Is this your daughter? I ask the woman.
But Lottie comes in and sits beside me, takes my hand.
‘What a day!’ Lottie says.
‘I can see the Visitors,’ I tell her.
Her face changes. Her eyebrows lower. Yes, this is a frown. She disapproves.
I go on, ‘They have a strange light about them. And they are in perfect focus, never blurred.’
I have been glancing from Lottie to them as I explain this. Lottie cannot help herself, she turns and looks at the bottom of the bed. I find it difficult to read her expression, but from the way her hand lies in mine, I sense she is annoyed.
‘I know you cannot see them. No one can but me. What are they, Lottie?’
Lottie takes my hand firmly. I glance back to the Visitors. They are waiting for me to finish. They want to talk to me.
‘Look at me,’ says Lottie emphatically.
Leave us, I tell them. They fade and go. I still find this shuddery.
‘Liza, now you are more normal, you need to banish your blindisms. The Visitors is one of these and it is time to dismiss them.’
‘But they are real.’
‘No, they are not. I think you are not yet used to your new eyes. Everything is odd to you and you are mistaken.’
‘I know what a person looks like. And these are people, as real as you or me. You do not believe me?’
‘I cannot believe in something I cannot see with my own eyes.’
‘Once I was blind and could not see the world. But I believed in it.’
‘That is not the same. You could touch it. You had the physical proof. Can you touch the Visitors?’
‘Not really. But I can see them and hear them in my mind.’
‘Eyes can deceive you, the mind can play tricks. You would need to bring me greater proof.’
I think, I will. Someday I will prove it to Lottie. I am determined.
‘Until then, you had better keep quiet about the Visitors, or others will think it is a kind of madness and lock you up.’
‘Father would never do that to me.’
‘I do not know. But I fear it.’
I hug Lottie and tell her not to worry. I know that I cannot speak of this to her again, or to anyone. I will work it out for myself. Lottie retires and shuts my door. I find myself in the dark, a new dark, the dark of the seeing. It is not frightening, as I have read some children are afraid of the dark. I find it comforting. I stare into it, fascinated. I perceive that it changes the more you look at it. Outlines emerge, things take shape and the dark recedes. Colour is absent, night is achromatic. I do not know if this is normal, or just me, or some magic the Visitors are working. I go to my bookshelf. I find by touch my old copy of A Christmas Carol. Now I can see, the raised type seems ridiculous, but until I learn my letters by sight, I still read like a blind person. And I can read these books in the dark and do not need a candle.
I find the part where the spirit of Christmas Past appears. I read: from the crown of its head there sprang a bright clear jet of light. It does not quite tally, but I think Mr Dickens is hazarding a good guess and he has never seen a spirit. Perhaps it is because he had not had his lenses removed, that within the space left by the emptiness in my eyes is a realm where violet light exists, and this is where the Visitors live. And that is why I can see them, the Visitors.
Ghosts.
I cannot sleep so I go to my window, part the curtains and look outside. The gardens gleam with an ashen lustre. I know the source of light must be the moon and I look up, desperate to see it. And there it is, bright white and spectacular; I like it better than the sun, as it does not hurt to look at it. A drift of steel-grey cloud floats across it and I think perhaps this silvery vision is the most beautiful thing I have seen yet. Then I see the other lights in the sky, white dots, here, there. The more I look, the more I find. So that is a star. And I think, Why are they so tiny and the moon so large? And I recall something Lottie explained earlier, that objects far away look smaller and those closer look bigger. The stars must be a hundred miles away, maybe more. I should make a wish; after all, it is the first star I see tonight, or any night. But I have nothing left to wish for, have I?
8
It is a blustery April afternoon and all the ladies, young and old, fight to keep our hair presentable and hats in place. My first railway journey with my new eyes is to Whitstable, to visit the Crowe family. The excitement of my first train ride to London is multiplied a thousand-fold by the delightful sensations of seeing the painted and polished engine puff into Edenbridge station. We board the train and find our carriage, which Lottie and I have to ourselves to begin with, reclining on the clean, soft cushions. I see the guard with his flag and whistle on the platform and he winks at me. I blush and turn to Lottie. Her face is serene. For her, this is going home.
On the way, Lottie and I eat cold slabs of pudding-pie and play the trade game, a new pastime Lottie has taught me to improve my observation skills.
She asks me, ‘Please, I’ve come to learn the trade.’
‘What trade? Set to work and do it.’
She mimes a trade and I have to guess it. Then it is my turn. I beat her on apothecary and she wins with pantry boy and funeral mute. We make up stories about the people we see at every stop. We talk now in visual signs. It is quicker and more expressive than finger spelling. I still use the latter sometimes, as I miss it. I mostly dream now through my eyes, but sometimes I dream in darkness through my fingers. It was my mother tongue and I cannot abandon it. Lottie tells me that her mother, father and brother still remember the finger spelling, but have never had cause to learn visual signs, so I will speak to them in the old way and I can lip-read their words.
I am rather good at reading lips nowadays. I have worked hard over winter. I now have my spectacles and can read words well, write tolerably neatly. As I could already write letters, reading was not an undiscovered land to me. I just had to impose upon my visual sense of letters the shapes that I had made with my hand and a pen for all this time. So I soon learned to read by sight and the world opened up to me again, for now I had access to all of Father’s library and could order books from catalogues and read whatever I pleased, without being restricted to the paltry editions available in Braille. The first book I ordered was one about ghosts. But it had no pictures and I think that the writer does not know how the Visitors appear. I love to look at pictures in books, try hard to reconcile this flat thing of two dimensions with the actuality it portrays, and marvel at the trick of the eye that makes it look real.
So, along with reading and writing, I can lip-read and speak with hand signs. I use a mixture of these to communicate with people. It is, of course, easier for me to receive than give when it comes to words. Most people do not know the signs, so I need my Lottie to translate my signs into speech for them. It frustrates me that the world does not know my language or take the time to learn it. I am a disgruntled Englishman marooned in a Far Eastern port, where no one knows or cares about the British Empire and its tongue. He must get by with gestures and befriend a local if he requires more complex transactions. But bluster and complain as he might, he will never persuade his fellows to learn his language universally.
What perturbs me most is that it will be virtually impossible for me ever to assimilate completely. There are some deaf people who lost their hearing later in life, and learned to speak before their tragedy. They are able to express themselves through speech and lip-read the words of others. How I envy them. When hearing was lost at an early age, like mine, or perhaps never existed, as for those born deaf, it is extremely difficult to learn to speak adequately. I have been told that some congenitally deaf people have learned, but I understand it is a difficult and time-consuming process, taking hours of daily practice for years on end. And quite frankly, I do not want to spend my youth in a schoolroom with a mirror and a speech teacher toiling away at this far-flung dream. There would be precious little time for other lessons. What must be
sacrificed at the devouring altar of speech? They say too that the results are often quite bizarre, with only close companions able to understand the learned sounds. So what is the point?
Lottie takes a nap as we travel. From the window I watch the grassy banks and neat fences whizz past, as we snake our way to the coast past fields of sheep or cattle, orchards, hop grounds. A winding river flows slowly by, banked by tall grasses waving at me in the invisible wind, birds flitting from tree to river bank, butterflies – how I adore butterflies. I found a dead one once before I could see, touched its paper wings. But a dead creature is nothing when you can see the life in something. They say you kill a butterfly by touching its wings, and that seems to me an evil thing to do. Flying things should be free; you can touch them with your eyes. It is enough, more than enough.
As Lottie dozes, I talk with the Visitors on the train. There are two in our compartment. One sits opposite me and the other stands by the door. As ever, neither knows the other is there and at times they talk over one another. The seated lady is most interested in rifling through her handbag.
I know I had it in here somewhere.
What did you have?
My medicine. I take it to get rid of that blasted pain in my arm. It grates on me so. Sometimes I take too much and I get a little woozy. And then I am a fright! Tripping up and walking into things! One of these days I’ll come to a bad end, if I’m not careful.
I want to tell her, You did come to a bad end. You are dead, I’m afraid. But I have tried this, first with the dark-eyed gypsy ghost in my room. She had frightened me, and I thought, if I tell her she is dead, perhaps she will pass away and leave me alone.
I said to her, I am very sorry to tell you that you have died. You are a ghost.
Take care who you curse, my dear. I can curse with the best of them.
Her eyes, like black pits in her head.
I am not cursing you, I assure you. But I have to tell you that you are dead. Please believe me.
She stepped threateningly towards me. But I stood my ground. I am quite sure that the Visitors are too airy to hurt me.
You a witch, eh? I’ll string you up!
Go away for ever! And never come back.
And do you know, it worked? I have not seen the gypsy ghost since. I did it with the angry one, who I think now must have fallen off his horse and died that way. I did not like his wrathful face, his accusing comments. I was too scared to tell him he was dead. I asked him to go away for ever instead and never return. I have not seen him either. I do not know if these commands are permanent, but I do have a degree of control over the situation.
The Visitors are not to be reasoned with. It is as if they suffer from their own form of deafness and blindness, from the truth. I wanted to tell every Visitor I saw what was truly happening to them. A child I told cried and cried, a sweet-tempered man became angry for the first time and shouted at me. Or they simply talk over me. I have given up trying to persuade them. It does not end well. I think of them now as idiots, who need to be humoured. If I am bored, they entertain me, I like to hear their stories. But sometimes I look at them and only feel sad. It is that way with family members. I have met Father’s relations many times. Before I could see, I knew of them, but did not know they were my family. Once I saw their likeness to Father, and to me, I guessed them for ancestors. I believe I have met the Visitors of his own parents, and their parents, and some cousins and siblings too. They dawdle about the house and grounds. The man who built the stone wall is one – he might be Father’s uncle. But I cannot ask Father to confirm, as I have still not told him about the Visitors. I want to talk to them about their lives, about Father when he was a little boy, but they have only their fixations and cannot be drawn to discuss anything much further. They welcome my company as I am their only friend. They ask me questions at times, engage in some conversation, yet mostly return to their obsession. I know now what it is: the day of their death. The Visitors never recall the moment of death itself, only the minutiae of the hours leading up to it, the little details of their lives that seem so important to them, a look in their eyes saying that there is something crucial they have forgotten, or more aptly, they have forgotten that they have forgotten it. It haunts them, a lost thought just out of earshot, in the corner of their eyes. They are distracted and troubled, then sunshine passes over their faces – the light of recollection – as they relate another incident from their lives.
The man by the door looks like a navvy. His clothes are those of the working man and his face is smeared black with mud and dirt. He smokes a long-stemmed pipe and does not speak. I smile at him and nod, to let him know everything is all right. Sometimes they get agitated and you have to calm them a little.
Then he speaks up: Excuse me, miss. I don’t have any flimsies left. Could you lend me a penny to get something to eat? I’ve been working so hard and I’m very hungry, miss.
Very polite he is. I tell him I cannot help him. The truth is, I could not put a penny in his vaporous hand if I tried.
He says, I was put away for begging once. I know it’s wrong. But it’s for food, see? Not for booze. Just so I can get my soup.
I wonder how he died. He does not bother me. Often they drift off in their own thoughts and forget I am there. Why I can see them and hear them, when no one else can, I do not know. Why they come to me, when I seem unable to help them, I do not know. Perhaps one day my purpose will be revealed to me. For now, I accept them as something one has always known; like hunger when hungry, thirst when thirsty, they are a fact of my life.
I survey the curves of countryside for my first glimpse of the sea. I have seen it in pictures, but cannot imagine the real sea, the size of it, the weight of it and its movement in time and space. The smell of it. Will it have a scent? Everything does. The guard walks past and people start busying themselves up and down the train. It must be soon. Then, there it is. Across the broad way to the sky, a triangle of grey appears at the horizon, flat, unmoving. I know no fields of grey. The sun catches a sparkle in it and it gleams blue, traversed by shifting lines of spray. I nudge Lottie and she looks startled, then sees her native landscape and grins. We gather our bags and fix our hats and feel the train gradually pull and pull in, reluctant to slow its cheerful progress through the land, but obliged to, as beyond Whitstable station would be only water all the way to France. It is the end of the line.
My first impression of Whitstable is one of industry. The railway station is dirty and smelly, yet thriving and full of endeavour. It is beside the dock, and the air is filled with coal-dust. They build boats nearby and the yard stinks of pitch, paint and tar. Nonetheless the bustle of the place, with its horses and goods lifted from ground to wagon by a hand-worked crane, or hoisted on the backs of burly, greasy men, is full of fascinating detail to me. My upbringing has been more than usually sheltered due to my condition as well as my sex, and I have not travelled much. To see these lives played out before me in all their grimy detail is a privilege. If I did not want to hurry so to see the Crowes, I would happily explore the docks all day and insist on conversations with the men, to know what they are doing, where their goods are going, how they feel about their lives. I want to speak to everyone in the world, regardless of age, sex, class or nation, and if I had Mr Wells’s time machine, I would want to speak with everyone who had ever lived. How else am I to know the world?
This part of the seafront is not a glamorous place, as one might expect from a seaside town, but it is somehow picturesque in its very ordinariness, with a jagged collection of squat, pitch-black weather-boarded cottages that face the sea, resolved to stay put whatever the elements hurl at them. They border the bright-pebbled beach, the throngs of polished stones glimmering white, caramel and grey under the cornflower sky and tumbling down to the hungry sea. Oh, the sea. It is restless and mighty, silver-metal here and green-blue-black there, facing the clouds with belligerent agitation. The ships in the port slice the sky with their huge criss-cross masts, pe
ppered with men engaged in maintenance, packing, unpacking, cleaning, heaving and working their backs off. Further along, the bay is filled with a cluster of boats, many of which have the same graceful curve to the sides and tall stretch of sail. Their masts reach high into the salty air, fencing with the invisible breeze. Lottie tells me these boats are the ‘oyster yawls’, used by her family to sail out to the oyster beds to tend the crop and fetch it in.
Even on this squally April day, there are brave souls on the beach: family clusters, girls in cotton dresses and canvas shoes, hair tied back in white frilled bonnets against the breeze, zephyrs ballooning their aprons; young women in confidante pairs sit awkwardly on the lumpy stones, legs crossed beneath their ankle-length skirts, grasping a shawl with one hand, boater with the other; groups of larking boys playing cricket or chucking stones. To grow up by the sea, to have the luxury of ignoring it only to find it there whenever you wish, waiting and wild, at the end of every street. How I envy them.
I become aware of others who walk the beach, the Visitors. They are harder to discern on a bright day like this. Somehow their white-blue light obscures them and makes their glassy outline melt into the blue sky and white light from the sun. But they are there: a few women and children, but most are men, fishermen dressed for the sea and wandering alongside it, staring out. One stops, scans the sky then turns to me, says, They must get their hauls aboard before it blows. Others look round at me, seem as if they want to talk, but my mind is closed to them and they know it. I have gained more control over them recently; by force of will I can repel them with a look. I do not want their chill today. They are drawn back constantly to the water, gazing beyond it, beyond everything to a realm only they can see. I turn from them and we walk away, Lottie and me.
The streets that lead from the station towards the Crowe home are narrow and muddy. Around a corner, we come across two boys dressed in green woolly jumpers, short trousers, long socks and cloth caps. Small, aged faces. They stand beside a neatly stacked pile of shells and when they catch sight of us, they reach out their hands, palms aloft, and the older boy speaks. I can read his first couple of words: ‘Remember the …’ but the third is a mystery and I turn to Lottie. She dismisses them with a gesture and walks on, calling out, ‘Come back in the summertime!’ The younger boy kicks the dirt and thrusts his hands away in his pockets. The other boy has forgotten us already, calling to two other arrivals as they walk up the alley.
The Visitors Page 8
