For all of you who are still not bored to tears by my remembrances of my lovely, lovely late husband, here’s a remarkable little tale that I was fortunate enough to witness.
Dave always considered himself to be an ordinary man, nothing special, he didn’t consider bring up three girls by himself, keeping down one of the most dangerous jobs in the world and living an extraordinary double life to be anything but ordinary.
When I first met him, it was his eyes that I was drawn to, remember the late Steve McQueen? well Dave’s eyes were every bit as bright as his were, they were an attraction that I couldn’t ignore.
I’ve told you in an earlier story about the first time we became lovers, well that night was the time when I noticed his arms, they were dotted with zillions of scars, some big, long slashes and others, just tiny dots of lighter skin.
I asked him about them and he told me they were birth marks!
“You lying old bugger” I laughed and we made love again,
I knew little about him then except that he told me about a little problem he said he had with his eyes, that was all he said about it until one day he rang me up and said that he had to go away for a couple of days.
Well that wasn’t enough for me, I was already in love with the old fart although I hadn’t said so and there was no way he was going anywhere without me, or at least telling me!
I realized that I was being pushy, which he hated, but all I knew was the man and I wanted to know much, much more about him, so I went round to his flat where he lived alone and found him packing his few clothes, I was devastated,
“Is that it then?” I asked, “You’ve just decided that I’m not the one, so you’re going to sod off are you, hadn’t you got the guts to tell me straight out?
(Dave’s readers will know that he mentioned the Canary Isles in some of his stories, that’s because the woman he went out with before me became pushier and pushier, he was too nice a man just to dump her, so one Christmas, he took her to Gran Canaria and told her that it was over, she hit the roof and became the nasty little vixen that I later got to know and dislike, Dave’s response was to wait until she was asleep, get a taxi to the airport and go home without her!)
His reaction to my outburst was the complete opposite, he sat me down, calmed me down and told me about what he called his little problem,
Belfast at it’s worst.
There were twelve of them, three units each of four men, all vastly experienced police officers and Dave was always quite proud of the fact that he was by far the scruffiest of them all, he told me once about how he was summoned to a house where some other officers wanted him to identify a suspect, there was a uniformed constable outside, a sterling sub machine gun under his arm and he looked really nervous as this scruffy, long haired, bearded, downright dirty old bugger approached the tape.
“Hey” he shouted at Dave, “Where the hell do you think you’re going? A detective came out then and told Dave to bugger off,
“And who’d be telling me that?” Dave asked and the detective produced a wallet containing his warrant card, Dave looked at it, looked at both policemen, took his own wallet out and said,
“I’ve got one like that, only mine says fucking sergeant!”
They let him in!
Anyway back to the tale, as ever in Ulster, there’d been a tip off, even a rough area had been named, hence the twelve scruffy men lounging about or sweeping the roads, one or two were sipping at cans of lager as befitted the run down area, technology then was not what it is now, so when the two men came into the precinct from opposite ends and each one stopped to light a cigarette, nothing untoward was suspected by anyone except Dave’s partner who tried furiously to attract Dave’s attention, Dave looked up and saw the expression on Pete’s face, he knew something was going off and moved towards the man nearest to him, the man began running but Pete was quicker and tripped him up, as quick as a flash Pet tapped his colt revolver under the man’s chin and explained that there were two ways to do it.
Dave nodded at his friend and partner and turned back towards where the guy had left his brief case, at the very second that he looked at it, he said for a millionth of a second, it seemed to bulge and Dave actually saw the flash as it exploded, he was dropping backwards with his arms up over his face and that was the last he knew until he awoke to darkness.
Hence the marks on his arms.
He was blind for four days and he told me later that when the bandages finally came off, he cried.
He was told that both retinas were damaged and ordered to return to Belfast for treatment if he started to see floaters in his eyes, those of you who have had eye problems will know what he meant. Well he’d been seeing floaters for some time then and he gave me what he thought would be the hardest choice of my young life.
“You can come with me Jack and wait while I have the op and then piss off when you see I’m blind, or you can wait here for me to phone you, or you can sod off and find somebody your own age who is young, fit, healthy and doesn’t have a million fucking problems, either way kid I’m on the 18.55 flight from East Midlands to Belfast”
I went mad at him and we had our first fight, I kicked him, tried to hit him, I threw things at him and do you know what the bastard did? He bloody well laughed and then hugged me until I stopped crying!
He made me cry when we landed at Aldergrove airport just outside Belfast, there was a long line of business men returning from whatever and wherever they’d been, but when he reached the tarmac at the bottom of the steps, he stopped, knelt down and touched the hard concrete, he never did explain that one, but I never thought it needed any explanations!
I just wish that I loved a place as much as Dave loved Ireland, I’m sure many of you are familiar with the old Irish song, “Forty shades of Green” but honestly, until you’ve seen Ireland from the air and seen all the many different shades, you can’t possibly realize how stunningly beautiful the place really is!
They operated the following afternoon and told me he would be out for at least twelve hours, I asked if the op had been a success but the nurse shook her head,
“I honestly don’t know” she said, “But before he went under, we had a chat, I remember your old man from when he was here before, one half of me groaned because I thought he might create mayhem like he did the last time, but my old heart was singing ‘cos he’s a lovely, lovely man, was he after telling you what happened when he was here?”
I shook my head and pressed her, but she wouldn’t budge,
“He’ll likely tell you himself” she smiled, kissed my cheek and left,
Ten minutes later she returned and told me that her husband was waiting in the car park for me,
“He’ll be out all night Jackie, I’ve never done this before but you look shattered, come on and we can offer you a hot meal, a bath and our daughter’s bed, she’s away at college” she told me proudly, “It’s my day off tomorrow but I’ll bring you in and we can check how much booze he’s had in the night”
That confused me more than just a bit until she told me that the R.U.C. had a habit of looking in on their fellow officers, even their ex fellow officers as Dave was, but Belfast, although a city, is really more like a village,
“He’ll not go short of visitors Jackie, believe me”
I did believe her and I spent a really restful night with that delightful lady and her equally nice husband, two people, who if there were more like them would make the world a better place!
It broke my heart when we arrived back at the hospital the following morning, he was sitting up in his bed eating his breakfast, but the bandages round his eyes told their own story and for a split second I questioned my commitment, I noticed one of the officers around him nudge him and whisper something, he looked up, sniffed and grinned,
“What about ye Jack?” the dam broke and I scattered his breakfast as I threw myself on his bed, the tears fell in bucket loads, I held him tightly and breathed in his scent, his odour,
“I don’t care Dave, I’m here and I’ll look after you, we’ll be okay baby trust me”
“Jackie?”
I just cried against his chest,
“Jackie?”
I refused to look at anyone, I knew they were his friends, I could never share with him what they had, but he was my man and I was going to look after him, not them, me!
“Jackie, the doctor hasn’t been round yet sweetheart, the bandages will be off when he arrives”
“Stupid?” Stupid doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt,
“Oh”
The next two hours were the longest of my life, but finally the doctor arrived, a lovely little Indian guy who greeted me as if I was royalty and gave me some idea of the esteem those brave men of the R.UC. are held in by the vast majority of the population of Ulster.
It seemed to take an age for him to take the bandages off, he left the last layer on and told Dave to open his eyes as there was only one layer of bandage between him seeing and total blindness.
Incredible though it may sound, I could hardly believe what happened next, he lay back down on the pillow, held my hand and promptly fell asleep,
I thought he’d died, how the bloody hell could someone sleep in such a situation?
He told me later that he was actually scared, my big, bad bear afraid?
He only slept for ten minutes or so but I had to be restrained from strangling the bugger, there he was in dreamland while I was completely distraught, was I going to be nursing a blind man or would I get my Dave back?
He sat up and the doctor asked him to close his eyes,
“Fucking hell” I thought, “The old sod will fall asleep again”
He closed his eyes and the doctor slowly unwound the last of the bandage.
“Right David” he’d switched the lights off, “Open them slowly, if it hurts, tell me and close them immediately”
The silence was horrible, I gripped his hand although I’d rather have gripped his neck, I swear he was doing it deliberately, I could see that his eyes were stuck, but the doctor wiped them gently with some solution or other and I held my breath.
Slowly he opened his eyes, one at a time and turned his head to look at me, but his eyes were focused somewhere above my head, I sobbed and gripped his hand even tighter, I wanted to say that it didn’t matter, I loved him anyway, but slowly his eyes looked up and found mine, they were no longer the piercing, bright blue that they’d been a few hours ago and I choked back a sob,
“I love you Dave” I could hardly get the words out.
“If you really loved me” he said slowly, “You wouldn’t wear that bloody awful tee shirt”
It took a couple of seconds for it to sink in, but then he added, “Mind you Jack, I love the way it shows your nipples”
I squealed, screamed, hugged the nurses, kissed the doctor and then started crying,
Oh my God the relief, I’d got him back again in one piece, I’m sure everyone in the ward could see my knickers as I did my best to smother him, but I really didn’t care, I’d got my Dave back!
The doctor wanted me to leave him alone for a while, whilst his eyes got used to functioning again, Kathleen, the nurse took me into the canteen for a coffee, but we diverted to the ladies on the way where I spent a good ten minutes crying out my relief, why did I love this old bugger so much, why had I followed him to Ireland, why the hell was I bothering?
Kathleen told me why over a coffee.
I’ve told you about when he was shot and about how he spent eighteen months in hospital afterwards, that in itself is easy to say, but can you imagine the pain, the suffering and the agony that he went through when his bitch of a wife calmly phoned him and said she was leaving him?
I’m only four feet eleven and three quarters of an inch tall, whilst his wife was about twelve feet nine inches (she was a lot taller than me anyway) and even before I met her, I hated her, no I bloody well detested her and I still do.
Time went on and slowly Dave’s health improved and almost eighteen months to the day that he was taken in, unconscious and losing a lot of blood, he was discharged, I actually cried when Kathleen told me about that day, they were transferring him to a hospital at a place called Bretby, near to Derby, but apart from his girls, he didn’t really know anyone there, she said that for the first time since she’d known him, she realized that Dave was afraid!
“My old heart went out to him Jackie” she said. “The old sod had got awards for his bravery, but he was afraid to go home”
In the middle of the afternoon, he was visited by one of his colleagues, they disappeared and came back about three hours later half pissed and carrying about two hundred pounds worth of booze, which wasn’t bad for Dave as he was still on crutches.
The upshot was that he was so well liked in that wonderful, wonderful place, that hardly anyone went home on time after their shift, most staggered out half cut and she swore that if there had been a major trauma in Belfast that night, they would never, for the first time in their history, been able to cope!
In the few weeks since Dave’s death, Maureen and I have visited the hospital and all of the old staff who remembered him, almost without exception shed a tear with us, I think I’ve said enough about my Dave, although as long as I live I’ll know that nobody else will ever come up to the same standard as him.
I remember someone saying to me that if you can remember somebody with a smile, you had a good life with them, well all I can say is that, I’m laughing, “God bless you all for your letters, I will not write any more about Dave.
Dave Barton, 1946-2005. R.I.P. my darling.