Eyes of the Blind

by Alex Tresillian

  After the blind journalist had gone, Susannah felt strange: comforted, but lonely. Nobody had ever spoken to her so directly, so personally, so challengingly. She knew some of the things she had said had exasperated him, but he was so different from her. She really liked him. He had told her that seeing would be OK, that she would soon get the hang of it, and the surprise factor would wear off, that life was genuinely better when you could see. And she believed him because she could hear pain in his voice when he said it; well-disguised, but there. Mr. Daghash had told her it would be OK, but he was the surgeon, he was bound to say that. And he’d never been blind. Niall said he was happy enough – she didn’t believe him – but if he was offered it he’d take his sight back tomorrow. She was lucky. She knew she was lucky. And glad she’d agreed to see him. She wished they’d let him bring his dog in. Hugo. She really wanted to meet him.

  “What a stupid, fatuous, ridiculous girl,” Niall said to Simon. They were in the front room of Simon’s Chiswick house, which had that not-very-new-furniture rented smell about it. Hugo was asleep on the carpet, Erica (the girlfriend) sat next to Simon on a sofa flicking through a copy of Glamour; Simon was internet-surfing on his laptop, trying not to let Niall distract him.

  “If she’s the public face of blindness in the tabloids we may as well give up and go home,” Niall went on.

  “I am home,” Simon said.

  “And she’s going to end up a celebrity.”

  “Only if the operation works,” Erica said.

  “God, can you imagine if it doesn’t?” Niall said. “The whole nation will go into mourning for poor Susannah and the lost sight she never had.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to make a very good story out of this,” Simon said.

  “Fucking waste of time,” Niall said. “I just wish Hugo had crapped somewhere he shouldn’t.”

  “You could try and find out why they chose her,” Erica suggested.

  “You think there might be a whiff of corruption?” Niall asked. “Backhander from Daddy? Contribution to research costs?”

  “Might make a story,” Erica said.

  “I want to find out what this operation is costing,” Niall said. “My story is going to be about the thousands of blind people they could’ve helped in a small way if they hadn’t blown all their money on this high-profile high-octane publicity stunt.”

  Erica said, “The eyes are the window of the soul. But whose soul will you see when you look in hers?”

  “I left her my number,” Niall said. “Why the Hell did I do that?”

  Simon laughed. “You can’t help it,” he said.

  “I felt sorry for her. The same way I do when I see tortured and malnourished animals on the news.”

  “She’s a girl, so you fancied her. Remember I’ve known you since you were twelve.”

  “Could you hack into BAB for me,” Niall asked, “like you once did when we were at school?” BAB was the British Association for the Blind.

  “I’m a responsible adult now,” Simon said.

  “I just want to see if there’s an email trail about this operation. I need to find out what it cost and who’s paying for it.”

  “You’re a pain,” Simon said.

  Hugo sighed, stretched and released an enormous fart.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” Erica said, slamming her magazine down and walking out to the kitchen.

  “What about BAB?” Niall asked.

  “Leave it with me. You know Lindsey Spencer works at their head office.”

  Niall choked on his raspberry tea.

  “Lindsey Spencer?” He mimicked a strident, thin, nasal voice.

  “Yeah. I’m not quite sure what she does there.”

  “Cleans the bloody toilets I should think,” Niall said. “Probably not very well.”

  “I love it when your past comes back to haunt you,” Simon said.

  Lindsey Spencer had been in the year above them at school. She had launched herself at Niall when he was thirteen and innocent, nearly breaking his jaw with her inept attempts at French kissing. Then for two years she had managed to operate an exclusion zone around him so that no other girl and not many boys could get to spend any time with him. He had ended up despising her for it, but they had clumsily lost their virginity together, and for that alone he would always be grateful. Then when he finally had the guts to finish with her she took an overdose of paracetamol and it all got very messy. Her parents got involved, and even though they’d never met Niall they blamed him for everything. Lindsey was sight impaired but had a bit of vision and made a point of avoiding him from that time on, which suited him fine. Then he made the fatal mistake of following her down the A Level German route, and when he was in Year Twelve and she in Year Thirteen they ended up on a German blind school exchange together. Far from home on the fringes of the Schwarzwald she had cornered him and forced him into conversation.

  “I’ve forgiven you, you know.”

  “Great.”

  “I think I’ll always love you, in spite of what you did to me.”

  “You don’t love me.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about love.”

  Well maybe he didn’t, but being chained to her through his middle teens hadn’t helped.

  “I want to be your friend,” she said.

  “Fine.”

  “You really need a good friend.”

  “Right.” He decided the best way was to let her make her patronising speech. Get it off her increasingly ample chest. She went on for about an hour telling him things he apparently didn’t know about himself, things that he had allegedly been too wrapped up in himself to find out about her; he had never realised that she had gone out with him initially because she took pity on him, or that she had wanted to end their relationship several times (and yet she would always love him) but thought that he wouldn’t be able to cope.

  He didn’t learn a lot of German that week.

  And now she worked for BAB. Which was typical, somehow. But if she was his route into head office, then so be it.

  “What’s BAB’s phone number?”

  “Haven’t a clue mate. You’ll have to 118 it.”

  Niall found out and rang.

  “Lindsey Spencer please.”

  “One moment.” The line went quiet. Niall tried to imagine what her role would be. He tried to remember if he had ever known what degree if any she had gone on to read from school. Not that that meant anything of course.

  “Who’s calling please?”

  “Simon Roberts.” The receptionist sounded as though she was on work experience.

  “Simon?”

  “It’s not Simon actually. It’s Niall. Hi Lindsey. Don’t hang up.”

  “Niall.” A pause. “Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. Because I haven’t kept in touch.”

  “Which was hardly surprising.”

  “No, I know.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Can I come and see you at work tomorrow? Do I need to make an appointment?”

  “Yes. And no. I’m intrigued.”

  “Brilliant. What time shall I come?”

  “Eleven? We could go for coffee.”

  “I don’t drink coffee. What about ten?”

  “Yes, OK. Do you even know where this place is?”

  “Somewhere between Harrod’s and the Natural History Museum.”

  “If you say so. I’ve never been to either.”

  “I just remember somebody telling me once.”

  She gave him the address and the call came to an uncertain end.

  “She sounds exactly the same,” Niall said.

  “Yes,” Simon agreed. “I heard every word.”

  THREE

  They all sat around her bed: Mr. Daghash, who smelt of hygiene, Mummy and Daddy, Amelia, the journalist from the Mirror – Matthew somebody; a man from the British Association for the Blind and the nurse with the lemon tart voice, Beverley. Another journalist had b
een taking pictures, but he had gone.

  “So how do you feel?” the journalist asked.

  “I don’t know,” Susannah said after a pause for thought. “Scared probably.”

  “Of the operation?” Matthew pressed.

  “Well – yes.”

  “But excited to think that tomorrow, if it all goes according to plan, when they take the bandages off you’ll see the world for the first time.”

  “Yes.” It was easiest just to say yes to him. Her thoughts were so confused and his suggestions were so logical. She knew they were what she ought to be thinking, if she could get control of herself.

  “So Mr. Leman,” Matthew said changing tack, “if you could say something right now to the family of the person who died and donated the eyes your daughter’s going to see with, what would it be?”

  “Just that we are so grateful,” he said immediately, rehearsed, “that in the midst of their tragedy, they had the wonderful generosity to think of others. To make this miracle possible. They are heroes to us.”

  Susannah wondered if she would ever meet them: how weird it would be that they would see their daughter’s/sister’s/cousin’s eyes looking at them out of somebody else’s face. Her face. They would hate her because she would remind them of what they had lost. Nobody had even told her what colour the eyes were. She opened her mouth to ask, but the conversation had swept on without her.

  “Susie will be going into theatre about three o’clock,” Mr. Daghash was saying. “The operation will take several hours, and there are a number of critical points. If we pass all those critical points successfully, and if Susie has faith, then by the grace of God she will see the world for the first time tomorrow morning.”

  “And what are you most looking forward to seeing?” Matthew said to her.

  Susannah tried to think.

  “Her mother,” her father said.

  “Everybody,” Susannah said. “Everything.” Or nothing, she thought.

  “But what I would like to say to you,” Mr. Daghash went on, “is that when she opens her eyes none of us quite knows what she will see at first. Her brain has never processed visual data, and it will almost certainly take a little time for everything to settle down and for Susannah to see normally, as we do. At first everything may be blurred and unfocused. She will be bombarded with visual stimuli and the brain will have to figure out how to deal with it. The first few days will be critical. And then the aftercare and the anti-rejection medication are very important. We must be patient, and we must have faith.”

  “I never thought this day would come,” her mother, Karin, said tearfully. “It’s the answer to all our prayers.”

  “And is it right that it’s all down to a commitment to fund the research from the British Association for the Blind?” Matthew asked, turning to the fourth man in the room.

  “The British Association for the Blind,” he said, “is committed to supporting and empowering the visually impaired, ameliorating visual impairment, and, where possible, fighting visual impairment.” His voice was stodgy, but dried up. Stale treacle pudding, Susannah decided. “We have a duty to divide the money that we are able to raise through the general public’s generous support between projects and services that will benefit and ease the lives of the majority of people battling sight loss, and groundbreaking scientific research that could lead to the beginning of the end of congenital visual impairment. We have supported the research into artificial ‘seeing’ eyes from the beginning –”

  “But I am right aren’t I,” Matthew cut across him, “that most of the funding for this research has come from the Association?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Daghash.

  “The gift of sight is a wonderful thing,” the Association man said.

  “And what would any of you say right now,” Matthew went on, “to those people who say this is playing God and it’s against nature and wrong?”

  “I would say today is not the day and this is not the place to be debating that issue,” Mr. Daghash said firmly.

  Matthew left soon after. Mr. Daghash squeezed Susannah’s hand, wished her luck, and then left with the man from the Association. She was alone with her family. The family she had never seen for twenty-two years, but might see tomorrow. So many faces to learn, so many sights to see. Would her brain cope and make sense of it all? What if they wired her up wrong and everything was upside down? Would it be better to see the world upside down than not to see it at all?

  “We’ll be just outside,” her mother said. “I won’t be far away. You won’t be alone.”

  “Thanks, Mum.”

  “Mum’s going to stay the night with you in the hospital,” Amelia said. “Dad and I are going to wait until the operation’s done. Then we’re going to go home and come back in the morning. It’s going to be fantastic to have you look at me.”

  “Yeah.”

  She found herself wanting them to go, leave her to gather her thoughts and her courage. She thought of Niall Burnet. Whether the operation worked or not, she was going to ring him. He’d let her tell the truth.

  The taxi deposited Niall in Knightsbridge, outside the imposing headquarters of the British Association for the Blind.

  “You’ve got a flight of steps and then a door that’s open,” the taxi driver told him.

  “Cheers mate,” Niall said. “Keep the change.” He gave the man an absurdly generous tip, but he couldn’t bear faffing about with coins. You could tell a note by its size, and by what Niall called ‘wallet memory’. He used to play a game with his friends at Radio Salop where he’d get them to bet on whether he could correctly pick every item out of his wallet. He’d got it down to a fine art, and the skill had never left him.

  Hugo steered him up the steps and through the door into a large reception hall, carpeted to lessen echo. Fairly standard in terms of getting your bearings, but it did mean people could creep up on you, as some woman did now.

  “Can I help you at all?”

  “Hopefully, if it’s your job,” Niall said. He meant it tongue-in-cheek, but he sensed the woman bridling, and realised that she was one of those who would never ‘get’ him; would think he was just rude and arrogant. It kept happening.

  “I’ve got an appointment with Lindsey Spencer,” he said.

  “Oh, Lindsey,” she said, thawing slightly. “I’ll take you up. She’s on the first floor; do you prefer lift or stairs?”

  “Let’s do stairs, it’s good for me.”

  “This way then,” she said.

  “After her, Hugo,” Niall said, and the dog, who understood his sense of humour better than most women, set off.

  “Do you know Lindsey?” the woman asked.

  “We were at school together,” Niall said.

  “Isn’t she lovely?” the woman said.

  “Yeah,” Niall offered, trying to sound committed.

  “My name’s Juliette, by the way. Juliette Warwick. I work in HR.”

  “That’s such a great phrase,” Niall said.

  “What?”

  “Human Resources.”

  “It just means we look after people,” Juliette said. “I like that. I’m a people person.”

  And I’m not people, then, Niall thought, because you’re radiating dislike and we’ve barely met.

  “What’s Lindsey going to do for you?” Juliette asked.

  “It’s about a reunion,” Niall lied quickly. He didn’t want to arouse suspicion if he could avoid it, and he still didn’t know what department they were going to find Lindsey in.

  “I’m holding a door for you.”

  “Thanks. Go, Hugo.”

  They walked into a large office.

  “Lindsey!” Juliette called loudly.

  “Yes?” The voice hadn’t mellowed with time.

  “An old school-friend to see you.”

  “Let me see, let me see!” Lindsey almost shrieked, approaching. “Oh my God, Niall. Everyone, this was my first ever boyfriend, Niall Burnet!”

&n
bsp; Maximum humiliation, minimum effort. Niall could almost have been impressed if he hadn’t been inwardly squirming. He could imagine the smile of delight on Juliette Warwick’s face.

  “Come and meet everybody. Oh, and look at your dog! What’s his name?”

  “Hugo.”

  “That’s just such a typical name for you. Mine’s called Jessie. You must meet her too.”

  Niall met everybody, including Jessie, but he wasn’t on top form and annoyingly he failed to take in their names or what they did. He seemed to be somewhere in the lower reaches of the finance department, which was promising, among book-keepers and wages clerks. It might be a short step to the information he wanted about funding, if he could regain his composure and control of the situation.

  “So,” Lindsey said, when she finally sat him on a not very comfortable chair in what she called ‘her area’, “to what do I owe this dubious pleasure?”

  “Where’ve you been learning light sarcasm?” Niall asked. “It always used to be beyond you.”

  “I’ve grown as a person,” she said.

  “What do you do here exactly?” he asked, partly to avoid answering her question directly when there might be unnecessary ears listening, partly to gain control of the conversation.

  “I’m not really strictly a finance person,” Lindsey said. “I work with bequests.”

  “Isn’t that finance?”

  “It is when we get them,” Lindsey said. “My job is to visit elderly people who are registered blind or partially sighted and talk to them about the possibility of leaving money to the Association.”

  “You’re a predator,” Niall said. “That ought to suit you.”

  “If you’ve come here to be rude to me you can just leave.”

  “Sorry. No. I’m really sorry.” Niall cursed his tongue. He needed to open her up, not get her to close down. “Doesn’t it bother you though?”

  “What?”

  “You’re visiting vulnerable old people and persuading them to leave money away from their families. What do you think the families would say about it?”