five years. Perhaps it hadn't been one of his best speeches but it was better than being arrested for throttling Prudence live on the podium.

But, right now, Quentin was on his way to a job interview and, despite his neatly brushed hair, pristine, navy-blue suit, white shirt, red tie and well-polished Church's lace-ups on his feet, Quentin felt more like a pimply, teenager in low slung pants, hoodie and Nikes and carrying his one and only achievement in life – a crumpled copy of a school certificate showing some proficiency in basic numeracy.

He fidgeted in his seat. It felt harder than usual but he'd forgotten he was now one of the riffraff. No longer was he a First-Class passenger but in one of the seats for ordinary men, defeated men and dismal failures. So, he continued to stare despondently out of the window and what did he see on that cold, grey and damp morning?

Quentin found himself staring at the same thing the other riff-raff were staring at: a young woman trotting along the platform wearing red high-heeled shoes. But as everyone watched, she stopped hurrying and switched to a casual walk. Quentin could hear the slower clip-clop of her heels through the closed window,

He said, "Mmm, nice," to himself because that was what came naturally, but then he checked his watch. It was 7.59am, but the driver of the train or whoever gave the go ahead to depart, seemed oblivious. The train seemed to be waiting for her. It had got him thinking.

Like everyone else already on the train he had woken on time, showered, dressed, and even tried to be civil to Mrs. Kelp. He'd driven, parked the car and arrived, albeit panting and stressed, to be there before 7.45 am. But this daintily clad creature trotting beneath the red umbrella with her red bag strung across her shoulder, her neat grey suit and her long black hair tied in a red bow had decided that the rest of her fellow commuters would have to wait for her to board. Quentin took another look at his watch.

It was 8.01 am when he heard the door slam and he wondered if the train would now grant her a minute or so to find a seat and make herself comfortable. He sniffed and picked up his newspaper but was unable to concentrate. Something felt very wrong here.

If it had been him arriving a minute late and sweating in his sensible lace-ups, navy suit and black umbrella, the train operators would had seen him coming and deliberately slammed the doors shut. What's more the passengers already on board would not have watched in admiration but grinned and nodded at one another in appreciation of the treatment handed out to their ex – no, let's be frank, their recently and heavily defeated - Member of Parliament.

Quentin could hear the comments now. "Serve the stupid old codger right, thinking he was so bloody important. I hope the wind turns his umbrella inside out. Give us all a good laugh."

The train moved off and Quentin watched the woman smiling sweetly at nearly every passenger as if she was a majority shareholder of the train operator or a well-known celebrity that everyone should know and that it was quite right that the train's departure time had been adjusted accordingly.

She finally settled herself next to a man wearing a brown corduroy jacket. She smiled at him with glossy red lips as if he, too, must know her celebrity status. She took out a pink, glittery phone from the red bag and pressed something as if to command it to wake up.

Quentin glanced at the corduroy jacket and untidy mop of grey hair and recognized a partner in the town's main architect practice. The man smiled at his fellow passenger and probably, Quentin thought, checked her knees. He then nodded a polite "Good Morning", moved his copy of the Guardian a fraction so as not to intrude on her space and went back to reading the front page. He was too polite to comment on her late arrival or the train's late departure.

But it wasn't just the men who'd been watching as she settled and pulled her skirt down a fraction, and it hadn't been just the men watching this neat spectacle daintily tiptoeing her way along the platform. Women had been watching too. And Quentin's analysis was that there were two quite separate reasons for the wiping of the windows for a clearer view. The men had looked, quickly decided she was a reasonable contender for mating purposes if the opportunity arose and returned to their phones and morning papers.

The women, on the other hand, Quentin decided, were far more analytical. Indeed, he'd seen shaking of heads suggesting thoughts like: "Mmm, asking for it, stupid tart. Nice pair of shoes though. Wonder where she got the handbag." That sort of thing.

That was it, Quentin concluded. The men didn't even notice her handbag or her shoes. They just did a quick summing up, took a quick, imaginary X ray image and returned to the real world. Men cared about her physical health and wellbeing. Men mentally undressed her to check not only her assets but for hidden faults and blemishes. Not so the women. For them it was the outside, the superficial, the body adornments, the handbag, the skirt, the jacket, the earrings, the hairstyle, the lipstick and the height of the heels. They didn't care whether she might trip on them and hurt herself. Some probably hoped she would. Men would have rushed to help. Women would have sniffed, smirked and walked on by.

So, what was it about a woman and their shoes, handbags, lipstick and make-up?

Quentin put his newspaper to one side and a smile at last crossed his beleaguered face. Riff raff no longer, Quentin decided. This was to be his new venture – a bestselling book on his experiences living as a woman in the modern age. And, after all was said and done, no-one could object or make snide comments without repercussions such as arrest for hate crime, homophobia, gender discrimination and a long host of other modern sins. Quentin would join the LGBQT community - or whatever it was called - not as a full-blown member but as an experiment. He cancelled his interview, got off at the first station and took the next train back to Krupton to buy a pair of red high-heeled shoes.

Paddy read it but Sinnick wrote it.

Sinnick's poetry, praised by Quentin, Charlie and Paddy for its originality and poignant relevance to life and white, middle aged men in particular, gave him that extra dimension to his daily life.

If it was ridiculed by Mrs. Sinnick when she found a discarded draft in the trash bin it was like water off a duck's back. Just as Paddy knew the anatomy of a Dover Sole and the poems of Seamus Heaney, Sinnick knew human anatomy and wrote on miracles of engineering arising from accidents, about art and sculpture arising from periods of madness, about scientific discoveries made sitting under apple trees, about words written on sinking ships, in country churchyards and in lush meadows with views of golden daffodils. Mostly, though, he wrote about being a doctor in a society where the only people respected were the winners of X Factor, those who gathered likes on social media and who covered themselves in tattoos.

But something was still missing from Sinnick's life.

"I need something fresh to get my teeth into," he told Freud almost every day. "Something to spice up my life, a distraction from the stifling routine. Do you realise I have dealt with two thousand one hundred and fifty-eight sore throats in the last twenty years?"

It was pre-opening time and Sinnick had decided to carry out his occasional unannounced check on what the early morning cleaners did when no-one was around. The number of discarded tea bags was an indicator. Unfolded scraps of paper from his waste basket and cigarette ends and ash outside in the cotoneaster was another. And who paid for these early morning shysters who tuned into Radio 2 and forgot to retune to Classic FM? Sinnick. That's who. So, he sat at Mrs. Pettifer's desk in the main office desperately holding back sobs, not out of shame but because tears might ruin Mrs. Pettifer's piles of spread sheets.

" _Should we brainstorm some more ideas?"_ Freud asked trying to be friendly and helpful.

Sinnick struck the desk with his head so hard that Mrs P's tub of Nivea hand cream fell from the shelf.

"Shhhh! We can't say brainstorm in here, Freud. I can't even say that Polly-Anne Druss is lazy even though I've watched her fall asleep doing her nails. Oh no. I have to say with great understanding that today she's just a tiny bit motivationally deficient. On the other hand, I'm a mean old has-been, who doesn't understand human feelings, Freud."

" _So sad."_

"I can't even tell old George Carter about his body odour and personal hygiene even when his armpits reek of fried onions and his smell pursues him along the corridor and lingers in my room for a week. Oh no. We can't mention the foul-smelling unwashed living amongst us, Freud. We can't even refer to body odour as BO any longer because Mrs Pettifer won't allow it. I must, instead advise George to address his non-discretionary fragrance so as not to upset him. Can you believe it?

"George Carter's seventy-nine, Freud. I've known him for thirty years. He lives alone in a flat with an old Labrador dog as arthritic and wheezy and smelly as George. He couldn't care less if I tell him he stinks to high heaven. He'd just grin and joke that he's sweaty because he's been at it all night like a rampant stallion with the woman next door. We'd have a good laugh; I'd then pat his sticky old shoulders out of affection and give the corridor and my office a quick spray with Lavender air freshener.

"According to Mrs P I'm just a mean old has-been, who doesn't understand human feelings. But I'm going to get my own back. I'll ban the word Scrooge, Freud. I'll say I feel mortally offended being referred to as Scrooge every time I mention the number of paperclips we use. Calling someone Scrooge will become as bad as calling them fat or lazy. I'll get the word black-listed, Freud, just you watch."

" _You can't say black-listed."_

"In that case I'll just say listed."

" _Mrs P will then want to know which list to put it on?"_

"Then I'll ask her to make a list of a list."

" _A list of a list?"_

"That's it, Freud. She can prepare a spreadsheet."

" _You're wasting time, Sinnick."_

"Everything's a waste of time, Freud."

" _Would you say you waste time and effort on - what shall we call it? – poetry?"_

"Some. But I have spasms you see - no, no, I'm not allowed to say spasms. I have episodes - no, I can't say that either. I have periods. I can still say I have periods because they use the expression all the time. There are short periods of each day, Freud, when I find myself talking in rhyme. But being creative takes valuable time. Instead of naps I fill short gaps by being witty. Every hour another ditty. You see what I mean?"

Sinnick, assuming that Freud was sitting comfortably inside his head, nodding in agreement, continued.

"It's the patients," he went on, "It's the other medical staff. It's the women in the office. It's the unrealistic expectations of society and the world at large. It's the Health Trust members who lean over my shoulder checking that I'm using a vaginal speculum without interfering in a patient's privacy and nagging me over statistics and budgets and finances. Christ Almighty, one of the board members is the Bishop who struggles to add up his Sunday collection money. He's so behind the times that in his weekly sermons he calls for shrift by watching pennies and shillings."

" _Are you saying he doesn't present a particularly modern outlook to his flock?"_

"Freud, my friend, the man and his friends have barely moved forward since the crucifixion. He learned his trade from the Book of Genesis and his catch phrases from the scribblings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He studied science under Archimedes and arithmetic under Aristotle but failed both."

" _So, he's not up to double entry book-keeping, then."_

"And yet he's got more hassocks than I've got clean shirts. And if it was you or me carrying a seven-foot-long gilded stick with a hook on the end we'd be arrested for possession of a dangerous weapon. And as for his hat...."

" _What's wrong with his hat?_

"It's a metre high, that's what. What would patients think if I was to welcome them here with my stethoscope poised, my digital sphygmomanometer fully charged and pretending to be serious wearing a hat like a gold-plated traffic cone on my head? You think they'd take me seriously? If our religious leaders want to be listened to then I suggest they start wearing ordinary clothing and ditch the ridiculous pantomime costumes.

"And then there are the patients with tattoos. I'm so fed up with them, Freud. I......"

Sinnick wiped his furrowed brow and emitted an odd, guttural choke - the sign of another sob about to burst from his lungs – before continuing. "By the time they're covered in them from head to toe the fashion changes and they come in here wanting them removed. Last week I had a woman weeping over a tattoo of a desert cactus on the inside of one thigh and rose thorns on the other."

"What was her problem?"

"Jokes at her expense, Freud. Something about pricks should be inside not outside."

"No, I don't get it either."

"If there's one thing everyone should do each morning it's clean their ears, Freud. But it's all about the outside, you see. Superficiality is the new reality. If it can't be seen, it's never been. They can't see it but I do when I'm required to peer inside. I wrote to the Health Secretary about dirty ears but, as usual, got no reply."

" _Was that the letter headed 'Waxing Lyrical' and signed A. Sinnick?"_

"And please don't mention internal politics and women. Did you that Mrs. P once organised a meeting to discuss tea bags? How can it take an hour to decide whether we should order ones with string or ones without? Do I need to overhear a discussion about divorces when I've got a patient in my office about to have a coronary? Do I need to listen to pleas for understanding for taking time off due to family arguments, kids, headaches and Christmas shopping? Do I need to know about patient's handbags or the extortionate price of Jimmy Shoes when they're only here for their ears to be syringed?

"George Carter couldn't care less about anything. He's been wearing the same shoes and socks for thirty years. Women bring everything to work just like they carry everything around in their bags.

"And even when I try to engage, I get told off. I asked one-woman patient, in all politeness and interest, what she did for a job and got shrieked at for making an assumption that having a job and career was more important than looking after kids and home? On the other hand, I get scolded by Mrs. P for not making small talk by asking women what they do for a job?"

Sinnick's voice rose two octaves as he imitated Mrs. Pettifer. ' _It's not just you men who have careers, Doctor Sinnick. It is us women who keep this male-dominated world on the straight and narrow. Show some interest or I'll need to mark you down for poor interpersonal skills.'_

His normal voice resumed. "Do I really need to keep a box of tissues handy for every time they cry when I'm far closer to sobbing my heart out than they are, Freud?"

" _So, it's women, isn't it? They are the problem."_

How intuitive was Freud? How understanding? But how unbelievably slow at narrowing things down to a single cause.

Sadly, perceptive though he was, Freud was only a mirage. How intuitive could mirages be? Freud was a hallucination, an apparition, a fantasy. Sinnick suffered from many things but the phantasmagoria was both a help and a hindrance. But then: _"Does no-one other than me ever ask about your welfare, Sinnick? What you do? What you think? How you feel? If you're in pain, physically or mentally?"_

The question was posed with such a touch of male kindness and sensitivity that Sinnick almost wept. "Only Quentin, Paddy and Charlie," he sniffed.

" _Are they supportive?"_

"Oh yes."

" _What about_ Belinda?"

"Who?"

" _Your wife."_

"Oh, yes. No. It's positive influence that I'm seeking, Freud. Not the negative or the status quo. I suppose I'm seeking change through a change in myself."

" _So, what influence would you like? Government Minister? Union official? Health Trust Board member? Parish Priest? Professional footballer? Ageing rock musician?"_

"None of those, Freud. All are insignificant, self-important upstarts. They should offer me a leading role in preventing world destruction - an honorary professorship and then chairmanship of the UN's Oblivion Detection Department, ODD. It's only right that I'm put in charge, of anything to do with ODD matters, after all I have written extensively about oblivion in that the end of the human race is blindingly obvious."

" _So, if it's a new challenge you're after it has to show some real benefits to mankind."_

"We don't call it mankind any more, Freud. They don't like it. You must catch up. That aside, it's about changes through direct action, telling the truth, pointing out the blindingly obvious and painting a horrific picture of impending doom unless everyone gets off their arses and does something."

" _Starting with yourself, Sinnick?"_

"I suppose so."

Perhaps it was the early morning start or his poor night's sleep but Sinnick fell asleep with his mouth open, dribbling onto Mrs. P's cervical smear statistics.

But Sinnick's brain never slept. Freud was always there: a tiny man with the face of Albert Einstein and the body of Rumpelstiltskin in the dress of a miniature fighter pilot, listening, feeling, watching screens and twiddling knobs. Sinnick's biggest fear was that Freud would someday leave him just by pressing the ejector seat button.

"Sermo lapsus - of course," Sinnick cried out in his sleep. "That's it. Sermo to speak or talk, as in the Sermon on the Mount and Lapsus a mistake. Sermo lapsus. Talking to oneself. That'll do. No one will check."

A dreamy vision of a patient then grew in Sinnick's mind: a busty, middle-aged woman in a low-cut frock with blue eyes, high heels, perfect white teeth and long, golden hair like a fifty-year-old Rapunzel. She was smiling broadly through bright red lipstick as if Rumpelstiltskin had just performed his magic on her. "You see her Freud?"

"Yes. Nice feet. What about her?"

"I've just finished examining her on the couch."

" _And?"_

As Sinnick's dream went deeper, his mouth opened wider. "Yes, madam. I did mutter something. I said you've got pancreatic cancer but you'll receive confirmation by email, not from me your doctor but from Mrs Pettifer the office manager. Cancer of whatever organ is a problem I admit but we all have our crosses to bear."

The woman hurled a saucepan full of thick, yellow custard at Sinnick's head. His tongue emerged to taste it and he dribbled another spoonful pf saliva this time onto Mrs. P's prostate cancer stats.

"My apologies, madam. But I myself also suffer from a chronic condition. It is called Sermo lapsus. It means I occasionally converse with myself. It's an extremely rare affliction, known to affect those with a high IQ like Albert Einstein. Don't worry. I'm harmless enough. And, anyway, this is only a dream. Enjoy it while it lasts."

The woman now spoke though not in words but in spreadsheets. They poured from between her red lips like a fast, digital printer. _"I assume you're receiving some sort of medication for it, Doctor. It's not right that women patients are examined by seriously deranged white, middle-aged men."_

"Medication, madam? Never. I am proud to say that Sermo Lapsus is an honour bestowed on the few."

"Well I've never heard of it before."

Her voice is like an African parrot and her lips have become a sharp, curved beak.

"That, madam, is because it's so rarely bestowed. Did you not learn Latin at school, madam?"

The parrot shrieks. _"So Sermo Lapsus also refers to blatant bloody liars and you don't really mean I've got pancreatic cancer. Oh my God!"_

"Blatant, deliberate lying, madam, is quite wrong. It is something to be frowned upon and is referred to in medical circles as........ah......Sermo non veritas. Check your email. A far better person, a woman, will get back to you on the cancer."

Something wakes Sinnick. It is the sound of the front door. He raises his head, wipes the drenched pile of spread sheets with his hand and jumps up. It's Mrs. Pettifer so he hums a little tune – the second bar of Pop Goes the Weasel which quickly changes to Singing in the Rain as he sees water dripping from Mrs. P's clear plastic hat.

"Raining again Mrs. P? I need to get a hat like that. They look so......effective."

Mrs. P ignores him. The elastic of her hat is pulled from beneath her chin and the rain drops shaken. The dripping umbrella is stood in the rusty bucket for wet umbrellas. The dripping, brown coat is hung on the hook for wet coats and Mrs. Pettifer studiously ignores him until:

"Right, got to get on. Busy day. Rest of the office staff should be here soon. It's pre-natal day today. Thirty-six to organise. And all those ends of month target reports are due back. How may flu jabs given, how many new cases of unvaccinated kids with whooping cough. Finished with yesterday's Daily Mirror? And may I ask, Doctor Sinnick, why it is you're wearing blue lipstick this morning?"

"Thirty-six pre-natals? What the hell do they do around here? On the other hand, what is there to do around Krupton except....... fuck!" Sinnick wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Blue ink. Must be this cheap pen."

"It leaks. I tried throwing it in the bin yesterday but missed."

"So did the cleaners. I retrieved it. My bad luck. I gave it a suck."

"And what's this slimy mess on my spreadsheets?"

"A drip or two from your hat, perhaps?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Forgive my inquisitiveness but what happens to these print-outs now?"

"We pass them to the Health Trust, of course."

"I see. Do they perhaps require checking? Approval from the practice's senior partner? His signature? Can he access then at any time should he need to? Are they computerised? Are there likely to be questions asked? Are we doing enough smear tests? Can we be sure that our ladies are able to access the best, most modern technology available, Mrs. P? And what about the men? Have you finished the spreadsheet on male suicide rates yet?"

Mrs. Pettifer stood with her hands on her hips. "Have you quite finished, Doctor Sinnick?"

"Yes."

Her hands stayed on her wide hips. "Bullying takes many forms you know, Doctor Sinnick."

Sinnick tried hard to smile but was not sure how it looked. If there'd been a mirror close by, he'd have tried to hold it in place for a moment to check. "Yes, of course" he said, "I read and duly signed the intimidation and bullying circular you prepared. Did you finish the one on our anti-slavery and human trafficking policy?"

Perhaps it was the rain but Mrs. P sniffed and Sinnick seized the moment to wipe her sodden files with his sleeve. "Dew drops from your cold nose, Mrs. P."

"Hmm."

"But let us not start the new day badly, Mrs. P. Please, take your comfortable seat. Slip off your sodden shoes. Rest your tired feet. Dry them by laying them across the desk next to your time-sheets. Let their vapours help the re-humidification process that your female staff found necessary following the drying effect of our new central heating system. Here - have one of your Polo Mints. Blob of hand cream, perhaps? Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee? Gin and tonic?"

"Now then Doctor Sinnick, don't you go all creepy with me. Here's Polly Anne. It might upset her."

"She's early. Did she sleep walk here by mistake?"

Sinnick scurried away to rinse his mouth and wash his face of blue ink but he was fully aware that the way he scurried was like a mouse who'd just seen the cat.

Sinnick fled to his room where the walls were plastered in the comforting but essential elements of his profession: The fading photo of him receiving his medical degree at University. The 3D plastic torso that showed essential internal organs, body parts in shiny colours so he could explain in simplest terms what they were, what they did, how they all connected up and why, like the family Ford Fiesta, the parts sometimes got blocked, went rusty, needed servicing or replacement until, finally and inevitably, the entire structure, by then a worthless heap, was dumped and recycled.

And there on his desk lay the thing that had really gnawed at his nerves the day before - the copy of the 'joint professional indemnity insurance policy' and the quote for next year's premium.

PART FOUR:

With an hour to go before opening time, Paddy returned to look out of his upstairs window.

The pigeon had long gone. Angus had gone and taken his bags of junk mail with him. The old ladies pulling their bags loaded with a loaf of bread and a half-pint carton of milk had gone. It was time, Paddy knew from experience, for a changing of the guard. It was time now for the young mothers from the Wood End Estate to arrive in groups of two or three, pushing buggies with sticky-looking offspring trapped inside with ice creams and donuts with pink icing.

Paddy knew where they were going. They were on their way to browse the racks of clothing at 'Peahens', looking for bargain-priced torn jeans made in Bangladesh and tee shirts with obscene inscriptions. Later they would head to KFC because that's where single mothers gathered during the day. They might, of course, call in at the travel agents to decide which was better - a week in Ibiza or two weeks in Lanzarote. Mothers, after all, needed a break from child rearing.

He'd spoken to one once while sweeping swirling detritus from his doorway.

"You look very sunburned."

"Yeh."

"Been on holiday?"

"Yeh."

"Somewhere nice?"

"Yeh."

"Where?"

"Faliraki."

"Where's that?"

She'd stared at him as if he was mad. "How the fuck should I know? It was raining when we left, sunny when we arrived."

Once in every blue moon they gathered outside Paddy's where he'd hear them complaining about the price of his real chips compared to the fake ones at KFC. Attracted by the scent of his malt vinegar imbued real chips they might buy a small carton to share amongst nine toddlers and show them how to squeeze ketchup from sachets. Then they'd wheel them away looking like the offspring of Dracula.

Paddy sighed, went downstairs to switch on the lights and deep fryers and then returned upstirs. After a while, he glanced out of the window again and was just in time to see a man in a suit disappear around the corner. "Well, bless me," he said to himself. "If that wasn't Quentin then it was his double."

Sinnick was sitting at his computer screen.

He'd needed to get a poem off his chest. It was Paddy who'd started it with a few first lines he liked and still remembered so he read it through for the third time.

' _My wife has this infernal cat, A creature best described as fat. She feeds it well; I get the scraps. It eats the best and then it naps. It's neutered now, I saw to that, but still it seems to lust._

" _Last night it wandered out at night, arriving home when light. This over fed and poxy feline, strolled about and made a beeline for the border and my grass. Here it stopped and looked around and sat upon its ass. Then, later on, when I came out, to walk about, to chat a little with my neighbours, enjoy the efforts of my labours, to take the air and go to sit in the morning sun and write a bit, as I approached, it moved away._

It happens every day. It rarely looks me in the face. It hates my very presence. I hate it too as it thinks it owns the freehold on the place. Today it watched me from the shed where it had made a bed. This slit-eyed, untamed, jungle creature with its devious, sly, unsavoury nature, saw me take my normal seat, relaxing for my morning treat. I wrote some lines and then stood up and moved towards the door. But something made me feel uneasy, my stomach churned, I felt quite queasy. I was sure the cat had grinned. It turned its head to see me, it's steely glare upon me. And then it was I felt behind me, a damp and sticky patch. And then I saw where I had sat. The place where it had shat."

As always Sinnick hated his output. Nevertheless, he moved it to his Poetry file. One day, Paddy had said he'd edit them and tout them to agents. "No need to be embarrassed, Albert, there's a lot of other crap out there."

Sinnick delayed pressing the buzzer for patient number 21 for a few minutes and lay on his examination couch, drew the curtain and, in the pleasing semi-darkness, wondered why he, a doctor and a professional man with education and status had become such a pathetic, navel gazing, self-critical creature more concerned about finding a word to rhyme with hypochondriac than exploiting his rights as a proud upstanding member of Krupton society.

The truth, as Freud often reminded him, was that he'd become a man who no longer wished to live with modern society. It was as if he'd floated down on a cloud and arrived in a world dominated by aliens with whom he had no cultural connections other than that he shared their rough, skeletal structure of four limbs and a head.

In a word he hated it. Besides the mindless scrolling of phones, it was the intolerance of anyone, like himself, who held an opposite point of view to the ever-growing list of unacceptable views. Laws had been changed due to pressure from narrow minded, foul-mouthed minorities while the quiet and polite majority stood by, afraid to object for fear of arrest.

Perhaps Mrs Sinnick was right in that he'd become a boring old fart with his refusal to adapt or change his ways.

" _You want to go on a Caribbean cruise, my dear? Feel free. Just don't expect me to join five thousand overfed and overindulged aliens eating, drinking and sunbathing like beached whales on a boat the size of Greater Manchester."_

He had once dreamed he was living in glorious solitude on a deserted island surrounded by nature and the soothing sound of lapping waves and seagulls calling, but the dream had shattered when he heard a noise and looked up to find his island had been invaded by a massive cruise ship disembarking ten thousand noisy, overweight people in bikinis, Bermuda shorts and sunglasses and waving selfie sticks. It was like being trampled on by a mass migration of chattering mutant apes.

Poetry was a distraction from all this but his would never reach the peaks of popularity that Wordsworth, Keats and Byron once achieved because Wordsworth, Keats and Byron had been just like the modern-day celebrities he also disliked. Nevertheless, it was a release valve for the daily pressure even if the subject was a cat with bald patches.

Behind the curtain, Sinnick's mind drifted on. Paddy had an impressive collection of second hand poetry books. It was mostly Irish, of course, and Sinnick often imagined Paddy reading it by torchlight beneath a blanket. _"I'll add yours one day, Sinnick – the collected works! It'll take pride of place next to the Toby jug."_

At the end of the day, though, after dealing with the cystitis and the haemorrhoids, after the ear ache of Mrs. Pettifer's voice on the internal phone, after worrying himself senseless about the rear, offside tyre of the car with the slow puncture and where to get a ladder long enough to reach the clock in reception that had stopped for need of a new battery because everyone said it was not in their employment contract to deal with electrical problems, and wondering if Mrs. Sinnick would at last agree to the use of weed killer around the door of the garden shed......After all that, Sinnick knew he had to make a radical decision.

In a moment of weakness, he'd mentioned to Mrs. S setting up a school and clinic in deepest, darkest Africa, but there had not been even the merest flicker of interest. " _What?_ " she'd screamed. _"How on earth would we pay for the new kitchen?"_

Freud's voice swam into his ears from the pillow. _"So, what do you want?"_

"A reason to give up the stifling routine, Freud. Do you realise I have dealt with one thousand one hundred and fifty-eight alcohol-induced headaches and almost as many cases of fast food diarrhoea since I've been here? What am I supposed to do? I can't tell them the truth, that it's their own damned fault because I'll be hauled before the disciplinary committee."

He sighed, sat up, pushed the curtain aside, went to his desk, touched the mouse on his computer and the front page opened requiring him to identify himself. "It's me, you damned stupid machine."

" _Are you about to write another letter?"_ Freud asked.

"I used to be decisive, Freud, but I'm not so sure any more. Anyway, no-one ever responds to letters signed A. Sinnick."

" _Shame."_

"Someone needs to point out the blindingly obvious – that we're all doomed, Freud."

" _And, of course, you have written extensively on the subject of doom."_

Indeed, he had. Sinnick had once described oblivion as the moment when the world with its billions of impoverished human beings clinging on by their fingertips, disappeared up its own colon in the vacuum left by one big fart. And, in pursuing his comparison with flatulence, he'd written that on the celestial scale of things, human impact would be seen like a single fart - heard once and never again."

" _Written from such a dismal swamp, a slough of despond, your poetry never ceases to be picturesque, Sinnick."_

"It's because I'm a pilgrim, Freud. A pilgrim who drew the short straw when Reverend Collins trickled water over my infant brow and declared me Christian. I am a pilgrim who has failed to make any progress. I need a diversion, a challenge that will cause all of my concerns to fade into irrelevance and triviality."

And then Sinnick's phone rang.

Quentin had emerged from Krupton train station like a man on fire.

This was no tender creature with doubts about his gender or whether he lacked a Y chromosome. Quentin had the X factor, a man who knew his gonads. Quentin had no need to announce that he thought he'd been brought up all wrong and should have been allowed to play with a Cindy doll and brush the blonde hair of a My Little Pony. When Quentin's voice broke and dark hairs sprouted on his legs, he'd only just finished building bridges and skyscrapers with his Lego wearing a hard hat and brandishing a chain saw.

The first few chapters of Quentin's book on what it was like for a real man to live as a modern woman were already forming in his mind as he passed briskly beneath the window of Paddy's upstairs flat.

"Chapter One: To unfold the mystery of high heeled shoes. Chapter Two: To analyze the logic of painted finger nails and toe nails. Chapter Three: To understand the reasons for painting eyelashes black and lips bright red. Chapter Four: The psychology behind the need to carry a handbag at all times."

Speed, though, was essential if he was to find a publisher, bank the advance and keep it secret from Mrs. Agnes Kelp before the divorce.

Quentin's immediate priority was to purchase a pair of size eleven high heeled shoes, so he headed for the High Street and an establishment he once spotted whilst out campaigning. Tucked between the Oxfam charity shop and the Help the Aged charity shop was Sandra's Boutique.

Cupping his hands around his eyes to shield them from the murky morning light, Quentin peered through the window at a small display of shoes amongst shelves of necklaces, scarves and other delicate items. Most items looked as if they might, with luck, last a week but definitely not two and Quentin was a man who sought out quality, long-lasting goods made by real craftsmen. If he was to purchase a pair of size 11 wide-fitting high-heeled shoes then he needed to ensure they would last. After all, if he got to like them and they were comfortable, they might well find a permanent place in his wardrobe alongside his black Church's lace-ups.

Quentin went inside and asked the woman sitting and sharpening her finger nails to speak to Sandra herself.

"Thass me, luv," she said and Quentin was quick to realize that this was the woman Sinnick called Sandra the Philanderer.

Quentin had no evidence of any philandering but clear evidence that Sandra was well built. She was dressed from top to bottom in black - black trousers, black shirt, black high heels and a black low-cut shirt that quite deliberately exposed the top end of a black bras. Her cleavage was like a cleft in the white chalk cliffs of Dover and her long black hair hung around a face that looked as if it has been chiseled from a chunk of purest white alabaster - all of which explained Sinnick's alternative name: 'Sandra the Panda'.

Quentin's thoughts turned to Krypton parish church where similar alabaster carvings were apparent on the lids of ancient coffins of long dead knights of the realm, having been sculpted by ancient craftsmen into lifelike but prostrate figures complete with helmet and body armor and, quite inexplicably, a small alabaster dog lying at their feet. These ancient relics were usually found to be wearing deeply pointed shoes that posed questions about how mobile these knights were during battles, but Quentin was there to find high-heeled shoes not winkle pickers.

Sandra's alabaster face was adorned with almost as many items as her shop window. There were seven rings - three in each ear and one in her nose. How she could blow her nose without having to rinse the ring under a running tap afterwards was another thought that ran speedily through Quentin's mind. He decided to ask Sinnick for his opinion.

Around her neck was a flimsy black scarf and, on each snowy white wrist, row upon row of yet more rings - shiny, black ones. As Quentin studied this black and white spectacle she spoke, interrupting his thoughts. "You alright?"

"Yes," he replied, wondering if perhaps she kept a broom and a boiling cauldron out the back, "I'm looking for a pair of red, high-heeled shoes, size eleven."

"Burfday present, luv?"

Sexism already. Quentin could never have got away with addressing anyone as "luv" without an outburst from irate feminists in the Krupton News.

"No," he replied.

"Partner?"

"I'm not currently running a business."

"Girlfriend?"

"No."

"Well who for then? Size eleven's quite big, yunno."

"Not true," Quentin said. "My feet are of average dimensions for a well-built man."

"Yeh, but, for a woman......"

"They are for me, luv." Already he couldn't care less about feminist outrage. "For me. Got it? I'm a size eleven and a wide fitting, luv."

"I see." She seemed unsure and sought further reassurance. "For you?"

Quentin was sure she was trying to hide a grin but decided the case was made already. Why was it a woman could go into any shop \- even one calling itself a boutique - and buy trousers or a jacket or a hat like a man's cap or trilby without being laughed at, but someone who was quite obviously a real man couldn't even make a tentative enquiry about a pair of high-heeled shoes without it being thought weird, suspicious or humorous?

"Yes," he said. "I'd like to purchase a pair of size eleven high-heeled shoes, wide fitting, for myself, not too high a heel as I need to practice walking. Preferably red but definitely not black. I hate black and I find white far too plain. I want to be seen, even at night, and I especially want to be heard. Therefore, the chosen items must produce a resonating but regular clip-clop-clip-clop sound when walking on concrete paving slabs or on porcelain tiles. Do you have anything in stock that might suit my requirements?"

She shrugged. "I'll check."

While he waited, Quentin wondered around her boutique for a while. It was Monday morning and he was the only customer but, by the time he reached the plastic beads section, he'd concluded that Sandra was in dire need of some marketing advice.

She returned. "Sorry, luv, no can do. Try next door. Help the Aged. They do a nice range in big, second-hand ladies' shoes."

Quentin left Sandra to her broom stick and went next door where he found a very helpful lady in her eighties who soon found him a nice pair of red high-heeled shoes, size eleven. The heels were a little high but things were already becoming urgent. He sat down and tried them on. They were very tight for his toes and the sides very low but, he decided, his feet could overhang a little thus eliminating the need for a wide fitting. It was squeezing them on at all that was the problem - and the standing up of course. Walking was something else entirely.

"I'll take them." he said. "How much?"

"Five pounds. All proceeds to Help the Aged," she croaked. Then, surprisingly, she sniffed them before sliding them into a used plastic bag. "Only worn a few times by the.......by the look," she said.

Quentin walked out clutching his purchase.

" **Rheumatism, cataclysm, pessimism, economic doom-ism?"**

During another gap in the flow of patients Sinnick had been struggling with a poem on the economy when his phone rang. He let it ring until it stopped.

More important right now was to link rheumatism with the economy, poetically. It had seemed so simple when he started but a large, black fly had settled on the left kidney of his plastic cadaver and seemed about to lay a thousand eggs that would hatch into a thousand maggots. It was very distracting.

"Buzzyism? Carnivorism? Cadaverism?"

The phone rang again so he decided to saunter at his own pace, along the corridor to ask Mrs. Pettifer what all the fuss was about. On his way, of course, he passed the Krupton Health Centre brass plaque and stopped to read it. He read it every day and nothing had changed since the appointment of Doctor Henrietta Manley, six months ago. Nevertheless, it seemed to sum up his achievements from a standing start and gave at least some encouragement to keep going a while longer.

Sometimes he read the plaque thoughtfully, consciously. Sometimes he used it as a mirror because, at a certain angle. he could see what was going on in the office without being seen. More often than not he just stared at it until someone passed by when he invariably frowned, rubbed his chin and shook his head as if there was something so deeply troubling that they felt a moment of pity for the heavy burden of responsibility that lay on his drooping shoulders. From births to deaths and subsequent funerals, Sinnick had been present, a fountain of wisdom on all matters of the flesh, whether living or dead: a shoulder on which others cried. And all the while his own tears welled up behind their lids like a dam ready to burst.

There, on the wall were the engraved names of his recruits. The rest of the clinic's walls were covered in dire warnings about unprotected sex, of non-vaccination against Rubella, Mumps and Whooping cough, about the need for personal hygiene at all times, of the days and times for flu jabs, asthma clinics and who to phone for Women's Health matters, contraception, fertility and cervical smear tests. Men's health services, on the other hand, were listed on a small black and white leaflet that constantly fell behind the poster promoting the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Spotting a smear of something next to his own name, he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, spat on a corner, rubbed it away and gave it a quick shine.

Doctor Albert F. Sinnick, it said, with a short string of letters that showed the outcome of his long, hard studies at Medical School. Next came the names of his five recruits and a neat demonstration of how he had bowed to demands for ethnic and gender diversity: His first appointment, Doctor Ali Mansour: dark in many ways but a trusted pair of hands particularly amongst the residents of Park Road and its side streets.

Doctor Christian 'Clever' Trevor who enjoyed mushroom vol-au-vents, egg and cress sandwiches and power point presentations so was given the job of attending lunchtime meetings with sales reps.

There was Doctor Robert 'Bob' Oring, awarded top marks by Mrs Pettifer for his bedside manner and useful knowledge of football. And there was Doctor Sam 'Sling' Ling from Singapore and his enthusiasm for alternative therapies such as cobra snake oil for previously untreatable cases of psoriasis and athletes foot. And then there was his most recent recruit, Doctor Henrietta Manley, brought in as a soft pair of hands for obstetrics and gynaecology only for Sinnick to discover she was a lesbian who had stepped out of the closet long before he had even heard of the expression.

Sinnick left the plaque and strolled on towards reception thinking about Manley.

He had never understood the increase in unproductive sexual activity in the last twenty years having always believed that such tendencies would have been lost through natural selection millions of years ago. Freud had suggested it was a fashion statement, a symptom of human uncertainty and confusion, though Sinnick, possessing all of those characteristics himself, had never succumbed.

Doctor Manley, in moments of dubious humour, called him Doctor Sin which seemed a strange accusation for someone of her own leanings. To be fair, though, he'd learned a lot from Manley. She, or was it a he, was a mine of information about things that happened on that side of the fence. She had once asked him what he knew about lesbian dinosaurs. "Nothing at all," Sinnick had replied in all seriousness whilst realising in a flash of enlightenment that it proved his theory about why creatures become extinct.

" _Oh, yes,"_ Manley had said. " _There's the Lickalotopuss and the Clitolickomus"._ And, as she went away, she'd called back, " _And there's another one called a Plentysaurus."_ That night Sinnick had looked up his old palaeontology books to check.

Quentin was looking for somewhere to sit to try on his new shoes.

The public bench outside the Help the Aged shop was usually occupied by loud teenagers with phones, eating burgers, smoking and sucking on bottles with plastic teats. Krupton's elderly passersby would give them a wide birth before looking back as if they might need to run. But this was a weekday, late morning, a time when they were probably still asleep.

The seat was damp but empty so Quentin, ignoring the deep hole in the rotting wood, sat down and once again tried to squeeze his feet into his new shoes. They were very tight, but as he struggled, an idea came and he took his socks off. Finally, breathing a sigh of relief, he stood up, pulling his trouser bottoms up to admire the contrast between his snowy white ankles and the glossy red of his new shoes.

It was perhaps fortunate that, right then, Paddy turned up. "Morning Quent. I thought you said you were going to London."

Quentin was holding on to the seat back. "Plan abandoned, Paddy. I've been shopping instead."

Paddy stared at Quentin's feet. "So, I see."

"Give us a hand, Paddy will you. I don't think I can walk too far in these. Not yet anyway."

Paddy wasn't sure if he was meant to laugh but decided not to as Quentin looked so serious. "You can lean on me if you like, Quent. It'll be just like closing time at the Red Lion."

"This is no joking matter, Paddy. Perhaps I should explain my plan. This is a serious social experiment, the outcome to which will be a bestselling book. You and I need to check the public's reaction to seeing a man who has no doubts about his gender and chromosomes and is totally at ease with his manliness wearing red high-heeled shoes and other accessories normally associated with women."

"Right now, Quent? What about my deep fryer?"

"Delegate to your overpaid staff, Paddy. I need your views as a man."

"Well, for sure, I'd be pleased to help, but where's your skirt, Quent? You'd look lovely with a nice red skirt that goes an inch or so beyond your knees. And what about a nice, red, tight-fitting sweater that exaggerates your contours? The shoes don't match your suit. You should have bought a black pair if you intended to continue wearing your suit or perhaps a red skirt if you were intent on making an impression. But because you didn't do either you'll need, at least, a nice red leather handbag, some ear-rings and perhaps red lipstick that matches the shoes and the handbag. Don't you know anything about matching accessories, Quent?"

"I'm here to learn why they do all these things, Paddy? Don't you understand?"

"Well, don't ask me, Quent. That's what women do. "

"Is it something to do with their sexual habits, Paddy? I need to know for my book."

"Probably Quent but I've never understood them."

Quentin hobbled two steps, clinging onto Paddy's shoulder. Then he peered at his feet, turning his ankle this way and that to examine them from different angles. "Do you ever notice high-heel shoes on a woman, Paddy?"

"Jesus, Quent. What man looks at a woman's feet? I'm a tits and bum man myself. Not that you ever see either. You just use your imagination."

"So why do they wear high heels, Paddy?"

"No idea, Quent."

"And why do they all carry a handbag?"

"Ah, that's for putting all their stuff in. Their powder, mirrors, funny brushes with sticky black paint, their balls of cotton wool, tissues, anti-wrinkle creams, combs, lipsticks. Everything goes in their bag."

"But why carry it around all day?"

"Just in case, Quent."

"Just in case what?"

"Just in case things needs topping up, I guess."

"Do they keep money in there, Paddy?"

"Oh sure – cash, credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, discount cards - far more than you and me."

Quentin thought for a moment, still holding tightly onto Paddy's arm. Two old ladies stopped to stare and he risked a one-handed wave and a smile because he was, or used to be, well known in Krupton. From his inside pocket he withdrew a small notebook with pencil attached. "I'll just make a few notes, Paddy."

"Then sit down, Quent. You look none too steady."

Quentin sat. "How about finger nails, Paddy? Are they a turn on?"

"Finger nails, Quent? What's wrong with you, man? Don't tell me you've got a fetish."

"No, no. I just wondered why they paint them red."

"Nails are weapons, Quent, Like claws on a cat. Red ones are a sign of aggression and are used on other women if the need arises."

Quentin scribbled. "What about lips? Do you ever notice the color of their lips? Why are they usually bright red and shiny as if they've just bitten a chunk out of some raw meat?"

Paddy scratched and shook his head. "Ah, you've got me there. It's very weird."

"So, you don't know?"

"No idea, Quent. But they even inject silicone to make them pout like they're blowing kisses at everyone. But don't ever try blowing one back, Quent. You'd risk getting your face smacked and, if they're feeling particularly nasty, you'd be arrested for intimidation, indecency or sexual assault. Your reputation, such as it is, will be in tatters and you'll need to move house to escape the bricks thrown by the Krupton feminist army. But you've really got me thinking now, Quent. They're really weird aren't they. And, Jesus, the time they waste."

"Weird is not a word I'll be putting in my book, Paddy. I need words that define their thought processes when applying the stuff. The purposes. The objectives. I need to know if they are as analytical and self-critical in their approach to decision making as we are. Are their decisions based on feasibility studies, on trial and error, past successes and failures? Do they rely on an understanding of basic physics and mechanics and do they develop time-saving habits tuned to perfection over years in order, for instance, not to miss the 7.52 train? Do they, for example, save time by cleaning their teeth or, in their case, applying powder and cream while sitting on the throne?"

"Aw, they're not so meticulous or as logical as us, Quent. You really must get that out of your mindset before you even start the first draft. Natural instincts and unfathomable emotions are the factors mostly at play, but even these are not logical in a sense we understand. But God help you if you upset them. Don't for Pete's sake argue. Be patient. Just nod and hold your tongue. But you're definitely on the right track, Quent."

As Quentin scribbled, Paddy stood, looking up at the scudding, grey clouds, memories flooding back.

"I remember I used to watch Maeve," he said. "In fact, I've watched Maeve for hours, not because I wanted to, you understand, but because there was nothing else left to do at the time. I must have spent hours, days, weeks, waiting for Maeve. But she didn't wait for me."

Paddy sniffed at the rain drops. "Time waits for no man, Quent, but it stands still for women especially if they know a bloke is sat waiting for them."

Quentin scribbled.

"And here's an idea for another chapter, Quentin. Facial expressions. Jesus wept. The only reason I ever waited so long for Maeve to don her paint was for the entertainment value of her facial expressions. You know the poem, Quent? The lips they writhed in horrid grins, like dying for unforgiven sins."

"That's a good one, Paddy. I'll make a note." Quentin paused. "But why walk around with bright red lips, Paddy? This question is particularly bothersome."

Paddy shrugged. "You're posing a real hard one there, Quent. The pink, natural sort is good enough for me. I like a pert little ass, a friendly face and a decent pair of legs but I'm a no make-up man, myself. I've always preferred to wake up to something I was already familiar with than start the day with a horror movie."

"Same here," Quentin said thoughtfully. "This is all very interesting, Paddy. I should have brought a voice recorder. Your insights are most valuable. So, what word should I use instead of weird?"

Paddy didn't hesitate. "Devious, Quent. In their eyes, we men start off as perverts, molesters, rapists and juvenile sex maniacs but a few years later we get complaints for lack of interest and poor performance. Their minds work differently to ours. We're black or white, simple and uncomplicated but they......Holy Mary!......they manipulate, plot and connive. They're devious, wily and sly. They're crafty and talk in quiet whispers to slippery friends to work out cunning plans of manipulation to twist us around their fingers.

"Look at poor old Charlie for instance. Only recently has he felt able to come out and admit to the pain and discomfort of being fleeced for every penny he's ever made and being forced to live off cold spring rolls and pork dumplings.

"And what about Albert? If it's not Mrs. Sinnick then it's that harridan of an office manager Mrs. Pettifer who reduces him to such tears of frustration that he locks himself in his office to write another poem as consolation. He's looking old, Quent, and, if he's not with us, he talks to himself like he's got an imaginary friend to speak his mind to. Haven't you noticed? Every time we ask for his opinion he hesitates as if he's checking whether he can still use the words that come to his mind.

"Women are schemers, Quent. They're actors who control us by deliberately feeding off our closely guarded emotions and, by Jesus, they're good at it. Maeve could squeeze false tears over nothing while I'd nearly choke to death trying to hold real ones back."

Quentin stopped scribbling. The scene Paddy was painting so vividly reminding him of words from the night before. "That's it. You go to your room. First you upset me, then you leave me here all alone. You just don't care about me anymore, do you? DO YOU?"

Quentin gulped.

"You know the poem about gossamer skin, Quent?" Paddy went on.

Quentin coughed to clear his throat. "Gossamer skin? No. But I could include a poem if there's no copywrite. How does it go?"

"It goes something like this: A constant distraction, the bane of our lives......."

Paddy paused though he'd barely begun. His fluffy grey hair fluttered in the damp wind and he closed his eyes before continuing:

"Gossamer skin, bedazzling smile, sensuous beauty, exotic and wild, heightening our senses, beleaguering our mind. Tempting, alluring, a poison, a need. Destructive, explosive, a thought we don't heed. Sirens, beguiling with secretive smiles. Seduction, sedation, an art they construed. This demonic voice, this double-edged sword. This seed of discord who flew abroad. To Cork and her sister as if I'd not miss her."

He opened his eyes and looked at Quentin. "Sorry. The last few words are my own, Quent. Sorry about the outburst of male emotion."

"That's OK, Paddy."

"No wonder good women poets are in such short supply though, eh Quent?"

"Never mind, Paddy. Who wrote the rest of it?"

"Some Indian fellow. I forget his name."

"In that case I'll just include your own words, Paddy. That way there won't be any copywrite infringement."

They sat for a moment, the steady drizzle seeping into Quentin's best suit and trickling from Paddy's scalp.

"They think we're such mean bastards, Paddy," Quentin said after a pause. "Shall I mention it in the book?"

"I wouldn't use quite those words, Quent. You don't want to jeopardize your chances of a decent advance by finding an ardent feminist on the committee though the chances of finding one without might not be easy."

Quentin made another note. "True, but very useful input Paddy. But you still haven't answered my key questions. Why do they wear high heels and lipstick and nail paint when we men barely notice it except when it becomes a damned nuisance waiting for them to put it on?"

"To go one better than other women, Quent. It's competition. They have this fixed but utterly false perception of what men find attractive. They blame us for everything but they've totally lost the plot. What normal bloke even cares about their shoes and handbags? But some women have hundreds. What are pockets for, I say. But someone has to pay for all these unnecessary adornments. That's when we come in useful. They always demand better pay and equality but their side of the wardrobe is always bigger than ours. They then encroach on what little space we've got left, but do we complain? Never. We daren't. It happened to me. When Maeve flew to Cork, the only positive thing was I got to hang my three shirts in the wardrobe. And think of poor Charlie. I've only ever seen him in two shirts – the mustard one and the grey one."

"Good examples, Paddy. Can I quote you?"

"Sure, but anonymous, OK? Now do you want to try walking again without my support?"

"OK, but don't go too far away just in case."

Quentin staggered to his feet and tried moving forward, unaided, on the four-inch heels. "I can't do it, Paddy."

"Sure, you can. Practice makes perfect."

"Walking in these things comes naturally to women. Why not me?"

"They're built different, Quent. They think different. They behave different. They want all this equality stuff but at the end of the day they like being different and that won't ever change. They don't really want to be like men or behave like men. Look at you. What woman would want to look like you right now?"

Quentin staggered another yard. "These shoes won't last more than a day, Paddy. Look at them. The soles are like paper. They're not suitable for mud and rain. I can make mine last for years with just some fresh laces."

"While we go for long-lasting quality and recycling, they need landfill sites for the clothes they only wear once, Quent."

Quentin tried a few more steps, smiled and put a hand to his ear.

"But they sound good, Paddy," he said with enthusiasm. "What do you think? Clip-cloppety-clap-clip-cloppety-clap It's a sort of irregular rhythm. I wonder how many decibels I could get out of them on the floor tiles in Westminster when I return. What would the sound waves look like? Just think. We could design shoes for their sound effects, Paddy. Forget appearance, go for decibels."

"Now you're talking like a man, Quent. It's all about technology with us. The advancement of science and engineering through innovation and creativeness. That's why some of us voted for you, Quent. For new ways of looking at things. Now.........off you go, try walking on your own, but look where you're going........ and avoid the drain cover, Quent. I said avoid the drain cover...... Mind the.........Are you OK, Quent?"

PART FIVE

**When Sinnick finally reached the reception desk** he'd forgotten about the missed phone calls.

"Ah there you are, Doctor Sinnick," Mrs. Pettifer said. "Where on earth have you been? You know the procedure. If you leave the building you must inform a member of my staff."

"I didn't leave the building, Mrs. P."

"Then where have you been? Someone called Paddy has been calling every few seconds. I can't waste valuable management time on private matters, Doctor Sinnick."

With perfect timing, the phone rang again. "It's that man Paddy again, Doctor Sinnick. I've already instructed my staff not to answer it. We've run out of excuses."

"But excuses are strictly forbidden, Mrs. P."

"Don't you come over all pedantic with me, Doctor Sinnick. I know our procedures. Where have you been for the last hour?"

Sinnick sank to his knees before Mrs. Pettifer's chair, putting his hands together in a prayer for forgiveness. "Sorry Mrs. Pettifer Never again. It's not my intention to drive you insane with my shameful behaviour and utter disdain."

From the floor, he grabbed the ringing phone. "Krupton Community Health Centre. Here for the good, the bad, the impure. The rich, the poor, the sore. But never forget our motto: Prevention is better than cure."

"Is that you Sinnick?"

"Chips away, Paddy. Got the fryer going yet?"

"Gabriela and Agnieska are in charge. Point is, it's Quentin. He's had an accident."

"In London?"

"He never went. He's here in Krupton."

"What's wrong with him?"

"He fell down. Maybe he's broken his ankle. He's in excruciating pain. The silly fool bought some new shoes and the heel gave out."

"Did he get a guarantee?"

"Second hand. Help the Aged. I was holding him up to practice walking but the heel went so quick, we both fell in a heap. I called you first. Then I called Charlie."

"What's Charlie doing?"

"Looking for somewhere to park his Honda. You want to talk to Quentin?"

"Put him on."

"Sinnick?"

"Morning, Quent. What's up?"

"My high heels gave out."

"High heels? What are you talking about, man?"

"Nice red ones, size eleven, wide fitting. Fitted perfectly once I took my socks off. It was the heel. I twisted my ankle trying to negotiate a drain cover and the thing just snapped off. I fell in a heap with Paddy on top of me. The ankle's so swollen I can't even get my Church's lace-ups back on. But I don't want to cause a scene or call an ambulance. It's my reputation."

"You don't have a reputation, Quent."

"I will do when my book's published."

Sinnick, was still sitting on the floor on a level with Mrs. Pettifer's bare knees.

"Doctor Sinnick! Move away. What are you looking at?"

Sinnick blinked. "Let me get this straight, Quent. You've just bought a pair of high heeled shoes?"

"Red."

"Why?"

"Research, Sinnick. I'll tell you later but right now I'm stuck. Paddy's here but I think I need crutches."

"Where are you?"

"Outside Help the Aged."

"Stay there. I'll get to you as soon as I can. Take my advice. Don't move."

**When Charlie arrived, Sinnick was examining Quentin's ankle.** Paddy was watching. Quentin was groaning.

Sinnick stood up. "Swelling, tenderness, bruising, pain, underlying tissue damage, turning blue, stiffness setting in."

Quentin groaned again. "What the hell are doctors for? To describe a patient's symptoms to the patient?"

Sinnick ignored him. "We need a wheelchair."

"What about crutches?" Charlie suggested.

"X ray?" Paddy added.

Sinnick frowned. "Who's the doctor around here?"

"You are Sinnick," Quentin said. "Just do something before Sandra the Panda walks by."

"You met her?"

"If she sees a weakened man, she might drag me to her cauldron."

"That's definitely Sandra."

"They rent out wheelchairs at Fook's" Charlie said.

"At last. Something positive," Paddy added. "How do we get it here from your digs?"

"Not my Fook's," Charlie replied. "Doctor Fook's Centre for Chinese Herbal Remedies and Training School for Oriental Alternative Therapy and Acupuncture next to Gregg's the Baker."

"Get one," Sinnick commanded. "I can't sit here all-day holding Quentin's foot."

Charlie returned in ten minutes pushing a wheelchair. "Twenty pounds deposit, three pounds a day rental. Seemed reasonable but I didn't bring my wallet." Charlie's cash problem was obvious by the flush behind his thick beard.

Sinnick saw it. "I'll deal with it."

"Where shall we take him?" Charlie asked

"My place is closest," Paddy suggested. "If we can get him up the stairs."

"We can't put hm on my Honda without a crash helmet," Charlie added.

Quentin looked up. "Would you care to include me in the decision making?"

"I don't make decisions anymore, Quentin," Sinnick admitted, "They've been driven out of me."

"Then push me to Paddy's place," Quentin instructed. "Sinnick, helmsman, Paddy to port, Charlie to starboard. Let's go. Reconvene later. Plenty to discuss."

**Sinnick had long wanted his own private clinic.** A private clinic meant he could do what he liked and employ whoever he wanted. Gone would be the days when others would sit in on interviews reminding him about employment regulations, disallowed questions and criticising his interviewing techniques. His choice of staff would be his own. He could turn his dream team of neat little nurses in white uniforms with winning smiles and quaint little hats into reality and star in his own jaunty YouTube adverts where he would start off saying _"Hi everyone it's Albert here. Today I'm going to show you........."_

A flash of inspiration made him sit up from where he was slouched over his computer screen trying to find something that rhymed with epididymis. "Sling," he said suddenly. "He'd know a thing or two."

He wandered along the corridor, peering through doors and finding no-one. In the main office Mrs. P was in a huddle with her band of staff. Sinnick held back because it had all the hallmarks of a union meeting. He coughed and heads turned.

"Yes?" Mrs. P said crossly.

"Sorry to interrupt. I was looking for Sling, Mrs. P."

"Doctor Ling has a consultation."

"Consultation? We don't do consultations, Mrs. P. We hand out useless prescriptions to anyone who calls in. Consultations are for those who can afford to go private, to take as long as they like because the clock just keeps ticking. He's not, is he, Mrs. P?"

"Not what, Dr Sinnick?"

"Doing private stuff on the side."

"Linda likes his ideas for alternative therapy."

"Linda? Who, pray, is Linda?"

"Linda Carey."

Sinnick stood stock still, suddenly struck by a mental image of patient Linda Carey and her head of hair that resembled an abandoned stork's nest. She'd been waiting in his room while he visited the toilet and he'd emerged having accidentally left the tail of his white short hanging through the broken front zip of this trousers. His hand-written patient notes still included the phrase: _'Must be wary of Linda Carey.'_

Sinnick snapped out of his trance. "So sorry to trouble you, Mrs. P. I look forward to receiving the minutes of your staff meeting later."

He was saved by the sound of Sling's voice. "Ah, Sling, where have you been? I asked around but you hadn't been seen."

Sinnick always began with "Ah" when talking to Sling because ethnic diversity regulations stated he must sympathize with Sling's Singaporean origin. But Sling looked nervous. He shuffled towards the empty nurse's room, his regular hiding place and tried to shut the door but Sinnick put his foot in the way. Sling turned, twisting his Charlie Chaplin-style moustache.

"Patient Wary," Sinnick said trying to sound strong, dominant and mightily suspicious like the senior partner he was. "Explain."

"Ah, you mean patient Cary?" Sling corrected.

"Ah, so. Scary wary Linda Carey. What's her problem?"

"Eczema. Hydrocortisone not work so I try special cream. Also not work."

"Ah. So, why not work?"

"Maybe not eczema after all, lah."

"Aha. So, what next, lah?"

Sling was twisting his moustache so rapidly in one direction that Sinnick expected the adhesive to fail and for it to drop to the floor. "Maybe just temporary allergy soon to go, clear up, like. I ask what she now use for cosmetic. Where buy. If powder or cream or defoliating compound or maybe she's using highlight enhancer or infusi gel."

Sinnick listened, bemused, wondering if this new pharmacological terminology had an oriental origin. He stared with his mouth open as a spot of blood from his morning shave oozed and glistened on his chin. "What do we run here, Sling? Are we running a French cosmetics clinical testing research institute?"

Sling, still unused to Sinnick's foreign way with words, tried to chuckle. He sometimes found him amusing, sometimes threatening and sometimes constructive, but he was usually left completely baffled, unsure whether to laugh, cry or try matching him in a stand-up comedy routine. What Sling didn't want was to lose face and Sinnick was confusing him by staring at him strangely, though whether with affection or utter dislike Sling couldn't tell. He decided to laugh. "Ha, Ha. Very good, lah."

Sinnick examined the spot of fresh blood now on his finger confident in knowing that while his old razor was blunt his way with words was sharp.

"Sling! Did they not teach you anything during your time treating the inmates of Changi prison? And what did you learn during your short stay in Hong Kong? The pharmacology of white rhino horn? Did you learn anything from ancient Chinese scrolls about the optimum level of dried crocodile penis required to increase the size of your own tiny appendage? Did you study the bioavailability of the active ingredients contained in the bark of the wallah-wallah tree illegally felled from the deep and sweaty jungles of neighbouring Borneo?"

He paused, distracted by memories of an ancient poem of his that had linked the words bewitching and twitching. He shut his eyes trying desperately to eliminate the words but it was no use. For some unfathomable reason he had to mention Sling's twitching moustache. "What about studying the psychological benefits of hair implants on upper lips?"

Sling laughed again still hoping it was all a joke. "No, lah. I never shaved it off after I played Hitler in the Christmas play at Raffles Medical Centre."

"A Christmas play that involved Adolf Hitler?" Sinnick shrieked. "Didn't you organise decent pantomimes based on classic English fairy tales like Cinderella, Puss in Boots or Hansel and Gretel out there?"

Sling's laughter increased. "Ha, ha, ha. No, lah, we decided Hitler needed to be put in his place after wrecking the country. Ha, ha, ha."

"It was the bloody Japanese who wrecked Singapore, not Hitler, Sling! What do you think your war museum on Sentosa is all about? A North American Indian invasion? A hoard of Mongolians marching down the Malaysian peninsula from Russia? Why we ever ran the country in the first place I don't know. We should have handed it over to the Japanese."

"You did," Sling reminded him.

Sinnick desperately tried to remember his World War Two history.

"Yes, well. We were unprepared and it was far too humid for the sort of thing we're good at. Our boots were designed for real weather - wind, rain, mud and snow - not hot, sticky stuff. Flip-flops would have been better."

Sinnick's mind diverted: flip-flops almost rhymed with dish-mops. He'd ned to remember that. "What were we talking about? Ah, yes. Linda Wary. So, in your oriental wisdom, what did you decide might counter the side effects of extortionately priced face cream?"

"Dr Fook's Aloe Vera with Coriander and Thai Basil Lanolin mixture," Sling replied.

Sinnick stared, speechless.

"Ah, but I didn't prescribe it. No, lah," Sling continued. "I suggested that things didn't look serious to me and it was probably best left alone for a day or so to clear up. But she's a very determined woman, lah. She insisted. So......."

Sinnick nodded understandingly. A possible explanation was now at hand. "Ah, I see now," he said kindly. "You must learn about English women, Sling. They are utterly obsessed. They believe medicine or surgery is the answer to everything. Even a tiny blackhead that decent men like you and I take for granted as a daily occurrence causes them sleepless nights. Sagging breasts, abdomen and buttocks that you and I look at in admiration as an example of the effects of gravity on human soft tissue are, to them, a disaster requiring extensive, not to say expensive, surgery. So, I can fully understand her concern about finding a red blemish on her cheek this morning."

Sinnick tenderly touched his own red blemish and Sling seized his chance. "Chinese women are the same, lah. It's how Doctor Fook got his ideas and built his business empire and became a millionaire."

"Doctor Fook? So Fook is a Chinese entrepreneur and also handy with a wok Sling?"

"Yah, yah. Many clever Fook's, lah."

"Do they also hire out wheelchairs, Sling?"

"Ah yes, lah. Anything to make money, lah."

Sinnick's mind could now picture the bright, red and yellow establishment he'd passed many times. "Ah so," he said. "Many Fooks. I wondered what it said in all that flowery Chinese lettering plastered over the front window, down the side and into next door. I once peered into its dark interior and thought it was a Dutch massage parlour. Tell me, Sling, what does Doctor Fook keep in those jars at the back? They reminded me of the shelves in the mortuary at the General Hospital."

A faint suspicion had arisen that Fook might turn out to be Sling's brother in law and that Sling was a sleeping partner in the business. All the same, the information was interesting. "So," Sinnick said. "How is Doctor Fook's business?"

"I don't know, lah," Sling replied. "Fook runs a nursing home for old Chinese folk called Golden Arches and......."

Sinnick liked that name. It registered somewhere in his frontal lobe where Freud lived that some other organisation might have already staked a claim to it but he couldn't immediately place it. Sling was still talking. "....... the shop in Krupton is run by Chu and Chu's brother-in-law Chiu."

"What a co-incidence, lah," Sinnick said. "Two Chus."

"No, no. One Chu and one Chui, lah."

Sinnick frowned. "Ah, but according to Einstein, though perhaps not Confucius, one Chu plus another Chu equals two Chus Sling. Were you not aware?"

"No, lah." Sling's Hitler moustache split into a downside and an upside as if he thought Sinnick was an idiot. "Chu from Dragon Garden restaurant and Chiu from Golden Wall Chinese Takeaway. Brothers-in-law, lah. And then there's Choo at Fook's Wok, lah."

"Three Chus! How extraordinary. They diversified did they Sling? From Chinese cooking to Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture to old people's homes. Tell me, how do they find time to run so many businesses? And I still don't understand why one Chu plus two other Chus doesn't equal three Chus?"

"Not Chu, lah, Chu and Chui and Choo."

"Forgive me, Sling but one man's Chu is another man's Chu surely."

By now, Sling was visibly frustrated. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. "Ah la ma. Not Chu, lah. Chiu. Notice how I say Chiu and then I say Chu and then I say Choo. You see, lah? Different, lah. Chu is Chu, Chiu is Chiu and Choo is Choo."

Sinnick walked away having already forgotten why he'd wanted to see Sling.

Quentin had made himself at home on Paddy's sofa.

"More tea, Quent?" Paddy asked.

"Thanks. More sugar and less milk this time."

Quentin's phone, that was lying on the table rang with a loud blast of heavy metal, the opening bars of Fire Over Water. "I'll get it for you, Quent. Deep Purple a favourite band?"

"Some prankster of a kid uploaded it when I was distracted. Fetch it quickly will you Paddy? It sounds terrible and what comes next is the same as what went before. Thanks. Hello?"

"Ah," the voice said. "Is that Mr. Kelp?"

"It is. How may I help you?"

"I'm looking for advice, ah."

Quentin, recognizing a Chinese accent, understandably assumed a wrong number but the caller continued. "Mr. Charlie gave me your number. Have problems in Chinese community, ah."

Quentin, the experienced politician, nodded to himself. It was Triads, Mahjong cheats or overcrowding somewhere – most likely in the bedsit above Charlie's. Charlie had mentioned josh stick smoke drifting down from upstairs.

"Yes, ah. Doctor Sinnick already know, ah. Sickness in community."

"But Sinnick's supposed to inform me of anything serious affecting the health of our thriving community," Quentin said.

"But it's happened since you were so heavily defeated, Mr. Kelp."

Why had he used the word heavily? Quentin's emotions were too fragile for hearing the scale of his defeat.

The caller continued: "Like Delhi belly can get from Indian food but Chinese food never have problem, ah," the man continued.

"You mean Canton Craps?"

"Ah."

"Is this not a matter for the health inspection team? Food standards? Is Doctor Sinnick not legally required to notify authorities about outbreaks of Canton Craps?"

"Doctor Sinnick also had it, ah. Had king prawn sweet and sour with special fried lice ah."

"And what happened?"

"Up all night ah. Mrs. Sinnick also ah."

Poor old Sinnick, Quentin thought. Bad enough getting diarrhea yourself but to put up with the wife blaming you for hers as well didn't bear thinking about. "So, what do you want me to do?"

"Check on evil Hell's Angel with beard who live upstairs, ah. No-one trusts him. We suspect sulleptitious spiking of steamed lice."

"But Mr. Charlie's the one who advised you to speak to me."

There was a definite pause. "Ah yes," the caller said as if he hadn't thought of that. "But sickness it spread now, Mr. Kelp."

"Spread? How far?"

"Grey Gables Old Person's Home. Monday night is Bingo, Tuesday is curry night, Wednesday is Comedy Night and Thursday night is Fook's Chinese take-away night."

It took a while for Quentin to digest that. His imagination was running wild. Most of the residents at Grey Gables were ladies in their eighties or nineties. One or two had reached triple figures but they had been a good source of votes. It would be a shame to lose them before the next election.

"Leave it with me, Mr. Chu," Quentin said. "Why not recommend a Paddy's fish and chips night until we get to the bottom of it?" Then he switched the phone off.

Paddy returned. "Here's your tea, Quent. Less milk, more sugar and already stirred. Why not relax with your feet up on my sofa?"

"Put it there. Meanwhile, we need to plan a trip to Grey Gables Old Person's Home, Paddy."

"In your state, Quent?

"Most of those who enter Grey Gables are in wheelchairs, Paddy. Their usual method of exit is also on wheels."

"What are you saying, Quent?"

"Another good idea, Paddy. I've already drafted chapters on younger women. Let's move on to the older ones. Call Sinnick and Charlie."

At the clinic, Sinnick rushed through his final list of patients. He'd been summoned to an urgent meeting with Quentin, Paddy and Charlie later but, other things were on his mind. He scurried up the High Street, past Paddy's, talking to Freud.

" _Where are we going?"_

"Dr Fook's Centre for Chinese Herbal Remedies and Training School for Oriental Alternative Therapy and Acupuncture next to Gregg's. I have ideas. We need to get there before it shuts."

" _You've peered through its darkened windows. You've walked past its glittering exterior. It's time to go inside. An entrepreneur must make his move."_

"I know that, Freud. Now you listen to me. This is the plan."

Racing past the Help the Aged shop and Sandra's, Sinnick explained.

" _Wah. And what's its name? Tell me. The tension is killing me,"_ Freud said.

"We'll call it 'Sinnick's Hair Inducing Treatment'. I need to make enough for a clinical trial, one of which needs to be a human not a cat. But it's a good name is it not, Freud? Sinnick defines the inventor. Hair defines the target. Inducing describes the purpose and calling it a treatment places it in a different league to shampoos. It says it originates from the inventive mind of an experienced physician not the test tube of a junior laboratory technician working for some jumped up French cosmetics company. Let's go in."

Sinnick pushed open the door expecting, of course, to find the proprietor himself busy with patients, students and those browsing the many options for alternative oriental therapies. But when the front door scraped open it was an electronic buzzer with an obvious electrical fault that welcomed him. Feeling as if he'd just entered North Korea by mistake Sinnick stepped off the mat and the buzzer stopped. Above his head red lanterns hung on threads of red silk and its resemblance to a Dutch massage parlour still seemed good enough although Sinnick had never visited Holland. Nevertheless, he had always imagined a lady dressed in crimson silk, her bosom half exposed and her long legs, wrapped in black, fishnet stockings, crossed as far up as her crotch. She might even have been smoking a cigarette in a long silver holder. "See anything, Freud?"

" _Nothing."_

"Hear anything?"

Sinnick crept forward. Towards the back were the shelves he had seen from the street and, yes, it was now easy to see that his description to Sling that they resembled the mummified remains of body parts was accurate. The only sign of a sales counter was another cabinet, bottles stacked beneath and a shiny wooden top that invited leaning. Sinnick leaned. Then he whistled a few lines from 'Old MacDonald had a Farm'. On the third EIEIO he wondered if it might be worth standing on the Welcome mat again but then there was the sound of feet, shuffling towards him. "Why do Chinese scuff everywhere in flip flops, Freud?

" _Bound feet during childhood."_

Sinnick turned towards the scuffing sound and saw a young Chinese-looking man wearing jeans torn at the knees and a black jacket with the hood in the safe 'down' position. As he emerged from the gloom Sinnick glanced at his feet. Flip flops.

"Good afternoon," Sinnick said. "Rain's stopped. Turned out nice again – lah."

"S'not so bad."

Sinnick quickly tuned in. This was a local Chinese who probably couldn't even point to China or Hong Kong on a map. Sinnick dropped his planned ahs and lahs.

"First off, here's twenty-five quid, mate. Deposit for wheelchair plus a day or so's rental."

"Cheers, mate."

Sinnick watched the notes disappear into the pocket of his jeans and then started on the purpose of his visit using pure Krupton-speak.

"Got any lanolin, mate? Paraffin wax? Any nice perfumes like Scottish raspberry, Granny Smith apple or Victoria plum? Keep such things in stock, do you? Or do I have to order specially, like? What about pure, liquid soap? Glycerine? Anything for dandruff? Got any artificial colouring like blue copper sulphate or a rich purple potassium permanganate? Keep any saffron in stock? How about fertilizer? Got anything for growing orchids? What about hydrogen peroxide to make the colours go away?"

"This is the place my man. We got most of that and anything else you might want."

Sinnick already liked this Chinese fellow. He sounded flexible. But Sinnick felt in a strange mood as if he might be heading for a breakdown. It was the instant accents as if he had acquired something else to add to the sermo lapsus. He really needed to snap out of it quickly or the accent would become a permanent fixture.

Pushing another idea, a cure for bad accents, aside, he made another quick assessment of the youth. Spotting the drooping jeans that exposed the top of his underwear, Sinnick loosened his own trouser belt, grabbed the top of his Y-fronts, pulled them up an inch or two and grinned.

"Planning on making a bomb mate?" the youth asked.

"Nah," Sinnick said, still struggling with his Y-fronts, his strange mood and his accent. "I leave that stuff to those foreign terrorists. We Brits must stick together, right?"

"Keep the country to ourselves, innit?"

Sinnick winced, moved his neck to disentangle a short, niggling hair stuck in his collar and suddenly felt better. He was cured. Back to his usual self again.

"Actually, my name is Doctor Albert Sinnick," he said. "I'm from Krupton Health Centre. I'm looking for some help in producing a new treatment. I hate calling it a shampoo or a cream but, loosely, one could place it in one of those categories. It is to be a concoction - nay a formula - that will assist our less well-endowed patients to grow a thriving thatch of fresh, new hair worthy of the late Ken Dodd or Ozzy Osbourne. In the world of medicine, we call it follicular stimulation, the treatment itself being a so-called folligen. So as not to blind you with pharmacology I will be brief. I'm looking for help in finding a radical new treatment for alopecia – baldness to you – based on natural products that would be safe and effective to use by the ordinary man or woman in the street. We are looking for mass market appeal here so it needs to be cheap and not like all that expensive French stuff."

"Effing amazing," the Chinese youth said with obvious enthusiasm.

"Yes, it's that important." Sinnick replied. "Together we could be onto something of international importance but we must first admit that none of the existing stuff works except as......." He paused to summon a suitably, poetic phrase. "Except as a splash of wall paint might conceal dirty hand marks."

He took a breath. "We need to find something that at least has a smattering of scientifically proven efficacy. But it must be based on natural products and not some concoction of synthetic chemicals decided around a boardroom table belonging to some Parisian multimillionaire. Alternative and natural is now the mindset of the modern supermarket shopper. The French are missing a big trick here because they've lost the plot. But we can do it. Our time has come."

If Sinnick had been in possession of his red, white and blue handkerchief he would now be waving it but today he had brought the white one. Surrender was not an option.

"I hate the French," the youth replied. "All cowards if you ask me. Cow-towing to unions all the time, sucking up to the Germans, stealing our fish, stopping our high-quality meat. Them and their Renault cars. I had one once. It felt like riding on a water bed. Girl-friend would throw up after a hundred yards. The bloody clutch kept going as well. I'll never buy one again. I've got a Peugeot now. The French need some proper private enterprise, more entrepreneurship and less state subsidy and competition. We're slowly getting rid of their wines. Let's do it with their shampoo."

Sinnick grinned and raised both thumbs. What he was hearing was like a full-blown English orchestral version of Elgar's Enigma Variations over-riding the tinny sound of a Frenchman trying to play a piece by Debussy on a banjo. Chinese hoodie or not, this was a man worthy of dual nationality. At last, someone with an entrepreneurial flair that had survived both Mao Tsai Tung and the inadequacies of the British state school system. He lowered his thumbs and held out his hand to the youth who grabbed it. "Call me Harry," said the youth.

"Harry, eh? Are you a Chu by any chance?"

"Yeh, Harry Chu. How did you know?"

"Never mind," says Sinnick. "Let's work on it, shall we, Harry?"

"Yeh, why not? No problem. So, what are you going to call this new treatment of yours?"

Sinnick stood straight and proud to announce his trade name for the first time to the world at large. "Sinnick's Hair Inducing Treatment" he said proudly. "What do you think, Harry Chu?"

And then Sinnick stood, waiting, smiling and nodding in anticipation, as the Chinese youth thought about it – for an unexpectedly long time. Too long. "What's wrong?"

"Sinnick's Hair Inducing Treatment? It's too long, mate. And everything needs an acronym these days. SHIT? That don't sound right to me."

PART SIX

With Quentin incapacitated, Paddy's flat became the meeting place.

Sinnick had carried up three cans of Heineken for Charlie, three bottles of Guinness for Paddy, three bottles of Old Peculier for Quentin and a bottle of Sunny Delight for himself.

Down below, Hamid, Agniesta and Gabriela were in charge of frying and serving.

With his bandaged foot outstretched before him, Quentin formally opened the session. "Apologies for absence?"

"None, chairman."

"Treasurer?"

"Twelve pounds in kitty," Charlie said. "We need to top it up but I'll need to forgo I'm afraid. Things are tight."

"No worries," Quentin said. "Sinnick will sort it. Being a public servant he's the only one with a decent income." He took a swig of his Old Peculier. "Right then. Item one's for you, Sinnick. Diarrhea. I heard you suffered on Friday night."

"How the hell...?"

"Small community, Sinnick. Want to elaborate?"

"Not especially."

"Pity, because it leads onto an idea of mine."

Sinnick gave in and sipped his orange juice. "I sensed a minor problem at two in the morning. Got up, went to the bathroom. No pain, no strain, just sat and let it drain. Real trouble started at three o'clock when Mrs. S came banging on the bathroom door because I'd fallen asleep."

"She had it as well?"

"Far worse. I never slept a wink afterwards for the noise."

"Fook's Wok?" Quentin checked.

"Correct. I was half an hour late for dinner so my pork sausage was fed to the cats......."

"Disgraceful. Put cats on the next agenda again, Paddy."

"....... So, I went out and called in at Fook's Wok for some......."

"King prawn sweet and sour with special fried rice. I know, Sinnick. Just get on with it."

Sinnick sniffed. "I looked to see if the light was on in your room above, Charlie. I thought I'd share it with you but it was in darkness."

"Very thoughtful, Sinnick but I don't have a window."

"When I got home, Mrs. S said it smelled nice so I handed most of it to her to avoid a dispute. And that's why her problem was worse than mine."

"Serves her right," Quentin said with no apparent concern. "Next item."

"Have we finished with this subject?"

"Yes, but it links to agenda item two - my book. You've all heard about it by now. Sitting here in the comfort of Paddy's living room I've already drafted the first few chapters on women between the ages of twenty-one and sixty. I now propose to move on to studying the over seventies as I suspect they've never had quite so much money to fritter away on non-essentials.

"So, whilst I'm incapacitated and we're renting the wheelchair, I am proposing to infiltrate Grey Gables Old Person's Home which, by coincidence also suffered an outbreak due to it being Fook's Chinese take-away night. Once inside I'll study the ways of its residents whose ages, I understand, range from seventy-six to one hundred and six. In that way we might get a feeling for those who saw things during the First World War."

"Only just, Quent," Sinnick interrupted. "Edna Pearce was born in 1918. She's familiar with such things as Pampers now but they didn't exist in 1918."

"Of course. You know them all, Sinnick."

"Every one, Quent. I'm Grey Gables' on-call doctor. They're the only patients I feel comfortable with."

"Didn't you know about the diarrhea?"

Sinnick shook his head sadly. "Perhaps Mrs. Pettifer knows but I don't. I'm their appointed physician and yet, quite clearly, she hadn't the decency to tell me. Why? Probably because she decided there was no need."

Sinnick's voice then doubled in volume.

"You see how things are, Quent? I told you to do something about employment law and gender and equality and the political correctness that now overrides basic common sense. I'm a white middle-aged professional man, blamed for the errors of the past, present and the future and granted less respect than a lower caste Indian latrine cleaner.

"I'm over-ridden by a woman whose last job was an assistant administrator in a junior school where box-ticking, petty regulation, government inspections and political correctness took priority over plain common sense. Bullying when I was a kid meant getting beaten up in a corner of the playground by a bunch of thuggish kids with no brains. It was unusual but it happened. We got over it and were stronger for it. Bullying nowadays means one kid upsetting another by a text message. To listen to Mrs. P I'm a bully for saying that the member of her staff who fell fast asleep over her nail polishing is bone idle and that I'd like to put a lighted firework inside her underwear.

"It's me who's bullied, Quent. It's me who's discriminated against and me who's demeaned. I'm assaulted by an army of box tickers and an avalanche of political correctness and taken to task for everything my dear mother taught me about politeness, common courtesy and good manners. I'm treated as if I'm a relic of an outdated system, a system that once respected knowledge and experience and could take a touch of humor to make a serious point. We now live in a world where no-one can fail, where failure is now supposed to make the world a better and fairer place. The system's gone crazy, Quent, and the only way I can deal with it is by trying to appear humorous and light-hearted. But then I'm told that my humor is unacceptable and tantamount to more bullying."

Sinnick took another deep breath.

"You know, I had a drunk woman to deal with this morning. It took me ten, God-damned minutes to right her notes. First, I was tempted to write, pissed as a newt again" but changed it to "drunk once more" before crossing that out and writing "intoxicated". But even that was not good enough for Mrs. P. She took it upon herself to overrule my words with 'chemically inconvenienced.'"

Sinnick's cheeks had turned from his usual pasty white to pink and flushed. It had happened before. His outbursts were well known and always short lived but were potent reminders of his daily heartache. He quickly calmed down but the others remained silent just in case he started again. He did, but with far less noisy passion.

"I need a change," he said almost beneath his breath. "It's urgent. The system has drained me of all my reasons for being a doctor."

He sniffed anxiously and leaned forward. "Do you know if my dear Edna in Room 63 got diarrhea? Do you know if she suffered, Quent? Did she have enough Pampers? I must go and see her."

It seemed to the others that Sinnick was just as concerned for the health of his patients as he'd always been, so much so that he was about to jump up and run to Grey Gables with a fresh pack of incontinence pads for one old lady.

But Charlie, sitting on the floor beside him, put a hand on his knee, patted it, looked up at Quentin and Paddy and then back to Sinnick. "Grey Gables is up for sale," he said, "It was on the list I gave Paddy."

A thoughtful, meditative silence descended; a silence ruined by a sudden shout from downstairs.

"Meester Paddy! Come quick. Eez the chip fryer. Eez too 'ot."

Paddy jumped. "Jesus wept. The rips in Hamid's jeans have got caught in the switch again."

He ran downstairs and Quentin moved from his almost horizontal position on the sofa to sitting up. "I'm staying here for the night," he announced. "Are you both in a hurry to go home?"

Charlie shook his head.

Sinnick said: "I'll say I had an urgent call-out – nasty outbreak of Salmonella poisoning at Grey Gables. Anyway, my liver and onions will have been fed to the cats by now."

Paddy returned. "I told you. It was Hamid's ripped jeans. But his fly zip was also open. God knows what was happening behind the haddock slicer. Agniesta looked very flushed. Where were we?"

"Grey Gables," Quentin said and another silence descended. Brains were ticking.

Sinnick was the first to speak. "Let's buy it," he said.

Perhaps it was the enormity of the suggestion because no-one said anything for another minute before Sinnick continued.

"I'll be medical director, Paddy on personnel and human resources, Charlie on finance and Quentin on sales and marketing. I can then take care of Edna. Instead of going home I can stay and read to her every night."

"She likes being read to, Sinnick?" Paddy asked. "At night?"

"At any time, Paddy. Let me tell you something. Edna was Professor of English Literature at Oxford. Edna has been abandoned, not only by her family but by academia itself. She'd love it if you read her some of your Irish poetry because she now struggles to see or hear anything. She lies there in the dark desperate for someone to talk to and listen to her and all I've ever got time for is to stroke her forehead and plump her pillows. A lot of them are like Edna, Paddy. Many of them were professionals – skilled and knowledgeable – but they're abandoned. Now ask me, Paddy. Who would I prefer to listen to and spend my time with? Petty Pettifer or Professor Edna Pearce?"

They all looked at him. Paddy's eyes were sparkling, Charlie was sniffing and Quentin was stroking his swollen ankle whilst looking at Sinnick from the corner of a rapidly blinking eye.

"Right then," Quentin said at last with a noticeable crack to his voice. "I'll move in tomorrow. In disguise, of course. Good look around, Check the place out from a user's perspective. We can't have them knowing we're potential buyers or they'll sweep the corridors and empty the trash bins."

By morning, Quentin's ankle was twice its normal size but he'd been busy on the phone. Claiming to be a doting son caring for an ageing mother but about to move to Canada as an adviser to the Canadian government, he'd convinced the manager at Grey Gables to accept his mother to fill a vacancy.

"Your dear mother could move in today. I'll make sure her room is ready by 3pm. Will you be bringing her before you fly to Toronto?"

"Not too sure about that," Quentin said, "I'm meeting the Canadian Ambassador for lunch but I'll arrange some sort of transport for her."

Job done he turned to Paddy who'd been listening. "Despite the excruciating pain I must go shopping, Paddy. If I'm to resemble an old lady of eighty-six I'll need a few more things from the Help the Aged shop. There's a lady there who said she'd always voted for me in the past."

"Right now, I need to fix the chip fryer," Paddy said. "But Charlie would be free once he's cleaned Fook's kitchen and bathed in the sink."

Quentin called Charlie and by midday, he and Charlie had done the shopping and were back at Paddy's flat with Quentin desperate to try on his purchases.

Sitting in his wheelchair, Quentin looked at the pile of bags laid out on the floor. According to the lady in Help the Aged, the grey cardigan was a classic that would have cost a good £25 back in 1986. The tweed skirt had labels, one saying Made in Scotland, the other £3. And then there was Quentin's pair of thick lady's stockings complete with suspender belt.

"I do so like my hat, Charlie. It makes me feel like a working-class version of Miss Marples. What do you think?"

"But how are we going to get you into those, Quent?"

"First, help me out of my trousers, Charlie."

Charlie did as he was told and then picked up the stockings. "Definitely pre-worn. The nylon has got what my mother used to call a ladder."

"That's fine. I'm just a poor old widow living on a basic state pension."

"I thought you were the mother of a highly paid Canadian government adviser, Quent."

"In truth he's a mean and heartless bastard, Charlie. The torrid story will make interesting listening once I'm inside. How do these suspenders work?"

"No idea, Quent. And what about your new, size 10 brown lace-up shoes."

"One shoe only, Charlie. The other foot will stay bandaged beneath my stockings to attract sympathy."

"And your extra-large bra?"

Quentin held it up and winced. It hung like a pair of dead puffer fish. "I've gone off it," he said.

"And your knickers, Quent?"

"I like the pink colour, nice long legs and strong elastic."

"And your handbag? Plenty of pockets inside to put your phone, credit cards and driving licence etcetera. This pocket might do for your lipstick."

"Be realistic, Charlie. I'm eighty-six for God's sake. A dab of talcum powder is all I'll need."

"Want to try standing up?"

Quentin struggled up. "How do I look? Does Paddy have a full-length mirror? And where's my walking stick?"

"Here. The curved part goes at the top."

Quentin stood on one leg, supported by the stick. "I think we've cracked it, Charlie. Now for the crowning glory. My wig."

"It goes the other way around, Quent."

"Lovely. Silver with a touch of blue. I'll need a shave before I go. I don't suppose Charlie will mind me using his razor."

"What time do you check in, Quent?"

"Around 3pm. I'll be wheelchair-bound for a few days. If she sees I'm five feet eleven in my stockings it might raise some awkward questions."

"And did you decide on a name?"

"Ada Marples, Charlie. What do you think? Do I look like an Ada?"

"You still look like Quentin to me."

"That's because you know me. I feel reborn, Charlie. Go and see if Paddy could send up cod and chips with mushy peas for two. After lunch I'll head for Grey Gables. You can push me to the taxi rank."

**Sinnick had locked himself inside his office** to think things through. Freud had already persuaded him to abandon Sinnick's Hair Inducing Treatment.

" _You became too excitable. SHIT! For goodness sake, man. What got into you? Just removing the S for Sinnick would have given you HIT. HIT would have been far better but no, off you went on a bout of shameless self-publicity and it took a Chinese youth in flip flops and ripped jeans to point it out to you."_

"Shameless self-publicity, Freud? That's a bit strong."

" _Not strong enough, my friend. Most unlike you. Rushing off like a demented fool with some badly thought through idea. Grow up man."_

Freud was right. It was a shameless venture driven by visions of his private clinic where Mrs. Pettifer with her plastic rain hat was a distant memory and because he'd had a return of the erotic dream with his very own team of neat, blonde nurses wearing short skirts, white socks and plimsolls and quaint little white hats who welcomed him each morning with wicked looks, rose-bud kisses and expectant smiles.

Two days ago, he'd even written about a bottle of shampoo he'd spotted in the supermarket. _'I bought a pack and checked the price, then saw with mounting glee, as my business instincts hit me, a chance to earn a fee. It tempted me to thinking that I should move away. To Harley Street or Brighton or Worthing by the Sea. With my name on a shiny plaque outside my new-found private clinic: Consultant to the balding, that brilliant Dr Sinnick!'_

It was pathetic.

" _Are you crying?"_ Freud asked.

"Almost"

" _Good. Nothing like a touch of reality. But what about a nursing home? An old people's final resting place?"_

"Better but I don't like the name, Freud. Grey Gables sounds so depressing."

" _Get real Sinnick. You're far too hung up on names. If the name is so important, then change it."_

"I suppose you're right but grey is not suitable for an old people's home, Freud. When reaching the final straight of a long marathon you need to see bright and shining colours ahead to drive you across the line. There needs to be a big golden archway and a welcoming party with your final medal."

And then, of course, he remembered Fook's Golden Arches and wondered whether the medals that Fook handed out took the form of cheese burgers or Fortune cookies.

Then he went online and downloaded a book entitled, "Nursing Home Management." He was smiling as he began reading it.

**Paddy arrived with two boxes of cod and chips.** "Where's Quent?"

Charlie looked exhausted. "Having a shave. He worries me, Paddy."

"You've not known him as long as me. He's a politician."

"So why did he lose the election?"

There was a crashing sound from the bathroom, the door swung open and Quentin appeared. "How do you steer this thing?"

Paddy stared. "Lovely hair and nice skirt Quent, but the stockings are wrinkled."

"Impoverished working-class widows all have wrinkled stockings, Paddy. But, until further notice, please address me as Ada. Ah, lunch. Last decent meal before my confinement. Any ketchup?"

"What about your voice, Quent?"

Quentin swallowed a mouthful of battered fish and chips, cleared his throat and shook an invisible hand. "Ada Marples," he said in cracked soprano. "Nice to meet you, Mrs Ricketts. Glad to see the trash bins are empty and plenty of spare car parking spaces. I assume my room's ready with nice clean sheets? How fast is the Wi-Fi? How's that?"

"How long are you planning to stay, Quent?"

Quentin munched away. "A few nights. Get to know the residents. Write a few chapters. Sign autographs if recognized."

"And what about buying the place?"

"We'll split duties. I'll conduct a thorough inspection. Charlie will check current and past accounts and Sinnick, who already knows the staff and how's it's run, is reading a book on nursing care management."

"What can I do?"

"Think up fresh menus more suited to the over eighties whilst pushing me to the taxi rank. I need to arrive in style."

"You walk and hobble like a man, Quent," Paddy said.

"He looks like a man," Charlie added.

Quentin waved away the negativity. "I intend to remain in my wheelchair. With my wig, my skirt, my cardigan and sheep skin slippers no-one will notice."

Charlie and Paddy looked at one another.

"If I may say so you both seem unconvinced. Contingency is that I'll come out as an eighty-six-year-old cross-dresser and will threaten to report any intolerance of my newly chosen gender as age discrimination and a hate crime. And there's always Cyril."

"Cyril?"

"Cyril is the only male resident at Grey Gables."

**A** police car was parked next to the taxis outside the train station as Paddy pushed Quentin along. "Stop a minute, Paddy."

From his wheelchair, Quentin knocked on the side window and a face appeared from inside. "Allo Quent, mate. How's it going? Nice to see you. Been to a fancy-dress party?"

"I'm not Quentin, Steve. I'm Ada Marples. Any chance of a lift to Grey Gables Old Folks Home? Save me the price of a taxi?"

"Sure. Jump in."

"I can't jump. I can't even walk. Can you put the wheelchair in the back?"

"Sure, sure. Nice wig, Quent. I like the blue tint. So, what's up, Quent? Missed seeing you around since......you know."

"Confidential, Steve. But hurry up. My underwear is killing me."

Paddy waved him off.

At 3.30 pm Sinnick emerged from his usual mid-afternoon soul searching. Like a Buddhist monk in a meditative trance he sauntered slowly along the corridor to reception.

"Oh, there you are," Mrs. Pettifer said. "I need you, urgently."

Sinnick looked up. "You've never said that to me before, Mrs. P. Change of heart?"

"This is urgent, Doctor Sinick. It's Krupton Radio. Live. They're waiting for you. Come quick. Here, on this phone."

"What the Dickens......?

"Spoons, Doctor Sinnick. Spoons."

"Spoons? Krupton Radio? Live? What the hell?"

Sinnick was still not entirely in this world. His trance-like state, caused by worrying what books to read Edna Pearce without knowing what she'd already read, had still not worn off but he took the phone only partly aware that all nine of Mrs. P's female staff were there. From Cynthia the appointments clerk to Polly Anne Druss they were all there with their eyes wide open, their hands over their mouths, nodding away like excited donkeys.

What the hell?

"Hello?" Sinnick said into the phone. "Who is this?"

"Good afternoon, Doctor Sinnick. Welcome and thanks for joining us. We're live on Krupton Radio and we've been discussing spoons."

"Spoons?"

In his side vision, Sinnick could see that everyone had surrounded a tiny speaker linked to a smart phone in the corner. So, this was what they did while they thought he was out at lunch.

_"So, here we are,"_ the unknown radio woman continued _. "We're joined now by Doctor Sinnick from Krupton Health Centre. As you know, Doctor Sinnick, every Wednesday afternoon we discuss beauty tips and this afternoon we're discussing all those weird and wonderful ideas that we can use whenever those beauty-related emergencies catch us out. You know the sort - like when you leave your makeup bag in the office over the weekend or have mislaid your......"_

It sounded like a question Sinnick was expected to answer but what the heck did he know about lost make-up bags? He stood erect, like a statue, frowning and scratching his head with his mind still holding a vision of Edna propped up in bed by pillows and all of it made worse by Paddy having just told him that Quentin's plan was to come out as an eighty-six-year-old cross-dresser if things proved difficult.

" _Doctor Sinnick. Do we still have you? I think he's still with us. Yes. Just before you came on, we were discussing the interview with Pop Sugar and......"_

"What the.........?" Sinnick mumbled.

".... _and how Aussie supermodel, Patsy, revealed how she'd discovered the art of curling eyelashes with - wait for it – a spoon! How exciting is that? So, feeling we needed to check this out, ladies, we decided to seek medical advice from Doctor Sinnick so that everyone knows exactly what type of spoon to use and how to use it. After all, we don't want to get carried away and injure ourselves, do we, Doctor Sinnick? Better safe than sorry....... Yes?"_

"No." Sinnick said.

_"Good. He's still with us. It's so exciting to be speaking to one of our own local celebrities. So, Doctor Sinnick, what size and shape of spoon should we use and which way round should we use it? Listeners will know that earlier, in the studio, we tried a spoon as a mirror to check our eye lashes but found that on one side_ _we were upside down and on the other we just looked really weird. So how should we use our spoon, Doctor Sinnick?"_

"To eat your cornflakes?" suggested Sinnick.

" _Ha Ha. Well, that's one use, I suppose,_ " the woman giggled. " _But what we need to know is how best to use a spoon to curl our eyelashes!.............Doctor Sinnick. Have we lost him again?.........Doctor Sinnick?"_

Sinnick glanced around the reception area and the increasing numbers of female staff and even patients now crowding around the speaker. That's when his trance vanished and panic struck. He supposed he'd better say or do something, but what?

"Doctor Sinnick?"

Several quite unconnected words suddenly joined together in Sinnick's confused brain as if this was it - the total breakdown he'd been expecting for months. Either the world had gone mad or he had. He took a deep breath.

"Cornflakes and lashes and snowflakes and rashes," he said, the words gathering effortlessly on his tongue like iron filings around a magnet.

He glanced at the group of excited women for confirmation that he was still in this world but, at the same time, saw himself standing on a Swiss mountainside with Julie Andrews swirling over an alpine meadow in a wide skirt, a sound of music and a metallic clattering of knives, forks, spoons and his very own Gillette razor. And then, to his horror and because (if Mrs. Sinnick's TV watching was anything to go by) singing, dancing or both was what modern mass entertainment expected, he began to sing:

"When the blade cuts, when the soap stings. That's when I try out my favourite things - like carving knives, dinner forks, rubbers and pencils - spray paint and spanners and wall paper stencils - and then I remember that eyes are to see - that curling my lashes means nothing to me."

His voice, even to him, sounded like a fret saw cutting through a sheet of corrugated metal so poor Sinnick took fright at the thought of millions of women listening to his performance, dropped the phone, ran to his office and locked the door. Then he leaned on his desk with his head in his hands.

"What the fuck's the world coming to Freud? Do people have nothing better to do on a weekday afternoon? Are there not a billion undernourished people out there who need food first before they think of curling their bloody eyelashes. God help us!"

Unusually, there was no reply from Freud.

"Freud? Freud? Where the hell are you, man?"

" _I'm here. I'm wondering what to say."_

"Say anything you like, man, but please tell me I'm no longer suited to a world of women, selfies, Pop Sugars and dim-witted Australian lamebrains called Patsy? And why the hell would a fifty-year-old female divorcee who arrives at work in a plastic rain hat and regards me with vengeful green eyes and vertical slits for pupils think I'm remotely interested in joining in her mid-afternoon shenanigans in the clinic's time? I pay them to work for the benefit of our community's health and wellbeing, for God's sake. Come on, man, speak."

" _You're singing was awful, Sinnick."_

"That wasn't singing, Freud. That was......."

**A sudden knock on the door made Sinnick jump** and he turned to face it with a fear that turned his stomach to jelly. Was this it? An official complaint? A summons? A Court Order?

"Albert?"

No-one called him Albert except Quentin, Paddy or Charlie. And then it was usually when they were trying to console him. The knock came again. "Albert? It's Charlie."

Charlie! It was like being thrown a bunch of fresh roses. Reprieve. Sinnick unlocked the door and there he stood in all his hairy glory, black leathers, boots and blue-tinted sun glasses.

"Come in, come in," Sinnick said, grabbing him by his leather clad arm. "Am I glad to see you? How did you get past the guards?"

"They were huddled over a radio. The only men were a few patients looking at their watches."

"I'm so glad to see you, Charlie."

"You said that once."

"Freud's just gone on one of his silences which means he's disgusted with me."

"Freud?"

"No matter. What's up?"

"Quent," Charlie said. "He'd just got into a police car dressed in drag. Thinks he's Ada Marples."

"Sit, Charlie. Right now, I need some company. Tell me all about it."

Charlie explained how he'd helped Quentin get dressed. "So off he went, Sinnick, looking like Dame Edna Everage without the glasses and lipstick. I'm worried sick about him."

"Don't worry, Charlie. Quent is in his element. Even if they see through his disguise, he'll manage it."

"I hope so," Charlie said thoughtfully. "I suppose it's because I don't want him to mess up this opportunity. I reckon Grey Gables might be the saviour of us all."

Sinnick looked at him affectionately. "Why don't you take your glasses off, Charlie?"

"Sorry." Charlie stuffed them in his top pocket.

It was Sinnick's turn now. He patted Charlie's cold, dry hand and for the first time in weeks felt like a real doctor with a real patient - a man like himself who needed some TLC. "Your dark glasses," he said, smiling. "Did you put them on to creep past the guards?"

Charlie nodded, smiled through the beard and his eyes twinkled with something Sinnick saw as emotion. "What is it, Charlie? Tell me."

"Since last night I can't help thinking about Grey Gables. It's my life, Sinnick – I mean, Albert. I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going any longer."

Sinnick nodded. "Go on."

"I hate that bloody room over Fook's. I can't even see the sky. What did I do to deserve it?"

Sinnick was still holding Charlie's hand and Charlie looked down at it but didn't remove it. "Did you know I still pay for the kids?" he said.

Charlie's children. Charlie was a father. Charlie had only ever mentioned children once and Sinnick still, quite distinctly, remembered his words: " _I already pay maintenance to Patsy and the kids."_

After that Charlie had never said another word about them and, to their shame, neither had he, Paddy or Quentin. They'd just waited until Charlie was ready to say something more. It was the way they were – men, good friends but each with private secrets. If necessary, they'd have waited for ever for Charlie to say something more.

"How many do you have, Charlie?"

"Two: Mark is thirteen now and Louise is fifteen."

Sinnick removed his hand, sat back and looked at Charlie wondering why he'd not mentioned his children before. But then, a lot of men were like that. Paddy would mention Cork but he'd rarely mention Maeve. And Quentin, for all his outward absurdities, was similar. Quentin spoke of Agnes as if she was a scolding old nag, but Quentin, he suspected, knew where he was best off. Quentin was settled. Quentin accepted Mrs. Agnes Kelp's ways because she accepted his. Paddy, on the other hand, was still getting over Maeve's sudden and unexpected departure back to Ireland. Paddy missed her, badly. But he'd never actually say so because he was a man.

As for himself, his marriage was also his own, private matter unless it came down to snippets of conversation that might, just might, hint at the way things were. Discussing the cats was the door that opened just a fraction to show his own frustrations at Belinda but he never mentioned her two hundred handbags and matching shoes, her collection of food mixers, perfumes and porcelain dogs and cats and her periods of depression when she'd sit at home for days on end and do nothing.

But Charlie? He was the newest of the group and, as usual, they'd left him alone. They'd not asked and not interfered. They knew he had problems but it was an unspoken agreement that they'd wait until Charlie chose to say something, which meant they'd wait for ever.

"Do you see the children?" Sinnick asked.

Charlie was looking down into his lap and playing with his sun glasses. "No, not now," he said. "You know something, Albert? I don't even think the kids are mine but I still......you know. Care."

With that, Charlie had come of age. He'd become a full-fledged member of the Red Lion Club and they sat in a perfectly comfortable silence, content in their solidarity. That particular matter was closed for now so Sinnick tapped his teeth with a pen and Charlie pulled on his beard. Someday, Charlie would probably say a little more. Sinnick might now even encourage him. Meanwhile....

"What do you think about Grey Gables?" Charlie asked.

"I think it needs a change of name," Sinnick replied.

It was pathetic. It was shallow. It was an unfit response for the seriousness of Charlie's question. But Sinnick was still trying to imagine how it must feel to have two children you no longer saw but who you'd cared for and brought up whilst knowing all along they were not yours. It was tragic.

"It's not a priority, right now, Albert. But it's something worth considering for the future."

That was a good answer. A fit response to an idiotic question. It came from a man with a decent commercial head who understood the black and white of figures not an immature student of business who only thought about human health and politics and entertained himself with useless poetry.

Charlie leaned forward, private matters forgotten, intense, serious, nodding his head, now raising his first finger and waving it.

"I've checked their accounts for the last five years." he said. "I've told their agent I've got a potential buyer so now I'm getting their current accounts. Earlier this morning, at dawn, before I dealt with Quentin, I took a ride out there. Quent's going inside of course but you can get a feel for a place from the outside before the sun's up."

Sinnick patted Charlie's hand again. Dawn, he thought to himself.

At dawn the garden at Sinnick's home was so marked by holes the cats had dug and then filled that he'd wear gloves just to pull out a weed.

"What's your conclusion, Charlie?"

"The figures look satisfactory but like all other care homes it isn't sustainable without finding new ways to create income. The garden's neglected but I understand the current owners have had enough – they've been there fifteen years."

Sinnick listened for a while longer. Charlie had put his domestic affairs aside because they were his problems and his alone. The relationship had changed. Sinnick was being taught a few things. And in Charlie's enthusiasm Sinnick ditched his thoughts of his performance on Krupton Radio and saw things in a new light.

Grey Gables and Golden Arches were ridiculous names but Silver Arches might be better.

PART SEVEN:

PC Steve Perkins pushed Quentin in his wheelchair right up to the front door of Grey Gables and wished him well. "Thanks, Steve. You can go now."

Quentin then pushed the bell with his stick and heard it echo along corridors like a prison. The door opened and Mrs. Rickets stood there in a blue uniform with her name, title and a slogan across her chest. "Mrs. Marples?"

"Yes," Quentin croaked whilst trying to read the slogan through an unfocussed mist, courtesy of a pair of old spectacles Paddy said he'd found in the street.

It had probably once said, 'Life after Life,' but the letters were frayed and now said 'Lie after Lie.'

"Welcome to Grey Gables," Mrs. Ricketts said. "Where are your things?"

"Things?"

"Bags, cases, personal belongings."

"Arriving later," Quentin said. "I got a lift." He pointed to the departing blue and yellow striped police car.

"Are you confined?"

"Confined?" Quentin repeated, trying to keep to his cracked soprano delivery and wondering if she really meant incontinent? "I'm eight-six," he croaked. "Things are not as sound as they once were."

"I meant are you confined to a wheelchair."

"Oh, I see. Yes. Temporarily." Judged by her facial expression, Quentin wondered if Mrs. Ricketts might be Mrs. Pettifer's twin sister. "Badly sprained ankle," he added.

"And where's your son?"

"My son? Oh yes. Just flown to Toronto. A very busy boy these days."

She then peered at his bound ankle. "Can you make your own way up the disabled access?" She pointed to it. "The ramp. There."

Quentin disliked her already but he managed to propel his chair up the slope.

Next, it was the smell that struck him – boiled cabbage, urine and pine disinfectant was not something he'd smelled in that triple combination before. Portcullis House in Westminster was known for its faint smell of pine disinfectant but only during early mornings after the cleaners had left when the aroma of fresh coffee took over.

"I'll show you your room. Follow me."

Quentin coughed to suggest he also had breathing difficulties but also to prepare his throat for the croaking sound he needed to maintain for the next day or so and followed Mrs. Ricketts's squeaking plimsolls along a dimly lit passageway to a lift whilst trying to scribble a note or two into the pad on his lap. She pressed a button. "What are you doing?"

"Mild Parkinson's," Quentin explained.

Another corridor, worn carpet and a different smell: pine disinfectant, washing powder and rubber. "Here's your room. The rubber sheet on the mattress is just in case."

"Very considerate. Am I allowed visitors?"

"Between 9am and midday, two thirty to five and six thirty until lights out at 9pm. Groups of no more than two and everyone must sign the security book."

Quentin had often told Paddy he should delegate more so that evening he put Hamid and Agnieska in charge and went upstairs to the flat with a plan to relax for an hour with a book. But he knew, all along, that relaxing would be impossible. Evenings and night-times were always the worst time for Paddy. Increasingly, at night-time, he felt old and decrepit as if it was all downhill from now on. For years he'd wondered if he should call Maeve's sister but he never had so, as always, he leaned on the windowsill and looked out. As usual it was as if there'd been an outbreak of plague and he was the only survivor.

"Ah well," he said to himself. "The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For every one that stops another one starts."

Perhaps, he thought, he'd read some Spike Milligan tonight. Spike had always said he wasn't afraid of dying. He just didn't want to be there when it happened.

Then his phone rang.

"I'm ensconced," Quentin announced breezily. "Just had dinner with thirteen old ladies – cottage pie with vanilla ice cream, followed by a cup of tea. Cyril didn't turn up, though. Apparently, he was busy with a customer."

Paddy perked up. "Am I hearing right, Quent? A customer? How old is Cyril?"

"Ninety-four."

"And he runs a business?"

"Just as Sinnick said, a vast amount of talent lies with these old folks."

"What about the book?"

"Chapter seven. Contents of handbags. Mrs. Ainslie dropped her bag during dinner. Everything fell out including lipstick and a pack of condoms. I think she did it on purpose."

"How old is Mrs. Ainslie?"

"Eighty-three. Neat and tidy, blue highlights and a twinkle in her eye."

Paddy, still looking out of the window, was suddenly distracted. "Looks like the evening rush has started, Quent. No, no. I'm wrong. He's gone away again. Took one look and left. It's happened before. I expect Hamid forgot to turn the 'Open' sign around. I'd better go down and sort it, Quent. See you tomorrow."

**In his room overlooking the staff car park,** Quentin scanned the four walls with its wallpaper of pink roses and checked his watch. It was only 7.30 and he was already bored. The place was too quiet. He tried the TV: A quiz game, so he turned it off and sat on the bed. He removed his cotton knickers, suspender belt and stockings. He unwound the bandage on his ankle, spat on his finger, tried soothing the blue flesh to cool it and then rewound the bandage.

He was lying on the bed in his boxer shorts when there was a knock on the door. Panicking, he wound a towel around his waist, adjusted his wig, grabbed his stick, opened the door as far as the chain would allow, looked out and then looked down. Looking up at him was Cyril, all five feet six inches of him, wearing an army beret poised at a nifty angle and a blazer with a row of bright ribbons as if for a veterans Remembrance Day march. Wisps of fine grey hair floated around his ears and two rheumy blue eyes looked up at Quentin.

"Hello, Ada, my dear. Glass of sherry?"

A veiny, shaking white hand rose to the crack of the door next to Quentin's nose. It held a bottle of something.

"Nice medium Amontillado – twenty percent alcohol. Guaranteed to get the juices running, Ada. What do you think?"

"Got two glasses as well, Cyril?" Quentin said in his best contralto croak.

"I can easily pop back for a couple. Or how about a nice Gordon's gin and tonic?"

"Got any vodka, Cyril?"

"Only a drop of Beluga left, perhaps with a dash of Red Bull. Cynthia drinks it like a fish."

"I prefer Finlandia, Cyril. With a drop of cranberry juice."

There was a pause. The bottle of sherry was lowered slightly. "Ada?"

"Yes, Cyril?" Quentin's contralto had become a high tenor but the croak was lasting well.

"How do you know my name, Ada?"

"How do you know mine, Cyril?"

"From the new arrivals list. But......" he paused. Quentin could almost hear his brain ticking.

"What is it, Cyril?"

"Can I come in?"

Quentin's voice changed to soprano. "Oh, Cyril. How do I know I'll be safe with you?"

Another pause. Cyril was still thinking. The bottle disappeared from sight.

Quentin undid the chain and eased the door open a few more inches. "Oh Cyril," he squealed. "I never could resist a man with medals."

Cyril pushed on the door as if ravishing a willing maiden was the only thing on his mind. "Bloody hell," he said in his east London accent. "Bloody hell if it ain't my old mate, Quentin. How're you doing, mate?"

"Not so bad, Cyril. How're you?"

"Doing OK, Quent. Ain't seen you since the election. Why the bleedin' towel? Hiding your modesty, Quent? What're you doing here?"

"Come in and I'll tell you. Sit on my bed but take your hat off in the presence of a lady. I'll keep my boxers on if you don't mind. Not sure if I trust you."

"Ha Ha. Well I'll be. If it ain't my old pal, Quentin. I like the wig. This calls for a celebration, Quent. Got a cup or a mug?"

"Only the toothbrush one, Cyril."

"That'll do. I've got a nice set of Waterford Crystal in my room if any of the old dears gets a bit pernickety but you and me are mates, ain't we? No airs 'n graces."

PART EIGHT:

It was three days later that Sinnick's phone rang at 6.30 am.

It was Quentin's normal, baritone voice, "I can't sleep, Sinnick."

"But it's time to get up, Quent."

"I've got a hangover. I was up until 3am with Cyril. My suspender belt rubs on my crotch and I've got holes in both stockings."

"No-one wears stockings these days, Quent."

"I wouldn't either but they hide the hairs on my legs. Can you get here with Charlie and Paddy about 11am? A lot to discuss."

"I'll need an excuse for Mrs. P."

"Nonsense Sinnick. Why do you need an excuse? What are you? Man or mouse? Call in sick."

Sinnick made himself a plate of toast and marmalade, took it to the bathroom, put it on the floor alongside his crumpled trousers, took a bite and sighed. Why on earth did he feel the need for an excuse just to leave the clinic for a few hours on a private matter? He was in charge for heaven's sake. He was the boss, the senior partner. His time was his own.

But he did care. He had an old-fashioned sense of duty and a need to set an example. He worried in case his excuse would not be believed, that he'd be caught out and would need an alibi in case it went to Court. But no-one else cared about time off so why did he? He sat there compiling a growing list of possible excuses but none of them felt convincing enough.

" _You're pathetic, Sinnick,"_ Freud said.

"It's my upbringing, Freud. The time-keeping, the self-discipline, the law-abiding obedience, the fear of being smacked."

" _No-one cares anymore. Smacking has been outlawed. Discipline is a thing of the past. Relax."_

He pulled an old copy of Nursing Times from the pile beside the toilet and became engrossed in an article on childhood asthma. When he looked at his watch it was 9am. Then the phone rang.

"Where are you Doctor Sinnick?"

"Right this moment, Mrs. Pettifer, I'm attending to my morning ablutions."

"What's that noise?"

"Toast, Mrs. P. I like it cold, dark and crunchy. Why have you called?"

"Have you seen Polly-Anne's eyelash?"

"Pardon me?"

"Polly-Anne. She's lost an eyelash. None of us can find it."

"An eyelash? For heaven's sake. Mine fall out every day. I don't go crawling around the floor looking for them."

"It's a L'Oreal one. You'd crawl around if it cost half your weekly salary,"

"Dear God! What in heaven's name is wrong with you women?"

"Excuse me, Doctor Sinnick, but can we not engage in yet more petty, sexist and unbecoming arguments? Have you seen her eyelash or not?"

"Unless it was that furry object, I tripped over outside the female staff toilet yesterday then no. Very sorry."

"That would have been Bella's lucky key ring."

"Lucky for who, Mrs. P? It was like one of the fur balls my wife's cats cough up. It was so big it caught in my trouser turnups and I almost fell into the clinical waste bin. By the way, before you ask, I'll be in late today, Mrs, P. Things to do. You're in charge." He switched off.

" _There,"_ said the familiar voice from his frontal lobe. _"That's the way to do it."_

By 11am Quentin was holding court on the bed in his room. Sinnick had declared his ankle was much improved but, in the interests of inviting compassion, advised a further period with his leg outstretched.

Sinnick was in the wheelchair, Charlie was cross-legged on the floor and Paddy was in the arm chair by the window next to a vase of wilting roses with the label 'Welcome to Mrs. Ada Marples, from the Grey Gables team.' When presented with it at breakfast on his first morning, Quentin had squeezed a tear and everyone with enough energy had clapped.

"Right then," Quentin began. "Meeting timed at 11.28am. Subject: Proposed Purchase of Grey Gables. Pass me the water bottle, Charlie. And the pain killers by the flowers, Paddy. Oh, and the wheelchair cushion tucked behind you, Sinnick. Thanks. But, first of all, a quick summary of my recent experiences."

Quentin edged himself into a sitting position, swallowed a few paracetamol tablets and began but, as always, was instantly distracted.

"Before you all ask," he said, "It was me who won all ten of yesterday's Bingo games. I've become used to allowing Elsie to win but she had another bout of Fook's. Cyril didn't compete because he was doing his accounts, Beatrice was in a day long sulk about the nuts on the bird feeding table, Peggy fell asleep and Mary was in one of her swearing moods because the tartan carpet reminded her of a boyfriend in the Highland Light Infantry who dumped her in 1952."

"But did you win a prize?" Paddy enquired because he knew Quentin would expect to be asked.

"Don't remind me. Paddy. I was unsure whether to brandish it above my head as if I'd won the Cup Final or hide it beneath my tweed skirt. In the end I did the latter."

"What was it?"

Quentin sighed and shook his head.

"What was it? It was an object, hand made by someone with a particular skill in creating soft toys out of old wool and straw, but this highly accomplished craftsperson was clearly someone who had not followed trends in political correctness for at least thirty years. My prize, I regret to announce, was an object now associated with racial discrimination. You can imagine the fear that struck me that someone might take a quick snap on their phone and I'd be front page before the day was out."

He shook his head again as the others waited patiently for enlightenment.

"You can have pink ones, blonde ones, brunette ones, plastic ones, rag ones, paper ones, ugly ones, ones born in cabbage patches and ones that sleep, wet themselves and cry out loud. You can own fluffy versions of nearly every species of animal that roams the earth. You can own pink horses with long hair and a million types of he bears and she bears. You can play with puppets on strings and fight battles with military action men and, if you so desire, you can even copulate with full size ones complete with every anatomical feature imaginable and no-one bats an eyelid. But not this one. Oh no.

"This one may have been perfectly gender neutral but in these enlightened times there's no way you can own one with curly black hair, big red lips and a pair of startled eyes as big as dinner plates."

"Don't tell me!" said Sinnick. "Was it a golliwog, Quent?"

"Aaargh! Wash your mouth out, Sinnick. Shame on you, but you are right. Needless to say, I was so embarrassed in case I was reported to the Race Relations Board with all the implications for my hopes of re-election, that I immediately stuffed it inside my knickers where I could feel its mop of curly black hair clinging to my private parts. Strange feelings persisted for a while until I managed to dislodge it and felt it slide down to reappear at my knees smiling at everyone with its bright red lips."

"Did anyone notice, Quent?"

"I don't know. There was a repeat of X Factor on the TV and Mary was shouting abuse at it so I left them to it and limped up to see Cyril by holding it between my knees."

"So where is it now?" Paddy asked.

Quentin shifted on the bed and pointed behind him "There," he said.

And there it was, sitting, tucked up in bed, smiling with its little black head on the pillow and its tiny, white-gloved hands holding onto the blanket.

"I had a golly when I was six," Quentin said, tenderly adjusting the blanket around its neck, "But I lost him. I left him on the bus. I was distraught."

They all got up for a closer view of him from the bedside.

"Was your old one also gender-neutral, Quent?"

"How the hell should I know, Charlie. Gender wasn't important when we were six. Neither should it be now. We were who we were. He was who he was. I called him Jambo because it sounded friendly and welcoming and it suited him. My sister had a sinister-looking white doll made of plastic with nylon hair, blue eyes and pouting lips. She called it Maddy but it looked more like a pubescent Dame Edna Everage. I suppose she was very fond of her Maddy but so was I was very fond of my Jambo. Surely that's what was important."

"What do you call this one, Quent?" Charlie asked.

"Jambo Two."

Sinnick nodded and then took Jambo Two out and sat him on his lap. Charlie knelt down and smoothed his mop of curly black hair. Paddy pulled up his little pair of red shorts to ensure he kept his secret and then, after a minute or so, Sinnick tucked him back into bed.

"He just won't sleep," Quentin said sadly. "He just lies there watching me with his eyes open."

"It's called nocturnal lagophthalmos," Sinnick said. "It's surprisingly common. Poor little fellow. I could operate on him. A simple incision and some stitching would help but you'd have to pull his eyelids down every night."

"That wouldn't be a problem," Quentin said.

And they all sighed and continued to look at Jambo for a while longer until:

"Right then, where were we?" Quentin said.

"Purchase of Grey Gables," Charlie said.

"Oh yes."

And they were back on track. The meeting continued.

"The current owners claim it's not profitable enough," Quentin said, "But if a ninety-four-year-old D Day veteran can make money living as an inmate why can't the current management make a better job of it?"

"So, what's he doing, Quent?" Sinnick asked.

"Keeping the residents happy," Quentin said. "Products and services. It's not just alcoholic drinks. He's got contacts at other old people's homes: bored old men, retired businessmen, shopkeepers, engineers, doctors and accountants who've still got energy and miss the cut and thrust. Cyril can do or supply anything as long as he gets paid. If money's a problem he knows someone who'll do things for free. One old fellow at Parklands Nursing Home had always wanted a red, white and blue punk haircut so Cyril sorted it. He gets deliveries in boxes marked Pampers and has even learned how to use a laptop despite his Parkinson's.

"Point is, chaps, unlike the Grey Gables management who think it only necessary to organize Bingo games, pass the beach ball sessions and comedy nights where no-one laughs and where everyone falls asleep to old Val Doonican recordings, Cyril's found a niche: an untapped market in understanding old people's needs because he's one himself. He's a bundle of energy and an endless source of ideas."

Sinnick sat up. "Has he found anyone to read to Edna? To listen to her? Someone who really cares?"

"I asked Cyril about Edna. He didn't know anything about her. He says he'll order her some audio books and....... But do you see? We could run Grey Gables differently, reorganize it and get the residents themselves involved in running their own home. We'll make it cool. The place to retire to. We could even use the patio for jazz and rock n' roll bands and Shakespeare performances and......"

Since introducing Jambo, Quentin's voice had been getting louder by the second.

"Led by Cyril's example we'll challenge the way these female-dominated care homes are run," he now roared. "We must fight this prejudice and challenge these false notions that men cannot be trusted to care for old ladies who outlive us and then dominate these evil-smelling establishments with their sole objectives of perpetuating misery by keeping the old dears alive with contraptions like hoists, ulcer-inducing rubber mattresses and pathetic exercises involving beach balls, singsongs and Bingo.

"These depressing establishments must at long last see that it is men, pioneering visionaries like Cyril, who've got the ingenuity and fresh ideas to invigorate, change things and offer some quality of life for abandoned elderly, men and women alike. If the old ladies still require L'Oréal lipstick and nail varnish into their nineties – which I discovered they do - then who are we to deny them. If they need help to find some lost treasure from their past to press to their bosoms in their dying moments then we should help them, even if it means sifting through their many handbags and shoes still locked away in the boxes they arrived with.

"And if the old men need a cool haircut and a cheap bottle of Bell's whisky or a few cases of Carling Black Label and Liebfraumilch for a party on the second floor why should it be denied? And if, during the party, they need to scatter the contents of a packet of Durex and their room keys on the floor as a sign to the tipsy and giggling old ladies then why not?"

By the time Quentin's address had finally come to an end, Sinnick had leaped from the wheelchair, Paddy had knocked over the vase of roses and Charlie was punching the air.

And by afternoon, they'd bought an off the shelf, ready-made company called Silverways Limited. Sinnick had already enquired about changing its name to Silver Arches and Charlie had phoned the sales agent and started on a deeper financial investigation.

"Give me a week," Charlie said. "And I'll provide an easily understood report with recommendation just as I used to do for clients."

Paddy was tasked to understand care home regulations and Sinnick, being the only one with a job, a pension and money in the bank made an appointment with his bank manager to look into borrowing.

Finally, Quentin said he had been hoping to remain for a few more days but his task was becoming difficult because Mrs Ricketts had confronted him over why he constantly left the toilet seat up and left drips on the floor. So, the next morning Quentin checked out carrying just one plastic bag of belongings.

On the doorstep, he shook Mrs Rickett's hand. "Short but sweet, Mrs Ricketts," he said in his normal deep baritone. "Thanks for having me."

Mrs Ricketts massaged her almost broken fingers and looked up at him. "Mmm," she said. "I can't say I'm sorry to see you go. I'll need to replace the bathroom carpet and I see you've left a case of Bollinger champagne under your bed. Goodbye Mrs Marples. Or should I say Mr Kelp."

Quentin fled, leaving his wheelchair behind and holding up his knickers with one hand and his plastic bag, hat, wig and mobile phone in the other. At the gate, as arranged, PC Steve Perkins was waiting in his blue and yellow police car.

"If I may say so, you don't look your usual breezy self, Quent," he said as Quentin clambered in.

Quentin was biting his fingernails. "No," he admitted. The stay had, quite unexpectedly, affected him. "I don't want to grow old," he added.

"Who does, Quent? Eyeopener was it?"

"Yes," Quentin replied softly.

"Make any new friends?"

Yes," he said with an unusually vivid memory of Mary swearing and hurling her slippers at the TV. _'Fucking rubbish. Where's the remote?"_

Mary was right to get upset of course. Why should she have had to watch X Factor on the wide screen in the community lounge when she preferred watching rugby. Cyril liked rugby as well but Mrs Ricketts constantly switched the channels back again without asking.

And then there was Beatrice. He could hear her now, still talking about the bird table outside her window. " _You see lots of nice birds, Beatrice_?" he'd asked her thinking the question might pose a problem for her fading memory.

She'd told him off. " _I'm Beaty,_ " she said sternly _. "No-one ever called me Beatrice until I came here. I've always been Beaty, even when I was in Antarctica. There were two Beatys in the camp: Beaty Boswell and me, Beaty Brownhill."_

That had shocked him. _"You were in Antarctica?" he'd asked._

" _Head of Astronomy and Ornithology,"_ Beaty said. _"Invented a star tracking device. Nice bit of kit. Now look at me. Daughter in Australia, son in Japan and me sat here because of my hip and problems with my ears and balance."_

" _Does anyone ever talk to you about astronomy, Beaty?"_ Quentin had asked her.

She'd shaken her head. _"When I came here and told Mrs Ricketts I was an astronomer she asked me if I could be Grey Gable's fortune teller."_

Quentin had almost cried then. If he'd known anything about astronomy, or even astrology, he might have engaged in conversation but he was hard pressed even to identify Jupiter or Saturn in the night sky.

Slumped in the back of the car, Quentin took a deep breath. "There were a few lighter moments, I suppose," he said.

Steve started the engine. "When were they then, Quent?"

"I heard two old ladies, Joyce and Patsy talking about their dead husbands," Quentin said.

Steve waited, watching Quentin in the mirror. He was he still holding tightly onto his plastic bag. "Go on Quent. What happened?"

Quentin sniffed. "Joyce said her husband used to chew his nails and it was very annoying. Patsy then said that her husband also used to do that. They both agreed it was extremely annoying so Patsy asked Joyce what she did to stop him." Quentin sniffed again.

"So how, Quent - how did she stop him biting his nails?"

"She used to hide his teeth," Quentin said and then he curled up on the back seat with Jambo Two and tried not to cry.

PART NINE:

When Quentin arrived home at The Firs, Hector was there with six friends.

They didn't, of course, hear him arrive or move their entangled limbs from around the TV when he opened the living room door. He found them, thumbs and fingers in a blurred frenzy of activity, engaged in a digital battle between a gang of metal clad giants and an army of prehistoric beasts with machine guns that belched green smoke and orange fire. The noise was deafening.

"Good Evening," he shouted at the row of humped backs.

"Aw. Ah. Yeh. Get that you slime ball. His head's gone. See that Heck?"

Quentin tried again, louder. "Good Evening."

"Gotcha. Three in one. Use the flame thrower, Matt. Fuck! Where the hell did that weird Ork come from?

"I've just arrived from the real world," Quentin tried.

"Wahay! Gotcha. Ahhhh. Doh! Roasted, man. Right where it hurts."

Quentin gave up, retreated, went to the Wi-Fi router in the hallway, switched it off and listened with some quiet satisfaction from behind the door.

"Fuck! What the....? Just as I was ready to......"

He then heard Hector's voice. "Christ! The old man's home."

Then the others: "That mean old geezer? My old man says he's a loser."

Quentin snarled, pulled the entire ethernet cable out, stuffed it in his pocket and went upstairs to his office. Perhaps, he thought, it was just as well they'd not seen him standing there in his grey wig.

From his office, he called Sinnick. "Red Lion? Twenty minutes?"

"Ready when you are, Quent. Swelling gone down?"

"Still hobbling but intact."

He rang Paddy.

"Did you finish the book, Quent?"

"Not another word written for three days, Paddy."

He rang Charlie.

"How's Ada Marples?"

"An emotional wreck, Charlie. See you later."

Their meeting lasted until closing time.

"It was the underlying, unspoken loneliness that got to me," Quentin said sadly as, yet again, he related his experiences. "Thirty old people slowly retreating into their own irrelevance. Thirty old ladies and Cyril who, apart from Cyril, have found themselves living together because they were fortunate in having a few assets they could convert into half decent care where someone else hands out three meals a day, as many cups of tea as you can drink, but no true love or companionship.

"Wherever they'd gone for that care I suspect their lives would be much the same. A room with boxes of memories, a TV, monotonous menus and a patch of lawn and each other to look at for however much time they've got left. But amongst them.........oh dear."

Quentin's rare, emotional outpourings threatened to spill over once again.

"It's not just your Edna, Sinnick. Oh no. It's ladies like Beaty the astronomer, Emmie the teacher who'd taught in Africa and Asia, Shirley who ran a shelter for the homeless in New Zealand and Brenda, who once flew helicopters. All lost husbands, have children who they rarely or never see and now struggle with health issues – eyesight, deafness, arthritis. Their lives have stopped and yet......"

He sniffed again as Sinnick, Charlie and Paddy watched hm. It was as if the last few days since his book idea, his ankle injury and his short time living as Ada Marples had changed him for good.

"Only Cyril is carrying on as if nothing has changed," Quentin went on. "Except, of course, his shaking hands, his eyesight and his hip replacements. The only thing that worries Cyril is falling down and losing his glasses. Cyril, the only male inmate, is the only one beating the system. Should I point this out in the book if I ever complete it? He seems to think that living there is no different than living over his old fishing tackle shop in east London. "It's just another stage, Quent," he told me. "Another step towards the big hole in the ground that'll open up in front of me sooner or later."

"He says he runs the business to boost his pension but I reckon he's making more than he can spend. He's got a safe in his room that he says contains a few old antiques but I reckon it's full of cash. He's still a bachelor who claims his libido is as strong as ever and going on his attempted seduction when he arrived outside my door on my first night, I suspect he's not unsuccessful. He would sometimes disappear upstairs for an hour or so and I'd notice one of the ladies was missing. "Sometimes fading eyesight is a bonus," he told me. "And shaking hands are perfect for some jobs."

"Cyril's not changed since the day he came to see me saying he had a great business idea and would only vote for me if I helped him move to Grey Gables amongst thirty women. "I see some potential," he'd told me with a wink, but he described his venture much more clearly the night we spent drinking vodka and Red Bull. 'It's loneliness,' he said. 'It's a growing market. Someone's got to satisfy it. If I spend the night telling them jokes you should see the change next morning. If they only look at me, they laugh. And then they ask me if I've got any more of that nice skin cream that smells of frangipani or could I get them a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream.'

"He then told me one of his best jokes. 'It never fails to get a laugh, Quent," he said. 'I tell _them I know I'm getting old because the other day when I walked past Krupton cemetery two guys with shovels picked me up and carried me inside.'_ And the best thing of all is that they've forgotten it the next time I tell it.'"

"Edna," Sinnick then said. "She was writing a novel when her eyesight became too poor. I asked her if she wanted to finish it. Her voice is so quiet now it's difficult to hear her but it was clear she wanted to. I found it for her – three note books in a box she hadn't had the strength to sort. It's there now."

"So why didn't you help her?" Charlie asked.

"Why?" Sinnick sighed. "You want me to go through my list?"

"But Beaty or Emmie could help," Paddy said. "Do you think they'd like me to read some Samuel Beckett, James Joyce or Roddy Doyle?"

"No doubt about it, Paddy," said Quentin. "Audio books are one thing but there's nothing like a real Irishman sat beside you to read to you and perhaps chat about other things. It's company. It's basic human friendship."

"And it's not just those living in Grey Gables is it?" Charlie said. "There are hundreds of old people around here sitting on their own with nothing to do and no-one to talk to. Couldn't we involve them? Visit them? Invite them in? Turn Grey Gables into some sort of community where some live and others join in?"

"Exactly," Quentin said. "Cyril calls it added features. I think we should make him our marketing consultant."

"Charlie, Paddy and I met the bank manager," Sinnick then said. "We bought Charlie a nice suit from Help the Aged so he didn't get arrested. Paddy took a hot midday shower to dissolve the grease and I wore my trousers with the working zip." He paused. "Afterwards, I asked Freud what he thought about us buying Grey Gables."

Sinnick then stopped, embarrassed, aware he'd never before mentioned Freud. He looked at Quentin, Paddy and Charlie but they were smiling at him.

"What did he say?" Quentin asked.

"He thinks it's a good idea. He says it's the right thing to do and that it would be good for all of us. He also says we should change the name from Grey Gables to Silver Arches."

About the author:

Terry Morgan has been writing stories and poetry for over twenty-five years, mostly while he "lived out of a suitcase", travelling with his own exporting business. Having visited around eighty countries during that time he now lives with his Thai wife, Yung, in Petchabun, Thailand with occasional visits back to friends and family in the Forest of Dean and the Cotswold Valleys around Stroud in the UK. He mostly writes full-length novels with a strong international, business and political flavour and occasional shorter satirical stories like Four Men.

Full length novels by Terry Morgan all published on Smashwords:

Paperback versions are also available.

An Old Spy Story

The old spy in "An Old Spy Story" is octagenerian, Oliver ("Ollie") Thomas. During a long career spent trying to earn an honest living with his own export business, Ollie was also, reluctantly, carrying out parallel assignments in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere only loosely connected to British Intelligence. But, by using threats and blackmail, his controller, Major Alex Donaldson, was forcing Ollie to help run his own secret money making schemes that included arms shipments to the IRA through Gadaffi and Libya, money laundering in Africa and assassination.

Now aged eighty six, recently widowed and alone Ollie still struggles with guilt and anger over his past and decides to make one last attempt to track down and deal with Donaldson.

" _A masterful tale by someone who knows exactly what he is writing about."_

" _A wonderful and moving love story from an elderly man's perspective is beautifully woven into it and the ending is masterful."_

" _I enjoyed it – exciting, endlessly beguiling and fun."_

" _Thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. A remarkable book from a writer who has clearly been there and done it. Easy reading."_

Whistleblower

Huge amounts of international aid money are being stolen by those at the heart of the political establishment. Ex-politician, Jim Smith, threatened and harassed into fleeing abroad for accusations of fraud secretly returns to renew his campaign. A realistic thriller covering events in the USA, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia and a sensitive study of a stubborn and talented man who steadfastly refuses to fit into the stereotype of a successful businessman and a modern politician.

"Highly convincing.......This could all be happening right now. Another realistic and highly entertaining story...."

_._ " _Whistleblower", by Terry Morgan, is an international thriller that stretches from England to Thailand with many stops in between. The plot centers around the timely topic of international aid money and the criminals who feed on it. The hero, the story's whistle-blower, is British ex-politician Jim Smith, and the story follows him around the globe as he seeks to put a stop to the corruption. Morgan, a world traveller who now resides in Thailand, knows his locations well. Cities in Italy and Africa come alive, and Jim Smith's home in off-the-beaten-path Thailand is wonderfully described, allowing readers to feel like they're there--this is no easy thing to do, and the authenticity of the various settings is a real strength of the book. Another strength includes the protagonist. Smith is not a typical hero. He's older and lacks the suaveness and action-hero credentials of a James Bond or Jason Bourne, but he more than makes up for it with his intelligence and depth--a big pleasure in the book is being invited into this man's life as he tries to pick up the pieces after an underhanded campaign aimed at ruining him. The plot moves along briskly, and the technology, players (politicians, intelligence agencies, criminals), and small details about the finance industry all add up to a novel that's rich in credibility and intrigue. Anyone interested in seeing the world from the comfort of a good armchair should read Morgan's book." (AMAZON_ )

An Honourable Fake

At age fourteen, Femi Akindele, an orphaned street boy from the Makoko slum in Lagos, Nigeria, decided to call himself Pastor Gabriel Joshua. Unqualified and self-taught and now in his mid-forties, Gabriel has become a flamboyant, popular and highly acclaimed international speaker on African affairs, economics, terrorism, corruption and the widespread poverty and economic migration that results.

Gabriel wants changes but, in his way, lie big corporations, international politics and a group of wealthy but corrupt Nigerians financing a terrorist organisation, the COK, with one purpose in mind – the overthrow of the democratically elected Nigerian President and the establishment of a vast new West African state.

On Gabriel's side, though, are his loyal boyhood friend Solomon, a private investigator of international corporate fraud and the newly appointed head of the Nigerian State Security Service Colonel Martin Abisola.

" _A rare sort of political thriller – a black African hero."_

" _Accomplished and knowledgeable – a class follow up to Whistleblower."_

The Malthus Pandemic

Daniel Capelli is a private investigator of international commercial crime.

Armed with an unusually vague remit from a new client, an American biotechnology company, to investigate the theft of valuable research material but motivated largely by a private desire to see a Thai girlfriend, Anna, he travels to Bangkok for an infectious diseases conference. Here, he discovers that several virologists have also disappeared. One of them, David Solomon, is known for extreme views on the need for direct action to reduce the world's population.

As the investigation deepens, he rapidly uncovers a sinister plot to deliberately spread a deadly new virus, the Malthus A virus, specifically created by Solomon. But Solomon needs funds and help to spread it. With sporadic outbreaks of the disease already in Thailand, Nigeria and Kenya, Capelli finds two other characters - Doctor Larry Brown, an American doctor working at the USA Embassy in Nigeria, and Kevin Parker, an academic and expert on the history and economics of population control - have also arrived at similar conclusions but from different angles.

Calling on help from another close friend, Colin Asher - a London based private investigator - it soon becomes clear that Solomon is being supported by a rich American with a history of fraud, embezzlement and murder and a secretive Arab healthcare company with a ready-made international distribution network. Their plan: To help spread the Malthus A virus and make huge profits by marketing ineffective or counterfeit drugs.

But with his cover blown by the murder of another colleague, the charismatic Kenyan detective Jimmy Banda, and with increasing fears that the virus is about to be released Capelli, Anna and his colleagues face another problem - persuading UK and USA politicians and the international agencies responsible for bioterrorism and commercial crime, to believe them and respond in time.

"Anchored firmly in the present, no high-tech Bond style gadgets, just good old-fashioned detective work. Gritty descriptions of the international locations, compelling plot and poignant rants about the inadequacy of democratic institutions and persuasive insight on the inner workings of the global establishment. Easy reading and difficult to put down once started. Enjoyable read."

Prisoners of Conscience & Circumstance

Set around the year 2050 when overpopulation is causing food and energy shortages, mass unemployment, social tension and civil conflict. An ex-politician and professor of biology talks to a grandson no longer able to cope with life in an overcrowded city. A follow-up to the author's previous thriller, 'The Malthus Pandemic', this hard-hitting, illustrated novel contains facts and forecasts supported by original papers.

"Not for the faint hearted."

Short Stories:

**The Red Lantern** is a selection of six short stories about international crime, corruption and terrorism taken from five of the author's full-length novels – An Old Spy Story, Whistleblower, Vendetta, An Honourable Fake and Bad Boys.

God's Factory

Terry Morgan writes mainly serious novels with a strong international background but intersperses it with less serious satire and humour like 'God's Factory' and 'Four Men'.

