by Henry Green
“What was he like?” (So he was blind, how funny.)
“Dear boy, he was the finest man to hounds in three counties, and the most lovely shot. I remember him killing fifty birds in sixty cartridges with driven grouse at your grandfather’s up in Scotland. A beautiful shot. He would have helped.”
“It’s all right, I guessed it all along, you see. I knew it really when the man was looking at me in what he said was darkness. There was something in his manner. Christ! my eyes hurt, though.”
“Dear boy, don’t swear like that. No, it can’t be your eyes that hurt; if they did it would be a very good thing. It’s your face that—that is cut up rather. Not that all hope is gone, of course, there is still a chance, there always is, the specialist said so. Miracles have happened before now. But I do hate your swearing like this.”
“I’m sorry.”
Why had she died, who could have helped him so much now? All these years he had thought so little about her, and now she was back, and she ought to be sitting by the bed, and she would be helping so much, and there would be nothing to hide, and it would be so much simpler if Mummy were here. Her hands would drive away the pain. It would be so different.
“But I will read to you, all your nice books. And then you will go on writing just the same; you could dictate to me. I shall always be there to help, we’ll see it out together.”
Heaven forbid. She would never be able to read Dostoievsky, would never be able to understand. Besides, poor dear, it would bore her so except for the first few weeks when she would feel a martyr, and that was never a feeling to encourage. And how fine it would be to renounce her help in seeing it through, not as if it ever had an end, but how unselfish. Why was there no one else?
“Thank you, darling.”
What had he said? He ought never to have said that, it gave the whole show away. Why did one’s voice go? But what was there to say? He was blind, finished, on the shelf, that was all. Still, he must carry her through. She must be dreadfully upset about it all. But what was there to say?
She was struggling.
“It’s all right, it’s not so bad as it looks, it’s not as if we were very poor, it could—much worse, much worse.”
How wonderful he was, taking it like this, just like Ralph. She would like to say so many things, she longed to, but he did so hate demonstrativeness. She must try to say the right thing, she must not let it run away with her. And she must talk to keep his mind off.
“You are very brave, dear. I know it would have knocked me up completely, Ralph too. I don’t know where you take everything from, I can’t understand you half the time, you’re not a bit like the family, though Mabel told me the other day that you are getting Ralph’s profile as you grow older, but I can’t see it. You know God gave you your sight and He has taken it away, but He has left us each other, you know, and . . .”
“Yes, yes.”
There, she had done it. But it was all true, it must be true. She must not make that mistake again.
It wasn’t fair to say that as he was helpless. And what business was it of hers?—he wasn’t hers. Why did these things happen? Why did she sit there? It was so hard. And the pain.
“Yes, Mummy, of course.”
Mummy, he hadn’t used that for so long.
It would not happen again. Her feelings had betrayed her. The great thing was to keep his mind off. One must just go on talking, and it was so hard not to harp on it. A silence would be so terrible. There was always her between them. And it was not right, it was not as if the woman had ever done anything for him, except, of course, to bring him into the world. But it was she who had brought him up. He belonged to her.
“I am afraid I shall never be a good mother to you, John. I don’t understand anything except out-of-door things, and babies. You were a lovely baby when you were small, and I could do everything for you then, and I loved it. But now you’ve outgrown me in a way and left me behind. As I was saying to Mabel the other day, I don’t understand the young generation, you’re too free about everything, though in many ways you yourself are an exception to that, with your secretiveness. I don’t know how it is, but young people seem to care less about the country than they did. Now you, John, when you went—go for a walk, you mooch about, as old Pinch would say. And when you come back you don’t eat a decent meal, but in that nice phrase, you are all mimmocky with your grub.”
She laughed tremulously, then hurried on. He smiled at the old friend, though his mouth seemed afraid.
“I believe it all comes from this cigarette smoking, that’s what Ralph used to say, and I think it’s true. Nasty as his pipe was, at least it was healthy. You are all either too difficult and unapproachable, or too talkative. That Bendon girl a few days ago at Mrs. Pender’s told me all her most private and intimate affairs for a whole hour after having met me for the first time. In the old days the girl would have been thought improper. She was the sort of girl your grandfather would have smiled at. He . . .”
“Mamma!” This was better.
“Eh?”
“Nothing.”
“He always smiled at something he could not understand, and what he could not understand he could not, and of course there was something wrong in it if he could not. In the old days . . .”
She was off again, and how the old days thrilled her generation, how blind they were not to see the glories of the present and future! Blind. Perhaps in years to come his memories would be only of the time when he had seen the colours and life through his own eyes. But he was becoming sentimental, and surely he had recovered from that phase of his Noat days. What is she saying? (Blind? Yes, blind.) What?
“. . . don’t understand.”—The strain of talking to him of other things!
“But why try? Parents will never understand their children. Have you read Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons? There’s a wonderful picture there.”
He had not been listening. She had not been able to understand the bailiff’s policy with the pigs. And here he was on to his books again, as if books mattered in life. But one must always show interest, so that he might feel he had someone who took a kindred interest. One had read all those Russian things in one’s teens. One had loved them then, but one saw now what nonsense they had been.
“Yes, I read it years ago, when I married. I don’t remember much, but I don’t think it was a tremendously interesting book, do you, dear?”
There, they are always like that, “Yes, I read it years ago.” Nothing lives for them but the new, they have forgotten everything else, life itself even! She has always read a book, any book you care to mention, and she has always forgotten all about it, save that she has read it. Irritation! She was dead, withered through not caring, and he was alive, how alive he was! Alive! Alive? And blind, a tomb of darkness, with all the carbuncles of life hidden away! Blind? Yes, blind for ever, always, always blind! No. What is she saying? Nothing, there is silence save for the silken rustling of the rain outside. She must be ill at ease.
“Yes,” he says, as one throws a lifebelt at someone drowning.
“Dear, I meant to help, and here I am, swearing away just the same. I’m not much of a mother to you, I’m afraid . . .” Was there no way to help him? When you tried to make him respond to affection he withdrew into himself at once. She would cry if she stayed here much longer. Why did these tragedies come like this? And they were like strangers.
“. . . don’t, of course not. Of course you help, because I can feel that there is someone there, someone standing by who can really help when I want it. That’s what you are to me, a real friend.”
The weather had beaten all real sympathy out of her. She was so hard, so desperately rugged. There was a great deal to be said against going out in the rain. Hot-house flowers were better than hardy annuals, but then he would never understand the names of flowers now. Mrs. Fane was the ideal, so tantalizing, so feminine. Mummy would have been like that. And now he would never see a painting, he would just become a vegetable lik
e Mamma, a fine cabbage. And he would have had such a marvellous time with flowers, and with women, who were so close to flowers. But what was this? One must not slobber, sentimentality was intolerable. But how nice to slobber sometimes.
What’s that she was saying, a story? Which one? As, yes, the new one, about the waste of pig-wash.
There’s the rain outside, and the chuckling of the gutter pipes. It will be grey in the room now, or is it dark? Blind, so he didn’t know. Light, no more light. And if he were to lift the bandages, surely there was only that between him and light, not a whole lifetime. There is a click.
“Is that the light on?”
“Yes, dear. Well, I must go to tea. Don’t let it all worry you too much, dear.” She could not bear it any more.
And she was gone. What did she mean by her “and don’t let it all worry you too much”? Worry? Worry? He was blind. They did not seem to realize that he was blind, that he would never see again. Nothing but black. Why, it was absurd, stifling. He was blind and they did not mind that he was blind and would never see again. But it was silly to say that you would never see anything again, that was impossible. You could not see black for ever, you would have to see something, or you would go mad. Mad. So he was blind. He had always heard of blind people. But of course it meant absolutely nothing. It was silly.
There were slow steps up stair carpet, three wavering steps on the linoleum, and the door opened. Nanny comes in.
“Master John, I have brought you your tea.”
She puts something down that clinks.
“Thanks.”
“Did you have a nice sleep?”
“No.”
“Would you like a nice cup o’ tea, Master John?”
Was everything nice and like her religion, comfortable?
“All right, Nan.”
He was being very good. Tea drinking was a vice in some walks of life, and in tea there was tannin, a harmful drug. But he was blind, he could not see. And the pain. So that he was like a blind worm in a fire, squirming, squirming to get out.
“Nice hot tea. You love your tea, don’t you, Nan?”
“She likes her cup o’ tea, your old Nan does, Master John. I always have been partial to a cup o’ tea. All through the time when you was in the nursery it helped me along, for you was a bad boy then. An’ before that, when you used to lie ’elpless in my arms with yer little red face. Lor’, you would ’oller too if yer milk was so much as a minute late. I remember . . .”
She was remembering. Why were they all remembering? But perhaps it was an occasion to do so. They looked back into a past that lived only in their memories, they did not see the present, the birth of a new life, of a new art, and his life which had changed so suddenly. But he had lived his life, as Nan had lived hers, he must now look back. And it would be so comfortable being sentimental, and talking about memories. For to look back was the only thing left, to look forward was like thinking of nothing. Still, it could not all be over, there must be something in the future, something beyond these black walls! Romantic again. She too, “. . . with yer grasp in yer little hand . . .” she was maudlin. Magdalen, he was to have gone there. Oxford. No. Prehensile, that is all a baby is, and the nurse a ministrant at the knees of Moloch, the supreme sentimentalist. But her feelings were hurt so easily, and her tears were terrible. He must be good.
“. . . a lovely babby. . .”
“What is there for tea, Nan?”
“Well, I thought you might like buttered toast and bread and butter, you always was that fond of at nursery teas, and the Easter cake. . .”
“I’ll break the rules and have a bit of that first, Nan, please.”
She cuts a slice and begins to feed him bit by bit, at intervals putting the teacup into his hands. She loves doing it. For years she has watched him getting more and more independent, and now she is feeding him again. It is nice.
Her hand trembles, she has been garrulous and reminiscent, while she is usually sparing of unnecessary words. She has been told that he is blind, of course that’s it. So that will mean more sympathy, if not expressed—which would be intolerable—at any rate only just underneath the surface. But how could you escape it? There were the people who had seen him grow up, and who inevitably had a possessive interest in him. They cared for him through no fault of his own, like dogs, and were sorry for the pain they felt in themselves at his blindness. They were busy dramatizing it all to him, while he wanted to be alone, alone to patch up his life. And now he was being theatrical!
“Would you like a sip of tea again, Master John?”
“Thanks, and some buttered toast.”
“I do so love feeding ye, Master John, like I used to with the bottle. I remember . . .”
There would be red round her eyes, there would be a tell-tale weakness about her lips. He could see her looking at him with the smile he used to notice on parents’ faces in Chapel at Noat, while they were saying to themselves, all through the service, that they had been through just what the boy was going through now, though what it was they didn’t know. They were saying that they had read the book, years ago. And she was remembering him when he had hardly been alive, she was gloating, gloating that he was weak and helpless again. He would have to have her near him day after day, while she bombarded him with her sickening sentimentality. But what was he doing, eating like this, with this tragedy of darkness upon him? And the pain, the pain.
“No, no, take it away, I don’t want any more, I couldn’t.”
“Oh, Master John, don’t take on so.”
And the poor old face is falling in, and he hears her beginning to sob. Then she is groping for the chair, to sit, bowed, in it. This was terrible, it bordered on a scene, and he was helpless. He shrank and shrank till he was shrivelled up. The whole creed was strength and not giving way. He gives her his hand, which she takes in her skinny, trembling ones, and tears fall on it, one by one, with little sploshes that he feels rather than hears. Poor Nanny.
But of course she must have been crying in the servants’ hall before this, banking, minting on the fact that she had known him longer than anyone else there. The cook and Mamma’s maid had been most attentive and sympathetic, the kitchen-maid had wept with her. Only the trained nurse did not listen, she would have sat apart reading, for she knew what youth was, the others had forgotten it. He could see the scene, with Nan babbling on through her tears. That fatuous line of Tennyson’s, “Like summer tempests came her tears.” But there was coming a serious Tennyson revival.
The trained nurse understood youth from the way her hand caressed his bandages, they had not trained it out of her yet, nor had life. But everyone else was like that, everyone except B. G. He wanted B. G., who would understand, who was the only person who would feel what he was feeling, and who would sympathize in the right way.
She struggled to her feet, letting go of his hand.
“You mustn’t mind me, Master John, I’m only an old woman.”
And she went out slowly. So she had gone. But he was blind, everyone would be sorry for him, everyone would try to help him, and everyone would be at his beck and call; it was very nice, it was comfortable. And he would take full advantage, after all he deserved it in all conscience. He would enjoy life: why not? But he was blind. He would never be able to go out in the morning and recognize the sweep of lawn and garden again, and to wonder that all should be the same. He would never again be able to appreciate the miracle that anything could be so beautiful, never to see a bird again, or a cloud, or a tree, or a horse dragging a cart, or a baby blowing bubbles at his mother! Never to see a flower softly alive in a field, never to see colour again, never to watch colour and line together build up little exquisite temples to beauty. And the time when he had gone down on his knees before a daffodil with Herrick at the back of his mind, how he had grown drunk before it. And then the thought of how finely poetic he must be looking as he knelt before a daffodil in his best flannel trousers. What a cynic he was! That was another
of his besetting sins. What a pity, also, to be self-conscious. The pain.
The misery of hating himself as much as he did. How unlucky he was to have been born like that, so infinitely superior to the common ruck. The herd did not feel all that he did, all his private tortures, and he was unfit to die like this, shut up in the traditional living tomb. A priest ought to have said offices over him as the glass entered his head and caused the white-hot pains there. And now the darkness pressed down on him, and he was not ready. He was not sufficient in himself. He did not know. He had been wandering off on expeditions in a mental morass before, and now all chance of retreat was cut off. He must live on himself, on his own reserves of mental fat, which would be increased a trifle perhaps when Mamma or Nan read to him, as steam rollers go over roads, levelling all sense, razing all imagery to the ground with their stupidity. And when he learned Braille it would be too slow. And it terrifies, the darkness, it chokes. Where is he? Where? What’s that? Nothing. No, he is lost. Ah, the wall, and he is still in bed and has hurt his hand in the blow he gave it. The bell should be here to the left—yes, here it is, how smoothly everything goes if you keep your head. His hand tastes salt, he must have skinned it against the wall.
There are steps on stair carpet, four quick steps on the linoleum, and the nurse enters, prettily out of breath.
“Well, and how are we? Did you ring, Mr. John? I am so sorry, I was having my tea.”
“Oh, nurse, I was frightened. Look, I have skinned my knuckles, haven’t I?”
“Silly, whatever did you do that for? That was very naughty of you. Now I shall have to bind it up.”
She washes it . . . She has such a pretty voice that he would like to squeeze her hand as she is holding his. And he wanted sympathy. But it would be too terrifying, he had had enough awkward scenes today, he did not feel strong enough for another if she were to object. And a nice sight he must be with bandages all over him. Besides, being a professional, she would not be intrigued by bandages as others might. No, he could do nothing.