Space Hopper Read online

  We were a lot older now and all with children, and the idea that Eddie was perfect had mellowed and shifted. They’d seen his temper flare up on the rare occasion, the odd bout of jealousy and some choice swearing when we all got pissed; enough for them to realise that he was just a man after all. But still, they considered him a better man than most. Until he announced he wanted to be a vicar. They didn’t like that.

  So when Eddie was at work and I was back from dropping the girls at school, Cassie and Clem knocked on the door and breezed into my house as though they owned it. They kissed me on the cheek and pressed on through the hallway, continuing their conversation, as Clem – baby on hip – tested the weight of my kettle and flicked it on.

  ‘Don’t you agree, Faye?’ Cassie said, crossing her willowy arms and seeking my approval for the side of an argument I knew nothing about; a position I had found myself in so often that I’d developed a set of stock answers.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, on this occasion, I have to agree with Clem,’ I said, winking and holding my arms out for the baby. Clem hefted him over to me as casually as if he were a bag of potatoes, and I nuzzled my nose in the soft down of his head.

  ‘Of course she agrees with me,’ said Clem, looking at me earnestly. ‘By the way, you look like shit.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered into the baby’s head.

  ‘We’re talking about Eddie,’ Cassie said. ‘Clem thinks this whole vicar thing is practically grounds for divorce.’

  ‘Deal breaker,’ added Clem. ‘If Dave did it, I’d kill him.’ She busied herself, efficiently fetching out cups, teabags and milk. ‘He’s not just changing his life,’ she turned on Cassie, waving her hands like an Italian mother. ‘He’s forcing a complete lifestyle change on Faye and the girls. And not really giving them any choice in the matter.’

  This had become a regular subject, more pointed and intense as it became clear that Eddie was seriously intending to train for the clergy.

  ‘Yes, but not grounds for divorce,’ said Cassie. ‘Is it?’ She looked at me, her huge almond eyes full of confidence.

  ‘It’s a pretty big thing,’ I said. ‘I didn’t sign up to be a vicar’s wife. I’m not sure I’m sensible enough, for a start.’

  ‘See!’ Clem threw teabags into the cups with gusto. ‘Isn’t that what I said, Cassie? She’s too juvenile for this role. No offence.’

  ‘Juvenile!’ I said. ‘Is that meant to be a compliment?’

  ‘Oh you know what I mean,’ Clem said. ‘You’re going to have to be on your best behaviour all the time. For ever. It’s too big an ask. Eddie’s being selfish.’

  ‘He’s following a calling, hardly selfish,’ said Cassie.

  ‘It is a bit selfish,’ I said, and finally they both stopped talking and moving about and just looked at me. ‘I wouldn’t dream of getting Eddie involved in my job, but I don’t think I’m up to being a vicar’s wife. Plus, I don’t know how much it matters about the God part.’

  ‘Does Eddie know you don’t actually believe in God?’ Clem said.

  ‘I’ve told him, he knows, we’ve talked. But it’s amazing how religious you can start sounding when you just say that you believe in compassion, peace and helping others. I think he thinks I’m going to learn to believe in Him.’

  I felt tired again and handed the baby back to Clem. They followed with tea and biscuits as I sloped out of the kitchen into the living room. Cassie and Clem shared a small sofa with the baby and I laid down on the larger one, opposite them.

  ‘I just want to know, Faye, tell me the truth, is it going to break you up, this clergy thing?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not leaving Eddie, even if he becomes a vomit-collector at a fairground.’ And we all laughed, because at college we used to joke about the worst jobs in the world and this was one of them. To change the subject, I showed them the photo of me in the Space Hopper box.

  ‘So cute!’ Cassie said, and Clem took the photo, holding it out of reach of small sticky hands.

  ‘Where was this taken?’ Clem asked.

  ‘In my mother’s house, Christmas time, obviously. It was taken by my mother. I would have been six.’

  ‘How old were you when she died?’ Clem said. ‘Wasn’t it quite soon after this?’

  ‘Eight.’

  ‘That’s why you’re kind of stuck, sort of immature in some ways.’

  ‘Shut up, Clem,’ Cassie said.

  ‘Part of you got stuck when your mum died. It happens, it’s a thing. Evie will be eight soon, and after that, you don’t have a role model for motherhood. Esther’s definitely more sensible than you.’

  ‘Jesus, will you shut up,’ said Cassie, elbowing Clem and looking at me apologetically. ‘Esther’s more sensible than all of us.’

  I just nodded and closed my eyes; I didn’t want to open them. My friends’ voices retreated to nothing but background noise, and I wanted to be alone because even in their company – at this moment – I felt utterly isolated, and the silence that hovered underneath the noise they made was just waiting for me anyway, I might as well face it.

  It suddenly struck me that this weariness I felt could be something like grief; a type of grief I hadn’t been capable of before. Em and Henry hadn’t known what to say or do with me when it came to helping me through my loss and suffering; back in the seventies they thought the least said, the better. Wanting to protect me from further pain was understandable, but by today’s psychology, it had to be counterproductive.

  I didn’t remember asking Em and Henry a lot of questions about my mother. What I did recall was that I felt I shouldn’t ask. I searched my memory like it was a messy drawer, trying to find an image, some mental recording of a conversation, something to explain exactly why I’d felt so alone in dealing with losing my mum, when Em and Henry had been so supportive, so caring, in every other way. I could see Henry’s face in a memory so coated with dust I could barely picture it. It was his face with a worried look, glancing over at Em as I asked her a question or said something about my mother. What would it have been? ‘I miss my mother. I want to see my mother again. Do you think my mother was happy?’

  I had seen those looks of his, and I’d filed them away. I hadn’t thought about it, but I realised what they were: he didn’t want me to upset his wife. Em was a lovely woman, and she cared for me like her own. I trusted her completely, but maybe when I came to her, whilst she would never have wanted me to lose my mother, maybe it had suited her, a dream come true. I thought of how possessive she’d seemed when she played with little me at her house, with the chocolates on the Christmas tree, as though I were a doll that she wanted. My mother’s loss was entirely Em’s gain, and it must have been easier for her to pretend I was all hers and put my mother behind her, behind me. I bore her no ill will, Em had been good to me. She was selfish in her love for the daughter she’d always wanted, that’s all.

  But as a result, as a child, there had been a void, an emptiness, a sad silence. When I cried back then it was on my own and into a black hole, an abyss, the unknown. But now I had just lost my mother again. So was I grieving again? A more normal type of grief? Or rather a grief that was easier to cope with because this time I had said goodbye, embraced her, and now I had some hope of seeing her again, as I might if I actually had faith.

  Cassie and Clem were still talking, ignoring me, I’d been quiet for a long time and I knew Cassie would be keen to steer away from the emotional stuff. They were arguing happily about something else now.

  I thought about what Clem had said, about me getting stuck around the age I was when my mother died. Something about that felt true, although when I was with my mother a few days ago, I did feel older than her, maybe just because I looked so much older and because I knew more about the situation.

  I swung my heavy legs over the side of the sofa and sat up. ‘What do you think of time travel?’ I said, when my friends paused for breath.

  ‘What?’ Cassie said, taking a bite from a biscuit.

&n
bsp; Clem looked at me blankly for a moment. ‘Impossible, obviously. UFOs, questionable; little green men, improbable; God…’ She sighed. ‘Dubious. Time travel, well, that’s just for nutters, novels and the movies.’ Her eyes slid back to Cassie and she turned absently away, resuming her previous line of conversation, hardly missing a beat.

  I didn’t push it, or defend time travel, I just wanted to try out the words in my mouth. In the instant before I asked my question, I imagined I would be able to pursue the topic a little further, though I was aware that anything I said might reach Eddie’s ears. But Clem, with her brutal gauge of irrationality, and Cassie with her bored silence, were as definitive as a door slammed in my face. I was the unwelcome salesman and I didn’t feel I could knock again.

  9

  I was thinking of going back in time, could think of nothing else. But this time I’d be prepared. My mother would let me in and know me as the adult that had saved her daughter’s life. I would have my questions ready for her; all the things a person wished they’d asked before it was too late. I would make the most of it. Absorbed in my thoughts of her, I sometimes caught Eddie looking at me with eyes full of questions he knew I wouldn’t answer. Daydreams of seeing her again were like brown paper parcels tied with bright ribbon and I could happily have spent my days planning and thinking, but I needed to go back to work.

  I do experiments at the RNIB to test product designs on blind, partially-sighted and sighted people. Then I write reports on whether the thing being designed is going to be as easy for blind people to use as the developer says it is.

  This one experiment I’m doing involves participants wearing Marigolds and feeling the plaster cast heads of Mozart and Bach. Sighted participants wear blindfolds and everyone has to describe what they can feel. I’m trying to find out if they can get enough information from what they’re touching to give a meaningful description of the thing.

  I could tell you why I was doing the experiment, but it’s not part of this story.

  I had thirty participants: ten blind, ten partially-sighted and ten sighted, and my friend Louis was one of them; he was the one who wanted to feel inside photographs. Whenever I do an experiment or a focus group Louis gets involved; we’ve got to know each other over the years, and we go out for lunch most weeks.

  I think of Louis as a Big Gay Bear, because he’s gay, and big, and very loveable. He’s a snappy dresser, always in expensive-looking shirts and has a neatly trimmed beard. And he smells great. He’s been blind since birth and says the thing that irks him most about being blind is that he can’t look after a guy on a date the way his sighted friends do. He’d like to be able to go out with someone and then make sure they get home safely, by driving or walking them home, but he says it’s just not like that for blind guys. His protective streak is forcibly suppressed by his lack of sight.

  He’s a sweetheart, but frustration can make him argumentative after a couple of pints. We were in the pub across the road from the RNIB one day after work, and he went to the bar – he insisted – and got us a couple of beers. On the way back to the table, some guy was walking backwards as he finished a conversation with his mates and knocked Louis’s arm, getting beer down his front. Concentrating on his beery T-shirt, and not looking at Louis, he started the predictable, ‘Oi, watch where you’re going mate, what are you? Blind? You’ve ruined my top!’ When he looked at Louis and saw that he was in fact blind, he started apologising madly. Well, Louis was having none of it.

  ‘Come on then,’ Louis said, relishing the novelty of the upper hand. ‘What do you want to do? Take it outside?’

  ‘Nah, mate, no harm done,’ the guy said, retreating like a slug touching salt.

  ‘No harm done? I don’t think so!’ my Big Gay Bear said. ‘Your shirt is ruined and I’ve lost half a pint. The question is, whose fault is it?’ He held up the arm holding the offending pint, slopping more of it on the wilting bulldog of a man. And for the record, he had initially spilled only a fraction of a pint.

  ‘It’s okay, I’ll buy you another, I’ll buy a whole round, what you drinking?’ Even Louis couldn’t argue with that.

  Louis sat down next to me. When the guy came over with another couple of beers, he set them in front of us, saying, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’

  ‘That was nice,’ I said to Louis, after the guy had gone. ‘Him being so apologetic for you spilling beer all over him.’

  ‘Nothing to do with beer. He was apologising because I’m blind and he’s not, so whatever fight we get into, he’s already the winner.’ I squeezed Louis’s hand, because the upper hand for him, like any dream, is just an illusion. I squeezed his hand because he was so right.

  * * *

  When Louis came to the rubber glove experiment, I hadn’t seen him all week. He was feeling the head of Mozart and there was something surreal and soothing about watching my friend carefully caress the contours of the musical genius. His sightless face tilted toward the ceiling, and his fingers walked and glided over the man-made contours of hair and facial features.

  ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life!’

  ‘Louis, you’re supposed to be doing a description.’ I stopped the recording and rewound. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and I switched the machine back on. There was a long pause, and then he said, ‘The head I’m feeling is meaningless to me. I have no idea if it’s a man or a woman. I can tell there’s a lot of hair, but it feels nothing like real hair. It feels like waves carved in stone, which is as far away from hair as you can get.’ Louis stopped.

  ‘Is that everything?’ I asked, and he nodded. I stopped recording again. ‘Not exactly what I was expecting,’ I said. ‘But it’s all valid, really interesting actually.’

  ‘What have other people said?’

  ‘Mainly an account of the features of the face, you know, the shape of the nose, whether it’s bigger than average. That sort of thing.’

  Louis grunted. ‘This thing is not a head,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not?’

  ‘It’s a solid cast in the shape of a head. What’s the point of me feeling this? I presume it’s supposed to tell me roughly what a head feels like. Well, I can feel my own head. Or yours, if you’ll let me. Nobody feels a stone head to get to know what a head looks like. This is for the eyes, not the hands,’ he said, tapping it.

  ‘Let me press record again. Ready?’ I said.

  ‘I’m sick of sighted people doing this,’ he said. ‘When I was a kid, I can only have been about six, this expert gave me a test.’ Louis used sarcastic fingers as inverted commas around ‘expert’. ‘I don’t know what he was trying to find out, but he gave me some braille pictures, raised outlines. One was a cat, I found out later. But if you’ve only ever felt a real cat, would you draw it in the standard way a sighted person does? A cat in my world looks different from a cat in your world; nothing about it is sharp, apart from its claws, because a cat is predominantly a bundle of fur. But this outline the man gave me was sharp: hard pointed triangles, ears apparently, and a smooth round body like the base of an hourglass. I got it wrong, I don’t know what I said, but it wasn’t “cat”. The guy thought I was an idiot. Then he asked me to draw an egg, and I couldn’t. He said, “Just the simple shape of it will do.” But I’d never held an egg. My mother spoon-fed me, to avoid a mess. So I drew a blob because my experience of egg was only a soft blob in my mouth. Then he asked me to draw a bus and when I finished he said, “What is this, young man?” and I said, “It’s a bus, like you asked.” And he said, “This is just a few random lines.” I had drawn a long vertical line, and to the left of that line three short horizontal lines.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Let me try and work it out.’ I drew the lines as he’d described, with a pencil on the back of an envelope.

  Bus. Vertical line. Horizontals.

  I closed my eyes and imagined getting on a bus.

  ‘Got it,’ I said. ‘You drew the handle you held as you got onto the bus, that’s t
he vertical line, and three horizontal lines, they’re the steps that lead up to the driver. A bus! Correction: your bus.’

  ‘I knew you’d understand. In a practical sense, my world extends as far as my arms can reach. Yours is as far as your eyes can see. But we both know, in our hearts, that our worlds are actually far bigger than that. You know that, don’t you, Faye?’

  I did.

  I picked up the keys for the room and shoved my chair back. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy you a coffee.’

  * * *

  It was a beautiful day; the sun was out, and Louis and I sat outside the Turkish café a little way down the road from the entrance to RNIB. I put a folder on the wooden picnic table between us, so if any of our colleagues walked by, it looked more like work than chit-chat.

  ‘What’s going on with you?’ Louis said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I feel like I haven’t seen you for ages, and your voice seems lower.’

  ‘I’ve had a sex change.’

  ‘Not that low!’ he said. He waited. ‘See, normally you’d laugh at that.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘I’m down I suppose, lonely.’

  ‘You? Really? Well, join the club,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got Eddie, and the girls.’

  ‘I know, but… I’ve got stuff going on. Secrets I can’t tell,’ I said, pretending to be mysterious, brushing it off.

  ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got that one all sewn up. I felt like that for years until I came out to my sister.’ He stopped, and I said nothing. ‘Are you gay? Is that what this is about?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not.’

  ‘Is it about Eddie, and you entering the world of vicar’s wifedom?’

  ‘If only that was my only problem, now,’ I said.