The Blink That Killed the Eye Read online

  It looked like the daughter’s nose was either broken or fractured, her eyes heavily blackened and her tears running superfluously down her face. Her mother hurtling around the kitchen looking for a tea towel to stop the bleeding while at the same time trying to remind the daughter to keep her head tilted back. To keep looking up at the ceiling. She didn’t want to call an ambulance; the thought of those lacerating neon strobes infiltrating the midnight hour causing meddlesome neighbours to peep through their curtains, or stand apprehensively in their doorways in only dressing gowns and slippers.

  At this point, between the bombardment of apologies and words intended to offer some kind of comfort, her mother claimed the reason she had lashed out wasn’t because her only daughter would be moving out, or for the fact she was now in love with this boy named Alex, but because she knew, in her heart of hearts, that they would want to move into the flat together. The flat she purchased for her daughter all those years ago with the intention of having her move into the property once she was a bit more mature, with a burgeoning career, both stable and purposeful. She was working in a small art shop selling paints, canvasses and random artwork created by a handful of relatively unknown local artists. Her mother constantly reminding her how the job offered very few prospects, that she couldn’t do it forever and she would need to take some time out to think about what it was she really wanted to do, but more importantly that this wasn’t where she hoped for her to be at this stage in her life.

  Now, what really irked the mother was whenher daughter had previously disclosed her plans to move she used very specific words such as Independence, Space and Peace of Mind followed by Boyfriend, Love, Security, Dreams and Art. In her mother’s mind Alex was merely filling a carnal purpose, a plastic figure to play with in times of boredom when there was nothing else to occupy the night. We know that’s how she regarded most men; as mindless and primitive entities who should only be beckoned in those more concupiscent hours, yet in her daughter’s mind Alex was so much more. He wasn’t just a man, he was someone replenishing a void comprised of both ontological and intimate necessity. He would protect her, sleep beside her, hold her, adore her in the intricate ways only he could. She would be his and he would be hers.

  With the cloth still pressed up against her nose she sourly mentioned Holly had already moved into an East London flat with her boyfriend and that their young union had fortified itself. They spent evenings drinking and dining in local restaurants, enjoying the fine range of foreign cuisine with other young popinjays. She reiterated how rent wouldn’t be an issue but if her mother really did disapprove of the move then they were happy to find another place to live. Her mother however was more than aware this would be impossible as her daughter’s wage packet was mortifyingly minimal and from the little she’d been told about Alex, his job was equally poor.

  Bringing the cloth away from her nose she insisted they’d done all the maths and were capable of matching the rate the current tenants were already paying. Her mother went back over to pour the last helping of wine into her glass, looking at her daughter with the white tablecloth blotted with blood on her lap. The bleeding had subsided and this, to both their relief, informed them that the nose wasn’t in fact broken. Her mother placed a finger under her daughter’s chin, tilting back her head slightly to inspect more closely the damage. Taking the cloth from her lap and walking over to the laundry she asked what he did for work. Touching with gentle pinches the ridge of her nose she said he was currently delivering pizzas but he was planning to start work for his uncle’s construction company in the next few weeks, emphasising he too had big dreams, ones he had carefully grasped from the loose apparitions of his boyhood.

  The two didn’t speak properly for some time after the incident but eventually the mother came to appreciate her daughter’s point of view, accepting that her little girl was indeed growing up and that her own latent misery had rooted itself in a part of her which had little to do with her daughter’s actual affairs. She understood during the course of those following weeks how people can develop a capacity to lie to the world but never to themselves. From what’s known she never did hit her mother back nor did the mother hit her daughter again, even though there were still some disputes and grievances, right up until the Tuesday when Alex drove round in a small black Ford to help move his girlfriend’s belongings into their new flat.

  Things haven’t seemed this amicable for months. Her mother stands endearingly by the front door in a thick white dressing gown, puffing unsteadily on a slim cigarette while reeling off a checklist of things her daughter needs to do once she gets into the flat. Deliberately she avoids having to exchange words with the man who in a few moments will have inadvertently purloined her only daughter. He doesn’t appear to mind as he walks in and out of the house carrying a new box each time, his face burdened with its own obtrusive worry. One of the great advantages of youth is how it can masterfully conceal despair in a singular beauty, one exclusive to such undeveloped age, a despair that only the old and infirm can recognise after having lived through its regrettably short artifice. Marked boxes are being piled into the car. Then comes the closing act. At the door the mother and daughter embrace for a long period of time. Holding each other. Needing each other. Until everything is made to feel as if it’s been restored; her daughter clinging on to her body as she did those twenty-one years ago when her mother laboured and screamed through excruciating pains just to hand this little life over to the world. Alex sits in the car waiting patiently, the boxes layered with masking tape all loaded unevenly in the boot and the back seat. Her mother asks if she has everything she needs; her daughter sends back an affectionate nod, keeping a hand on her mother’s thin arm for reassurance, asking her not to worry. She will be in touch in a few days. After they’d managed to settle in and unpack some bits.

  The car indicates to pull out onto the street, the squashed plastic figure of a cowboy with a white and blue hat, pinkish skin, cinematic blue eyes, blond hair and a broad hexagonal chest pokes out from the top of one of the boxes. It looks to be the same as it was, even after all this time. Off he goes making the final journey, his ageless and exact face pressed up against the car’s back window. Within seconds she was gone, as was he – lost to the great gamble of life and love.

  With that I stepped away from the window handing the room back to its soft and retracted light. Settling into my armchair I remembered today was Tuesday and my afternoon tea would soon be arriving. Next to the remote control was a letter from my daughter. All it said was Dad, please will you call us. The postage stamp on the envelope was marked U.S.A. There were two separate telephone numbers on the bottom of the letter – one longer than the other. Putting my spectacles on I studied both for some time. Then I folded it once, twice, three times, until it became no smaller than a pill, burying it inside my glasses case just beneath the cleaning cloth. Looking around the room I remembered again today was Tuesday and my afternoon tea would soon be arriving. I glanced down at my watch, the one she bought me just after my retirement. I readjusted the strap. It had just gone 1.30pm. Picking up the remote control I flicked through the channels – One, Two, Three, Four. It’s old. I turned it off. It still couldn’t pick up a clear picture. Food should be here soon I thought. Better keep an eye out.

  Belongings

  The last voice you heard was hers. She gave you sufficient warning. To take all your belongings with you when you leave. To leave behind nothing capable of reminding her that you were once a part of this home. That you existed here together. That she was once yours and you were once hers. You have reached the moment when everything you tried to build together starts its long, piteous crumble. It’s the end, and like the previous endings you’ve suffered you find yourself once again reeling back to the very beginning; maybe in an attempt to identify a reason, or maybe because those embryonic months, where everything was formed from the votive cloth of rainbows, held within them the soothing balm to your underlying heartache.

>   You have a long way to go, that’s what you tell yourself as the oscillating progression provokes your thoughts. You shift back to the time you came into each other’s worlds, a time when neither of you believed in endings. When you drove away from her mother’s house in your modest car, her wiping away the tears along with the bad memories, while you held her hand whispering words of assurance laced in legitimate promises. As is common with new lovers, both pure in purpose, you wanted to become each other, to beam a steady light through the bleak reality of each other’s tunnels, bend with each other’s smoke, let each other’s name hold the vows your mouths so readily declared. In time you grew to understand the language of her nature. The way she stretched her limbs out towards the sky in the early mornings before work. How she rubbed loose the bits of gathered sleep from the puffy pockets of her eyes. She would be the first and last thing you’d see. Even before you had set sight on the day’s texture outside, before you’d even checked the time, you were already looking straight into the eyelashes of her great sun.

  You found joy in those tepid irises of hers, the kind that left you looking at your own happiness blind. How wonderful it was. Her smile. Your smile. How beautiful it was to love the same person over and over again. To make plans of devoting an entire lifetime to preserving and recreating that love. One which lives in tribute to the very first love that met you both in those younger years. To feel the strain of life become lessened by those soft and succinct expressions of a heart that can only beat so long as yours is alive to beat with it. Words that can only be, so long as your ears are around to receive them. How wonderfully it all presented itself; to rest in love, to know with all your days you were both safe, keeping a part of yourselves open for the other to fall into and find healing once again. How love patterns itself so flawlessly.

  Before she had stepped into her morning shower you already knew the tune she would sing. And you would sing along too, just because she was, but you would do so discreetly, as if bashfully sharing an unofficial prayer with the perfect temple of your happy heart. Familiar, like already knowing the colours of the clothes she would wear. Bright colours. Celebratory. Because today would be spent in love. Doubled and proud. Rejoicing in a safe and limitless love, one that carefully guided you to the acme of all ardency, then allowed you to bellow forever-songs from the rich mountain of your heart.

  Everything would be learnt in time. Like the map of a repeated journey you would observe things about her with an almost surgical eye. The way her scent would change from day to day depending on her mood. How the colours she’d wear would deepen or intensify depending on the quality of her feelings. Now you sit in the carriage holding onto your few belongings, not the ones in your hand but the ones inside yourself as the reality transports you further away from her. You travel deeper into the distance as it begins to make you its own. You think about the first time you kissed her and you deny your eyes the cool rivers they so despairingly want to free. The first kiss was so strange, so awkward and exultant. Her lips warm and accurate; a kiss loaded with so much loneliness, so much searching and deprivation.

  Now, your throbbing mind amidst all its toil and conflict searches for a reason to hate her, even though you’re unable to because your heart won’t permit it. It still belongs to her, sleeping somewhere in her arms until she’ll inadvertently roll over to crush it. You kick the seat with your heel startling the lady next to you who happens to be holding a carrier bag with a new sketchpad and some paints inside. You make your assumption. Apologising with the embarrassment stuck to your tone. She smiles. It keeps moving. Your mind. The memories. Stop at the park. The park. The bucolic tranquility where couples and families flock when needing to reacquaint themselves with things made by the hand of the sky rather than by the machine. Where they unleash the tender spirit of love and lounge in its great rapture. Everything is permitted to be unusual and mad. No longer mythopoeic. No longer restrained.

  You’re at the still lake with the half-dozen swans. You’re remembering how she loved to paint them in her summer sketchbook while you lazed on the grass beside her, dipping low the white and blue cowboy hat she bought you for your twenty-fourth birthday, resting its rim coolly just above your eyes. She wanted to be an artist so much, painting and drawing profusely as you lay beside her under the warmth of the sun, sipping a cold bottle of beer, feeling the earth against your skin, watching as her paintbrush danced and leaked around the anaemic walls of the pad. How she would carefully braid together the small range of colours she had, capturing the regal grace of those noble swans. Bright. Celebratory. How she would say that in her past life she must have been a swan. Or a cowboy. You can’t recall much more than that but you do remember the comment you made about her neck, how it was elongated and swan-like. She leaned in to kiss you, taking off your hat dumping it childishly on her head. She told you then how you’d saved her, but you couldn’t quite grasp what she’d meant. That was the year you finally understood summer.

  You exhale. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to breathe. Thoughts building up to harass your lungs. You hear her calling your name. In your head. It’s faint like syllables being submersed in water. In oceans. A man boards. He’s carrying shopping. You notice a bottle of red wine, six free-range eggs with various dips. He wears brogues. His aftershave newly applied. His skin smooth. His hair neat. Someone is waiting for him somewhere.

  You spent all day preparing the meal. It was February 14th. Valentine’s day. Summer had long gone. You were out of work, again. You thought it would be nice to have her come home to a surprise. It excited you to envision her excited. Flowers. Bright with life. Wine. Red for love and passion and blood. Her favourite cuisine. Jazz music swaying from your old record player. Coltrane. Her favourite. The plan: she walks in from work, closes the door, puts her bag down then makes her way over to the living room. There she would be halted by sheer astonishment. Her face would ignite, her perfect teeth revealing themselves. Then with a shy incredulity she would express a sentiment overflowing with love and appreciation, noticing how you had meticulously arranged the room to be almost shrine-like. The pictures of you both polished on the shelf. The aroma of food wafting in from the kitchen. The mellifluous sound of music. The wine. Candles. Low-lighting. How handsome you will look – all for her.

  You cooked all day. Thai chicken curry. Her favourite. You found the recipe online. You burnt yourself twice. Cut yourself once. She would be home in half an hour. You hurry. Hoover. Dust again. The parts you missed. Fold the clothes. The bright ones. Put them away. Wash the dishes. Move as if you didn’t live there and everything she was about to see happened within the context of some unexplainable miracle. Rearrange the fridge magnets to spell I Love You Babe. Her keys jangle in the door. She opens and sees you standing there, smiling your most sincere smile. You’re wearing a newly pressed shirt, black trousers and polished brogues. You’ve shaved for once and put on cologne. The only one on your shelf, the one she bought you, her favourite. Your books stacked away neatly. Coltrane is playing low. Track three. Her favourite. She smiles an uncomfortable smile. Forced. The wrong kind of smile. It catches you off guard. She’s tired, you can see that. She doesn’t say anything. Her bags look as if they’re carrying her. She doesn’t kiss your lips. She doesn’t comment on the smell of the food or the music playing low. She doesn’t become emphatic over the bottle of wine or your polished brogues. She can’t smell your cologne. She walks slowly into the bedroom. The same you would whisper her morning shower songs in. She closes the door leaving you on the outside with John Coltrane playing perfectly oblivious.

  It’s getting busier. Must be rush hour. Nobody wants to acknowledge the other person. The only words exchanged are excuse me. Can you move down a bit please. Sorry. People are bunched in together doing their best to avoid eye contact. Re-reading the same adverts. Adverts that say nothing. You bring your belongings in, closer towards you. More pile in. A lady wearing a suit as grey as her hair opens the evening paper. She hovers a
bove you. The headline reads Storm Warning. Your vest starts to stick to your skin. You’re perspiring. You start to read the article in the hope it’ll take your mind off things but it’s difficult, too much jostling around. You pick out what you can: Gales of up to 80mph winds. Heavy rains. Torrential. Danger. Strong storms. Met Office. Three people dead. Drowning dog.

  Drowning dog.

  Money was tight. You were still out of work. She was supporting you, covering the rent with her wages from the art shop. You knew that. Every weekend she would try and explain to her mother that things were getting better. Every weekend she would cry after hanging up the phone. You had lost two jobs. Nobody wanted to employ you. You had no experience in anything substantial. She bought the food. You cleaned the house. Washed dishes, even the clean ones. Ironed clothes. Read books. Wrote. That weekend the rains came down heavy. She was feeling low. Said she wanted to stay in bed. You hated seeing her like that. Crushed. Pale. Unwashed. You told her a joke to try and lift the mood. It started with do you remember the time when and ended with you laughing alone. You brought her over a cup of tea but by the close of the hour it was cold.