by Rob Palk
I had been trying to make us both a cup of tea and had misjudged the distance from kettle to cup. The boiling hot water had gone straight over my wrist. I was shocked enough to think she had a point. I held my arm under the cold tap till it numbed, and pink soreness rose from the white.
‘Isn’t this sort of thing common? Going a bit blind after the flu? This sounds like something that happens, frequently.’
‘I don’t think it is common. I don’t think it is flu.’ She held my hand up, looked at it, frowned and stood back. ‘You’re going to have to get this looked at. It isn’t normal to lose this much vision. It isn’t normal to spend two days screaming and howling like that. You need to talk to someone else.’
‘I’ll go at the end of the week. I’ll go to the opticians.’
‘Go tomorrow.’ She folded her arms. This was the first time I had seen her be determined. It was something I would get to know well.
‘I’ll go at the end of the week.’
‘Tomorrow. You need to do this.’
‘I’ll go tomorrow.’ And, not knowing she had saved my life, Marie refilled and flicked on the kettle, poured us both a fresh cup of tea and went back to the sofa with her script.
Thirteen
After I was out of the woods and past the worst of it, I went back to my GP. I told him I’d been through a period of intense and wondrous joy and now this joy had gone I found I missed it. He scribbled away on his pad.
‘It isn’t the lack of eyesight,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve got used to that. It isn’t even having this illness hanging over me. It’s more, I can’t get excited over the things that everyone else does. Stuff like jobs. Children, having children. A really cool restaurant they went to. Something on the news. I feel like I had something bigger than that, something that was more real and now I’ve lost it.’
‘Do you think that you love life now, would you say?’ I told him I thought I did. ‘But a version of life in which useful employment, procreation, eating and current affairs are of minimal importance. This is a lot of life to turn your back on. These are what life consists of, some would say.’
‘I mean, I know I’m lucky. I was reading, what’s his name, Oliver Sacks. There was a guy who had what I had, you know with the visual cortex. He couldn’t see at all. Not only that, he couldn’t remember having had seen. And my sight, it’s not so bad now. I’m kind of used to it. So I feel bad for feeling bad.’ My GP wedged his glasses further up his nose, showing the deep trench-lines where they pressed into his skin. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. It sounds like you are a mystic. Not a good thing to be in this day and age. You just have to hope you snap out of it. And make sure you eat plenty of eggs. Vitamin D, it’s terribly important.’
About this time, I was trying to write a novel. I’d started off fine, the words seeping from my fingers, liquid, full of grace and then, one day, a month or so in, I found I couldn’t write. I was stumbling. My brain felt strapped in, bound by limitations. I couldn’t find the words. Marie came back that day and found me weeping over an adjective. ‘Have some time out,’ she kept saying. ‘Wait. There’s plenty of time.’ I was scared my brain wasn’t what it had been. I pressed my face into the pillow. My fainting became more regular. We were to marry at the end of the month.
‘Marie,’ I said. It was two days before the wedding. ‘I think I’m starting to be okay again.’
She was writing something, probably wedding related. No, it was a play, a play she was writing. This was her new project. She was bored with just acting, needed to try something new. She was always trying new things. Before the acting there had been a period of learning to dance. Before that, a spell trying to paint. She’d take on a passion, build a life in it, get unsatisfied and move on. She looked up at me.
‘I’m glad you’re feeling better,’ she said.
‘I know I’ve possibly been difficult. Something eating at me and I’m not sure what it is.’
‘You’ve seemed cross with me. Angry, almost.’
‘I know. I’m not angry. I think I know what it was.’
She lowered her screen and scratched herself. I wasn’t sure if she’d been doing that much of late. She had certainly lost weight. A wedding thing, I thought.
‘I’ve wondered what was up.’
‘I’ve got it. Nothing was up. What it was, was . . . well, it’s obvious. My brain. It’s a physical thing. My feeling strange, my acting strange. It’s a response to that. Just a physical response.’
‘I’m not sure that’s how it works,’ she said. ‘You’re you, a person. Not just a set of synapses.’
‘There’s nothing else wrong,’ I said. ‘It was obviously just that. And this means that now I know that, I can go back to feeling fine.’
‘That’s good,’ she said and went back to writing, the concentration making her frown.
Fourteen
The morning of the wedding arrived. It felt like being stretchered. Other forces were in control; all I had to do was place myself, soldier-like, in the correct and pre-ordained flow and things would happen for me. I didn’t feel fretful or scared. Somehow that feeling had passed. I examined myself carefully, and yes, it was all gone. I was coming through, it seemed. Physically, I felt stronger. I only noticed the eyesight at times of stress, the new glasses had made a difference. Although I knew I was at risk of a second bleed, I knew this risk was small and I wasn’t walking around in fear of my life.
I was happy, I decided. It wasn’t euphoria but then, not everything was. I was happy and in love and sometimes this was enough. God knows, I couldn’t lose her. God knows, being alone was unthinkable.
That day, after we’d recited our self-scripted vows, after we’d said hello to Marie’s beautiful Regent’s Park friends and my more ungainly university ones, after my mum had cried and Frank had pretended to flirt with her, after he’d stood up to deliver a rambling, vaguely obscene speech, replete with quotes from the classics, after I’d made my own speech, which was simpler and less obscene, after we’d eaten vegetarian food and I’d allowed myself a couple of glasses of champagne, the time came for the first dance.
I hadn’t really danced since I’d been ill. We’d practiced in our front room, shifting the table, standing on each other’s feet.
We swayed in front of the crowd, trying to pretend we were alone. She was looking past me, at the wall. We jerked and bobbed, we shimmied.
As the dance continued, it became a race, a gallop. The song ended and she kissed me and ran straight off the stage.
The next song began. I could see her at the back of the crowd, laughing with some friends. I stayed at the front, bopping on my own, grin soldered to my face.
Fifteen
I am trying to remember the moment the badgers crawled into our lives. Our wedding was in 2013 and earlier in the year the government had announced a cull. I think I tried to be funny about it. First they came for the badgers but I did not complain because I was not a badger.
The cull was to deal with TB, the line went. The badgers were supposed to have been spreading the disease to cows. I remember Marie reading the paper, saying she didn’t think a cull would work, but she didn’t seem too exercised. After our wedding, they were back in the news again. I was at work answering the phone to people with lost cats, neighbours troubled by unhappy barks, and more and more I’d get calls about the cull.
It was good though, being married. Sometimes I’d think about the first dance but not for very long. I had carried on trying to write. Marie had been working on her script in her spare time. One day she said she was stuck with it, that she couldn’t give it shape. And then it was badgers, just badgers.
‘I’ve been thinking about the badger cull,’ she said. ‘I think we should do something about it.’
‘Like what?’ Go on a march, I expected. I couldn’t see it happening. Marie was far too cleanly, far too kempt for marching. A couple of years before this there’d been Occupy. I’d l
et myself get excited, to my surprise. Every now and again I lapse into politics before invariably losing faith. Still, I was enthused. Marie had shrugged. I should be finishing my book. We’d argued. History had started again, I said. It was easy for her, with her Regent’s Park parents and her nice hair, while out on the streets of London, battles were being fought.
I went down to the protest camp on my own. It smelt slightly of soup. I came home and forgot about it.
‘I’ve been in touch with the anti-cull people,’ she said. This was a surprise. I didn’t even know there were such people already. ‘The whole thing’s up and running. They’re looking for volunteers.’
I muttered something about my health. I didn’t fancy patrolling the woods at night but Marie had always cared about animals. It was she who had chosen the cat.
The acting seemed to have been forgotten for a while. It always puzzled me how she never got far with that. She was beautiful, after all, but she never could quite lift off. Maybe she wasn’t good at it. She’d been doing a lot of temping, wearing a trouser suit like a suit of armour. She told me she’d considered giving up acting altogether, that she was sick of the unreality, the unnaturalness of it. She needed, she said, something new in life, something authentic and real. She had started filling our little rooms with plants. Herbs and rubber plants, flowers, a bonsai tree. I liked them. They were calming, but I felt they were excessive. I was forever bumping into them.
The other thing: since my illness she’d been reading J. M. Coetzee. ‘John can be a bit funny on some issues,’ Frank had warned. ‘Takes things a bit far.’ But she fell for him, his ascetic complexity, the clearness of his gaze. She had cried over Disgrace. There was something in there, she said. Something odd and inexpressible, something around power and sex and truth and it was all mixed up in the way we handle animals. She reminded me of our day out at the zoo. I couldn’t really follow her. She said the book chimed with her thoughts. There was something growing in her, something transforming. And now this obsession with badgers.
‘Okay then,’ I said. ‘I suppose we can lend a hand.’ I didn’t know when I said it how much she’d resolved to do.
Sixteen
When I was a kid, visiting London, I would usually insist upon a trip to Paddington because of the glamour added by the eponymous bear. With adulthood the gold-leaf glow of ursine fame had passed and I knew that Paddington was pretty far from anywhere and hadn’t got that much going for it. I don’t think I’d ever been back. But on the first weekend in October, there I was again, this time with Marie, dashing, married, from the tube and into the station with fifteen minutes to spare before our train. We were never usually this early for anything but then, this was important. We were off to do something for the badgers.
‘Oh look, there’s photos,’ I said. We were on the train, paper spread out on the table, water bottles and crisp packets nearby. ‘Look. Badgers. In the magazine.’ Two-tone faces with inquisitive button eyes, wide black noses sniffing for danger. Appealing beasts, I thought. You wouldn’t want to kill them. Marie snatched the magazine from me and gazed at the photos, a rapturous look on her face. A look I hadn’t seen for a while. Not since the honeymoon, I thought.
‘Gorgeous, aren’t they?’ she said. I made an appropriate grunt. I didn’t want to sound too enthusiastic. They were, after all, only badgers. I didn’t dislike them – I wasn’t a farmer or a psychopath – but I wasn’t going to give them a round of applause. Marie furrowed her brow for a second, but obviously decided her energies should go elsewhere. She pulled out her phone and started firing off texts, making sure the hard-core badger crowd knew that we were coming.
It had been something to see, her transforming fervour for this cause. It was as though, she said, she’d accessed an intensity she’d never had before. She said she felt like Nietzsche on seeing that horse. She’d almost felt reluctance at the responsibilities ahead. But also this vast enthusiasm, the joy that comes from knowing your purpose is clear. She had realised, she said, that all of her previous passions were just hobbies, just means of filling the time. Animal rights was a revelation, an all-consuming goal. There was now a photograph of a badger above our bed. I bought her a stuffed badger toy. There were books about badgers on our shelves. She’d beleaguered the members of her extended family who’d had the temerity to vote Conservative. She had even started listening to the music of Queen, as their guitarist was against the cull. I was scared, to tell the truth. Something bigger than me had come along.
‘I hope I don’t lose my glasses,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s not like I can see brilliantly at the best of times. And it’ll be dark. Take away the glasses and I’m not going to be much use.’ I had adapted to my lack of eyesight, but not enough that new situations didn’t bother me.
Marie sighed. I expect she felt I was subtracting from the dignity of the cause.
‘It’s true,’ I said, as though she were suggesting it wasn’t. ‘I’m still not entirely well.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I suppose that makes it all the braver of you to come.’ Satisfied with this formulation she pulled out a book, about badgers, and read with a transfixed smile. She had spent weeks liaising with a hodgepodge, sprawling collective of the animal-loving aggrieved. Environmentalists, post-scarcity-anarchists, sentimental shires-women and vegan townies. I couldn’t get enthused. Still, at least I was dressed for our adventure. I wore a pork pie hat and a holey cardigan I thought made me look like an anarchist. I hoped anyone seeing me would assume I cared deeply about animal rights. I looked like a shambling bucolic scallywag, the sort of person who tries to sell you a boat in the local pub. It occurred to me that a really successful anarchist would probably not dress like an anarchist. But then, I wasn’t really an anarchist.
I hoped we didn’t get arrested. I really didn’t want to get arrested.
We reached Newent at noon. There was an unseasonably bright, caressing sun, the summer of our wedding still clinging. It seemed a long time ago now, three months down the line. The first thing we saw when we’d ambled from the station was the sort of gift shop that normally gets called quaint. In the window were figurines of woodland creatures, a fox, a mole, a weasel and a beaver.
‘A beaver,’ said Marie. ‘A fucking beaver. I’ve a good mind to go in.’
‘Please do not go in.’
‘They’ve definitely hidden the badger,’ she said. ‘When was the last time you saw a beaver in the woods? And weasels? Badgers are more popular than weasels. Nobody likes weasels.’ She checked herself. ‘I like weasels. But I am committed to animal rights. Your average gift shop buyer isn’t looking to buy a statue of a weasel. There is an agenda here.’
‘We should probably head to the bed and breakfast, get some sleep.’
‘I’m not going to complain,’ she said. ‘But that is because you are here.’
A police van cruised down the narrow street, followed by two more. The last one especially slowly, with the driver winding down the window to assess us, in case we’d been thinking of smashing up the shop. Which wasn’t that far from the truth, I supposed. Still, it felt a bit much. This was West Gloucestershire not the West Bank. Maybe we were outlaws now. I really hoped we didn’t get arrested.
‘Should we tell the bed and breakfast why we’re here?’ We strolled down to the war memorial while Marie called us a cab. The number had been given to her by the badger folk and was guaranteed reliable.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Let’s wait till we get there and suss out the vibe.’ Suss out the vibe? She didn’t normally say things like ‘suss out the vibe’. This must be how anarchists talk. ‘The driver’s safe though.’ I wished it wasn’t too late for me to start smoking again.
I paced around the memorial while Marie read her book. The sky was incredibly blue for the time of year, a picture-book spotless blue. I worried, dutifully, about climate change. If only she’d been passionate about that. That was the sort of issue you could take seriously. My wife? She’s an actress
. My wife? Oh, she’s the Lansdowne’s daughter. My wife campaigns about climate change. You could tell people at parties that your wife cared about climate change and they wouldn’t smirk at all. There was dignity in it. There was no dignity in badgers.
A 4x4 chugged close, a cab sign over the windscreen. Marie skipped over, smiling widely, ready to take charge. I remembered that, when I was a teenager in Lancashire, listening to Britpop in my room, she had been out in Essex, attending actual illegal raves. She was streetwise in the way that only very posh people can be. I sat in the front next to the driver while she sprawled in the back with our bags.
‘Down for the weekend?’ said the driver. He had burnt toast stubble and leaky tattoos and an air of some faint decay on him. Through the window there were curvy green fields with farmhouses dotted at the backs of them, as though they’d been dropped from the sky.
‘We’re here for the protest,’ said Marie, in her crispest, North London-est voice. ‘We’re part of the Badger Patrol.’
‘Ah,’ said the driver, non-committal, thick wrists on the wheel. As long as he got his money it didn’t matter what his cargo thought about badgers. ‘Gets people riled up that one does.’
I glanced round at Marie and gave what I hoped was an encouraging smile. She was scratching the fingers of one hand with the other and I worried if this was one of her nervous tics, but her face didn’t show any tension. Instead it showed fixity, calmness.
‘Have you had a lot of people down?’ she said. ‘For the protests?’
‘A few,’ he said, ‘from London. Couple of us locals involved too. Course I’m not really a local. Originally from Kent. Been driving these all over. Berlin, I was, for a while. Florida for a few years. Cardiff. I’ve seen the world. In the end, don’t ask me why, but I felt myself missing England. I said, Mike, you better go home. Get yourself in the country, find a wife.’