Blindness

by Henry Green

She had known his mother, Mummy. She had a very few stories about her, such nice stories, and he would make her tell them again and again, when perhaps a new story would come out. Mummy must have been so charming, they had all loved her so.

She was like a dream, something so far away that came back sometimes. And now that he was blind he had come to treasure little personal things of her own, a prayer-book of hers, though that, of course, was mistaken; a pair of kid gloves, so soft to touch, and they had a faint suggestion of her about them, so faint, that gently surrounded them and made them still more soft. And she had died because of him.

There was so little that he knew about her, only what Nanny could tell. He never saw anyone who had known her, and Mamma was always trying, ever since she had told him by letter how he was not her son, to put herself in Mummy’s place. How silly to go on calling her by that name, she had been dead nearly nineteen years now; it was so sentimental. But the word was fresh, it clung about the gloves. They had been cold so long, those gloves.

From what Nanny said she had been so happy in the house, going about lightly from place to place. One really did not know anything about her; Nanny had only seen her once and her stories were only what the other servants had told her. They would have been seated round in the kitchen waiting for the funeral, and they would have talked and talked, weeping in turns, and Nanny had learnt what she knew in that way. There were none of them left; he had never known them, for Mamma had sent them all away when she had married Father and gone to India. But apparently she had whistled most beautifully; Nanny’s descriptions never went beyond “beautiful,” and he could hear her going about whistling gently till the house was full of shadows. She must have linked everything up with it. And then apparently she had played the piano quite beautifully.

Such ages ago he had been at Noat, only a few months, but still—the misery of those days, their dreariness, and with their strange exaltations now and then. So much depended on whether people were nice to you or not. And the Art Society with the marionette shows. There had been no one at J. W. P.’s to mind about such things. It was getting cold out here. Heat drew one out, one was with a companion. Just as their glow against each other would draw them out—June and he.

Mummy would have helped, then and now. She would have had such a gentle understanding, so that when he came back from Noat for the holidays they would have sat by the fire and talked it out. What evenings, and what quiet grey days with the colours in the fields washed into luminous clarity, and the calm in the trees. She would have understood all that with her tender whistling, and they would have walked, perhaps, silently happy together to the top of Swan’s Wood. Or down to the river with its surprises and the quietly-flowing water.

For she would have seen things by the light of intuitions, often wrong, but no less enchanting, and by discovering things in other people she would have shown herself. How silly people were to think a grey day sad; it was really so full of happiness, while the sun only made things reflect the sun, and so not be themselves. Dew came in the morning with the light sky above and sent pearl colours over the fields, and so made him think of her, who was so like that herself.

There were so many things to do, all the senses to develop, old acquaintances of childhood to make friends with again. To sit still and be stifled by the blackness was wrong; he had done that long enough. The temptation was so great, the darkness pressed so close, and what sounds one heard could only at first be converted into terms of sight and not of sound. When a blackbird fled screaming he had only been able to see it as a smudge darting along, and he had tried in vain to visualise it exactly. Now he was beginning to see it as a signal to the other birds that something was not right; it was the feeling that one has in the dark when something moves, and when one jumps to turn on the light, and the light leaps out through the night. Why translate into terms of seeing, for perhaps he would never see again, even in his dreams? They might be of sounds or of touch now. The deaf might dream of a soundless world, and how cold that would be. There was the story of the deaf old man who had forgotten that the breaking waves of the sea on the beach made sound. He must not go deaf; one clung so to what senses were left. But sight was not really necessary; the values of everything changed, that was all. There was so much in the wind, in the feel of the air, in the sounds that Nature lent one for a little, only to take away again. Or was there nothing in all these? Why did everyone and everything have to live on illusion, that Mummy was really near, and as the meaning of everything? But one could not let that go.

June was an illusion—a lovely one. He had never felt anyone so alive. Coming into that room had been like a shower of sparks, or was it merely the mood he had been in? There were days when everything bristled with life, the mahogany table in the front hall almost purred when you stroked it, it was so warm and clinging. Great feline table. And the flowers poked their soft heads so confidingly into your palm, tickling. They must get another dog now that Ruffles was dead that he might have his hands licked. Stroking June, her skin would be so alive. There were days when everything was a toy, and when even the big flowers with heavy scents condescended, except the wooden lilies, and they stank of pollution. Violets were silly; they were not bold enough; they nestled simpering and were too frightened. But the others would play with you if you would only let them, gay exquisite things.

He would write about these things, for life was only beginning again, and there were many things to say. Besides, one couldn’t for ever be sitting in a chair like this, and be for the rest of one’s life someone to be sorry for. And perhaps the way he saw everything was the right way, though there could be no right way but one’s own. Art was what created in the looker-on, and he would have to try and create in others. He would write slowly, slowly, and his story would drift as the country drifted, and it would be about trivial things. The man who chased tulips on a bicycle was silly as well as being an idiot, but the piano-tuner might make a story. He was of the type that had to feel over your face before he became confidential. Why hadn’t he done that to Miss Blandair? Of all practices it was the most revolting, and far more for yourself. Faces were so deformed, your fingers strayed into hair suddenly, though shut eyelids were incredibly alive. Not that the piano-tuner ever became confidential. He was very unhappy and very secretive. He had been blinded in the war, and the injustice of it made his hands burn when he talked about it. He gave himself away so painfully when he played after the tuning was over. But he had a few interesting things to say, how you would find when you were blind a little longer that you could tell by a feeling in your face when a wall or a chair of even something so low as a footstool was coming. So that you could walk about alone and unaided as he did. It would be wonderful this new sense, he looked forward to it so, and was often imagining objects in the way when there were none. It would give a new feeling of companionship with the world. The darkness would be more intimate.