shops actually display special signs giving an exception for
guide-dogs. Of course, it is up to the shopkeeper whether he
puts the signs up or not. There is no law that says he must do it.
I can understand, moreover, that there are owners who have
no control over their dogs, and they would be a nuisance in
shops. In all fairness, there are some places that have let us in
regardless of their 'NO DOGS' rule-so I suppose I can say that
Emma has been to many places where no dog has ever been
before, and she has never chewed the floorboards up. In fact,
46
most of the time people don't realize she is there at all because
she is so quiet and curls up in such a small space.
Strangely enough, not long after I had been home from
hospital, it was the 'NO DOGS' rule that gave me, yet again, a
fresh insight into Emma's character.
one day I had to go to a local shop that used to let Emma in
with me when she was a guide-dog but now no longer ad
rnitted her. I had already had an argument with the shopkeeper,
and didn't want another one. So, for the one and only
time in my life, I decided I would leave Emma at home and go
on my own. Emma heard me getting the shopping bag and, as
usual, rushed to the front door. 'No, Emma,' I said, 'I won't be
long. I promise. But I've got to go to this shop, and they won't
let you in. I'm ever so sorry, little sausage. Stay there like a
good girl.' Emma did as she was told. She stayed there. But
Ctlicre' was right at the front door. I tried to lean over her and
op(.n it. She would not budge. 'Emma, come on. Let me out.'
But she wouldn't move an inch. I took her by the collar and
tried to drag her back into the living-room. But no success. She
doesn't weigh a great deal, possibly about sixty pounds, yet
now she seemed to have put on a ton. She dug her paws into the
carpet and refused to move, and she looked up at me with an
expression that was fatal. It said: 'You've just never been out
without me. You can't start doing it now. Whatever it is you
want from that shop, you'll just have to go without.' I had to
gi~,,e in.
Don went down for me later when he came back from the
surgery, and I took Emma for a walk instead. I was glad that
she had persuaded me not to leave her behind, and I was glad
I had been forced to keep my resolve not to patronize shops
which wouldn't allow dogs, because it was only about a fortnight
after this that I had a really extraordinary demonstration
which showed that, despite being able to see, I still couldn't do
without Emma.
47
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN I WAs blind, I used to have a constantly recurring
nightmare: it was full of terrifying shapes and threatening
sounds, and was, I came to realize, an expression of my utter
dependence on Emma and my deep fear of ever being parted
from her and having to try to fend for myself. Realization of
the meaning did not lessen the desperate terror when it
occurred, nor the relief when I woke and found it was not true
after all. The pattern was always the same. I was in the middle
of Nottingham near Griffin and Spalding's department store,
among deafening traffic noise, on the edge of a pavementwith
no Emma. Masses of people were jostling and crowding
me. I could hear them talking to one another, but when I tried
to stop them and ask for help they ignored me and just pushed
past when I told them I had lost Emma. At the same time I
knew the reason they were all engulfing me like this and taking
no notice. It was because they could not see me. Like me, they
were all blind.
I used to wake up with the relief ofjust having escaped death,
wildly pleading with Don never to let me go on my own into
Nottingham.
Partly as a result of the fear of that nightmare, even though
it never recurred after my operation, I sometimes used to take
Emma's guide-dog harness with me when we went shopping in
the first few months after I could see. My reasons were confused.
I had come to rely on the harness as the link with Emma and
hence to the outside world. Having Emma on the lead and
having the harness with me as well seemed an insurance. I
knew it was illogical and I knew I should try to break myself of
the habit, but there it was.
One afternoon I made a conscious decision to be strong and
not to take the harness. I remember my hand hovering near the
harness in its place on a hook near the hall-stand, and thinking,
48
No! Emma had seen me make a move into the hall for my
coat, and was bouncing about like a vertical take-off dog as she
always did when she knew we were about to go shopping, and
was wagging her tail so furiously that her entire body was
swinging to and fro as well. All this with excited snorts and
yelps as I bent down to clip the lead to her collar on which she
still kept her little brass disc saying proudly, 'I Am A Guide
Dog'. Now that she didn't have to guide me, Emma loved to
stop and sniff the trees and the lamp~posts; if we met another
dog, well, that was a further treat. Yet, although Emma
seemed to have reverted to behaving like other dogs, with
the shedding of her responsibilities, there was one important
respect in which she did not. It took me some time to realize it,
but it gradually dawned on me that she didn't walk on a lead
like an ordinary dog: she always walked that bit further in
front, always to the left of me (as she did when guiding) and,
most noticeably, always kept a slight tension on the lead. This
I liked particularly, because, just as she used to communicate
with me through the handle of the harness, I felt I was still very
much connected with her and we were still an indivisible team
when we went out together.
It was like this as we set off on that la~e February afternoon:
Emma pulling gently, like the old days, and enjoying herself so
much. We had only gone down to the local shops, but, of
course, on the way back there was the obligatory stop at the
pet-shop. It was always marvellous to me, now that I could see,
to watch how Emma behaved herself just as she had always
behaved herself when a guide-dog and we had gone there, into
this canine Aladdin's cave, this very centre of all temptation.
Emma sniffed round the shelves and always stopped at one
point and looked round and up at me, brown eyes full of
question marks, and giving just a tentative wag meaning: 'This
looks the sort of thing we're after, don't you think? What about
this?' Usually it would be the display of brightly-coloured
rubber bones, or sometimes the chewy toys. Occasionally it
would be the outsize square biscuits or the tins of vitamin
chocolate drops. Whatever it was, Emma would inspect it with
enormous interest, but would never touch. I had seen children
far worse behaved in sweet-shops than Emma in the pet-shop.
49
AI II
> She, unlike the more unruly kids, had been well taught that
you can look but not touch.
For some reason, on this particular afternoon she took longer
than usual making up her mind what took her fancy, uncharacteristically
rather like the kind of woman who has every hat in
the shop out on the counter before deciding that what she
really wants is a new bra. Emma had looked thoughtfully at
blue rubber bones, non-committally at yellow rubber bones,
and disdainfully at brown ones. And then given the approving
wag of the tail at last to a chewy toy on another shelf that had
had a thorough going over. I thought as I paid for it that it
looked like one of Don's slippers fashioned in toffee.
With this prize firmly in her mouth we made our way to the
door of the shop. While we were in there I had been getting a
bit anxious about Emma taking her time over picking and
choosing because I knew it was beginning to get dark. My eyesight
is fine in daylight but no good at all at night because my
retinas-which, over years of blindness, never developed-have
insufficient facility for picking out objects in the dark. Having
said this, I was only a little apprehensive because much as the
dark made me nervous and unsure of myself, we would still be
able to get home with the help of the street-lamps. But I was
totally unprepared for what did happen when we got out of the
shop. Outside the light of the shop window it was not just dark,
it was black. At first I thought there was a power cut. I had no
idea what to do. Then I found I could just make out the streetlamps.
But they were very blurred, just vague blobs of amber.
I wear contact lenses, the soft sort, and I wondered if something
had gone wrong with them. It reminded me of when I first
came out of hospital and wore glasses. I used to forget to clean
them and wonder why it was so dark when I got out into the
daylight. But the same thing could not happen with contact
lenses.
'Gosh, Emma,' I said, 'I know it's dark, but everything's so
blurred.' By this time my eyes were beginning to smart, and at
last it dawned on me. Fog! The smell should have given it away
from the moment we came out of the pet-shop. I had smelt it,
but not cottoned on. 'Fog, Emma,' I said almost involuntarily
and thinking at the same time that it was almost like being
50
blind again. I was now very worried because it seemed to be
getting thicker.
Finally I said, 'It's no use, Emma, we'll have to have a go.'
And so, takiiia her lead firmly, I set off into the blackness.
Within a few seconds the light from the window of the pet-shop
had vanished behind us, and, to make it worse, the fog had
quickly become so thick that even the amber blobs had been
swallowed up. All I could see was a sort of soft, swimming haze.
I stood wondering what to do. Emma, sensing something was
wrong, dropped her chewy toy onto the pavement and I had to
fumble to pick it up and put it into my basket. I knew we were
still only a few yards from the pet-shop, but I could hardly go
back there and ask someone to take us home. There was only
one thing for it: if we couldn't go back, we would have to go
forward, against the odds. I took a firmer grasp on Emma's lead
and pulled her closer to me. 'Emma,' I said, 'I'm sure we're not
going to like this.' Emma stepped forward and I followed her.
I kept very close to her.
'I don't know how many kerbs we cross,' I said. That was
something, when I was blind, that I never failed to note and
nc-,,er forgot. But once I was able to see I had given up the habit
of automatically counting kerbs. I had lost the unfailing routine
that occurred every time I went out: Turn left on the fifth down
kerb, turn right on the fifth up kerb. I had stopped remembering
what pavements were like and measuring out a journey by
their roughness or smoothness, and whether I felt tarmac, or
slabs, or gravel through my shoes. I had also forgotten to
remember the echoes that came back from different brick walls
and gave sure reference points, punctuated by the differing
sound of wooden gates or, quite unmistakable, the hollow ring
of a railway arch. I blamed myself as we stumbled along in the
fog, quite unnecessarily I suppose. Why hadn't I kept up my
old routine? I thought. Why, just because I could see, had I
i!thrown away habits that might always be useful? Yet I knew
that the very abandoning of old habits had been part of my
celebration of seeing, ofjoining the rest of the world.
I racked my brains, desperately attempting to remember how
many kerbs we had to go up and down. All I could recall,
instead, was that there were shops and, after the pet-shop, a big
5I
chestnut tree and then a beech hedge that looked so beautiful.
All my impressions had become visual, and it didn't help at all.
So I walked very gingerly behind Emma.
Emma stopped, and I stopped. I assumed she was sniffing a
tree or an interesting piece of grass. 'Come on, Emma,' I said.
She didn't move. It was strange, because although I assumed
she had stopped to sniff I couldn't feel her through the lead
putting her head down, nor could I hear her usual snuffles and
snorts. I put my hand down to feel her head. Emma had sat
down. I put my foot forward a little into the blackness, and I
felt as if I was on a cliff-top or the edge of the world. It was a
kerb. Emma had sat down by a kerb, just as she always did
when she was a guide-dog. It was, moreover, something she
had not done from the moment she knew I could see. Was it
just coincidence?
'There's a good girl, Emma,' I said. 'Come on, I know there's
a kerb there.' She got up and crossed the road. I was very careful
as we neared the other side, trying to find the opposite kerb. I
felt Emma hesitate. Yes, there it was. She'd got it. Up we went,
and walked on.
The pavement then became very uneven beneath my feet,
and all the confidence that had been coming back drained away
again because I couldn't remember rough pavement at any
stage of our walk. Emma slowed down. 'There's a good girl,
Emma. Are we finding the way home?' Then, suddenly, she
turned left and I remembered that there was a left turning on
our route. This must be it. Then I felt a small grass bank under
my feet and recalled all at once that that was right. 'Good girl,
Emma,' I said, 'find the way home.' By this time the fog was
really dense. It was eerie and disturbing. I could see nothing
whatsoever, and I felt I had become involved in one of those
time-shift stories and had been transported back to a part of my
life, the great dark void, that I never wanted to revisit.
Emma stopped again. Another kerb. And a deep one this
time. Thank goodness for Emma. Had I been on my own, I
would have fallen down. 'Good girl, Emma.' But before I could
put my foot down into the gutter, Emma was backing off on the
a good girl.' I thought: Perhaps she really has found a tree with
52
interesting scents this time. I stood still. Then in a few seconds I
heard a sound. A hiss of tyres on the road. It was a bike. Emma
had heard it long before me, and had, no doubt, seen its lamp.
Only when it was past and there was silence again, the enfolding,
strange silence of fog, did she move. Up the next kerb, then
a left turn, and almost immediately a sound under my feet that
was unbelievable music: the crunch of gravel! We were home!
At the door I put the light on, and saw Emma for the first
time since we had left the pet-shop. She was wagging her tail
furiously, leaping about as if she was three again and snorting
and sneezing with pleasure. She was thrilled because she knew
what she had done. I took the chewy toy from my basket and
made an enormous fuss of her.
'Emma,' I said, 'how did you know? How did you know?
Who is the cleverest girl in the world?' And as she proudly
carried the chewy toy slipper, head high, still wagging her tail
like a metronome gone mad as she disappeared up the hall, I
could tell that she was thinking: 'Yes, but it's not just that I'm
clever. I know now that she .~till can't do without me to look
after her.'
Not long after this, two events took place that altered the course
of my life. The phone rang on a bright day in April, and I little
knew then what it would lead to. It was Margaret Howard of
the BBC. They had heard of my operation and wanted me
to do a programme for them. I was astonished. Although I
was always conscious of how wonderful it was to be able to see,
I was surprised at the interest other people showed in me as a
result. Partly because of this, I think, I did not react with
instant enthusiasm to the idea of doing a broadcast. I could not,
somehow, immediately see why people should be interested in
me. Also at the back of my mind I knew straight away that it
would mean going to London, and the idea of an enormous city
quite scared me. But by the end of the conversation I had
emma vip Sheila Hocken Page 6