Would You Believe Him?

by Jack Hollinson

  ‘No, just twelve or thirteen hours, really and we won’t pay for any hotels because we’ll stay at my friends’ or family’s houses. Oh, please Barry.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to clear it with the boss. I’m not going all that way for just three weeks though. Can you get four weeks off from your bank?’

  ‘I’ll try. They don’t mind being a Japanese bank, if staff go to Japan.’

  ‘Yes, okay, that’ll be good. I think I should see my mother-in-law at least once. Do you think that she’ll have a go at me for keeping you away so long?’

  ‘No, no - she’s very quiet,’ laughed Shu.

  So plans were made to go to Japan for the whole of April - the month before it gets hot, out there. Barry had heard of temperatures of thirty degrees plus in the summer together with possible monsoons and was definitely going to avoid that.

  They both got permission to take leave from their jobs and one night, before they left, Barry had an idea.

  ‘I’m in a reasonably good job now and the pay is all right - and you are getting older, Shu. Why don’t we try for a child when we’re in Japan, and then he or she would be English but “Made in Japan”!’

  Shu laughed.

  ‘Yes, okay - we try for child but how do we know when to try?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just about two weeks after your period starts, isn’t it? Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.’

  They got a lift to Heathrow and as there were no hold-ups, they were soon flying to Moscow and then on to Tokyo. The old Tupolov plane had seen better days and the seats were cramped, which left no room for Barry’s long legs.

  At Moscow, they changed planes and had to wait in a deserted airport terminal and were escorted by armed guards.

  On the flight to Tokyo, they had to eat Russian food and this was either tasteless or horrible. Shu did not eat a thing and was very glad when they arrived in Tokyo. They caught the bus to the city centre and took a taxi to an apartment, owned by one of Shu’s friends. It was minute with two small rooms, a minuscule kitchen and a tiny bathroom, but it must have been worth a fortune - as is any building in Tokyo.

  Shu felt quite good but Barry was completely exhausted and continued feeling tired for about four days. They just put it down to his accident because increased fatigue can be the result of brain damage.

  They wandered around the city in the first few days and went to see Shu’s brother who worked in the city. He then showed them around the city on the next day and they went to the south of Tokyo to see one of Shu’s friends afterwards.

  This lady was very friendly and was, as all the Japanese are, eager to help. She showed them around the local sights and, when her husband arrived home, they went to his parents’ farm, fifteen miles away.

  They all had a very enjoyable night and Barry had a few too many drinks of sake. They indulged in the traditional Japanese pastime of karaoke where a backing track is played without voices and people have to sing over it. Barry tried and they even took a photograph of him singing. When this was developed, he saw just how drunk he had been!

  The next day was fun. They were taken to a monkey park and then to a pebbled beach when Shu’s friend’s husband found a prawn, cooked it alive and ate it. Barry declined to do this when asked but he concluded that you couldn’t get it much fresher.

  Next they went to Nagasaki by bullet train. Barry expected a run-down place inhabited by weary-eyed, lethargic people but he couldn’t have been more wrong. The town had been completely rebuilt after the atom bomb had destroyed it in the Second World War, it had a tram system and was very busy.

  They stayed there for a couple of days, saw the park which, by English standards, was very small, looked around the shops and then went to see a house built in the eighteenth century and was lived in then by an Englishman - Thomas Glover. It contrasted with Japanese houses because of its size and English style. Apparently, Glover, was the man who had made Nagasaki because he had organised the illegal trading in the harbour through Dutch ships. Barry felt proud to be Eng1ish whilst he was there.

  They went to Hiroshima next and saw the Peace Park and Museum, which showed the destruction of the city by the first atomic bomb. Whilst walking around the museum, Barry felt a strange tingling feeling when he went near the debris of the bomb. He wondered whether any radiation was still being emitted by the debris, but didn’t wait to find out!

  Apart from the park, the city was dirtier than Nagasaki and after they had bought a Hakata doll, an expensive porcelain figure of a Japanese lady, made locally, they were pleased to be heading off towards the north-east and the town of Kumamoto.

  They strolled around a bigger park in Kumamoto and then it was off to Kyoto, once the capital of Japan, to meet Shu’s mother and stay for a few days in one of her friend’s flats.

  During this time, they had been making love whenever possible in the hope of getting Shu pregnant. She had finished her period just before they had started the journey and so the end of the first week was her fertile time.

  ‘I suppose that we’ll have to stop trying when your mother is in the next bedroom. I do wish the Japanese would use brick when building their houses and not wood and tissue paper.’

  Shu became embarrassed and, with a red face, said, ‘Oh, Barry, we’ve got plenty of time in England, just the two of us, so don’t force me, please.’

  ‘Yes, okay. It’s just that I wanted him or her to be “Made in Japan”!’

  The few days they spent in Kyoto were pleasant. They found another monkey park and Barry got a good photograph of Shu with a big monkey sitting on the same bench, staring in the same direction.

  ‘That’ll be a good photo,’ exclaimed Barry.

  Shu suddenly became aware of what he was doing. ‘Oh, no, have you taken a picture? Well, if you look at these monkeys, they attack you!’

  They saw the rest of the city with its temples and Buddhist shrines and, on the last day that they could use their rail passes, they travelled to Shu’s other brother’s home to stay for the remaining week. Shu’s mother lived there as well. The week passed in a relaxed fashion and her brother, Ling, hired a minivan and took the family to see a historic road that had been the same for hundreds of years and officials used to walk down it on their way to Tokyo.

  Ling and Carol had two children, both boys, who were fifteen and thirteen. They were very attractive children; the result of an Eurasian marriage, thought Barry. The boys, though, had problems at school because they were not pure Japanese so they didn’t like going as they were picked on. However, they did have one advantage for they were at least six inches taller than any other pupil of their ages, so they won many fights!

  On the way back to England, Barry was pleased that they had forked out many pounds, which had really given them the holiday of a lifetime. The Japanese people were so different! They seemed to be a polite, largely law-abiding population - if only Britain could be like that, he thought.

  They arrived home on Tuesday morning and, after unpacking, they sit down to have some tea.

  ‘Barry, I’ve got to tell you something said Shu. ‘I have just started my period.’

  ‘Have you? Oh damn! Oh, well, never mind, I suppose were just unlucky so we’ll have to keep going. Say, if we try every day next month, we can’t go wrong.’

  ‘Are you up to it?’

  ‘Of course I am, bloody cheek!’ It was rather a demoralising piece of news, but Barry was one who didn’t give in.

  The next month, they did try every single night but with no luck so Barry resigned himself to just keep on trying - not frantically, just methodically. There were times when Shu’s period was late and they both became excited - just to have all their hopes dashed when it eventually started. Shu was ready to go and see the doctor after six months but was told to wait until nine months had passed. They were timing their love sessions quite a
ccurately, but to no avail.

  Meanwhile, at Barry’s work, Charles seemed quite interested in the progress.

  ‘Any luck yet?’ was his frequent question.

  ‘No - we’re still trying,’ was always the answer.

  One day, Barry went into work with the expectation of taking a copy of some artwork the agency had prepared to one of their major clients - a large pharmaceutical company. He drank his coffee, did some paperwork and then phoned the artist to see if it was ready. They had just finished and so Barry drove to the studio, picked up the photocopy and returned to the agency.

  ‘What is it like? Let me have it,’ said Charles, as Barry walked in. It was quite usual for he didn’t trust anyone else’s judgement on artwork - he had to see it for himself, even though it was just typesetting.

  ‘Yes, not bad, but I don’t really like that widow up there,’ said Barry, referring to the last word of the paragraph on its own at the top of the page.

  ‘Well, let’s see what the client says,’ said Charles, not wishing to show any agreement with Barry’s criticism. ‘You shoot off now and I’ll tell them you’re coming.’

  Barry walked to his car. Bloody messenger, that’s all I am, he thought. But there was another, secret, reason why he was going - one that he wouldn’t guess for a long time.

  The journey into the City was very quick as the rush hour had passed, and Barry knew all the back roads. There was, as usual, a vacant parking meter outside the client’s offices. Barry walked in and got the usual smile from the middle-aged receptionist. He went up to the second floor in the lift and walked to the office.

  ‘Hello, Barry how are you?’ said Helen, the secretary-cum-personal assistant.

  ‘Oh, good day, Helen,’ said Barry, smiling his “Keep the Client Happy” smile. ‘I’m feeling really good. The journey was okay and I had no trouble parking so here I am. And how are you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m feeling really tired today so I might go home at lunch-time. I need an extra few hours in bed!’

  Barry heard what she said and thought no more of it. Due to his slow rate of digesting facts, he didn’t realise that Helen was casting the hook and wanted him to offer to take her home.

  Barry went into Mr Brady’s office and gave him the photocopy of the advertisement.

  ‘Hmm - headline’s a bit small and sub-headline’s too big,’ he grumbled. Helen came in. ‘Oh, hello love - what can I do for you?’ It was a complete turnaround in attitude.

  Helen told him her problem and he said ‘Okay, when I’ve finished here, I’ll phone Mr Neil.’ She went out. ‘Right, correct the mistakes and send the artwork off,’ he demanded.

  This was the usual for Mr Brady who wanted Barry to see him as a strong man - in control. If Barry worried at all about what people said or how they said it he would have been scared of this man, but he didn’t really care how he was spoken to and he forgot it very quickly.

  As he left the office, Helen was still moaning about being tired so he told her that he hoped she would recover soon and then left. She realised that she would have to try much harder to break his resistance down at all.

  At this time Shu was starting to see the doctor about her inability to become pregnant. At first, she was given some pills that helped some women to ovulate. They did have the side effect of making it more likely for the woman to have a baby girl, but that did not matter at all to either Shu or Barry.

  The weeks went by with no luck at the first or second attempt. It was about this time that Barry started looking at himself and wondering about how he felt. He always seemed to be exhausted by the time Friday came around and, seeing as he did not do that much work during the day, only drove for half an hour to the office and back, he thought that he should have more energy.

  He studied his diet; pretty good. He always had seven to eight hours sleep at night, and he didn’t go out playing sport, of course, so why was he so tired? Shu couldn’t think why and she was always tired, travelling to town and back each day, so he could only blame it on his accident.

  One aspect of this tired feeling really worried Barry. He had started noticing that when he was driving, he would suddenly feel his eyes glazing over, as though he were dazed. This could have caused an accident so, when it happened, Barry blinked repeatedly, looked frequently into his rear mirror and brought himself out of the stupor. Why did this happen? What caused it? Could this be a result of his accident again? Of course, he didn’t mention this to anyone for fear of being told to stop driving. He just had to carry on and hope that the problem would disappear.

  It was approaching the end of the year and Barry was asked to go to the hospital to have his fertility checked because it could be him who was infertile, and not Shu. Barry had a wall planner at work and wrote the appointment down, a month before he had to go to the hospital. When he asked for the time off, Charles, who still never liked anyone having time off work, asked what it was for. Barry told him, quite openly, and thought that this was not that strange. Charles, however, grumbled and told him not to be too long.

  Barry then recalled the time when one of his mates had died in a motorcycle accident and Charles had said that he didn’t need to go to the funeral - a waste of time. Barry had been shocked by this, and, had he been quicker at analysing characters, would have seen Charles for the selfish man he was. Barry still felt ashamed for not going to his other mate’s funeral, all because Charles had told him he didn’t need to go because business was more important.

  The month passed quickly and soon Barry, felt brighter and more with it. He had the hospital test and, whilst waiting for the results, went to his brother’s house in the country one weekend. When he and Shu got there, he was surprised that he felt so exhausted. Just 140 miles of driving and he felt shattered and he just couldn’t understand it. Must be the change in area, he thought, or something else.

  Chapter Eleven

  Shu and Barry only had to wait a short time for the result of Barry’s test and for this, they went to see the doctor. As they sat in the waiting room, Barry was beginning to feel uneasy.

  ‘What’ll you do if I am impotent?’ he asked Shu.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, err...’

  ‘I hope you won’t take drastic steps like walking right out of the door!’

  ‘Oh no, not that, I won’t leave you, but I don’t want to adopt children.’

  ‘Why not? Wouldn’t you want to give a home to an orphaned child?’

  ‘Hmm, no. They would never be your own and if they did have parents alive, they would find them and go away when they grew up.’

  Barry was puzzling over this attitude when they were called in to see the doctor. It was a lady doctor of about Barry’s age.

  ‘The results have come back from your test, Mr Connors and you are fertile so you can father a baby. This means that the fault must be in your reproductive organs, Mrs Connors. I shall start you on a course of tablets and make an appointment for you to go to the hospital.

  ‘Why’s that?’ asked Barry.

  ‘They will interview your wife and test her to see where the problem is. It will take quite a long time so you must be patient, and, anyway, you might conceive whilst you are waiting.’

  ‘Is that okay, Shu? Anything you want to ask?’ said Barry.

  Well, just how long will it be before I go to the hospital?’

  ‘I don’t know how busy they are, at the moment. I’ll send you an appointment card as soon as I can,’ said the doctor, trying to be as helpful as possible.

  As Shu and Barry were walking towards the car, Shu said, ‘I hope they won’t take too long. In Japan, they would be very efficient.’

  ‘Yeah, and you’d have to pay a fortune as well! This treatment is free, so just hang on awhile and it’ll happen, sooner or later.’

  At least, Barry was relieved. More than that, h
e was quite happy to know that he could father a child. He could even have questioned his relationship with Shu and thought of going elsewhere, to another lady, if he drastically wanted to become a father, but Barry was going to keep on trying with Shu - of that he was sure!

  He arrived at work, after dropping Shu at the railway station, and looked at the work on his desk.

  ‘How did you get on today?’ asked Charles, eager to know the outcome of the test.

  Barry looked very pleased.

  ‘Yes, I’m okay - a true man,’ he revealed, with some satisfaction.

  Charles, who had looked tense, seemed to breathe a great sigh of relief.

  ‘Oh good, I am pleased. I suppose it must be Shu then,’ he said trying to bring a little doubt into Barry’s mind.

  ‘Yes, it is, but she’s going to have tests at the hospital soon, so they will find out what it is and, hopefully, put it right!’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Charles. ‘I have just heard something that’ll please you.’ Barry looked up, attentively. ‘Mr Brady is giving a special lunch for old Elsie who retires at Christmas and I want you to go and represent us.’

  ‘That’s great, thanks a lot.’

  ‘But don’t drink too much. It’s on Friday, so remember to wear your best bib and tucker!’

  ‘Yes, okay. I’ll be smart.’

  Barry had never been on such an assignment as this before and he was looking forward to it but, of course, he didn’t realise the ulterior motive - for him to meet Helen again.

  Friday came and he duly left at 11.45 am to go to the lunch. Helen was looking particularly nice and sat next to Barry in the plush restaurant. The whole of her department was there and everyone participated in idle chit-chat. Mr Brady had his ‘be nice’ hat on and was laughing with everyone except Barry and it was as though he resented him - or something that he was doing.

  On the whole, Barry enjoyed the meal, although he couldn’t help noticing Helen looking at him and the way she accidentally kept touching him. If he’d really been on the lookout for another woman, he knew that he could go for Helen, but he wasn’t interested. Besides, Shu was beautiful and Helen was only pleasant looking. He placed great store in being able to look at what attracted him - all the time, because, he thought, handsome men preferred beautiful women, and he was handsome.