Eyes of the Blind

by Alex Tresillian

  He needed a future and this was not it. Once you got on the right path it was amazing how things that would normally seem insurmountable just fell away. London obviously wasn’t the right path. He should’ve read the signs when the path he chose led to the feet of Lindsey Corncrake Spencer. It had all been entertaining for a while, but it was not leading towards a job. And that was what he needed, a job and a life.

  Leaving Hugo where he would be well looked after, he allowed himself to be guided to Susannah’s room.

  “Another visitor,” the nurse said, bringing him in. “Somebody’s popular this evening.”

  “Hello Niall,” he heard Susannah say. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  “Hi,” Niall said. “Got company?”

  “Yes, Mr. Sullivan from the Blind Association.”

  “I told you to call me Daniel,” Sullivan said.

  “OK,” Susannah said uncomfortably.

  It was another twenty minutes before they managed to get Sullivan to leave. Twenty minutes of roundabout conversation, inconsequential remarks loaded with sub-text, and Sullivan determined not to take the hint. In the end Susannah, desperately worried that Niall would make some excuse and leave before she had a chance to have her proper conversation with him, took the bull by the horns and told Daniel that she needed to talk to Niall in private. He was clearly unimpressed, but left with as good a grace as he could muster.

  “What did he want?” Niall asked.

  “You don’t like him, do you?” Susannah said.

  “I don’t really know him. He sounds a pompous ass.”

  “He’s being very kind to me.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The conversation ground to an uncomfortable halt.

  “How do I look?” Niall said at last.

  “Do you hate me?” was Susannah’s response.

  “What? No. Why?”

  “For seeing.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “You were the one who gave me the courage to face it.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “No, really. All the sighted people, talking about sight as if it’s the most wonderful thing in the world and ‘Oh you must be so excited’, ‘Oh it’s so thrilling’ and they had no idea. That from where I was it wasn’t wonderful, it wasn’t thrilling. It was just scary. Still is. I had a life and it made sense. Pathetic compared to yours, I know, but it was mine and I was at ease with it. Now I have to start all over again. Mr. Daghash even says I’m going to have to learn to walk again. To stop walking like a blind person. Can you imagine that?”

  “Yes,” Niall said. “It’s what happened to me, but in reverse. Believe me, I’d rather be where you are.”

  “But I’m not me anymore.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “No. I feel different. I’ve changed my name.”

  “What?”

  “Nobody else knows. But I’m not Susannah any more. She’s dead and gone. I’m Miranda now.”

  “Admired Miranda,” Niall said, instinctively quoting A Level Shakespeare.

  “Do you think that’s crazy?”

  “No. I think it makes a Hell of a lot of sense.”

  “I knew you’d understand.”

  “And what’s Miranda going to do with her life?”

  “I’ve absolutely no idea.”

  “Well if she fancies a future in sunny Shropshire, just give me a call. I’m going back tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” Niall hadn’t heard that much disappointment in a woman’s voice for a very long time. Certainly not at the prospect of him going away.

  “Where is Shropshire?” Miranda asked.

  “In the middle,” Niall said. “Between Birmingham and Wales.”

  “Is it nice?”

  “It isn’t exactly the centre of the universe, but – it’s home.” A good place for failures and no-hopers to grow old, he wanted to add, but it would have spoiled the moment.

  “And you live in - ?” he asked instead.

  “Surrey.”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. It’s not your fault. It’s just kind of – predictable.”

  “You think I’m a poor little rich girl, don’t you?”

  “Now that’s Miranda talking,” Niall said with a smile. “I think I’m going to like her.”

  “I hope you do,” Miranda said. “She likes you.”

  “Because she hasn’t met enough guys yet to know better.”

  “What do you mean? I’ve met Daniel Sullivan.”

  “Of course.”

  “And Matthew Long.”

  “Oh yes. Mr. Tabloid.”

  “My sister thinks he’s fit.”

  “Right.”

  “This is so strange. I have the kind of conversations with you that I have with me in my head. It’s weird.”

  “Weird.”

  “I’ve never talked like this to anyone before.”

  “Look, Miranda,” Niall felt it incumbent upon him to say, “don’t build it into something it’s not. I have to go back to Shropshire. You have to go and see Surrey. And meet the press. And be famous. We’re moving in opposite directions.”

  “Are you still going to write your article about me?”

  “Yeah, yeah – sure.”

  “So you might need to interview me again.”

  “You’ve signed a contract.”

  “Do you know what? Come closer, I want to whisper something.” Niall walked up to the bed. She took his arm and pulled his head down to hers. “Fuck the contract,” she whispered, and laughed. “Do you know,” she went on, letting go of him, “that is the first time in my life that I’ve said that word.”

  “I think you had a personality transplant along with the eyes,” Niall said appreciatively.

  “Do you think that’s possible?” Miranda asked, suddenly serious. “The eyes have brought some of their old owner with them?”

  “No,” Niall said. “They’ve just given you the confidence to step outside the box your parents put you in.”

  Half an hour later Niall left. He promised to keep in touch but he knew as he said it that it was a promise he wasn’t going to keep. The only thing that surprised him was the sense of loss that he felt as he walked out of Moorfields with Hugo.

  Being blind, he didn’t notice the silver BMW that followed him back to Chiswick, and again from Simon’s to Paddington station the next morning.

  PART

  TWO

  ‘I once was lost, but now am found

  Was blind but now I see…’

  Amazing Grace

  NINE

  In the dream, Rebecca was back in the room at the top of 17, Cardew Crescent. She was naked, and so was the man who wasn’t Richard (but whose face was a blur). He started to touch her and in spite of herself she started to feel turned on. Knowing she didn’t really want to, she nevertheless lay down on the bed and spread her legs. Instead of getting on top of her though, he just smiled (but how can a man smile if his face has no features?) and guided her hand to his penis. She didn’t want to do it, but she did. Gently at first, rhythmically, and then gathering momentum almost into a frenzy until she felt the explosion that told her it was over. He relaxed. She relaxed. She looked at his face and it was her brother Joe.

  Rebecca woke up shaking. Her sheets were damp with cold sweat. She was a wreck. She had been a wreck since the night of the ‘adult soiree’. The whole sordid experience had messed with her mind and she hadn’t been able to move on from it. She couldn’t concentrate on her work, her relationship with Penny had become complicated, and her nights were racked by terrible haunting dreams. She was losing it, and everybody was so understanding because they said it was delayed grief for Joe: her body had gone into shock at first, but now this was the next phase in coming to terms with it. And she just wanted to shout at them and throw things at them because it was nothing to do with that. Well maybe partly, but that wasn’t what it was a
ctually about. It was her total disgust at Daniel’s sex party, the sex act she had performed, Penny’s prostitution, Daniel, “Adrian”, “Richard”, “Mary”, Penny, Beth, herself and anyone and everyone who had ever done anything sordid in the sexual line. She felt as though she would never get into bed with another man ever, for as long as she lived.

  “You’ve got to get over it, girl,” Penny said, trying to joke and jolly her out of it.

  “I can’t,” Rebecca said. But why couldn’t she? If Penny was OK with it, and Beth was OK with it, and hundreds of thousands of women throughout history had coped with it, why was she incapable of rationalising it and putting it in perspective? Her body had not been violated thanks to Richard’s failure to perform; but part of her felt it would have been easier to excuse if it had been: she could have allowed that to feel a bit like rape, something she had unwillingly succumbed to. Instead of leading him by the prick to somewhere he was really too embarrassed to go. Why the Hell had she done it? Every time she stood at the basin in the bathroom she was Lady Macbeth, frantically scrubbing at her right hand in a pathetic and doomed attempt to cleanse it.

  Her tutor had offered her the chance to defer her studies and start the whole year again the following September. It had felt like the last thing in the world that she wanted or needed to do at the time, but now, maybe – To get out of London, away from Penny and everything she now stood for, even if only for a while, might help to clear her head. Let her breathe again. Rebuild whatever part of her had collapsed. Perhaps her parents did need her. Perhaps she needed to be needed. To feel a cleansing winter wind blow through her on the Sussex Downs. Let the New Year come and open the door to a better future.

  She made a decision. She would go home.

  By December 10th Niall had had enough of Christmas. He had eaten all the chocolates in the Advent Calendar his mother had bought him, heard more than his fair share of Christmas music, and endured a visit from some Bible-basher who had knocked on his door, offered him a mince pie, and then proceeded to ask him whether he ever thought about the spiritual side of Christmas. Admittedly his answer – ‘Not really’ – had probably not been the smartest thing he had ever said, but at the time he had been trying to keep Hugo’s nose out of the woman’s mince pie tin.

  Life as one of Telford’s unemployed had brought few excitements since his return from London. The phone that had seemed red hot back then with calls from Lindsey Spencer and Susannah Leman’s eye surgeon was now stone cold and almost completely dormant. He had dropped off the map, fallen off the carousel, become part of the two-dimensional background of life. Sometimes he minded, and sometimes the softly-sprung ease of it all reached out and lured him in.

  He assumed that silence meant Lindsey had either heard nothing, or heard something but decided she didn’t want anything more to do with him, or been reinstated following the delightful Ms Warwick’s investigation, or sought refuge with the man in her life who might or might not actually be a myth.

  He assumed that silence meant that Susannah or Miranda had walked out into the sighted world and forgotten all about him. He had picked up a news item on the day she left hospital, but after that the trail had gone cold.

  He assumed that silence meant that Simon had not yet forgiven him for the disturbance he had caused in his domestic affairs.

  All in all, this was going to be a year to forget. Roll on January 1st. He presumed he’d go to his mother and stepdad’s for Christmas – or at least that was what she presumed – but New Year’s Eve was a time for solitary reflection with a congenial guide dog, some Guinness and a couple of spicy Pot Noodles.

  Then his doorbell rang. After his experience with the rabid Christian he decided to employ a caution that was altogether foreign to his nature. He couldn’t pretend to be out, because Hugo had already given the game away, but he could at least act the part of the poor defenceless blind person if it turned out to be someone after money or his soul.

  “Who is it?” he called, without opening the door.

  “Niall! That’s not like you.”

  The voice was maddeningly familiar. He just needed a second to –

  “Faith? What on Earth are you doing here?”

  And he opened the door.

  “Well I’ve come to see you of course,” Faith Hodgkiss said. “It’s a bit wet out here. Are you going to ask me in?”

  “Of course, of course.” Niall backed away from the door and the counsellor who had nursed him through every crisis since he first started to go blind stepped into his flat.

  “This is a nice place, Niall,” she said appreciatively.

  “How did you find it?”

  “I treated myself to a SatNav,” Faith said, in a voice that managed to sound both gleeful and apologetic. “It’s been a great investment because it makes me laugh and it helps me get to places. I was never very good with maps, especially if I wasn’t going from the bottom in the direction of the top.”

  “I can offer you raspberry tea, Guinness, ordinary tea, or there might be some lager,” Niall said.

  “Difficult choice,” Faith replied. “I think ordinary tea sounds good under the circumstances.”

  “Actually there might be some Earl Grey or something that my mum put in the cupboard for when she comes round,” Niall added on reflection. “Come into the kitchen and have a look.”

  Between them they furnished Faith with a cup of Earl Grey and Niall with his inevitable raspberry, and then he led the way to the lounge.

  “I’d’ve tidied up if I’d known I was expecting visitors,” he said.

  “No problem,” Faith said, making space on the sofa and sitting down.

  “So,” Niall said. “You’ve never done this before, dropped in unannounced, so what’s the occasion?”

  “Well,” Faith said, “partly I was concerned about you, knowing you’d been made redundant and wondering how you were coping. But I could have rung you to talk about that. But more importantly, I think your help is needed, and I feel responsible on two counts, and you are too, and I thought it would be better to discuss it face to face.”

  “Wow. Must be serious,” Niall said lightly.

  “It is,” Faith said. “It’s about Susannah Leman.”

  “Susannah Leman.” Niall was both astonished and curious.

  “Yes, or Miranda, as she calls herself now.”

  “Did she really go through with that?” Niall said, appreciatively.

  “You have no idea what she’s gone through.”

  “I hardly know her,” Niall said defensively.

  “No,” Faith replied, “and she hardly knows you, but she’s built you up into something very special inside her head.”

  “Oh no,” Niall said. “I really didn’t try to –”

  “Niall,” Faith cautioned, “I know you too well.”

  “Honestly. I didn’t even like her much at first.”

  “Well, one way or another it happened.”

  “And that’s why you’re here?”

  “Partly. But not on her behalf. She has no idea where you are and it’s not for me to tell her. But as it was me who put you onto her in the first place because you were so insistent and I thought it might help both of you, I feel a sense of responsibility. And so should you, because you were the one who rang me to try to get enough of the inside track to wangle your way in.”

  “OK,” Niall said. “Responsibility for what?”

  “For her,” Faith said. “For everything she’s going through and everything that’s happened to her. She’s back in hospital you know. They think she may be getting chronic rejection of the new eyes. And I really think you can help her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s in a very lonely space and she trusts you,” Faith said. “For whatever reason. And the other people around her all seem to have an axe of their own to grind.”

  “I can’t go back to London,” Niall said. “Simon won’t put me up again.”

  “We’ll cross that brid
ge later,” Faith said. “I just think first of all you need to hear everything that’s happened to that poor girl since she came out of Moorfields.”

  “OK. I’m all ears. So’s Hugo.”

  “Dear Hugo,” Faith said, stroking him. “He was the perfect dog for you. Intelligent, individual, with a charisma that you can’t quite put your finger on.”

  “He’s a good mate,” Niall said.

  “I spoke to Susannah a couple of times before she came out,” Faith began in earnest. “I could tell she was very nervous. She’d been upset by one of the consultants, Duncan Clark, who had accused her of just wanting to be a celebrity. I’ve known Duncan for years and he’s a brilliant man who knows more about eyes than almost anyone on the planet, but he’s never believed that what Jamal and his team have been doing in relation to the transplant was possible. He’s like a paid up member of the Flat Earth Society. Somebody could sail round the world in good faith and come back into Portsmouth, and he would claim the whole thing was a stunt. Because his mind just can’t go there. It goes against everything he’s ever known, ever learnt and ever done. And he can be very cutting when he puts you down. I suppose he went to see her out of curiosity, and dismissed her out of hand. It really upset her. You know her, you know that being a celebrity is hardly high on her list of priorities.”

  “You never know,” Niall said. “It’s supposed to be every young person’s ambition nowadays.”

  “I think the ambition is all on her parents’ and her sister’s side,” Faith replied. “It was her father who pushed her to the front of the queue, and her sister was positively lapping up the media attention. Anyway, back to the plot. Susannah shared with me a lot of her early seeing experiences. Her anxiety about seeing, about knowing how to see and how to live in the sighted world. I know she said the same stuff to you because she told me so. She was worried about letting her family down, worried about who she was. All very understandable stuff except nobody around her was in a mood to be understanding.