“I will,” Susannah said.
“And I’ll call your friend.”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Is he in London?”
“I think so. Yes, I’m sure he is.”
Still further puzzled, Jamal Daghash bid Susannah goodnight. Dr. Clarke did the same, and the two of them withdrew.
‘Alone with her face’. Susannah opened her eyes and focused on the disc in her hand. Sure enough, there it was. Close up, things were getting easier. It had a pattern on one side that might have been flowers, but on the other she saw the glass surface. She held it up to her face and studied her reflection.
This was the face she had felt who knows how many times, the cheeks, the lips, the nose. She had wondered so much about noses, and this was hers. But in amongst the purple bruising (they told her it was purple) were two things that were not hers. Two eyes that belonged to somebody else. Except now they were hers. For the rest of this life they were hers, and a part of who she now was. This wasn’t Susannah Leman’s face – Susannah was a blind girl she had known and loved but that girl was gone. This was a new girl who needed a new name. Even as she thought it she wondered whether anyone would understand. She had been born Susannah Miranda Leman. Susannah was gone. She would be Miranda now. This was Miranda’s face. These were Miranda’s eyes. Those eyebrows were Miranda’s eyebrows and Miranda was going to ask someone to pluck them for her in the morning. She remembered Amelia plucking her eyebrows once: it had hurt and she hadn’t enjoyed it but Amelia had said that stylish girls and women all plucked their eyebrows. Looking at the dark lines above her eyes, Miranda resolved that she would be stylish, even if it cost some pain. It would be nothing to the pain she had felt earlier in her head.
She tilted the mirror so she could see more of her hair. ‘Light brown’ people had always described it. So that was light brown. It was a difficult colour to describe. Actually the eyes – no, her eyes – were similar. Maybe a little darker. She looked at the skin on her face. White. People talked about being white but if the sheets on her bed were white then skin really wasn’t white at all. The world of colour was a world of confusion. Blindness had been so simple.
And suddenly she cried. Cried for blind Susannah who was lost for ever. She saw wet tears run down her face. They had no colour at all.
Niall was very annoyed with himself. He had had Vivien Loosemore on the ropes and then he had let her get away from him. Losing his touch. Was he too direct? Or pressing the wrong buttons? She definitely knew something. And he had failed to get it out of her. Hardly premier league journalism.
“I’m just so pissed off,” he snarled into a beer at Simon’s nearest pub.
“Why?” Simon asked obligingly.
“Because I had her. She was starting to go. The legs had gone. Two good punches would have finished her.”
“Did you actually fight her then?” Simon asked.
“Sporting metaphor, you cyber-moron,” Niall said. “I didn’t go in for the kill when I knew she was down.”
“Would that be a hunting metaphor?” Simon asked. Niall threw a pork scratching in his direction.
“I’m missing something,” he said.
“Because you don’t know what it is,” Simon suggested.
“Thanks, Einstein.”
“No,” Simon went on defensively. “What I mean is, I think that maybe – don’t ask me why I think it but maybe – you’re right that something’s not right at BAB, and Lindsey’s suspension is connected with it. The problem is, you really don’t have a clue what it is.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m saying you’re right, you fucking arsehole.”
“It’s not helping.”
“When we were at school,” Simon enlarged after downing the last third of his pint, “you knew what was going on. Between us in the Sixth Form we knew everything. So when Vivien Loosemore made one of her little slips you could pounce on it and make things worse for her. This time she knows everything and we’re in the dark.”
“She won’t know everything,” Niall said. “Not unless whoever’s running this show has no idea what a headless pelican she is.”
“Think about the leads we have got while I get another round in,” Simon said. He got to his feet and turned towards the bar. The regulars were used to him and helping hands ferried him forward.
Niall reviewed his leads for all of ten seconds before deciding he hadn’t got any and relapsing back into self-pity. When Simon returned it was to find him telling Hugo that he should ‘get a new retard to pull around’.
“Niall get a grip,” Simon said. “The fact that Loosemore nearly fucked up in front of you shows that she had something to fuck up about. It’s the first thing that’s convinced me that there’s anything in this so-called story of yours. That’s progress.”
“Convincing you wasn’t really the main criteria for success,” Niall said.
“Thanks. But I’m on board with it now. We’ve got Number Seventeen to get to the bottom of, Lindsey’s disciplinary, and the girl.”
“What girl?”
“The eye girl, you fuckwit,” Simon spluttered. “That’s where all this began.”
“There’s no story there,” Niall said.
“Because you didn’t like her.”
“Because she just –” Niall searched for words that wouldn’t come.
“She can see now,” Simon said. “Bye bye, Blind World.”
Niall was silent.
“Now I get it,” Simon said. “You’re bitter. You’re jealous of her. You wish it was you and that’s why you don’t want to follow it through.”
“Crap,” Niall said.
They drank.
“All right it isn’t crap,” Niall relented finally. “I thought it was crap but it isn’t. I do want my sight back. What the fuck can a blind freelance journalist ever fucking accomplish? You know, we kid ourselves that it’s all going to be OK and we’re going to have a great life and people think we’re fantastic for being so up-beat and making a go of things, but the truth is we’re fucked from the start. The so-called Blind World is just something we’ve invented to try and make out we’ve got something special that’s just ours and nobody else can have. But it’s shite. It’s total fucking garbage. The real world, the only world, is the sighted world, and we can’t fucking compete.”
Simon didn’t respond.
“Unless you’re a fucking computer nerd of course,” Niall added.
“That’s right,” Simon said. “I’m on the cutting edge. That’s why I’ve got such a high-flying job. Not.”
They sat for a while, drinking in companionable silence.
“Did you ever have sight?” Niall asked eventually.
“No,” Simon said.
“I think that’s the difference.”
“It’s a difference,” Simon acknowledged. “Or you might say you were the lucky one because you had it for a while. You’ve got real pictures for your dreams.”
“No, to have it and to lose it. That’s the worst.”
“Of course, mate.” Niall threw a beer mat. “Don’t get me chucked out. This is the only decent pub round here.”
“That would just about top off my trip to London,” Niall said. “I’ve got your flatmates pissed off, I’ve lost Lindsey her job, and now I’m going to get you barred from your local.”
“You don’t care about Lindsey anyway.”
“No but she didn’t deserve this. The best thing I can do is piss off back to Shropshire. Collect my DLA and write some fucking awful novel. Publish it on the internet.”
“I’d read it,” Simon said.
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
There was a pause. Niall’s phone rang.
“This is a mobile free pub,” Simon said.
“Shit,” Niall said, and answered it quickly. “Hello?”
“Hello? Is that Niall Burnet?”
“Yeah, speaking.”
“My name is Jamal Dag
hash. I’m a surgeon. I’m the surgeon who carried out Susannah Leman’s eye transplant.”
“OK.”
“Is this a convenient time? Do you have a moment?”
“Yes. Yes. Fine.”
“Susannah has asked me to call you. You’re a friend, I understand. There’s a meeting at Moorfields tomorrow at which all her after-care medication is going to be explained. She has asked if you could attend the meeting.”
“I – I – me?” Niall struggled for words. “The operation was successful then?”
“It seems so, thus far,” Daghash said. “Susie hasn’t called you?”
“I’ve been busy,” Niall lied, still trying to get his head round the conversation. “Away from my phone. And she wants me to be there?”
“It seems very important to her,” Daghash said. “I don’t have to tell you she’s in a very fragile emotional state. Any support that any of us can give at this time is worth its weight in gold to her. I appreciate it’s short notice – ”
“No, no. I’ll be there,” Niall interrupted. “What time?”
“Ten o’clock. At Moorfields Eye Hospital. City Road. Someone will direct you when you arrive.”
“Thanks. Thanks.”
“No, thank you. I know she’ll be pleased.”
“OK.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Burnet.”
“Goodbye.”
Niall hung up and sat in silence, staring sightlessly straight ahead.
“Are you going to enlighten me?” Simon asked.
“I need another beer first,” Niall said.
The taxi pulled up outside 17 Cardew Crescent. Rebecca Blackford blamed the government. Not for the taxi but for the fact that she was in it. The fact that all three of them were in it. Her housemate Penny from Cardiff who had started it all, Penny’s fellow nursing degree student Beth, and her. Two years into her BA (Ed.). A respectable primary school teacher in the making. But how were you supposed to exist as a student in London? When you needed a loan for a night out, never mind tuition, rent and just – well – life.
Typical of Penny to have taken the plunge. She was game for everything; had tried more things in twenty-one years than most people would get through in a lifetime. Rebecca couldn’t decide whether she had no self-respect, or so much that nothing could touch her. Whichever it was, she loved her for it.
She hadn’t known at first, because Penny had been using B&Bs and cheap hotels, but eventually the economic imperative drove her to confess, and start bringing the men to her room. They had a heart-to-heart over a bottle of wine in the kitchen.
“Penny I don’t think I believe you,” she said.
“Then where do you think I got these from?” Her Welsh brown eyes twinkled as she pulled four fifty pound notes out of her purse. Instinctive moral outrage rained down on her poor housemate for about twenty minutes.
“Worse than my mother,” Penny said. “Look, Becky –” Nobody in the world called her Becky apart from Penny. She was Rebecca or Reb. “It’s not what I’d’ve wished for myself when I was playing with My Little Pony Dream Castle but it is only sex. And it’s better than trying to live the rest of your life with one hand tied behind your back paying off student loans for ever. I shall stop it when I get a proper job.”
“If you haven’t caught AIDS or got killed by some pimp because you’re on his territory,” Rebecca had said.
But Penny hadn’t caught AIDS, and she hadn’t got killed or beaten up; instead she had got into the very expensive car one day of a gross man who thought the sun shone so brightly out of his own arse that it could blind you without proper protection. Penny had had her in hysterics with her description of him. And he had taken a Pretty-Woman-ish shine to her (but in a totally repulsive and unromantic way) and offered her stupid sums of money to work exclusively servicing him ‘and some of my intimate friends and business colleagues’. ‘Think of yourself as my paid courtesan or geisha’ he had apparently said.
“And that’s a top profession in Japan,” Penny said proudly.
“Oh but Penny he’s revolting,” Rebecca had said. She had seen him arrive with her when she had dared to peer out of the top floor window. If she wasn’t actually out she had to pretend to be during one of Penny’s ‘client visits’,
“– because if you’re not careful they’ll be after a threesome and will wonder why you’re not up for it.”
It suited Daniel (his name was Daniel) that Penny was a student – a cut above the average prostitute – ‘clean, respectable and intelligent’ were his exact words, and Penny was more than pleased to give up random clients.
“It’s a safe arrangement that suits everybody,” she said, and Rebecca had to admit to herself in darker moments that she was more than a little envious of the money Penny was earning. It made her pittance from waitressing look particularly feeble.
Then Daniel had asked Penny to recruit a couple of friends – ‘same terms, no questions asked, and a bonus for you each time they come’.
“I hope he didn’t actually mean ‘come’,” Penny said, “because I’d never get the bonus then.”
Daniel wanted to develop ‘Roman-style soirees’ in which ‘high quality women eat with and give significant attention to some of my closest friends.’ Penny seemed to take great delight in quoting his exact words when she regaled Rebecca with each new development.
And of course she had asked her.
“Go on Becky. It’ll be fun. Think of the money. Then we can come home and tell each other what a bloody awful night we’ve had and make each other laugh.”
She had been tempted. But her upbringing saved her. Penny was disappointed but found some other volunteers who didn’t share her scruples.
Then Rebecca’s brother died in a car accident. Her little brother whom she had loved and nurtured and played with all through their shared childhood. And nothing felt the same. He had been a passenger in his best friend’s car. Somehow he was still holding his dead girlfriend’s hand when they found him (or so somebody had said). He survived the crash but died in hospital. Her parents signed away his organs as if they were stale buns on offer from a supermarket bakery. And she had to pick up her life and make sense of it.
People expected her to take time out, to ditch her course and go home. For what? If he’d been paralysed there’d’ve been something to go home for: to be with him and make him laugh. But he was dead. Gone. That book was finished. There was no more Joe. No sequel. No remake. Nothing. She actually didn’t want to be there because there were too many good memories and she wasn’t ready for them. Wasn’t ready to consign him to the past and certainly wasn’t ready to cope with her parents’ grief. Which sounded heartless but was true.
So instead of going home to help with the funeral arrangements she was going to have sex for money with rich men she didn’t know. Was it any worse than trying to lure a millionaire husband? Because, to paraphrase her favourite of all heroines Scarlett O’Hara, nothing was ever going to hurt her again.
The three girls stepped out of the taxi and walked up the path to the front door. 17 Cardew Crescent was an imposing London house, still intact where others nearby had been carved up into flats. They rang the doorbell and it was answered by a woman with iron-grey hair and a rather distracted expression.
“Come in, come in,” she said.
“This is Mary,” Penny said to Rebecca. “At least it’s not really, because we all have fake names here, but this is her house.”
“What’s my name then?” Rebecca asked.
“You’ll pick one out of a box. I’m Tanya. Isn’t it a laugh?”
Mary took them upstairs to what was obviously her bedroom. She told them to make themselves at home and excused herself to see to the dinner.
“So what’s her role in all this?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t really know,” Penny said. “It’s her house and she sorts out the catering. I think she buys it all in, just has to heat some bits up. But WHY she does any of it, well, that’s
a total mystery. Perhaps she gets turned on watching young girls in underwear feeding middle aged men. Perhaps she watches the sex on CCTV.”
Rebecca didn’t want to think about it. As the hour crept closer she felt more and more like making a bolt for freedom. She wanted to tell Penny it had all been a big mistake. But now she felt trapped.
She realised Penny and Beth were stripping down to their underwear. Trying to detach herself from her body and find a happy place to escape to, she did the same. It was very warm in the house, probably deliberately.
Then there were men’s voices in the hall downstairs. The ‘Roman-style soiree’ had begun.
SEVEN
Lindsey called Niall as he was travelling to Moorfields for Susannah Leman’s medication meeting.
“Hi Lindsey, how’re you doing?”
“Juliette just called. I’ve got my first interview with her this afternoon. Three o’clock.”
“God, they’re not wasting much time.”
“Can I come and see you first?”
Niall cursed.
“Lindsey I’m kind of in the middle of something,” he said. “I could see you after.”
“This is my life we’re talking about. And there’s no-one else I can talk to.”
“What about the man in your life?”
“I can’t,” she said. “He wouldn’t understand.”
“So you’re lying to him too?”
“No. Niall. Stop it. Stop it.”
“OK, OK, I’m sorry. Look I know it’s tough. But you need a solicitor with you. Or someone at least. You shouldn’t go in on your own.”
“They told me I can take someone but I haven’t got anyone.”
“Then for God’s sake tell them you’re not ready. You have rights, you know.”
She went quiet.
“I’ve promised to be somewhere else this morning,” Niall said. “I gave my word. I can’t get out of it. But I’ll call you as soon as it’s finished.”
Still nothing.
“I swear, Lindsey. I’ll call you.”
“OK.”
She hung up.
“Fuck it,” Niall said, to the amusement of the taxi driver. Hugo’s ears twitched. It was an expression he’d come to recognise over the years.
Eyes of the Blind Page 6
