Passage of the Light

It was as well I was an early and passionate reader, for it helped to solve the problem of buying me presents. I didn’t fit into any of the neat pigeonholes when it came to children’s presents. I was lukewarm about dolls. I had a couple I liked, and called Wendy and Willow – Wendy was one of those big dolls with a ring pull at the back of her neck that made her speak, and Willow was some kind of knock-off Barbie, though, if I recall, with a marginally more realistic figure. But even with Wendy and Willow I soon grew secretly rather tired of Wendy’s limited vocabulary and slightly gravelly, robotic voice, and Willow reminded me too much of my older cousin Martina, who lived nearer than I’d have liked. We became close later, but at the time she was the kind of fifteen year old who thought she was at least twenty, and made a point of referring to me as that child Charlotte. Nor, though, was I one of those technically minded tomboys who was in seventh heaven with a trainset or construction kit. I was no more adept with my hands then than I am now. 

     The adults in my life evidently decided that though of course it was a good thing that I was a precocious reader, it just didn’t do to give a child a book for a present every single time. Even as an eight year old I realised there wasn’t much point to telling them I genuinely wouldn’t have minded.

     One thing I will give them full credit for. Though my birthday was on the 27^th of December, Christmas and my birthday were two wholly separate entities. That was largely due to my Granny Eileen, my maternal Grandmother, who was also a December baby, though in her case before Christmas and not after. To her dying day she expressed a loathing (and she wasn’t one of life’s loathers) for those Your Birthday at Christmas cards, saying, truthfully, that it wasn’t a question of expense, she preferred two separate ones costing far less than one big posh combined one.

     All the same, a bit later on, my little brother Jason would be a tad jealous of me effectively having “another Christmas” so soon. But that year he was still just a gurgling baby and though we liked to believe he was very taken with the Christmas tree, he probably had little notion of what either Christmas or birthdays were. 

     My parents weren’t over strict or zealous about sweet stuff, but had it not been my birthday and only just after Christmas, I’d never have been allowed to sit munching on a mince pie in the morning. Mum was an erratic cook, but she made delicious mince pies which probably only bore a passing resemblance to the classic recipe, and had a crumble topping, and cherries and cinnamon added to the mince meat and probably some booze too, though it never seemed to do me any harm! Granny Eileen came in looking very pretty and still a bit Christmassy in her dark green skirt and cherry red sweater. “Let’s give the birthday girl a kiss,” she said, and I flung myself willingly into her arms – I adored Granny Eileen. 

     But I’ve yet to meet an eight year old – and I know that’s what some called First World Privilege – who isn’t eager to find out what she’s got for her birthday, and Granny Eileen’ paisley-patterned bag had a couple of interesting shapes protruding from it. 

     One was easy to identify, even before I unwrapped it – and it wasn’t in recycled Christmas paper, but in a pretty paper with daisies and buttercups. A book. And the new book in one of my favourite series, Times of Tess, about a girl who time-travelled to different periods. This time she’d gone back to Roman times. It was harder to identify the other one by shape or touch. At first I thought it might be a torch, but then I decided that was unlikely. Santa (and I was at a sort of inbetween stage so far as he was concerned, but decided to keep my doubts to myself) had already brought me a torch, and I had fun wasting the batteries and shining it across the walls and ceilings of my bedroom when I was supposed to be asleep. “Open it and see!” Granny laughed, helping herself to a mince pie from the tray. So I did. And it still looked a bit like a torch. “Look into the eyepiece,” Granny said, “and turn round the bottom of it. It’s called a kaleidoscope.” For quite a while, though I was a very good speller for my age, I thought it was a collide-oscope and the name worried me a bit. But I could rely on Granny to give me something nice. Intrigued, I did as she said, and gasped in pure wonder at the colours shifting and blending and making thousands of different glowing patterns. It was as if worlds of wonder were hidden inside that metal tube with the little eyepiece. “It’s magic!” I exclaimed. Later on, Granny would explain that it was really pieces of coloured glass catching in the light, but on my birthday morning everyone let me believe that it was magic. I don’t suppose I could have spent every minute of the day with the kaleidoscope to my eye, watching the rainbow patterns, but it seems even now as if I did. Even my new Times of Tess book lay unread. 

     “I think you scored a hit there, Mum,” my own Mum said, and normally it always seemed a bit weird to hear Mum call someone Mum, even though I should have been used to it, but I was too engrossed with my kaleidoscope to pay any attention. 

     Of course, post-birthday, certain ground rules about the kaleidoscope were laid down. I was given to understand that within reason blind eyes would be turned if I put the light on in my bedroom after my official bedtime to play with it for a few minutes, but if Mum or Dad discovered I was sitting up into the small hours playing with it instead of getting some sleep, it would be removed from my bedroom. I was allowed to take it to school once, to show it to my friends, but after that, it must stay at home. I had mixed feelings about that one. I hated being parted from it, but was also fiercely protective of it. And they were quite right to suspect that I would be tempted to look through the eyepiece into the world of wonders instead of concentrating on my lessons.

     There were a glorious couple of years when I secretly called myself the Queen of the Kaleidoscope. I had soon realised that in fact I had no wish to take it to school and share it, even with my best friends. I was lucky that my brother was too young, and Cousin Martina down the road too old to much appreciate it. Jason learnt to talk, and reluctantly, I let him “have a play with it,” as Mum said, but he just said, “Pretty, pretty,” in much the same way he might have described a flower, and little boys aren’t famous for their fascination with flowers. Martina was less condescending than usual, and I couldn’t help having a sneaking suspicion that she half wished she wasn’t far too old to ask for one – though of course, she could have bought her own. 

     I didn’t have any kind of crisis when I realised that the magic in the kaleidoscope was an explicable sort of magic, and it was about that time when I also began my lifelong love affair with stained glass. Would I have had it anyway? That’s one of those things I’ll never know, but in my mind it will always be linked to the kaleidoscope. But as I grew older, and realised with a start that I was the same age Martina had been when she referred to me as that child Charlotte it also dawned on me, sadly, that I wouldn’t be spending my own life surrounded by it. My skill in the way of any kind of craft had not improved, and there was no way on earth I could have created it. By then there were women vicars, but though I wasn’t a disbeliever, I also knew that even the appeal of spending my working life surrounded by stained glass wouldn’t make me into a theologian with any kind of vocation. I was fortunate enough to go to a school that taught Art Appreciation as well as Art, and decided I would settle for being an art historian. I agreed, not as reluctantly as I made out, to study English Literature at university too. I’d never lost my love of books. 

     Where I went, the kaleidoscope went. I told myself I didn’t regard it as any kind of talisman, and told myself that I most certainly wouldn’t be silly about it if I forgot it. I neither displayed it nor hid it. And yes, it was in my handbag (I’ve always favoured quite a large handbag!) when, after completing my postgraduate work, I landed my dream job helping to oversee the restoration of the stained glass windows at one of the great cathedrals that had been damaged in a fire. Of course, I told myself, it would have been better had the fire never occurred at all, but as Jason, by now at university himself, said in his laidback way, you take what life gives you. 

     Though we’d long since put aside our childish quarrels it was also at this time that I became really close to Martina. Coincidentally, she and her partner Shaun, and their little girl Tamara, whom everyone called Tammy, were living in the same city. I’m ashamed to admit I was one of those people who delighted in being a doting aunt (okay, strictly technically I wasn’t her aunt!) – Tammy, then five, was as bright as a button and had us all wrapped round her little finger – but was secretly relieved to hand my niece back to Martina and Shaun after I’d been looking after her. “You just like the good bits,” Martina teased, but without rancour. Still, I couldn’t have denied there was some truth in it. Now here’s the thing. I hadn’t shown Tammy the kaleidoscope. I’d have been hard pushed to say why. I’d certainly have trusted her with it. She was a careful child, and not at all destructive, for all she could be a handful. It was almost as if I’d forgotten it was a toy at all. 

     Some would say we were living a charmed life, but of course, that’s the kind of thing that never occurs to you when you are. Then someone who had been drowning his sorrows after a relationship break-up chose to get into his car and utterly misjudging an overtaking manoeuvre, ploughed headlong into Shaun and Tammy’s car. He was killed instantly and pronounced dead at the scene – apparently, I found out later, by a very young paramedic attending his first road traffic accident. With hindsight I feel very sorry for him, but gave him no thought at all at the time. Shaun’s parents faced the unutterable awfulness of having to give permission for his life support to be switched off. They knew he carried a donor card, and respected his wishes. 

     But Tammy clung to life. She had multiple fractures, and internal injuries, too, but as the doctor, a kind, practical man, told me, “I don’t want to give you false hope. Martina’s condition is still critical and there are some hard days ahead. But she’s young and strong, and I have seen many with the same injuries make a full recovery.” She was drifting in and out of consciousness and one thing I clung to was that she seemed to have no brain damage. She muttered, “Look after Tammy for me, Charlotte. Please. And if I don’t make it look after her…..”

     “You will make it,” I insisted, but realised that she had lost consciousness again. Even so I clasped her hand and said, “I will look after Tammy.” Of course I said it. What else could I possibly say? Her own parents had had her late in life, and had passed away years since. Shaun’s parents were in Australia. 

     Tammy had just started “proper” school, and she loved it. I was one of her sanctioned “picker-uppers” and had the number. “Oh, dear God,” the head teacher, Sally Prentice, said, a catch in her own voice. “You know it goes without saying we’ll do anything, anything we can to help.”

     Between us we decided to let Tammy see the school day out – it always ended with the Year Ones being read a story by their teacher, and though, like me and her Mother, she was a precocious reader, she still loved to be told a story. The session would already have started before I even reached the school – I hated to leave Martina, but knew that she was well looked after, and Tammy had the more immediate need for my company.

     Even though we were at an important stage on the restoration, the project manager was wonderful. “Take as much time as you need, Charlotte,” he said, “Family comes first at times like this.”

     Everyone is being so wonderful, I thought, as I drove towards the school, forcing myself to concentrate almost obsessively on my own driving. Everyone is being so wonderful, and yet it doesn’t change a thing. My mind swirled with all the advice about how you were supposed to deal with a child who had been bereaved, and how you weren’t supposed to use words like gone to sleep or, even if you believed it yourself (and I honestly didn’t know, though I didn’t feel on especially good terms with God at that moment) gone to heaven. And though, of course, there’s never a right time to face something like that, Tammy was at exactly the wrong time. She was old enough and too young.

     She jumped into my arms, saying, “Hi, Auntie Charlie! Daddy said he’d be picking me up today, but it’s lovely to see you!” Sally gave my hand a quick squeeze, almost as if I were in a coma myself and needed some proof of human contact. 

     “Let’s get you round to my place, sweetheart,” I said.

     As Granny Eileen used to say, you couldn’t get anything past her. “Something’s wrong, Auntie Charlie,” she said, “Tell me!” The note of combined panic and defiance in her voice made me realise that I had no choice. Of course I didn’t tell her the full story. How could I? But I told her there had been a car accident and that her parents had been in it, and before going any further, I said, “Your Mummy has been hurt, but the doctors looking after her are brilliant, and I’m sure you’ll be allowed to see her very, very soon.” Actually I wasn’t sure at all, and as soon as the words were out didn’t know if they were cruel or kind. 

     “What about Daddy?” she demanded. “WHAT ABOUT DADDY?”. 

     I knew there could, this time, be no cruel or kind lie or half-lie. And she knew it, too. I will never, as long as I live, forget the sound she made. She didn’t scream or burst into tears. That, whilst heart-breaking, would have been easier to understand and to cope with. She let out a low moan that sounded more as if it should come from an old person with a debilitating illness or a battle-scarred soldier than a little girl in pink jeans and a sweater with a picture of Snoopy. Her expression was its visual equivalent. I hugged her, and she didn’t resist, but it was as if a little lump of concrete was unresponsive in my arms. Throughout that evening she didn’t say a single word. She refused to eat, though to my relief, I did at least manage to get her to take a drink of milk – and she did that without a word, though I knew that she hated milk. I thought it would at least get some nutrition into her.

     As I made a long-distance phonecall to Shaun’s parents – the hardest phonecall of my life – she sat silent and still on the sofa. But when I turned round I realised that I had left the kaleidoscope on the coffee table beside it, and, almost as if by muscle memory more than interest, she had shown a curious child’s interest in a new thing. “Put it to your eye, Tammy,” I said, “And turn the bottom round.” After a couple of seconds that seemed like a decade, she did. She turned it round for a few minutes, and then, still clutching it, muttered, “I want my Daddy!” and sobbed in my arms.

     It was a long and painful process, but Martina, in time, did make a full recovery, though she still had a steel plate in her left leg. Even though everyone told her that he’d never have wanted her to fret about it, it hurt deeply that she hadn’t been able to go to Shaun’s funeral. Tammy had gone. We all had such misgivings, but she had insisted, and in the end it was the right thing to do. She wore a blue dress with a little sailor collar he’d always said she looked specially pretty in, and she clutched the kaleidoscope.

     It’s hers now. And though obviously, I hope and pray never in similar circumstances, the time will come for her to hand it on, and she will know.