The Mind's Eye

by K. C. Finn

  I was surprised to find Henri indoors after so many visits to the beautiful mountainsides he had been traversing. He was in a little wooden room looking into a sink full of soapy water. He sloshed his hands into the sink and brought them up to his face with a tired sigh, obscuring my view as he washed his forehead before moving down to his cheeks. He looked up, but where I had been hoping for a mirror there was just a blank wooden wall that he stared at without focus. He slapped his wet face gently a few times then suddenly shook his whole head, droplets flying everywhere.

  Henri you make me feel sick when you do that! I protested.

  He jumped, then laughed in quick succession.

  “Then you should tell me you’re here instead of spying on me,” he accused.

  He had a point, actually, but I wouldn’t let him win. Oh yes, I replied, because feeling you wash your face is terribly exciting.

  “What do you mean ‘feeling’?” Henri asked.

  Um… In all our recent conversations I had managed not to let that slip yet, though I had often felt as though I ought to let Henri know I could feel everything that he felt. Well, I thought uncertainly, I can feel what you do with your body, almost like it’s my own body.

  He pinched his arm hard.

  Ow! I cried immediately. He hissed at the pain he’d caused himself. You didn’t have to test it!

  “This isn’t good news Kit,” Henri mused sadly, “If you’re with me and I get hurt, you’ll feel it. I don’t want you to suffer for me.”

  I wanted to gulp down my worries. Are you likely to get hurt? I asked.

  Henri turned his back on the sink quietly as he reached for his shirt and swung it over his shoulders. For a brief moment he looked down to do up his buttons and I saw a flash of his bare chest, but he must have remembered quickly that I was behind his eyes because he looked up again at the wall while he finished getting dressed.

  “Well, we’ve arrived at the place where the boats will come for us,” he explained, “This is a small base made up by the Resistance.”

  When will your boat come? I pressed. He had ignored my last question, but I was too interested in how soon he could get across the sea to pursue it.

  “When the water’s right,” he said, drawing in a sharp breath, “We just have to be ready to leave as soon as they tell us. It could be any night from now on.”

  That’s brilliant, I exclaimed. He smiled a very small smile.

  “Listen to me Kit,” he said, his deep voice turning serious, “I don’t want you to be there when I cross the water.” I made to protest but he carried on talking. “It’s going to be cold and dangerous and all kinds of hell to endure. I don’t want to be the reason that you feel all that.”

  But it won’t hurt me really, I argued, I’ll just-

  “No,” Henri cut me off, shaking his head, “If you come to my mind and you find me on that boat, you leave again right away. And you keep leaving until I am back on land somewhere. If you don’t, I won’t forgive you.”

  I hadn’t heard him speak this harshly since the night he cursed the Germans when his employer was taken away, and most of that had been in Norwegian. This was his warning to me and he meant it.

  “If you care for me at all then you must do what I say,” he urged.

  He knew more than I did about the dangers on the water, someone had clearly warned him how bad it was going to be. I wanted to tell him to turn back, to not risk it, but now that he had vanished from a city riddled with German soldiers there was little choice left for him but to endure whatever the journey threw at him.

  Of course I care for you, I said softly, I promise I’ll stay away until you’re safely on this island.

  “Good,” he answered quietly. I felt the heavy burden in his chest start to relax. “Well, do we still have time together now, or will you have to go soon?”

  I smiled. I think I’m all right for a while. Everyone’s busy here today.

  Henri left the little wooden washroom and made his way down a pitch black corridor, turning instinctively to another tiny, dark room. Once inside he fumbled with a lantern until it came to life, illuminating a little bedroll on the floor. He lay down on it quietly and I felt the hardness of the floor behind his back. It was horribly uncomfortable, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

  “I’ve been wondering about your family in London,” he said quietly, “Tell me, what does your mother do?”

  Mum works in a factory that makes parts for bicycles, I admitted. I felt Henri smiling quietly to himself. It used to be a tiny little job, but she started working millions of hours there once Dad went away, and now she says the factory’s started making parts for aircraft instead. I felt a sad sort of longing creeping into the back of my head. That’s why she can’t get away long enough to come and see us up here, she’s working very long hours for the war effort.

  “I think it’s good that everyone does their part,” Henri mused, “I want to do my part too when I come over.”

  He meant becoming a soldier, I was sure of it. The thought of Henri going to battle was both awfully brave and utterly terrifying to me.

  They won’t let you enlist until you’re eighteen though, I answered, bringing myself some comfort.

  “I know, but my birthday’s in August, it’s not that far away.” He shuffled on the hard floor, resting his head on a rolled up jacket. “So your father is away at the war?”

  Um... no. Not exactly.

  “What do you mean?” Henri asked.

  I hesitated, for a moment before I gave in and told him. Dad went away about a year before the war started. Mum always says he’s working, but we haven’t heard a word from him in all this time.

  “I had a friend like that once,” Henri began, “His mother told him the same thing.”

  And where was his dad really? I asked nervously.

  Henri bit his lip. “I’m not sure I should say.”

  Go on, I pressed, it can’t be any worse than what I’m thinking.

  “In prison,” Henri answered, “What were you thinking?”

  Dead.

  I could feel the shock in Henri’s broad chest. “You don’t really think your father’s dead, do you?”

  Sometimes, I said sadly, then sometimes not. It’s all so strange. We woke up one morning and he’d just vanished, he never even came to say goodbye to us. Mum just said he had to go, and that was that.

  “I think prison’s more likely by the sound of that,” Henri said. I felt his own grief matching mine as he gripped the pockets of his trousers tightly, his arms turning stiff. “I would have preferred to hope that my parents were still alive, if I could have.”

  I didn’t want to press him to talk about them and he didn’t volunteer any more information, so I tried to ignore the sadness rising within him.

  If we were in the same place together, I said gently, this would be a good moment to give you a hug.

  He broke into a grin as his gaze fixed on the black ceiling. “I have saved up a few hugs for you already,” he revealed, “On the condition that you can walk up to me to get them.”

  A fluttery, wonderful feeling gripped my chest so strongly that I didn’t know if it was me or Henri that was feeling it.

  I did twenty seven steps last count, I replied, wondering if my voice would quiver in his head.

  “Then I’m going to stand thirty paces away and hold my arms out like this,” he laughed, pushing his long, strong arms up in front of him in a wide, welcoming gesture, “And you’ll have to get to me.”

  Yours arms will be aching by the time I do, I giggled in reply, I walk like a snail. A slow snail. A really elderly, slow snail.

  He fell about laughing with such abandon that all thoughts of the war vanished from our heads, so it wasn’t until I returned to Ty Gwyn later that I thought again about the boat and the dangers ahead.

  Henri and I had a few more precious days where we could chat and laugh together, but the night finally came where I closed my eyes and found him at sea. The th
rash of icy waves shocked me so severely that I fell right out of his head and back into my own bed, but the few seconds I’d been with him were enough to tell me that every muscle in his body was straining against the North Sea. I wrestled with myself about going back to him, just to check that he was all right, but I had made a promise to him and it wouldn’t be right not to keep it.

  I told Idrys about the boat when we were practising my steps outside and he promised me that a good strong boy could make it across the water. Henri was a good strong boy if ever I’d seen one, but I took little comfort in the old Welshman’s words. I didn’t even need to step into his head; there was something behind his thoughtful eyes that told me he was worried for Henri too. I threw all my efforts into reaching thirty paces, which was about the distance from the edge of the field to the nearest tree, but I got stuck at twenty nine, my energy sapping away until I actually did collapse on the grass.

  It had been three days since Henri went to sea when my aching body dropped into the long warm grass, spent from my futile efforts. Twenty nine steps weren’t enough to reach him. Nothing was enough to reach him until the beastly sea let him go. Idrys rushed over to me and made to help me up, but I waved him off, looking up at the tree I had almost reached as my eyes began to water. He looked down on me, his bushy brow furrowed in concern.

  “Just leave me,” I sobbed, “I’m tired of this.”

  “Don’t be daft,” he said, crouching down to scoop me up in his hefty arms, “You’re doing great, you are. Don’t be giving up now eh? Not when you’re so close.”

  I lay limp and upset in his grip as he took me slowly back to my chair, shaking my head.

  “Everything’ll come right soon,” he promised, and I knew he didn’t just mean for me.

  That night I went to bed feeling sure that Henri’s crossing would be over, readying myself to congratulate him on a mission well completed. He’d told me it would take about three days if conditions were good. I suspected that they weren’t good from the brief glimpses of the crashing waves and hellish winds I had witnessed when I checked on him, but I was still hopeful that the boat might have kept to its timescale. I settled in my cosy bed trying to ignore the anxious pounding in my chest, focusing on Henri as hard as I could.

  Everything was black, like it sometimes was if I had caught him sleeping.

  Henri? Henri wake up, it’s me.

  Nothing happened. The world stayed black. I could feel someone breathing, but I couldn’t tell if it was him or me. There was no movement of body, no light, no noise.

  Henri, I pressed, pushing harder and louder into his head. Henri please wake up. Please!

  I tried time and again but there was no reply. I came back to my own head to check nothing was wrong with me then tried Henri again, but found myself in the same blackness as before. I panicked then, sitting up in bed and throwing all my splints off with a mighty crash. He was hurt; I just knew it, knocked out or something. I swung myself to the edge of the bed, tears flowing down my face. Or worse still, he was gone. He had warned me about the dangers he would have to face; perhaps this was what he really meant when he said he didn’t want me to suffer.

  He didn’t want me there in case I felt him die.

  In spite of any weakness I leapt to my feet, racing on wild limbs to the nearby wash basin to throw up. I hadn’t even realised that I had made the walk without aids until after I had spewed my guts out, crying and heaving into the bowl. The door burst open and a second later I felt Mam’s warm hands on my shoulders as she guided me to sit and wiped my face. I could hardly communicate with her I was crying so much, which didn’t really matter because I couldn’t have possibly explained what had made me so upset. When my chest finally finished heaving I began to hear her soothing words.

  “There, there, love,” Mam said in her sing-song lilt, “Bad dream was it?”

  I just nodded, feeling hollow. I grimaced at the horrid taste in my mouth and Mam fetched me some water. When I tried to sip it my hands shook out of all control.

  “Oh dear,” Mam said quietly, “I hope you’re not getting sick, not with your birthday the day after tomorrow.”

  I didn’t care about my birthday any more, not if I couldn’t hear Henri wish me many happy returns.

  ***

  My sixteenth birthday began with the news that conflict had broken out in North Africa. The wicked war that had engulfed the whole of Europe was expanding to other continents now; I had a horrid feeling that no place on Earth would be left untouched before it was through. It had already gotten to me, that was for sure. I tried in vain the whole morning of the day before to reach Henri again, but every time I sank into the horrific blackness where his mind used to be it only cut away another part of my heart, so that in the end I became terrified to try again, since every visit only cemented my grief at losing him.

  Mam still thought I was sick so she was being very tolerant about me crying all the time, tactfully ignoring it in that special way of hers. Idrys tried to take me out to practice my walking but I refused to go, even after he tried to persuade me that Henri was probably just unconscious. He didn’t know that for sure, he couldn’t possibly know that; I thought it was cruel to give me that kind of hope. In the end he gave up trying and just held my hand quietly for a while as Mam started to prattle on about the arrangements for my celebration.

  “Now we’ll set up the big tables in the field between yur and the barn, you’ll do that Da,” she said to Idrys, who just nodded, “And Blod can lay the table up for nine of us.”

  “Nine?” I said in a broken voice. If I was going to be made to suffer through a birthday garden party, I at least wanted to know the guest list.

  “You, me, Bampi, Leighton, Blod, Ness, the two farm boys,” Mam began, hesitating a moment, “and Doctor Bickerstaff.”

  “Doctor Bickerstaff?” I spat with rage. There could only have been one way to make my life worse right now and Mam had gone and done it. “Why on earth is he coming to my birthday party?”

  “Nawr te,” Mam warned with a patient finger, “I know you don’t like him but he’s done wonders for you, and I want to say thank you to him.”

  I couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting at a table full of laughing, joking people when I felt like my whole world had fallen into a gaping pit. Idrys had a hopefulness that I just couldn’t accept, so he was no help when all I wanted, no needed, to do was to be alone and think through the facts. I consoled myself at least that Doctor Bickerstaff would not be smiling and laughing at my party, in fact it would probably be just as much of a torture for him to attend as it was for me to have him there. He’d be sharing my misery, whether he knew it or not, and he’d probably spend the whole afternoon terrified that I’d let something slip about his secret to Mam. It was comforting to fix on his misery for a bit instead of my own, however selfish it made me feel, but then I tried my best to involve myself in setting up for the party in the hope that if I got really busy I might just be able to push my grief right out of my head for the rest of the day.

  ***

  When the time came to sit at the head of the birthday table I had failed miserably in my attempt to not think about Henri. I plastered half a smile to my face as Idrys’s two farm boys came to sit down, their mouths hanging open as they stared at the beautiful food Mam had prepared in my honour. I tried to appreciate it all but it was so hard to unearth any spark of joy within me, so instead I just took a sandwich and ate quietly as the table gradually filled up with the rest of our little family. The farm boys’ mouths dropped once again at the arrival of Blod, apparently even more delicious than the party food.

  I was surprised at how much she’d gone to town to dress up, especially considering it was for my party. She looked stunning in a little yellow dress that I knew she had made from an old pair of curtains a few weeks ago, all long legs and flowing blonde tresses as she came and sat on my left hand side at the table. She gave me a smile that felt as forced as the one on my own face, which I didn
’t really mind. I felt a lot less obligated to be happy and chatty with her sat beside me than anyone else; I could get on with my snacks in peace, willing the clock to run out so I could get back to my room and let my real feelings out again.

  Bickerstaff was so late arriving that I’d actually convinced myself he wasn’t coming. It was funny to see him out of his usual doctor-wear; he was dressed in a smart suit, too clean for a party in a field, with a crisp bottle green shirt and a stunning white tie. As he approached the table and shook hands with Idrys I heard Blod gulping down water beside me like a starved camel. Her eyes were fixed on him for quite some time before she realised I was watching her. The young doctor settled himself as far away from us as possible at the other end of the table and accepted a small beer as he enquired with one of the farm boys after his father’s health.

  “Well, now we’re all yur,” Mam began, rubbing her hands together excitedly, “How about some cake?”

  Leighton and Ness cheered simultaneously; I envied their blissful ignorance to the horrible world around them. As Mam took some matches and started to light the candles of my cake, she smiled so warmly at me that for a moment I felt like things might get better again after all.