Iris Stroma had been making a spectacle of herself for years. Her foresight and forward-looking focus meant that she’d excelled as a pupil, been the apple of every teacher’s eye, and now, in the twilight of her career, had her sights set on immortality. Iris Stroma was about to make history.
Hers was a career that had spanned more than forty years, but a life that had been in the making for centuries. Iris came from a long line of optometrists and dispensing opticians, and could trace her roots back to Peter Dollond’s small optical business which opened in London’s Vine Street in 1750. While Dollond and his father were building their reputations, creating a name for themselves and receiving the honour of a royal appointment as official opticians to King George III, Iris Stroma’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother was working tirelessly behind the scenes, cleaning their kitchens and stealing their equipment.
By 1780, and with the help of a particularly baggy apron, she’d smuggled out enough lenses to fill her entire back passage, and in 1781, as Peter Dollond unveiled his first bifocal spectacles, Ida Stigmatism, a retired cleaning lady from Whitechapel, was opening her first branch of SpecUsers.
The business was a roaring success. Knowing next to nothing about optometry, Ida was able to offer a far speedier service than her learned rivals, who struggled under the burden of cripplingly high insurance premiums brought about by repeated unexplained burglaries. Ida’s simple eye test consisted of the question “Can you see me?” followed by a lucky dip into her bag of stolen spectacles, and thus she became popular amongst the wealthy and busy merchants of eighteenth century London, who had little time to read eye charts, and a lot more money than sense. Complaints were rare, primarily because her customers couldn’t see well enough to find their way back to the shop.
By the time Dollond met Aitchison in the 1880s, Ida had overseen the growth of SpecUsers from a single one-roomed shop above a tobacconist in Buck’s Row, to a multi-outlet chain of visionaries stretching across the south of England from Dover to Coventry and back again. But only if you counted each branch twice. Ida herself had died in 1812, but following overtures to the 19th century Fox sisters, made forty years after her death, the Stigmatism family were able to reconnect psychically with their lost matriarch, regain their focus, and achieve clarity for the business. With Ida’s guiding spirit at the helm, the Stigmatism name became synonymous with eye care, and SpecUsers emerged as the brand of choice for short sighted southerners.
Fifty years later, Iris was born. Some said it was the second coming. Some, that it was the reincarnation of Ida. Others maintained that it was merely the result of faulty contraception from an east end market stall. Whatever the truth, it was both the birth and the rebirth of a new dawn in optometry. The young Iris focused on her career with a dedication and an enthusiasm that thrilled her parents and annoyed her contemporaries. By the age of nine, she was qualified to dispense prescription glasses, by eleven she could use a slit lamp blindfolded, and by thirteen she was capable of diagnosing glaucoma from a distance of twelve feet. Although she refused to prove it under laboratory conditions.
At the age of just nineteen, Iris married the legendary Len Stroma, senior ophthalmologist at the infamous, and now demolished, Specs-tacular Ocular Academy of the Eye, just outside Reykjavik, or to give it Len’s preferred description, ‘The Capital of Eyes Land’. His death nine years later was a turning point, not just in the young Iris’s life, but in the course of ophthalmic history itself. It wasn’t just the manner of his death - true, he was the first, and possibly only, man ever to slip on an intraocular implant, hit his head on a case of dexamethasone eye drops, and be pierced through the heart by a phacoemulsification probe – but that wasn’t what made him unusual. Len Stroma was a maverick. And he passed that torch on to Iris.
Following a period of private mourning, and a six week holiday in the Maldives, paid for out of Len’s generous life insurance policy, Iris Stroma emerged back into the public eye as the founding editor of ‘Prism Break’ magazine, a leisure and lifestyle monthly for opticians. It was a role she maintained for the next fifteen years, watching as the magazine went from strength to strength, and her own profile followed a similar path. Over the course of two decades, Iris became the public face of optometry, an international ambassador for eyes. Time magazine featured her on its cover, under the headline ‘Iris Through the Looking Glasses’, Newsweek named her ‘Woman of the Year’, and she appeared on page 53 of the Radio Times next to a recipe for summer pudding. She had the world at her feet and a glint in her eye.
And then nothing. To all intents and purposes, Iris Stroma disappeared. Britain had been through tumultuous periods of change: the withdrawal of free school milk; the Winter of Discontent; the Falklands War; the Gulf War; the breakup of Take That. But in the midst of it all, the public face of optometry, the pin-up girl of dispensing opticians, apparently at the height of her powers, slipped quietly out of the back door.
Perhaps it is an indictment on the nature of celebrity, a measure of the fickleness of the general public, or merely a lack of skill on behalf of investigative journalists, that Iris Stroma was allowed to vanish from sight so completely, and with so little in the way of repercussions. The Radio Times, which had once heralded her existence alongside a striking list of fruitful ingredients, now gave her no more than a cursory mention on page 14, in the description of a programme entitled ‘Where Are They Now?’, due to be broadcast at 9:30pm on a November evening on BBC2. As it transpired, the programme was cancelled in favour of a tribute to River Phoenix, and never subsequently shown. Perhaps it was merely unfortunate circumstances.
Perhaps. But, in fact, not. Iris Stroma’s withdrawal from the public eye was a well planned and skilfully orchestrated act. For fifteen years, the ‘Prism Break’ headlines had been no more than cover stories. Iris had formulated a plan. An agenda for change. A structured programme of both evolution and revolution which would take two decades to put into practice, but which, ultimately, would secure her place in history. Iris Stroma wanted to detect diabetic retinopathy without eye drops, without cameras, without graders or screeners. But she wanted so much more than that. She wanted equality for opticians.
Iris had seen the way the ophthalmic wind was blowing. She’d worked in the visual field. She’d seen that for the humble optician, the glasses were becoming half empty, not half full. And she wanted to change that. Optometry was her heritage, her life blood and that of her family for more than two hundred years. And it was under threat, endangered by a new breed of ophthalmologist, a new form of screening programme, and the actions of just one man: Sir Roger Logmar.
Long before the Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health had opened its doors, Iris Stroma’s eyes had been opened to the threat. Her years as editor in chief of ‘Prism Break’ had enabled her to make not just plans but contacts, to recruit an optometric team of fearsome expertise. As Sir Roger was quietly assembling his squad of eye doctors, ophthalmic nurses, pharmacists and retinal screeners, Iris was doing the same for optometrists and dispensing opticians. Magazine interviews became job interviews. Exclusives became conspiracies. As OOOH was born in the hospitals of public sector health care, so Iris was enlisting her own army in the high street of private eye care.
The result was MOO: the legendary ‘Movement Of Opticians’, a secretive undercover organisation designed to safeguard the interests of optometrists and dispensing opticians past, present and, most importantly, future. It was unseen to the casual observer, unheard of outside the darkened rooms of high street opticians, yet whispered on the air of every glaucoma puffer test. And it had one groundbreaking achievement: the D Generation.
It’s what Iris Stroma had been working towards since the death of her husband. As she’d looked at Len’s implants on the floor of the operating theatre, watched her own tears fall silently into the shimmering pools of dexamethasone at her feet, and pulled the phacoemulsification probe from the chest of the man she loved, she’d vowed to do this for him. To create an intelligent bio-organism capable of accurately detecting diabetic retinopathy without eye drops. It had been Len’s vision. And Iris intended to see it through.
Sunday 28 November 2010
Saturday 20 November 2010
Chapter Sixteen
“All I said,” announced Bobby, about to say it again, “was –”
“Don’t say it again,” replied Irma, as if anticipating that fact.
“‘Is that a crowbar in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?’” he finished.
Irma rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know why you had to take offence,” he added. “Especially as it was a crowbar.”
“Well I certainly wasn’t pleased to see you,” replied Irma.
“Hey,” said Bobby, “if it wasn’t for me, we’d still be outside with the alarm going off. You’re just grumpy because you’re full of shit.”
Irma looked down at the manure on her spying trousers. She was grumpy, it was true. She’d momentarily lost her cool, let the situation get to her, and run into a compost heap. For Irma Drusen, the legendary poster girl of undercover ophthalmology, it had been a bad day at the office.
“Look,” she said, “let’s just draw a line under this episode and start again. We’ve got off on the wrong foot...” She looked down at the toe she’d stubbed on the badly painted gnome. “... but if we’re going to stand any chance of defeating the D Generation, we need to work together. An effective, cohesive unit, combining our skills and our strengths. And I know we can do it. Sir Roger speaks very highly of you.”
“Really?” said Bobby, surprised.
“Well, no,” replied Irma, “I was just being polite. Two days ago, he’d never heard of you. Even now, he can barely remember your name. But there’s one thing he has told me.”
“What’s that?” asked Bobby.
“There’s no eye in team,” she replied.
“And what does that mean?” asked Bobby.
Irma looked back at him with the sage expression of a wise old owl.
“I’ve no idea,” she said. “Now follow me, we’ve got work to do.”
Irma turned and walked off through the smartly decorated entrance hall of Queenswood Junior School. Bobby wondered if he should point out the muddy, herb-encrusted footprints she was leaving behind her in a telltale trail which would surely be spotted by anyone who followed, but in the end he decided not to question the spying techniques of such an experienced operative, and simply felt grateful that he had an easy way of tracking someone who, let’s face it, walked considerably faster than he did.
Following in Irma’s footsteps, Bobby wandered past a photographic display of all the Head Boys and Head Girls in the school’s history, which stretched proudly along the corridor like a walk of fame for pint-sized swots that nobody liked. Pausing for a moment to examine the pictures, he called after Irma.
“Good grief,” he said, “have you seen 1983? Was that the year the freak show came to town?”
Irma did not respond. She was crossing the main hall and making for the stairs to the first floor. Bobby dawdled after her. Reaching the foot of the stairs, Irma turned to check for her companion.
“Come on,” she said impatiently, “we don’t have all day.”
She waited for Bobby to catch up, then led him up the stairs and into classroom 4B. Irma made for the teacher’s desk and sat down in a comfy swivel chair.
“Grab a seat,” she said, “we have a lot to discuss.”
Bobby looked at the choice of seating on offer, and reluctantly selected a hard plastic chair without arms, which stood no more than a foot off the ground. Resting his chin on his knees, he tried to make himself comfortable, before deciding he’d feel more at home on a desk. He repositioned himself at the front of the class, legs swinging like a rebellious eight-year-old.
“Ok,” said Irma, breathing in deeply, “here’s the situation. When it comes to the D Generation, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Bobby.
“For a start, we think it’s cow-coloured,” replied Irma.
“I know,” confirmed Bobby.
“Which presents us with a problem,” added Irma.
“Does it?” asked Bobby.
“It does,” replied Irma. “Bobby, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified information. It is not to be divulged to anyone, anywhere at any time, regardless of the extremes of physical or mental duress you may be placed under.”
She looked Bobby in the eye. He looked back, unconsciously biting his nails.
“By which,” Irma continued, “I mean torture. Bobby, if this information were to fall into the wrong hands, it could bring down governments, cost tens of thousands of lives, and perhaps even change the world as we know it. You must take what I am about to say to your grave.”
Bobby looked serious. As serious as he could look whilst sitting on a school desk and swinging his legs.
“Go on,” he said.
Irma inhaled deeply, then spoke softly, yet clearly, and with a powerful and fiery intensity which resonated strongly within the depths of Bobby’s soul.
“Bobby,” she said, “I have a cow phobia.”
“You what?” replied Bobby, in a tone which perhaps lacked the respect she’d been hoping for.
“I’m scared of cows,” she clarified.
“So?”
“Mr Macula,” she said indignantly, “I don’t think you’re quite grasping the seriousness of this situation. I’m lactose intolerant to the point of fainting. Dairy-free isn’t a lifestyle choice, it’s what stands between me and abject terror.”
“At the risk of repeating myself,” said Bobby, about to repeat himself, “so?”
“I can’t get within twelve feet of an udder.”
Bobby was tempted to go for a third ‘so’, but he held back.
“The D Generation isn’t a cow,” he pointed out.
“It’s cow-coloured,” came the reply.
“So?” said Bobby, in a moment of weakness.
“Mr Macula,” replied Irma, “I only have to see a black patch on white leather, and I pass out. I can feel faint at the sight of a Jack Russell. Catch a glimpse of a zebra in the wrong light, and I get palpitations.”
Bobby wondered how often Irma came across zebras in semi-darkness, but he decided not to ask.
“So what’s the highly classified information?” he said.
“That is,” replied Irma.
“I thought you said it could bring down governments?”
“Given the right circumstances, yes.”
“It doesn’t seem that likely.”
“Bobby,” said Irma, “look around you. There hasn’t been a bottle of free school milk in this classroom for thirty years. Ask yourself who’s to blame for that fact?”
“Thatcher?” he suggested.
“That’s what they’d like you to think,” replied Irma. “If it emerged that the ban was, in fact, brought about by a highly secretive, yet devastatingly effective, anti-cow pressure group led by a young orthoptist driven by pure bovine terror, it would shake the British establishment to its very foundations.”
“You’re telling me that you were responsible for ending free school milk in the 1970s?” asked Bobby, incredulously.
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” replied Irma, mysteriously.
“Ok,” said Bobby, about to ignore that instruction three times, “so what’s this got to do with the current situation? With the D Generation? With my role in all this?”
“Bobby,” said Irma, “my cow phobia is the reason you’re here.”
“I’m not a psychotherapist,” he replied. “I mean, sure, I’ve learnt to work through a lot of issues; I’ve been to hell and back with the fallout from a tortoise-drowning; I’ve suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder -”
“I thought that was medically unconfirmed?” Irma interrupted.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” Bobby stated, matter-of-factly. “All I’m saying is that I’ve suffered. But that doesn’t make me qualified to cure a fruit loop like you. At best, I can photograph your retinas and take a basic eye history.”
“You misunderstand me,” replied Irma, refusing to take offence at Bobby’s medical diagnosis of her mental health. “You’re not here to help me mentally. You’re here to help me physically. Surely you must have questioned why The Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health asked for assistance? And from you in particular?”
“They told me everyone else said no. And I’m pre-diabetic.”
“That’s true,” replied Irma, “but why ask for help at all? OOOH has me. And I have experience. And the ability to break necks like breadsticks. I could take on and defeat a five-legged retinopathy-screening monstrosity both single-handedly and with one arm tied behind my back.”
“They amount to the same thing,” Bobby pointed out.
“But not,” Irma ignored him, “if it’s cow-coloured.”
Bobby looked indignant. “So I’m here to do your job while you cower in the bushes?”
“Don’t use the word ‘cower’,” she said, “it brings me out in sweats. And make no mistake: I’ll be pulling my weight in this partnership. But I can’t do it alone. I have the experience, the expertise, the knowledge, the skills and, above all, the wanton killer instinct. But I can’t get within poking distance of anything bovine. Even just cosmetically.”
“That’s a stroke of luck for the opticians,” said Bobby.
“Is it?” replied Irma. “Or did they plan it all along?”
“Well, not if your cow phobia is top secret,” Bobby pointed out.
“Top secret, yes,” said Irma, “but not completely unknown. To my knowledge, there are two people alive in this world who know how I feel about cows. Three, counting you.”
“And they are?”
“Sir Roger Logmar...”
“And..?”
“Thatcher.”
“You think Margaret Thatcher’s in with the opticians?” said Bobby, dubiously.
“I don’t know,” replied Irma. “All I’m saying is that forty years after forcing her to endure public vilification by taking the rap for ending universal free school milk, a group of black hat opticians come up with a cow-coloured, man-eating bio-organism capable of detecting diabetic retinopathy without eye drops. Surely that can’t be coincidence?”
Bobby felt this might be a use of the word ‘surely’ that he hadn’t previously come across.
“I think it’s wise to keep an open mind,” he said.
“Milk Snatcher,” said Irma, solemnly. “Those words stung.”
“I’m sure they did,” replied Bobby, “but I can think of easier ways to take revenge.”
“Such as?”
“She could let a Friesian loose in your garden.”
“Maybe,” said Irma. “Although I bought my council house, and put up a cattle grid. The fact remains, however: there’s a murdering, monstrous killing machine out there; the only agent qualified to stop it is me; and I can’t look it in the leather without a crash trolley and three tanks of oxygen.”
Bobby sighed. He’d heard some excuses in his time. Mainly from Fatima when he’d found her with thirty-seven empty crisp packets and a cleavage full of crumbs. But this one took the biscuit. As did Fatima, regularly, and with little concern for her waistline. He suspected that Irma’s tales of cows were just a load of bullocks, and she was milking the situation in an effort to butter him up, but he knew that the human mind was a complex machine. He’d been pushed to the brink by a tortoise. Who knows what a cow could do? Looking at the undercover agent in front of him, the parsley garnishing her shoes, and the manure on her trousers, he resolved to give Irma the benefit of the doubt.
“Ok,” he said, reluctantly, “if you tell me what we need to do, I’m willing to do it. Within reason, of course. I’m not scared of cows, but I’m no killer either. At best, I can grill a beefburger to within an inch of its life.”
Irma looked at once relieved, pleased and determined.
“That’s all I need,” she replied.
Bobby wondered if she was planning a barbecue. For a moment, at least. Within seconds, his thoughts were interrupted by a blood-curdling scream.
“Don’t say it again,” replied Irma, as if anticipating that fact.
“‘Is that a crowbar in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?’” he finished.
Irma rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know why you had to take offence,” he added. “Especially as it was a crowbar.”
“Well I certainly wasn’t pleased to see you,” replied Irma.
“Hey,” said Bobby, “if it wasn’t for me, we’d still be outside with the alarm going off. You’re just grumpy because you’re full of shit.”
Irma looked down at the manure on her spying trousers. She was grumpy, it was true. She’d momentarily lost her cool, let the situation get to her, and run into a compost heap. For Irma Drusen, the legendary poster girl of undercover ophthalmology, it had been a bad day at the office.
“Look,” she said, “let’s just draw a line under this episode and start again. We’ve got off on the wrong foot...” She looked down at the toe she’d stubbed on the badly painted gnome. “... but if we’re going to stand any chance of defeating the D Generation, we need to work together. An effective, cohesive unit, combining our skills and our strengths. And I know we can do it. Sir Roger speaks very highly of you.”
“Really?” said Bobby, surprised.
“Well, no,” replied Irma, “I was just being polite. Two days ago, he’d never heard of you. Even now, he can barely remember your name. But there’s one thing he has told me.”
“What’s that?” asked Bobby.
“There’s no eye in team,” she replied.
“And what does that mean?” asked Bobby.
Irma looked back at him with the sage expression of a wise old owl.
“I’ve no idea,” she said. “Now follow me, we’ve got work to do.”
Irma turned and walked off through the smartly decorated entrance hall of Queenswood Junior School. Bobby wondered if he should point out the muddy, herb-encrusted footprints she was leaving behind her in a telltale trail which would surely be spotted by anyone who followed, but in the end he decided not to question the spying techniques of such an experienced operative, and simply felt grateful that he had an easy way of tracking someone who, let’s face it, walked considerably faster than he did.
Following in Irma’s footsteps, Bobby wandered past a photographic display of all the Head Boys and Head Girls in the school’s history, which stretched proudly along the corridor like a walk of fame for pint-sized swots that nobody liked. Pausing for a moment to examine the pictures, he called after Irma.
“Good grief,” he said, “have you seen 1983? Was that the year the freak show came to town?”
Irma did not respond. She was crossing the main hall and making for the stairs to the first floor. Bobby dawdled after her. Reaching the foot of the stairs, Irma turned to check for her companion.
“Come on,” she said impatiently, “we don’t have all day.”
She waited for Bobby to catch up, then led him up the stairs and into classroom 4B. Irma made for the teacher’s desk and sat down in a comfy swivel chair.
“Grab a seat,” she said, “we have a lot to discuss.”
Bobby looked at the choice of seating on offer, and reluctantly selected a hard plastic chair without arms, which stood no more than a foot off the ground. Resting his chin on his knees, he tried to make himself comfortable, before deciding he’d feel more at home on a desk. He repositioned himself at the front of the class, legs swinging like a rebellious eight-year-old.
“Ok,” said Irma, breathing in deeply, “here’s the situation. When it comes to the D Generation, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns; there are things we do not know we don’t know.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Bobby.
“For a start, we think it’s cow-coloured,” replied Irma.
“I know,” confirmed Bobby.
“Which presents us with a problem,” added Irma.
“Does it?” asked Bobby.
“It does,” replied Irma. “Bobby, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified information. It is not to be divulged to anyone, anywhere at any time, regardless of the extremes of physical or mental duress you may be placed under.”
She looked Bobby in the eye. He looked back, unconsciously biting his nails.
“By which,” Irma continued, “I mean torture. Bobby, if this information were to fall into the wrong hands, it could bring down governments, cost tens of thousands of lives, and perhaps even change the world as we know it. You must take what I am about to say to your grave.”
Bobby looked serious. As serious as he could look whilst sitting on a school desk and swinging his legs.
“Go on,” he said.
Irma inhaled deeply, then spoke softly, yet clearly, and with a powerful and fiery intensity which resonated strongly within the depths of Bobby’s soul.
“Bobby,” she said, “I have a cow phobia.”
“You what?” replied Bobby, in a tone which perhaps lacked the respect she’d been hoping for.
“I’m scared of cows,” she clarified.
“So?”
“Mr Macula,” she said indignantly, “I don’t think you’re quite grasping the seriousness of this situation. I’m lactose intolerant to the point of fainting. Dairy-free isn’t a lifestyle choice, it’s what stands between me and abject terror.”
“At the risk of repeating myself,” said Bobby, about to repeat himself, “so?”
“I can’t get within twelve feet of an udder.”
Bobby was tempted to go for a third ‘so’, but he held back.
“The D Generation isn’t a cow,” he pointed out.
“It’s cow-coloured,” came the reply.
“So?” said Bobby, in a moment of weakness.
“Mr Macula,” replied Irma, “I only have to see a black patch on white leather, and I pass out. I can feel faint at the sight of a Jack Russell. Catch a glimpse of a zebra in the wrong light, and I get palpitations.”
Bobby wondered how often Irma came across zebras in semi-darkness, but he decided not to ask.
“So what’s the highly classified information?” he said.
“That is,” replied Irma.
“I thought you said it could bring down governments?”
“Given the right circumstances, yes.”
“It doesn’t seem that likely.”
“Bobby,” said Irma, “look around you. There hasn’t been a bottle of free school milk in this classroom for thirty years. Ask yourself who’s to blame for that fact?”
“Thatcher?” he suggested.
“That’s what they’d like you to think,” replied Irma. “If it emerged that the ban was, in fact, brought about by a highly secretive, yet devastatingly effective, anti-cow pressure group led by a young orthoptist driven by pure bovine terror, it would shake the British establishment to its very foundations.”
“You’re telling me that you were responsible for ending free school milk in the 1970s?” asked Bobby, incredulously.
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” replied Irma, mysteriously.
“Ok,” said Bobby, about to ignore that instruction three times, “so what’s this got to do with the current situation? With the D Generation? With my role in all this?”
“Bobby,” said Irma, “my cow phobia is the reason you’re here.”
“I’m not a psychotherapist,” he replied. “I mean, sure, I’ve learnt to work through a lot of issues; I’ve been to hell and back with the fallout from a tortoise-drowning; I’ve suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder -”
“I thought that was medically unconfirmed?” Irma interrupted.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” Bobby stated, matter-of-factly. “All I’m saying is that I’ve suffered. But that doesn’t make me qualified to cure a fruit loop like you. At best, I can photograph your retinas and take a basic eye history.”
“You misunderstand me,” replied Irma, refusing to take offence at Bobby’s medical diagnosis of her mental health. “You’re not here to help me mentally. You’re here to help me physically. Surely you must have questioned why The Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health asked for assistance? And from you in particular?”
“They told me everyone else said no. And I’m pre-diabetic.”
“That’s true,” replied Irma, “but why ask for help at all? OOOH has me. And I have experience. And the ability to break necks like breadsticks. I could take on and defeat a five-legged retinopathy-screening monstrosity both single-handedly and with one arm tied behind my back.”
“They amount to the same thing,” Bobby pointed out.
“But not,” Irma ignored him, “if it’s cow-coloured.”
Bobby looked indignant. “So I’m here to do your job while you cower in the bushes?”
“Don’t use the word ‘cower’,” she said, “it brings me out in sweats. And make no mistake: I’ll be pulling my weight in this partnership. But I can’t do it alone. I have the experience, the expertise, the knowledge, the skills and, above all, the wanton killer instinct. But I can’t get within poking distance of anything bovine. Even just cosmetically.”
“That’s a stroke of luck for the opticians,” said Bobby.
“Is it?” replied Irma. “Or did they plan it all along?”
“Well, not if your cow phobia is top secret,” Bobby pointed out.
“Top secret, yes,” said Irma, “but not completely unknown. To my knowledge, there are two people alive in this world who know how I feel about cows. Three, counting you.”
“And they are?”
“Sir Roger Logmar...”
“And..?”
“Thatcher.”
“You think Margaret Thatcher’s in with the opticians?” said Bobby, dubiously.
“I don’t know,” replied Irma. “All I’m saying is that forty years after forcing her to endure public vilification by taking the rap for ending universal free school milk, a group of black hat opticians come up with a cow-coloured, man-eating bio-organism capable of detecting diabetic retinopathy without eye drops. Surely that can’t be coincidence?”
Bobby felt this might be a use of the word ‘surely’ that he hadn’t previously come across.
“I think it’s wise to keep an open mind,” he said.
“Milk Snatcher,” said Irma, solemnly. “Those words stung.”
“I’m sure they did,” replied Bobby, “but I can think of easier ways to take revenge.”
“Such as?”
“She could let a Friesian loose in your garden.”
“Maybe,” said Irma. “Although I bought my council house, and put up a cattle grid. The fact remains, however: there’s a murdering, monstrous killing machine out there; the only agent qualified to stop it is me; and I can’t look it in the leather without a crash trolley and three tanks of oxygen.”
Bobby sighed. He’d heard some excuses in his time. Mainly from Fatima when he’d found her with thirty-seven empty crisp packets and a cleavage full of crumbs. But this one took the biscuit. As did Fatima, regularly, and with little concern for her waistline. He suspected that Irma’s tales of cows were just a load of bullocks, and she was milking the situation in an effort to butter him up, but he knew that the human mind was a complex machine. He’d been pushed to the brink by a tortoise. Who knows what a cow could do? Looking at the undercover agent in front of him, the parsley garnishing her shoes, and the manure on her trousers, he resolved to give Irma the benefit of the doubt.
“Ok,” he said, reluctantly, “if you tell me what we need to do, I’m willing to do it. Within reason, of course. I’m not scared of cows, but I’m no killer either. At best, I can grill a beefburger to within an inch of its life.”
Irma looked at once relieved, pleased and determined.
“That’s all I need,” she replied.
Bobby wondered if she was planning a barbecue. For a moment, at least. Within seconds, his thoughts were interrupted by a blood-curdling scream.
Thursday 18 November 2010
Chapter Fifteen
Mavis Clutter watched as Irma Drusen led Bobby Macula away from the poplar trees, across the playing field and towards the main entrance of Queenswood Junior School. From a distance of perhaps fifty metres, she surveyed the scene before her, watching as Irma climbed onto a recycling bin, rolled up her sleeves and began to jimmy open a side window with a crowbar she’d produced from the pocket of her jet-black, bespoke spying trousers.
As if to honour the good work being carried out in Essex by the Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health, a peal of bells instantly rang out across the playing field. They were the bells of a burglar alarm, at once deafening, urgent, incessant, and ignored by everyone within a half mile radius. Irma lost her balance and fell off the recycling bin, the crowbar flying out of her hand and into the window of the caretaker’s storage shed opposite. A second alarm rang out. Scrambling to her feet, Irma ran across the Year 6 herb garden, waving her arms and shouting something indiscernible as Bobby stood motionless by the front entrance.
As Irma passed him at speed, tripped over a crudely painted gnome, and landed face down in a compost heap, Bobby noticed something at his feet. He bent down, picked up an inverted flowerpot, and found a key beneath. Holding it up momentarily for his colleague to see, he tried it in the door marked ‘Main Entrance’. It duly opened in front of him.
Mavis watched as the lovely pair of the OOOH matron and her newfound sidekick, Bobby, disappeared into the school. Moments later, the ringing of the alarm came to an abrupt end, and silence once again filled the cold November air.
A wry smile spread slowly across Mavis Clutter’s face. She looked down at her feet, at the ropes which bound her ankles, then up at her wrists, which were similarly tied. Apparently unbothered by the predicament in which she found herself, she calmly flexed the joints of her right arm, bent her wrist at an impossible angle and, employing a technique she’d learnt in 1989 at the ‘Escape from New Yorkshire’ escapology conference just outside Barnsley, she slipped her right hand effortlessly out of the rope.
Loosening her remaining bonds a little with her free hand, she did the same with the left, before reaching into the right pocket of her cardigan. Her hand emerged moments later clutching a silver cigarette lighter and a Panatella cigar. She lit the latter with the former, and took a long drag, inhaling deeply, then blowing out the smoke with an almost endless sigh of satisfaction. Pausing briefly to savour the moment, she returned the lighter to her pocket, held the cigar between her teeth, and lifted the bottom hem of her blouse to reveal a colostomy bag.
Mavis checked all around her, then, satisfied that there was no one nearby, she opened the colostomy bag and removed a small, sealed package no more than four inches long. Shaking it clean, she opened it, and removed the item inside. It was a mobile phone.
A glance towards the school confirmed that she was alone. Tapping a number into the keypad, she held the phone to her ear.
“It’s me,” she said. “I’m at ground zero. Everything’s going according to plan. I’ll call you when they’re dead.”
As if to honour the good work being carried out in Essex by the Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health, a peal of bells instantly rang out across the playing field. They were the bells of a burglar alarm, at once deafening, urgent, incessant, and ignored by everyone within a half mile radius. Irma lost her balance and fell off the recycling bin, the crowbar flying out of her hand and into the window of the caretaker’s storage shed opposite. A second alarm rang out. Scrambling to her feet, Irma ran across the Year 6 herb garden, waving her arms and shouting something indiscernible as Bobby stood motionless by the front entrance.
As Irma passed him at speed, tripped over a crudely painted gnome, and landed face down in a compost heap, Bobby noticed something at his feet. He bent down, picked up an inverted flowerpot, and found a key beneath. Holding it up momentarily for his colleague to see, he tried it in the door marked ‘Main Entrance’. It duly opened in front of him.
Mavis watched as the lovely pair of the OOOH matron and her newfound sidekick, Bobby, disappeared into the school. Moments later, the ringing of the alarm came to an abrupt end, and silence once again filled the cold November air.
A wry smile spread slowly across Mavis Clutter’s face. She looked down at her feet, at the ropes which bound her ankles, then up at her wrists, which were similarly tied. Apparently unbothered by the predicament in which she found herself, she calmly flexed the joints of her right arm, bent her wrist at an impossible angle and, employing a technique she’d learnt in 1989 at the ‘Escape from New Yorkshire’ escapology conference just outside Barnsley, she slipped her right hand effortlessly out of the rope.
Loosening her remaining bonds a little with her free hand, she did the same with the left, before reaching into the right pocket of her cardigan. Her hand emerged moments later clutching a silver cigarette lighter and a Panatella cigar. She lit the latter with the former, and took a long drag, inhaling deeply, then blowing out the smoke with an almost endless sigh of satisfaction. Pausing briefly to savour the moment, she returned the lighter to her pocket, held the cigar between her teeth, and lifted the bottom hem of her blouse to reveal a colostomy bag.
Mavis checked all around her, then, satisfied that there was no one nearby, she opened the colostomy bag and removed a small, sealed package no more than four inches long. Shaking it clean, she opened it, and removed the item inside. It was a mobile phone.
A glance towards the school confirmed that she was alone. Tapping a number into the keypad, she held the phone to her ear.
“It’s me,” she said. “I’m at ground zero. Everything’s going according to plan. I’ll call you when they’re dead.”
Wednesday 17 November 2010
Chapter Fourteen
Bobby Macula tightened the rope firmly around the base of the tree trunk, and secured it with a knot. Stepping back, he took a moment to admire his handiwork. Two rows of poplar trees stretched away from him like neat lines of cocaine on the back of a toilet seat in a city-centre nightclub. Poplar opinion suggested that they’d once lined the driveway to a farmhouse, which had long since been demolished to make way for a 1950s new town. Now they merely served as goalposts for the numerous football matches held daily by the children who played on the school field in which they stood.
There were a dozen trees, in two lines of six, perhaps eight metres apart, and Bobby had secured the rope to the first. A second rope was tied to the base of its opposite number, a third to its lowest branches, and a fourth served to match it on the other side. The ropes met in the centre of the avenue, secured at four points in an approximate square. It was a square formed by the limbs of Mavis Clutter.
Bobby surveyed the situation. “If Fay Wray was alive today,” he said, “she’d be proud of that workmanship.”
Mavis looked back at him from a standing position, legs akimbo, her body frozen in a permanent star jump by the ropes attached to her wrists and ankles.
“You really think,” she said, “that this will cure my back pain?”
“Absolutely,” replied Bobby. “It’s all about stretching the spine. Chiropractors charge a fortune for this kind of therapy.”
Bobby turned to the shadowy figure standing in the gathering gloom behind him.
“What do you think?” he said.
Irma Drusen stroked her chin thoughtfully. “I like it,” she said. “Now give her some Lucozade.”
* * *
It was dusk on a cold autumnal Saturday. From the charred remains of spent fireworks which littered the grass of the playing field, it could only be early November. Or Christmas. Or indeed New Year. Or possibly mid-summer after some kind of sporting event or family barbecue. Let’s face it, it could be just about any time of year, but on this occasion it was November, and Bobby was in Essex. Quite how he’d come to be there, he wasn’t entirely sure. He could remember the journey, the National Express coach, the endless hours sat next to Mavis Clutter and the pointless tales of her cats. What he couldn’t recall was ever having said yes to any of this.
Nevertheless, here he was: tying up a pensioner on a school playing field in Basildon, in the hope of attracting a cow-coloured, man-eating, retinopathy-screening mean machine, possibly with five legs, although that had yet to be confirmed. He wondered how his life had come to this. And if there was any way back. Looking into the distance, past the church on the corner, he pondered his chances of ever finding his way back to the bus depot.
Out of the corner of his eye, something moved. Bobby adjusted his view and looked towards the vicarage. He watched as the frosted glass of a small window at the front of the house opened and a face appeared, indistinct from this distance, yet clearly visible. Something fell from the window, something small, something yellow. From where he stood, Bobby could not accurately identify it without the use of a pinhole occluder, but as it hit the ground, a faint noise rang out and carried across the road in the still evening air, rustling through the branches of the poplar trees opposite. It sounded like a quack. It was followed by a curse. Then a short prayer for forgiveness.
Bobby recalled the final words spoken to him by Sir Roger Logmar as he and Mavis boarded the coach in Oxford city centre: “There’s no eye in team,” he’d said. Bobby still had no idea what he meant. They’d ridden that coach as far as the South Mimms services on the M25, where Sir Roger had instructed them to switch vehicles in an attempt to throw any would-be followers off the scent. Bobby had politely pointed out that they were unlikely to bump into the D Generation buying a Ginsters pasty at a Welcome Break service station on the M25, and that any undercover optician worth his salt would be fully capable of reading a coach number plate at a distance of twenty metres, thereby recognising the swap, and rendering their change of vehicle meaningless.
For his part, Roger had informed Bobby that he hadn’t got where he is today by taking things for granted, and that given the incomplete nature of OOOH’s dossier on the creature, no such assumptions could be made, and that for all anyone knows, it regularly eats at Julie’s Pantry. At which point they’d agreed to disagree, and Bobby had gone along with the plan to change coaches.
Boarding the National Express service from Stevenage to Southend, Bobby and Mavis had disembarked at Basildon Bus Station, where they’d successfully rendezvoused with Irma. She’d held up a handwritten sign which read ‘DRUSEN: MACULA CLUTTER’, and they’d spotted her immediately, Bobby introducing them both, as Mavis took her coat off. After a brief period of small-talk, during which they all agreed that it gets dark very early these days, but is definitely not as cold as it used to be, Irma had led them out of the bus depot, and past a police cordon surrounding ‘Raquel’s’ nightclub on the corner. Bobby had been intrigued by the white-suited forensic team carrying what appeared to be human body parts out of the building in large plastic bags, but he’d never visited Essex before, and assumed it was par for the course.
The walk up Clay Hill Road had taken perhaps ten minutes, not including the regular pauses for Mavis to rest her aching feet and express her disgust at the way the current government treats pensioners. All in all, it had taken them three hours. Bobby had suggested getting a taxi, but Irma was keen to avoid leaving a paper trail of financial transactions, and Mavis expressed a reluctance to “feed the fat cats on the council”. Which Bobby found ironic, as she wouldn’t shut up about her own. Cats, not council.
By the time they’d reached Queenswood Junior School, the sun was setting, not just on that cold November day, but also on Bobby’s resolve to do anything meaningful before nightfall. It was all he could do to muster the physical and mental strength to tie Mavis Clutter to a couple of trees with large ropes.
As he poured the last drops of Lucozade down the trussed-up pensioner’s throat, Bobby turned to Irma Drusen.
“Shall we go to bed?” he said.
Irma looked taken aback. “We’ve only just met,” she replied. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
“No,” he said, “I mean turn in for the night. I’m knackered. Which way’s the hotel?”
“The hotel?”
“Sir Roger said accommodation would be provided.”
“I wouldn’t focus too much on accommodation,” replied Irma, repeating the line that had won her ‘Best of Show’ at the 2004 ‘Jocular Ocular’ comedy festival in Beirut. It was wasted on Bobby Macula, who looked at her with an expression of tired disappointment and vacant bewilderment. Irma wondered if it wasn’t too late to resurrect her old stand-up career, and perhaps get some work on the after dinner circuit. She resolved to do more writing in her spare time, and perhaps the occasional open mic spot at ophthalmology conferences across Europe the following year.
“So where are we sleeping?” asked Bobby.
“I’ve set up a bed in the school,” replied Irma. “Well, I say bed. It’s more of a story mat. But it’s within easy reach of the nature table, so if you get hungry, there are nuts, berries and a cool glass of rain water.”
Bobby screwed up his face a little. The “deadly game of Eye Spy” that Sir Roger had promised him, was beginning to sound a bit like a camping trip for underprivileged orphans. He wondered if things could get any worse.
“But if you think you’ll be getting any sleep tonight,” added Irma, “you’re sadly mistaken.”
Bobby regretted tempting fate.
There were a dozen trees, in two lines of six, perhaps eight metres apart, and Bobby had secured the rope to the first. A second rope was tied to the base of its opposite number, a third to its lowest branches, and a fourth served to match it on the other side. The ropes met in the centre of the avenue, secured at four points in an approximate square. It was a square formed by the limbs of Mavis Clutter.
Bobby surveyed the situation. “If Fay Wray was alive today,” he said, “she’d be proud of that workmanship.”
Mavis looked back at him from a standing position, legs akimbo, her body frozen in a permanent star jump by the ropes attached to her wrists and ankles.
“You really think,” she said, “that this will cure my back pain?”
“Absolutely,” replied Bobby. “It’s all about stretching the spine. Chiropractors charge a fortune for this kind of therapy.”
Bobby turned to the shadowy figure standing in the gathering gloom behind him.
“What do you think?” he said.
Irma Drusen stroked her chin thoughtfully. “I like it,” she said. “Now give her some Lucozade.”
It was dusk on a cold autumnal Saturday. From the charred remains of spent fireworks which littered the grass of the playing field, it could only be early November. Or Christmas. Or indeed New Year. Or possibly mid-summer after some kind of sporting event or family barbecue. Let’s face it, it could be just about any time of year, but on this occasion it was November, and Bobby was in Essex. Quite how he’d come to be there, he wasn’t entirely sure. He could remember the journey, the National Express coach, the endless hours sat next to Mavis Clutter and the pointless tales of her cats. What he couldn’t recall was ever having said yes to any of this.
Nevertheless, here he was: tying up a pensioner on a school playing field in Basildon, in the hope of attracting a cow-coloured, man-eating, retinopathy-screening mean machine, possibly with five legs, although that had yet to be confirmed. He wondered how his life had come to this. And if there was any way back. Looking into the distance, past the church on the corner, he pondered his chances of ever finding his way back to the bus depot.
Out of the corner of his eye, something moved. Bobby adjusted his view and looked towards the vicarage. He watched as the frosted glass of a small window at the front of the house opened and a face appeared, indistinct from this distance, yet clearly visible. Something fell from the window, something small, something yellow. From where he stood, Bobby could not accurately identify it without the use of a pinhole occluder, but as it hit the ground, a faint noise rang out and carried across the road in the still evening air, rustling through the branches of the poplar trees opposite. It sounded like a quack. It was followed by a curse. Then a short prayer for forgiveness.
Bobby recalled the final words spoken to him by Sir Roger Logmar as he and Mavis boarded the coach in Oxford city centre: “There’s no eye in team,” he’d said. Bobby still had no idea what he meant. They’d ridden that coach as far as the South Mimms services on the M25, where Sir Roger had instructed them to switch vehicles in an attempt to throw any would-be followers off the scent. Bobby had politely pointed out that they were unlikely to bump into the D Generation buying a Ginsters pasty at a Welcome Break service station on the M25, and that any undercover optician worth his salt would be fully capable of reading a coach number plate at a distance of twenty metres, thereby recognising the swap, and rendering their change of vehicle meaningless.
For his part, Roger had informed Bobby that he hadn’t got where he is today by taking things for granted, and that given the incomplete nature of OOOH’s dossier on the creature, no such assumptions could be made, and that for all anyone knows, it regularly eats at Julie’s Pantry. At which point they’d agreed to disagree, and Bobby had gone along with the plan to change coaches.
Boarding the National Express service from Stevenage to Southend, Bobby and Mavis had disembarked at Basildon Bus Station, where they’d successfully rendezvoused with Irma. She’d held up a handwritten sign which read ‘DRUSEN: MACULA CLUTTER’, and they’d spotted her immediately, Bobby introducing them both, as Mavis took her coat off. After a brief period of small-talk, during which they all agreed that it gets dark very early these days, but is definitely not as cold as it used to be, Irma had led them out of the bus depot, and past a police cordon surrounding ‘Raquel’s’ nightclub on the corner. Bobby had been intrigued by the white-suited forensic team carrying what appeared to be human body parts out of the building in large plastic bags, but he’d never visited Essex before, and assumed it was par for the course.
The walk up Clay Hill Road had taken perhaps ten minutes, not including the regular pauses for Mavis to rest her aching feet and express her disgust at the way the current government treats pensioners. All in all, it had taken them three hours. Bobby had suggested getting a taxi, but Irma was keen to avoid leaving a paper trail of financial transactions, and Mavis expressed a reluctance to “feed the fat cats on the council”. Which Bobby found ironic, as she wouldn’t shut up about her own. Cats, not council.
By the time they’d reached Queenswood Junior School, the sun was setting, not just on that cold November day, but also on Bobby’s resolve to do anything meaningful before nightfall. It was all he could do to muster the physical and mental strength to tie Mavis Clutter to a couple of trees with large ropes.
As he poured the last drops of Lucozade down the trussed-up pensioner’s throat, Bobby turned to Irma Drusen.
“Shall we go to bed?” he said.
Irma looked taken aback. “We’ve only just met,” she replied. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
“No,” he said, “I mean turn in for the night. I’m knackered. Which way’s the hotel?”
“The hotel?”
“Sir Roger said accommodation would be provided.”
“I wouldn’t focus too much on accommodation,” replied Irma, repeating the line that had won her ‘Best of Show’ at the 2004 ‘Jocular Ocular’ comedy festival in Beirut. It was wasted on Bobby Macula, who looked at her with an expression of tired disappointment and vacant bewilderment. Irma wondered if it wasn’t too late to resurrect her old stand-up career, and perhaps get some work on the after dinner circuit. She resolved to do more writing in her spare time, and perhaps the occasional open mic spot at ophthalmology conferences across Europe the following year.
“So where are we sleeping?” asked Bobby.
“I’ve set up a bed in the school,” replied Irma. “Well, I say bed. It’s more of a story mat. But it’s within easy reach of the nature table, so if you get hungry, there are nuts, berries and a cool glass of rain water.”
Bobby screwed up his face a little. The “deadly game of Eye Spy” that Sir Roger had promised him, was beginning to sound a bit like a camping trip for underprivileged orphans. He wondered if things could get any worse.
“But if you think you’ll be getting any sleep tonight,” added Irma, “you’re sadly mistaken.”
Bobby regretted tempting fate.
Monday 15 November 2010
Chapter Thirteen
Bobby brushed a few croissant crumbs from his lap and looked at his watch. It was almost midday. High noon for his career, he thought, or time for an early lunch? Considering his options for a moment, Bobby’s eyes came to rest on a framed photograph of Sir Roger Logmar which sat before him on the Director General’s desk. It depicted him standing on a large stage, waving to an enthusiastic audience of several thousand people, all cheering and applauding with gusto. Beneath, two words were printed in capital letters: ‘THE BOSS’.
Impressed by the power and influence of the man before him, and by the sheer love and admiration he garnered from so many people, Bobby found himself viewing Sir Roger in an entirely new, and wholly favourable, light. Before realising that he’d simply Photoshopped his face onto a picture of Bruce Springsteen.
As if sensing the wandering mind of his protégé, and the need for some urgent stimulation, Sir Roger Logmar stepped in. “Ivor,” he said, looking to the left at his right hand man, “get Bobby a drink.”
Bobby’s hopes were raised momentarily, and then instantly dashed as Snellen stood up, walked straight past the mini-bar, and made his way over to the ‘Mr Coffee-matic’ machine at the side of the room.
“Bobby,” Sir Roger said, looking back in his direction, “as I’m sure you’ve realised by now, the D Generation is the fourth incarnation of retinopathy screening bio-organism to be created.”
Bobby hadn’t realised, but he chose to keep quiet.
“The A Generation was the first,” Logmar continued, “and was duly followed by versions B and C. They had one thing in common.”
Bobby raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“They were crap,” said Sir Roger. “The A Generation was little more than a petri dish of microbes, a primordial soup, a mish-mash of genetic croutons and vegetable matter served up with a few silicon chips.”
Bobby was starting to feel hungry. He wondered if he should have opted for the early lunch.
“Things began to take shape with the B Generation,” Sir Roger continued. “For the first time, the opticians succeeded in creating a living, breathing creature, but it resembled a hamster and had the memory of a goldfish. It was cute to look at, but of little practical use. Nevertheless, we decided to stamp down on their research. Quite literally in fact. Irma takes size nine boots.”
Sir Roger paused as Ivor Snellen returned from the coffee machine with two polystyrene cups. He gave one to each of his companions, before returning to fetch a third for himself.
“Unfortunately,” said Sir Roger, “the opticians were not discouraged by the little ‘accident’ which had befallen their creation. They pressed on with a third generation, a far more ambitious organism, capable of genuine diagnosis and patient interaction. No photos exist of the creature, and video footage is thought to have been destroyed, but it was said to be comparable to a monkey with the face of a gerbil, if you can imagine such a thing.”
Bobby pictured his old geography teacher.
“The C Generation was at least partly successful,” said Sir Roger. “It possessed the ability to view the retinas of diabetic patients without pupil dilation, and to communicate what it saw. But it was hopelessly inaccurate. Pigment was referred as R3, new vessels as background retinopathy, and in one clinical trial, it classed a malignant melanoma as dust on the lens. Which is particularly worrying as they weren’t using cameras.”
Sir Roger took a sip of his coffee.
“How many sugars did you put in this, Ivor?” he said, a look of distaste on his face.
“One,” came the reply.
“Good God man, I’m not diabetic,” said Logmar. “I need at least three. And get me a biscuit while you’re over there.”
Snellen picked up two sachets of sugar, and a packet of gingernuts, before returning to his seat. He placed the supplies on Sir Roger’s desk.
“With you around, Snellen, it’s a miracle we don’t all hypo,” muttered Sir Roger, opening the biscuits.
Snellen ignored him. His boss was always grumpy when his blood glucose levels dipped.
“So,” said Sir Roger, speaking with his mouth full, “the C Generation was a failure, but it taught the opticians a great deal. They knew what could be done, and where they’d gone wrong, and they learnt from their mistakes. A year later they were back, and this time they meant business. The new and improved D Generation was everything we feared it would be. Fast, powerful, and freakishly accurate, it could glance at the eyes of a diabetic, and within seconds announce the results of a full disease grade. In clinical trials, it was never wrong. Not even once.”
“Rendering a second disease grade meaningless,” added Snellen, helping himself to a biscuit.
“Within weeks,” Sir Roger continued, “the opticians had built a simple touch-screen system, and trained the creature to use it. Even allowing for feeding, comfort breaks, and the use of a handler, it is estimated that the creature could screen the entire diabetic population of a town the size of Leamington Spa in just twelve hours. In the time it took a pensioner to walk into the room unaided, the creature could have their retinas analysed, accurately graded and the results letter sent out.
“And more importantly,” added Snellen, “they wouldn’t have time to take their coat off.”
Bobby looked impressed. “So why,” he said, “is all this such a problem? If you ask me, this is the way forward. Instant screening, instant results, no eye drops. It all sounds good to me. If I was diabetic, I’d go for it. Why isn’t this being rolled out across the country?”
“Because something went wrong,” replied Sir Roger, seriously.
“Very badly wrong,” added Snellen, unnecessarily.
“The opticians were on the verge of announcing their creation to the world. A press conference had been arranged; the first clinics had been booked; the creature was about to be unveiled to the media, and every NHS diabetic retinopathy screening programme in the UK was unknowingly on the brink of oblivion.”
“And..?” said Bobby.
“It started eating the patients,” replied Sir Roger.
“What?” Bobby asked, incredulously.
“The D Generation was bred to be more accurate,” replied Logmar, “but genetic engineering is not without its pitfalls. Supreme accuracy came at a cost. The opticians didn’t realise it at the time, of course, but their blinkered attempts to create perfection in one area, had led to mutation in another. A single defective gene. But one with devastating results.”
Sir Roger paused, grim-faced, before continuing:
“It developed a taste for diabetics.”
Bobby looked puzzled. “Why diabetics?” he asked.
“It has a sweet tooth,” replied Sir Roger. “The higher the blood glucose levels, the better. Show me an 18-year-old party girl who won’t take her insulin, and I’ll show you a woman who’ll be dead within a fortnight.”
Bobby swallowed hard. “But surely the creature’s not out there?” he said. “Surely the opticians destroyed it? They couldn’t let such a thing live, could they?”
“You have to understand, Bobby,” said Sir Roger, “that these opticians had invested millions in this plan, spent years on their research, and they were so close to perfection. They hadn’t come so far by being ethical. And they weren’t going to give up now, not with success so nearly in their grasp. Sure, there were those who backed the destruction of the creature, but there were more who felt it could be retrained, re-engineered, persuaded to eat salad. Weaned slowly off the sweetbreads of nephropathic diabetics.”
Bobby felt slightly queasy.
“The result was conflict. Discord in the ranks of opticians nationwide,” Sir Roger continued. “At least, amongst those who knew of the creature’s existence. Even now, there are many who don’t. Hundreds blind to the eye-watering vision of a few blinkered mavericks. But at the top, in the corridors of power and the hallowed halls of optometry, there was first unrest, and then escalating anarchy. And the outcome..?”
Sir Roger awaited an answer to his rhetorical question.
“The creature escaped,” he finished, providing it himself.
Bobby looked slightly alarmed.
“Escaped, my foot,” stated Snellen, dismissively.
“We don’t know the full circumstances, Ivor,” Sir Roger responded. “We have to assume it escaped, but I am not a naive fool. I am fully aware that there are those who may have wished to see the creature live, no matter what the outcome.”
“That thing was released,” said Snellen, “pure and simple. Someone didn’t want it destroyed, and decided to let it go, and now they’re sitting back, happily watching the genocide of Britain’s diabetic population.”
Bobby looked taken aback. He found diabetics annoying at times, but he didn’t wish them dead. At least, not all of them.
“Regardless of the circumstances,” said Sir Roger, “that creature is out there, right now, and it’s feeding. Word reached us some time ago that DNA rates in the Basildon & District Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Programme have gone through the roof. At the same time, the number of new cases of diabetes being diagnosed has fallen. With obesity levels rising all the time, there is only one explanation. The creature’s living it large in Essex.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?” asked Bobby.
“Mr Macula,” replied Sir Roger, ominously, “that thing needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice.”
“Well, I can be extremely prejudiced at the best of times,” said Bobby, “especially against diabetics. And pensioners. I don’t like the blind much either. But I’m not sure it’s my problem. Retinal screening is just a job to me, not a vocation. Now, if it was bottoms, then we’d be talking. But eyes? I can take them or leave them. It’s no skin off my nose if the sugary people snuff it.”
Sir Roger Logmar looked back at the young screener with an unflinching stare.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Bobby, look at you. You’re overweight, unfit, and both your parents have diabetes.”
“How do you know?” questioned Bobby.
“Facebook,” replied Sir Roger. “They’re both listed on ‘Fans of Metformin’. Your Mum poked the head of Novo Nordisk.”
“So?” came the curt response.
“Bobby, there’s a reason we let you lie in this morning,” said Sir Roger. “We did a fasting plasma glucose test while you slept.”
Bobby looked down. There was a small adhesive plaster in the crook of his arm.
“And?” he said, in a slight state of shock.
“It was one hundred and ten,” said Sir Roger, pulling out a pathology report from a drawer in his desk. “Bobby, you’re pre-diabetic. Impaired fasting glucose. And your days on this earth are numbered. If the D Generation isn’t stopped, you’ll soon be on its hit list. Maybe this year, maybe next, maybe not until the year after. But eventually your time will come. You’re on death row, Bobby, and the executioner’s waiting.”
Bobby turned pale.
“So why me?” he said. “There are five million diabetics in this country – minus the ones it’s already eaten – every one of those people has more of a vested interest in stopping it than I do.”
“Mr Macula, you’re unique,” said Sir Roger. “We need a modern day hero, a mighty warrior, a man who can. Or at least a man who tries. We’ve scoured this nation from top to bottom, and you’re the only one who can do it.”
“Why?” he asked.
“You know about eyes, retinal screening and diabetes. You can converse with people at every level, from pensioners all the way down to ophthalmologists. You’re not diabetic, so you’re immune from attack, but you will be, so you’re motivated. And you have a career that’s worth saving. You’re the only man who can do it.”
“What about Snellen?” asked Bobby. “What about you?”
“We can’t be bothered,” said Sir Roger. “And besides, it might be dangerous.”
Bobby was stunned into silence. He attempted to gather his thoughts amidst the chaotic whirlwind of all that he’d been told, and all that might lay ahead. His head swimming with thoughts of killer screeners, bloodsucking monsters, life, death and turtles, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a single moment of clarity. Truly, he had entered the eye of the storm, and at once, his world became both calm and clear. He took a moment to ground his emotions, then spoke quietly, but with purpose:
“So how does Mavis Clutter fit into all this?”
Sir Roger Logmar sat back in his chair and breathed deeply for a moment. He exchanged a look with Ivor Snellen, before turning back to Bobby and replying in a sombre, yet impassioned tone, with a single, earth-shattering word:
“Bait.”
Impressed by the power and influence of the man before him, and by the sheer love and admiration he garnered from so many people, Bobby found himself viewing Sir Roger in an entirely new, and wholly favourable, light. Before realising that he’d simply Photoshopped his face onto a picture of Bruce Springsteen.
As if sensing the wandering mind of his protégé, and the need for some urgent stimulation, Sir Roger Logmar stepped in. “Ivor,” he said, looking to the left at his right hand man, “get Bobby a drink.”
Bobby’s hopes were raised momentarily, and then instantly dashed as Snellen stood up, walked straight past the mini-bar, and made his way over to the ‘Mr Coffee-matic’ machine at the side of the room.
“Bobby,” Sir Roger said, looking back in his direction, “as I’m sure you’ve realised by now, the D Generation is the fourth incarnation of retinopathy screening bio-organism to be created.”
Bobby hadn’t realised, but he chose to keep quiet.
“The A Generation was the first,” Logmar continued, “and was duly followed by versions B and C. They had one thing in common.”
Bobby raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“They were crap,” said Sir Roger. “The A Generation was little more than a petri dish of microbes, a primordial soup, a mish-mash of genetic croutons and vegetable matter served up with a few silicon chips.”
Bobby was starting to feel hungry. He wondered if he should have opted for the early lunch.
“Things began to take shape with the B Generation,” Sir Roger continued. “For the first time, the opticians succeeded in creating a living, breathing creature, but it resembled a hamster and had the memory of a goldfish. It was cute to look at, but of little practical use. Nevertheless, we decided to stamp down on their research. Quite literally in fact. Irma takes size nine boots.”
Sir Roger paused as Ivor Snellen returned from the coffee machine with two polystyrene cups. He gave one to each of his companions, before returning to fetch a third for himself.
“Unfortunately,” said Sir Roger, “the opticians were not discouraged by the little ‘accident’ which had befallen their creation. They pressed on with a third generation, a far more ambitious organism, capable of genuine diagnosis and patient interaction. No photos exist of the creature, and video footage is thought to have been destroyed, but it was said to be comparable to a monkey with the face of a gerbil, if you can imagine such a thing.”
Bobby pictured his old geography teacher.
“The C Generation was at least partly successful,” said Sir Roger. “It possessed the ability to view the retinas of diabetic patients without pupil dilation, and to communicate what it saw. But it was hopelessly inaccurate. Pigment was referred as R3, new vessels as background retinopathy, and in one clinical trial, it classed a malignant melanoma as dust on the lens. Which is particularly worrying as they weren’t using cameras.”
Sir Roger took a sip of his coffee.
“How many sugars did you put in this, Ivor?” he said, a look of distaste on his face.
“One,” came the reply.
“Good God man, I’m not diabetic,” said Logmar. “I need at least three. And get me a biscuit while you’re over there.”
Snellen picked up two sachets of sugar, and a packet of gingernuts, before returning to his seat. He placed the supplies on Sir Roger’s desk.
“With you around, Snellen, it’s a miracle we don’t all hypo,” muttered Sir Roger, opening the biscuits.
Snellen ignored him. His boss was always grumpy when his blood glucose levels dipped.
“So,” said Sir Roger, speaking with his mouth full, “the C Generation was a failure, but it taught the opticians a great deal. They knew what could be done, and where they’d gone wrong, and they learnt from their mistakes. A year later they were back, and this time they meant business. The new and improved D Generation was everything we feared it would be. Fast, powerful, and freakishly accurate, it could glance at the eyes of a diabetic, and within seconds announce the results of a full disease grade. In clinical trials, it was never wrong. Not even once.”
“Rendering a second disease grade meaningless,” added Snellen, helping himself to a biscuit.
“Within weeks,” Sir Roger continued, “the opticians had built a simple touch-screen system, and trained the creature to use it. Even allowing for feeding, comfort breaks, and the use of a handler, it is estimated that the creature could screen the entire diabetic population of a town the size of Leamington Spa in just twelve hours. In the time it took a pensioner to walk into the room unaided, the creature could have their retinas analysed, accurately graded and the results letter sent out.
“And more importantly,” added Snellen, “they wouldn’t have time to take their coat off.”
Bobby looked impressed. “So why,” he said, “is all this such a problem? If you ask me, this is the way forward. Instant screening, instant results, no eye drops. It all sounds good to me. If I was diabetic, I’d go for it. Why isn’t this being rolled out across the country?”
“Because something went wrong,” replied Sir Roger, seriously.
“Very badly wrong,” added Snellen, unnecessarily.
“The opticians were on the verge of announcing their creation to the world. A press conference had been arranged; the first clinics had been booked; the creature was about to be unveiled to the media, and every NHS diabetic retinopathy screening programme in the UK was unknowingly on the brink of oblivion.”
“And..?” said Bobby.
“It started eating the patients,” replied Sir Roger.
“What?” Bobby asked, incredulously.
“The D Generation was bred to be more accurate,” replied Logmar, “but genetic engineering is not without its pitfalls. Supreme accuracy came at a cost. The opticians didn’t realise it at the time, of course, but their blinkered attempts to create perfection in one area, had led to mutation in another. A single defective gene. But one with devastating results.”
Sir Roger paused, grim-faced, before continuing:
“It developed a taste for diabetics.”
Bobby looked puzzled. “Why diabetics?” he asked.
“It has a sweet tooth,” replied Sir Roger. “The higher the blood glucose levels, the better. Show me an 18-year-old party girl who won’t take her insulin, and I’ll show you a woman who’ll be dead within a fortnight.”
Bobby swallowed hard. “But surely the creature’s not out there?” he said. “Surely the opticians destroyed it? They couldn’t let such a thing live, could they?”
“You have to understand, Bobby,” said Sir Roger, “that these opticians had invested millions in this plan, spent years on their research, and they were so close to perfection. They hadn’t come so far by being ethical. And they weren’t going to give up now, not with success so nearly in their grasp. Sure, there were those who backed the destruction of the creature, but there were more who felt it could be retrained, re-engineered, persuaded to eat salad. Weaned slowly off the sweetbreads of nephropathic diabetics.”
Bobby felt slightly queasy.
“The result was conflict. Discord in the ranks of opticians nationwide,” Sir Roger continued. “At least, amongst those who knew of the creature’s existence. Even now, there are many who don’t. Hundreds blind to the eye-watering vision of a few blinkered mavericks. But at the top, in the corridors of power and the hallowed halls of optometry, there was first unrest, and then escalating anarchy. And the outcome..?”
Sir Roger awaited an answer to his rhetorical question.
“The creature escaped,” he finished, providing it himself.
Bobby looked slightly alarmed.
“Escaped, my foot,” stated Snellen, dismissively.
“We don’t know the full circumstances, Ivor,” Sir Roger responded. “We have to assume it escaped, but I am not a naive fool. I am fully aware that there are those who may have wished to see the creature live, no matter what the outcome.”
“That thing was released,” said Snellen, “pure and simple. Someone didn’t want it destroyed, and decided to let it go, and now they’re sitting back, happily watching the genocide of Britain’s diabetic population.”
Bobby looked taken aback. He found diabetics annoying at times, but he didn’t wish them dead. At least, not all of them.
“Regardless of the circumstances,” said Sir Roger, “that creature is out there, right now, and it’s feeding. Word reached us some time ago that DNA rates in the Basildon & District Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Programme have gone through the roof. At the same time, the number of new cases of diabetes being diagnosed has fallen. With obesity levels rising all the time, there is only one explanation. The creature’s living it large in Essex.”
“And what do you expect me to do about it?” asked Bobby.
“Mr Macula,” replied Sir Roger, ominously, “that thing needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice.”
“Well, I can be extremely prejudiced at the best of times,” said Bobby, “especially against diabetics. And pensioners. I don’t like the blind much either. But I’m not sure it’s my problem. Retinal screening is just a job to me, not a vocation. Now, if it was bottoms, then we’d be talking. But eyes? I can take them or leave them. It’s no skin off my nose if the sugary people snuff it.”
Sir Roger Logmar looked back at the young screener with an unflinching stare.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Bobby, look at you. You’re overweight, unfit, and both your parents have diabetes.”
“How do you know?” questioned Bobby.
“Facebook,” replied Sir Roger. “They’re both listed on ‘Fans of Metformin’. Your Mum poked the head of Novo Nordisk.”
“So?” came the curt response.
“Bobby, there’s a reason we let you lie in this morning,” said Sir Roger. “We did a fasting plasma glucose test while you slept.”
Bobby looked down. There was a small adhesive plaster in the crook of his arm.
“And?” he said, in a slight state of shock.
“It was one hundred and ten,” said Sir Roger, pulling out a pathology report from a drawer in his desk. “Bobby, you’re pre-diabetic. Impaired fasting glucose. And your days on this earth are numbered. If the D Generation isn’t stopped, you’ll soon be on its hit list. Maybe this year, maybe next, maybe not until the year after. But eventually your time will come. You’re on death row, Bobby, and the executioner’s waiting.”
Bobby turned pale.
“So why me?” he said. “There are five million diabetics in this country – minus the ones it’s already eaten – every one of those people has more of a vested interest in stopping it than I do.”
“Mr Macula, you’re unique,” said Sir Roger. “We need a modern day hero, a mighty warrior, a man who can. Or at least a man who tries. We’ve scoured this nation from top to bottom, and you’re the only one who can do it.”
“Why?” he asked.
“You know about eyes, retinal screening and diabetes. You can converse with people at every level, from pensioners all the way down to ophthalmologists. You’re not diabetic, so you’re immune from attack, but you will be, so you’re motivated. And you have a career that’s worth saving. You’re the only man who can do it.”
“What about Snellen?” asked Bobby. “What about you?”
“We can’t be bothered,” said Sir Roger. “And besides, it might be dangerous.”
Bobby was stunned into silence. He attempted to gather his thoughts amidst the chaotic whirlwind of all that he’d been told, and all that might lay ahead. His head swimming with thoughts of killer screeners, bloodsucking monsters, life, death and turtles, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a single moment of clarity. Truly, he had entered the eye of the storm, and at once, his world became both calm and clear. He took a moment to ground his emotions, then spoke quietly, but with purpose:
“So how does Mavis Clutter fit into all this?”
Sir Roger Logmar sat back in his chair and breathed deeply for a moment. He exchanged a look with Ivor Snellen, before turning back to Bobby and replying in a sombre, yet impassioned tone, with a single, earth-shattering word:
“Bait.”
Sunday 14 November 2010
Chapter Twelve
Bobby Macula opened his eyes and blinked, wondering momentarily where he was. It was a moment which grew longer as he realised he had no idea. The soft mattress beneath him led him to believe that he might be in bed, a fact he confirmed with a quick glance down and a squeeze of the pillow under his head, but it was not a bedroom he recognised. It was a simple room, sparsely furnished, with just a bedside cabinet, a small chest of drawers, and a narrow door which may have been a wardrobe. The bed in which he lay was only a single, and the room would not have accommodated anything larger. The curtains were brown, the bedspread candlewick, and there were noticeable stains on the carpet. He was, he decided, in a cheap B & B.
As Bobby considered how he had come to be in such a place, and who might be paying for it, there was a knock at the door. Not the wardrobe door, but the wider one in the opposite wall. Unsure of who to expect, and less sure that he could be bothered to get up and find out, Bobby chose to stay where he was.
“Come in,” he called, snuggling further under the covers.
The door opened, and a man walked in holding a breakfast tray. It was Ivor Snellen. Bobby felt mildly disappointed. He’d been pinning his hopes on a French maid.
“Good morning, Mr Macula,” said Snellen. “I trust you slept well.”
“I don’t really remember,” replied Bobby. “I’m not even sure where I am.”
Snellen put the breakfast tray on the bedside cabinet, walked over to the brown curtains, and with something of a flourish, he pulled them apart. Behind them was a concrete wall.
“You’re three floors underground in the OOOH bridal suite,” he said.
“Bridal suite?” questioned Bobby. “There’s only a single bed.”
“That’s the reality of modern marriage,” replied Snellen. “You’re in the spare room.”
“How did I get here?” asked Bobby, sitting up. He looked down and saw that he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
“Would you believe me,” asked Snellen, “if I said you’d walked here yourself?”
Bobby swung himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Wincing, he wondered why his ankles hurt, before noticing a faint ring of bruising on both, and what appeared to be a carpet burn on his stomach.
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t.”
“The truth is, you fainted,” said Snellen. “The existence of the D Generation was too much for your brain to handle, and you passed out.”
“I think it’s far more likely that I fell asleep through boredom,” replied Bobby.
“Well, either way,” said Snellen, “we decided to adjourn until the morning. Most of which has now passed you by. It’s eleven-thirty, and we have work to do. You’re to come with me at once to Sir Roger’s office. He has a great deal to discuss with you.”
Bobby didn’t feel that the deal on offer was likely to be that great, but having come this far, he decided to keep going. Grabbing two stale croissants from the breakfast tray, he stood up, downed a glass of orange juice, and followed Snellen out of the door, whilst considering how much time he could save in the mornings if he always slept in his clothes.
The corridor into which they emerged was typical of the Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health. Decorated in varying shades of green and red to test for colour blindness, it was long, straight, and accurately conveyed the experience of tunnel vision to all who walked down it. On the walls hung screen-printed posters of Sir Roger Logmar in various smiling poses, interspersed with sight charts and anatomical diagrams of the eye.
Up ahead, the metal handle on a door marked ‘Cleaning Supplies’ appeared to be moving, as if being turned with some force from the other side. As the two men approached, Bobby could hear knocking, and a voice, perhaps female, emanating from within.
“I take it Mavis is awake then?” he asked, in a mildly sarcastic tone.
“This is no time to be judgemental,” replied Snellen. “Miss Clutter is being well cared for. She has an important role to play in the work which lies ahead, and no one in this organisation undervalues her for one moment. We just can’t bear to talk to her. The woman could drive a deaf man insane.”
“How?”
“Lip-reading,” replied Snellen. “But that’s beside the point. Miss Clutter will be released in due course. And in the meantime, she has plenty to keep her occupied. There’s enough Ajax in that cupboard to keep a pensioner busy for weeks.”
Bobby continued to follow Ivor down the corridor. It eventually ended in a lift, which the two men took to ground level. A short walk along a similar, if more naturally lit, corridor and the pair arrived at a door. The impressive plaque mounted at head height bore the words ‘Sir Roger Logmar OBE’. Below, a slightly less impressive sticker read ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here – but it helps!’.
Snellen knocked on the door and, without waiting, opened it. Sir Roger was sitting behind a large oak desk, embossed with leather (the desk, not Sir Roger), and was on the telephone. He beckoned the two men inside, and waved them towards a couple of chairs. They did as he requested, and sat down. Bobby began eating his croissants.
“Drusen, Drusen, Drusen...” said Sir Roger, on the phone, “it’s nothing to worry about. Very common. An age thing, generally.” He paused, listening to the caller on the line. “Drusen... yes, it may very well lead Macula to D Generation, but it’s too early to tell. Call me back in an hour. Ok. Bye.”
He put the phone down.
“Your mother?” asked Snellen.
“No,” said Sir Roger, “it was Irma again.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s currently outside a church in Essex.”
“Has she found God?” asked Snellen.
“She has,” said Sir Roger. “And he’s living on a council estate in Basildon.”
“Well,” replied Snellen, “I suppose Jesus visited a leper colony.”
“Really?” said Sir Roger. “I’ve never been a fan of big cats.”
“No, lepers.”
“Snow leopards? Even worse. They’ll rip out your throat as soon as look as you, and you can’t see them coming in a blizzard.”
Ivor Snellen decided to abandon this conversation.
“So what’s the latest from the field?” he asked.
Sir Roger Logmar sat back and swung himself around a full three hundred and sixty degrees in his luxury swivel chair, before answering in a roundabout way.
“It’s not looking good,” he said. “The sooner we get ‘Operation Dead Meat’ under way, the better.”
He peered across his desk at the young retinal screener in front of him.
“And that,” he continued, “is where you come in.”
It was perhaps fortunate for the future of this vitally important mission, that Bobby Macula had been focused so entirely on the consumption of his croissants that he hadn’t paid a blind bit of notice to the words Sir Roger had spoken. Had he heard the name of the operation he was about to be asked to lead, he may not have remained quite so calm and composed. He looked up now, with a blank expression.
“Are you talking to me?” he said, unintentionally performing the finest Robert De Niro impression ever seen outside of New York.
“I am,” replied Sir Roger. “Bobby, I realise that last night’s news left you dazed and confused...”
“I didn’t faint,” he countered quickly, “I fell asleep. I saw twenty-nine patients yesterday, five of them transport, six over eighty, and one with a mental age of three. I was knackered, not flustered.”
“Whatever,” said Sir Roger. “But there’s more to this situation than we’ve so far managed to tell you.”
“I think I’ve got the gist,” replied Bobby. “SpecSavers have a creature that’s going to put me out of a job, and... what? You expect me to stop them?”
Sir Roger didn’t reply.
“Well I’m not sure I’m that bothered,” Bobby continued. “I can always retrain. You think eyes are the only thing I know? Try turtles. Crabs. Morbid obesity. I may not be an educated man, Mr Logmar, but I’ve spent a few years at the University of Life. I’ve been chucked out of the School of Hard Knocks. And I’ve learnt a thing or two. There could be any number of alternative careers open to someone like me. I’m not wed to this job. I’m wed to a bariatric monstrosity that still hasn’t divorced me. And the world, like my wife’s favourite aphrodisiac, is my oyster.”
Sir Roger looked taken aback by such an impassioned speech so early on a Friday morning, before realising it was almost lunchtime, and they’d all had a lie-in. He watched as a large flake of croissant fell from Bobby’s chin and tumbled past the carpet burn on his stomach, clearly visible through his unbuttoned, badly ironed shirt.
“With respect, Mr Macula,” he said, “you’re a mess. And not just because you slept underground in your clothes. Your career, like your shirt, is in tatters, but it’s salvageable. Your life, however, may not be. You see, the D Generation doesn’t just threaten your job, it endangers your very existence. If you decide not to act now, you may not be alive to see that new career in crabs. You’ll be as dead as a drowned tortoise.”
Bobby tensed. A wave of deeply buried, and medically unconfirmed, post-traumatic stress disorder washed over him like a river of unresolved conflict. He opened his mouth to reply, but he found it so hard to talk about. Sir Roger Logmar sensed the young man’s distress and stepped in with some words of comfort.
“Bobby,” he said, “you’re a good-for-nothing waste of space. But I can change all that. I can offer you a lifeline, relaunch your career, and above all, save your life. But you need to do something for me.”
Bobby didn’t reply. He was replaying the death scene of the Droitwich One over and over in his head.
“You see,” continued Sir Roger, “it’s not about saving careers, protecting a few jobs or propping up the NHS. Things have moved way, way beyond that. It’s now about saving the world. Or, at least, ten per cent of its population. Let me explain...”
As Bobby considered how he had come to be in such a place, and who might be paying for it, there was a knock at the door. Not the wardrobe door, but the wider one in the opposite wall. Unsure of who to expect, and less sure that he could be bothered to get up and find out, Bobby chose to stay where he was.
“Come in,” he called, snuggling further under the covers.
The door opened, and a man walked in holding a breakfast tray. It was Ivor Snellen. Bobby felt mildly disappointed. He’d been pinning his hopes on a French maid.
“Good morning, Mr Macula,” said Snellen. “I trust you slept well.”
“I don’t really remember,” replied Bobby. “I’m not even sure where I am.”
Snellen put the breakfast tray on the bedside cabinet, walked over to the brown curtains, and with something of a flourish, he pulled them apart. Behind them was a concrete wall.
“You’re three floors underground in the OOOH bridal suite,” he said.
“Bridal suite?” questioned Bobby. “There’s only a single bed.”
“That’s the reality of modern marriage,” replied Snellen. “You’re in the spare room.”
“How did I get here?” asked Bobby, sitting up. He looked down and saw that he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
“Would you believe me,” asked Snellen, “if I said you’d walked here yourself?”
Bobby swung himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Wincing, he wondered why his ankles hurt, before noticing a faint ring of bruising on both, and what appeared to be a carpet burn on his stomach.
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t.”
“The truth is, you fainted,” said Snellen. “The existence of the D Generation was too much for your brain to handle, and you passed out.”
“I think it’s far more likely that I fell asleep through boredom,” replied Bobby.
“Well, either way,” said Snellen, “we decided to adjourn until the morning. Most of which has now passed you by. It’s eleven-thirty, and we have work to do. You’re to come with me at once to Sir Roger’s office. He has a great deal to discuss with you.”
Bobby didn’t feel that the deal on offer was likely to be that great, but having come this far, he decided to keep going. Grabbing two stale croissants from the breakfast tray, he stood up, downed a glass of orange juice, and followed Snellen out of the door, whilst considering how much time he could save in the mornings if he always slept in his clothes.
The corridor into which they emerged was typical of the Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health. Decorated in varying shades of green and red to test for colour blindness, it was long, straight, and accurately conveyed the experience of tunnel vision to all who walked down it. On the walls hung screen-printed posters of Sir Roger Logmar in various smiling poses, interspersed with sight charts and anatomical diagrams of the eye.
Up ahead, the metal handle on a door marked ‘Cleaning Supplies’ appeared to be moving, as if being turned with some force from the other side. As the two men approached, Bobby could hear knocking, and a voice, perhaps female, emanating from within.
“I take it Mavis is awake then?” he asked, in a mildly sarcastic tone.
“This is no time to be judgemental,” replied Snellen. “Miss Clutter is being well cared for. She has an important role to play in the work which lies ahead, and no one in this organisation undervalues her for one moment. We just can’t bear to talk to her. The woman could drive a deaf man insane.”
“How?”
“Lip-reading,” replied Snellen. “But that’s beside the point. Miss Clutter will be released in due course. And in the meantime, she has plenty to keep her occupied. There’s enough Ajax in that cupboard to keep a pensioner busy for weeks.”
Bobby continued to follow Ivor down the corridor. It eventually ended in a lift, which the two men took to ground level. A short walk along a similar, if more naturally lit, corridor and the pair arrived at a door. The impressive plaque mounted at head height bore the words ‘Sir Roger Logmar OBE’. Below, a slightly less impressive sticker read ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here – but it helps!’.
Snellen knocked on the door and, without waiting, opened it. Sir Roger was sitting behind a large oak desk, embossed with leather (the desk, not Sir Roger), and was on the telephone. He beckoned the two men inside, and waved them towards a couple of chairs. They did as he requested, and sat down. Bobby began eating his croissants.
“Drusen, Drusen, Drusen...” said Sir Roger, on the phone, “it’s nothing to worry about. Very common. An age thing, generally.” He paused, listening to the caller on the line. “Drusen... yes, it may very well lead Macula to D Generation, but it’s too early to tell. Call me back in an hour. Ok. Bye.”
He put the phone down.
“Your mother?” asked Snellen.
“No,” said Sir Roger, “it was Irma again.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s currently outside a church in Essex.”
“Has she found God?” asked Snellen.
“She has,” said Sir Roger. “And he’s living on a council estate in Basildon.”
“Well,” replied Snellen, “I suppose Jesus visited a leper colony.”
“Really?” said Sir Roger. “I’ve never been a fan of big cats.”
“No, lepers.”
“Snow leopards? Even worse. They’ll rip out your throat as soon as look as you, and you can’t see them coming in a blizzard.”
Ivor Snellen decided to abandon this conversation.
“So what’s the latest from the field?” he asked.
Sir Roger Logmar sat back and swung himself around a full three hundred and sixty degrees in his luxury swivel chair, before answering in a roundabout way.
“It’s not looking good,” he said. “The sooner we get ‘Operation Dead Meat’ under way, the better.”
He peered across his desk at the young retinal screener in front of him.
“And that,” he continued, “is where you come in.”
It was perhaps fortunate for the future of this vitally important mission, that Bobby Macula had been focused so entirely on the consumption of his croissants that he hadn’t paid a blind bit of notice to the words Sir Roger had spoken. Had he heard the name of the operation he was about to be asked to lead, he may not have remained quite so calm and composed. He looked up now, with a blank expression.
“Are you talking to me?” he said, unintentionally performing the finest Robert De Niro impression ever seen outside of New York.
“I am,” replied Sir Roger. “Bobby, I realise that last night’s news left you dazed and confused...”
“I didn’t faint,” he countered quickly, “I fell asleep. I saw twenty-nine patients yesterday, five of them transport, six over eighty, and one with a mental age of three. I was knackered, not flustered.”
“Whatever,” said Sir Roger. “But there’s more to this situation than we’ve so far managed to tell you.”
“I think I’ve got the gist,” replied Bobby. “SpecSavers have a creature that’s going to put me out of a job, and... what? You expect me to stop them?”
Sir Roger didn’t reply.
“Well I’m not sure I’m that bothered,” Bobby continued. “I can always retrain. You think eyes are the only thing I know? Try turtles. Crabs. Morbid obesity. I may not be an educated man, Mr Logmar, but I’ve spent a few years at the University of Life. I’ve been chucked out of the School of Hard Knocks. And I’ve learnt a thing or two. There could be any number of alternative careers open to someone like me. I’m not wed to this job. I’m wed to a bariatric monstrosity that still hasn’t divorced me. And the world, like my wife’s favourite aphrodisiac, is my oyster.”
Sir Roger looked taken aback by such an impassioned speech so early on a Friday morning, before realising it was almost lunchtime, and they’d all had a lie-in. He watched as a large flake of croissant fell from Bobby’s chin and tumbled past the carpet burn on his stomach, clearly visible through his unbuttoned, badly ironed shirt.
“With respect, Mr Macula,” he said, “you’re a mess. And not just because you slept underground in your clothes. Your career, like your shirt, is in tatters, but it’s salvageable. Your life, however, may not be. You see, the D Generation doesn’t just threaten your job, it endangers your very existence. If you decide not to act now, you may not be alive to see that new career in crabs. You’ll be as dead as a drowned tortoise.”
Bobby tensed. A wave of deeply buried, and medically unconfirmed, post-traumatic stress disorder washed over him like a river of unresolved conflict. He opened his mouth to reply, but he found it so hard to talk about. Sir Roger Logmar sensed the young man’s distress and stepped in with some words of comfort.
“Bobby,” he said, “you’re a good-for-nothing waste of space. But I can change all that. I can offer you a lifeline, relaunch your career, and above all, save your life. But you need to do something for me.”
Bobby didn’t reply. He was replaying the death scene of the Droitwich One over and over in his head.
“You see,” continued Sir Roger, “it’s not about saving careers, protecting a few jobs or propping up the NHS. Things have moved way, way beyond that. It’s now about saving the world. Or, at least, ten per cent of its population. Let me explain...”
Saturday 13 November 2010
Chapter Eleven
“More tea?” said the vicar.
Irma Drusen looked at the empty china cup in her hand. It was Friday morning, about eleven, and she didn’t usually take caffeine after ten, but the man in front of her was so warm, so courteous, and so disarmingly geeky that she couldn’t help but say yes.
“Yes,” she said, as if to prove that point. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
Picking up the handmade ceramic teapot he’d won on Countdown, the Reverend Tinpot poured a weak brew of Earl Grey into Irma’s teacup, before doing the same with his own. A large and unexpected glug caused the vessel to overflow.
“Oh dear,” he said, “my cup runneth over! Tinpot’s teapot lives up to its name!”
Irma’s smile was as weak as the tea. She sat back in the armchair and surveyed the scene. The living room in which she sat was small, and slightly cluttered, but had a unique and friendly charm that Irma appreciated. The tasteful wallpaper, the crocheted doilies, the collection of plastic Smurfs that lined the shelves on the opposite wall – all came together to create a welcoming mood that said ‘Come in, sit down, relax, take your shoes off, and make yourself at home under the lampshade shaped like the Starship Enterprise’. She’d done all five in the last ten minutes, and had warmed to her host considerably.
Contrary to both popular and unpopular opinion, Irma Drusen was not a hard-hearted, unfeeling bitch. True, she could snap a spine like a twig with her bare hands, and would think nothing of trampling over the bodies of helpless kittens in her pursuit of the truth, or a number nine bus, but that didn’t make her a bad person. She saw it as efficiency, not ruthlessness.
Irma’s life up to this point had been a rocky road of hard knocks, broken promises and shattered dreams. Abandoned at the age of three by a mother who wanted more time to pursue her hobby of international whale-watching, Irma had been raised by a couple of high-flying advertising executives who lived and worked out of a small loft conversion in Mile End. Her childhood had been spent formulating strap lines for products as diverse as washing powder, sofas, and designer face creams with active hyperzones and natural lipozoids designed to halt the three hundred and forty-seven signs of aging. Irma wasn’t sure it was worth it. She was left to feed, clothe and fend for herself, all the while growing as bitter as the beer she helped to shift from supermarket shelves.
Such a childhood had not left her without scars. She had a particularly nasty one on her left hand, caused by a deep paper cut sustained by a flip chart during a surprisingly heavy brainstorming session. But the mental scars ran deeper. To this day, she couldn’t look at a billboard poster without experiencing a sense of inner turmoil, and the mere mention of whales would conjour up a feeling of rage within her. She’d once driven past a ten-metre wide advert designed by the Welsh Tourist Board, and the very words ‘See Wales’, glimpsed briefly and inaccurately out of the corner of her eye, had very nearly sent her over the edge. Quite literally. She was driving along a cliff top at the time.
Escaping from the world of advertising, and from Mile End, Irma embarked on a new and groundbreaking career in orthoptics. Her firm belief was that amblyopia was nothing more than laziness, and she took it upon herself to prove it. Years of training and research resulted in her own private practice, an exclusive clinic in Chelsea where she put her original methods to work on the squinty-eyed children of London’s social elite. Few could afford her services, but those who could, left with their eyes opened and, for the first time, working together in harmony.
For a time, Irma appeared to have found her niche in life. Her background in advertising led her to brand the clinic with a single-worded, and strikingly effectively, name. It was known simply as ‘EYE’, and celebrities, particularly those who struggled with long words, soon flocked to take advantage of her unique services. She was growing rich on the disposable income of the upper middle classes, but more than that, her sense of self-satisfaction and contentment was growing too. She was helping the lazy to see. She was making a difference.
It couldn’t last. And it didn’t. If life had taught Irma Drusen one thing, it was that the road of contentment was littered with potholes. Great cavernous pits of despair into which the wheels of the happiness bandwagon could, and inevitably would, plunge at a moment’s notice, leaving the axles of satisfaction scraping along the road to hell like the fingernails of a failing teacher on the brittle blackboard of an OFSTED condemned school.
Sure enough, an unexpected mistake, one single moment of madness, had brought Irma’s career tumbling down around her eyes. Perhaps, she thought, she was partly to blame. True, she was the one who had called that nine-year-old red-headed boy a “speccy four-eyed ginga”. She was the one who’d slapped him round the back of the head and stamped on his Dolce & Gabbana glasses. She was even the one who’d told his celebrity parents that they’d raised “a goggle-eyed freak with the drive of a lemming”, before throwing his eye patch out of the window and giving him the finger. But was she really to blame?
It didn’t matter. Her career was over. Her life as an orthoptist to the stars was at an end. Clients deserted her overnight, and within days she was finished. EYE was permanently closed.
At which point the phone rang, and a man offered her a lifeline. Who wants to be a millionaire, she thought, when there are other, more worthwhile paths to pursue in life? The man on the phone was Sir Roger Logmar. He put to her a proposition. And Irma Drusen said yes.
At the time, she hadn’t known it, but Irma’s career had been followed closely for a number of years. Nondescript figures in dark glasses often sat unnoticed on park benches opposite her clinic, reading newspapers at odd times of day. Newspapers with eye holes cut into them. Through the missing nipples of a page three girl, Irma’s work had been observed, monitored, and admired from afar. Unbeknownst to the celebrity orthoptist, a position was waiting for her at a fledgling organisation sixty miles away. The Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health recognised her talents, and Sir Roger Logmar wanted her. In an entirely non-sexual way.
There are some who have quietly suggested that the downfall of Irma Drusen’s orthoptic career was no accident. That there was more to that nine-year-old ginger boy than met the amblyotic eye. That the incident was, in reality, a carefully crafted set piece, designed to achieve a deliberate end and to fulfil a specific purpose. That, perhaps, an unseen puppet master was somehow controlling Irma’s fate.
The truth, of course, may never be known. Unless you were to ask Sir Roger Logmar, in which case he’d admit it was all his idea. He’d found the big-eared carrot-topped tyke on a farm in Devon, and sent him in like a heat-seeking missile to poke Irma in the EYE, and free her up for a new challenge. And he didn’t care who knew it. Although, oddly, no one had ever asked.
As it transpired, it was the best thing that ever happened to Irma. She was routinely referred to an ophthalmologist in Kensington, who took her via the underground railroad to Oxford, and a meeting that would change her life. Mostly for the better. Having seen her determination, her groundbreaking ocular research, and the ruthless way she meted out violence to a nine-year-old ginge, Sir Roger Logmar had no hesitation in signing her up for the OOOH team. He promptly offered her a role as his special envoy, his all-seeing eye, his 007 with a licence to kill, maim, and administer prescription-only eye drops. It was an offer she could not refuse. Mainly because Ivor Snellen had her in a headlock at the time.
The rest, as they say in all good humanities departments, is history. Irma Drusen took to the undercover world of eye spying like the proverbial duck to toilet. The job played to her strengths, allowing her to use both her extensive ophthalmic knowledge and her innate ability to subtly extract key pieces of information from unsuspecting members of the public using nothing more than intimidation, kidnap and extreme physical violence.
That new road of happiness had led her to places she never dreamt she would visit, and allowed her to see things she never thought she would see. And now it had led her to Essex, to a vicarage on the edge of a housing estate near Basildon town centre, and allowed her to see the Smurf collection of a middle aged clergyman. It was beyond her wildest dreams. And dangerously close to a nightmare. But she felt strangely comfortable.
“So tell me, Reverend Tinpot,” she said, “Exactly what did you see last night?”
The vicar finished mopping up Earl Grey from a china saucer shaped like one of Mr Spock’s ears, and sat down in the chair opposite. “Well,” he said, “as I told your colleague on the phone, I’m not really sure.”
Reverend Tinpot had not told Irma Drusen’s colleagues any such thing. He’d told the police. Irma had merely heard them laughing about it on shortwave radio. Within half an hour, she’d been knocking on the vicarage door with a fake ID and a genuine concern, keen to know more, and determined not to leave until she got it.
“But you saw... something?” Irma prompted.
The vicar looked mildly troubled. “I heard a scream,” he said. “That was the start of it. I was upstairs in the bathroom, filling my hot water bottle from the tap, when I heard a noise coming from outside, over that way”. He motioned with his hand towards the front of the house. “The bathroom window’s frosted of course, so I opened it, but it’s hard to get a good view. The sink’s below the window, and I can’t lean out without standing on the toilet and moving my ducks from the windowsill.”
“And did you do that?” asked Irma.
“Well, yes,” replied the vicar self-consciously. “With hindsight, it might have been quicker to run downstairs and open the front door, but I wasn’t really thinking straight. I’d heard a scream. And a...” he paused for a moment, “... a howling I suppose you’d call it, something animalistic. Like a young hippo caught in a man-trap. To be quite honest, I felt like locking the bathroom door, not running downstairs.”
“So,” said Irma, “you stood on the toilet, moved your ducks, and leaned out of the window..?”
Reverend Tinpot nodded.
“And what did you see?” she asked.
The vicar looked pale. “Not much,” he said. “I think I was too late.”
“But you did see something?” Irma pressed.
“I saw a woman,” the Reverend replied. “At least I think it was a woman.”
He paused, trying to find the right words.
“How can I put this,” he continued, “she may have had some issues with food.”
“She was a lardbucket?” suggested Irma.
“No, no,” replied Tinpot. “I wouldn’t put it like that at all.”
“But she was fat?”
“Let’s just say she was wider than she was tall,” he clarified.
“Let’s not beat around the bush,” said Irma, “she had the figure of a space hopper and moved about as fast.”
“Well, yes,” admitted the vicar. “She was running – if one can call it running –”
“I’ll put down waddling,” said Irma, writing on a pad.
“- towards the school across the road. I only caught a glimpse of her before she disappeared behind the poplar trees, but she appeared to be fleeing from someone. Or something.”
“And did you see what was chasing her?” asked Irma.
“Well...” hesitated the vicar, “... only for a moment. It was dark, and it was moving at speed. I couldn’t get a clear view past my dental floss holder, and I was struggling to keep my balance on the toilet. But it – whatever it was – came out from the bushes by the street sign, and chased her across the road and behind the trees.”
“And what was it?” Irma said, looking the vicar in the eye. “What did you see?”
The Reverend Tinpot exhaled deeply, and swallowed hard before replying.
“It appeared,” he said nervously, as if scared of his own words, “to be a cow with five legs.”
Irma Drusen looked at the empty china cup in her hand. It was Friday morning, about eleven, and she didn’t usually take caffeine after ten, but the man in front of her was so warm, so courteous, and so disarmingly geeky that she couldn’t help but say yes.
“Yes,” she said, as if to prove that point. “That would be lovely, thank you.”
Picking up the handmade ceramic teapot he’d won on Countdown, the Reverend Tinpot poured a weak brew of Earl Grey into Irma’s teacup, before doing the same with his own. A large and unexpected glug caused the vessel to overflow.
“Oh dear,” he said, “my cup runneth over! Tinpot’s teapot lives up to its name!”
Irma’s smile was as weak as the tea. She sat back in the armchair and surveyed the scene. The living room in which she sat was small, and slightly cluttered, but had a unique and friendly charm that Irma appreciated. The tasteful wallpaper, the crocheted doilies, the collection of plastic Smurfs that lined the shelves on the opposite wall – all came together to create a welcoming mood that said ‘Come in, sit down, relax, take your shoes off, and make yourself at home under the lampshade shaped like the Starship Enterprise’. She’d done all five in the last ten minutes, and had warmed to her host considerably.
Contrary to both popular and unpopular opinion, Irma Drusen was not a hard-hearted, unfeeling bitch. True, she could snap a spine like a twig with her bare hands, and would think nothing of trampling over the bodies of helpless kittens in her pursuit of the truth, or a number nine bus, but that didn’t make her a bad person. She saw it as efficiency, not ruthlessness.
Irma’s life up to this point had been a rocky road of hard knocks, broken promises and shattered dreams. Abandoned at the age of three by a mother who wanted more time to pursue her hobby of international whale-watching, Irma had been raised by a couple of high-flying advertising executives who lived and worked out of a small loft conversion in Mile End. Her childhood had been spent formulating strap lines for products as diverse as washing powder, sofas, and designer face creams with active hyperzones and natural lipozoids designed to halt the three hundred and forty-seven signs of aging. Irma wasn’t sure it was worth it. She was left to feed, clothe and fend for herself, all the while growing as bitter as the beer she helped to shift from supermarket shelves.
Such a childhood had not left her without scars. She had a particularly nasty one on her left hand, caused by a deep paper cut sustained by a flip chart during a surprisingly heavy brainstorming session. But the mental scars ran deeper. To this day, she couldn’t look at a billboard poster without experiencing a sense of inner turmoil, and the mere mention of whales would conjour up a feeling of rage within her. She’d once driven past a ten-metre wide advert designed by the Welsh Tourist Board, and the very words ‘See Wales’, glimpsed briefly and inaccurately out of the corner of her eye, had very nearly sent her over the edge. Quite literally. She was driving along a cliff top at the time.
Escaping from the world of advertising, and from Mile End, Irma embarked on a new and groundbreaking career in orthoptics. Her firm belief was that amblyopia was nothing more than laziness, and she took it upon herself to prove it. Years of training and research resulted in her own private practice, an exclusive clinic in Chelsea where she put her original methods to work on the squinty-eyed children of London’s social elite. Few could afford her services, but those who could, left with their eyes opened and, for the first time, working together in harmony.
For a time, Irma appeared to have found her niche in life. Her background in advertising led her to brand the clinic with a single-worded, and strikingly effectively, name. It was known simply as ‘EYE’, and celebrities, particularly those who struggled with long words, soon flocked to take advantage of her unique services. She was growing rich on the disposable income of the upper middle classes, but more than that, her sense of self-satisfaction and contentment was growing too. She was helping the lazy to see. She was making a difference.
It couldn’t last. And it didn’t. If life had taught Irma Drusen one thing, it was that the road of contentment was littered with potholes. Great cavernous pits of despair into which the wheels of the happiness bandwagon could, and inevitably would, plunge at a moment’s notice, leaving the axles of satisfaction scraping along the road to hell like the fingernails of a failing teacher on the brittle blackboard of an OFSTED condemned school.
Sure enough, an unexpected mistake, one single moment of madness, had brought Irma’s career tumbling down around her eyes. Perhaps, she thought, she was partly to blame. True, she was the one who had called that nine-year-old red-headed boy a “speccy four-eyed ginga”. She was the one who’d slapped him round the back of the head and stamped on his Dolce & Gabbana glasses. She was even the one who’d told his celebrity parents that they’d raised “a goggle-eyed freak with the drive of a lemming”, before throwing his eye patch out of the window and giving him the finger. But was she really to blame?
It didn’t matter. Her career was over. Her life as an orthoptist to the stars was at an end. Clients deserted her overnight, and within days she was finished. EYE was permanently closed.
At which point the phone rang, and a man offered her a lifeline. Who wants to be a millionaire, she thought, when there are other, more worthwhile paths to pursue in life? The man on the phone was Sir Roger Logmar. He put to her a proposition. And Irma Drusen said yes.
At the time, she hadn’t known it, but Irma’s career had been followed closely for a number of years. Nondescript figures in dark glasses often sat unnoticed on park benches opposite her clinic, reading newspapers at odd times of day. Newspapers with eye holes cut into them. Through the missing nipples of a page three girl, Irma’s work had been observed, monitored, and admired from afar. Unbeknownst to the celebrity orthoptist, a position was waiting for her at a fledgling organisation sixty miles away. The Oxford Office of Ophthalmic Health recognised her talents, and Sir Roger Logmar wanted her. In an entirely non-sexual way.
There are some who have quietly suggested that the downfall of Irma Drusen’s orthoptic career was no accident. That there was more to that nine-year-old ginger boy than met the amblyotic eye. That the incident was, in reality, a carefully crafted set piece, designed to achieve a deliberate end and to fulfil a specific purpose. That, perhaps, an unseen puppet master was somehow controlling Irma’s fate.
The truth, of course, may never be known. Unless you were to ask Sir Roger Logmar, in which case he’d admit it was all his idea. He’d found the big-eared carrot-topped tyke on a farm in Devon, and sent him in like a heat-seeking missile to poke Irma in the EYE, and free her up for a new challenge. And he didn’t care who knew it. Although, oddly, no one had ever asked.
As it transpired, it was the best thing that ever happened to Irma. She was routinely referred to an ophthalmologist in Kensington, who took her via the underground railroad to Oxford, and a meeting that would change her life. Mostly for the better. Having seen her determination, her groundbreaking ocular research, and the ruthless way she meted out violence to a nine-year-old ginge, Sir Roger Logmar had no hesitation in signing her up for the OOOH team. He promptly offered her a role as his special envoy, his all-seeing eye, his 007 with a licence to kill, maim, and administer prescription-only eye drops. It was an offer she could not refuse. Mainly because Ivor Snellen had her in a headlock at the time.
The rest, as they say in all good humanities departments, is history. Irma Drusen took to the undercover world of eye spying like the proverbial duck to toilet. The job played to her strengths, allowing her to use both her extensive ophthalmic knowledge and her innate ability to subtly extract key pieces of information from unsuspecting members of the public using nothing more than intimidation, kidnap and extreme physical violence.
That new road of happiness had led her to places she never dreamt she would visit, and allowed her to see things she never thought she would see. And now it had led her to Essex, to a vicarage on the edge of a housing estate near Basildon town centre, and allowed her to see the Smurf collection of a middle aged clergyman. It was beyond her wildest dreams. And dangerously close to a nightmare. But she felt strangely comfortable.
“So tell me, Reverend Tinpot,” she said, “Exactly what did you see last night?”
The vicar finished mopping up Earl Grey from a china saucer shaped like one of Mr Spock’s ears, and sat down in the chair opposite. “Well,” he said, “as I told your colleague on the phone, I’m not really sure.”
Reverend Tinpot had not told Irma Drusen’s colleagues any such thing. He’d told the police. Irma had merely heard them laughing about it on shortwave radio. Within half an hour, she’d been knocking on the vicarage door with a fake ID and a genuine concern, keen to know more, and determined not to leave until she got it.
“But you saw... something?” Irma prompted.
The vicar looked mildly troubled. “I heard a scream,” he said. “That was the start of it. I was upstairs in the bathroom, filling my hot water bottle from the tap, when I heard a noise coming from outside, over that way”. He motioned with his hand towards the front of the house. “The bathroom window’s frosted of course, so I opened it, but it’s hard to get a good view. The sink’s below the window, and I can’t lean out without standing on the toilet and moving my ducks from the windowsill.”
“And did you do that?” asked Irma.
“Well, yes,” replied the vicar self-consciously. “With hindsight, it might have been quicker to run downstairs and open the front door, but I wasn’t really thinking straight. I’d heard a scream. And a...” he paused for a moment, “... a howling I suppose you’d call it, something animalistic. Like a young hippo caught in a man-trap. To be quite honest, I felt like locking the bathroom door, not running downstairs.”
“So,” said Irma, “you stood on the toilet, moved your ducks, and leaned out of the window..?”
Reverend Tinpot nodded.
“And what did you see?” she asked.
The vicar looked pale. “Not much,” he said. “I think I was too late.”
“But you did see something?” Irma pressed.
“I saw a woman,” the Reverend replied. “At least I think it was a woman.”
He paused, trying to find the right words.
“How can I put this,” he continued, “she may have had some issues with food.”
“She was a lardbucket?” suggested Irma.
“No, no,” replied Tinpot. “I wouldn’t put it like that at all.”
“But she was fat?”
“Let’s just say she was wider than she was tall,” he clarified.
“Let’s not beat around the bush,” said Irma, “she had the figure of a space hopper and moved about as fast.”
“Well, yes,” admitted the vicar. “She was running – if one can call it running –”
“I’ll put down waddling,” said Irma, writing on a pad.
“- towards the school across the road. I only caught a glimpse of her before she disappeared behind the poplar trees, but she appeared to be fleeing from someone. Or something.”
“And did you see what was chasing her?” asked Irma.
“Well...” hesitated the vicar, “... only for a moment. It was dark, and it was moving at speed. I couldn’t get a clear view past my dental floss holder, and I was struggling to keep my balance on the toilet. But it – whatever it was – came out from the bushes by the street sign, and chased her across the road and behind the trees.”
“And what was it?” Irma said, looking the vicar in the eye. “What did you see?”
The Reverend Tinpot exhaled deeply, and swallowed hard before replying.
“It appeared,” he said nervously, as if scared of his own words, “to be a cow with five legs.”