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Authors: Michael Kelly
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problem.”
The treatment chair reminds him of the dentist (a sharp psychosomatic stab in a back molar) but he takes his seat. As the optician materializes behind him and swiftly positions the chin and head rests, the auteur thinks of a film he once made: the head of a knight encased in a helmet.
“I just need you to sit very still, eyes wide open, look this way.”
He grasps the horizontal bars. A puff of air in each eye. The beam of a torch and then the test card appears in the wall mirror. One lens is exchanged for another until the letters start to clarify. He reads the top two lines only. A change, much sharper now, AXO TVH and then—quite clearly—SEX.
The woman who gets off the bus dresses with an eloquent simplicity unusual for the area. Her skirt and blouse are a vibrant blue. In the midst of shoppers in shades of milk chocolate, grey and mouse-brown she has the electric plumage of an American jay in a garden of house sparrows. She was seen in the lobbies of Parisian hotels. If it were not for her tinted glasses, we might recognize the eyes that once stared at us from the back covers of magazines (
Vogue
,
Tatler
)
.
Her blonde hair touches her shoulders and is cut straight across her forehead. And she wears a loose silk scarf (perhaps Jaeger or Hermes) with a blue and yellow pattern. Her shoulder bag has the sheen of soft Italian leather bought in Milan.
She walks quickly, ignoring the outstretched hand of the beggar in khaki trousers (army surplus) squatting on a rug outside the supermarket. At first she appears to be heading past the pawnbrokers, the snooker hall and the curry house towards the
patisserie
on the corner, with its display of baked bread in the window, its coffee shop and small courtyard garden: the one place redolent of France in a suburb of chain shops,
halal
butchers, convenience stores, moneylenders, estate agents and one laundrette that smells of hot metal, washing powder and Saharan-dry heat. But without pausing to look at the baskets filled with almond croissants and
pain-au-chocolat,
she makes her way past the chairs on the pavement. One man looks up from his newspaper and knows in an instant the damage done to the perfectly symmetrical features: the hairline cracks beneath the repaired porcelain skin, the brittle lips that threaten breakdown and grief. And then she turns down a side street.
Now that she is away from the crowds, her pace slows, and once she halts and rummages in her shoulder bag. Beneath her dress is a slim white body that appeared naked in a film made in Paris. An art house movie directed by her uncle. Every night and every morning when she steps into the shower, she returns to a scene in the film when she showered with a camera on her side of the curtain. But now she is thinking of a building with a flat roof and three shops, a florist’s that sells red flowers only on Tuesdays, an empty room that was formerly filled with brochures for holidays abroad , and an optician’s. She knows that if she maintains her pace she will reach her destination in under two minutes. As she is moving more slowly, it is easier to see the streaks of silver in her blonde hair. But there is no one else in the street to observe this. In spite of the heat, the thick green foliage of the trees lining the pavement suggests the dampness of the winter months has yet to be entirely dissipated. The refuse is to be collected today and the front gate of every house has at least one squat black sentry with a topknot on guard next to a wheelie-bin.
She catches sight of the yellow skip and the pile of pink bricks ahead of her and knows there’s not much further to go; and indeed it is not long before she opens the door of the optician’s (the bell gives its priestly tinkle) and walks over to the reception desk. Although there is no one there, a spectacle case, with a rubber band wrapped around it, is waiting for her. This she slips into her shoulder bag and turns to leave. But before she reaches
The treatment chair reminds him of the dentist (a sharp psychosomatic stab in a back molar) but he takes his seat. As the optician materializes behind him and swiftly positions the chin and head rests, the auteur thinks of a film he once made: the head of a knight encased in a helmet.
“I just need you to sit very still, eyes wide open, look this way.”
He grasps the horizontal bars. A puff of air in each eye. The beam of a torch and then the test card appears in the wall mirror. One lens is exchanged for another until the letters start to clarify. He reads the top two lines only. A change, much sharper now, AXO TVH and then—quite clearly—SEX.
The woman who gets off the bus dresses with an eloquent simplicity unusual for the area. Her skirt and blouse are a vibrant blue. In the midst of shoppers in shades of milk chocolate, grey and mouse-brown she has the electric plumage of an American jay in a garden of house sparrows. She was seen in the lobbies of Parisian hotels. If it were not for her tinted glasses, we might recognize the eyes that once stared at us from the back covers of magazines (
Vogue
,
Tatler
)
.
Her blonde hair touches her shoulders and is cut straight across her forehead. And she wears a loose silk scarf (perhaps Jaeger or Hermes) with a blue and yellow pattern. Her shoulder bag has the sheen of soft Italian leather bought in Milan.
She walks quickly, ignoring the outstretched hand of the beggar in khaki trousers (army surplus) squatting on a rug outside the supermarket. At first she appears to be heading past the pawnbrokers, the snooker hall and the curry house towards the
patisserie
on the corner, with its display of baked bread in the window, its coffee shop and small courtyard garden: the one place redolent of France in a suburb of chain shops,
halal
butchers, convenience stores, moneylenders, estate agents and one laundrette that smells of hot metal, washing powder and Saharan-dry heat. But without pausing to look at the baskets filled with almond croissants and
pain-au-chocolat,
she makes her way past the chairs on the pavement. One man looks up from his newspaper and knows in an instant the damage done to the perfectly symmetrical features: the hairline cracks beneath the repaired porcelain skin, the brittle lips that threaten breakdown and grief. And then she turns down a side street.
Now that she is away from the crowds, her pace slows, and once she halts and rummages in her shoulder bag. Beneath her dress is a slim white body that appeared naked in a film made in Paris. An art house movie directed by her uncle. Every night and every morning when she steps into the shower, she returns to a scene in the film when she showered with a camera on her side of the curtain. But now she is thinking of a building with a flat roof and three shops, a florist’s that sells red flowers only on Tuesdays, an empty room that was formerly filled with brochures for holidays abroad , and an optician’s. She knows that if she maintains her pace she will reach her destination in under two minutes. As she is moving more slowly, it is easier to see the streaks of silver in her blonde hair. But there is no one else in the street to observe this. In spite of the heat, the thick green foliage of the trees lining the pavement suggests the dampness of the winter months has yet to be entirely dissipated. The refuse is to be collected today and the front gate of every house has at least one squat black sentry with a topknot on guard next to a wheelie-bin.
She catches sight of the yellow skip and the pile of pink bricks ahead of her and knows there’s not much further to go; and indeed it is not long before she opens the door of the optician’s (the bell gives its priestly tinkle) and walks over to the reception desk. Although there is no one there, a spectacle case, with a rubber band wrapped around it, is waiting for her. This she slips into her shoulder bag and turns to leave. But before she reaches
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