by Kate Helm
‘It’s a strong word.’
I remember the footballer glorying in his ‘victory’, and all the other guilty people I’ve drawn over the years.
‘It’s more common than you’d think.’
‘What about justice? Rehabilitation?’
Now I think of Daniel Fielding again – not the boy I drew, but the man who tried to kill himself. Jail has achieved nothing. That’s if he should even have been there in the first place. Maybe all the anger about what happened in Ashdean was directed at the wrong person.
But there is nothing I can do to put that right.
‘Prison is about retribution.’
‘And forgiveness?’
I close my eyes: I cannot forgive my father. Or myself.
‘That only works if there’s someone left to forgive you.’
44
If the counselling achieves nothing else, it does make me decide to research what the future holds for someone with my medical conditions.
Back home, I peer at the laptop screen. The blurry display, I know now, has nothing to do with the equipment and everything to do with me. One of the leaflets suggests a text magnification app I can download, and it helps, a little.
My searches return diagrams of the egg yolk effect Dr Nash mentioned, and research on which gene is implicated in Best disease. No cure, though.
Googling Charles Bonnet syndrome instead brings up personal accounts from older patients who’ve seen visions like mine – trippy patterns, as well as people, brick walls and mazes – all produced by a brain frantically trying to compensate for what the eyes are no longer seeing.
There’s a video of an artist who captures his strange hallucinations as abstract paintings on large canvases. They’re not very accomplished but he sells them to people wanting to do good. I don’t want to become a charity case, an oddity. The point about my work has always been to capture people as they really are – to reveal the secrets they thought they’d hidden from view.
I have looked at the guilty, then looked through them. If my vision deteriorates even further, I won’t even be able to recognise my own face in the mirror.
Enough of this. I am out of wine, and I want to get drunk.
I don’t notice the envelope until I’m on my way back from the off-licence, my three-for-two bottles of red clinking against each other in the blue plastic bag.
It’s A4-sized, couriered and addressed to me. But there’s no flat number, and it has been signed for by a neighbour.
My contracts for the art book arrived like this and for a moment, I wonder if the publisher has somehow found out about my eyesight, and this is a letter terminating the contract. Even though I know I’ll have to end it myself, I’m not quite ready to tell anyone the truth.
So it can’t be that.
Back upstairs, with a large glass of wine at my side, I open the envelope carefully. I’ve never had hate mail, but Neena has had her share sent to work, including a Jiffy bag with razor blades taped into the flap.
I tip the contents onto the floor: there’s a DVD with my name written on in black Sharpie, and an A4 sheet neatly folded into three. I open it. It’s a word-processed list of names in frustratingly small type. I look closer, tilt the page. Women’s names.
No. Not women. Girls. At the top of the page, the heading reads:
Female residents of Copse View Home for Girls, Ashdean, 1978–1980.
My heart beats a little faster as a yellow square of paper falls to the floor. I reach down to pick up the sticky note, which has just a few words scrawled in the same block capitals as those on the DVD.
I GOT NOWHERE. MAYBE YOU CAN DO BETTER. PLEASE TRY FOR THEIR SAKES.
Who sent this?
I scan the names – there are thirty or more – trying to make sense of the list. Is Sharon Fielding here? Her surname would have been different then, of course, but there are no Sharons at all.
I hold my breath as I put the disc into my computer and wait for it to load. A folder appears with eight files identified only by number. I double-click on the first one.
A photograph appears: it shows girls dressed for a party. The image is fuzzy, and not only because of my vision. It was obviously taken decades ago; the poodle perms and batwing jumpers give it away. The 1980s? There are a few Christmas decorations on the unfinished wall.
I click on the next file: another party, same place. In the background, I can see a breeze-block wall, a painting table loaded with drinks. Different girls, same era. I pick up the typed list. Anne, Cathy, Samantha? They raise plastic cups to the camera. They look too young to be drinking booze.
The next photo was taken outdoors, in spring. The girls – I can’t tell if it’s the same ones – are wearing a lot less. One is sunburned across the shoulders. Another has eyes half-closed – either she was caught unawares, or she’s drunk. They’re all smoking, lined up against a whitewashed wall. Above this, glimpses of treetops.
Were these taken at Copse View? I pick up the envelope and look for a return address. There’s nothing on the outside, but someone has written something on the inside flap. When I manage to focus on the tiny letters, my mouth goes dry.
Sent on behalf of Sharon Fielding, Copse View, Ashdean.
Whoever sent this knows I’ve been painting Jim. Maybe they know I visited Daniel too.
But they don’t know that it’s all over, that this crime and those people no longer have anything to do with me.
I click on the last photo.
For the first time, there’s a man in the image. No, not a man – a teenager. The photo has been taken indoors with a flash because his eyes blaze. His upper body is naked, and next to him is a short-haired blonde girl, and she’s clutching a T-shirt to her chest, which doesn’t quite cover her breasts. She’s fourteen, fifteen at most. Her face is hard to read. Shock? Fear?
But it’s not her I stare at. It’s the young man.
And a defiant, unfinished Jim Fielding stares back.
45
The woman in the dock doesn’t look like a child killer. She is neat, featureless. I have no idea how I’m going to draw her.
I shouldn’t be working. But when Neena called about this case, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about my diagnosis over the phone.
And there’s a more important reason: she’s the only person I can think of who might be able to make sense of the photos from Ashdean.
I’ve spent the weekend poring over the faces, especially Jim’s, and reading the girls’ names until I know them by heart. I’ve googled them too but got nowhere; the names are too common, the girls lost in the Web. Jim was involved with one, maybe more, that much is obvious. Perhaps they weren’t willing. Whoever sent me the pictures obviously doesn’t think the whole story has been told.
I’ll never actually finish Jim’s portrait, but he doesn’t have to know that yet. I can still carry on with the next sitting, ask him questions. Except I don’t know what questions.
Neena will. That’s why I’m here.
‘This is not about a mother who snapped from exhaustion, or suffered postnatal depression,’ the young prosecution barrister is saying. ‘The defendant, Pamela Kirk, is a cold, arrogant woman who felt she’d given her children life, therefore she had the right to take it from them. Which is exactly what she did. For her husband, the nightmare will never end.’
The more I stare at the accused woman, the less clear she becomes. The words of the opening speech float in and out of my head – ‘an evil streak . . . feelings of resentment that couldn’t be controlled . . . complete lack of remorse’ – but I can’t seem to match them to the defendant’s unexceptional face.
Little Charlie stands in the empty witness box, yawning, and the fact he’s not really there makes him no less vivid.
On the packed train up to London this morning, as Charlie played hide-and-seek between the commuters’ pinstriped legs, I convinced myself I might still get away with this sketch. After all, I’ve had Best disease for years
without knowing, and still managed to build my glorious career.
I was lying to myself. I try to angle my head to see the defendant more clearly, but nothing about her seems to register. Knowing has changed everything.
Neena taps her watch and leans in to whisper:
‘Can you manage a quick one, for the lunchtime bulletin? It’s a quiet news day, they want to lead with it.’
Shit.
This is not meant to happen yet.
I’d assumed I wouldn’t have to draw the defendant until teatime. My plan was to catch Neena at lunch – show her the list of girls who were at Copse View and ask her to apply her twisted journalistic perspective to it all. But she’ll be a lot less receptive if I’ve already let her down with a poor drawing.
My hands feel numb. When I try to scribble a final note about the woman – how the boat-neck shape of her taupe cotton top is perhaps the most exciting thing about her – my writing spiders across the page and my pen falls onto the floor.
Neena leans down with me to pick it up.
‘You are all right, aren’t you, Georgia?’
There is a warning note in her voice.
I follow her as we shuffle out of court early, our faces towards the bench, avoiding turning our backs on the judge. Charlie pokes his tongue out, mocking me and the whole pantomime.
Outside in the street, I set up to draw near the camera, while Neena writes her script. The sunshine is harsh, making my eyes water.
‘What are you planning?’ she calls over.
I stare at my easel. My mind is as blank as the paper mounted on it. I have no memory of what this woman looks like, except that boat-necked top and the limp, mousy hair just touching her shoulders.
‘Um, it’ll be . . . her watching as the barrister opens for the prosecution.’
‘Fine. I’ll be done in twenty-five, that should be enough time, right?’
Twenty-five minutes. Fifteen hundred seconds. I’ve done decent work in that time before. But I want to run away, down the Strand, to lose myself in the meandering tourists and the impatient office workers getting an early lunch. Anywhere would be better than standing here, feeling blind.
Come on, Georgia.
It doesn’t have to be brilliant, it just has to be done.
I tried to find a picture of the defendant in advance, knowing this could happen. But, unusually, the papers had found nothing on her: no Facebook account; no office party snap sold by a former colleague for a quick buck.
One step at a time: I sketch in the square angles of the court; the black, prosecutor’s gown; the back of his head, reddish hair just creeping out from under the scrolls of the wig.
Pamela Kirk remains formless in my head. I reach out with my pencil, hoping something will come to me. I begin with the neckline, then the rounded slump of her shoulders and plump arms – at least, I think they were plump.
But no. Perhaps they were skinny, bird-like. A flat chest follows, and then guilty hands that touch the front of the dock. No wedding ring anymore.
I must do this.
The hair is easier, a few lethargic strokes in yellow ochre.
But her face . . . Her face won’t come.
I sense Neena’s eyes on me, from where she’s setting up ready for her piece to camera. There can’t be long left. I check my watch. Eight minutes have already passed.
How?
I try to remember what any nose is like, any mouth, and as I force myself to put another line on the page, I’m as clueless as a child with brand-new crayons, trying to represent the world for the first time.
Charlie stands near me. I copy his nose.
I add lips with a pinkish pastel. I try to fill in Pamela Kirk’s eyes with the pencil and then smudges of dullish green.
When I step back, it’s worse than I thought – a series of lines that just about make a face, but not a recognisable one. Neena has finished recording her spot now; she’s heading towards me, reaching for the picture.
‘It’s not working,’ I say, trying to shield it from view.
‘What do you mean? Anything’s better than nothing, I can’t afford black holes in the package. Come on.’
I shake my head. ‘Please. Can’t you do without, just this once?’
‘George—’
Toby is striding towards us, frowning with impatience, and I know the only thing left is to step aside and let them both see what a mess I’ve made.
I look away; I can’t bear to be pitied.
‘Oh,’ says Toby.
‘Shit,’ says Neena. ‘We can’t use that, can we?’
The producer is staring at my picture.
‘I . . .’ He looks at his watch. ‘We don’t have time to reshoot . . . I mean, if we did it as a fleeting pan across, so we don’t linger on the face . . .’
He’s losing conviction as he speaks.
Before he can finish the sentence, I turn and run.
46
I don’t stop until I get to Covent Garden Market, fighting through the crowds, abandoning the cautious walk I’ve adopted since my diagnosis.
Suddenly all the strength that propelled me from the court drains away. I lean against one of the wrought-iron pillars as I fight for breath.
It’s over.
Whether they use the image or not – please don’t let them use it – word will spread. Journalists live to gossip: before the day is out, everyone will know that I have lost whatever gift I once had.
Maureen will know.
And the publisher. And Jim Fielding . . .
Goosebumps prickle up my back and neck. I turn slowly, half-expecting to see Neena or Toby behind me, ready to rage.
But there’s no one I know. Only the humpbacked tourists with their daysacks.
I wait for my heart to slow, and my strength to return. But while my breath grows less ragged, my legs still feel like jelly. I can’t imagine making it as far as the Tube, never mind all the way home to Brighton.
I reach into my pocket and with shaking hands, call a number.
‘It’s me. Could you come, please? I need you.’
*
Oli finds me after thirty minutes.
In that time, I’ve had four missed calls: two from Neena, and two from WITHHELD – almost certainly a BBC news exec. Voicemail messages show as a blurry reel-to-reel symbol in the corner of my phone screen, but I’m not brave enough to play them back.
‘Let’s get you out of here,’ Oli says.
I let myself be led out of the market like a child. A black cab is waiting. Oli gives the address of his chambers, and I climb in, slumping against the back seat.
Oli passes me a bottle of water, and when I’ve finished drinking, he takes my hand and holds it until we get to Lincoln’s Inn.
It’s thirteen years since I first visited him here; he’d hoped to impress me, and it worked. But as he leads me across the manicured grass, this legal Disneyland seems so distant from real life – and real victims.
Once we’re inside, Oli finds a small, oak-panelled meeting room and gently ushers me inside. He takes off my coat, sits me down, then places my bag and box of pastels on the heavy table.
‘I left my easel behind,’ I say.
‘I’ll arrange to have it picked up. It’ll be OK.’
My sobbing takes me by surprise, and Oli too. He crouches next to my chair and lets me cry, my head resting on his shoulder. I spot short strands of horsehair on the dark fabric of his suit.
‘Were you in court? Did I drag you out?’
He shakes his head. ‘Your timing was good. Early adjournment.’
I try to apologise between the sobs but the sounds I make are nothing like words, and he holds my hands in my lap.
I don’t know how long I cry for. Two minutes? Twenty? But eventually I’m empty. I sit up, my eyes raw, my ears buzzing.
‘I don’t know where that came from.’ My voice is the croak of an eighty-year-old, and I laugh. ‘I’ve never cried like that before.’<
br />
Oli nods. ‘I’ve never seen you cry at all.’
I point to the sodden patch on the shoulder of his suit.
‘The dry cleaners on Battersea Park Road will sort that. Get them to do the blue riband service.’
He smiles. ‘I will. Do you want to tell me what’s happened?’
I do want to tell him everything. But where would I begin? With today’s sketch? My diagnosis? Or earlier still, with Pip and Mum and what my father did?
‘Yes. But I’ll need a drink.’
‘That is never a problem in chambers. Give me two minutes.’
47
I nurse the brandy glass, the crystal warming under my fingers. Dutch courage. Where do I begin?
‘Oli, I’m going blind. Or, at least, I’ve lost a substantial part of my sight.’
He doesn’t move. He’s close to me, his leg pressed up against mine, and our breathing has taken on the same rhythm.
‘How?’
‘It’s a genetic condition. It probably started in my teens. I didn’t realise until . . .’ I hesitate. The next part is harder to confide. ‘It sounds mad, but I found out because I’d started seeing things.’
Again, if he’s shocked, he doesn’t show it.
‘What things?’
‘People who aren’t there. I thought I was going crazy.’
I look up, expecting Charlie to be in the room with us, but it’s just Oli and me.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I was afraid of what it meant. And I’m not exactly good godmother material if I’m a fruitcake, am I?’
‘We’re all a bit crazy, Georgie. But how does it connect to your eyesight?’
I explain.
‘There must be surgery. There’s bound to be something in the States—’
I shake my head. ‘Right now, the best they can do is monitor me. Glasses might make a few things easier, but the damage is done.’
‘Oh, my poor Georgie.’ His voice breaks. ‘Promise me you won’t keep anything from me again?’
I nod. But of course it’s already a lie. I know I won’t tell him his poor Georgie is no more real than my hallucinations.