Blindsight Read online

  ‘Huh. Unofficial manager, that’s me. I do the cleaning. And yes, all men. If you can call them that. Ratbags, most of them. They’d shit in their own nests. Cyril’s all right. He’s the best. How come you know him? When was that?’

  ‘The last time I saw him,’ I said, ‘was 1959.’

  ‘I’m surprised you recognise him now. He’s changed a bit.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No. But they change. They’re middle-aged one day and old men the next. I suppose they’d say the same about us.’

  ‘How long has he been here?’

  ‘Ever since I came. That’s about, let’s see, six years. He’s had the same room all the time. It’s up the top of the stairs and along at the end. If you put your arms out, you can touch both walls. Doesn’t bother him. He won’t shift anywhere else. What’s your interest? You wouldn’t have been his girlfriend, someone like you.’

  ‘No, I just … knew him. Does he talk to you? Does he tell you anything?’

  ‘Cyril doesn’t say a word to anyone. Hello, Goodbye, Thank you, that’s his lot.’ She poured boiling water in the mugs. ‘I’ve heard stories about him. Like, how he comes from Aussie and he’s run away from his wife and kids, but I don’t believe that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s a gentle sort. He wouldn’t do it. Here, love.’ She handed me the tea towel again. ‘Wipe your face.’

  I held the towel to my eyes while she took the tea bags out of the mugs.

  ‘Milk?’ I heard her voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sugar?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I guess you knew him pretty well?’

  ‘I used to,’ I said. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Drink that. You’ll feel better. It’s not often anyone comes for one of them. Except social workers now and then. And the cops. We’ve had a couple of flashers, poor old sods. They’re not the worst.’

  ‘Cyril doesn’t …?’

  ‘No, not him. Like I said, he’s a gentleman. It’s just, his mind’s gone. It’s somewhere else. He’s got it locked up. I’d like to know what’s really in his head. But you can’t see Cyril’s eyes. He won’t look in faces.’

  ‘How does he pay?’

  ‘His benefit. The owner’s here every two weeks on the dot – gets it from them before they can booze it away. No rent, you’re out.’

  ‘Does Cyril drink?’

  ‘Not now. They say he used to. He was on that island the Sallies used to run, so I’ve heard. He still goes to AA meetings though. Sits in the back. The other men say it’s for the tea.’ The woman laughed. ‘He’s addicted to tea. Did you see his thermos flask? He’s worked through three or four of those. I fill it up for him before he goes out. Lots of sugar. He likes that. Are you sure you want to know all this, dear?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I want to know. What about food?’

  ‘They cook for themselves. Although some of them just do pies and fish and chips and stuff. We’ve got one eats out of rubbish tins. That’s Ted. But Cyril cooks. It’s chops or sausages most of the time. He can fry. He’s got a fry pan and a pot. He boils potatoes. He puts a bit of cabbage in on top.’ She got up and opened the cupboard named Cyril. ‘That’s his stuff. Knife and fork. Thermos flask. Cup and plate. That’s his bottle of sauce. He likes sauce.’

  ‘What does he do? I mean, all day?’

  ‘He sits in his room. That’s in the morning. He goes out in the afternoon, with his bucket and his flask. He goes round a few places he knows and someone there tops up whatever he’s drunk, and maybe they give him a sandwich and a plate of soup. Then he comes back and sits in his room until it’s time to cook his bit of veggies and meat.’

  ‘But in his room? He – what?’

  ‘Told you, he sits. There’s a bed in there and a chair. He sits. Or he lies down.’

  ‘Is there a radio? Does he listen?’

  ‘No radio. We don’t have TV either. The owner doesn’t run an airport lounge, he says. They’ve got their rooms. They take their food back there and eat, and then they bring their dishes down. Wash their own dishes. They know where the tea towels are. And the soap.’ She looked at me sharply. ‘I suppose if you got close enough you noticed he smells. That’s not Cyril, that’s his clothes. He’s quite clean. He shaves when I tell him. He washes a bit, but there’s parts he doesn’t get to. I say to him, “It’s time for a bath, Cyril,” and he has one. I tell him, “It’s time you washed your underpants. And your singlet and your socks. You better put your shirt in too.” So he goes out in the wash-house and does it. He wears his pants and jacket while his shirt and stuff are drying. He gets by. You shouldn’t feel sorry for Cyril.’

  I said: ‘I don’t.’

  I felt wrapped around him like a blanket. My mind was clear, avid to know more – and later on would know what to make of it all. Yet my body told me how things were. Tears still ran on my cheeks. I could not make my hand reach out to my mug of tea.

  ‘Can I see his room?’

  ‘That’s a private place – that’s what I reckon. Without him saying yes, and he can never say that. It’s tiny, I told you. They all are. A bed and a chair, that’s their lot. There’s a window he can open if he wants to get on the fire escape. There’ll be a fire here one day, that’s my pick. The way they smoke.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Cyril doesn’t do anything.’

  ‘If I tried to take him away …?’ – although I knew I would not.

  ‘You couldn’t. He won’t shift. He’s going to die here. Or up in the bush. He’s got a possie on Tinakori Hill. He sleeps there most times in the summer, gets water in his bucket from the tap in Grant Road, by the steps. He’s got a little thermette for his tea. When you see him with his quilt he’s sleeping there. But he pays his rent and comes back here whenever he wants. It’s his room. The owner tries to put someone in – double up, the miserable sod. But I don’t let him. It’s Cyril’s place. Why would you want to, anyway?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Take him away?’ She looked at me, brown eyes sharp with interest. ‘You’re not his wife?’

  I drew a deep breath and pulled words out like bits of paper tied on a string: ‘I’m his sister.’ My body, not my mind, knew the import, releasing a squirt of urine into my pants.

  ‘Thought it might be something like that,’ Sheena said.

  ‘And I haven’t seen him for so long … and here he is …’

  ‘Does he know you? No, course not. How long?’

  ‘Thirty years. Thirty-two years.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t. Cyril doesn’t know anyone, not like that. His mind’s gone. I don’t know whether from alcohol or something else. Maybe both. You’d know.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And he’s …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Up there, on his bed?’

  ‘That’s what he does. You can decide, if you’re next of kin, but I’d leave him there.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I will.’ I knew I must.

  ‘I wouldn’t even try talking to him. Because there’s a kind of balance and if you put that out he could go right away. I’m no expert. That’s what I think.’

  I had at least the central part of myself in command even though, around it, bits flew off, bits fastened on. I said: ‘Is there some way I can pay for him?’

  ‘His benefit does it. If you like …’

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘You can leave some money with me. I’ll get him stuff. I’ll leave it in his cupboard: he won’t know where it’s from – things are just there or not there. I’ll get Snickers, he likes those. And fresh bread sometimes, and butter if you like. New underpants too. It’s not my job …’

  ‘I can pay you something.’

  ‘Yeah, all right. What do you say? Thirty dollars a week – is that too much? Half for my time and extra work, and half for him. I’ll get him a new pillow, he needs that.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, thank you.’

  ‘You can
put it in an envelope and post it here. Sheena Gourlay is me.’

  I took money from my purse and put it on the table. I wrote her name on a piece of paper. Then I went away, left Gordon lying on his bed, and I’ve never been back inside that house, although I’ve been as far as the gate many times, walking after Gordon. I haven’t met Sheena Gourlay again, or seen more than the back of her, sweeping the porch. I sent her thirty dollars a week until she wrote that it was getting pinched. She gave me a bank account number and I do it by automatic transfer now – forty dollars, she put it up. I don’t know how she uses it, but I trust her. I’ve seen Snickers bars in Gordon’s bucket. I’ve seen him with a brand-new bucket – now grown old.

  I pray – I sometimes beg – that she won’t change jobs or die; that she’ll see us out, Gordon and me.

  I came down to Wellington two or three times a year until I retired. Then I bought my house in Wadestown, on the eastern buttress of the hill. In summer Gordon sleeps in his possie on the southern side, while I sleep in mine. I talk to him before I close my eyes: Stay warm and dry. The southerly is a winter wind, bringing icy rain. He’s safe in Fry-up House in that season. I can’t get the name out of my head, or the picture of Gordon frying chops at the stove. Yet I’m preserved from too much pain and guilt by stoicism. I’m stoical about what has happened to him and me. This is how our lives turned out. I see his progress through the town with his bucket, with his quilt, with his head forward like a turtle and his eyes fixed on the pavement – see it as Gordon responding to me.

  At other times I want to turn up my head and scream. He can’t bear to look at human faces. I did that. I want him once, only once, to raise his eyes and look at me.

  Over these ten years I’ve talked to people – street people, vagrants, alcoholics, Salvation Army workers, women who run soup kitchens and night shelters and give out used clothing, and none of them know him well. ‘You can’t know Cyril,’ the women say. All the same, they know stories about him: Cyril and the president’s men. He had not long turned up in Wellington (Cyril is an Aussie to some of them) and in those days he was drinking. A while after that he went to the island for the cure and tea became his drink. Doesn’t that show he had an idea of himself; doesn’t it show his mind was all right? If he could stop and never drink again? They’re not sure. He was always far away; he was gone, they say. They’d sooner tell stories, like the one about giving Gordon a pair of winter socks, which he would accept only one of because only one from his old pair had a hole.

  When I say ‘Gordon’ they look at me strangely. I change to Cyril, which has always been his name for those who help him. He must have changed it, perhaps by deed poll, soon after Handy’s death. Sheena Gourlay is the only one I’ve told I’m his sister. Others suspect a connection, but some think I’m a Wadestown lady coming close to sniff at poverty. I leave bits of money in envelopes and go away.

  Gordon has grown twenty years older in ten years. His wrists are thinner and his hands have deep clefts between the metacarpal bones. His ears seem bigger but that’s because his face has shrunk. I never see into it because of the tilt of his head. The vertebrae at the base of his neck stand out like seed potatoes. And his mouth, when I glimpse it …

  Sheena Gourlay telephoned me: ‘You won’t see Cyril for a while. He’s lost some teeth.’

  I asked what had happened and she told me the man called Angus had hit him in the mouth with a bottle, for no reason at all. Then he, Angus, had sat down and cried. Gordon had four of his upper teeth knocked out. Sheena got him to a dentist, who took out the stumps. (She posted me the bill.) A doctor put stitches in his lip. And no, she said, they hadn’t called the police: ‘We don’t go much on the John-hops round here.’ She told me not to come, I’d only get him confused. He was staying in his room for a day or two. So, his mouth – that’s where I was – is sunken at the top. He works it not hungrily but like a ruminant.

  New sneakers recently, new socks. Both of the old ones must have had holes. His beanie hat in the Hurricanes colours is gone; he wears a green one with a yellow rat’s tail plaited from wool. His quilt is worn through so the padding shows. It’s stained with mud. I’ll send Sheena money for a new one.

  Several years ago I followed my brother at a distance up Molesworth Street and Park Road and along Grant Road to a track leading into the trees at the foot of the hill. I had put on trousers and walking shoes, thinking I might have to slog my way up zigzag paths, but Gordon did not go very far. The track had barely started to climb when he turned off, using the chunky roots of a pine tree as stairs. He pushed aside fern branches and I saw him sink into a hollow as though going down in a pool. It marked a passing out of everyday life like the one he had made from our family; and made me hold my breath as though I were drowning. I might have called him: Gordon, come back; or: Gordon, don’t go. No sound came out but, yes, I called those words in my mind. Coming to the tree, I heard movements at a short distance, heard him sigh heavily, with almost a groan, and understood for the first time since finding him that he had physical aches like other men. I had thought everything was in his head – and, almost, that nothing was there. I heard the shuffling of his feet on boards and the sound of his bucket as he put it down. No further noise then, except for the pines – never silent, pine trees, even in still air. I climbed the serried roots and looked through kidney fern. He sat like a gnome in the entrance of his hollow, or like a tired miner at the end of the day. He reached up his hand and pulled off his woollen hat, then took his thermos flask from the bucket, unscrewed the top, poured tea, shaking the last drop out. I knelt in the ferns and watched, wanting extra sugar for him, wanting every pleasure, yet knowing that even his way of tasting sweetness was changed from mine. I knew nothing about him, nothing of where he was – yet knew him best and only I gave him continuity and his original being.

  The place he slept in on the hill must have been built by children as a fort or hideaway. They had carried in old pieces of 4x2 timber and a sheet of corrugated iron and made a roof resting on a pine branch and anchored in the bank behind. The tree bole sheltered one end; old patterned brocade drapes, probably from a rag bin, closed the other. The front, where Gordon sat, was open. A wooden door, tongue and groove, with the chrome-plated handle still in place, made a floor, which was kept off the ground by bricks in the corners. I could not see in. Later I discovered he had nothing there except his thermette and a cardboard box for bits of food. I suppose children still came, but out of curiosity, not for games. Gordon had nothing worth stealing. The roof kept out rain, the hill and trees kept out wind, and the raised floor stayed dry except in winter, when the cold drove him back to his boarding house. I saw he could be comfortable and not be bothered. He had his quilt and probably used his jacket for a pillow. I tried counting other things he would need, but did not keep on. For Gordon, I could not understand need.

  When he stood up with his bucket, I withdrew: went out of sight up the path, then crept after him down to the road and watched him fetch his water from the fountain by the steps. I retreated again when he came back, then walked up the top road to my house and made tea for myself and drank it, eating biscuits, while clouds came up and the afternoon darkened and the harbour intensified its light. Gordon there, on the hill; Alice here. I began to know a sort of contentment – but only a sort. I can move about in shallows but don’t dare step where the bottom shelves down.

  I’ve visited his hideaway several times while he’s away. I’ve thought of leaving a present – a few coins, a Snickers bar – but stop myself because of the fear he’d go away and never come back. Instead, I keep a simplified map of Wellington in my head and whisper it to him when I’m alone, as an offering: a hill marked with two crosses where Gordon and I live, and the only roads the ones he walks along, and the only places places where he goes, with Fry-up House marking the limit.

  You make the rules, Gordon, I say.

  Sometimes it almost seems enough.

  But my life has changed. A hundred
small things are rearranged and face each other in a different way. As for the larger pattern, it has shifted its parts, drawn them tighter and made room. Where Gordon and I once stood together, then stood apart, a third figure steps in from the side. Adrian, leaning a little forward, eager to see, arrives to join us.

  Alice, Gordon, Adrian: we are three.

  Chapter Nine

  He wore a new pair of jeans to meet his grandfather. I was clothed in my usual way – and clothed in my belief that this expedition would leave Gordon untouched. How could anything – news of Marlene, news of a son, the presence of a grandson – penetrate the barrier of incomprehension his change of being had erected in him? I was not worried for Gordon, and anyway, Adrian would not get within talking distance of him. I had extracted his promise that we were only looking today. It was the boy who worried me. New jeans. His face shaved clean. But along with this care of himself came an aggressive puzzlement. He did not understand what was going on. I hardly knew myself. I’m rearranging him, I thought, but am I going to know him when it’s done? Is he going to look at me and say: Alice, you’re mad. Is he going to wash his hands of me? I did not think I would be able to stand losing him.

  We parked in Aitken Street and I led him round the corner to a seat by the Backbencher Hotel. It was a few minutes after four o’clock. Now, in the warm weather of the last few weeks, Gordon is sleeping on Tinakori Hill. I imagined his schedule fixed like a train timetable in his mind, which meant he would appear in the next quarter hour, on the footpath over the road from us.

  ‘You mean we’ve got to meet him sitting here?’ Adrian said.

  ‘We’re not meeting him. He’ll be coming past. You promise me you’ll do what I say?’

  ‘Sure. Sure.’ He looked at the Beehive, showing its top – it’s like the lid on a biscuit barrel – above the trees. ‘I hope if he’s in Parliament he’s on the right side.’

  ‘Right?’

  ‘Left,’ he grinned. ‘If there’s any left.’ Grinned wider.