Blindness

by Henry Green

  He felt himself sinking into a pit of darkness. At the top of the pit were figures, like dolls and like his friends, striking attitudes at a sun they had made for themselves, till sinking he lost sight of them, to find himself in the presence of other dolls in the light of a sun that others had made for them. Then it did not work, and he was back in the darkness, on the lawn again. Nothing seemed real.

  He said “tree” out loud and it was a word. He saw branches with vague substance blocked round them, he saw lawn, all green, and he built up a picture of lawn and tree, but there were gaps, and his brain reeled from the effort of filling them.

  He felt desperately at the deck-chair in which he was sitting. He felt the rough edges of the wood, which would be a buff colour, and he ran a splinter into his finger. He put his hand on the canvas, he knew that it was canvas, dirty white with two red stripes at each side. It felt rough and warm where his body had touched it. He felt for the red, it should have blared like a bugle. It did not; that would come later, perhaps.

  He felt the grass, but it was not the same as the grass he had seen.

  He lay back, his head hurting him. How much longer would he be here? The letter crinkled in his hands, reminding him of its presence. He ran his fingers over the pages, but he could feel no trace of ink. He came upon the embossed address. It might have been anything. A fly buzzed suddenly. Even a fly could see.

  He was shut out, into himself, in the cold.

  So much of life had been made up of seeing things. The country he had always looked to for something. He had seen so much in line, so much in colour, so much in everything he had seen. And he had noticed more than anyone else, of course he had.

  But when he had seen, how much it had meant. Everything was abstract now, personality had gone. Flashes came back of things seen and remembered, but they were not clear-cut. Little bits in a wood, a pool in a hedge with red flowers everywhere, a red-coated man in the distance on a white horse galloping, the sea with violet patches over grey where the seaweed stained it, silver where the sun rays met it. A gull coming up from beneath a cliff. There was a certain comfort in remembering.

  This would have been a good fishing day. There was no sun, yet enough heat to draw the chub up to the surface. The boat would glide silently on the stream, the withies would droop quietly to dabble in the water. Where the two met the chub lay, waiting for something to eat. And he would prepare his rod and he would throw the bright speckled fly to alight gently on the water, and to swim on the current past mysterious doors in the bathing green. The boat floated gently too, a bird sang and then was silent, and he would watch the jaunty fly, watch for the white, greedy mouth that would come up, for the swirl when he would flick lightly, and the fight, with another panting, gleaming fish to be mired in struggles on the muddy floor of the boat.

  He would go down the river, catching fish. The day would draw away as if sucked down in the east, where a little rose made as if to play with pearl and grey and blue. There were chub he had missed, four or five he would have caught, and more further on. A kingfisher might shoot out to dart down the river, a guilty thing in colours. More rarely a grey heron would raise himself painfully to flap awkwardly away. He would go on, casting his fly, placing it here or there, watching it always, and now and then, with little touches, steering it from floating leaves. And it would become more difficult to see, and the only sound would be the plops the fish made as they sent out rings in eating flies on the water. One last chub in the boat and he would turn to row back through the haze that was rising from the river. The water chattered at the prow, he would notice suddenly that the crows were no longer cawing in the trees on the hill, but had gone to sleep. He would yawn and begin to think of dinner. It was a long way back.

  He would come to the ferry, where the boats were tied up, where they huddled darkly together. There would be the rattle of the chain, and the feeling that something else was finished. Voices would come from behind the lighted blinds of the inn; a dog would bark, a laugh perhaps, while the other bank was thick with shadows. He would carry the oars and rowlocks to put them as always in the shed, and he would climb the gate, the rod tiresome, the creel heavy. A quick walk home across the fields, for there was nothing to see in the dark. An owl perhaps and a bat or two.

  Or again, the river in the heat of an afternoon, stalking from the bank the chub that lay by the withies, and being careful with his shadow. He would wade slowly through long grass with here and there a flower at random, or more often a bed of nettles. He would peer through the leaves that drooped in green plumes to where a chub cruised phantom-like in the cloudy onyx of the water. The sun made other smaller suns that would pierce his eyes and dazzling dance there. Bending low he would draw out as much line as he could. Stooping he would pitch his fly cunningly. The line might fall over the fin, and the fish would be gone.

  The chub were hard to catch from the bank, and often it was so hot that the only thing to do was to lie in the shade. There was an alder tree under which lived a rat. He would watch for it sometimes: if one kept still it would come out to play, or to teach a baby what to eat, or to wash in the water. The cattle, bored, might bestir themselves to come and look at him, blowing curiously. The flies would always be tiresome. The water slipped by.

  Why was it all over? But it wasn’t, he would cultivate his sense of hearing, he would listen to the water, and feel the alder, and the wind, and the flowers. Besides, there had only been about ten fishing days every summer, what with the prevailing wind, which was against the current, raising waves, and the rain in the hills which made mud of the water. There would be no more railing against the bad weather now, which had been half the joy of fishing.

  Sometimes, when he was rowing back in the dark after fishing over the sunset below, he had stopped by a withy that he could hardly see, to cast a white fly blindly into the pool of darkness beneath. He would strike by the ripple of light, he had caught two or three fish that way, and it was so mysterious in the twilight. Colours had been wonderful. But these were words only.

  What sense of beauty had others? Mamma never said any more than that a thing was pretty or jolly, and yet she loved this garden. She spent hours in weeding and in cutting off the heads of dead roses, and there were long talks with Weston when long names would come out of their mouths—why had some flowers nothing but an ugly Latin name? But you could not say that she had no sense of beauty.

  Harry looked upon the country from the hunting standpoint, whether there were many stiff fences and fox coverts. The Arts of Use. And there was Herbert, during the war, at Salonica. The only thing of interest he had remembered afterwards was that a certain flower, that they had here and that was incessantly nursed by Weston in the hot-house, grew wild and in profusion on the hills above the port. Egbert, the underkeeper, at Salonica also, had seen a colossal covey of partridges. That was all they remembered.

  In the country one lost all sense of proportion. Mamma used to become hysterical over some ridiculously small matter. Last Christmas it had been ludicrous, she had been so angry, and it had led to one of her outbursts about his not caring for the life here, he, who was to carry on the house and the traditions, and so on. It had been about the Church Parochial Council. She had asked that at matins on Christmas Day there might be music. Crayshaw had answered that there would be music at Holy Communion which took place before, but that as no one ever came to matins on Christmas Day—(And whose fault was that, my dear?)—it was not worth while having music again. There had been a violent discussion, one would have given anything to be there, during which Mamma had said that if she was a child her Christmas would have been ruined with no music on Christmas Day. Crayshaw had replied that the children could come at six in the evening when everyone else came, and when there was music. Mamma had said that it was the morning that mattered. Crayshaw had parried by saying that the children could come to Holy Communion. Mamma had not liked that, “it was bothering children’s heads with mysticism.” Finally they had voted, an
d Mamma had been defeated because she had closed the public pathway at the bottom of the garden, a path which no one had used for nine years, and the gates were ugly and in the way. It had spoilt the drive, that wretched path. “The first time, John, that the village has not followed my lead. It is so discouraging.” Oh, it had been tragic.

  Behind the house a hen was taken with asthma over her newlylaid.

  A bee droned by to the accompaniment of flies. He glided down the hill of consciousness to the bottom, where he was aware only of wings buzzing, and of the sun, that poured down a beam to warm him, and of a wind that curled round. Only one pigeon cooed now, and he was tireless, emptying his sentiment into a void of unresponding laziness. He was singing everyone to sleep. How dreadful if a cuckoo were to come. The sky would have cleared, it would be a white-blue. It was hot.

  A woodpecker mocked.

  He leant down and his fingers hurried over the grass, here and there, looking for the cigarette-box. He found and opened it, taking out a cigarette. Again they set out to find the matches, which they found. He felt for the end that lit, he struck and heard the burst of flame. Fingers of the left hand groped down the cigarette in his mouth to the end, and he brought the match there. He puffed, he might have puffed anything then. He felt with a forefinger to see whether it was alight and he burned the tip. The match blew out with a shudder, and he threw it away.

  How intolerable not to be able to smoke, but people said that you came to appreciate it in time, and it was degrading to chew gum. Was it still alight? Again he burned his finger. He threw the cigarette away. Now it would be starting a fire; still he had thrown it out on to the lawn. What was that? A tiny sound, miles away, no one but a blind man could possibly have caught it. He sniffed, he could smell the fire, very small yet, but starting, just one flame, invisible in the sunlight, eating a pine-needle. What was to be done? To leave it was madness, but how to find it to put it out? Await developments, there was nothing probably. Stevenson’s last match.

  All the same the cigarette was not burning anything, it was an invention typical of the country. He was getting into the country state of mind already, with no sense of proportion, and always looking for trouble. And he would become more and more like that, when one was blind there was no escape. It was a wretched business. The life of the century was in the towns, he had meant to go there to write books, and now he was imprisoned in a rudimentary part of life. And the nurse was busy nursing him back to a state of health sufficient for him to be left to their all-enfolding embrace of fatuity. So that all he could do to keep his brain a little his own was to write short stories. Perhaps one on the nurse, with her love of white wards and of stiff flowers, they were sure to be stiff if she had any, and of a ghastly antiseptic sanity. With her love of pain and horrors, and of interesting cases, with her devastating knowledge of human anatomy. But that was rather cheap, for she wasn’t like that. She was merely dull, with a desire for something concrete and defined to hold on to. But she was dull.

  He would write a story, all about tulips. That time when Mamma had taken him one Easter holidays to Holland, when the tulips had been out all along the railway line. And the cows with blankets on in case it rained. But no, it would have to be in England, the tourist effect in stories was dreadful. It would be a Dutchman with a strange passion for tulips—that was rather beautiful, that idea. Yes, and he would have passed all his life in sending tulips over to England, till he had come to think that England must have been a carpet of them in spring—he would have to be uneducated and think that England was only a very tiny island. He would be just a little bit queer with lovely haunting ideas that drifted through his brain, and he would love his tulips! So that Holland in springtime would not have enough tulips for him, and he would sell the little he had so as to buy a passage, that he might feed his soul on his tulips in England. His place in the bulb farm would be to address the wrappers, and there would be an address in Cumberland that he was told to write to very often. Then there would be those hills to work into the story, and he would go on a bicycle, which he had bought with his last penny, and each hill would seem to hide his tulips, they might be there, just beyond, behind the next hill. Till he would fall down, dead, his heart broken! But perhaps that was a little flat. It must simmer over in his brain. He would be very queer, with little fragments of insanity here and there. It would work.

  The laziness of this afternoon.

  Mrs. Haye crushed grass on the way to Mrs. Trench. Herbert stretched out a hand and made clucking noises, while Mrs. Lane giggled. Weston shifted his feet slightly, and put his cap further back on his head, before the artichokes. Harry began hissing his way down another paragraph, and Doris was fondly tying a bow on the end of one pigtail. Jenny, the laundry cat, was two inches nearer the sparrow.

  Nan put down her cup with a sigh and folded her hands on her lap, while her eyes fixed on the fly-paper over the table.

  *

  They were all standing round him on the lawn.

  “Seven days old. I said what I could to Mrs. Trench. A terrible affair. What can one do?”

  “Poor little mite.”

  “What was it, Mrs. Haye?”

  “Gastric pneumonia, I think, nurse. I am sure that Brodwell muddled the case.”

  “To think of it!”

  “Of course, Mrs. Haye, gastric pneumonia with a seven days’ child is very grave.”

  “Was it a boy or a little girl’m?”

  “A girl. How is he today, nurse?”

  “Oh, I’m all right.”

  “I think we are getting on very nicely, aren’t we?”

  “He has more colour to him today.”

  “Oh, Master John, you do look a heap better.”

  “Thanks, Nan, I’m sure I do.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Haye, he really has. In one or two days we shall be up and about again, shan’t we?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Of course you will, dear.”

  “It did give me a fright.”

  “Well, there’s another fright over anyway, Nan.”

  “Dr. Mulligan is not coming again, is he, nurse?”

  “Only tomorrow, Mrs. Haye, for a final inspection. And I had perhaps be better getting ready to go back to town in a week or two, he is going on so quickly.”

  —Thank God, the woman was talkin’ about goin’.

  —Time she went, too, airified body.

  “Well, nurse, I think in about ten days’ time it will be safe for me to take over the dressings, and then there would be nothing left for you to do except teaching him how to get about and so on, and we can do that, can’t we, Jennings?”

  “We can do that’m.”

  Yes, they could do that. The nurse was intolerable, but at least she was alive, and now they were sending her away.

  “Then, Mrs. Haye, I can write up to town to tell them that I shall be free in, say, twelve days’ time? That will make the 24th, won’t it?”

  “Yes, shall we say the 24th? Why, it’s you, Ruffles. Oh, so old.”

  “Poor dog.”

  “How old is he, Mrs. Haye?”

  “Twelve years old. He ought to be destroyed. One must be practical.”

  “That’s right. Kill him.”

  “But, my dear, it is cruel to let him live.”

  “He is too old to be healthy, Mrs. Haye. They are germ traps.”

  Ruffles made confiding noises, wagging a patchy tail. An effluvia of decay arose.

  “Perhaps it would be best.”

  It was a pity to shoot him, after he had been so good. How sentimental dogs were. Nan would be having one of her waves of silent grief. Their breathing descended in a chorus to where he lay, hoarse, sibilant, and tired. Were they thinking of Ruffles? Did they all snore at night?

  The evening was falling away and the breeze had dropped. A midge bit him on the ankle and a drop of sweat tickled him by the bandages. The pigeons were all cooing together, there seemed to be no question and answer, they were in such a hurr
y to say everything that there wasn’t time. Birds twittered happily and senselessly all round. Through it and over it all there was the evening calm, the wet air heavy everywhere. The sky would be in great form, being crude and vulgar.

  They were silent because it was the evening, though they could not keep it up for long.

  “A pretty sunset.”

  “It’s that beautiful.”

  “I do love a sunset, Mrs. Haye, I think . . .”

  “A sunset, John”—the woman was intolerable.

  “Ah.”

  “Is it not becoming a little fresh for him out here, Mrs. Haye? We mustn’t catch a chill.”

  “Perhaps. Jennin’s, could you just go and tell William and Robert to come here to help Master John back.”

  “But I can walk by myself if one of you will give me their arm.”

  “I don’t think we are quite strong enough yet, Mrs. Haye.”

  She would write tomorrow to get her changed. It was too bad of them to send her this thing.

  God blast the woman, why was he always treated as a baby? Oh, how they loved it, now that he was helpless.

  “What time is it?”

  “Eight o’clock, dear. Time for dinner. Ah, here are William and Robert.”

  Ruffles licked his hand. My only friend. Oh, he was sick and tired of it all.

  “Now, dear, put your arm round William’s shoulder, and the other round Robert . . .”

  “Would it not be better, Mrs. Haye, if between them they carried the chair and him on it?”

  “Stairs—narrow. Now lift him. That’s right. You can get along like that with them on each side, can’t you, John?”

  The woman was insufferable.

  “Yes, I’m all right. Goodnight, Ruffles.”

  “I’ll come up and see you after dinner, dear.”

  William breathed discreetly but heavily, Robert full of energy. William’s shoulders were thin.

  “Mind, Master John, here’s the step into the library.”

  The nurse walked quickly behind. Mrs. Haye was a fool, and with no medical training, even if she were an honourable. Of course it was bad for the patient to walk upstairs. If she had had her way, they would never have put him in a room two storeys up, even if he had been in it since childhood. These ex-VADs who gave themselves such airs.