LIFE
photographed the interiors of my eyeballs
hundreds of times. They’d blown little puffs
of air at them. They’d told me to watch the
red light until it turns green, then look to
the left. But I had yet to see this Mr Doyle.
Closely following my second visit, a hospi-
tal administrator had rung me up and told
me that he wanted to see me urgently and
could I come in again tomorrow morning?
‘Urgently?’ I said. ‘Did I say that?’ she
said. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, I’m not supposed
to say “urgently”. But yes, Mr Doyle would
like to see you as soon as possible before he
goes on leave on Friday.’ So the verdict was
in at last, I thought. And because this Mr
Doyle wanted to see me urgently I could
reasonably assume that their grave suspi-
cion of cancer in my left eye had turned out
to be justified. And this Mr Doyle was the
one who was going to break it to me.
The waiting room was like the floor of
a stock exchange during a crash. A recep-
tionist now picked her way through the
crowd. Cupping her mouth against the back-
ground, she said: ‘Mr Clarke?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Mr
Doyle wants to let you know he is in a meet-
ing and will have to delay your appointment
by a few minutes.’ I assured her that my time
was nowhere near as valuable as Mr Doyle
imagines but thanks all the same.
My plastic seat was next to the clinic
entrance. I swung my knees this way and
that to allow more space for the burgeon-
ing queue. A woman whose face looked as
though it cried a lot paused in front of me
on her way out and said: ‘Are you waiting to
see Mr Doyle?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I just wanted
to tell you that I’ve been seeing Mr Doyle
for about a year and he’s a wonderful man.
You’re lucky to get him. Whatever it is
you’ve got wrong with you — you’ll be fine.’
I nodded immediate and complete under-
standing of all this woman had said and
implied. I venerated an oncologist on level 2
in much the same way, and in a similar situa-
tion would go out of my way to say the same
thing to someone else.
Ten minutes later my name was shout-
ed and I was directed to a smaller, empti-
er waiting room, which felt a bit like being
upgraded to first class. In here a spry old
lady pushing a League of Friends refresh-
ment trolley gave me a mug of stewed
tea and her benediction in exchange for
a pound coin. Then one of the doors in
this room opened a little way and some-
one stuck his neck and head out comically
nearer to the horizontal than the vertical
and said my name. On entering his exam-
ination room, I saw that Mr Doyle was a
gentle, unassuming beanpole who wore
cheap business shoes. I asked him whether
he minded my mug of tea and handed over
the box of six fresh farm eggs I’d bought
from an honesty box in the lane. I thought
that a gift of fresh farm eggs in exchange
for being told I had cancer of the eye would
show I had no hard feelings and might even
do something towards reversing this run of
bad luck. ‘You’ll like those,’ I said. ‘Laid this
morning. They’ll stand proud in the frying
pan.’ Mr Doyle accepted the eggs hum-
bly and slid them into his cheap briefcase.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said. Then while
I sipped my tea he opened a folder and
read a selection from my notes.
After about five minutes he snapped theI could reasonably assume that their
grave suspicion of cancer in my
left eye had been justifiedfolder shut decisively, reclined my chair and
put two anaesthetic eye drops into each eye.
While I lay in this position, he fished around,
particularly in the left one, using a plastic
spatula to expose the eyeball edge where the
questionable mass or colouring had been
detected on an earlier photograph. Then
he threw the spatula in the bin, washed his
hands in a little sink and said very kindly:
‘There’s nothing wrong with your eyes. You
can go.’ He was as pleased as I was. I told him
it was the first piece of good news I’d had for
a long time. ‘And long may it continue, Mr
Clarke,’ said this wonderful man.Parks and Recreation
Dispatched with a spec
from central depot, we trundle the estates
in a clapped-out Minivan.Returning astronauts: emerging
from its creaking back doors
in regulation whites, we take our gloss potsto the slide, rocking horse, climbing frame
and teapot lid. Rag dry the tubes, bolts and collars
of the swings, unravel the chainsaround the crossbar. Pick out the tripods
in lobster, mimosa, seacrest and delphinium;
work down the steps to the slide.Finish the roundabout in apple. The horse
is tangerine. Mind our heads inside
the climbing frame, crawl out backwards.— Philip Hancock
Geronimo!
After Dennis and Joe slipped
the handrail off our working platform
and leapt forty feet into the pen of foam cubes
at Burslem Gymnastics Centre, I yelled:
Shout something different.Sick of our surnames, we stuck on
We d g w o o d! our foreman,
loud enough to beckon him across the city
and stand watching us from the door.