by Mark Morris
I thought this was worth passing on to Daniel, and as soon as I’d said goodbye to Jane I rang him. His phone was unresponsive, refusing even to accept messages. I blamed his interpretation of his wife’s calls for making the utter silence feel like darkness so complete it could engulf all sound. I phoned the hospital where he worked, only to learn that he’d cancelled all his operations. They had no idea how long he would be on leave, and wished they knew.
My first meeting of the day was after lunch. As I drove to the suburb next to mine I tried to think what to say to Daniel. I was hoping to persuade him that he needed someone else’s help. His broad house—one of a conjoined pair—was emptily pregnant with a bay window and shaded by a sycamore that had strewn the front lawn with seeds. Sunlight muffled by unbroken cloud made the front room look dusty if not abandoned. I was ringing the bell a third time when Daniel’s neighbour emerged from her house, pointing a key at her car to wake it up. “He went out earlier,” she said. “He’ll be at work.”
At once I knew where he might be. In five minutes I was at the graveyard where I’d attended Dorothy’s funeral. Her plot was in the newest section, where the turf wouldn’t have looked out of place in a garden centre and the headstones were so clean they could have advertised the stonemason’s shop. Once I’d parked the car a wind followed me across the grass, and I heard the discreet whispering of cypresses. My footfalls weren’t much louder. I was trying to be unobtrusive, having seen Daniel.
He was kneeling on Dorothy’s grave with his back to me. He hadn’t reacted when I shut the car door, admittedly as quietly as I could. While I was reluctant to disturb him, I wanted to know what state he was in. I strained my ears but heard only the reticently restless trees. At least I wouldn’t interrupt Daniel at prayer or in attempted conversation, and as I approached he stirred as though he was about to greet me. No, a shadow was patting his shoulder, a faint ineffectual gesture on the part of a cypress. In fact, he was so immobile that I couldn’t help clearing my throat to rouse him. This brought no visible response, and I’d grown nervous by the time I came close enough to see his face.
He wasn’t merely kneeling. His chest rested against the headstone, and his chin was propped on the sharp edge. However uncomfortable that might have been, he showed no sign of pain. His fixed smile looked fiercely determined, and his eyes were stretched so wide that I could only wonder what he’d been striving to see. They saw nothing now, because nobody was using them. When I closed the lids I imagined shutting in the dark.
His phone had fallen from one dangling hand and lay beside the headstone. I retrieved it, finding it chilly with dew, and wiped it on my sleeve. For a moment I was pitifully relieved that I wouldn’t be able to look for any messages, since the phone was activated by a passcode, and then I recalled seeing Daniel type his birthdate. Before I could panic I keyed in the digits and brought up the list of messages. All the latest ones were unnamed and dateless, and there were two more than I’d previously seen.
I opened the first one and held my breath. The pleading voice wasn’t much louder than the cypresses, and I fancied that it sounded afraid to be heard or else acknowledged. “Leave me alone. You’re just the dark and worms. You’re just a dream and I want a different one.” At first I thought the noise that followed was just a loose mass of static, and then it began to form words. “Mother’s here now,” it said. “She’s what she promised she would be. There’s nobody for you to tell and nobody to see. She’ll be with you always like a mother should.”
I struggled to believe the explanation I would have given Daniel—that it was yet another deferred call from Dorothy, which was why she was referring to her mother in the third person—but not only the usage made the voice seem inhuman. It no longer resembled static so much as the writhing of numerous worms, an image I tried to drive out of my head as I played the last message. I almost wish I’d left it unheard. An onslaught of slithering swelled out of the speaker in wordless triumph, and in its midst I seemed to hear a plea crushed almost beyond audibility but fighting to shape words. I couldn’t bear much of this, and I was reaching to turn it off when another voice went some way towards blotting out the relentless clamour. “I’m here as well.”
It was unmistakably Daniel’s, though it sounded in need of regaining strength. In less than a second the message came to an end. I closed my fist around the phone and tried to tell myself that Daniel could have recorded his voice over the last part of an existing message. The idea he’d left in my mind days ago was stronger: that the phone, or the way he’d sought not just to preserve all its recordings of his wife but to contact her, had somehow caused the situation. Perhaps I was mistaken, but by the time I doubted my decision it was too late. I found the edit button for the messages and let out a protracted shaky breath as I hit ERASE ALL.
I used Daniel’s phone to call the police. Weeks later the inquest confirmed that he’d poisoned himself. When the police finished questioning me I drove from the graveyard to work. Though I yearned to be home, I managed to deal with several clients. At last I was at our front door, and when Jane opened it she gasped as if my embrace had driven out all her breath. “No need to hang on so tight. I’m not going anywhere,” she said, and I wondered how I could even begin to explain.
THE EYES ARE WHITE AND QUIET
by Carole Johnstone
18.02.19 (Clinic: BAR55, 14.02.19)
Consultant: Dr Barriga
Ophthalmology—Direct Line: 020 5489 9000/ Fax: 020
5487 5291
Minard Surgery Group, Minard Road, SE6 5UX
Dear Dr Wilson,
Hannah Somerville (06.07.93)
Flat 01, 3 Broadfield Rd, SE6 5UP
NHS No.: 566 455 6123
Thank you for referring this young lady, whose optician suspected optic disc cupping. Her visual acuity is 6/6 in the right eye and 6/4 in the left. Both of the eyes are white and quiet. Intraocular pressure readings are 18mm/Hg in the right and 16mm/Hg in the left. She has open anterior chamber angles in both. The CD ratios are about 0.5. There is no significant visual field defect.
Her eyesight does not appear to be deteriorating. Her chief complaint is that of intermittent visual disturbance, but this was absent in clinic. There is no family history of glaucoma. I have not started her on any medication. Unless she has any further problems, she will be reviewed in the eye clinic in twelve months following a repeat visual fields test and central corneal thickness assessment.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Rajesh Roshan DRCOphth, FRCS
Staff Specialist in Ophthalmology
* * *
19.08.19 (Clinic: BAR55, 15.08.19)
Consultant: Dr Barriga
Ophthalmology—Direct Line: 020 5489 9000/ Fax: 020
5487 5291
Minard Surgery Group, Minard Road, SE6 5UX
Dear Dr Wilson,
Hannah Somerville (06.07.93)
Flat 01, 3 Broadfield Rd, SE6 5UP
NHS No.: 566 455 6123
This patient was reviewed in the eye clinic today at her own request. Her visual acuity is 6/6 in the right eye and 6/5 in the left. The eyes are white and quiet. The CD ratio remains about 0.5 in both. There is no significant visual field defect and no evidence of glaucoma.
We have seen this young lady at least three times in the last six months, and can ascertain no physical cause for her complaints of intermittent visual disturbance and periods of “complete blindness”. These are reported as having lasted up to two hours on occasion, and she believes that their frequency is increasing.
I am of the opinion that we can do no more for her. I have referred her for psychological evaluation and discharged her from the eye clinic, with the advice to see her optician on an annual basis.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Rajesh Roshan DRCOphth, FRCS
Staff Specialist in Ophthalmology
* * *
“I mean, all that fuckin’ gabbin’and over-sharin’like, everyone thinkin’ they’re be
in’ all civilised again, and look how quickly that went the way of everythin’ else when they thought one had got in tonight.” He rocked back on his heels; the dirt crackled against his boots. The fire warmed her face and she leaned closer to it. She was always so bloody cold.
“Sharin’s never a good idea anyways. That posh divvy, he’s half mad on that Debbie one, the auld arse don’t know half as much as he thinks he does, Jimmy is more fuckin’ terrified of wild dogs than anythin’ could actually kill us. That’s all it is, ain’t it? Listenin’, findin’ out what makes folk tick, what makes ’em shit themselves. Survival instinct—if you’re smart like. Say nothin’ and let everyone else do the talkin’.”
He was from Liverpool and he was on his own. He had terrible teeth; often she could smell his breath before he even spoke. His name was Robbo. That was all she knew about him. That, and he did a whole lot of talking for someone so against it. He liked talking to her; she had no idea why.
“Why don’t you leave then?” she asked. It had started to snow: cold, glancing touches against her fire-warmed cheeks. She could hear the growing mutters and cries of dismay on the other side of the parked vans. They always built at least four fires now, one in each corner like a mobile Roman infantry camp.
“Nowhere to go is there? And folk need folk, like. That’s just survival instinct too, ain’t it? Some folks, they got that more than other folks. And, I mean, it’s not like you know which kind you’re gonna be till it happens, ay? Soft lads like Jimmy are scared of their own shadow, then you got the likes of Bob fuckin’ Marley runnin’ straight at everythin’ like a proper weapon. Debbie and that other bird—the Scottish one…”
“Sarah.”
“Right. Sarah. I mean, what have they done since we all hooked up, eh?”
“They’re just scared.”
“I’m fuckin’ scared. Don’t stop me helpin’ out, goin’ on patrol. I mean, explain that, ay? You look at the animal kingdom, right? It’s not like Peter fuckin’ Rabbit wakes up one night and thinks, fuck it, what’s the point? I can’t be arsed runnin’ away from anythin’ that wants to ’ave me for brekkie. Might as well give up and die like. Or just cry meself to sleep in me nice comfy VW.”
She smiled. “It’s not the same.” He was rattled. He was always wired, always opinionated, but the events of the day and then the wild dog that had snuck past the fires had got to him. His sweat was fresh, but it smelled bad; it reminded her of the days when no one had understood what was going on. When everyone had been trying so desperately to get away from a thing that they hadn’t yet realised was everywhere.
“I mean, fuck, look at you, ’ann. You don’t just go out on reccies, you fuckin’ lead a few. And you can’t see your arse from your fuckin’ elbow.”
She didn’t answer.
“Arr ey, you can’t, come on like. I’m not bein’ a fuckin’ dick. It’s a valid fuckin’ point.”
She liked the way his fucks and likes and dicks always sounded like the hissing hot water siphons of the coffee shops that she used to hide in when her sight started getting really bad. It was comforting somehow. She liked the way that he admired her too. Even before she’d proved her worth to everyone else, he’d always been the first to volunteer to sit watch with her. Back when she’d just been the blind girl.
There had been many convoys in those first few months, but none had stopped for her—or if they had, they’d moved on swiftly again without her. This one had initially said yes, she suspected, only because of Robbo. And as convoys went, it only just qualified. One of the vans was his beat-up Ford, still smelling of methylated spirits and paint and hash. The other—the VW—had belonged to a brethren couple whose names she had already forgotten.
Robbo swore when they both heard sudden movement behind him.
“Grub’s up, ladies.”
“Nice one,” Robbo said, pretending that he hadn’t cursed, that he couldn’t hear Marley’s low chuckle. “Want some scran, ’annah?”
She put out her hands and relished the sudden warmth of the foil tray. “Thanks.”
Marley was big, she could tell. Sometimes—often—she could sense something other than scorn or tightly wound caution in him, especially when they were alone. Once, he had followed her to the shallow pit that they always dug on the periphery of their camp, and as she’d squatted and peed, she’d felt him watching; she’d breathed in the sea smells of him. If it wasn’t for Robbo, she knew that she’d have a lot more to fear from Marley than she already did.
After Marley left them alone again, Robbo attacked his stew with gusto. She suspected that he always ate with his mouth wide open; she found the sound of that oddly comforting too. She ate quietly, mechanically, tasting nothing at all.
“Why won’t this snow fuckin’ stop?” he eventually muttered. “Last thing we fuckin’ need is another fuckin’ whiteout.”
“I’ll be able to hear them,” she said, and he heaved a great sigh, even though it was a lie. It never failed to amaze her how easily that lie had been believed from the very start, as though the immediate consequence of her blindness should be a nearly preternatural sharpening of all her other senses. They did believe it though—all of them—and it was just as well. It made her useful, maybe indispensable. She knew that even Robbo’s surrendered Peter Rabbits remembered the night that the Whites had ambushed them while they’d all been sleeping. She knew that they remembered her warning scream, the dead White at her feet next to the opened VW door, the bloodied crowbar in her hands. When the brethren couple had staggered out of the van, they’d pulled their coats tight around their bellies, crying and sobbing that God had saved them.
“Oh, aye?” Robbo had said, after discovering the body of a Pakistani man, whose name Hannah had also forgotten, lying by the makeshift entrance to their camp. “What he do to piss Him off then, ay?” The Pakistani had died badly. Even though Robbo had never told her exactly how, she’d been able to smell it; she’d been able to see it through the horrified witness of everyone else.
They’d burned both bodies on the periphery of their camp, and then buried the smoking bonfire under heavy, wet clods of grass.
“They almost look like us,” Robbo had whispered to her later. “When they’re dead at least, like. When they’re not runnin’.”
After that, they stopped sleeping in the vans. After that, not one member of the convoy voiced an objection when she started taking point, same as everyone else. There was always someone ready to hold onto her elbow and take the weight of her pack. A few weeks after the dead White, the brethren couple didn’t return from an easy supply run. No one volunteered to go looking for them.
“So, what kind of folk are you, Robbo?” It wasn’t what she wanted to ask, not even close, but she needed to start somewhere. They never talked about anything that was worth something. They never talked about where they’d come from, because none of them believed they’d ever be going back. And they never talked about where they were going, because they weren’t going anywhere. They were just moving. And progress was slow. It was safer to scout routes and camps on foot before bringing up the vans behind. The vans weren’t for travel any more; they were for escape. She’d been on point today, and the two days before that, and Robbo had held her elbow for all of them. That was why tonight of all nights, she needed somewhere to start.
“I’m still here, ay? What’s that tell you?”
She swallowed. For a brief moment, fear swallowed her up, doubt pinched fingers against her windpipe. “Tell me something from home. Tell me something about before, about you before.”
He sighed. It still rattled a bit inside his chest, even though he’d run out of the last of his bifters weeks ago. “Aright, ’annah. Don’t see the fuckin’ point like, but aright.”
She heard him change position, move a little closer. “Anythin’s better than bein’ on your own, ain’t it? That’s just how it is. It’s why we’re all still here, ain’t it? I had this mate, right. We’d been mates since school—not bezzies li
ke ’cause he was a bit nuts, and you know what kids are like; you’re not about to hang out with the soft lad. Anyways, we stayed in touch ’cause we lived on the same estate, we both worked in the Asda, and went to the same pubs on the weekend. And this guy, ’ann, he was somethin’ else, man. He was like them abandoned puppies they used to show on ad breaks. He was built like a brick shithouse like, but soft as shite on account of his ma beatin’ him up every time she took a drink when he was a kid, and his da tryin’ to shag him every time she wasn’t lookin’. All he wanted, right, was someone, anyone. You could fuckin’ smell it off him.”
When Robbo coughed, she nearly told him that it was okay, that he could stop if he wanted to. But she didn’t. She shook the snow free of her blanket before pulling it tighter around her shoulders. She blinked her eyes, brushed icy fingers between her eyelashes, offering Robbo at least the illusion that she could see him. “Did he find someone?”
Robbo’s laugh sounded angry, but she knew it wasn’t. “Yer, he did. She likely didn’t know her luck till she didn’t. Folk never know what to do with unconditional love, like, d’you know that, ’annah? They think it’s all they want till they get it. It wrecks with your head ’cause it makes no sense at all. It’s like them pop-up targets at the shows. After a while you just need ’em to stay down, you know?”
She nodded, even though she had no idea at all.
“By the time they’d been seein’ each other six months, she’d shagged half the estate behind his back.”
“Did he find out?”
That angry laugh again. “Yer he did.”
“What happened?”
When he didn’t answer, she stabbed at the fire with a stick, sending up sparks of heat between them. Her heart was still beating far too fast. “Robbo?”
“He walked in on them,” he muttered, and then suddenly he was talking too fast and too hard again; she struggled to keep up. “He whacked her over the ’ead with an ’ammer, and then he took a carvin’ knife to the fella. And then he fronts up to my house, covered in their blood, and asks if he can come in like, if he can borrow a fuckin’ towel. And I say go’ed, lad, no worries, have a shower while you’re at it. And I phone the bizzies the minute he does.”