The Four of Us

The text would usually arrive around 2pm on Saturday afternoon. There were four us and we’d do our best to avoid being the one to send it. Nobody wanted to appear needy. But by 2pm one of us would crack.

“Anyone fancy a few scoops tonight? Bettys at 9 bells?”

We had our own code for beer drinking. We asked for Charlie Birds rather than Carlsberg, a pint of Arthur rather than Guinness and a wedgy was a drink bought outside of the tightly controlled and monitored round system. It was all part of the comfortable vocabulary of drinkers, ‘the wink and elbow language of delight.’

Our numbers would vary depending on high days and holidays, but we had a core group of four. There were three of my school friends who had settled down in our hometown. And myself, the one who stubbornly refused to live in that hometown since the day I left in 1988, but still felt a gravitational pull most Saturday afternoons.

We would settle into Betty’s pub at 9pm. If we were lucky, we’d get our favourite corner seat which gave easy access to the bar and more importantly as the evening progressed, provided a clear run to the toilets.

I had my leaving drinks there, before I took the long road South in 2007. Celebrated birthdays, Christenings and Weddings. Put an arm round friends after funerals and enjoyed the many ordinary nights in winter when a joke would be cracked that would make that night magical.   

Betty has long since gone to the great pub in the sky and the pub shut well before Covid had the chance to put the final nail in its coffin.

I was the first of that group of four to succumb to Cancer. In hindsight I was the luckiest. Testicular Cancer is the most survivable and I’m now eleven years free of the Big C, despite the best attempts of a specialist last year to convince me otherwise.

I was in Ireland in 2015 when the second guy was diagnosed. We met up in Bettys that Christmas and I noticed he wasn’t drinking. That was a red flag given our previous history. He explained that he wasn’t feeling well and was getting tests. It spiraled pretty quickly after that and he’s still fighting Cancer to this day.  When I speak to him and hear what he’s going through I feel embarrassed for ever making a fuss about my brush with the disease. I had an operation and was discharged the same day. Spent a week with my feet up, enjoying the pain killers I left the hospital with.

Chemo was even easy in hindsight. It came with a side serving of anxiety, but I had no discernible side effects. I’ve had scans and so many blood tests that my arm feels like a second-hand dartboard. But these were all precautionary and if nothing else, got me time off work.

My mate has had more Cancer than any single person should have to endure, but bears all this with a stoicism that shames those of us who have moaned about the petty troubles of our lucky lives.

Not long after my mate was visited by the tumour ghost, it came looking for another victim.  It was Leukaemia this time. That ghoul that tricks its way into your bloodstream. This struck down the third member of my drinking group. But thankfully, he got back on his feet and so far at least, he has fought it off.

The last time I was home was in July 2019. I met my mates in a new pub and the subject of Cancer came up. We joked with the fourth guy in the group. His time would come.

That time came last Thursday. I woke up to a message on our Whatsapp group. He announced that he had bowel Cancer and was going in that day to have the tumour removed. He’s now recovering from having the tumour removed and is trying not to think about the long journey he’s about to embark on. You eat an elephant one bite at a time and the same applies to living with Cancer. There is no need to worry about the long term when there is enough activity going on this week.

Now that all four of us have has danced with Cancer, you might ask if Betty was putting something dodgy in the beer. It could be a statistical blip. 40% of people will get Cancer at some stage. It might have been 100% of our group but that could be put down to bad luck.

There are stories of radioactive winds blowing across the Irish Sea from Sellafield. But if this was the cause, we would have all developed the same type of Cancer, when in fact each of us had a unique form.

We’ll probably never know and I’m not sure I’d want to anyway. Ignorance will at least allow all of us to believe that our ailments were caused by factors beyond our control.

It’s now July 2021 and ordinarily, I’d be planning a trip back to Ireland around now. But we don’t live in ordinary times. We live in the era of Covid, when International travel seems as a likely as Ireland winning a major football tournament. I try not to think about this too much, but since I found out about my mate’s condition last week, it’s been dominating my thoughts. I would like nothing better than to spend a night in Ireland, holding up the corner of a bar and drinking with those same three friends I spent so many fun nights with.

We would trade war stories, reminisce about old times, outdo each other with shaggy dog stories and raise a glass to Betty and all those who have gone before us.

Then we would stumble out into the streets in the wee small hour and scream to the Gods above. Covid can go fuck itself and Cancer can too.