The Visitors

by Mascull, Rebecca

  I sit and commune with the train’s tempo. I speed across the land. I am a traveller. I feel a new Visitor, who says he has been standing on the bridge all day, watching the trains come and go.

  I ask him, What do you see from the bridge?

  All the trains. Golly, they’re fast. The fastest thing on land.

  Another comes. The railwayman. He was in the tunnel, now he is riding the train with me.

  Why were you in the tunnel?

  I’m the signalman, miss. A sheep strayed from the field beyond and I came down to shoo it off. We don’t want blood on the tracks, do we?

  Where is the sheep?

  Gone, miss. Gone.

  Lottie touches my hand. ‘Not long now. The conductor is here. He says we shall arrive in London soon.’

  I shake hands with the conductor. He has a hole punch for tickets and lets me play with it. He gives me a bit of paper and I make long lines of holes which veer into circles and diamonds. I give it to him as a present. Lottie says he is grinning from ear to ear. I have made many friends on this journey. The train begins to waver and rattle from the driver applying the brakes. We are approaching the station. There is movement up and down the walkway; I can feel people’s feet stumbling along with the train’s halting pulse. As we pull into the station, Father takes my arm and helps me to find the door to the platform. My first train journey is over and I have loved it.

  As we descend on to the platform at Victoria station, the stench of too close humanity engulfs me. I have never conceived such a potent concoction of people, bustling and bumping and sharing the same close air and space. As we begin to walk, I know once more that there are dozens of new Visitors waiting to speak with me, but I shut my eyes to dismiss them. It is curious this, that new Visitors come when I travel. I cannot explain it. Something tells me that when I board the train again later to return home, I will leave these behind. I do not understand why, it is just something I know.

  I feel the ground shake when a rocketing eruption comes from the train as it lets off steam. Those with ears must suffer. Lottie tells me a porter is asking Father to carry our luggage, but we only have the picnic box and Father shakes his head, saying to Lottie that he will not be forking out money to someone to carry a basket when he can quite easily do it himself. Lottie tells me there is a Nestlé’s chocolate machine but we would need a penny from Father. I know she is shy of asking him, so I stop and take his hand.

  ‘Can we have some chocolate from the machine?’

  ‘How did you know about that?’ asks Father.

  ‘I could smell it.’ It is a white lie. Lottie and I devour the chocolate as we walk along, though Father declines.

  I grab his hand. ‘Have some, Father, please!’ But he will not. Something in the quick movements of his wrist tells me that he is anxious. And I remember why we are here in London, not to have picnics or eat chocolate and other adventures. It is to see the eye doctor. I work the melting mass around my teeth as I think about what this doctor wants and why Father is nervous.

  Outside Victoria station the air broadens and the rumbling chaos of my first city street assaults my senses. Father is looking for transport to the doctor’s office. I am overwhelmed by the reverberations from the pressing of huge wheels into the road, the clip-clop of a thousand horses’ hooves, the throb of machines all around, the thrum of numberless feet pounding the pavements. You may believe a deaf-blind person is immune to the teeming roar of a city street, but you would be wrong. Our sense of physical awareness is attacked in precisely the same cacophonous way. It is exhilarating and terrifying, exhausting and vital. I feel the dust and grit speckle my skin and inhale smoke and dirt and horse manure and produce of every kind.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ I press Lottie.

  She says the wide road is packed three deep each way with carts, coaches, trams and trolley buses of every description, all drawn by horses clattering by each other with hundreds of near-misses every second. Trams and omnibuses are stuffed with passengers, the upper deck reached by a half-spiral staircase with a rail, topped by mottled crews of men in bowler hats and cloth caps, handlebar moustaches and side whiskers, women with their hair pinned up and wide-brimmed hats furnished with cloth flowers, artificial fruit and masses of feathers. Carts are driven by men and boys with dusty coats and mucky boots, some with blankets across their knees, their goods secured with tarpaulin and rope. A coach and pair of the well-to-do is directed by a coachman and groom riding on the box with a top hat and plume on the side, while cabs have men in bowler hats with a whip. There are two men pushing a board on wheels advertising tea along the edge of the road. The lanes clog at turnings, where two-wheeled hansom cabs and four-wheeled growlers queue quite patiently. Nearby is a stoppage where a horse has slipped on the cobbles and men are placing sacks all around so the horse can regain its footing. Pedestrians negotiate the roads at their peril, old gentlemen with canes and top hats, little messenger boys with cropped trousers and working women with tight-waisted coats dodge in and out of the bustling traffic. But there is a kind of method to it, Lottie says, as everyone seems to know what they are about. And where on earth are they all going? All these individual lives acting out their progress simultaneously in the tumult of the city street, just like Dickens. I dare not open my eyes as I know there are hundreds of Visitors clamouring through this tempest to speak with me and I cannot bear the din.

  Father finds a cab and helps me up the one step into the sprung seat inside. I sit between Lottie and Father and we are off, moving into the stream of traffic and bouncing with the trit-trot of our driver’s horse. The rattle of the clanking wheels jostles my bones and jogs me against my companions.

  Father finds my hand and asks, ‘What do you think of London?’

  ‘Noisy!’ I joke.

  We dismount in a quieter street, the stiller air punctuated by a coach or cart here and there, but much more subdued and welcome. Lottie tells me it is called Wigmore Place. I did not know streets had names. She says it is a very smart street and there is even a motor car parked at the far end, the first she has ever seen.

  ‘There must be someone ill nearby,’ Lottie tells me, ‘as the road has been covered with straw to spare their ears.’

  We wait to cross the road. Lottie describes an old man with a long beard who is called the crossing-sweeper. She says all along the kerbs are horses and carriages top-to-toe and our man must find a place for us to squeeze through on to the pavement. Lottie says two little boys further up are crawling under a horse’s belly to get across.

  We mount five steps and I feel Father rat-a-tat-tat on the door knocker. The door scrapes open and we tread on dense carpet. As we progress down the hall, I flutter my fingers along the wall. Thick wallpaper and heavy curtains absorb the vibrations from outside. We are in a haven of peace from the stormy seas of London.

  We enter a room that smells of Brasso and a hand finds me. It is a man’s hand: warm, chubby and good-natured fingers grip my own in a confident handshake and I am at ease. Lottie tells me this is Dr Knapp. He smells of medicines, a minty flavour lingering about him, but its sharp clean lines are comforting. He lets me feel his face, which is fat and jowly with a soft beard and kindly smile. I am led to a chair that has a reclined back and Lottie says I should sit and get comfy. She tells me the doctor wishes to examine my eyes, so I must sit very still and keep them open. I like the brush of his fingertips on my eyebrows and do not mind his attentions. Lottie says he is holding up a succession of instruments to look carefully into each eye. At periods, she asks me to look up, left, right, down and straight ahead. Then a change comes.

  ‘I can see that,’ I tell Lottie.

  He has shone a light into my eyes. I perceive it, as I do the bright sunshine when it shines directly on to my face at noon.

  Lottie says, ‘That is good news.’

  The examination continues for some time, then Lottie tells me the doctor has thanked me for my patience.

  I go to sit down in a cha
ir like those in our dining room at home, flanked by Lottie and Father. The doctor sits opposite me and takes my hand. In it, he places a curious object. I feel it all over. It is a sphere, like the globe, but bumpy and lumpy, and it comes apart into pieces. Lottie feeds me information through my left hand, as my right hand explores the curious thing in my lap. The doctor has given me a model of an eye. Liza tells me the names and they are beautiful: iris, cornea, lens, retina. Then I am asked to leave the room, so that Father and the doctor can talk. But I will not. I want to know everything. I reach for Father’s hand.

  ‘I want the doctor to explain it to me. Please. I want to understand.’

  Father agrees.

  Through Lottie, Dr Knapp tells me about my eyes: ‘Your eye lets in light. It travels through the lens. This helps to focus the light on the back of your eye and lets you see clearly. When you were born, you were very short-sighted. We call it high myopia. Your eyeballs were too long. When the light came in, it couldn’t reach the back of the eyes. Your vision developed well as most of a baby’s preserve is seen closely, such as your mother’s face. But your myopia grew worse as you grew older. Then you developed cataracts in both eyes. These make your lenses cloud over. And you lost your vision completely. Both of your problems lie in your lenses, which help you to focus. I can give you an operation that will take the problem away. I can remove your lenses. This will remove the cataracts and change the way light reaches the back of your eye. Other parts of your eye will still be able to focus light for you. If the operation is a success, you will be able to see. You will be able to look at distances quite well. You will need spectacles for reading and close work. But you will be able to see for the first time. You should also understand that there are risks with any operation. You could have an infection afterwards, which could harm or even destroy your eyes. Or make you very ill. In the worst cases, infections can be fatal. But we will do everything we can to stop that from happening. You do not have to have this operation, Adeliza. But it is your best chance to see.’

  I cannot believe what I have just heard. I had no idea this was why we had come. I thought we were meeting another associate, another nosy parker to poke and prod and study for their own ends.

  I reach for Father’s hand. ‘Why did nobody tell me that the doctor could make me see?’

  ‘We did not know for sure. The doctor had to examine you first. We did not want to raise your hopes to have them dashed.’

  ‘Is it really true? Can he make me see?’

  ‘There are risks. And I am worried about those. You might lose your eyes or become very ill. You might even die. And I cannot bear the thought of it.’

  ‘I do not want to die.’

  ‘I know. And I would never put you in harm’s way. But I believe you are old enough now to understand the risks of this. And I believe you have the right to decide your future. If you accept the dangers, and choose to have this operation, I will espouse that decision. Mother feels the same way. And I believe that God wants you to see the wonder of His creation and He will protect you.’

  ‘Ask the doctor what happens in the operation.’

  Lottie narrates: ‘He says you will have special medicine to make your eyes numb, then he will use a very sharp knife to make a small cut in each eye and remove your lenses. Afterwards, you will be bandaged for many days and stay in bed in a dark room. The eyes should heal on their own. When the bandages are removed, we will know if the operation has worked.’

  I ask Lottie, ‘What should I do?’

  ‘It is your decision.’

  ‘But what would you do?’

  ‘It is not important what I think.’

  ‘It is, it is!’

  ‘What do you think, Liza?’

  A Visitor says, Where is the nurse? She said she would bring remedy and it hurts, it hurts.

  A creeping fear takes hold of me. I twist my fingers. I do not know what to do. I have never felt the need of counsel more. I think and think. Of the operation, the medicine, the knife. Of the time after in the dark room, of infection and destruction, of the boiling fever when I was two and how I suffered. To go through all that and to make it worse, perhaps become so ill, maybe to die, to die, to die. But to see, to see, to see …

  I say, ‘Do it now.’

  6

  I have to wait for the operation. Dr Knapp is very busy and treats many people. The waiting is agony. I feel sad in my eyes all days. A legion of hopes and fears punish me.

  I try to imagine what it will be like to see. I turn my face to the light and sense its benevolent warmth and try to stretch my memory back and back to the time before the Time Before, when I was a happy child without cataracts. Yes, my eyesight was bad then, as the doctor called it, high myopia. But I could see things close by, my parents’ faces, the breast, my hands and toes, the blanket, the bottle, the spoon, the dummy, nappy and pin, the hundred little things of a baby’s days and nights. These sights were stored in my infant brain somewhere, but are atrophied through neglect. I cannot apprehend how they looked, what looking was like, how seeing will be. I have talked with Lottie many times about colour and still do not understand it. She helps me by linking colours to other things I know, thus white is clean and black is dirty. But I have great difficulty accepting that a white shirt can become grubby when rubbed in mud, or that a blackbird’s wings can be smooth and speck-free. I feel an object and hold it up to my eyes, try to see myself seeing it, but I cannot imagine comprehending an object through anything but the feel of it, the shape, the weight, the texture and the space it inhabits. Does all this also come through sight, or is it something so different it cannot be conceptualised, as different from touch as smell is? Another country, another language, another arena of sensation? I ache for it. I open my eyes wide and strain to see, to make it happen myself. And all the while, this corkscrew dread, that it will never happen, that the hope will fizzle like spit on a hand iron.

  One day, Father brings me a letter from the doctor. He reads it to me: ‘Adeliza Golding is requested to attend at the London offices of Dr Lucius Knapp for an operation of cataract removal, the sixteenth day of October, 1895.’

  ‘I will be twelve years old by then.’

  ‘Old enough,’ says Father.

  Mother packs a bag for me. She puts in all my nightdresses, as I am to stay in the doctor’s house for the first two to three weeks, or until I am able to travel. Then I will be brought home all the way in a coach and recuperate in my own bed.

  ‘The doctor must ask us for a fee. And the coach will be very expensive,’ I say to Mother. ‘Where will we find the money to pay?’

  I know we are quite well-to-do. I know we are richer by far than Lottie’s family, that we have a large house, fine belongings and land. But we are not aristocrats. And Father always says hop farming is where fortunes are made and lost.

  ‘Do not worry,’ says Mother. ‘It is all in hand.’

  But Mother knows nothing of such things.

  I ask Father, ‘Where is the money for the doctor and the coach? Do we sell enough hops for these? Will we go hungry?’

  ‘We do very well. These past few years we have had high yields and neither the mould nor the flea, and prices are good nowadays. We can pay for the coach. But, very kindly, Dr Knapp has offered to do your operation for free.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because he knows you need it and he is a good man. Some people would call him a philanthropist, which is a person who acts kindly towards others for no reward.’

  ‘Are there such people in the world?’

  ‘Yes, and Dr Knapp is one of them. Also he is very interested in your eyes and your being deaf. He wants to study you. So he is getting something out of it too, to satisfy his scientific interest.’

  ‘I am a very interesting person,’ I say. And in this way, we resolve it.

  We take the train, as before. A dizzying collection of Visitors calls to me from the streets of London: here a lost boy crying, a young woman w
ith a baby who will not feed, an elderly lady who cannot find her hat with the little birds on it, a man who says the omnibus company must pay, must pay, it is not safe. I realise that after the operation, my eyes will be covered for weeks, and I will not be able to sense the Visitors. I wonder if I will miss them.

  When I arrive, I am settled in a bedroom upstairs at Dr Knapp’s house and Lottie helps me change into a nightdress. A nurse comes to show us to the operating room. We meet Father in the hallway.

  ‘My brave girl,’ he says. I reach to touch his face but he stops me. I insist and feel his wet cheeks.

  ‘I will be well,’ I say.

  He tells me he has to wait outside, as they cannot have too many people in the room. But they have said Lottie can be there to hold my hand and tell me what is happening. I say goodbye to Father and go into the theatre. It smells of disinfectant and metal. I am asked to lie on a hard bed. They place a folded cloth over my mouth and chin, and another across my forehead. My nose is left exposed for easy breathing and, of course, my eyes.

  A Visitor is here, another and another. They are all afraid.

  They said it would be over now. Why am I still here?

  Where is the nurse?

  My wound, how it throbs.

  Now I am very frightened. I want to say no, I have changed my mind. But I do not want to let everyone down. I think how much easier the lives of everyone I love will be if I could see. I think perhaps they will love me more if I am not blind. And I know I must do this, for everyone. Lottie takes my hand and holds it tight. She asks if I want to know what the doctor is doing.