Darkness Visible (15 page)

After that Sophy became addicted to the transistor with Winnie inside it. She thought it likely that all transistors had their owners inside them and so it was lucky this one was already tenanted. She listened often, sometimes with her ear against the fairing of the speaker, sometimes pulling the earplug out of its niche and being private to herself. It was that way she heard two talks which spoke not to the little girl with her smiling face (little friend of all the world) but directly to the Sophy-thing that sat inside at the mouth of its private tunnel. One was about the universe running down and she understood that she had always known that, it explained so much it was obvious, it was why fools were fools and why there were so many of them. The other talk was about some people being able to guess the colour of a greater percentage of cards than they should be able to, statistically speaking. Sophy listened enthralled to the man who spoke about this nonsense, as he called it. He said there was no magic and how if people could guess these so-called cards more than they ought, statistically speaking, then fiercely, oh so very fiercely, the man’s eyes must be popping out,
statistics
must
be
re-examined.
This made even the Sophy-creature giggle because she could swim in numbers when she wanted. She remembered the duck’s egg and the little
Sophy-child walking through those areas of inattention; and she saw that what they missed out of their experiments in magic which gave them no or little result, was just the stinky-poo bit, the breaking of rules, the using of people, the well-deep wish, the piercingness, the—the what? The other end of the tunnel, where surely it joined on.

In the evening when these things came together, she jumped clean out of bed and the desire to be weird was like a taste in the mouth, a hunger and thirst after weirdness. It seemed to her then that unless she did what had never been done, saw something that she never ought to see, she would be lost for ever and rum into a young girl. Something pushed her, shoved her, craved. She tried to get the rusty dormer open and did so, just a crack; then more than a crack as if the door of a vault were grinding on its hinge. But all she could see in the evening light was the canal shining. But then there were footsteps on the towpath. She did a violence to her head, thrusting it sideways in the crack and yes, she could see now what was never before oh not by living people seen from this angle, not just the towpath and the canal but along the towpath to the Old Bridge, yes, more of the Old Bridge and yes, the filthy old stinky-poo urinal, whiff whiff; and there was the old man who stole books from Mr Goodchild going in and she kept him there she did! She willed him to stay in the dirty place, like Winnie in the transistor, would not let him come out, she bent her mind, frowning, teeth gritted, she brought everything down to one point where he was in the dirty place and kept him there; and a man in a black hat went cycling primly out over the Old Bridge into the country and a bus heaved this way over it and she kept him there! But she could not hold on. The man in the black hat went cycling out into the country, the bus went on into Greenfield High Street. Her mind inside her let go so that she could not tell whether she was keeping the old man in the dirty place or not. All the same, she thought as she turned away from the dormer, he stayed in there and if I can’t be sure I kept him in, I can’t be sure I didn’t. Then all at once because she had let go of her mind and become the Sophy-child again in her pyjamas out in the centre of the moony room, fear descended over her like a magician’s tall hat and froze her flesh so that she cried out in panic.

“Toni! Toni!”

But Toni was fast asleep and stayed that way even when shaken.

In their fifteenth year at a specific hour or even instant, Sophy felt herself come out into daylight. She was sitting in class and Toni was the only other girl of her age in the room. The rest were seniors with lumpy breasts and big bums and they were groaning as if the algebra was glue they were stuck in. Sophy was sitting back because she had finished. Toni was sitting back because she had not only finished but evaporated and left her body there with its face tilted up. That was when it happened. Sophy
saw
as well as knew, that there was a dimension they were moving through; and as she saw that she saw something else too. It was not that Toni was Toni the wet, though she
was
a wet hen and always would be, but yes, she was beautiful, a beautiful young girl—no, not beautiful with her smoke-grey hair afloat, her thin, no slim body, her face that could be seen through—she was not just beautiful. She was
stunning.
It was a pang clean through Sophy to see that so clearly; and after the pang, a kind of rage, that wet hen Toni of all people—

She asked to be excused, went and examined herself urgently in the grubby mirror. Yes. It was not like Toni’s beauty but it was alright. It was dark of course, and not to be seen through, not transparent, but regular, pretty, oh God,
healthy
,
outdoor, winning, inviting, could be strong and yes that would be the best side for a photograph; in fact very satisfactory indeed if you didn’t have always at your side the wet hen for which or whom there was now no easy word—So Sophy stared into the grubby mirror at her reflection, seeing all things in the daylight that had brightened and cleared so suddenly. That evening after the French verbs and American history she lay on her divan and Toni on hers. Sophy wrenched up the volume of her new transistor so that it blared for a moment, a challenge perhaps, an insult even, or at least a rude jab at her silent twin.

“Do you mind, Sophy!”

“Doesn’t make any difference to you does it?”

Toni half knelt, changing her position. With her new, daylight eyes, Sophy saw the impossible curve alter and flow, from the line of the forehead under the smoky hair, down, round the curve of the long neck, the shoulder, include the suggestion of a breast,
sweep round and end back there where a toe moved and pushed off a sandal.

“It does as a matter of fact.”

“Well you’ll have to go on minding then, my deah, deah Toni.”

“I’m not Toni any more. I’m Antonia.”

Sophy burst out laughing.

“And I’m Sophia.”

“If you like.”

And the strange creature drifted away again, leaving her body to lie there, as it were, untenanted. Sophy had a mind to blow the roof off with the radio but it seemed an action out of that childhood which they had so suddenly left behind. She lay back instead, looking at the ceiling with the big spot of damp. With another jolt of awareness she saw that this new daylight made the dark direction at the back of her head all the more incredible yet all the more evident; because there it was!

“I’ve got eyes in the back of my head!”

She sat up with a jerk, conscious of the words spoken aloud, then the turn of the other girl’s head and the long look.

“Oh?”

Neither of them said anything after that and presently Toni turned away. It was impossible that Toni should know. Yet Toni did.

There are eyes in the back of my head. The angle is still there, wider, the thing called Sophy can sit looking out through the eyes, the thing which really is nameless. It can choose either to go out into the daylight or to lie in this private segment of infinite depth, distance, this ambushed separateness from which comes all strength—

She shut her eyes with sudden excitement. She made a connection that seemed exact between this new feeling and an old one, the one of the rotten egg, the passionate desire to be weird, to be on the other side, desire for the impossibilities of the darkness and the bringing of them into being to disrupt the placid normalities of the daylight world. With her front eyes shut it was as if those other eyes opened in the back of her head and stared into a darkness that stretched away infinitely, a cone of black light.

She came up out of this contemplation and opened her daylight eyes. There the other figure was, curled on the other divan, child and woman—and surely expression too, not of the futile pinpricks
of light with its bursting and efflorescence, but of the darkness and running down?

It was from that moment that Sophy ceased to make many of the gestures that the world required of her. She found a measuring rod in her hand. Look at “ought” and “must” and “want” and “need”. If they were not appropriate at the moment to the sweet-faced girl with the optional eyes at the back of her head, then she touched them with her wand and they vanished. Hey presto.

When they were fifteen-and-a-bit, the staff said Toni should go to a college but Toni wasn’t certain and said she might prefer to model. Sophy didn’t know what she would do but saw no point in going to college or loading your body with someone else’s clothes day after day. It was while she was still in the position of not really believing that it would come to the point of living in the outside world that Toni went off to London and was away quite a time, which infuriated the school and Daddy. The thing was that after a few days, girls being supposed to be a fragile commodity, Toni became a genuine missing person and listed by Interpol, as on the telly. The next anybody knew was that she turned up in Afghanistan of all places, and in deep trouble because the people she had accepted a lift from were running drugs. It seemed for a while that Toni might have to stay in jail for years. Sophy was astonished by Toni’s daring and a bit jealous, and decided to get on with her own further education. The first thing she did, being certain that by now Toni must have got rid of her virginity, was to examine her own by means of a strategically placed mirror. She was not impressed. She tried a couple of boys who proved incompetent and their mechanisms ridiculous. But they did teach her the astonishing power her prettiness could wield over men. She examined the traffic situation in Greenfield and saw the best place, by the pillar-box a hundred yards beyond the Old Bridge. She waited there, refused a truck and a man on a motorbike and chose the third one.

He drove a small van, not a car, he was dark and attractive and he said he was going to Wales. Sophy allowed him to pick her up by the post-box because she thought he was very likely telling the truth and never seeing him again would be that much easier if it was what she wanted. Ten miles out of Greenfield he drove down a side road, parked in the skirts of a wood and enveloped her,
breathing heavily. It was she who suggested they should go into the wood and there she found there was no doubt about his competence at all. He hurt her more than she had thought possible. When he had ended his part of the affair he pulled out, wiped himself, zipped himself and looked down at her with a mixture of triumph and caution.

“Now don’t you go telling anyone. See?”

Sophy was faintly surprised.

“Why should I?”

He looked at her with less caution and more triumph.

“You were a virgin. Well. You aren’t, now. I’ve had you, see?”

Sophy took out the tissues she had brought with her for the purpose and wiped a trickle of blood from her thigh. The man said, in high humour and to no one in particular.

“Had a virgin!”

Sophy pulled on her pants. She was wearing a dress rather than jeans, which was most unusual but another bit of foresight. She looked curiously at the man who was now evidently delighted with life.

“Is that all?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Sex. Fucking.”

“Christ. What did you expect?”

She said nothing, since it was not necessary. She then had a lesson in the extraordinary nature of men, if this specimen was anything to go by. This instrument of her initiation told her what a risk she had run, she might have been picked up by anyone and lying there at this very moment strangled, she must never, never do such a thing again. If she were his daughter he would take the strap to her, letting herself get picked up and she only seventeen, why she might, she might—

By this time Sophy lost patience.

“I’m not sixteen yet.”

“Christ! But you said—”

“Not till October.”

“Christ—”

It was a mistake. She saw that at once. It was another lesson. Always stick to the simplest lie like the simplest truth. He was angry and frightened. But then as he blustered about deadly secrets and how he’d find her and cut her throat she saw how
slight and silly he was, all this about never letting on, forgetting him, if she said a word—if she mentioned
anyone
had picked her up. Bored, she broke it to him.

“I picked you up, silly.”

He made for her and she went on quickly before his hands touched her.

“That card I posted when you stopped by me. It had the number of your van on it. It’s to my Dad. If I don’t pick it up—”

“Christ.”

He took an uncertain step among the leaves.

“I don’t believe you!”

She recited the number of his van to him. She told him he was to take her back to where he had found her and when he swore, mentioned the card again. Finally, of course, he drove her back, because, as she told herself, her will was stronger than his. She liked that idea so much that she broke her recent resolve and told him in so many words. It made him very angry all over again but pleased her. Then what was the most extraordinary part of the whole thing, he got positively wet, telling her she was a lovely kid really and she shouldn’t waste herself on this sort of thing. If she waited for him at the same place and time next week, they’d go together regular. She’d like that. He had a bit of money—

To all this Sophy listened silently, nodding occasionally, since that was what kept him planning. But she would not tell him her name or give him her address.

“Don’t you want to know my name then, kiddy?”

“As a matter of fact, not.”

“‘As a mattah of fact not.’ Christ stone the fucking crows. You’ll be murdered one of these days. Straight, you will.”

“Just put me down by the post-box.”

He shouted after her that he would be at the same place, same time, next week and she gave him a smile to get rid of him and then walked a long way home by all the sidestreets and alleys she could think of so that the van could not follow. She was still in the grip of her astonishment at it meaning so little. It was so trivial an act when you subtracted the necessary and not-to-be-repeated pain of the first time. It meant nothing at all. There was little more sensation to it than feeling the inside of your cheek with your tongue—well, there
was
a little more but not much.