Read The Visitors Online

Authors: Rebecca Mascull

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Ghost, #Romance, #General, #Action & Adventure, #Horror

The Visitors (6 page)

BOOK: The Visitors
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I am most looking forward to our railway picnic devised by Cook to be eaten on the train. Almost as soon as we are seated, I ask Lottie if we can eat. We have potted cheese, pickled gherkins, cress sandwiches and cold tongue, with ginger beer to swill it all down. I imagine our other passengers must be very envious, so I ask Lottie to offer them some, but she says they decline. I cannot think why. Perhaps they have their own hamper.

One of them opens the window and I beg Father to be allowed to put my head out. He agrees, but says I must not lean out too far, just as far as my rosy cheeks. He holds firmly on to my waist. I cannot think the door will fly open but he is being very careful. It is my first time away from home, after all. I can feel that the window slides down and I want it open further as I can only just reach my nose above it. Father shows me the leather strap to slide it down and now I can tilt forward. The wind rushes against my face and makes my eyes water. I shut them tight. When I open them again there are three new Visitors all talking at once. One says he works on the railways but cannot find his train. I perceive a colossal blast from the front of the train and the camber of the track changes, the rushing wind is gone and I feel crowded. A Visitor calls to me, says,
Watch out, miss!
I pull back in and Father tells me the train has entered a tunnel. As we rush out of the other end, I put my head out again. The train describes a sharp inward bend in the line and the steam buffets me as it is blown towards us from the engine. Tiny bits of stuff are flung into my eyes. I jam my fists in to rub them. Father pulls me inside and tells me my face is a mess of soot. I did not know steam was so dirty. Lottie is dispatched for water and a cloth to clean me up. I must look my best for the doctor.

I sit and commune with the train’s tempo. I speed across the land. I am a traveller. I feel a new Visitor, who says he has been standing on the bridge all day, watching the trains come and go.

I ask him,
What do you see from the bridge?

All the trains. Golly, they’re fast. The fastest thing on land.

Another comes. The railwayman. He was in the tunnel, now he is riding the train with me.

Why were you in the tunnel?

I’m the signalman, miss. A sheep strayed from the field beyond and I came down to shoo it off. We don’t want blood on the tracks, do we?

Where is the sheep?

Gone, miss. Gone.

Lottie touches my hand. ‘Not long now. The conductor is here. He says we shall arrive in London soon.’

I shake hands with the conductor. He has a hole punch for tickets and lets me play with it. He gives me a bit of paper and I make long lines of holes which veer into circles and diamonds. I give it to him as a present. Lottie says he is grinning from ear to ear. I have made many friends on this journey. The train begins to waver and rattle from the driver applying the brakes. We are approaching the station. There is movement up and down the walkway; I can feel people’s feet stumbling along with the train’s halting pulse. As we pull into the station, Father takes my arm and helps me to find the door to the platform. My first train journey is over and I have loved it.

As we descend on to the platform at Victoria station, the stench of too close humanity engulfs me. I have never conceived such a potent concoction of people, bustling and bumping and sharing the same close air and space. As we begin to walk, I know once more that there are dozens of new Visitors waiting to speak with me, but I shut my eyes to dismiss them. It is curious this, that new Visitors come when I travel. I cannot explain it. Something tells me that when I board the train again later to return home, I will leave these behind. I do not understand why, it is just something I know.

I feel the ground shake when a rocketing eruption comes from the train as it lets off steam. Those with ears must suffer. Lottie tells me a porter is asking Father to carry our luggage, but we only have the picnic box and Father shakes his head, saying to Lottie that he will not be forking out money to someone to carry a basket when he can quite easily do it himself. Lottie tells me there is a Nestlé’s chocolate machine but we would need a penny from Father. I know she is shy of asking him, so I stop and take his hand.

‘Can we have some chocolate from the machine?’

‘How did you know about that?’ asks Father.

‘I could smell it.’ It is a white lie. Lottie and I devour the chocolate as we walk along, though Father declines.

I grab his hand. ‘Have some, Father, please!’ But he will not. Something in the quick movements of his wrist tells me that he is anxious. And I remember why we are here in London, not to have picnics or eat chocolate and other adventures. It is to see the eye doctor. I work the melting mass around my teeth as I think about what this doctor wants and why Father is nervous.

Outside Victoria station the air broadens and the rumbling chaos of my first city street assaults my senses. Father is looking for transport to the doctor’s office. I am overwhelmed by the reverberations from the pressing of huge wheels into the road, the clip-clop of a thousand horses’ hooves, the throb of machines all around, the thrum of numberless feet pounding the pavements. You may believe a deaf-blind person is immune to the teeming roar of a city street, but you would be wrong. Our sense of physical awareness is attacked in precisely the same cacophonous way. It is exhilarating and terrifying, exhausting and vital. I feel the dust and grit speckle my skin and inhale smoke and dirt and horse manure and produce of every kind.

‘Tell me everything,’ I press Lottie.

She says the wide road is packed three deep each way with carts, coaches, trams and trolley buses of every description, all drawn by horses clattering by each other with hundreds of near-misses every second. Trams and omnibuses are stuffed with passengers, the upper deck reached by a half-spiral staircase with a rail, topped by mottled crews of men in bowler hats and cloth caps, handlebar moustaches and side whiskers, women with their hair pinned up and wide-brimmed hats furnished with cloth flowers, artificial fruit and masses of feathers. Carts are driven by men and boys with dusty coats and mucky boots, some with blankets across their knees, their goods secured with tarpaulin and rope. A coach and pair of the well-to-do is directed by a coachman and groom riding on the box with a top hat and plume on the side, while cabs have men in bowler hats with a whip. There are two men pushing a board on wheels advertising tea along the edge of the road. The lanes clog at turnings, where two-wheeled hansom cabs and four-wheeled growlers queue quite patiently. Nearby is a stoppage where a horse has slipped on the cobbles and men are placing sacks all around so the horse can regain its footing. Pedestrians negotiate the roads at their peril, old gentlemen with canes and top hats, little messenger boys with cropped trousers and working women with tight-waisted coats dodge in and out of the bustling traffic. But there is a kind of method to it, Lottie says, as everyone seems to know what they are about. And where on earth are they all going? All these individual lives acting out their progress simultaneously in the tumult of the city street, just like Dickens. I dare not open my eyes as I know there are hundreds of Visitors clamouring through this tempest to speak with me and I cannot bear the din.

Father finds a cab and helps me up the one step into the sprung seat inside. I sit between Lottie and Father and we are off, moving into the stream of traffic and bouncing with the trit-trot of our driver’s horse. The rattle of the clanking wheels jostles my bones and jogs me against my companions.

Father finds my hand and asks, ‘What do you think of London?’

‘Noisy!’ I joke.

We dismount in a quieter street, the stiller air punctuated by a coach or cart here and there, but much more subdued and welcome. Lottie tells me it is called Wigmore Place. I did not know streets had names. She says it is a very smart street and there is even a motor car parked at the far end, the first she has ever seen.

‘There must be someone ill nearby,’ Lottie tells me, ‘as the road has been covered with straw to spare their ears.’

We wait to cross the road. Lottie describes an old man with a long beard who is called the crossing-sweeper. She says all along the kerbs are horses and carriages top-to-toe and our man must find a place for us to squeeze through on to the pavement. Lottie says two little boys further up are crawling under a horse’s belly to get across.

We mount five steps and I feel Father rat-a-tat-tat on the door knocker. The door scrapes open and we tread on dense carpet. As we progress down the hall, I flutter my fingers along the wall. Thick wallpaper and heavy curtains absorb the vibrations from outside. We are in a haven of peace from the stormy seas of London.

We enter a room that smells of Brasso and a hand finds me. It is a man’s hand: warm, chubby and good-natured fingers grip my own in a confident handshake and I am at ease. Lottie tells me this is Dr Knapp. He smells of medicines, a minty flavour lingering about him, but its sharp clean lines are comforting. He lets me feel his face, which is fat and jowly with a soft beard and kindly smile. I am led to a chair that has a reclined back and Lottie says I should sit and get comfy. She tells me the doctor wishes to examine my eyes, so I must sit very still and keep them open. I like the brush of his fingertips on my eyebrows and do not mind his attentions. Lottie says he is holding up a succession of instruments to look carefully into each eye. At periods, she asks me to look up, left, right, down and straight ahead. Then a change comes.

‘I can see that,’ I tell Lottie.

He has shone a light into my eyes. I perceive it, as I do the bright sunshine when it shines directly on to my face at noon.

Lottie says, ‘That is good news.’

The examination continues for some time, then Lottie tells me the doctor has thanked me for my patience.

I go to sit down in a chair like those in our dining room at home, flanked by Lottie and Father. The doctor sits opposite me and takes my hand. In it, he places a curious object. I feel it all over. It is a sphere, like the globe, but bumpy and lumpy, and it comes apart into pieces. Lottie feeds me information through my left hand, as my right hand explores the curious thing in my lap. The doctor has given me a model of an eye. Liza tells me the names and they are beautiful: iris, cornea, lens, retina. Then I am asked to leave the room, so that Father and the doctor can talk. But I will not. I want to know everything. I reach for Father’s hand.

‘I want the doctor to explain it to me. Please. I want to understand.’

Father agrees.

Through Lottie, Dr Knapp tells me about my eyes: ‘Your eye lets in light. It travels through the lens. This helps to focus the light on the back of your eye and lets you see clearly. When you were born, you were very short-sighted. We call it high myopia. Your eyeballs were too long. When the light came in, it couldn’t reach the back of the eyes. Your vision developed well as most of a baby’s preserve is seen closely, such as your mother’s face. But your myopia grew worse as you grew older. Then you developed cataracts in both eyes. These make your lenses cloud over. And you lost your vision completely. Both of your problems lie in your lenses, which help you to focus. I can give you an operation that will take the problem away. I can remove your lenses. This will remove the cataracts and change the way light reaches the back of your eye. Other parts of your eye will still be able to focus light for you. If the operation is a success, you will be able to see. You will be able to look at distances quite well. You will need spectacles for reading and close work. But you will be able to see for the first time. You should also understand that there are risks with any operation. You could have an infection afterwards, which could harm or even destroy your eyes. Or make you very ill. In the worst cases, infections can be fatal. But we will do everything we can to stop that from happening. You do not have to have this operation, Adeliza. But it is your best chance to see.’

I cannot believe what I have just heard. I had no idea this was why we had come. I thought we were meeting another associate, another nosy parker to poke and prod and study for their own ends.

I reach for Father’s hand. ‘Why did nobody tell me that the doctor could make me see?’

‘We did not know for sure. The doctor had to examine you first. We did not want to raise your hopes to have them dashed.’

‘Is it really true? Can he make me see?’

‘There are risks. And I am worried about those. You might lose your eyes or become very ill. You might even die. And I cannot bear the thought of it.’

‘I do not want to die.’

‘I know. And I would never put you in harm’s way. But I believe you are old enough now to understand the risks of this. And I believe you have the right to decide your future. If you accept the dangers, and choose to have this operation, I will espouse that decision. Mother feels the same way. And I believe that God wants you to see the wonder of His creation and He will protect you.’

‘Ask the doctor what happens in the operation.’

Lottie narrates: ‘He says you will have special medicine to make your eyes numb, then he will use a very sharp knife to make a small cut in each eye and remove your lenses. Afterwards, you will be bandaged for many days and stay in bed in a dark room. The eyes should heal on their own. When the bandages are removed, we will know if the operation has worked.’

I ask Lottie, ‘What should I do?’

‘It is your decision.’

‘But what would you do?’

‘It is not important what I think.’

‘It is, it is!’

‘What do
you
think, Liza?’

A Visitor says,
Where is the nurse? She said she would bring remedy and it hurts, it hurts.

A creeping fear takes hold of me. I twist my fingers. I do not know what to do. I have never felt the need of counsel more. I think and think. Of the operation, the medicine, the knife. Of the time after in the dark room, of infection and destruction, of the boiling fever when I was two and how I suffered. To go through all that and to make it worse, perhaps become so ill, maybe to die, to die, to die. But to see, to see, to see …

BOOK: The Visitors
12.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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