The Eyes of the Blind

The light had failed a long time ago. The research, the injections, even the gridlines you had to look at to check if your macular degeneration was getting worse – all these had come too late for Vera. She was blind.

           Most days, Vera was reasonably pleased with how she was coping. Her long-dead mother, whose astringent voice she could still hear clearly, would have – mostly – been proud of her. She had learned to use a white cane, although combining it with a walker was proving a challenge. She had learned to operate – by touch, of course – the Talking Books that the RNIB sent her. Podcasts were great, but she couldn’t do the actual downloading herself. When Hilda or James came to see her – or better still, one of their children – she would get them to load up her Kindle, although what she ended up playing back was still a bit of pot-luck. Sometimes she gave up and listened to the same podcast twice. Or three times.

           Even when the Kindle irritated her most, though, Vera made a point of never complaining. That way lay rolled eyes – which she was sure a person could hear as well as see – and whispered conversations that stopped as soon as one entered the room. She would not be That Elderly Parent.

           In the days of her declining sight, she had lived with James and then with Hilda. Helpers had come in to teach her the various skills she would need in what she brightly referred to as her ‘new life’. She had worked hard at adapting, and everybody had been full of compliments, mostly sincere. ‘She’s a wonder, especially at her age,’ had been said so often that it had taken awhile to realise that the arrangements weren’t quite working. 

Both her children had made valiant efforts to include her in their family routines, but still…. She couldn’t contribute as she had done when she was an early grandmother. The one time she had tried to make dinner as a surprise, she had broken a casserole dish and cut her finger. In her own home she would have chalked it up to experience and soldiered on, but in someone else’s kitchen it hardly seemed fair. It had not, after all, been her casserole dish – and to this day she wasn’t sure how badly her blood had stained the floor.

Her hearing was still acute, which made it easier to monitor how much trouble she was causing. ‘Monitoring’ had a better ring to it than ‘eavesdropping’, which her mother would certainly not have approved of. And the day she’d overheard that Hilda was planning to stay home from a vacation to look after her, Vera had realised that something had to change. She did not want to be resented.

And so – here she was at The Alders. It was fine. It was, really. Her life had shrunk, that was all – but life in reduced compass did not have to be any less rich. Just think of clotted cream, she told herself. Or diamonds. So she had set out to be a diamond at The Alders. 

To be perfectly frank, it was exhausting at times. People talked a load of twaddle, Vera felt, about the other senses of the visually impaired developing to compensate for the loss of sight. Well, maybe they did – but it didn’t happen automatically. Recognising people by their voices alone was just more effort. With the staff, for example – of whom there were a great many, on a bewildering pattern of shifts – you couldn’t just sneak a quick peek at their name-tag. The waiters in the dining-room were another challenge. She had suggested that they introduce themselves at each meal, but some people objected; they said it made it sound like a restaurant instead of their home. These complaints came, for the most part, from people who could still see.

Then there were the various common areas to map in her head, and the number of steps between them to memorise. And the buttons on the elevators were a bit confusing; her Braille still wasn’t very good, and in any case there was no voice to announce the levels. More than once Vera had gotten off at the wrong floor, and alarmed a fellow resident by trying to put her key into the wrong lock. After an encounter like that, it was hard to go on being a diamond.

But most of the time, she managed to turn herself outward rather than inward. In the end, it was easier for her, too. If she gave someone else at the meal-table her full attention, she was less likely to be troubled by such trivialities as soup spilled down her front.  She became known as a good listener. She was sought out at social events. She even had callers, and in her tiny kitchenette frequently succeeded in making tea and putting biscuits onto a plate. She began to feel that she had work to do here – that life had not stopped when the curtain had dropped over her eyes.

All of which was just as well, because there was one Thing that never, ever went away. No matter how hard she tried to be a diamond.

It took Vera quite a while to realise that the Thing was not – or least mostly not – about being blind. It was about being old.

‘Time for dinner, dear.’ Even if she wasn’t hungry.

‘Shower day today, Vera!’ Even though it was really last night that she had wanted the shower that she could not manage on her own.

‘Chicken or risotto today, Vera?’ When what she craved was Indian food – spicy and succulent, with the coolness of cucumber raita alongside it. The only ‘Indian’ food the Alders ever served was so bland that she could hardly see the point. 

But Vera was not in charge. Not any more. That was the Thing that never quite went away.

Complaining, however, was ungracious. (Her mother again – although her mother, having collapsed and died at sixty-nine beside her kitchen stove after a hot day of jam-making, had never had to deal with the Thing…) Also complaining was pointless. She really couldn’t manage on her own any more. And so the only choices she had were to respond with a smile or turn into Dolly next door. Dolly was the Despair of the Alders. Everybody knew it – including her mortified daughter, who scattered apologies and chocolates amongst the staff whenever she visited.

And then came Lockdown.

At first, it was a relief. Vera liked to keep up with the news, and ever since January she’d been wondering when the British were going to start taking Covid seriously. Many had snickered as the Chinese and Italians had sung to each other out of their apartment windows, as if such extreme reactions were the particular province of foreigners. Vera had not laughed. She remembered all too well her mother’s tales of the influenza epidemic that had taken the life of an older brother, who had survived the fires of the trenches only to burn away with fever in his own bed. She listened warily to the voices of Sunday visitors, wondering what contagion they might be bringing with them, and retreated to her room. 

 When the hospitals raised the alarm, though, the government was obliged to act. Three weeks too late, Vera thought, but was encouraged by everybody’s cooperation. Until, that was, they were told that there would be no visitors for awhile. 

‘I’d rather be dead than not see my family,’ declared Rita vehemently over dinner.

Reg agreed. ‘It should be up to us,’ he opined in the ringing tones often used by the deaf. ‘If we want to take the risk, then let us! It’s not like we have much longer on this planet, anyway.’

No one mentioned that the staff, who were all probably counting on quite a few more decades of life, might need protecting as well.

Vera kept her thoughts to herself. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad… And it was certainly sensible.

Dolly had been going downhill for a while. The people at her table were growing weary.

‘She’s foul-mouthed as well as batty,’ remarked Betty wryly over coffee in her room. ‘You know that nice young man who waits on our table? Well, she had him blushing beetroot-red the other day – and the rest of us, too. I mean, I know he’s nice-looking, but really--!’

‘That’s not fair,’ agreed Vera quietly. She reflected that the Thing that afflicted the old actually had other victims as well – such as young people who needed a job. Powerlessness was everywhere.

‘Haven’t you heard?’ chipped in Cicely. ‘They carted her off to hospital last night – suspected urinary tract infection. Which would explain the ‘confusion’. They may find that there’s no antibiotic that can cure her of being Dolly, though.’ At which they all laughed -- largely without malice. The spectre of becoming Dolly oneself was all too real.

The day Dolly came back from hospital was a Friday. She’d be having her meals in her room for a few days, they were told. The cheerfulness of the staff seemed a little forced, but that wasn’t surprising with Dolly back on their hands. Her UTI might be better, thought Vera ruefully, but her dementia seemed to be worse. The soundproofing at The Alders was thin, and she could frequently hear Dolly shouting. Not shouting at anybody – just shouting. As if giving voice to some kind of inner tumult. It was disturbing.

On Saturday, the shouting turned to moaning. Vera paced about her room, which she could do now on auto-pilot without bumping into anything. She tried to listen to a podcast, but found that her hands were shaking. 

This was ridiculous, thought Vera. She sat down in her armchair, picked up the phone and dialled the Nursing station.

The nurse was soothing, but Vera noted wryly that there was a knock at Dolly’s door within five minutes. Then there was quite a lot of coming and going, including a voice that Vera didn’t recognise. And then, half an hour later, the phone rang.

It was the front desk. ‘We’re going to bring your dinner up to your room tonight, Vera,’ said Suzanne brightly. ‘You can all be lazy and stay put for once.’

Vera put down the phone slowly. What about breakfast tomorrow? she wondered. Why are they not saying? 

She rang Betty’s number. ‘Do you know how long it takes for a Covid test to come back?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Only a few hours, I think. Why, do you know somebody who’s waiting for one?’

‘Dolly, I think,’ said Vera slowly. ‘It’s just a guess, but….’

The two women sat in silence on either end of the phone line, while beyond the wall Dolly’s moans rose and fell like the sea.

On Sunday morning there was another phone call. Suzanne’s voice was less bright today. ‘All meals in your room until further notice,’ she said – for probably the fiftieth time, thought Vera. Poor girl – to have to give out the same bad news so many times. ‘And I’m afraid all social activities are cancelled. We really need you to stay in your rooms.’

‘I understand,’ said Vera quietly.

‘Thank you,’ Suzanne responded fervently. ‘You can’t imagine how upset everyone is – but we really need to keep you all safe.’

‘Is it Dolly?’

Suzanne hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t really say, but everybody seems to know, anyway,’ she said. ‘Yes, it’s Dolly. We think she brought it back from hospital with her.’

‘How is she?’

Suzanne laughed. ‘Do you know, you’re actually the first person who’s asked me that?’ Her voice changed. ‘Not good – but she’s a toughie, and we hope she’ll pull through.’

Yes, Dolly was a toughie. She’d grown up running half-wild through the poorest part of central Liverpool, and between malnutrition and childhood diseases had never achieved full stature. Physically, that was. In terms of determination, she had been a giant – and had qualified as a teacher in the face of every possible discouragement. Her daughter, when not cringing with embarrassment at her mother’s current improprieties, still retained touches of awe in her attitude towards her.

The days went by. Dolly was over the worst, but The Alders remained on lockdown. There were three more cases; nobody knew where they’d got it from. The staff tried to radiate reassurance through the plastic that swathed them. Vera could hear it rustling whenever they came into her room. Their masks seemed to be changing their voices, she thought – and then realised that the change in tone was not muffling but fear.

She asked after Dolly every day, but the staff were infuriatingly discreet.   She had to pick up her information by monitoring conversations from just inside her door.

‘Her daughter is frantic,’ the nurse said one day in the corridor. ‘I’ve tried to get Dolly to speak to her on the phone, but it’s like she’s forgotten what it’s for.’

The doctor sighed. ‘Dementia can progress quite rapidly during lockdowns,’ she said. ‘And this one sure isn’t over yet.’

Vera opened her door and stepped out. ‘Perhaps if she had a visitor? I’m right here…’

But the reaction was swift. ‘Vera! What are you doing out of your room? You need to get back inside right away!’

‘But –’

‘Please, Vera – we’re just trying to keep everybody safe.’

And Vera, knowing it was true, went back to her chair. The muttering through the wall continued, rising and falling with the tide of Dolly’s awareness. 

Vera knew that she was being unfair on the staff. She shouldn’t keep nagging them. But really – now that Dolly had had two negative tests (as Vera knew from her monitoring), why could she not keep the poor old thing company? It might make a difference  – slow down some of that ebb of her faculties, that threatened to leave nothing at all for her daughter to recognise when finally she was allowed in to see her mother again.

But the answer was always ‘No’. Sorry, but no.

Vera began to have a certain amount of sympathy for Reg’s loudly-proclaimed view that they should be allowed to dispose of their own lives as they wished. She felt that the work she had to do here at The Alders had been brought to an abrupt halt – and just when there was so much that needed doing!  The rules were stopping her from being a diamond.

Everybody was feeling the isolation. The staff phoned every day to ask for her meal orders, but they were too busy to chat. It was up to the residents to look after each other, and to quite an extent they did. There was a lot of telephoning. But that was no good to poor Dolly. 

Vera began to wonder, although her conscience pricked her for thinking it, whether the staff had somehow written Dolly off. The Thing that was a nuisance for the blind and a creeping threat for the old grew to monstrous size in the case of those with dementia.

Then, one evening, the lights went out. Not that Vera noticed. What she noticed was a flurry of alarm close to her door – people calling to each other, doors opening, residents questioning staff, being told to get back inside. A very little monitoring revealed the source of everybody’s disquiet. Vera couldn’t help a somewhat evil grin. What did they think life was like for her, every day of the year?

She was about to turn on the television when a sound from next door stopped her in her tracks. A wail of terror. And then she remembered: Dolly always slept with a light on. As a child, apparently, she’d been afraid of the dark, and in this second childhood the old dread had returned with new ferocity. 

Vera was suddenly filled with anger. This could not go on. It was inhuman. She picked up the phone and tried the desk, but the line was busy. And again. Probably trying frantically to reach an electrician, she thought. 

She opened her door and called, hoping a member of staff might be within earshot. But the corridor was silent. Vera imagined her neighbours up and down the corridor, sitting in the dark, not moving for fear of hurting themselves, waiting helplessly for someone to come and rescue them.

It suddenly occurred to Vera that at this particular moment, she was the most competent person in the whole building. Nothing had changed for her. This was her daily reality, and she was good at it.

The wails from next door had turned to sobbing. Suddenly something in Vera snapped. Alright, everybody was handling a supposed emergency; she got that. But here she was, fully functioning and with time on her hands. And Dolly needed her.

Vera picked up her white cane and left her room. She opened Dolly’s door and tapped her way in. Dolly’s room, she remembered, was a mirror image of her own. Wall there, sofa there, doorway – Vera made her way carefully across the bedroom floor towards the sound of that heartrending sobbing.

She felt for a chair and sat down. Then she found Dolly’s bird-like hand and held it in her own. ‘I’m here, dear,’ she said. ‘Nothing is going to hurt you.’

Dolly stopped sobbing abruptly. ‘Mama?’ she whispered.

‘It’s Vera, Dolly.’

Dolly was silent, breathing more evenly now. Then suddenly, her hand tightened on Vera’s. ‘Rock,’ she whispered.

Vera bent closer. ‘What is it, dear?’

‘Rock – rockabye – ‘

Vera felt the tears rush to her eyes. She cleared her throat, and did the best she could with what voice had been left to her after ninety years on earth.

‘Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree-top….’

Vera knew quite a few lullabies. She sat beside Dolly, holding her hand and singing softly, while the Thing that stalks the blind, and the old, and the demented, shrank almost out of sight into a corner.