He went blind suddenly, overnight. He woke up sightless. His hearing seemed much more acute; he could hear the birds twittering outside the window, the distant drone of a lawnmower, the hum of traffic on a nearby motorway. There was no Mrs Thomlinson to whom he could turn - she'd been dead for over a year now and he'd gotten used to the empty space in the bed next to him, the vacant chair at the kitchen table, the conversations he conducted with the air, with nothingness. Her death had excavated a hole in the centre of his chest, an abyss that he tightrope walked across. He was a pensioner; his days followed a strict routine - he rose, ate a bowl of cornflakes, drank three cups of Earl Grey tea and got out in his garden for the duration of the morning. After a light lunch (typically a bun and a can of sardines or salmon, perhaps a kipper or two), he would walk to the local library and sit reading the papers for three hours before taking a short walk along the river, then heading home and reading a book until dinnertime. He'd been proud of the fact that he didn't take out large print books; his sight had been excellent, nearly 20/20, the vision of a much younger man. Now there was just this endless sea of black, like the outer darkness into which rebel angels were supposedly cast, the darkness with the weeping and wailing and the gnashing of the teeth. Mr Thomlinson neither wept nor wailed nor gnashed his teeth. He was a practical man. For every problem there was a solution. Life's hurdles were there to be leapt. Answers hovered, waiting to be found.
- He swung his feet out over the edge of the bed and, clad in his red and black striped pyjamas, felt his way to the telephone and dialled the number of the local hospital. He spoke like a child.
- “Hello, my name is Alan Thomlinson. I live at 7 Eckers Place and I appear to have gone blind.”
- “Is there somebody who can drive you to the hospital?”
- Who could he ask? The neighbours, with whom he hardly spoke (he didn't even know their names) would already have left for work; he'd never seen anybody home during the day. His only child, his daughter, was in Melbourne. All his friends had died; one by one the grim reaper had picked them off. He hadn't made new friends; he didn't belong to any groups or clubs. He was a lone unit. There was only himself. No, there was nobody to drive him. The receptionist said that she would send out an ambulance.
- He was collected. There was an MRI scan, a diagnosis.
- “You've had a stroke,” said the doctor. “Both occipital lobes, which reside at the posterior of the brain have been affected. Your vision will not return.”
- So, one of his vital five senses had deserted him. Well, he would just have to develop a sixth sense, or some sort of extra ability. Nothing is taken away without something being given. Something would compensate.
- They arranged for him to have a seeing eye dog and a white cane and a woman to come twice a week to help him with the housework and grocery shopping and preparation of meals. The dog was a golden Labrador called Candice. He hadn't realised how lonely he'd been until he had a canine companion. He ran his hands through her glossy coat, stroked her ears. The woman was called Janice. Candice and Janice. Janice told him all about herself, as she dusted his shelves and vacuumed his floors and held onto his arm as they walked down the grocery aisles. She was a recent divorcee. Before they'd married, her husband had seemed like a nice enough chap, a catch, even. He'd courted her the old fashioned way, with theatre tickets to the latest shows and dinners in fancy restaurants and boxes of expensive chocolates with liqueur centres. After they'd tied the knot he bared his dark side, his anger; an explosive temper. He revealed himself to be a dormant volcano of a man - he could blow at any time. He became increasingly difficult; nothing she did pleased or soothed him - if a lightbulb blew it was her fault, if the thermostat on the fridge gave out she was to blame, if there were specks of dust left on a surface after she'd done the housework he would collect the specks on his finger and hold it in front of her face accusingly. He was verbally and psychologically, but not physically abusive. He would agree to meet her at various places and then not bother to show up, later claiming that he had forgotten or been too busy. He criticised her clothes, her choice of friends, her lipstick. She'd taken five years of it and then she'd left him. She'd only stayed that long because she'd hoped he would change. Like many sociopaths, he could be charming and in between the bouts of bad temper and abuse were weeks when he was like a man heaven sent; kind, generous, witty, loving. Then a switch would flick, and he'd be in a different mode of operating, a dark state. A devil took up residence behind his eyes. She neither knew nor cared what had caused him to become that way. One night she gathered up all her belongings in their Toyota, drove to her sister's and never looked back.
- “Men,” she would say. “Better off without 'em.”
- The cane felt ordinary. He ran his hands along its smooth surface, had a small practice walk, tapping his way to the letter box and back. Mr Thomlinson had been blessed with an extraordinary memory. In his mind's eye he saw his town's streets spread out as clearly as if a map had been laid down in front of him. To test himself, to develop his sixth sense or ability, two weeks after his sight had left him he set out without Candice, tap, tap, tap all the way to the corner store to buy a pint of milk and tap, tap, tap back. It felt good, free, independent. Another man might have let the sightlessness knock him for a six - not Mr Thomlinson. Mr Thomlinson was strong, he wouldn't let this cripple him, he would bounce back, better than ever. His spirits remained high; despite having been much alone in recent years, he'd never been prone to depression, never been one for moping about the house in a blue funk. There was plenty to look forward to - his daughter's visit from Australia later in the year, at Christmas-time, the ripening of the citrus on the trees that fruited in his backyard, the harvesting of the bok choi that he had planted.
- There was something more. With the arrival of Janice there had been added to Mr Thomlinson's life an extra dimension. Just the other day she had flicked his hand with her feather duster as she had been doing the mantelpiece and he'd felt a small spark, like electricity, travel across the surface of his skin. Had she done it accidentally, or on purpose, or accidentally on purpose? On another occasion, she held on a little too long to a mug of tea as she'd been passing it to him and their hands had brushed together. Finally, when he'd been out on his garden path tending to the dahlias that grew there, she'd waltzed past and her hips had lightly touched his buttocks that had been poking up in the air as he bent over his flowers. Then there was the overall effect she had on him. Despite having been plunged into a world of total darkness, he felt fresh, young, frisky. He was more loquacious than he'd been since his wife's death; well, he'd not had anyone there to talk to had he? His steps grew springy. His eyes, though blind, were bright.
- On the days when Janice didn't visit he stroked Candice's fur and counted the hours until Janice's arrival. He felt like a lovesick teenager. He told himself to snap out of it, to pull himself together, he couldn't be galloping through this gamut of emotions at his age. He was a man ruled by logic and routine, he couldn't afford to let the heart, the fickle red, beating heart, have any say in his affairs, not at this stage of the game. It was unseemly. He was pushing seventy. Would he even be able to perform? Needing to push Janice from his mind, he set off down the road towards the river; tap, tap, tap. Halfway along the street he stumbled and tripped over an old shoe that some damned fool had left lying there and the tip of his cane smacked down forcefully upon the pavement. An overwhelming stench of roses filled the air, an otherworldly, heavenly scent.
- “Hey,” he heard somebody yell. “Hey that old guy just made roses appear in the middle of the pavement!”
- Had he? Could he really have done that? He groped the air in front of him, felt his hands touch petals, thorns, leaves.He turned around and rapped the tip of the cane down hard. He felt ahead. More blooms sprouted. He stepped sideways, stepped out and around the roses. Continued on his way.
- It was a Tuesday and he was out in his garden when she brushed against him next. This time it was unmistakeably intentional, frottage, her chest against his chest, her pelvis against his groin as she edged past him along the garden path. If his eyes could see they would have seen hers looking into his. Not knowing how to react, he froze. Janice smiled knowingly to herself and edged away, along the path to where a patch of Remember Me roses bloomed a deep copper orange. She took a pair of secateurs from her pocket and began snipping away the deadheads. They fell to the ground and lay on the path reminding Janice of the ex-husband she'd chopped out of her life. A deadhead, that's what he'd been. A worthless dried up old thing. She looked back at Mr Thomlinson. Here he was, this sweet sprightly, elderly man, a man who wouldn't harm a fly. She'd felt her heart soften the minute she'd laid eyes on him, opening the front door with his hand on his dog's head, fondling his canine's ears.
- “Men, better off without 'em,” that's what she used to say, but she'd never really believed it.
- The words had been a crust, a carapace around her heart, protective words designed to keep her from harm. What she really thought was that there was somebody out there for everyone, that nobody should have to make the brutal journey from cradle to grave alone, that everybody needed a hand holder, somebody by their side to ease the pain of daily existence, somebody to share experiences and emotions with, somebody to lie down next to at night and wake up beside in the morning. Janice's sister Dorothy was forty-two and she'd never been involved with anybody and look how she'd turned out - cynical as all hell, bitter from having eaten too many meals alone at the dining room table of an evening, nothing but the radio for company, her smile hardened into a grimace, her shoulders hunched when she walked along the street, her head down, as if looking for sixpences. No, the pair was the correct state of affairs, the natural order of things, the way we were meant to be.
- Janice enrolled Mr Thomlinson (Alan, she had to start thinking of him as Alan) in Braille classes. She attended with him, closing her eyes, hands moving across the raised letters, the single dot of the 'a', the vertical two dots of the 'b', the horizontal two dots of the 'c'. A, B, C. Every now and then, she would reach out her hand and rest her fingers upon his; two hands like two spiders crawling across the page.
- Alan had yet to reciprocate Janice's advances. He didn't flinch, he didn't pull away, but neither did he respond in kind. Typically, he simply sat there, like a man cast in stone, immobile, a monolith. Certainly, he was grateful for Janice's company. But then, he was grateful for the dog's company, too. A love affair didn't necessarily follow on from companionship. His wife wasn't that long dead - a year passes at the speed of light when one is in one's later decades. Her memory was still fresh in his mind, images of the two of them at the beach, building sandcastles, or together in the garden or simply sitting at home watching television. If she was in heaven (as he hoped she was), looking down on him, how would she feel about another woman, this usurper, this Janice elbowing her way in with her lingering touches, her immaculate housework and her comforting words? Would she be happy that he was moving on with his life, or would she be resentful? Would she think it was too soon, that he was smearing their memories, taking a crayon to the family photographs that perched on the mantelpiece? Would she think that this new light, this sun, this new potential love cast a dark shadow over what the two of them had shared together, for so many years?
- Then there was this business with the cane. The blooming had not been an isolated incident. Whenever he rapped the tip of his cane down upon the concrete something flowered. It wasn't just roses that bloomed; there were chrysanthemums, crocuses, tulips, irises, hyacinths, birds of paradise. A veritable jungle blossomed all along Eckers Place. Janice remarked on it on those mornings when she turned up at his door. She didn't know that it was him that was causing the concrete to burst into flower. Her joke was that elves were at work, digging little holes in the pavement late at night or first thing in the morning and pushing in plants.
- Vast improvement, Mr Thomlinson,
she would say. Elves hard at work. Yours must be the prettiest street in the entire neighbour-hood.
- The irony of it, the grand irony of it, was that Mr Thomlinson couldn't see any of his handiwork. Oh, but he could feel it though; hands outstretched, he touched gorgeous silken blossoms, delicate shooting leaves, spiky thorns. Each morning he tap-tapped down the street and then tap-tapped back, stopping along the way to reach out and feel the foliage, the fauna that he had created - this something that he had conjured from nothingness. He did not search for an explanation - he simply accepted the cane's powers. What explanation could there possibly be? The cane was magical; somebody must have cast a spell on it.
- They were sitting in the lounge, she watching and he listening to Wheel of Fortune when she put her hand upon his thigh. A warm glow spread along his leg in both directions, he felt as if his flesh was melting, turning from solid into liquid, becoming molten. Still he did not respond, he simply sat there, wondering what would happen next. Nothing happened. She left her hand where it was for the duration of the programme. Mr Thomlinson remained frozen, and at the end of the episode he rose to his feet, offered her a cup of tea and then felt his way through to the kitchen where he prepared them both a cup of Earl Grey, she with two sugars, him with none.
- The next morning when she came to the door he could hear the note of upset in her voice.
- “Oh Alan,” she said (it was the first time she had called him by his first name). “Oh Alan, everything's
- Everything's droopy. Something must have happened; somebody must have been out there spreading poison.”
- He walked down the quiet street, felt crispy leaves, wilted stems, atrophy. She had followed him, she trotted along just behind - could he hear her quietly weeping? He stopped, turned around, reached out tentatively, put his trembling arm around her shoulders and considered his future possibilities.
