I see my first animals, little birds flitting from tree to tree or flapping across the white of the sky. The way birds move brings me to tears. I have felt a bird’s feather many times, found them in the grass or stuck to a twig. I have held a bird’s body and drawn out its miraculous wing and named the different types of feather along it. There are stuffed birds in glass cases in the parlour, and Lottie would take one out for me and let me touch it. I had a caged bird for a time. I would open the miniature door and put my hand in the cage, feel around for the vibrant fluttering and hold its little engine of a body, feel its heart beat furiously in its tiny chest. One day I found it inert, lying on its back at the gritty bottom of its cage. I cried for it then. But to see birds now, as they flutter from branch to branch and hop, hop, hop along the paving slabs and peck, peck, peck, almost too quick for the eye to comprehend; and then the miracle, as they lift up and fly, small black shapes against the brightness scoring the sky with their wings, the absolute liberty of it. I never knew what happy creatures birds are. I assume they are happy, though I cannot see them smile. To think, I once allowed that sovereign creature to be locked in a cage in my house. My defence is that I did not know, I could not know the joy of emancipation myself. We envy the birds theirs and lock them up. I wish to open every cage and free them, as I have been freed.
The elegance of water. Lottie takes me to the beck and I watch the water shimmer and slide over pebbles, sparkle and glint, endlessly mobile. It feels delightful, water, as it slips through your fingers and surrounds your skin and cools your throat. But who could know how purely it declares its life as it moves endlessly downstream? I realise that when I was blind and moved my hand through water, I had thought I cut it as a knife slices butter. I am amazed that it runs on, through and over my fingers. As I am splashed by the skittish brook, I think of raindrops and look up, willing those rainclouds yonder edged in thunder to loose their load and show me rain. And I want the sky to bring forth snow, hail, fog, lightning – and oh, a rainbow! – so that I can see all weather all at once.
Where is the wind? Can we not see it? I am astonished to discover that the wind is invisible. It was never, in all our lessons, something we had got round to discussing. The wind moves the trees and plays a thousand dances along every bend of leaf and lift of branch and blade of grass, and plays havoc with my hair and blows it playfully into my new eyes – but it is all invisible. One can see its effects, but not itself. What is wind made of? Air. What is air made of? Lottie tells me about microscopes and says Father must get me one. A telescope too. Then I will understand about the universe beyond our eyes, the realms of the very small and of the very large and far away, that even our wondrous eyes are limited. But our marvellous brains have invented tools for us to overcome our limitations. The utter complexity of the world. Only now, as my eyes drink in the intricacy of it, do I think of God. Is even His mind big enough to encompass this endless variety? I conclude this is impossible, that these limitless features could not have been contrived by one mind, that it is all too much.
We come back into the house through the scullery. Our cook and three maids are there to meet me. They are all smiling, and though they are servants and I am the young lady of the house, I do not care at this moment and I hug them.
I say to Lottie, ‘Please tell Martha, Edith, Florrie and Alice I want to know them, if they do not mind and would like it.’
‘You do not need to say this,’ spells Lottie, frowning.
‘I know I do not need to, but I wish to. I wish to know everyone alive, and I want to start here, with these kind ladies.’
I watch Lottie say my words. Edith speaks to Lottie, who tells me: ‘Edith says from this day on we are all friends.’
Edith holds her hand out to me and we shake on it. They all laugh and some speak words and there is more smiling. I comprehend how much I have missed, the constant flutter of communication that speech and sight afford, the asides and glances, a flick of the hand or a cocked head or the twitch of a nose, the raising of one eyebrow and the palm covering the mouth. All this has been occurring while I have been laboriously finger spelling my way through the last few years, thinking myself so grand in my intercourse with others and placing myself at the firm centre of the universe. How much else was going on around me of which I had no clue, and what an almighty fool I feel.
As they chatter, I watch their mouths and a new envy grips me.
‘Lottie, I know I cannot speak, that with no hearing and no memory of sound this would be very difficult. But can I learn to read what people say? Can I learn the movements people make with their mouths and perhaps see a word or two there?’
‘Yes, you can,’ says Lottie. ‘It is called lip-reading. You will learn this, starting tomorrow. I have been reading about it. And I have another surprise for you. While you were recovering, I spent my evenings learning about another kind of language for you, which will give you more freedom to speak and a greater range. It is a language of signs you make with both hands in the air in front of your body. They call it sign language and I will begin teaching you this afternoon.’
‘Why did you learn it while I was recovering? You did not know I would be able to see. It might have been a complete waste of your time.’
‘I just knew you would.’
‘Did you pray for it?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I have not prayed since Constance died.’
And for the first time with my new eyes, I see real sadness in a person’s face. And as it is Lottie’s sadness it near cracks my heart in two.
‘Oh, Lottie. God was cruel to take her from you. How did you bear it?’
Lottie pulls her hand from mine and makes a few curious shapes in the air between us.
I take her hand back. ‘What is that?’ I say.
‘They are signs. I spoke to you with them.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, “I found you.”’
Cook Martha beckons us to the table. While we have been talking, she has laid out my luncheon. I sit at the broad oak table with its knots and cracks and grain and I touch its surface and see with my fingers and my eyes how ornate is even this most prosaic of objects, a kitchen table.
‘Are all tables like this?’ I ask. ‘Beautiful, like this, with the shapes and shades of colour?’
Lottie relays my question and Cook laughs and shakes her head. People’s faces are so odd when they laugh, teeth are so broad and fill up their mouths which seem too small to house them all.
My lunch is a thick juicy slice of pink ham fringed with a golden honey glaze, a hunk of pure white bread with a brown crust warm from the range, apple slices of pale yellow flesh and bright red skin and vibrant orange carrots cut into sticks. I cannot believe how radiant are ordinary foodstuffs! The maids watch me smiling and Lottie sits beside me, but where is their lunch?
‘We will eat later,’ Lottie tells me.
‘Are you not hungry?’ I say.
They exchange glances and again I see a milieu of which I have had not a moment of experience, of shared meanings and secrets conveyed through the eyes only.
‘Please eat with me, everyone,’ I ask Lottie to tell them. Cook Martha nods and places five more plates on the lovely old table, and we all eat together. It is the best meal of my whole life.
I look around the room as I eat. The tiles on the wall are blue and white check and around the range a mixture of earthy reds and browns. I love the kitchen and all its bits and bobs, its pots and pans and paraphernalia. It is as rich in treasure as Aladdin’s cave. On the shelves there are dozens of packets of food and other goods, I know not what, with pictures of people and objects on them and writing in different colours. People store these items in cupboards and throw away the packets after they have finished the contents. They do not see the beauty in them as I do with my new eyes. I ask Lottie to pass me some and examine a box of Reckitt’s Bag Blue, patterned in red, blue and white – so bright and c
heerful. And Nixey’s Black Lead, which they tell me is for cleaning the Kitchener and yet the picture on the front is so eerie, it gives me a chill; there is a woman in her kitchen and a figure reaching to her, giving her the Nixey’s Black Lead. The figure is wearing a black hat and has a glow all around her.
I ask Lottie, ‘Is that a Visitor?’
‘None of that nonsense,’ she says and takes my cleared plate away.
I must talk with her later about this. I have something to tell her.
We spend the afternoon learning new signs. It is beguiling, this visual language. It allows me to express myself in space; there is a relationship between yourself, your hands, your face and the movement between your hands and your body. My favourite so far is this: you pinch your fingers together and place them against the side of your head, move them away and catch something. This is ‘remember’. If you fail to catch it, open your hand and let it escape, this is the sign for ‘forget’. There is a playful quality in sign language absent from the mechanics of finger spelling; it sometimes uses ideas and gestures to approximate life in a way pure letters do not. I love it more heartily even than my beloved manual alphabet which set me free from the Time Before. I feel a quickening in my understanding of the world, as Lottie and I labour together all afternoon to learn the rudiments of the new language from a lovely book she has, each page filled with line drawings of the hands making signs for vocabulary. But as the doctor said, I will need spectacles for close work like this, and so at the moment it is rather blurred and irritates me. Once I have my eyeglasses, I will be able to buy my own books and look at the pictures and read the words. I know I have another huge mountain to climb.
‘Will I learn to read words?’
‘Of course,’ says Lottie. ‘I will teach you.’
‘When? Now?’
‘Give me a moment! We will begin everything tomorrow. But now, you must dress for dinner.’
I am very excited about my first formal dinner with Father and Mother. I am permitted to sit at the grand dining table with them as a special treat. Father says grace. I never knew one has to close one’s eyes for prayer. Only once this prayer has finished and we have thought about it are we allowed to eat. But eating is not easy for the newly sighted, trying to negotiate knife and fork with food and mouth. As with walking it might be easier to close my eyes, but I am determined not to and will not accept any help. The worst is the tomato soup which causes gory havoc down my napkinned front. My dinner is quite cold by the time I finish it. But it is nice to sit with my parents and share their delight as I stare around the gorgeous dining room, seeing at last my favourite flock wallpaper which always felt so luxurious. Now I realise it is scarlet on a pearly background, I delight in it all the more. I like to watch my parents eat, pronging a fork so delicately into a potato glistening with gravy and slicing it dextrously, placing the piece so accurately in the mouth and chewing. This eating business is serious here in the dining room. Now I understand why Cook Martha gave me finger foods for lunch, which I jammed in quite easily, and I love her for that.
I use a specially shaped knife for the fish, which is engraved with a picture of two salmon leaping from a river. Our dessert forks are wrought with flowers and leaves spiralling the handle. How can such exquisite things be used only to stuff food into mouths? Even the crumb scoop used by Maid Florrie has an ivory handle decorated with heliotrope birds. After dessert we have three different types of cheese: Cheddar, Stilton and something French. I like the French best and Father disapproves. He takes a knife from his pocket and begins to cut shapes in a lump of Cheddar. When he is done, he passes it to me. He has carved an animal, I believe. Tall ears, big feet, whiskers. I reach across and finger spell for him: ‘Rabbit!’ He nods and smiles at me, then bids me eat it, but I cannot. I want to keep it. I place it on my plate and stare at it.
At bath time, I see my own naked body for the first time. I look down at my skin and chest and between my legs, perturbed by the absurd shapes. My body seems all out of proportion, arms too short, legs too thick. I ask Lottie for a full-length mirror, but she tells me this is rude and I should never gaze at myself naked. I know of course that nakedness is forbidden in polite society and only savages go around with their bits and pieces out. And I have to admit that clothes look so gratifying, that it is vastly preferable on the eye to see them. But skin is striking too, the shadows in the curves and the subtle flesh tones so pleasing to the eye, just as skin is pleasurable to the touch. As I sit in the bath and watch the play of water against my skin, I want to touch my body, but I know Lottie will say I must not, as ever. I think, now that I can see, I will not need Lottie at bath time any more. And I realise that sight brings freedom and my heart swells with the possibilities.
At bedtime, Mother kisses my cheeks and my eyelids.
‘Today was the first day of your new life,’ she says.
When Father comes he brings with him a curious object. There is a curved piece of leather to place over your eyes and extending from it a frame holding two pictures that look exactly alike. Father tells me it is called a stereoscope and bids me look through the eyepiece. I expect to see the two pictures but instead see only one, a mass of white and grey without form, yet strangely deep, leaning out towards me as if I could reach out my fingertips and touch it.
‘What is it?’ I ask with my free hand in his.
‘It is a famous waterfall called Niagara Falls. The two photographs are taken a short distance apart, the left one showing what the left eye would see and the same for the right. It makes the one image seem real. Does it look real to you?’
I stare and stare at the blurred image before me, but can make nothing of it. I do not wish to disappoint him, but it seems a poor trick.
I lower the stereoscope and spell out, ‘I do not know what a waterfall looks like, Father, so I do not know if it looks real.’
‘Of course not,’ replies Father, a short line creasing his forehead. ‘You have much to learn. But what a joy it will be for you to see God’s creation in all its wonders. In the beginning, He gave you Charlotte to bring you the word. Then Dr Knapp was His vessel to bring you light. Let us pray.’
He kneels down beside me and closes his eyes. I watch his lips move and try to catch a word. I interrupt him by unclasping his hand and asking, ‘What are you praying for, Father?’
‘I am thanking the Lord for the miracle of your sight. Are you not doing the same?’
‘Yes, Father.’ But I lie. I was doing nothing of the sort. I think of what Lottie said earlier and I want to ask Father why God gave me sight yet took Constance away. But he might be angry, so I close my eyes and put my hands together and instead I thank Dr Knapp for my miracle, my parents for their kindness, Cook Martha and the maids for sharing luncheon, and Lottie for being Lottie and being everything to me. But I do not wish to thank God, as I cannot see His part in all this. Besides, the Visitors never talk of God or heaven. The Bible is a pleasant story, but I cannot think that it is real. Father tucks me in and I believe I can read two things in his face: happiness and exhaustion. His eyes sparkle, yet the wrinkles around them make him seem ancient. As he bends down to kiss me goodnight, he puts his hand to his chest and grimaces. Perhaps today has been a trial for him.
‘Sleep well,’ I say.
‘I will, for the first night in ten years.’
I snuggle down in bed and wait for Lottie. I relive my first day in my mind, now filled with new, visual memories. I am fascinated by eyes. It seems a very intimate thing to stare at someone’s eyes, perhaps more rude than undressing. I have decided I do not like pink. It is insipid when light and garish when dark. It is a shame as one of my favourite blouses, I discover, is pink. I ask Mother how she could ever have let me wear such a ridiculous garment and fling it across the room. But I do not mind pink flowers so much, as they are natural and cannot help themselves. I pity them, for not being sunshine yellow or blood red, but instead this pointless half-colour. I adore clothes. When blind I prefer
red the nap of particular fabrics and had my favourites based on texture – velvet, voile, satin. Now I am in love with patterns, ideally those that are not too busy as these seem to aggravate my eyes. Rather, I am partial to representation of nature: flowers and leaves, animals and clouds, rainbows and waterfalls. I see these shapes in certain curves and swirls of decoration. I see faces in patterns on the bathroom tiles, the knots in tree trunks, my bedroom curtains. I see faces everywhere. It is as if they have been waiting all my life for me to see them, these hidden faces that only show themselves to those who are really looking, those who are as obsessed with what they see as I am. I point them out to Lottie, just to make sure I am not ‘seeing things’, as they say. But she can find them too, and delights in sharing them with me. I feel her load is also lifted by my operation. She was indeed devoted to me, the deaf-blind girl, as she was to Constance. Now we can simply have more fun together.
I survey my room and realise there is not one picture on my wall. I never needed them, I suppose, and I resolve that tomorrow I will ask Father if I can buy some. Then I think with a shock that I could learn to draw and paint now, and make my own pictures. And my mind gladdens at all the marvellous things I have waiting for me tomorrow and the next day and the next and for the rest of my sighted life, this new life, this new adventure. And I put my hands behind my head and lean back against the headboard, elated.
At the foot of my bed, a blue-white phosphorescence glows into being and there stands the Visitor woman with the black eyes, watching me, unsmiling. Beside her is a child with a crimson sash around her waist, cuddling a doll and kissing its button nose.
The Visitors Page 7
