Read an extract from Star Gazing by Linda Gillard

To mark the announcement that Linda Gillard's novel Star Gazing has been shortlisted for the 2009 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, we present a two-chapter excerpt from the book...

Chapter One

Marianne

This is not a ghost story. Not really. But it was Christmas and I did feel as if I'd seen a ghost. Or rather heard a ghost. Except that you don't hear ghosts, do you? Clanking chains, hideous moans perhaps, but on the whole people see ghosts, or so I understand.

It's an experience I've been spared.

But I thought I'd heard one.


The woman takes care getting out of the taxi, reaches inside and removes a briefcase and carrier bag. She sets them carefully on the kerb and fumbles in a capacious handbag for her purse.

As the taxi pulls away she turns to face the grey Georgian terrace, elegantly anonymous, typical of many in Edinburgh. Dressed in a full-length woollen coat and dashing velvet hat, the woman extends a booted toe and places it, deliberately, on a manhole cover. She bends and picks up her bags, straightens, pauses for a moment, then without looking to left or right, she strides across the pavement towards the steps leading up to a front door. A keen-eared observer might hear her counting under her breath.

Before she has taken four paces there is a hiss of braking wheels and the sound of a bicycle skidding on pavement, followed by an angry adolescent shout.

'Jesus! Didn't you see me coming? Are you blind or what?'

Shaken, the woman turns to face the cyclist. As she adjusts her hat, knocked askew, her hands are unsteady but her voice is firm. 'Yes. As a matter of fact, I am.'


Marianne

That's right, I'm blind.

I'll just give you a moment or two to adjust your prejudices.

But, I hear you ask, shouldn't I have been escorted by a Golden Labrador? Or waving a white stick? At the very least, shouldn't I have been wearing enormous dark glasses, as favoured by Roy Orbison and Ray Charles?

I know, I know – it really was my own stupid fault for wandering about looking <i>normal</i>. (Well, I'm told I do. How would I know?)

'I am blind and you have no right to be cycling on the pavement. If you have a bell, might I suggest you try using it in future?'

But the cyclist is already gone. She bends to pick up the bag she dropped, feels the shifting of broken glass, hears the steady drip of liquid onto the pavement. With sinking heart she mounts the steps and delves into her handbag again for her door key. The loss of the Burgundy is a disaster – how will they cook boeuf bourguignonne without it? And the meringue nests will be as shattered as her nerves. Encountering the cold metal of her phone, she wonders whether to ring her sister with a lastminute shopping-list.

The door key falls from her chilled fingers. She gasps, straining her ears to locate the direction of the small sound it makes as it hits the ground. She bends, sweeps the stone with bare hands, cursing the cyclist, Christmas and most particularly her blindness. Something wet and weightless lands on the back of her hands.

Snow ...

She feels the prickle of tears, blinks rapidly and sweeps the doorstep again, then plunges her hand into the evergreen foliage of a potted plant, shaking it, listening for the clink of a falling key.

Silence.

She is considering what comfort might be derived from sitting on the steps and bursting into tears when she hears footsteps approach, then come to a halt. She registers a habitual flutter of apprehension. The footsteps are male.

'Can I help?' A man's voice, not local, nor one that she knows. Or ...?

'I've dropped my door key and I can't find it. I'm blind.'

She hears the sound of change jingling in pockets as he mounts the steps  quickly. After a moment he says, 'It's fallen onto the basement stair ... Here you are.' He takes her chilled hand, places the key in her palm and murmurs, 'Che gelida manina...'

'Yes, I've lost my gloves too. Must have dropped them somewhere.'

'No, they're dangling from your coat pocket.'

'Are they?' She feels for the gloves. 'Thank you. And thank you for finding my key.'

'No bother. I hate to tell you this, but your shopping seems to be bleeding.'

'It's red wine. I dropped it. It's been one of those days.' She opens her handbag and pushes the gloves inside. 'Do you like opera? Or do you just break out in Italian every so often?'

'I'm a sucker for Puccini.'

She considers. 'Musically very appealing, but ideologically unsound, I always think. Women as passive victims of glamorous men. Rather repellent in the twenty-first century.'

'I hadn't really thought about it like that.'

'You wouldn't. You're a man.'

'A chromosomal accident. I'm sorry.'

She laughs. 'No, I'm sorry. For being so rude. Forgive me – I was rather shaken, losing my key. Cross with myself and taking it out on you. Hardly fair. I keep my key on a chain that I put round my wrist so I can't drop it, but I was in a hurry and I didn't bother ... Are you from Skye?'

He pauses a moment before answering. 'Aye. Well, I was brought up there. I was born on Harris. But my parents hankered after bright lights and the big city. So they moved to Portree.' She laughs again. 'I take it you know Portree?'

'Only by reputation. I knew a Skye man ... A Sgiathanach.'

'Sgiathanaich are loyal. We tend to go back.'

'Do you?'

'Aye, when I can. It's a great place. As long as you don't crave excitement.'

'Your parents were disappointed then?'

'Och no, they died happy in their beds.' She senses a smile.

'Of culture shock.'

'Well, there are worse ways to die.'

'Aye. A lot worse.'

'Thanks for your help.'

'No bother. Will you manage with the broken glass?'

'Oh, yes, my sister will deal with it, after she's given me a thorough scolding for being so damned independent. I'll just leave the bag on the doorstep. The food's ruined anyway.'

'Well, if you're sure there's nothing more I can do?'

'Thanks, I'll be fine now.'

She hears his feet on the steps again. He calls up, his voice more distant now. 'I'll run into you at the opera, maybe? I presume Turandot meets your stringent feminist criteria?'

'Ah, now she's a girl after my own heart. Chews men up and spits them out. And if they can't guess the riddles – off with their head!'

'But the prince confounds her. With his name.'

'Yes. Puccini's misogyny always triumphs in the end.'

'You're getting cold. Away indoors. And wipe your feet – you're standing in a pool of red wine.'

'It was very nearly a pool of tears.'

'I'll see you around, maybe.'

'Well, you might see me, but I definitely won't see you. Goodbye.'


Marianne

Has it ever struck you how language favours the sighted? (Of course not, because you can see.) I don't just have a problem seeing, I have a problem talking, trying to find words and phrases appropriate to my experience. Just listen to how people go on: Oh, I see what you mean ... Now look here ... The way I see it ... Reading between the lines ... I didn't see that coming! ... It depends on your point of view ...

You get the picture?

I, of course, don't.


People often ask me why I go to the opera when I can't see the singers act, I can't see the set or costumes and I can't see any lighting effects. Why don't I just stay home and listen to a CD – surely it's the same? I ask them if they think it's the same looking at a reproduction of Van Gogh's Starry Night as standing in front of the actual painting? (I wouldn't know, of course, but I do know people who have stood before that canvas and wept.)

I tell sceptics and doubters that I go to the opera because opera pours a vision of a wider world into my ears in a way that no other art form that I can access does. Sculpture and textiles, on the rare occasion I'm permitted to touch them, excite me. Plays, novels and poems move, entertain and educate me, but they don't rock me to my foundations and make me see. I can read Tolstoy's account of the French retreat from Moscow, either in Braille or as an audiobook, but I have never seen a city. Or snow. I've never seen a man, let alone an army. Tolstoy uses a visual language that I can read, haltingly. It's not my mother tongue.

But music I can 'read' much more easily. In fact, I don't need to read it at all. When I hear music it goes directly to my heart, it pierces my soul and stirs me with nameless emotions, countless ideas and aural pictures. Nowhere am I more conscious of this than at the opera. At times I am so shaken by what I hear, by what I feel, I wonder if my constitution could actually cope with the addition of a visual component.

I lied to the man on my doorstep about my dislike of Puccini's victim-heroines, or rather I told him a half-truth. What I cannot bear is their pain, and when their suffering seems random, pointless – as Tosca's, Mimi's and Butterfly's does – I think what I feel, at some deep level, is angry. And I don't want to feel angry, especially not in the opera house.

I have far too much to be angry about.

Anger is a place I don't go, a colour I never wear.


I have two wardrobes in my large bedroom. One of them contains black clothes and the other contains cream and ivory. (These adjectives are labels that my elder sister Louisa has allocated for me. For all I know she could be dressing me in sky-blue pink, as our mother used to say, a colour no more difficult for me to imagine than black or ivory.)

Wearing coloured clothes would be too complicated for me. If I wish to look smart for work or for my limited social life, and if I wish to be independent, I have to have clothes that will match or blend. Louisa and I thought this through carefully. She rejected navy blue because there are apparently many different types of navy. (She also said she couldn't bear to look at me in navy since this was the colour we wore for years as school uniform.) Louisa said black and cream would co-ordinate if I got confused and put an item of clothing away in the wrong wardrobe.

Light-coloured clothes are hazardous of course. They show stains and dirt. Eating when you're blind is fraught with difficulties, so I spend a fortune on dry-cleaning. I rely on Lou to tell me when it needs to be done, but at least I don't ever have to stand in front of a mirror agonising over what to wear. It's either a cream day or a black day. Occasionally Lou prevails upon me to wear a brightly coloured scarf or pashmina to ring the changes. She says my eyes are an attractive opal blue and certain colours bring it out.

I hope the colour is more attractive than the word. 'Opal' is an ugly-sounding word, like all words for which there is no rhyme, such as 'pint' and 'orange'. Perhaps they aren't ugly sounds, merely unique, and therefore odd. When you cannot see what words describe, you tend to focus on the words themselves. Words are a form of music and I suppose I hear them differently from the sighted. Louisa describes my opal eyes in breathless tones, as if she is paying me a huge compliment based, I gather, on a comparison with the precious stone, which she tells me is quite spectacular. I just hear an ugly, faintly ridiculous word.

I don't wear colours.

I don't do anger.

Nor, I'm afraid, love. Not any more.

A monochrome existence, the sighted might say, but even that implies the presence of one colour. You might use the word 'colourless', but what colour do you then see? People seem to describe dull things as 'colourless' when – apparently – they are grey or brown.

When we were young I asked Louisa if anything was literally colourless. She thought for a while and said 'glass'. Then she said 'rain'. I asked her if all water was colourless and she said, no, not from a distance. The sea or a lake is coloured because it reflects the sky, but she said individual drops of water were colourless; rain, as it fell through the air, was colourless.

It's a paradox. Things that look colourless to you are my artist's palette. Rain is the only thing apart from my sense of touch that gives me any sense of three dimensions. Water falling from the sky defines shape, size and quality by the sounds it makes when it lands.

Water colourless? Not for me.


Harvey was dead. Long dead. I hardly even thought about him any more, perhaps because I'd never had any visual memories of him – no photographs, no wedding video to watch to keep the memories alive, no children to remind me of him. To me Harvey was just a body and a voice. A very faint one now, but then he was always soft-spoken, perhaps to compensate for the fact that some people believe blindness affects the ears as well as the eyes, so they raise their voice when speaking to you. Harvey didn't do that. He knew how sensitive my hearing was, how I saw with my ears.

But Harvey died.

I didn't see that coming either.


I ran into him again. Not Harvey, the man from Skye. At the theatre. The opera, in fact. During the interval of Die Walküre Louisa bought us both drinks, settled me at a table and went off to join the queue in the Ladies. She left me stewing in a soup of sound, the kind of aural overload that I find distressing: the quack of elderly ladies; the clatter of teaspoons and the chink of sturdy cups; the murmur of male voices breathing urgently into their mobiles; English women sounding like neighing horses; Scotsmen scouring the ear with aural Brillo pads. I'd already taken a hammering from Wagner and was thinking of abandoning the two G&Ts and joining Louisa in the Ladies when a male voice asked me if a chair was taken. I recognised him immediately. I was about to reply but by then he'd recognised me and was sitting down, asking me what I thought of the singing.

His voice was so similar. Like toffee. Smooth and pitched low. But this voice didn't have the drop of vanilla, the hint of a drawl that Harvey had inherited from his Canadian mother. This voice was more like a good dark chocolate, the kind that's succulent, almost fruity, but with a hint of bitterness. He hit his Highland consonants with the same satisfying 'click' that good chocolate makes when you snap it into pieces. (The blind are as fetishistic about voices as the sighted are about appearances, so allow me, if you will, to describe this man's voice as chocolate. Serious chocolate. Green & Black's, not Cadbury's.)

When I'd met him on my doorstep I knew immediately it wasn't Harvey's voice. In any case, Harvey was dead. (I may be blind but I'm not stupid.) When I heard that voice for the second time, I knew at once who it was, but again I remembered ... So I was already thinking about Harvey when he told me his name.

'Harvey.'

'I beg your pardon?'

'My name's Harvey. Keir Harvey.'

'Did you say Hardy?'

'Harvey. Keir Hardie was the founder of the Labour Party.'

'I'm aware of that. He's also dead.'

'Aye, but his spirit lives on.'

'In you?'

'Not that I'm aware. It could have taken up residence without my knowing, I suppose.'

'Do you have socialist leanings?'

'Practically toppling over.'

'Well, that might account for it. If you were possessed, I mean.'

'Do I strike you as possessed?'

'No ... Self-possessed, perhaps.'

'That's an odd expression. I mean, who else would own you?'

'Well, in your case, possibly Keir Hardie. Perhaps you should change your name.'

'It's Harvey. Like the rabbit.'

'What rabbit?'

'In the film. With James Stewart.'

'What film?'

'Harvey.'

'I've never seen it.'

'Have you ever seen any film?'

'No. I've been blind since birth.'

'Aye, well, you missed a good one there. Harvey is a six-foot rabbit that only James Stewart can see, which could have something to do with him being always out on the bevvy. But the rabbit is remarkably good company, for all he's invisible.'

'You didn't apologise.'

'What for?'

'When I told you I've been blind since birth, you didn't say, "I'm sorry" in a tragic voice. People usually do.'

'Well, it wasn't my fault, so I don't really see why I should apologise. Is it obligatory?'

'I think it's said more as an expression of compassion. Fellow feeling.'

'Embarassment, more like.'

'Yes, very probably. And you're not embarrassed.'

'Not by your inability to see. I'm deeply embarrassed that you mistook me for a dead socialist.'

'It could have been worse. I might have taken you for a six-foot rabbit.'

'How d'you know I'm not?'


The middle-aged woman who bustles through the crowded bar is small but determined. She adjusts a beaded pashmina draped round her plump shoulders and, with a well-aimed nudge of her elbow, squeezes her way through the press of suits and evening gowns to a low table where a woman sits nursing a gin and tonic, staring into space. The family resemblance is striking. Both women are fair, even-featured, blue-eyed. The extravagant blondeness of the woman on her feet owes much to the skills of her hairdresser. The fair hair of her seated sister, Marianne, is ashen, in places grey, drawn back into a simple chignon suggesting the pale, poised severity of a ballerina. Despite her greying hair she is evidently younger than the sister who now bears down on her, round face shining despite recent ministrations with a powder compact.

'Sorry I was so long, darling.' She bends, picks up a glass and takes a large swig. 'Oh, God – the ice has melted!' She puts the glass down again. 'There was an interminable queue in the Ladies and then I was accosted by a fan. She wanted to know when <i>Eldest Night and Chaos</i> was coming out. So I gave her a bookmark – I had some in my handbag. She was thrilled.'

Marianne doesn't look up but sighs. 'Really, Lou, the imbecility of your titles beggars belief.'

'That's Milton, I'll have you know.'

'I'm aware it's Milton. You, my dear, are not. Now be quiet a moment and let me introduce you to Mr Harvey.' She indicates a chair on her right with a wave of her hand. 'This is the kind man who retrieved my door key for me – when I lost it at Christmas, do you remember? Mr Harvey, this is my sister, Louisa Potter who, in another guise, is a famous author. Of very silly books.'

Louisa laughs nervously. 'Marianne, darling, there's nobody there! The chair's empty.'

'Is it?' Marianne's large eyes register no emotion but her head inclines slightly towards the adjacent chair as if she is listening. 'Well, he was here a moment ago. He was talking to me just before you arrived. How very odd!'

Louisa sinks into the empty chair beside her sister and thinks about kicking off her high-heeled shoes. She considers the worse discomfort of trying to get them back on again after the interval and decides to suffer. 'Did you have a nice chat? With your mystery man?'

'Yes, thanks.'

'I wonder why he slipped off like that without saying anything? Very bad-mannered.' Louisa swirls the remains of her ice cubes around in her glass. 'Perhaps he spotted someone he knew. Or maybe he was paged. A medical emergency. He might have been a surgeon.'

'For goodness sake, Lou, do you have to turn everything into a melodrama?'

'Well, you said it was odd, disappearing like that. I was trying to account for it.'

'He wasn't a surgeon anyway.'

'Oh? What does he do?'

'I've no idea, but he's not a surgeon. We shook hands. His was rough and decidedly workmanlike. I'd say he works outdoors.'

'Now who's inventing mysteries?'

'I'm not inventing, I'm deducing. From the evidence of my senses.'

'Damn, that's the bell for Act Two.' Louisa takes another mouthful of watery gin and struggles to her aching feet. 'Listen out for his voice. He might be sitting near us.'

'He won't be talking. He's here on his own.'

'Well, now I am intrigued. A man who works outdoors with his hands and goes to the opera alone ... I presume he's not elderly?'

'The handshake wasn't.'

'Young, then?'

'No, not young. Well, he didn't sound young. I can't always tell with voices.'

'Was he chatting you up?'

'No, of course not! Lou, you really are impossible.'

'Not impossible – just an incurable romantic and a diehard optimist.'

'A nauseating combination, if I may say so.'

'Thank you, sweetie. Love you too.'

As Marianne rises from her chair and reaches for her cane, Louisa turns the pages of her programme. 'How many more acts of this musical torture do we have to endure?'

'Two. Add philistinism to your long list of failings.'

'I know Wagner was supposed to be an orchestral genius – you've told me often enough – but I just feel sorry for the poor singers, rambling on and on in search of a tune. Give me Puccini any day.'

'You and Mr Harvey both.' Marianne extends her arm in the direction of her sister's voice. Louisa searches her inscrutable face, then takes her arm and links it affectionately with her own as they join the chattering throng moving slowly towards the auditorium.

'I'd really like to meet this man. A solitary, male opera-goer with labourer's hands, who loves Puccini. Fascinating! If you put him in a book no one would believe you.'

'I wasn't aware that credibility was a criterion in fiction these days. Especially not yours.'

'I write fantasy, darling,' Louisa replies amiably, patting her sister's hand. 'Anything goes. You don't have to believe it. You just consume it. Like chocolate.'


Chapter Two

Louisa

I feel I should explain. About my sister. Marianne.

What you need to understand about Marianne is that, despite the fact that she's blind – perhaps because she's blind – she's always had a very vivid imagination. So certain allowances have to be made, were always made: by our parents, doctors, teachers and so on. It was always understood that Marianne lived life in her head – well, what else could she do, poor thing? She was blind – and the boundaries between fantasy and reality were a little hazy for her at times.

She developed a philosophical bent at university. She used to say that, as sisters, we had more in common than genes. We both lived in imaginary worlds of our own creating. The only difference was, mine made me a lot of money. (That was a dig, of course. I didn't mind. Marianne's been through a lot. As I said, you have to make allowances and I do.)

It occurs to me, you don't know who I am, do you? So sorry – let me introduce myself! My name is Louisa Potter, but you'll know me as Waverley Ross. That's my nom de plume. What's in a name? An awful lot, apparently. My publishers didn't think Louisa Potter sounded either Scottish or sexy and I had to agree. As an English pupil in a Scottish school I was known as 'Potty Lou' and dreamed of marriage so I could change my prosaic surname to something glamorous like Traquair or Urquhart. A husband never materialised, so I settled for a nom de plume.

It's all part of the marketing. No matter how good a writer you are, without a good marketing strategy you're dead in the water. So I was advised by those in the know to become 'Waverley Ross'. Sounds Scottish, doesn't it? And strong. It's supposed to sound sexy as well, although I always think of Edinburgh railway station when I hear the word 'Waverley', but I gather my hordes of American fans, bless them, conjure up swirling mists and Sir Walter Scott.

I'm an author – a very successful one – of vampire romance. Upmarket vampire romance, I hasten to add. It's a big genre and one needs to be aware of the nuances. There's an awful lot of tat out there. Sick tat too. I don't write that. I write Scottish Gothic vampire romance. (Hence my nom de plume.) I did a history degree in Edinburgh, fell in love with the city and nineteenth-century Scottish literature, and my writing career grew out of my passions.

All my books are set in Edinburgh. They're pretty formulaic, I admit, but that's what people like. You know where you are with a Waverley Ross. In Edinburgh, doing battle with the powers of darkness, righting wrongs, fending off over-sexed vampires of both genders and all sexual proclivities.

I do quite a lot of sex but nothing distasteful. (In my books, I mean.) No rape and definitely no S&M. My books are very traditional – just love stories really – but the men have to be supernatural because frankly, a good hero is hard to come by these days. It's difficult finding an excuse to create a tall, dark and handsome hero who dresses in flamboyant clothes and behaves in an unpredictable but masterful way. (And, believe me, that is what women want. Well, it's what they want in fiction. My gay following too. They're all soppy romantics at heart.)

I began my writing career writing Regency romances (don't knock it – so did Joanna Trollope) but they didn't sell and I wasn't getting anywhere. Then it occurred to me that everyone was fed up to the back teeth with political correctness. The last thing women wanted to read about was men behaving like something out of Jane Austen. I realised what we actually wanted was bad boys. But not real bad boys. Vampires. Sexy vampires who were – to a man – tall, dark and handsome. (I do throw in the occasional blond, just to ring the changes. I don't think you can do anything with redheads but my assistant, Garth, says I should be more open-minded.)

Being supernatural, my vampires have extraordinary powers and physical attributes, plus an uncanny facility for shedding their clothes at key dramatic moments. To be honest, this last trait is a bit difficult to make convincing because, as any Scot will tell you, it's extremely cold and damp in Auld Reekie, but my thesis (this actually came to me when I had my first hot flush) is that vampires are hot-blooded creatures, immune to cold, hunger, thirst and pain. (But not, of course, sexual frustration.)

Anyway, I digress. My books (see www.waverleyross.com) have enabled me to live with my sister in a certain degree of luxury in a desirable part of Edinburgh. Marianne may scoff at my work – she refers to my characters as my 'imaginary friends' – but she's happy enough to enjoy what my labours buy. I don't begrudge her a penny. She's all the family I have, she's excellent company (if you have a thick skin) and she keeps the flat ticking over when I'm away on promotional tours. She works part-time answering the phone for a blind charity, but she doesn't need to. She does it to assert her independence. I understand that. I'm sure I'd feel exactly the same in her position.

So we rub along together quite nicely, a couple of old spinsters becoming increasingly eccentric with the passing of the years. I said to Marianne the other day, 'I'm over fifty – I need to slow down,' and she said, 'I'm nearly fifty – I need to speed up.' She was exaggerating, of course. At forty-five Marianne is six years younger than me. It seemed a big gap when we were children but I think that was a lot to do with her blindness. I'd already started school when she was born, so Marianne was always something of a solitary child, isolated by her age and her handicap. That's probably why she developed such a vivid imagination. She had imaginary friends too! Hers never made her any money but I'm sure, in their way, they were a great comfort to her.

Heaven knows, there have been times when poor Marianne has needed comfort.


Marianne

One of my favourite walks in all seasons is Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden, known fondly to all as the Botanics. I can find my way there on my own. I've memorised the route as a sequence of numbers – the paces I take before turning a corner or crossing a road. There are landmarks that I navigate by – a manhole cover, a postbox, a pedestrian crossing. I usually take my cane because people leave things on the pavement that I don't expect to be there: rubbish bins, bicycles and the like. But these unexpected obstacles aside, I can walk confidently to the Botanics, enjoying the scents and sounds along my route, anticipating the blissful moment when I can walk through the gates and leave the traffic behind.

I love the garden in all seasons. I especially love it when it rains. I like to shelter under the trees when they're in full leaf and listen to the patter of rain as it forms a kind of sound-sculpture for me, defining the size and shape of a tree, giving me an aural sense of scale, of distance. I have no concept of landscape and only a vague understanding of what distance must look like. I experience distance mainly as the difference between loud and soft, but sound quality isn't always related to distance. A man's voice might be very soft, but he could be lying beside you. Volume is not a true guide.

Music gives me some inkling of landscape. The sheer scale of orchestral music, the volume and the detail, can put me in touch with something much bigger than myself, take me beyond my personal boundaries, the world that I experience with my fingertips or my cane. Music tells me there is a wider world and what it might be like.

I know it exists, of course. I listen to the news; I did geography at school; I read books about faraway places just like any other armchair traveller, and Louisa and I have visited some of them. But for me the Earth is a conceit, something I'm told exists but cannot see – like Pluto or Neptune for you. Astronomers deduced that Neptune must exist long before they devised telescopes powerful enough to view it. They thought it must be there because something was affecting the orbits of the other planets. There was a gap in the galaxy where a planet ought to be and they trusted that there was. It was an act of faith: faith in mathematics and physics.

There is a gap in my life where the Earth ought to be. I have to take its existence on trust. I cannot see or feel the Earth, I am merely informed by my senses of the minutiae of its being. It's much the same for you, but sight allows you to appreciate what others see, through a camera lens, through telescopes, from spaceships. Thanks to this second-hand sight, your world is much, much bigger than mine can ever be.

But when I listen to an orchestra play a symphony, I have a sense of what it might be like to contemplate a mountain range, a fast-flowing river, the skyline of a city. Music helps me see. So does rain. Rain helps me see things that my fingers can't encompass, like a tree or a glasshouse. That's where you'll find me when it rains. In the Botanics. In one of the glasshouses, or sheltering under one of my favourite trees.

But I dislike winter. Not for all the usual reasons – dreary weather, short days. What are those to me? I don't like winter because there are no leaves left on the trees, no leaves to make music with the rain. My trees fall silent. Once a blanket of snow has fallen, my whole world becomes muffled, indistinct. (You would say blurred – how I imagine the world looks to the myopic.) There are no dead leaves crackling underfoot, few birds sing and I'm deprived of many of my markers, like manhole covers, sometimes even the kerb. My walk to the Botanics becomes a perilous undertaking.

I hate the silent world of winter because it makes me feel blind. I can experience the cold and wetness of snow, but I can never have a sense of a wintry landscape except as an almost silent world, bereft of the usual sounds that are its distinguishing features. In the depths of winter I suffer from depression, brought on by a kind of aural blankness. Those of you who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder will have some idea what I mean. You miss light, I miss sound. My little world with its modest horizons is transformed temporarily into one I don't recognise, and every single winter this comes as a dreadful shock.

Louisa says this is more or less what it's like for the sighted. The known world is transformed overnight, obscured by snow, and therein lies the thrill: you get out of bed one morning, look out the window and your world has turned white. I don't need to look. I can <i>hear</i> what has happened. The silence of snow is claustrophobic for me. Unsettling. I lose the familiar sounds that I associate with feeling safe and confident. Without those sounds I'm dis-orientated. I have to re-navigate, re-negotiate my life.

I have no understanding of colour, so I don't know what colour white is. But if silence were a colour, I think it would be white.


I knew I was being watched. To begin with I sensed it, but dismissed the feeling, then I became certain. It's a feeling I have at the back of my head, a feeling that makes my hair stand on end and my shoulders hunch, as if I'm bracing myself for fight or flight. I suppose it must be a remnant of an animal instinct that lies dormant in one of the areas of the brain for which scientists have so far found no use. I don't know whether this sense is likely to be more developed in the blind or whether we are just more paranoid. (The latter seems more likely, especially if you are a woman.)

One of the reasons I don't use my cane as much as I should is because I don't like to advertise to the world that I'm blind. I'm vulnerable enough on the streets as a woman without letting criminals and perverts of all denominations know that I'm easy prey. I try to look and behave as if I'm sighted. What I actually look, I suspect, is drunk. I trip and stumble, touch railings and walls, as if I'm unsteady on my feet, but it probably draws the attention less than a white stick.

But despite my precautions, my attempts at invisibility, my dressing in black, my intention of blending in with the leafless skeletons of trees, someone had noticed me. And was watching.


Seated on a wooden bench Marianne turns her head slowly in the direction of the approaching footsteps. She thinks of getting to her feet and walking briskly in the opposite direction but wonders if an element of chase might be exactly what the stalker would like – if indeed there is a stalker. In any case she finds it difficult to walk quickly, even with her cane. Instead she reaches into her bag for her personal alarm, registering briefly that if she uses it, she'll empty the garden of birds, animals and possibly startled, law-abiding humans.

A cold gust of wind lifts a wisp of hair and blows it across her face. Hamamelis. Witch hazel ... And something else, another scent. But it's wrong. Out of season. A memory surfaces and seconds later she places it.

'Is that you, Mr Harvey?'

Silence and stillness.

Then, 'I thought you were supposed to be blind? Are you working some kind of benefit fraud?'

'I am blind.'

'And a seer? Or just a mind-reader?'

'What, might I ask, are you? A stalker? You've been watching me, haven't you?'

'Only because I was trying to work out if it was you, then whether you'd mind being disturbed. You seemed deep in thought.'

'I was listening.'

'To the birds?'

'To the trees.'

He sits beside her. 'How did you know it was me?'

'Smell. I was down-wind of you.'

'Smell? I showered this morning. Very thoroughly.'

'I didn't mean a bad smell. It's probably your cologne.'

'I don't wear any.'

'Shampoo, then. Or maybe it's just your natural smell. My nose is very sensitive. I recognise people by voice and smell. I'm pretty good at it, but it's not a lot of help with judging character. It's harder for the blind, meeting new people. You have to be ... cautious. You never know what you're getting.'

'It's always a blind date.'

'Exactly. You aren't a six-foot rabbit, are you?'

'No.'

'Well, that's a relief.'

'I'm six foot two.'

'And furry?'

'Only in the usual places.'

'I could hear you were tall.'

She hears a sound pitched somewhere between laughter and astonishment. 'How?'

'Where your voice comes from. You must get bored looking at the tops of people's heads.'

'Not as bored as they must get looking up my nostrils.'

'Something else I'm spared. So just how furry are you?'

'Not very. Ears normal length too. Well, for a rabbit ... What did you smell? I'm fascinated.'

'Oh, hawthorn blossom, I think.'

'You're kidding me?'

'No. It's a good masculine smell. Sharp. Exotic, in an understated way.' She lifts her head and he watches her profile as her delicate nostrils flare, like an animal scenting danger. 'I think it's you, not the shampoo. I can smell a soapy, chemical scent on top of the hawthorn. What were you photographing? Not me, I hope.'

'How did you –? Och, you heard the shutter! I was photographing trees.'

'Why?'

'I compare what I see this year with what I saw this time last year. I make notes, keep a record. I'm tracking climate change.'

'Is that your job?'

'No, just an interest of mine.'

'Do you live in Edinburgh?'

'No. But I sometimes work here. And Aberdeen. Sometimes abroad.'

'Where's home?'

'Wherever I happen to be.'

'I get the impression you don't like personal questions.'

'Do you?'

'Not particularly.'

'Another thing we have in common.'

'Apart from a love of opera, you mean?'

'Aye, and a love of trees.'

'How do you know I love trees?'

'Folk who sit here on a cold winter's day must love trees. There's little else to look –' He pauses. 'Ah.'

'You fell into the trap. Don't worry. You lasted longer than most before making your faux pas.'

'So was I wrong? About you and trees?'

'No. I do love trees.'

'Even though you can't see them?'

'I can hear them. You can hear the bare branches tapping against each other in the breeze. Listen! ... It sounds like me, feeling my way along the pavement with my cane. I listen to trees. And I feel them.'

'Do you?'

'Yes. I lay my hands on them. Feel the texture of their bark and leaves, try to gauge their girth.'

'You touch wood.'

'Yes, I touch wood. Primitive, isn't it? But very satisfying. Are you superstitious, Mr Harvey?'

'Keir. Aye, I suppose so. I'm from the islands. A healthy respect for the supernatural goes with the territory.'

'Do you believe in an afterlife?'

'No.'

'Neither do I. I sometimes wish I did, but I don't. I think this is it, don't you? We get one crack at life and have to make the best of it.'

After a moment he says, 'You lost someone.'

It's not a question and she is thrown momentarily. 'What makes you say that?'

'Folk talk like that when they've been through the fire. Death concentrates the mind.'

'Yes, it certainly does. That's about all that can be said for it.' The conversation languishes and she shivers. He looks down at her ungloved hands.

'You're not married?'

'I was. Many years ago.'

'Divorced?'

'Widowed.'

'I'm sorry. You must have been quite young.'

'Twenty-seven. My husband was only thirty-three.'

'What happened?'

'I don't talk about it.'

They are silent for a long time, then the peace of the garden is shattered by an ambulance siren approaching, then receding. She hears him change his position on the bench, then clear his throat.

'Would you prefer to be on your own? I was gate-crashing anyway and I seem to have effectively killed the conversation.'

'Oh, you're still there, are you? I thought you might have vanished again, like you did at the opera. You know, I blithely introduced you to my sister, then felt a complete fool.'

'I'm sorry. I saw someone. Someone who shouldn't have been there. Someone I really didn't want to see ... But that's no excuse. My behaviour was very rude. Civility is not exactly my strong suit. As you may have noticed. Would you like me to vanish now?'

'No. I mean, if you want to leave –'

'I don't.'

'Then stay. I'm enjoying your company – though you might think I have a funny way of showing it. I sit here for hours on my own while my sister writes. If you can call what she does writing. I think monkeys on typewriters might come up with similar stuff. Blind monkeys. But it pays the bills, so I mustn't sneer. What do you do?'

'I'm a geophysicist. I work in oil and gas exploration.'

Standing abruptly, she says, 'You know, it's really too cold to sit here. We'll catch our deaths. I need a coffee. Better still, a hot chocolate.' She puts a hand up to her eyes, masking them, but not before he has seen tears.

'Are you OK? What did I say? I've upset you.'

'No, it wasn't you, I just wasn't expecting ...' She turns away, her head bowed.

He senses the muscles bunched in her shoulders, knows she would run if she could. Extending an arm he gently lifts the chilled fingers of one of her hands. He places them between his palms and she feels warmth radiating from his rough skin, restoring the circulation. 'Come on, let's get some coffee. Will you take my arm?'

She looks up but doesn't face him. 'My husband was an oil man too ... He died. In 1988. The sixth of July.'

She hears the faint whistle of breath between his teeth. 'Piper Alpha?'

'Yes.'

'Marianne, I'm sorry.'

'That's why I don't talk about being widowed. What, in God's name, is there to say? Maybe I'll talk about it one day, when I've come to terms with it. Give me another fifty years or so and I might be able to take a more philosophical view. But for now, I'm still angry. Incandescently angry.'


Marianne

It was – still is – the world's worst-ever offshore disaster. The flames could be seen for sixty miles.

One hundred and sixty-five oil workers died in an inferno when the Piper Alpha oil rig exploded. The sixty-one men who survived did so by leaping hundreds of feet into the sea, despite serious injuries and the rubber in their survival suits melting in the heat. Two heroic crewmen died attempting to rescue workers from the sea by boat. The bodies of thirty men – including my husband – were never recovered.

It was, apparently, an accident waiting to happen. The Cullen inquiry concluded that the management had been grossly deficient. The platform was in poor condition. There had been cutbacks in maintenance. Major refurbishment was taking place without production being interrupted. The day shift neglected to talk to the night shift and when the night shift activated equipment that had been partly decommissioned by the day shift, all hell was let loose. Literally.

It was a corporate massacre, but no one was ever prosecuted.

There's a memorial in Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen. It's surrounded by a rose garden. The names of the 167 victims are engraved on a granite plinth. I can read Harvey's name with my fingers, but I can't see it, of course. I can't see the rest of the memorial, can't even feel it. The three bronze figures of oilmen in working gear and survival suits are mounted above head height. To give visitors a good view, I suppose.

I'm told the memorial – designed by a woman – is very moving. The three figures face north, east and west and their symbolic gestures and details of their appearance are a sort of coded statement about the oil industry, life, death, the universe and everything.

Sorry if I sound cynical. Bitter, even.

I am.

I spend some time every July sitting in the re-named, specially dedicated North Sea Rose Garden, facing a memorial I cannot see. (The roses smell nice.) Then I take a taxi to the seafront and sit on a bench facing out to sea in the direction of the marker buoy, 120 miles north-east of Aberdeen, which marks my husband's grave.

They tell me there's a light so the marker buoy is visible day and night, especially from Piper Bravo, the new platform that was built just 600 metres away from the site of Piper Alpha.

I can't see the marker. I can't see the sea. But I face them both every summer, believing they are there, believing that it matters I am there, trying to believe that somehow Harvey knows I'm there.

God, I hate July.


'I think outside Scotland people have practically forgotten. Well, it's not the sort of thing you want to remember, is it?' In the café Marianne sips hot chocolate, warming her hands on the mug. Keir hasn't spoken for some time, but she's heard him exhale, sensed him sink into the chair beside her, oppressed by her story. 'I didn't just lose my husband ... I was pregnant.'

'Are you sure you want –'

'Oh, yes. The only people I ever talk to about it are people I don't know and will probably never meet again. You're performing a sort of service – if you can bear to listen.'

'Aye.' He touches her hand briefly, as if to reassure her of his physical presence. 'If you can bear to talk, I can bear to listen.'

'I was three months pregnant when Harvey died.'

'Harvey? Oh, Christ, I'm really sorry –'

'Don't worry about it. I like rabbits. The idea of them anyway. And I think I like you ... First of all people told me the pregnancy was a blessing – I'd have something to remember him by. Then when I lost the baby, people said that was a blessing too. I could marry again, unencumbered. I used to wonder if I was on the receiving end of more than the usual amount of crass insensitivity, simply because I was blind. Some people do actually speak more slowly when they realise you're blind. That's one of the reasons I go to such lengths to disguise my disability. To avoid being patronised.' She sighs and takes a mouthful of chocolate. 'Oh, let's change the subject. I'd rather talk about your furry ears. Do you have any other anatomical abnormalities?' He is silent. 'Keir, are you still there? I'd hate to think I've been unburdening myself to thin air.'

'I'm still here. Would you like me to describe myself to you?'

'Would you tell the truth?'

'I'd try. But I can't say I ever give my appearance a great deal of thought.'

'How refreshing. Something else we have in common.'

She hears him shift in his chair. 'I'm forty-two. Tall. A big guy, I suppose. Big bones and a fair bit of muscle. My hair's dark. Very short.'

'Eyes?'

'Two.'

'Both in working order, presumably?'

'Aye. One's blue and one's green.'

'Really?'

'Aye. They're different colours. Most folk don't notice. Or they notice there's something odd about my eyes, but can't work out what it is.'

'How extraordinary. Go on.'

'What more is there to say?'

'Well, would you say you're attractive?'

'Dogs seem to like me. And old ladies.'

'You're dodging the question.'

'How would I know?'

'Oh, come on! Men always know if women find them attractive.'

'I'm not sure that I do. Do <i>you</i>?'

'Do I what?'

'Find me attractive?'

'I can't see you.'

'You can't see anyone. It's a level playing field. Voice and smell, I believe you said.'

'And touch. But that comes later.'

'It needn't. You could read me with your hands and answer your own question.'

She is still for a moment, in apparent contemplation of her empty mug, then she turns towards him. Raising her hand towards his face, she finds it, then spreads her fingers, tracing the lines and planes of his brow, cheeks, nose and – lingering a moment – his mouth. She places both hands at the sides of his head and smiles as she feels short, spiky hair, sleek like an animal's coat. Leaning back in her seat she extends a palm until it meets his chest, registering a soft woollen jumper and hard shirt buttons beneath. She moves her hand across, feeling the undulation of muscle, until she finds his upper arm which she follows downwards, arriving at a large hand resting loosely on his thigh. She sketches his hand with her fingertips then moves them to his thigh where she lets them rest for a moment, exerting just the smallest pressure. Withdrawing her hand, she leans back.

'Thank you.'

'Well. That was ... stirring.'

'It was also very informative. I think you sold yourself a bit short in the physique department. Not so much a rabbit – more of a bear.'

'So did you answer your own question?'

'If the colour of your hair were a smell, what would it be?'

'Impressive diversionary tactic. A smell for a colour? That's a tough one. It's a rich brown. Goes a bit red in the summer.'

'Useless. I need smells.'

'Walnuts. Walnuts when you crack them open at Christmas.'

'And your eyes?'

'Which one? The blue or the green?'

'The blue.'

He is silent for a moment, then says, 'Juniper.'

'And the green?'

'The smell of ... autumn leaves. Decaying. That November smell. Smoky.'

'Lovely! You're good at this game – I can see you now. You aren't a rabbit at all. Or even a bear.' She extends a hand again and places her palm on his chest, leaving it there. 'You're a tree.'

Posted 16/01/2009 16:08:33 by Darren Turpin with 0 comments.