I can’t remember the last time someone called me ‘sir’.
It makes me feel officious, remote, about a hundred years old.
I check Stan for intention (sarcastic? hostile? guarded?), but I don’t get a sense of anything other than an eagerness to show how much he appreciates the visit. Still – it’s oddly deferential, and I can’t help squirming.
‘The good lady wife’s just through here, sir,’ he says, showing me along the hallway to the lounge, and then standing aside, nodding and closing his eyes. All he needs is a pair of white gloves and a silver tray under his arm. ‘She can’t go far, I’m afraid. You’ll see why.’
Vera has been discharged from the hospital with home oxygen. She sits on the sofa, working her shoulders like a landed carp, her eyes just as large and round and glassy.
‘Oh – hello, dear,’ she gasps. ‘And what – have you – come for?’
I introduce myself. She pats the sofa cushion next to her for me to sit down.
‘Can I fetch you a drink, sir?’ says Stan. ‘A tea, perhaps? Or something cool?’
‘That’s very kind, Stan, but I’ve just put one out.’
‘Oh!’ he says, raising his eyebrows and tipping back on his heels. ‘Like a cigarette, you mean! Yes. Very good. Well – let me know if you need anything. Is it all right if I…?’
He gestures to an armchair the other side of the room.
‘Of course! If Vera doesn’t mind.’
‘We’ve been – married – forty-five years,’ says Vera. ‘It’s a bit – late in the day – if I do.’

Lionel has the same birthday as me, minus forty years.
‘So you’re the twenty-ninth of December, too?’ he says. ‘How interesting! I don’t know about you, Jim, but one thing I noticed was the tendency to get rather a lot of suspect Christmas and birthday present combinations.’
‘Me too. I was always tempted to ask for the receipt so I could work it out.’
‘Yes!’
‘But there were consolations. I never used to mind it when I’d finished opening my Christmas presents because I knew I’d be getting some more in a few days’ time.’
‘There was always that consolation. And then it’s New Year’s Eve…’

It’s interesting, meeting patients with the same birthday. Sometimes it’s best not to say anything, though, tempting as it is, especially if the patient shares the same year, too, and hasn’t fared so well. The last patient I met who was my exact astrological twin was an alcoholic whose career had ended, wife run off with his best friend, been made homeless, and fallen down a flight of stairs. I’m pretty safe with Lionel, though. There’s the great age difference, to give us a tactful margin. And then there’s the fact that Lionel is one of the most inspirational ninety-five year olds I’ve ever met.

‘I would never have guessed you were ninety-five,’ I say to him, reflecting on his dates. ‘If you’d have said eighty I’d have said no way.’
‘You’re too kind!’ he says. ‘But carry on…’

Lionel’s been referred to us because he fractured his arm gardening.
‘I’ll tell you what happened,’ he says, shifting awkwardly in the armchair. ‘I was out there pruning back the fuchsia when I took a step back to see what needed to come off next. But the trouble was, you see, I’d forgotten about the laburnum stump. I’d taken the thing down about five or six years ago, something like that, pretty much to ground level, but I’d put off grubbing up the roots. It’s quite a tough job as you know, and I was working up to it. So what happened was I caught my foot and over I went, flailing around like Charlie Chaplin on a bad day, landing on my arm and causing the injury you see before you. An absolute bloody nuisance, but there you are. You make the best of these things.’
He settles back in the chair.
‘I suppose you’d have to say it was revenge,’ he says. ‘That poor tree! I expect it’s been waiting to get me all this time…’

Quite how the conversion was done or how it all hangs together it’s impossible to grasp. All you can say with any certainty is that at some point in the last twenty years a substantial Georgian house was designated as hostel accommodation, completely gutted and then divided up into numerous studio flatlets. The effect is of a grand old bee-hive. If I was a giant, I could take the roof off and lean in to inspect the interior, layer on layer of compact cells, each divided by nothing more than paper (and all the bees looking up at me, shaking their fists).
The cards describing the flat numbers give you a flavour. Random, hysterical groupings, arrows pointing left and right and round the corner – which is where the door to the staircase leading up to Terry’s flat is located, in an alleyway that funnels the wind so furiously it makes my ID lanyard flap backwards over my shoulder and snatches the sunglasses from the top of my head.
Hello?
Hello. It’s Jim, from the hospital. Come to see Terry.
Hello?
I put my mouth to the intercom.
Hello! It’s Jim, from the…
The door buzzes and I step inside.
A steep staircase, something of a cubist spiral, steeply rising up and up past flat doors whose numbers seem completely random.
By the sixth floor I’m slowing up and breathing hard. Terry is waiting for me by the door.
‘Why didn’t you say anything when I answered?’ he says, clutching his bathrobe around him.
‘I did… but the… wind was so strong…phew! That’s a long haul!’
‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ he says, and retreats into the flat.

I’m astonished to see how much IT equipment Terry has in his living room. There are laptops, desktops, a 3D printer the size of a small family car, plus shelf after shelf of spare parts, manuals, odds and ends, and then miles of cables of every colour and size, looped chaotically over hooks and hangars and any other appendage that might take them. It’s like climbing to the top of a great pine tree to find a crow’s nest with a fully-stocked workshop, fridge and snooker table.
‘Wow!’ I say. ‘I’m exhausted just carrying my bag’ dropping it down and then sitting in a chair. ‘This is amazing!’
‘I didn’t do it all at once,’ he says.
I want to say that doing any of it at any time would be inconceivable, but I let it pass.
‘I’ve come to see how you are,’ I say. ‘To do your blood pressure and that sort of thing.’
‘What – again?’ he says.
‘I know it’s a pain, but it’s good to get a picture over a period of time.’
‘I suppose,’ he says. ‘I just don’t think it means anything.’

Terry is an extraordinary figure. He’d be a shoe-in for Ben Gunn, if his robe had been woven from grass and not cotton towelling. Terry hasn’t cut his hair in years; it stands out in long, grey strands that, back-lit in the harsh light from the window, looking like the splayed ends of a fibre-optic cable. His thick glasses enlarge and dilute his eyes, holding their rather lost expression regardless of the wild changes of emotion Terry expresses.
‘It would help if it bloody worked’ he says, suddenly enraged, picking up a tablet and then crashing it down on the table again. ‘Windows 7,’ he says, his whole body trembling. ‘All I wanted was to download the driver for my printer so I could bloody well use the thing, but will it do it? Yes, it will.’
‘Oh! Good!’
‘No – but just wait a minute. Yes, it will download the driver, but it won’t let me load it!’
‘That must be frustrating…’
‘Frustrating? It makes me want to… I want to….’
He tails off, overwhelmed by the injustice of it, his whole head wobbling, as if the sudden change in pressure in his brain had loosened something critical in his neck.
‘What about getting advice on a forum…’
‘Forum? Don’t make me laugh! I haven’t got time for forums. They don’t want to… I can’t…’
It’s simply too much; he runs out of breath.
‘Unfortunately I’m not the one to advise you on this sort of thing,’ I tell him. ‘I struggle to find my way around my phone. I’m a bit hopeless, to be honest. If my daughters were here, though…’
‘Ah. Well,’ he says, blinking hard. ‘Digital natives.’
Terry seems so tortured by his environment it’s strange to think he’s responsible for it. I couldn’t be more confused than if I saw a mouse deliberately lower itself into a vivarium and then sit on a rock, quivering.
‘Try these on,’ he says, in a tone of voice suddenly balanced and conversational. He reaches behind him and hands me a pair of hi-spec glasses, connected to a handheld device that turns out to be some fantastically ergonomic controller. Through the glasses I’m presented with a virtual desktop, so vibrant and unexpected I’m momentarily lost for words.
‘Wow!’ I say, moving my head around and gently experimenting with the controls. ‘That’s – amazing!’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It is – or it would be if my hands didn’t shake so much I can’t work the damn thing!’