Her brother. It was no good, there was someone else, just as June would have someone else now. How could they like him with his scars? He raised a hand and slipped the fingers along them, smooth varnished things unlike the clinging life of his skin. The door shut, she was gone, and the coolness with her. He was alone. That child on the platform as they had been coming up here: “Look, Mumma, . . . blind, Mumma,” and the horror which had been in its little cursed treble because another little thing had thrown a stone at a passing train. Of course it had been his window the stone hit, of course. A motor horn kept on braying in the street outside. And now that the blind was down and that the window was shut he felt that he would suffocate, and that those flowers were watching him and mocking because they could do something that he could not.
He must go out, but he must wait first for Mamma as he could not find his way about. Their walks were terrifying very often, crossing a street Mamma would lose her head, pulling on his arm this way and that while death in a car rushed down on them and passed in a swirl, gathering the air after it, and all the time he was trying not to show how frightened he was. Then, when they were on the pavement at last, people had no mercy on you if it was crowded; you were always being jostled, and broken ends of conversation were jumbled up and thrown at you, and then presences would glide past leaving a snatch of warm scent behind them to tantalise. He was continually running into dogs, he trod on them, and they howled till their owners became angry and then apologised when they realised that you were not as others were. In the country you had been able to forget that you were blind.
Everything was pressing down on him to-day, crowding in on him, dragging him down. And now that the window was shut and the sun cut off by the blind he felt suffocated. A barrel-organ was thudding a tune through the window, beating at the threshold of his brain. He got up and groping towards the window opened it. As he did so there was a sudden lull in all the noise, he could only hear the clop-clop of a horse receding into the distance, and then mysteriously from below there floated up a chuckle; it was a woman and someone must have been making love to her, so low, so deep it was. He was on fire at once. Love in the street, he would write of it, love shouting over the traffic, unsettling the policemen, sweeping over the park, wave upon wave of it, inciting the baboons to mutiny in the Zoo, clearing the streets. What was the use of his going blind if he did not write? People must hear of what he felt, of how he knew things differently. The sun throbbed in his head. Yes, all that, he would write all that. He was on the crest of a petulant wave, surging along, when his wave broke on the sound of a motor horn. There were his scars, and the sun pricked at him through them. He drew back into the room, his face wet with the heat. Oh, he was tired.
As he searched for his chair a flower poked its head confidingly into his open hand, but he crushed it, for what had he to do with flowers now? Why did Mamma leave him alone, a prey to all his thoughts? They must go out, Mamma and he, but he felt so ill. And was she happy here, away from Barwood and all the worries that she had lived for? As for him, it was only that he was dazed by all these new sensations, he would rise above them soon, when he knew how to interpret them, and then he would have some peace.
A car was pulled up sharp, the brakes screamed and he writhed at it. He was imprisoned here, for somehow he could not learn to find his way about in this new house. Why didn’t she come?
It was hot. It made him think of Barwood, where probably it would be raining, and of sitting in the summer-house while the cool rain spattered softly in washing away the scars, and where the wind brought things from afar to hang for a moment in his ears and then take away again. Years ago the trees there had been green for him, only months ago really, and here there was only dust and the dying flowers and tar. And he had fished where the sunset came to earth and bathed in the river. But there were voices coming up the stairs, Mamma’s and a new voice. They must be glad to be together again, because the two streams of what they had to say to each other mingled as they both talked at the same time and purled so happily on. The door opened. He got up shyly.
“Who have you brought?”
“My dear, what do you think, it is Lorna Greene. Just think, we had not met since I married. Oh, Lorna, this is like old days.”
She was so excited and laughing, she must be happy. Then her voice dropped. “Lorna, this is John.” All the life had gone out of her voice, but then why wonder at it, after all he was the problem and the millstone. Damn them! But he was saying:
“Oh, how do you do,” while a strange hand, languid but interested, took his for a moment and he felt many rings and much culture. He had never in his life held anything so cared for, she must bathe this hand in oil every night, it was so smooth, so impersonal. Then it coolly slipped away again, and she was saying something about his having known her son at Noat in an amused kind of drawl, her voice curling round her lips. It was almost as if she were laughing at him. She searched with her voice, it was sardonic, she would drive him mad. What was there funny about him, except that he was stuck here defenceless?