Chapter Two

Bobby Macula had been a retinal screener for three of his thirty-four years. Although it felt much longer. He'd previously fed turtles in a professional capacity at the Droitwich Sea Centre, before a tragic accident involving a drowned tortoise forced his premature retirement. Having scratched out a living for six months as a travelling sailsman on a yacht in the North Sea, he'd come across an advert in the ship's recycling bin for a 'Retinal Screener', and decided to apply.

That life-changing decision was based largely on a mis-reading of the word 'Retinal'. He'd long had a secret (and, he felt, entirely healthy) love of ladies' bottoms, and felt that the ideal job for him would be some kind of backside work, possibly involving lingerie or spanking. He was willing to start at the bottom and stay there. Unfortunately, having consulted careers advisors and spoken to staff at numerous branches of Jobcentre Plus, he’d come to realise that opportunities in such a field were strictly limited, if not non-existent. He’d put this down largely to the inherent sexism of the job market, and the longstanding prejudices faced by men working in women’s underwear. He’d eventually learnt to accept the situation and move on. Until, that is, he had his Road to Damascus experience.

The ‘Road to Damascus’ was a fishing trawler operating out of the small Norfolk town of Cromer. As a young man, Bobby had caught crabs there, but he’d quickly learnt his lesson, and now avoided the nightclubs, choosing instead to stick strictly to the quayside. Following his drowned tortoise experience, which he still found it hard to talk about, he had retreated to the coast with a self-diagnosed case of post traumatic stress disorder.

At the time, Bobby had been happily married to a young lady named Fatima. They’d met on an internet dating site, where Fatima had described herself as both “bubbly” and “curvy”. Ordinarily, Bobby would have taken that description as a strong indicator of morbid obesity, but having received an e-mail from his future bride, he decided that no one who topped the scales at more than thirty stone would dare to use the name Fatima. They’d be more likely to adopt a moniker that implied ‘thin’, and call themselves Lizzy. So he took a chance and replied.

By the time they met in person, and Bobby had seen her being lifted off the back of a pick-up truck in a hoist, it was too late. Love had blossomed, and whilst his head told him it could never work, his heart insisted that if he put a lock on the fridge, and kept Pizza Hut’s number off the speed dial, then everything would be ok.

And so it proved. For a while at least. Bobby left for the Droitwich Sea Centre every morning at seven, and returned home nine hours later, his pockets stuffed with sardines, to find Fatima propped up on the reinforced sofa, surrounded by empty crisp packets and microwave meals for four. The microwave oven sat on the coffee table in a permanent state of over-heating, as Fatima spent her days making convenience foods as convenient as possible. The fridge in the TV unit had been her master-stroke. She’d welcome Bobby home with an excited round of applause, as he lovingly tossed dead fish into her gaping mouth.

They’d married six months later after Bobby had got down on one knee to retrieve some Hula Hoops from under the sofa, and Fatima had misunderstood the situation. The wedding took place at a service station just off the M5, with convenient access to both the south-west of England, and a branch of McDonalds that was willing to cater for thirty guests.

Cracks soon started to appear, however, most notably in Fatima’s resolve to lose weight. Bobby was a tolerant man, but as a connoisseur of ladies’ bottoms, he found it difficult being married to a woman who couldn’t roll over without an electric hoist and a large plank of wood for leverage. Spontaneity in their sex life was as lacking as celery on their shopping list.

Ironically, it wasn’t Bobby who ended the marriage, it was Fatima. The day of the tortoise drowning was a turning point in their relationship. Fatima never fully appreciated the extent of her husband’s mental suffering (perhaps because he found it so hard to talk about), preferring to concentrate instead on the decrease in the number of fish he started bringing home. When Bobby expressed his belief that he might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Fatima’s response that “It was only a tortoise – get over it” was enough to send Bobby into a downward spiral. His subsequent decision to take voluntary redundancy from the world of turtle husbandry was greeted with horror by his wife, who’d run up substantial debts with numerous pizza delivery firms and could see no way out. Mainly because she struggled to fit through the door.

The final straw had come three weeks later when, in a desperate cry for help, Bobby had told his wife that he felt like an empty, lifeless shell. Fatima’s response of “Now you know how the tortoise feels” failed to raise his spirits in quite the way she expected, and when her husband had finished weeping tears of sorrow into a tin of pilchards for eight hours straight, she decided that enough was enough, and asked him to leave.

Bobby did so the next day, having done the decent thing and paid off the fast food bailiffs in full. He left Fatima with a takeaway menu, a cordless phone and a hundred pounds in cash. The money, he figured, wouldn’t last more than a day, but the fat reserves would keep her going for months. He walked out of Droitwich, and never returned.

A few weeks later, he found himself in Cromer. He didn’t know how, or indeed why he’d come to be there. A feeling he shared with most residents of Cromer. He suspected it was a deep-seated longing to recapture the carefree days of his youth, and to be close to the sea creatures he’d spent so much of his life caring for. In reality it just happened to be the end of the line for the National Express coach he’d fallen asleep on.

Fatefully, he now felt, he’d landed a job on the ‘Road to Damascus’, primarily because he’d been the only person to apply, and took up a life on the high seas. Unlike most trawlers in the North Sea, the ‘Road to Damascus’ rejected the notion of fast engines and powerful motors, and chose instead to rely on a single PVC sail. As a result, it was the most spectacularly unsuccessful member of the Cromer fishing fleet, and rarely caught more than a keep-net of sprats. Had Bobby expected to be paid, he would have found that the job fell short of his expectations.

As it was, the post-traumatic stress disorder, whilst unconfirmed by any doctor, meant that the only thing of importance to Bobby was to feel the wind in his hair, and smell the fragrance of fish under his nose. Nothing else mattered. He spent his days floating aimlessly across Cromer harbour, wondering how the rigging worked, whilst nibbling crabsticks and drinking rainwater.

Until, that is, the day he emptied the ship’s recycling bin. Bobby was as green as the next man, so he only did it once every six months, but when he did, it changed his life. A copy of the East Anglian Daily Times lay at the bottom, partially soaked in salt water, vinegar, and tomato ketchup. It was open at a double page spread of job vacancies, and there, at the top, in an unoriginal yet functional typeface, were the words ‘Retinal Screener’. A small piece of batter obscured the middle three letters of the first word, and thus, the die was cast.

Glossing over the rest of the advert, Bobby’s brain, fired by an unbridled bottom obsession, read the word as ‘Rectal’, saw an opportunity, and within hours, his application was in the post. If he was honest with himself, he did wonder why, three weeks later at the resulting interview, the man behind the National Health Service desk kept mentioning eyes, but he took it to be a slight speech impediment and assumed the chap meant ‘arse’. He’d heard the NHS was less formal these days.

His sheer enthusiasm had landed him the job, and by the time he learnt the truth, it didn’t matter: it had given him a reason for living, helped him move on, and finally banished the tortoise-related (and medically unconfirmed) post traumatic stress disorder he’d found so hard to talk about.

Three years later, there he was: in a small room in a large hospital, facing a short man with a long face. The man spoke:

“My name’s Ivor Snellen,” he said. “Mr Macula, I need to speak to you on a matter of grave importance.”

Bobby looked back at him, unflinching. “I’ve told you people before,” he said. “I don’t want to buy a headstone. I’m going to be cremated, and have my ashes scattered off the north Norfolk coast to nourish the plankton and support future generations of sea turtles. You’re wasting your time, mate. Now take this, and start reading at the top of the chart.”

Bobby tried to hand him the pinhole occluder. Ivor Snellen declined. “I mean a very serious matter,” he said. “And I’ve told you, I’m not one of your patients. I pulled strings at the highest level of the National Screening Programme in order to get this appointment, and a chance to speak to you in private, Mr Macula.”

“You should have just turned up,” replied Bobby. “I’ve had six DNAs since 9:30. I could have fitted you in any time. Especially if you don’t need drops.”

“Mr Macula, I’m not diabetic,” said Snellen sternly.

“That’s what they all say,” came the reply.

Snellen reached inside his jacket and withdrew a folded sheet of A4 paper from a concealed pocket. “I foresaw such an eventuality,” he said, offering the piece of paper to Bobby. “Here, take it. That document details the results of more than twenty blood tests covering the past five years. You’ll see that my HbA1c has never been above five.”

“You could be on tablets.”

“Mr Macula,” said Snellen with a tone of irritability, “I’ve been sitting in that waiting room for the past hour without once running to the toilet. I’m clearly not on Metformin. If you want me to take my clothes off so that you can check for needle marks, or lock me in a cupboard for twenty-four hours to see if I hypo, I’m sure that could be arranged. But I think we’d both be a lot better off if you simply took my word for it.”

Bobby shrugged. “Whatever you say,” he muttered. “So what’s this important thing you need to talk to me about? Have you seen a floater or something?”

“Mr Macula,” replied Snellen in a sombre, yet urgent tone of voice, “the diabetics of this country are about to face the most diabolical foe they have ever encountered.”

“McDonalds?” said Bobby.

Snellen ignored him. “It is an enemy so powerful, so heinous, and so potentially devastating to all concerned, that it threatens lives, careers, and the very future of retinopathy screening as we know it. For the sake of this great nation, and indeed all the nations of the world, it must be stopped, right now, before it is too late. And you, Bobby Macula, are the only man who can help us.”

Bobby looked taken aback. “Why me?” he asked.

Ivor Snellen fixed him with an intense stare, and then paused momentarily, as if a few seconds silence was required to fully comprehend the gravity of his message. His face like granite, his eyes unblinking, he swallowed once before answering:

“Because we’ve asked everyone else, and they all said no.”