Gosford Bloody Tanner's Fault

"Since I left I've tried to send my kids every single penny I can spare and have managed to do so with just a single hiccough when I was forced to transfer from weekly to monthly pay. That's why I rang Josh and left you a message yesterday because I was concerned that you'd miss the money due tomorrow and worry about when or whether it was ever coming again. I only woke up in hospital two days ago and have absolutely no means of transferring any cash to you in time. Also, I don't even have a cheque book with me, so you coming up for your money is a complete waste of time for both of us.

"I am still so angry with you that I am sending the vital signs monitors off the bloody charts, setting the alarms off and I'm going to have the nurses back giving me gyp in a minute. I thought after all this time I was over what you did to me but I know now that I will never get over it.

I can never ever forget what you did but what I can do is ... forgive you, if that is what you are chasing me for. If you just want closure of our marriage, I give it to you freely here and now. Send me the divorce papers and I'll sign them in an instant. I just want to get on with my life and you can get on with yours. We don't even have to ever see each other again.

"As for the kids? As I was so beneath your contempt and no longer of any use to you I thought they'd do better with a stable relationship, between you and your current lover and enjoy a convenient middle-class upbringing. I assumed they were young enough to have forgotten all about me by now, they never saw me much anyway, I was always out slave-labouring most of the time they were up and about so I don't suppose they even noticed when I was no longer around. So leave me alone, please, Amanda. I am too sore to type any more. Have a really good life, I mean it. This is goodbye, regards J."

I sent it, logged off my email account and switched the blasted thing off.

I didn't hear back from her until checking my emails again at lunchtime. My morning was routine, filled with breakfast, followed by the frustrating bedpans, bed bath, pain-killing tablets, doctor's visit, mid-morning tea and biscuits, changes of bandages on my head and lesions on my face and particularly painful where my broken ribs had punctured my skin. Your life is not your own when you are in hospital, but then I couldn't remember when my life was my own prior to five years ago. Since then you could say I had pleased myself but I wasn't truly pleased with what I had.

The message from my ex-wife was short and sharp and without comment, "See you tonight". Again, no trace of signature or kisses. A pattern was certainly emerging here and I really wasn't looking forward to seeing her. I thought about asking the nurse for a sleeping tablet with immediate effect but there was no avoiding the inevitable.

Nobody came to see me Friday afternoon visiting time. The side ward I was in had six beds, three had broken limbs and one was an old boy who was completely out of it most of the time so I was unable to communicate with him and the final bed was empty until late afternoon when a guy who had just been operated on and barely conscious was wheeled in and the curtains pulled around him. The previous occupant of that bed left I think the day I woke up, but I was pretty hazy then and for part of the time that I was barely conscious the screens were up around my bed anyway.

I was furthest away from the windows and the delight of fresh air. I was used to exercising and working outside. I trained, kept fit, played a lot of sports and worked in the open air most of the time. I was hot and sweaty even though I had a bed bath early in the morning. I felt that I stank to high heaven already, particularly under my casts, and it was still six or seven hours before Mandy was due to put in an appearance and ruin the rest of my day.

It occurred to me that once I got fit again I could move towns once more, perhaps move further north. But I loved firefighting and knew if I transferred anywhere to another station she could find me again.

Several people occupying my ward had visitors in the afternoon, one had a couple of little girls skipping about the bed and generally fidgeting with boredom and continually being shushed by the adults with them. I couldn't help wondering about my own two girls. When I left home, Kelly and Kaytie were 3 and 5, now they would be pushing 8 and 10. Perhaps Mandy would bring some photos. Damn! I thought, I'm falling into that trap of caring about them that I'd deliberately been avoiding all these years.

At the evening visiting hours, Mrs Murray popped in to see me again with baby Darren, well, I say baby, he was about two years old. She brought up a change of pyjamas for me and took the soiled ones away in a carrier bag for washing. I had been wearing one of those uncomfortable hospital smocks since my morning bath. I had got on quite well with little Darren and I used to delight in tossing him about when I was at home. He couldn't understand why he wasn't allowed to climb all over me like he was used to.

Mrs Murray was very chatty, but nervous. That was unusual as she was usually very confident and determined for a young woman. Eventually, after I prompted her, she admitted that she had just learned, well, actually confirmed by the doctor a week or so ago, that she was pregnant, two months gone.

That meant that I needed to move soon. She hated bringing it up just as I was injured and needed time to recover. The Murrays were planning to move Darren into my room and turn Darren's old box bedroom back into a nursery to await the new arrival. They wanted all the redecoration finished a month before the birth so the paint smell would be gone by the time it was needed, and required a month or so of weekends to get my old room ready for Darren. It looked like I had five months of lodgings available at the most, the thought of the upheaval involved rather depressed me. Perhaps that was another means of telling me that I needed to move on, with my life in general as well as geographical.

Some of my fire fighter pals turned up too, I could hear them gather in the corridor where they waited somewhat noisily. Ward rules were that only two people were allowed at each bedside at a time. When Mrs Murray and Darren got up to go, Darren insisted on giving me a proper kiss, so Mrs Murray decided to give me a quick peck too - that was a first, I didn't even know her Christian name. She and her husband were very formal and always called me Mr Collins, only little Darren called me Jim, and that was only after my insistence when I first encountered the little tyke.

Four of my firemen pals came in, big boisterous chaps all wearing sweatshirts with "Lincolnshire Fire Service" or the Humberside equivalent, some of the guys had worked for either neighbouring services over the years. I think the nurses made an exception to the two-to-a-bed rule when they came in, although they definitely didn't relax the rule when my garage mates had earlier visited en mass!

They cheered me up immediately and made the last hour or so of visiting time fly by and I clean forgot all about Mandy's impending arrival. The nurse came round with 10 minutes' visiting time left, warning visitors to wind down, please. When she got to my bed the nurse advised that I had another visitor waiting, so could the guys please leave within a couple of minutes to give her a chance to visit?

"That's the babe what was waiting when we got here," said Andy, "How come a beauty like that knows a scrawny ugly old bugger like you?"

Of course, I had finished my brief relationship with my girlfriend Sally a couple of months before I became a fire fighter, so the guys had never seen me with or even heard me talking about a woman, other than Mrs Murray and they had pulled my leg about her as soon as they walked in. Mrs Murray was a very attractive but much younger brunette, probably about Sally's age, early to mid-20s.

"She's my ex," I explained wearily, referring to the waiting Mandy, the painkillers must've suddenly worn off then because all those old agonies came flooding back. I guess I must've winced in pain.

"She a free agent now then, eh?" Nobby was always getting into trouble over women, his reputation for shagging anything in skirts was legendary in our station.

"No," I groaned, "She replaced me with Gosford bloody Tanner!"

"What?" laughed Andy, "He got a bigger dick than you or what?"

"Yeah."

Bugger! I didn't mean to say that out loud.

Of course Gosford bloody Tanner had a bigger dick than me.

There are a number of images permanently burned into my brain from that fateful night of the barbecue party, about a month short of five years ago. I had to work that day, I worked every Saturday, and Mandy went to the party with friends in the afternoon before I joined them early evening. I remember the thirty long agonising seconds I froze in the bedroom doorway while my wife and Tanner were obliviously enjoying extramarital relations with each other before I threw off my shock, stepped into the bedroom and punched the bastard as hard as I could in the side of his head. Neither of them knew I was even in the room until then. I remember the image of him sliding off to the left out of the bed and out of my wife and, yes I do remember he was bigger. I don't know, maybe a couple of inches or so.

I'm average, all the guys down the station shower together and we're all about average except for Nobby, and his first name is definitely not short for Norman. The only consolation I allowed myself was that Tanner's knob looked thinner, but that might have been an optical illusion due to his longer length.

"Sorry, mate," my friends chorused, looking at each other as they gathered their coats and shook my healthy left hand or slapped my good shoulder farewell.

Mandy breezed into the ward as the guys began to file out, carrying a shoulder bag and a small overnight bag. I could see them all giving her the once over as she swept by them. Well, I had to admit, Mandy always was worth a second look.

I suppose this is the point at which I need to describe Mandy. I've always loved her and, I guess, to some small degree I always will. I'd known her for over thirty years to this point, as our near-neighbour parents were well acquainted. Mandy is quite petite, barely five feet tall and quite slightly built. Her breasts are tiny 32A but absolutely in proportion to her size. In fact they are perfect, with sensitive and responsive nipples. She has always had long fair to dark blond hair, mostly all the way down to her bum, which she wore in a pony tail or plaited pig tails when working at school, piled high on her head on evenings out, or loose and flowing at home and in bed. Her eyes are a startlingly bright blue, her face elfin, delicate with the most beautiful of smiles. Mandy has always had the ability to turn heads but she never seemed to realise quite how stunning she actually was. If she had been aware of the effect she had on men she would never have settled for me in the first place. She thought all men naturally hit on all women regardless of their looks.

Today Mandy looked as beautiful as ever. Clearly she had travelled up straight from school as she was wearing a smart skirt and blouse. Her hair was a lighter blond than I remembered it and weaved into a pair of plaits, over her shoulders and reaching her chest, so had been cut a foot or more shorter than it had been when I last saw her five years earlier. I suppose at 32 it was appropriate to wear her hair shorter.

She flashed her brilliant smile at the guys in thanks for letting her visit as they filed past, who all turned to look at her so that the lead man, Jack, an older guy with grown-up kids and should have known better, missed the doorway completely and crashed his shoulder into the door jamb, stopping suddenly, so the other guys all collided into him. It looked like a scene from Keystone Cops but Mandy had turned her attention towards me by then and was completely oblivious to the effect she had caused.

Her smile vanished immediately after she passed the boys and her face became grimly set, focussed on me like a lioness eyeing up a wounded wildebeest. No sympathy registered, just the simple prospect of an easy meal for her and the cubs. Her smile, that had been effortlessly radiated to my departing pals vanished like the early morning summer mist, boiled away in an instant under a merciless sun. Clearly the effect I had on her had little in common with attraction and even less with affection. Perhaps she was hoping that I was so badly injured that she could kill two birds with one trip and stay on for the funeral, in which case I'd be delighted to disappoint her.

She kissed me almost perfunctorily on my sore bruised forehead before sitting down. I noticed that her eyes focussed steely on my freshly-laundered and folded change of pyjamas left by Mrs Murray on my bed.

"How are you feeling?" Mandy asked frostily, arching her eyebrows, adding, "You look a real mess!"

"Feeling fine," I lied, actually I ached all over and not just physically. "You look good, I like your hair shorter, it looks more ... sophisticated." I was trying to play nice, like my Mum always told me to in polite society, even if Mandy wasn't as polite as she could have been considering the circumstances.

Mandy flashed her smile again, for the first time at me in half a decade, "Thank you. The children all send their love."

"They know I'm in hospital then?"

"Not as such. They think Uncle Jimmy the hero fireman is in hospital. I've only told them that I'm away visiting him. They don't know yet that I'm here to see if their father can be persuaded to live up to his responsibilities by getting back into their lives. They need to see you again and regularly, James, if only to reassure them that your sudden departure wasn't their fault." She was still smiling slightly as she regarded me.

"Well, we know whose fault it was, even if they don't," I said quietly, resignedly, recognising she called me James. Only my mother and sisters call me James, she used to called me Jimbo all the time as a mark of affection but that was a long time ago, before Tanner came on the scene.

Her smile disappeared again at that and she looked frosty once more. "Our children know it was my fault why we split up, although it didn't help any that you wrote all four of us off without giving any one of us a second chance. I never lied to them about whose fault it was although I didn't go into details back then. Josh is old enough to know the real reason and he has accepted what happened and has forgiven me for my part in our split. The girls are too young at the moment to have the details explained to them but when I feel they up to it I will inform them, too."

I nodded. She continued, with increasing anger in her voice.

"They accept that our split was my fault and why you don't want to see me or speak to me. What they do not understand, what they cannot even begin to understand is, why you abandoned them and have never tried to get back into their lives. I cannot understand that either. They are your children and-"

"Are they?" I interjected, "Are they mine?"

Her face looked shocked, her mouth forming a perfect O, her eyes wide open, her tiny fists clenched with white knuckles. I had the feeling that if I hadn't got my right leg in plaster and in traction, my left foot and ankle plastered up, as was my right wrist, with my right arm in a sling and a big bandage on my head covering half of my forehead, I swear she would have given me a severe beating.

"How can you think that? Of course-"

"Because you are a cheating bitch," I interrupted again with a snarl, "So how can I believe anything you say? For all I know you've been whoring yourself out for years!"

She spluttered, eyes welling up in tears. "Bastard! It was just the once, just the once!"

She got up and rushed out of the room. I sat there feeling like a complete heel. On the one hand I had wanted to get rid of her but I wasn't happy about how it happened.

The ceiling lights were dimmed shortly after that but I didn't sleep much all night.

Hospitals are never quiet places and rarely restful. I ached all over and couldn't get comfortable in the limited sleeping positions available to me. I was miserable. At several points during the night I considered asking the nurses for more painkillers, but decided I was only feeling so sore because I was so low emotionally. Besides, firefighters are supposed to be tough and I didn't want the nurses to see that I had been crying.

My scheduled painkillers were delivered to me just before breakfast. I hoped I would be left alone until visiting times to catch up on my rest. I was surprised when Mandy came into the ward just as the breakfast tray was being cleared away about half nine. She waltzed in like she belonged in the place and put her shoulder bag down by my bed. She had changed from her business attire into much more relaxed and comfortable jeans, tee-shirt and trainers. She looked fit and well, beautiful of course, and, very surprisingly, was smiling broadly. Quite a contrast to our most recent parting.

"Hi, honey," she said cheerfully, "You look like shit again this morning. How do you feel, though?"

"Don't call me honey," I growled. I was sure the painkillers should've kicked in by now, but some pains that we feel acutely are impervious to prescription drugs. "What are you doin' here anyway? Visiting time's not for hours yet."

"Ah," she replied triumphantly, "This is where getting here early last night and speaking to the Night Sister came in very handy." Mandy looked annoyingly smug. I had that sinking feeling come over me. I'd experienced that before.

"And," she continued, "I have had an extremely enlightening conversation with the Day Sister, too, Honey!"

She smiled like the cat that swallowed the canary and a huge dollop of cream while eyeing up the goldfish for second helpings and then, which was unthinkable, she leaned across me and kissed me on the forehead before I could move out of the way. Mind you, I was limited in my movement and had nowhere to evade her. I noticed, too, that unlike the perfunctory kiss yesterday she actually lingered as if the kiss meant something to her. Boy, was I worried now. I'm a guy who relies heavily on stability and knowing where I stood, uncertainty makes me queasy and I was feeling sick enough without this unforeseen development on top.

"So," I said, "Please tell me you are only popping in to wish me a final fond farewell. If that is the case, goodbye and see you next in hell, Honey."

"No, sugar, I'm here to take care of you for a couple of days," she smiled sweetly. "Then, hopefully in a couple of weeks' time, if not sooner, I am taking you back home with me and help you with your recovery programme."

"Oh, no! No, no you're not, over my dead body!" I spluttered, "Besides, I live up here in Cleethorpes, I work here, my whole life is here. I'm not goin' anywhere."

"Oh, you can come back to live up here if you must, in four or five months or so at the earliest, possibly up to a year, according to your doctor, before you are fit to return to work as a fireman again. But in the meantime you are going to be signed over to your next of kin to look after you. And you know who your next of kin is don't you, honey?"

"No!" I cried, "There is no way that's going to happen. I am going home, to my home, to my place up here."

"But," she smiled that sweet but infuriatingly knowing little smile of hers, "You don't have a home here any more and you haven't got anywhere else to go."

"But-"

"Hush, Jimbo, you'll break blood vessels if you are not careful and that will only delay your recovery and you'd have to stay at home with me even longer," she said calmly, her voice smooth as silk and dripping with honey.