The Mind's Eye (7 page)
Authors: K.C. Finn
Tags: #young adult, #historical, #wwii, #historical romance, #ww2, #ya, #europe, #telepathic, #clean teen publishing, #kc finn
Blod
grumbled, contorting her pretty face into a dramatic frown. She
gave me a nasty look and put her hands on her hips.
honesty since I didn’t actually care what Blod thought of me.
queen cracked a little smile on her made-up lips. She came round me
to grab the handles of my chair, letting out a little laugh.
myself a little happier too. We had bonded, if only for a moment.
Nevertheless, Blod pushed me over every large or jagged cobble she
could find as we made our way home.
Thursday night that I started to worry about the appointment.
During the week I kept telling myself that if I practised with the
chair I’d improve, but as Friday drew nearer and nearer I had
managed only two inches of distance before it felt as though my
shoulders had been ripped from my body like a ragdoll caught in a
bulldog’s teeth. I had to tell myself firmly that any distance was
better than no distance and if that didn’t impress Doctor
Bickerstaff then he could lump it for all I cared. I wasn’t sure if
I’d be brave enough to tell him that to his face, but I supposed
that when the time came to challenge him I’d find out.
That was how
I came to be thinking about him at bedtime, most especially when
Mam strapped my arms and legs into the torturous splints that were
slowly turning my joints a regal shade of purple. I had gotten used
to sleeping with them as the nights wore on; it was the pain in the
morning that I’d begun to dread, especially that first agonising
moment after taking them off. I tried not to think of it as Mam
tucked me in with her kind, rosy face, leaving me the water and the
biscuit that Leighton would come and steal in the morning. She put
out my light and left me lying in the dark where I tried not to
think about tomorrow.
I expected,
as I always did, that I would probably visit somewhere interesting
on my way to sleep, but I was most confused in my half-slumber to
find myself staring directly at Doctor Bickerstaff’s movie star
face. It took me a while to realise that I was looking into a
mirror, at which point the horror set in. I was in his head.
Bickerstaff was looking at himself in the polished mirror of a very
pokey little bathroom with grey tiled walls. His blue eyes were
bloodshot in the harsh light from the unshaded bulb and his chin
had a dark, stubbly shadow growing on it.
It was
strange enough seeing him in his navy pyjamas, but as the doctor
started to brush his teeth it was the strength of his emotions that
disturbed me the most. He had a very peculiar feeling hanging about
him; he kept stopping in his night time routine to stare at his
face again in the mirror, like there was something about his look
that troubled him deeply. It was like that feeling when someone
takes the last cake off the plate just before you go to grab it,
except that it consumed him completely. He was Leighton when he’d
finished a particularly good dessert, staring at the empty bowl. He
was me when I watched people dancing at a fete, feeling the cold
metal of my chair against my useless legs.
Bickerstaff
wound his way to a small, single bed with starchy sheets, into
which he climbed with that awful feeling still weighing down his
chest. He checked his watch before he flicked off the light, but in
the darkness of his small bedroom he was just laid there staring at
the ceiling. I had been to some depressing minds during my
dreamtime visits, but there was something different about his.
Perhaps it was just because I knew him that it was all so awkward.
Perhaps someone somewhere was trying to teach me to hate him a
little bit less.
But he didn’t
have to sleep with dirty great slabs of wood strapped to his limbs
that bruised him all night as his joints resisted them. Aside from
whatever thought was troubling his mind, his body lay healthily and
comfortably in his crisp little bed. As my own sour thought
overtook his deepening sadness, I felt a cold shiver travel through
me. It seemed to travel through him as well, making him shift onto
his side. Bickerstaff finally closed his eyes and soon we were both
asleep.
***
I thought I
could have done without the creepy and depressing experience of
being inside Doctor Bickerstaff’s head, but when I went to my
appointment the next day I was surprised by how much less
intimidating he seemed after my little excursion. When he wheeled
me briskly to his room I cared nothing for his smug, sharp-suited
façade; I rather thought he must have noticed because he even gave
me a curious smile when he took his place opposite me next to the
desk.
almost laughed, haughty and oblivious to the source of my
amusement.
learned then, is a very fragile thing. My sense of superiority
flooded away as I remembered the embarrassing display from the last
time the doctor had ordered me onto my feet. I thought about
refusing to do it, but I had an idea that Bickerstaff was stubborn
enough to just keep me there until I did as I was told.
surprise he stood up after that and crossed the small gap between
us, waiting patiently for my upheaval. Dragging my torso up by the
strength of my elbows was just as painful as the last time I had
tried it; I felt the familiar burning of the strain as flames of
pain seared up and down my arms. I persevered, shifting myself
forward forcefully onto my unsteady legs as I had before.
For the
briefest of moments, I thought I had done it. I was standing. But
it was just a few seconds of false hope, and this time as my knees
gave way the doctor at least had the courtesy to catch me around
the waist and drop me back into my chair. I felt the red flush of
defeat in my cheeks, turning my face away from him and chiding
myself for my own stupidity. I don’t know why I thought I could win
against him, because every time I fell back into that chair I had
lost. And I would always fall back into the chair.
Bickerstaff
was writing in his file when I dared to look again. At least I had
stopped myself from crying this time. His pen raced across the page
he was turned to.
to resist answering him back. There were a lot of things about my
body that I thought ought to be different; I didn’t need him
pointing them out one by one like they were easy things to fix. No
matter how troubled the doctor was in private, at least he could
hide it behind his smart suit and smug face. I was troubled for all
to see and pity me for it, and so long as I was stuck in this chair
that fact was not going to change.
***
The first few
months of life at Ty Gwyn turned into a drab but comforting routine
from there on in. I devoted about a quarter of my free time to
Doctor Bickerstaff’s rotten exercises and my mobility in the chair
grew inch by inch until I could wheel from my bedroom door to the
edge of the bed unaided. It was about three feet, which was not
much use to me or anyone else, but it was enough to shut the rotten
doctor up, which meant I had the other three quarters of my time
left to train my other, far more important skill.
I went to
school with Leighton many times, mentally of course, but his
lessons in the winter term were simple things that I had learned
years ago and I grew tired of sitting in his mind listening in. I
tried to visit Mum’s mind plenty more times as the weeks went on,
but the psychic journey to London gave me unrelenting headaches for
hours after a trip. The headaches did get less the more carefully I
focused on the connection between us, but in all truth her growing
sense of guilt for our welfare and fears about the war made it hard
to stay in her mind for very long.
With my two
usual avenues of practice fast becoming useless, I decided that a
few other targets around me would be a better use of my time. I
deliberately avoided Doctor Bickerstaff for fear that his
depression might be catching, but if I could get into his head from
over the hill then the inhabitants of Ty Gwyn’s farmlands were
surely within my grasp. Ness Fach was easy to find; one thought of
her huge blue eyes and I was there with her rolling in the stiff
winter grass and flinging Dolly across the mud. I was there when
her Bampi picked her up by the ankle and told her it was too cold
to play outside. I watched the upside down world full of her
giggling joy as she was transported back into the house.
I tried
Blodwyn a few times before I actually got her, my own eagerness to
see what little miss perfect got up to in her spare time making me
all the more determined. I wasn’t surprised to find that she was
just as shallow in private as she was in public. Blod spent most of
her free time doing and re-doing her hair into different styles
from her magazine, trying on clothes and practising dance steps to
the radio in her bedroom. I also learned through these little trips
that the young farm boys Idrys had taken on for the winter were
throwing love letters into her window attached to little stones.
She laughed at them all, the boys were only about my age, and wrote
things back like ‘No chance mochyn’ and ‘When you start to shave,
we’ll see’.
I’d be lying
to say I didn’t envy the attention; the farm boys treated me like a
leper at worst and a statue at best, either way I was something to
be avoided. But then what chance did I have with a newly-adult
Celtic goddess flouncing about the place? The only thing that
really surprised me about Blod was that she was, sometimes,
actually nice to her sister. In the public parts of the house and
when she was doing her chores, Ness was just constantly in Blod’s
way and consequently was always being shouted at. But when Blod was
upstairs having a break Ness quite often wandered into her room
uninvited. The first time it happened I expected to feel Blod hit
the roof and order the little wanderer out forthwith. But despite
the huge age gap between them, Blod was actually quite a good
sister when she thought no-one could see. She let Ness put some of
her make-up on and let her bounce on her bed to the radio tunes.
Sometimes she even sat and talked to her.
When those
moments happened I let her mind go, too jealous of the sisterly
bond to stay and listen in. I had Leighton, of course, but it
wasn’t the same. And girl chat made me think of Mum too, for that
matter. I had noticed a strange thing on that score whilst I was
practising my visits. Out of any of the new minds that I had tried
to reach in Bryn Eira Bach, none of them gave me the splitting
headaches that I got from reaching Mum in London. I was tired
certainly, after every encounter, but there was never so much pain
as when I took my mind to hers. I pondered if it could be the
distance between us that hurt so much, but the visits I made in
half-sleep took me to all sorts of places much farther than London
and I never woke up crying from those.
***
keen to meet RAF Flight Sergeant Clive Price, so when they arrived
on the morning of Christmas Eve I gave it my best effort to wheel
myself out into the hall before anyone had to fetch me. I was so
successful that Mam tripped over me when she came out to wait by
the door herself, but she was good natured enough to congratulate
me on the effort all the same.
grumbled, contorting her pretty face into a dramatic frown. She
gave me a nasty look and put her hands on her hips.
“
What have you got a face on for?” she demanded.
honesty since I didn’t actually care what Blod thought of me.
“
I really hate that doctor,” I answered bitterly.
queen cracked a little smile on her made-up lips. She came round me
to grab the handles of my chair, letting out a little laugh.
“
Well that’s one thing we have in common,” she
observed.
myself a little happier too. We had bonded, if only for a moment.
Nevertheless, Blod pushed me over every large or jagged cobble she
could find as we made our way home.
Thursday night that I started to worry about the appointment.
During the week I kept telling myself that if I practised with the
chair I’d improve, but as Friday drew nearer and nearer I had
managed only two inches of distance before it felt as though my
shoulders had been ripped from my body like a ragdoll caught in a
bulldog’s teeth. I had to tell myself firmly that any distance was
better than no distance and if that didn’t impress Doctor
Bickerstaff then he could lump it for all I cared. I wasn’t sure if
I’d be brave enough to tell him that to his face, but I supposed
that when the time came to challenge him I’d find out.
That was how
I came to be thinking about him at bedtime, most especially when
Mam strapped my arms and legs into the torturous splints that were
slowly turning my joints a regal shade of purple. I had gotten used
to sleeping with them as the nights wore on; it was the pain in the
morning that I’d begun to dread, especially that first agonising
moment after taking them off. I tried not to think of it as Mam
tucked me in with her kind, rosy face, leaving me the water and the
biscuit that Leighton would come and steal in the morning. She put
out my light and left me lying in the dark where I tried not to
think about tomorrow.
I expected,
as I always did, that I would probably visit somewhere interesting
on my way to sleep, but I was most confused in my half-slumber to
find myself staring directly at Doctor Bickerstaff’s movie star
face. It took me a while to realise that I was looking into a
mirror, at which point the horror set in. I was in his head.
Bickerstaff was looking at himself in the polished mirror of a very
pokey little bathroom with grey tiled walls. His blue eyes were
bloodshot in the harsh light from the unshaded bulb and his chin
had a dark, stubbly shadow growing on it.
It was
strange enough seeing him in his navy pyjamas, but as the doctor
started to brush his teeth it was the strength of his emotions that
disturbed me the most. He had a very peculiar feeling hanging about
him; he kept stopping in his night time routine to stare at his
face again in the mirror, like there was something about his look
that troubled him deeply. It was like that feeling when someone
takes the last cake off the plate just before you go to grab it,
except that it consumed him completely. He was Leighton when he’d
finished a particularly good dessert, staring at the empty bowl. He
was me when I watched people dancing at a fete, feeling the cold
metal of my chair against my useless legs.
Bickerstaff
wound his way to a small, single bed with starchy sheets, into
which he climbed with that awful feeling still weighing down his
chest. He checked his watch before he flicked off the light, but in
the darkness of his small bedroom he was just laid there staring at
the ceiling. I had been to some depressing minds during my
dreamtime visits, but there was something different about his.
Perhaps it was just because I knew him that it was all so awkward.
Perhaps someone somewhere was trying to teach me to hate him a
little bit less.
But he didn’t
have to sleep with dirty great slabs of wood strapped to his limbs
that bruised him all night as his joints resisted them. Aside from
whatever thought was troubling his mind, his body lay healthily and
comfortably in his crisp little bed. As my own sour thought
overtook his deepening sadness, I felt a cold shiver travel through
me. It seemed to travel through him as well, making him shift onto
his side. Bickerstaff finally closed his eyes and soon we were both
asleep.
***
I thought I
could have done without the creepy and depressing experience of
being inside Doctor Bickerstaff’s head, but when I went to my
appointment the next day I was surprised by how much less
intimidating he seemed after my little excursion. When he wheeled
me briskly to his room I cared nothing for his smug, sharp-suited
façade; I rather thought he must have noticed because he even gave
me a curious smile when he took his place opposite me next to the
desk.
“
You seem very relaxed Catherine,” he observed.
“
I really do prefer to be called Kit, if you think you can
manage it,” I answered. It seemed the sight of him, depressed and
alone in his navy pyjamas, had done wonders for my
confidence.
almost laughed, haughty and oblivious to the source of my
amusement.
“
I do hope you’ll be putting this newfound spirit of yours
into your treatment,” he said in his schoolmaster tone.
“
We’ll see,” was my reply.
“
I’d like you to try and stand again,” he said.
learned then, is a very fragile thing. My sense of superiority
flooded away as I remembered the embarrassing display from the last
time the doctor had ordered me onto my feet. I thought about
refusing to do it, but I had an idea that Bickerstaff was stubborn
enough to just keep me there until I did as I was told.
“
Do you enjoy seeing me fall over then?” I asked, gripping the
arms of my chair as I forced my feet to find the lino
floor.
“
Not as much as you think I do,” he answered. I was annoyed
that it wasn’t a clear ‘No’.
surprise he stood up after that and crossed the small gap between
us, waiting patiently for my upheaval. Dragging my torso up by the
strength of my elbows was just as painful as the last time I had
tried it; I felt the familiar burning of the strain as flames of
pain seared up and down my arms. I persevered, shifting myself
forward forcefully onto my unsteady legs as I had before.
For the
briefest of moments, I thought I had done it. I was standing. But
it was just a few seconds of false hope, and this time as my knees
gave way the doctor at least had the courtesy to catch me around
the waist and drop me back into my chair. I felt the red flush of
defeat in my cheeks, turning my face away from him and chiding
myself for my own stupidity. I don’t know why I thought I could win
against him, because every time I fell back into that chair I had
lost. And I would always fall back into the chair.
Bickerstaff
was writing in his file when I dared to look again. At least I had
stopped myself from crying this time. His pen raced across the page
he was turned to.
“
You’re not practising moving around enough,” he said without
looking up from the page, “Your elbows ought to be
stronger.”
to resist answering him back. There were a lot of things about my
body that I thought ought to be different; I didn’t need him
pointing them out one by one like they were easy things to fix. No
matter how troubled the doctor was in private, at least he could
hide it behind his smart suit and smug face. I was troubled for all
to see and pity me for it, and so long as I was stuck in this chair
that fact was not going to change.
***
The first few
months of life at Ty Gwyn turned into a drab but comforting routine
from there on in. I devoted about a quarter of my free time to
Doctor Bickerstaff’s rotten exercises and my mobility in the chair
grew inch by inch until I could wheel from my bedroom door to the
edge of the bed unaided. It was about three feet, which was not
much use to me or anyone else, but it was enough to shut the rotten
doctor up, which meant I had the other three quarters of my time
left to train my other, far more important skill.
I went to
school with Leighton many times, mentally of course, but his
lessons in the winter term were simple things that I had learned
years ago and I grew tired of sitting in his mind listening in. I
tried to visit Mum’s mind plenty more times as the weeks went on,
but the psychic journey to London gave me unrelenting headaches for
hours after a trip. The headaches did get less the more carefully I
focused on the connection between us, but in all truth her growing
sense of guilt for our welfare and fears about the war made it hard
to stay in her mind for very long.
With my two
usual avenues of practice fast becoming useless, I decided that a
few other targets around me would be a better use of my time. I
deliberately avoided Doctor Bickerstaff for fear that his
depression might be catching, but if I could get into his head from
over the hill then the inhabitants of Ty Gwyn’s farmlands were
surely within my grasp. Ness Fach was easy to find; one thought of
her huge blue eyes and I was there with her rolling in the stiff
winter grass and flinging Dolly across the mud. I was there when
her Bampi picked her up by the ankle and told her it was too cold
to play outside. I watched the upside down world full of her
giggling joy as she was transported back into the house.
I tried
Blodwyn a few times before I actually got her, my own eagerness to
see what little miss perfect got up to in her spare time making me
all the more determined. I wasn’t surprised to find that she was
just as shallow in private as she was in public. Blod spent most of
her free time doing and re-doing her hair into different styles
from her magazine, trying on clothes and practising dance steps to
the radio in her bedroom. I also learned through these little trips
that the young farm boys Idrys had taken on for the winter were
throwing love letters into her window attached to little stones.
She laughed at them all, the boys were only about my age, and wrote
things back like ‘No chance mochyn’ and ‘When you start to shave,
we’ll see’.
I’d be lying
to say I didn’t envy the attention; the farm boys treated me like a
leper at worst and a statue at best, either way I was something to
be avoided. But then what chance did I have with a newly-adult
Celtic goddess flouncing about the place? The only thing that
really surprised me about Blod was that she was, sometimes,
actually nice to her sister. In the public parts of the house and
when she was doing her chores, Ness was just constantly in Blod’s
way and consequently was always being shouted at. But when Blod was
upstairs having a break Ness quite often wandered into her room
uninvited. The first time it happened I expected to feel Blod hit
the roof and order the little wanderer out forthwith. But despite
the huge age gap between them, Blod was actually quite a good
sister when she thought no-one could see. She let Ness put some of
her make-up on and let her bounce on her bed to the radio tunes.
Sometimes she even sat and talked to her.
When those
moments happened I let her mind go, too jealous of the sisterly
bond to stay and listen in. I had Leighton, of course, but it
wasn’t the same. And girl chat made me think of Mum too, for that
matter. I had noticed a strange thing on that score whilst I was
practising my visits. Out of any of the new minds that I had tried
to reach in Bryn Eira Bach, none of them gave me the splitting
headaches that I got from reaching Mum in London. I was tired
certainly, after every encounter, but there was never so much pain
as when I took my mind to hers. I pondered if it could be the
distance between us that hurt so much, but the visits I made in
half-sleep took me to all sorts of places much farther than London
and I never woke up crying from those.
***
By the time the snow set in and Christmas loomed on the
horizon, I felt I was ready for some serious new challenges. Mam
had given me a few little chores to do in the house as my arms grew
stronger, just polishing things or peeling vegetables before
dinner, but I still had more time alone in December than I knew
what to do with. Once Leighton was off school things were better
and there were no shortage of preparations to be made for a Price
family Christmas. Things went especially mad on the
22
nd
when Mam received a telegram delivered from the village post
office.
“
Clive and the boys are coming home for Christmas
dinner!”
keen to meet RAF Flight Sergeant Clive Price, so when they arrived
on the morning of Christmas Eve I gave it my best effort to wheel
myself out into the hall before anyone had to fetch me. I was so
successful that Mam tripped over me when she came out to wait by
the door herself, but she was good natured enough to congratulate
me on the effort all the same.
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