he had adapted to living in darkness? Inner light at least was more vivid, though power beyond his understanding wasn’t always what he wanted, and he would willingly have traded it for an occasional glimpse of street or seashore. Maybe people thought he had an ideal life in that his affliction would allow no other cares to gall him but, whatever mixture of guilt, fear or envy it might be, how could such deadly sins matter if a kindly action resulted?
She released her hand. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘You’ve been very kind.’ To sit over a cup of coffee with her would make a memorable day. ‘Off to do your shopping are you, Janet?’
‘No, I’m going to meet my boyfriend. He works in the arcades, mending the machines.’
‘Thank you, then, and I hope you have a nice day’ – for putting such notions into my head, though better not think so much, unless I want to get run over. Her light and quick footsteps were lost among others, crowding into the High Street, holidaymakers, mostly, out from boarding houses and hotels, or walking down from the station.
A poor kid got smacked for craving an ice-cream. There was a double stretch to cross where two streets merged. A dog barked, at what he would never know, but its throat grated, so it was on a lead, giving a shriek of despair at some minor loss, dragged from a rancid smell perhaps, or begrudged a tailwag with a possible companion. He stood, and laughed, dryly and alone, in tune with the animal’s moans of commiseration as it passed the pet shop.
The studs of the crossing made a wide enough runway, and the baker’s smell on the other side was a beam to draw him over. Ten times more traffic than forty years ago. A car stopped at seeing him, a big one this, station wagon maybe, certainly not a Mini. Here goes, and he went, a lift of his stick to the motorist, who pipped his horn – a vocal handshake. Another car stopped, this time small, all considerations shown, though he was glad to tap the lip of the kerb: the one-engined blind old kite had landed, the beam approach of studs and smell had worked, flying control had rolled out its expertise, just how he liked it.
Ozone caressed his nostrils from the one unmistakable direction, an endless horizon of green and blue, duck-egg blue maybe, a touch of turquoise, and the odd high cumulus above the line. A sail now and again might speck the water, anything from white to orange, though the fishing boats were already long back from their night’s work. He could smell that, too, another odour of eternal life, healthy as well, as he crunched over shingle and picked up the tang of tar from the tall huts called tackle boxes in which nets were hung to dry.
So it was easy, as always, to know where he was among the radar of aromas, familiar from years of living in the same place, gratifying that in nil visibility he could make his way at a sure pace to where he wanted to go. From rightwards came the shrill calls of children living out their lives on the boating lake and in the paddling pool, and the muted clank of the miniature railway making its slow way up and down, all sounds providing cross bearings to his navigation system, perfect cocked hats to fix his location from the constant rush of traffic behind.
At this point, between the huts and the broken concrete pier, he always thought of when Laura had led him here for the first time. Every day it came to him, as if there had been little progress in their lives since. Hands firmly held, he had smelled the tears before they came to her eyes, on him remarking that he could taste the salt water turning into spray from the sullen waves falling line by line onto the stones. A common observation, not one to make her cry, he would have thought, but she hurried him back up to the house, as if she found it too painful to be seen walking out with him, husband and wife at twenty-two, not a word from her on the ascent. Halfway, he assumed it was because of the summer rain that fell in plates and drenched them after a few yards.
Once in the door she put his stick away. He saw her as the young girl she was, how she threw the stick rather, though in those days people weren’t counted as young at such an age. The stick flew at the wall and bounced. She took off his saturated jacket and waistcoat, and sat him down, breathless from the climb though he was not, but he felt a light before his eyes as if about to get his sight back. She played Elgar’s Enigma Variations on the radiogram. He’d often told her how much he liked it, so she’d gone out the day before to get the records for his birthday, not for another month.
He heard the angry crash of the curtains sliding to, then – silence but for the duet of their breathing. She put on one of the records to hide whatever devastating emotion still blighted from the beach. ‘This is for you, darling’ pulling him roughly to his feet. ‘Only for you.’ Salt tears again, as they listened and held each other, mixing with his to run down both faces, an amalgam of happiness as much as despair for a plight that would lock more firmly than any marriage.
He couldn’t talk, blocked at the throat, a dumb tongue adding to his blindness. She had brought the records as a surprise, and the colours of music flared and expanded across white space, lighting every dark corner, his heart buffeted by the sweet strong music. Neither could she talk, didn’t want to, pulled and pushed, kisses of possessive disregard for that one time which her love had to go through, noises meeting with his, no words possible, a dull erotic burning conquering them both, taking them away from house and seascape and the downs behind. Each other’s clothes were clawed off, too hot in their passion to wait, that must have been it, they fell onto the carpet wailing and lost in a maelstrom of despair and pleasure that even now they hadn’t fully learned to separate, while knowing they had been made for each other even before birth.
More than thirty years ago. Kids, they might be called. He tapped a bigger stone than most, pushed a hump of seawrack out of the way. That’s what we were, yet it was all so dammed lucid still, and why did it come back every time he stood on this spot, the anchor stone of his life, and hers as well? Little more than twenty, how grown up we felt, and were, as if we’d lived a whole life already; and had, because there’d been no more since, not knowing we were set for an eternity of same days.
A gull came close, painted him with a rush of air from wing tips, slicing away the mark of Cain perhaps, or to stick two good eyes back beneath his lids as a gift from the gods, though even one would do. He envied Polyphemus at times and, hearing Laura’s divine and measured voice as evening by evening she read through the Odyssey from the other side of the fireplace, cursed the brutal Odysseus for taking a burning fire brand to gouge out that one sensitive solitary eye, while supposing he would have done the same to save his friends.
He swung his stick in case another curious gull thought him a piece of rock. Memories had ossified in him, since he’d stopped having them from the age of twenty. Cloud hid the sun, cooling the air, senses sharp enough to pick out the arrowing sloosh of incoming tide driving between the two halves of the broken harbour pier. The past was nagging even more than usual today. When he first met Laura at the station dance he’d seen her as a young rather severe girl, white blouse fastened to the neck, brown cardigan open to show her shape. She smelled sweet, hair freshened by shampoo. His aircrew insignia and sergeant’s stripes were newly sewn on, and he felt second to none, though slightly drunk from the cider.
They went around in the quickstep, and he knew it was polite to talk: ‘Would you like me to be your cavalier?’ Before she could answer he went on, pell mell to obliterate such a daft beginning: ‘Now there’s a remark to strike you, or it will when you wonder in the future how we first met.’
Nor had he ever needed to wonder, but why had he blathered such triteness when not really believing there could be any hope?
He had been blessedly wrong. She didn’t laugh or scorn. ‘Yes, you can be my cavalier.’
She had waited for him night after night to come back from raids, and then he returned a different person to the one who had set out, but in the hospital she took his hand and, through the confusion of his darkness, said once more that he would be her cavalier, forever.
