Eyes of the Blind

by Alex Tresillian

  Lindsey was crying by the time they emerged from the portals of BAB. It was also raining. They took a taxi as far as Simon’s local pub, and Niall called him to ask him to join them there.

  “Tomorrow morning we get you a lawyer,” Niall said.

  “How?” Lindsey whined.

  “Citizens Advice. We’ll call them and make an appointment.”

  “I won’t need one if they decide everything I did was OK.”

  “Lindsey, they’re not going to. You know that. I know that. It’s a fit up. So why don’t you tell me what really happened with this Mrs. Besser thing?”

  “What do you mean?” Lindsey asked.

  “Hi guys,” Simon said.

  The conversation shifted gear, and Niall never got his answer.

  Katrina Masters prepared a large bowl of green salad tossed in a dressing of her own devising. She had two swordfish steaks prepared and waiting for the griddle, and a bottle of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc open in the fridge. She loved, on her day off, to have the meal ready and waiting for when her partner came through the door. It just made the perfect start to the evening.

  She worked as a pastry chef at Arvo’s, a restaurant with a growing reputation not far from her home in Kilburn. She knew that the irregular hours she worked placed a strain on her relationship, and that relationship had been going through a sticky patch, so she always tried to make as much as she could of the evenings she was home.

  She heard the key in the door and her partner came in. Katrina could tell, just from the way she came through the door and took off her coat, that it hadn’t been a good day. She took the wine from the fridge, poured two glasses, and stood with them in her hands waiting for Juliette to come into the kitchen. She didn’t. She went straight into the downstairs cloak-room. Katrina put the glasses of wine down on the kitchen table.

  Juliette emerged two minutes later, came into the kitchen, kissed her perfunctorily and took a long slug of the wine.

  “Not good?” Katrina asked.

  “Mm? Oh. No. Not good. Not good at all.”

  Juliette took her wine and walked out. A moment later Katrina heard the television on in the living room. It was going to be another ‘dinner-on-trays’ evening. She sighed and lit the gas under the griddle. She took a lemon out of the fruit bowl and quartered it. Juliette’s moods were increasingly taking over their life. She felt as though she was bending over backwards to be accommodating and she was getting nothing in return. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes but she fought them back.

  Even down to this business with her aunt.

  She cooked the swordfish feeling desperately lonely. She was an only child. Her parents were dead. She seemed to have no friends other than Juliette’s friends. She was about to be forty and what had she got in her life? Her job. She had given up her position in a building society three years ago to follow her dream of a career in catering. Juliette had supported her at the time, but then at the time their relationship was very new. She had trained and qualified and worked her way up to a good position, but from day one of the reality of working restaurant hours Juliette had disliked and resented it. Although she wasn’t really sure whether it was the hours Juliette objected to or the fact that she was doing something interesting for herself by herself. Juliette did like to dominate her.

  Katrina arranged salad on two plates, positioned the griddled swordfish, seasoned them lightly and added the lemon wedges, put the plates on trays and carried Juliette’s through to her. She came back to the kitchen to get her own and to fetch the bottle of wine. Then she joined Juliette in front of the television.

  “So tell me,” she said.

  Juliette chewed a mouthful of fish and salad and washed it down with wine.

  “I’m angry,” Juliette said. Katrina said nothing. “I’m angry with the people that contrived this situation and I’m angry with the stupid woman who’s allowing herself to be destroyed by it.”

  “Are you angry with me?” Katrina asked.

  “I’m angry with everybody,” Juliette said dismissively. “Ignore me. It’s a pity it’s not a work night for you.”

  Katrina thought back through the whole saga of her ailing aunt’s dealings with the British Association for the Blind. It had been Juliette who suggested that the Association might be able to offer her support of one kind or another when Katrina had told her about Aunt Ingrid’s eye problems. Aunt Ingrid was Katrina’s only living relative, as far as she knew. She and her much younger sister Liesel had come to England with their mother, running from the Nazis at the beginning of World War Two. Liesel, Katrina’s mother, had been much too young to remember anything of the life and family they had left behind in Vienna, but Aunt Ingrid had shown her photographs of her grandfather and great uncles – even one uncle – who, to the best of Ingrid’s knowledge, had all died somewhere at the whim of the Third Reich. Ingrid had never married, and Katrina had sometimes wondered if she had inherited her sexuality from her, if such a thing were possible. Although she didn’t believe the relationship between her aunt and Friedl, who lived with her, was anything other than companionship.

  When Aunt Ingrid had called her that afternoon in July to tell her that a woman from the British Association for the Blind was coming to visit her the following day Katrina was instantly suspicious and protective. Her aunt was a very old woman who had clearly been confused and upset by the conversation. Katrina had demanded from Juliette an explanation of what the appointment meant. Juliette had been unusually defensive and they had had one of the very rare rows in which Katrina did not come out feeling totally humiliated. Instead she wrung a concession from Juliette that, if she called the woman in the morning, she would get the appointment cancelled.

  And she had called. She had been, admittedly, aggressive, and the woman – Linda or Lynne or Lindsey Spencer or Spence or Spicer or some such name – had met fire with fire. It had astonished her, and in her astonishment she was unable to recall whether she had insisted that the appointment was cancelled or not. But she knew that was the reason for the call, so she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t said it.

  Then Aunt Ingrid had phoned her later in the day to say how lovely the woman had been and how she was silly to have worried about it. She said she thought the woman was probably hoping for a large bite of Katrina’s inheritance, ‘but as you know, my dear, I have very little to leave, and what I do have will all be yours.’

  Katrina had been ready to make an official complaint. Juliette had talked her out of it. Had told her what a lovely person this Lindsey was. That she was doing a difficult job very well. That she had tunnel vision, and even that might go in time. Made Katrina feel sorry for her. And there had been no harm done. Aunt Ingrid had not been tricked into anything. The whole incident had passed into history.

  And then this week Juliette had telephoned her from work and asked her to make the complaint. Said that there was too much going wrong in that department and it would be helpful for everybody if it could all be brought out into the open. “Lance the boil,” she had said. Katrina hadn’t enjoyed the image.

  “What really annoys me,” Juliette said suddenly, bringing Katrina back to the present, “is when women fall apart. Lindsey was essentially a good woman doing a decent job. Is she standing up for herself? No.”

  She put her plate down on the floor. Katrina noticed that she had barely eaten half the fish and left almost all of the salad.

  EIGHT

  The Citizens Advice Bureau in Harrow was near Harrow and Wealdstone station, not very near to where Lindsey lived and a long and expensive taxi ride out from Chiswick. Lindsey tried to persuade Niall to use the rail network, but once they had called and made an appointment to see one of the legal people Niall insisted there wasn’t time.

  Their arrival provoked the flurry of attentive concern and fascination that was all a part of being blind, and they were escorted without delay into an office where the smell declared that – even though it was a no-smoking building and no smoki
ng had taken place in the room – its occupant was clearly a smoker.

  “Hello,” he said cheerfully, in an accent that was anything but Harrow. “Charles Taylor.”

  Charles Taylor came round from behind his desk, organised chairs for Lindsey and Niall, asked at the door for some water to be brought for the dogs, which impressed Niall, and then settled down.

  “You like dogs?” Niall asked, when the introductions were over.

  “Proper dogs, yes,” Charles Taylor said. “I’ve got two Great Danes that keep me permanently overdrawn. I can’t be doing with dogs the size of hamsters.”

  “You’re not from London?” Niall continued.

  “No. Plymouth born and bred,” Taylor replied. “The sea’s in my blood. That’s why I live in Harrow.”

  “So why do you live in Harrow?” Niall couldn’t help asking, appreciating the irony in Taylor’s remark.

  “Well, I could answer that,” Taylor said. “But time is money, even though in this instance it isn’t yours, so why don’t we get down to why you’re here?”

  Between them, Lindsey and Niall painted as clear a picture as they could of her situation.

  “Basically we’re here,” Niall finished up, “because I’m not a lawyer and Lindsey needs one. They’ve got people who know all the rules and we need someone in our corner who knows them too.”

  “Yes, right, yes,” Taylor said. It wasn’t the incisive immediate response that Niall had been hoping for. Maybe this was why Charles Taylor had ended up at the Citizens Advice Bureau, and not in some excruciatingly expensive law firm. “Are you two an item?” he asked at last.

  “No!” Lindsey stormed, at the same moment as Niall was asking “Is that relevant to the case?”

  “Well,” Taylor said, “you suspect dirty tricks. We need to know how many dirty tricks they have up their sleeve. We want to have all the bases covered.”

  “I don’t see how bringing me into it will help them,” Niall said.

  “According to you,” Taylor replied, “it was you walking in to speak to Lindsey that set this whole thing in motion.”

  “I did think that,” Niall said.

  “But - ?” Taylor prompted.

  “I’m not sure now. It comes down to the phone call.”

  “Phone call? I’m supposed to be your solicitor. You’ve nothing to gain from being obscure with me.”

  “The phone call between Lindsey and the niece,” Niall said, looking in Lindsey’s direction. There was a short pause.

  “She shouted at me,” Lindsey said suddenly. “She shouted at me and then I shouted back.”

  “OK,” Taylor said. “Can you remember any details?”

  “It was the first time it had ever happened to me. I’d been warned when I started that sometimes relatives took an aggressive stance but it had never happened to me and I wasn’t expecting it. She accused me of being irresponsible, of terrifying a vulnerable old lady who’d lived through more horrors than I was ever likely to. So, then I told her about the horrors of being blind and – well – I honestly can’t remember everything I said. It was awful. But she was just as bad and she started it.”

  “Did anyone overhear the conversation?”

  “Yes. Three or four people in the office.”

  “And they were all on your side?”

  “They all agreed they’d keep quiet about it. They knew I shouldn’t have spoken like that but they knew me and they knew it was out of character, so I must have been provoked.”

  “OK.” Taylor thought for a moment. “The real question is, ‘Why now?’ If the niece had made her complaint that day, or the next day... Why did you go to the house, incidentally?”

  “Because I was damned if that woman was going to speak to me like that and get away with it. I mean, who did she think she was? I’d been perfectly pleasant to her aunt, I’d done everything by the book, and I was absolutely determined to keep the appointment.”

  Niall interrupted. “So when you were first suspended, and called me in the middle of the night, and told me you’d never done anything wrong, you already knew this had happened and you must’ve guessed that it was involved in some way.”

  “It was so long ago,” Lindsey said feebly.

  “You lied to me,” Niall said. “You told me you’d been thinking all night and you couldn’t think of anything.”

  “There wasn’t anything.”

  “You abused a woman on the phone.”

  “She abused me.”

  “You must have known.”

  “I realised that it might be something to do with that. I just was sure it couldn’t be because it was so long ago.”

  “OK, OK,” Charles Taylor interrupted. “Now, we’re going to have to sit out the two weeks until we find out the next step. Chances are, though, that employment law being what it is, whatever happens you need to be looking for another job.”

  “But …” Lindsey tried to say.

  “They will argue that the relationship of trust between employer and employee has broken down, and will therefore be able to terminate your contract, with or without a finding of professional misconduct. You could fight it through industrial tribunal and all the way to the European court on the basis of unfair or constructive dismissal, but it would take years and you still wouldn’t get your job back.”

  “So what are you saying?” Lindsey said.

  “I’m saying if they offer you a chance to resign it’ll look better on your CV.”

  “One mistake,” Lindsey screeched. “One mistake. Aren’t I supposed to get a warning or something?”

  “You’ve got no witnesses to the phone call in which you first spoke to this Mrs. Besser. If they claim you were abusive to her, you’ll only have your own denial to fall back on. That’s compromised by the fact that there are witnesses to the conversation the next day, and rest assured they’ll come forward when push comes to shove, not thinking they’re doing any harm and absolutely sure that you were provoked, but all the while proving that you are well capable of losing it on the phone. If you did it once you can do it again. By your own admission you don’t know what you said to the niece, and then you went ahead with the visit after you were expressly told not to. I don’t know all the red tape surrounding your job but that may very well be illegal. The only witness to what actually took place between you and the old woman is the woman herself or her companion, and they’ll be very unlikely to call them. They’ll just use the niece, who’s very angry. Then you’ve got the fact that a big national charity like BAB is going to want to be seen to be keeping its house in order. They won’t want to risk embarrassment or bad press.”

  “I thought lawyers were supposed to help you,” Lindsey said stubbornly.

  “There are lawyers out there who’ll take your money and dishonestly tell you there’s a case worth fighting. I’m here to give you free advice, and that’s what I’m doing,” Charles Taylor said.

  “Appreciate it,” Niall said. He found himself liking Taylor, despite the uncompromising nature of his advice.

  “If they give you a chance to jump, take it,” Taylor went on. “They’re not going to want to go to disciplinary if they can avoid it.”

  “They could just move me to another department,” Lindsey said helplessly. “I could promise never to answer the phone again.”

  “You can always suggest it,” Taylor said. “You need to wait for them to make the next move. I know that’s difficult. But then you need to have your plans ready for when they do. If they say the decision’s a disciplinary, then you can say ‘What if I resign?’ or ‘Couldn’t I move to another department?’, but you need to know for sure what you’re prepared to do. Just remember that getting a job when you’re visually impaired is no joke, and having a dismissal for professional misconduct on your record isn’t going to make it any easier. Try to get a reference out of them.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Lindsey started sobbing.

  “But why now?” Taylor mused, ignoring her. “That�
��s the only curious thing.”

  “Do you think it could have anything to do with the questions I was asking about the transplant?” Niall asked.

  “Hard to say. Have you found anything out?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose you wouldn’t tell me if you had. Journalists.”

  “That’s right,” Niall said, glowing internally at the fact that someone was considering him on his own evaluation – a journalist, not a blind journalist.

  “I’ll give you my number,” Taylor said, “in case you find yourself needing a solicitor.”

  “I don’t live in Harrow,” Niall said.

  “I do private work as well,” Taylor said. “And this does sound interesting.”

  “Oh and I don’t,” Lindsey said suddenly.

  “If you decide to go to disciplinary, call me,” Taylor said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you what would happen.”

  It was six thirty pm when Hugo, exhausted, dragged Niall once more through the portals of Moorfields Eye Hospital. It had been a long and expensive day, the final expense being the rail ticket back to Telford that Niall had bought online for the following morning. After the good old-fashioned row that he had had with Lindsey to the astonishment of the passers-by on Station Road in Harrow, he had reached some decisions in the back of the cab that returned him to Chiswick. Firstly, the case that his imagination had built up around the eye transplant had collapsed. The one really suspicious event, Lindsey’s suspension the same day that he had met her at BAB, turned out to have a real, logical explanation. His conspiracy theory was now too ‘flimsy’ even for his own wildly creative mind to run with. There were still some curious anomalies, but nothing that proved anything or even provided a stepping stone towards something else. There was no chain, no progression, no developing investigation. So it was over. He would do his final good deed, pay this promised visit to Susannah Leman, and then close the book.

  He also needed to get out of London. It was costing him a fortune and that was without paying rent. He had put Simon’s relationship with Erica under pressure by out-staying his welcome in the house, and Hugo wasn’t making friends there either.