the dummy, nappy and pin, the hundred little things of a baby’s days and nights. These sights were stored in my infant brain somewhere, but are atrophied through neglect. I cannot apprehend how they looked, what looking was like, how seeing will be. I have talked with Lottie many times about colour and still do not understand it. She helps me by linking colours to other things I know, thus white is clean and black is dirty. But I have great difficulty accepting that a white shirt can become grubby when rubbed in mud, or that a blackbird’s wings can be smooth and speck-free. I feel an object and hold it up to my eyes, try to see myself seeing it, but I cannot imagine comprehending an object through anything but the feel of it, the shape, the weight, the texture and the space it inhabits. Does all this also come through sight, or is it something so different it cannot be conceptualised, as different from touch as smell is? Another country, another language, another arena of sensation? I ache for it. I open my eyes wide and strain to see, to make it happen myself. And all the while, this corkscrew dread, that it will never happen, that the hope will fizzle like spit on a hand iron.
One day, Father brings me a letter from the doctor. He reads it to me: ‘Adeliza Golding is requested to attend at the London offices of Dr Lucius Knapp for an operation of cataract removal, the sixteenth day of October, 1895.’
‘I will be twelve years old by then.’
‘Old enough,’ says Father.
Mother packs a bag for me. She puts in all my nightdresses, as I am to stay in the doctor’s house for the first two to three weeks, or until I am able to travel. Then I will be brought home all the way in a coach and recuperate in my own bed.
‘The doctor must ask us for a fee. And the coach will be very expensive,’ I say to Mother. ‘Where will we find the money to pay?’
I know we are quite well-to-do. I know we are richer by far than Lottie’s family, that we have a large house, fine belongings and land. But we are not aristocrats. And Father always says hop farming is where fortunes are made and lost.
‘Do not worry,’ says Mother. ‘It is all in hand.’
But Mother knows nothing of such things.
I ask Father, ‘Where is the money for the doctor and the coach? Do we sell enough hops for these? Will we go hungry?’
‘We do very well. These past few years we have had high yields and neither the mould nor the flea, and prices are good nowadays. We can pay for the coach. But, very kindly, Dr Knapp has offered to do your operation for free.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he knows you need it and he is a good man. Some people would call him a philanthropist, which is a person who acts kindly towards others for no reward.’
‘Are there such people in the world?’
‘Yes, and Dr Knapp is one of them. Also he is very interested in your eyes and your being deaf. He wants to study you. So he is getting something out of it too, to satisfy his scientific interest.’
‘I am a very interesting person,’ I say. And in this way, we resolve it.
We take the train, as before. A dizzying collection of Visitors calls to me from the streets of London: here a lost boy crying, a young woman with a baby who will not feed, an elderly lady who cannot find her hat with the little birds on it, a man who says the omnibus company must pay, must pay, it is not safe. I realise that after the operation, my eyes will be covered for weeks, and I will not be able to sense the Visitors. I wonder if I will miss them.
When I arrive, I am settled in a bedroom upstairs at Dr Knapp’s house and Lottie helps me change into a nightdress. A nurse comes to show us to the operating room. We meet Father in the hallway.
‘My brave girl,’ he says. I reach to touch his face but he stops me. I insist and feel his wet cheeks.
‘I will be well,’ I say.
He tells me he has to wait outside, as they cannot have too many people in the room. But they
One day, Father brings me a letter from the doctor. He reads it to me: ‘Adeliza Golding is requested to attend at the London offices of Dr Lucius Knapp for an operation of cataract removal, the sixteenth day of October, 1895.’
‘I will be twelve years old by then.’
‘Old enough,’ says Father.
Mother packs a bag for me. She puts in all my nightdresses, as I am to stay in the doctor’s house for the first two to three weeks, or until I am able to travel. Then I will be brought home all the way in a coach and recuperate in my own bed.
‘The doctor must ask us for a fee. And the coach will be very expensive,’ I say to Mother. ‘Where will we find the money to pay?’
I know we are quite well-to-do. I know we are richer by far than Lottie’s family, that we have a large house, fine belongings and land. But we are not aristocrats. And Father always says hop farming is where fortunes are made and lost.
‘Do not worry,’ says Mother. ‘It is all in hand.’
But Mother knows nothing of such things.
I ask Father, ‘Where is the money for the doctor and the coach? Do we sell enough hops for these? Will we go hungry?’
‘We do very well. These past few years we have had high yields and neither the mould nor the flea, and prices are good nowadays. We can pay for the coach. But, very kindly, Dr Knapp has offered to do your operation for free.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he knows you need it and he is a good man. Some people would call him a philanthropist, which is a person who acts kindly towards others for no reward.’
‘Are there such people in the world?’
‘Yes, and Dr Knapp is one of them. Also he is very interested in your eyes and your being deaf. He wants to study you. So he is getting something out of it too, to satisfy his scientific interest.’
‘I am a very interesting person,’ I say. And in this way, we resolve it.
We take the train, as before. A dizzying collection of Visitors calls to me from the streets of London: here a lost boy crying, a young woman with a baby who will not feed, an elderly lady who cannot find her hat with the little birds on it, a man who says the omnibus company must pay, must pay, it is not safe. I realise that after the operation, my eyes will be covered for weeks, and I will not be able to sense the Visitors. I wonder if I will miss them.
When I arrive, I am settled in a bedroom upstairs at Dr Knapp’s house and Lottie helps me change into a nightdress. A nurse comes to show us to the operating room. We meet Father in the hallway.
‘My brave girl,’ he says. I reach to touch his face but he stops me. I insist and feel his wet cheeks.
‘I will be well,’ I say.
He tells me he has to wait outside, as they cannot have too many people in the room. But they
Similar Books
