The Visitors

by Mascull, Rebecca

  ‘But I do not know anyone who lives far away, except your family. And they do not know me.’

  ‘Learn to write then and you can write them a letter, introducing yourself.’

  ‘I cannot write to old people. I am shy of them.’

  ‘Write to my brother Caleb, then. He would like that.’

  In winter, the smell of burning hop bines drifts through the air to my table as I labour over my writing. In the New Year I forgo my annual activity of helping make the first hole for the hop poles so that I can practise my letters. It takes months to write each letter of the alphabet distinctly and to separate words from each other. By March, the stilt walkers are stringing up the new coir twine to the overhead wires for the hop bines to grow up, and I am learning punctuation. In May, the farmhands thread the bines around the strings, training them to grow clockwise. They pinch out the pipey bines that promise long stems but no fruit. I can now write legibly enough for others to decipher. It is hard and long and daily work, doubly difficult as I cannot check my own writing and see my errors. But I persevere. I think about my finger spelling, my first language. Though we think of it as talking, I realise that I have been writing all this time, that my flat hand is the paper and my finger is the pen. Using ink is merely the next step, to make it conveyable. The growing season is well under way, my father’s workers busy protecting our cherished harvest. They place ladybirds on the leaves to eat the flies and stop the hop-blight. Later they trundle the crop washer down the alleys, spraying soft soap to kill pests. Meanwhile, I complete my first unaided letter, which reads thus:

  Dear Caleb Crowe Liza writes letter to you Liza will come to sea and bring doll Liza will talk with Caleb Liza will give love to Caleb Liza will come home

  It may not seem much, but it is a great leap for a ten-year-old deaf-blind girl whose first six years were lived in the land of the dead. My wooden board with the metal type becomes only a toy for filling a spare moment, gathers dust, then is put away. Mother has learned to finger spell. She comes downstairs and even takes short walks with me, my arm linked with hers, my hand stroking the material of her leg-of-mutton sleeves. As we walk, I say to her with my other hand, ‘What do you see?’ and she describes things to me. She has a particular way of speaking, a turn of phrase I like, a way of stating the heart of things. She still sleeps every afternoon. I am told she will always be weak. But I have my mother now. And Father and Lottie. I have my hands to talk, my books to read and my pen to write my thoughts. Now I am a person.

  A few weeks pass and Lottie brings me something wonderful. It is a letter from Caleb. She reads it to me:

  Dear Miss Golding,

  I was pleased to receive your letter. I think it would be a fine thing for you to visit us in Whitstable. Bring your doll and I will take you both out to sea. I will show you our oyster beds. You can feel an oyster in your hands and I will crack its shell open for you. Then you can eat it. Have you ever tasted an oyster? There is nothing better.

  Yours sincerely,

  Caleb Crowe

  It is finer even than Mr Dickens. But I am worried about the oyster.

  I ask Lottie, ‘Is it not very cruel to crack the oyster’s shell? Does it cry out?’ She assures me it does not and that they are indeed delicious to eat.

  From that moment on, I beg and beg Father to let me go to Whitstable.

  He says, ‘You are not ready to go into the world yet.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There are still some things for you to learn. About the way you are with people.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘The noises you make.’

  ‘But I have voice. Why cannot I use it?’

  ‘You know the hearing people find it disagreeable.’

  ‘But I want to practise so that I can speak with my mouth.’

  ‘We do not think you will ever speak with your mouth, Adeliza.’

  I consider this. ‘Is this true? Does Lottie say it is true?’

  ‘Charlotte and I agree. You will never speak with your mouth.’

  ‘When I go to God in heaven, I will see and hear, you told me. So I will speak with my mouth in heaven.’

  ‘But not on this earth, Liza. So it is best that you keep yourself quiet.’

  ‘I will try to be silent, Father.’

  ‘And another thing. There are times when your face is … a little odd.’

  ‘Am I ugly?’

  ‘Not at all. You are a beautiful girl. But perhaps others would find strange the way you make faces sometimes. And the way you sniff at objects and even at people.’

  ‘You mean the world is not ready to see me.’

  ‘You know I love you more than anyone else. But other people are not used to your ways, as we are at home.’

  ‘I will work hard on my vices, Father.’

  I am true to my word. I always do Father’s bidding, of course. But my most powerful incentive is this: every time I grimace or shout, I think of meeting Caleb Crowe. I think of his aversion when he sees the peculiar deaf-blind girl. From then on, I am composed and serene, neither a murmur from my throat or a flinch of my face. I know I must be a curious creature to behold. Not the wild animal of my early childhood, yet I am prone to great excitements. Now I strive to be an angel child. I ask Lottie to hit me every time I make a horrible noise or repulsive grimace, but she says she will never do that. She will tap my back when I do wrong and pat my head when I succeed. Lottie and I make a secret bargain, that I repress my urges all morning, but in the afternoons when Father is out, I can go to my room and do as much yelling and crying as my heart desires. At times I hark back to my old barbarous self, going on capers in my room, slamming doors to feel the quaking thud and jumping on the bed till the springs wince.

  Before I get a chance to travel to Whitstable, or anywhere else for that matter, it is the hop-picking season once more and the rest of the Crowe family come for their annual visit. Lottie disappears for a whole day. I do not begrudge her time with her family. But I miss her dreadfully. Mother takes a short walk with me in the morning and I mope around the house all afternoon, reading my books and knitting and pacing in and out of the scullery, waiting for the door to open through which my Lottie comes and goes from the house. But she does not return and I go to my room that night and it is Father who helps me to bed and to say my prayers and my only prayer is that Lottie should tire of her family soon and come back to me. The next morning she wakes me up and I throw my arms around her and weep. I want to tie her hands so she cannot leave me.

  ‘Do not go away again,’ I say.

  ‘I have to sometimes, my pet. You are my special one but I have others who love me too and who I love very much.’

  ‘I know. I am sorry. I am selfish.’

  ‘Come and meet them.’

  I dress with care. I insist I do my own hair but ensure it is carefully checked by Lottie. We walk down to the hop garden and find the Crowe family around their hop bin. They cannot stop to chat too long, as they only earn by the weight of flowers they pick. I know that Lottie sends money home to her mother from the wage she receives from Father. But they need more, I am told, and the hop picking helps a lot. It buys them winter clothes at least. Mr Crowe does not come to the hops; he stays by the sea to manage the oyster beds.

  There is Mrs Crowe here and three boys younger than Lottie. Their names are Clarence and Claude, twins aged five, and Christopher aged three. And there is Caleb. He and his mother can still finger spell, though they are rusty due to a long time since use. The children do not talk with their fingers at all, as they never had a need.

  Mrs Crowe says, ‘Pretty girl.’

  I say, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Very grown up.’

  ‘I am already eleven years old.’

  Mrs Crowe touches my cheek and her hands are rugged as bark. But kind. We pause and I think she has nothing more to say to me at present. I reach out and Lottie knows who I want to meet next.

  Caleb says, ‘Hello.’


  I say to Caleb, ‘Thank you for your letter.’

  ‘Welcome.’

  ‘Lottie says you are twins. Were you in your mother’s tummy together?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Lottie is twenty-two years old. Are you the same age as Lottie?’

  ‘Yes. Same birthday.’

  ‘Do you look the same?’

  He takes my hand and places it on his cheek. The edge of my hand brushes his tickly moustache. I feel his features with trembling fingers. He has the same sharp cheekbones as his sister, the same long nose, the full mouth. The hair is less wild, wavy and thick, long at the back and swept away from the front. I touch his eyelids, his eyes large like Lottie’s. I think of my eyes. Father says the cataracts are cloudy and look spectral. I hope they are not unsightly. I close them as I feel Caleb’s face. I do not want him to be scared of my eyes.

  They have to work on, so Lottie leads me away. I want to see them every day but Father says no. I believe Lottie spends the evenings with her family when I sleep. She is weary the next day, every day of the hop-picking season. Her fingers move slower than usual. I am allowed to meet her family once more. It is the last night before they leave for home and there is a hoppers’ party. Father says I can go for one hour, but must come home forthwith for bedtime. The ground shakes with dancing feet and thumping rhythm. I try to dance with Lottie, but tread on her toes so much I am embarrassed and stay by the side, feeling the swoop of dancing couples as they whirl by. I tap my feet and clap my hands to the pounding beat of the music. Lottie takes me to meet the musicians. There is a woman playing a hollow drum stretched with smooth skin, striking a double-ended beater on it. She lets me hold it while she beats a pattern and the rhythm resonates along my arms. They say she is from Ireland. I know from my globe it is reached by boat across the western sea.

  There is a violin and I touch the hand that holds it. Is is Caleb, I know instantly. He stands behind me and lets me hold the instrument in my left hand, my fingers wrapped around the fingerboard while he supports the scroll. The violin sits under my chin and I grip down with my jaw. In my right hand, he places the bow, curves my hand into the correct shape for gripping. We place the bow on the string and he pushes my hand upwards and gently pulls it back, the string vibrating and sending rays of delight through my body as the sound waves travel through the violin’s wooden frame into my own. I can feel the music come alive as we play the long note again and again, push up, pull down. He takes the violin and kneels beside me, lets me place my hand on it and plays me a tune, a jig or a reel or some such dance and I can feel the thrust of the bow and the jagged short strokes it makes to speak the tune. And the rhythm tap-taps through my hand and into my bones and I tap the tune all evening before bedtime and tap it again on my headboard that night. And I never forget it.

  I understand I have passed a kind of test. Now the hop pickers have met me, Father agrees I am fit to be seen. New friends come to the house. People have heard of the little deaf-blind girl who can talk with her fingers. I undergo the touch of dozens of new hands – friends of Father’s, local dignitaries, scholars and professors of the blind and deaf, the curious and the nosey, the sentimental and the avaricious – all come to see Adeliza Golding. Some come more than once and I know them in a trice by their handshake. You may glimpse a person once and not see them for a month or more. If you see them again, will you recognise them? I do, but by contact. A person’s handshake is unique, a slight pressure of the index finger in this one, a perpetual dampness with that one. My new acquaintances are amazed that I know them by a touch of their hand. I call them acquaintances as they are not friends, not true friends. They come for many reasons, mostly of their own – to study, to sate curiosity, to gawp, to feel pious or grateful for their own lot – but not to be my friend. I admit them as it seems to please Father. He can be proud of me now. For these visits, he wears his cutaway morning coat, high stiff collar and ascot tie. I am dressed smartly too. Apparently, since I have controlled my ‘blindisms’ I am quite a pretty girl. He shows me off and it makes me proud too, with my heavy hair and tricky fingers. But I must wear a ribbon across my eyes, so they do not distress the ladies. I hate the ribbon, but I do it for Father. My doll has a ribbon across her eyes too.

  We meet the people and feel their copperplate calling cards, each one unique. I smile for them, talk through Lottie of the things I can do with my hands. I would like to tell them about the Visitors, but know I cannot. I ask them many questions about themselves, to learn of life beyond my house and land. But they do not wish to talk much of their lives, as they live them and therefore find them dull. They only want to talk about me. They have some curious ideas about the deaf-blind girl, that I can see colours with my fingers or that I can read their thoughts and divine their futures. I am jaded and ask for rest. One silly woman says how clever I am and compares me to a parrot. When Lottie has spelled this into my hand – for she does not believe in shielding me from what people say – I stand up, raise myself on my toes, and with an expression of sheer disgust on my face I thrust my arm out towards Lottie and I spell: F-O-O-L. No, they are not my friends.

  They are a means to an end. Once I can prove that I am fit to be seen and heard, I am allowed to leave my home at last. I want to go straight to the sea. But Father says no. Instead, I am to travel on the train to London with him. Lottie is coming too. Father tells me I am famous. They write about me in the newspapers. An important person has read of me in The Times of London. He is a doctor. He has written to Father about me, asking many questions. He wants to meet me. He knows more than any man in England about one special subject.

  Eyes.

  5

  The year is 1895. I am eleven years old. I have never left my father’s land. This morning, Mother brings me new travelling clothes: woollen jacket and skirt, embroidered blouse with a lace trim, shirt collar and a ruffle jabot. My hair I wear down topped by a neat boater. I cannot abide the large hats favoured by Mother, as they make me topple. I want to impress the doctor but I must be comfortable for I am to walk and travel by train today. I have been worrying about my eyes.

  I ask Father, ‘Please can I leave the ribbon at home? I am sure the people who see me will not be afraid of my eyes. I think they will stare more if I wear the ribbon.’

  Father agrees and I kiss and hug him with gratitude.

  After breakfast, Lottie, Father and I begin our walk down the gravel driveway to the lane that leads to Edenbridge and the railway station. We have no need of the carriage as it is a short walk and a pleasant March day. There is the scent of early blackthorn blossom as we reach the bottom of our driveway, the furthest I have ever been from home. The moment we cross the road and find the path to the village, I have a sense that someone new has arrived. But not outside. As we walk, I find a new Visitor, a very old man who tells me he cannot find his wife anywhere. He is most anxious and questioning. I tell him I cannot help him. Another Visitor comes, a girl who complains she is wet through and cold. They talk over each other and make my head ache. Go now, I scold them. I am busy. And they do go, they always do when I tell them. Then I stumble.

  Father takes my hand and says, ‘Shall we go back? We can take the carriage.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I am fine. Please let us walk. I am very happy.’

  Lottie finger spells for me as we walk, telling me of the travellers she sees on the roads, their horses and wagons, their clothes and hats, those who wave and those who stare. I can feel the deep rumble of cartwheels on the road as they pass, tramping footsteps on the path, the tendrils of scents they leave behind, pipe smoke or coal dust. They know I am blind, perhaps not deaf. I hope they stare a little as Father has told me I look pretty today. If I close my eyes, the Visitors do not come. I know there is a crowd of new ones waiting, but my eyes remain shut and this keeps them away.

  We reach the railway station and wait in a line to buy our tickets. Father hands me the money and allows me to pay the man in the ticket office. He shake
s my hand with civility. He smells of boiled eggs and something else, something smoky and bitter. As we walk out on to the platform that same odour is overpowering. I feel a tremendous thundering in the ground and Lottie tells me the train is pulling into the station. The air is moist with steam and its acrid flavour piques my nose. We climb the steps into the carriage and Father leads us to our seats. There are Visitors on the train too, I can feel them waiting, watching. There are two other people in our carriage and I am introduced. A lady with leather gloves who is a teacher and a gentleman with hair on the back of his hands who is going to see his grandson in London. They ask me questions about myself through Lottie. I am accustomed to these interrogations from Father’s associates. But I feel these are more amiable, a chance encounter on a train with a deaf-blind girl brings a kind of casual curiosity absent from the analytical meetings at home.

  I am most looking forward to our railway picnic devised by Cook to be eaten on the train. Almost as soon as we are seated, I ask Lottie if we can eat. We have potted cheese, pickled gherkins, cress sandwiches and cold tongue, with ginger beer to swill it all down. I imagine our other passengers must be very envious, so I ask Lottie to offer them some, but she says they decline. I cannot think why. Perhaps they have their own hamper.

  One of them opens the window and I beg Father to be allowed to put my head out. He agrees, but says I must not lean out too far, just as far as my rosy cheeks. He holds firmly on to my waist. I cannot think the door will fly open but he is being very careful. It is my first time away from home, after all. I can feel that the window slides down and I want it open further as I can only just reach my nose above it. Father shows me the leather strap to slide it down and now I can tilt forward. The wind rushes against my face and makes my eyes water. I shut them tight. When I open them again there are three new Visitors all talking at once. One says he works on the railways but cannot find his train. I perceive a colossal blast from the front of the train and the camber of the track changes, the rushing wind is gone and I feel crowded. A Visitor calls to me, says, Watch out, miss! I pull back in and Father tells me the train has entered a tunnel. As we rush out of the other end, I put my head out again. The train describes a sharp inward bend in the line and the steam buffets me as it is blown towards us from the engine. Tiny bits of stuff are flung into my eyes. I jam my fists in to rub them. Father pulls me inside and tells me my face is a mess of soot. I did not know steam was so dirty. Lottie is dispatched for water and a cloth to clean me up. I must look my best for the doctor.