This all happened many years ago, but it is as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. It was a dream - a very vivid dream - an erotic dream. When I woke up, I could remember most of the details clearly, and since I was confused by it, I wanted to get my husband, Philip’s, point of view.

He (the man in my dream) was naked underneath his maroon paisley dressing gown. I obviously was enraptured by him, and very willing to participate in his plans - which involved me coming up a set of stairs to where he was waiting for me.  The essence of the dream was in the anticipation, and I doubt if anything happened once I got to the top of the stairs, but perhaps that is just my conscience telling me when it is better to forget. I knew that because of my climbing those stairs, there would be a reward for me.

So what, you might ask, is so very strange about that?

Well, the man in question was our local doctor, James Berke, and anyone more unlikely for me to fantasize about would be hard to imagine. I did not like the man.

He was about 35, and I was in my late 20's. He was short, shorter than me, and had quite a stocky build. He had very short, very curly hair which was sort of sandy coloured, and he was not exactly ugly, but certainly not handsome.

We had joined his surgery as soon as we moved to Marple Bridge, and with our children having constant colds, sore throats, ear infections and other such problems, I spent at least one day each week for the last four years in his surgery. He was rude, abrupt, unpleasant.

To be fair to him, he did make a house call on both Christmas and Boxing Day in 1971 to attend to our son who was very ill. So, I’m not saying he was not a good doctor, but he was totally inept in social situations.
 
As soon as I became pregnant with my third child, I withdrew from his surgery because I didn’t want him to deal with me on a personal level. He seemed surprised, and perhaps a bit hurt, and asked me why - and I told him. “I want a doctor who I can talk to - and who will listen to me.” But I added that the other children and my husband would continue having him as their doctor, and I wasn’t questioning his abilities.

Philip laughed with me over the dream, not at all jealous. And I almost pushed the dream out of my mind. But later that day, I walked down to our village, and there he was, Doctor Berke, more or less across the street from his surgery. I saw him, and he saw me, and he just stood still in the street looking at me. I’m sure I blushed, and I rather think he did too, but neither of us said a word, and he crossed the street before I came up to where he had been standing. I wanted to ask him whether he had a maroon paisley dressing gown. I wanted to know if he had somehow shared my dream - because from the look on his face, which I had never seen before, his thoughts of me were much different from those of a doctor to a patient.

Later that week, I had a phone call. To my surprise it was him, Dr. Berke. He said he had something to discuss with me, and would I come to his new office in the Cheshire Clinic that day at 2 p.m. I assented, and put down the phone all aflutter. What was this about? What did he want to see me for?

I had never thought seriously about his new plan for opening a private clinic, and certainly had no thought of spending money to see the man who I had rejected on the National Health Service.
 

As I climbed the white outside wooden staircase to the new clinic, it was just like in the dream. My heart was in my throat when I knocked on the door, and I half expected him to be wearing his maroon coloured paisley dressing gown when he called for me to come in. But he wasn’t. He had a suit on, and even his tie was a conventional blue or grey - without a paisley to be seen.
 

“I expect you know that I am starting a new private practice,” he said and I said that I had. “I wonder if you would like to work for me, as a dietitian. You could see the patients here, and could charge what you thought was a fair rate. What do you think about that idea?”

I have no idea how he knew I was a dietitian. I was working at the time two days a week at a hospital in Manchester, and I was quite happy to take on more work, especially if I could fit it into my children’s schedule of play group time. So I agreed, and he said they would contact me when I was needed. He didn’t look in the least lecherous, and was marginally more pleasant than usual, but nothing in his demeanor could have possibly made me think that he fancied me.

So that is the story. I had two patients there over the next year, and then got another job in Adult Education so declined to do anything more for them. I saw Dr. Berke on occasion, and he was just as always, abrupt and rude.

He retired about five years ago, and our children have long since stopped needing someone go to the doctor with them. So I hadn’t seen him for many years. But not long ago, I was walking up Hollins Lane - and he was walking down. And the look was there again. We hadn’t spoken for maybe ten years, maybe longer, but he stopped me and said, “I heard you on the radio. It had to be you. Tell me it was you.”

“No,” I said. “I wasn’t on the radio.” But although we then each went on our separate ways, I so much wished that I had had the courage to ask him if he had ever owned a maroon paisley dressing gown.