Night Without Stars (15 page)

“No harm, perhaps.”

Halliday grunted. “ Definitely if I were in your shoes I should make the effort. I don't want to raise false hopes in the slightest—”

“You won't.”

“But in this case a second opinion … Before you go abroad. After all, you've very little to lose.”

I'd had six or eight opinions while in hospital.

“Where does he live?”

“He has rooms just round the corner in Queen Anne's Street, but I should arrange for you to see him at the Vauxhall where he's consultant surgeon. Of course it's entirely up to you.”

A visit to the Vauxhall for another bout of head shaking. “All right,” I said.

Coulson was a little man with a quick, rather nervous way of talking and warm, light hands. He sounded more like a businessman than a surgeon.

He said: “The sight of the left eye isn't gone, Mr. Gordon, it's
obscured
, d'you see. Mr. Halliday will have explained, no doubt.”

“He did, but I didn't follow him.”

“What he proposes is that I should perform an iridotomy. Of course, in an eye with a history like yours it's so much a matter of chance what one finds behind. There might be any sort of disorganisation arising from the earlier injuries.”

“I follow roughly.”

“Well, it's like this. You know what the pupil is, don't you? It's the gap in the eye that the light goes through. Like the iris diaphragm in a camera. It expands or contracts according to the amount of light it has to cope with. Surrounding it is the iris. Well, the operation you had two years ago left a scar which contracted badly, drawing the iris so much out of shape that it has now almost completely closed the gap. No pupil's left, d'you see. Little light gets in. What I should do if I attempted that operation would be to cut you a new pupil.”

I thought this one out.

“What then?”

“Then the eye would begin to function more or less normally again.”

“I should see?”

“Yes, if it was a success.”

“What's against it?”

“At any time it's an operation of delicacy. The extra hazards in this case I've already told you.”

“And if the hazards turned up?”

Coulson blew out a slow breath. “At present you can tell the difference between daylight and darkness; you can detect, though you can't identify, objects moved in the region of the eye. It helps you to live your life. There are three possibilities if I operated. One is full sight. A second is a great improvement in the sight you would get but slight or no increase of vision. The third is complete darkness.”

“What are the chances?”

“It's almost impossible to say.… If I had to make some sort of estimate I should say three to two.”

“Against?”

“Against complete success, yes.”

“Well, that's frank anyhow.”

“There'd be no virtue in being otherwise. But I may be unduly cautious. I'm going somewhat on the history Mr. Halliday has provided, d'you see.”

I got up and stretched my legs. “Would you mind if I had a cigarette?”

“Of course not. Have one of mine.”

“Thanks.”

“D'you find much difficulty in getting them?” he asked. I could detect the flicker of his lighter.

“No, as a matter of fact I don't smoke much now.”

We talked shortages for a minute or two.

I said: “There's one thing. This operation you're proposing: might it mean the same as last time? Sight for twelve months, then a tactful fade-out?”

“Not if it's successful. There's no reason why you should get any decrease of vision afterwards—provided you get the vision at all. But there's no hurry to decide. I'd advise you to go home now and think it over quietly. Discuss it with your wife—I beg your pardon, your family then. Try to weigh up the alternatives. For my part, if I were in your place, I should have it done, not because I was in any way certain of success but because the possible gain is so much greater than the possible loss.”

The cigarette was proving the usual disappointment.

“I suppose it would be a local anaesthetic?”

“Yes. You don't find that very unpleasant, do you?”

“Well, there are nicer ways of spending the afternoon.”

He said with a twinkle: “ I always operate in the morning.”

“All right. Thank you for your candour. Ill let you know in, say, a week.”

“There's no hurry. Good-bye.”

I went to Oxford and discussed it with “ my family.” After three years' delay Hugh had just got the proofs of his book
The Philosophical Content of Hegel and Kierkegaard
; and Caroline had broken a bone in her ankle coming down the steps from a lecture on Hindu theosophy. Aside from these preoccupations they were sympathetic and kind.

Caroline said: “ I should certainly take the chance. Personally I hate to be dependent on anyone in the smallest degree—I'm so thankful the new treatment allows one to move about with a broken bone—and I suspect you're very much the same, Giles. We're alike in very few things, but I believe that's one of them. I can bear invalidism in others but not in myself.”

“You're too intelligent to be conceited over most things.”

Hugh said. “But that's a form of conceit, you know. Or pride anyway. The I, I, cannot bend. Not as other mortals. That's why Giles feels his loss of sight so much.”

I said: “You'll make us both pharisees in a minute.” It was strange to feel common cause with Caroline.

“In the normal way” she said, “ I've very little faith in doctors. They'd be an anachronism in a society which lived the right sort of life and lived on the right sort of food. Except, of course, in this sort of case. Giles is blinded. If the knife can help him I'd say he should try it just this once more.”

I hadn't told them about the McWheeler job. Now I said: “I've decided to go abroad again in any case. Halliday thinks he can get permission.”

“Have you ever tried to take up Braille?”

“No.”

“It's a mistake not to, I think, Giles. It helps one to keep up with things. There was a man sitting next to me at the lecture when I fractured my leg. He was taking notes in Braille. It's done, I think, by puncturing paper somehow. Makes a clicking sound. But I'm sure it does help. You should try it. Because it would be a new interest to keep up if the operation turned out disappointing.”

I saw that she perceived the issues more clearly than I'd been giving her credit for.

“I'll wait another couple of weeks. There'll be plenty of time to begin that—afterwards.”

That night I faced up to the reasons for still hesitating about Coulson, and now the thing came fairly clear. It wasn't the operation which stood in the way. What I was afraid of was failure. Since that first day with Alix, I'd grown more or less reconciled. Her company had done it. Even when she disappeared the old feeling hadn't quite come back. But Halliday and Coulson had put forward a new hope, however thin. Once let me accept it as a possibility—and going for the operation meant accepting it—then any failure would be the end.You can't go on offering the same carrot to the same donkey.

I looked all round it that night and thought: Already it's taking you all your time not to get excited about it, not to start thinking what it would be like to see again, to go back perhaps to Nice, to know what Alix really looks like, to find out the truth about Pierre.… But above all to see Alix and discover whether your feeling for her is solid or sham. Coulson and Halliday have put the seed there whether you want it or not; it's there now stirring and sprouting. Caroline saw that this evening. That's what she was trying to guard against.

Perhaps there never was really any choice. Perhaps it was only fallacy to sit back and think I could do this or that. From the minute Halliday said, see Coulson, a movement inside me had begun, and without fail it would lead to the hospital and the knife.

It was all very well to say I'd very little to lose. In a sense I had my eyesight to lose over again.

The next morning I phoned Coulson and made an appointment to go into the ophthalmic wing at the Vauxhall on the following Monday week.

They gave me a little room facing south in the same corridor as the general ward, but separated from it by the matron's room. On the Tuesday morning the sun fell across my bed, crept up to my hands, but by the time Coulson arrived clouds had blown up and the day seemed chilly again.

Or perhaps it was just his manner. I always think, however hard they try to be cheerful and kind, there's a faintly sinister air about the surgeon and the nurses when there's an operation in prospect. One gets a ha-ha-but-no-nonsense impression, as if they once had to deal with a hysterical child and have never quite forgotten it. Or maybe it's just the circumstances.

Eye operations aren't much different from other operations except that you know more about them at the time, which is no asset. They'd given me luminal and had been putting cocaine drops in the eye every five minutes for the half-hour before he came, so things were more or less ready when we got into the theatre. When I felt Coulson's warm hands on my forehead I thought, well, this is it.

They began by injecting more cocaine—into the lower lid with a hypodermic—and then they pottered about for a few minutes while this also took effect. This part always reminds me of having a tooth out. Only the rest is different. I heard Coulson reject one of the instruments laid out for him, and another had to be brought.

The other doctor, Saunders, sponged my eyelid and surrounding face with some sort of oily iodine, and presently Coulson's hands were back again like warm butterflies and he fixed in a speculum, which is a wire thing on a spring to keep the eyelids apart. Then he pinched a tiny bit of the eyeball between forceps to hold the eye steady and cut into the top of the eyeball with a knife.

“Now perfectly still, old man,” he said.

It was damned hot in the room and I could feel myself beginning to sweat. I thought about Mont Boron and kissing a girl under a lamp and a plaintive Italian singing,
Esser in prigione, e non poter fuggire.
I felt like that myself.

They mopped up some of the fluid which had drained out of the eye, and Coulson said:

“Straight ahead, just as if you were looking at a football a few feet away: that's right. Very still. Don't
squeeze
the lids.”

At this stage I gather he inserted the iridotomy scissors into the eyeball. I tried to think about that last journey home in the swaying bus together and the walk to her flat with our fingers clasped; and the telephone call a few days after, and the clopping hoofs of the horse taking me to Pierre's place. I thought, if this comes off …

Coulson said: “Steady,” and here he must have begun to cut the iris. I didn't think of anything then.

After a minute he said: “Splendid. Quite still. Eye on the ball, that's it.”

Light fell on my eye. I said: “ Christ!”

He said: “Perfectly clear lens, Saunders. Better than I'd hoped. Just a few seconds more, old man.” He withdrew the scissors.

I thought, here is the path to anonymity and here the signs … some poem. I must have gone a bit queer for a minute or two. When I came up again they were bandaging the eye. There was water running.

Coulson was saying: “ Never know what you're going to find. Halliday warned me in this case that …” His voice changed completely and he said: “Well, old man, it's all over. Wasn't too bad, was it? Feeling better?”

I said: “ Success?”

“All very good so far as the surgical part goes.” Because of the change in his voice I didn't believe him. “ Now we must have rest and quiet for a few days. Peace and patience.”

I said: “ Never told me what sort of football to look at. Soccer or rugger.”

“What? Oh, that” He chuckled politely. “ Soccer preferably. It's round, you know.”

“Was looking at rugger ball. Hope it won't affect result”

He said: “ Now back to bed. See he gets absolute quiet, sister. I'll be round to-morrow or Wednesday, Mr. Gordon. That's right. Just a little patience now. We'll have you up and about early next week.”

Then the hours of darkness and doubt. After a bit shut up in the black room of your head, your mind gets like a squirrel, going round and round, treading the familiar ground for the sake of being on the move. Then you've got to stop it, stand four square with yourself, say: This is me, all that ultimately counts; you're cosy, shut up like this, think, reason, get to know yourself, build something to show for it, be rational, sane in the darkness, creative. And your mind stays politely quiet for a few minutes—then as soon as it can it slips back to the treadmill.

The hopeful things. “ Perfectly clear lens, Saunders,” he'd said. “Better than I'd hoped.” Did that mean much? Not said to me but to the other surgeon. Not for effect, then. Clear lens. Better than hoped. But what had he hoped? What had he been afraid of?

Then his later voice; dry, different “ Never know
what
you're going to find. Halliday warned me in this case.…” A dry voice, tired and vaguely flat. Disappointed perhaps. Or faintly angry. Halliday had warned him, but hadn't warned him perhaps of the right dangers.
What
you're going to find. What had he found? A healthy eye or a diseased one?

A few hours after the operation, when the cocaine was wearing off they gave me more luminal to ease things up, so I didn't get much pain. It ached from time to time, that was all. Once a day they took the bandages off and put in atropine drops to keep the pupil dilated; and they put in some sort of antiseptic drops at the same time. The shades were always very carefully drawn, but in the second before the drops bleared everything I knew I could see. I could see the white glimmer of the nurse's cuff and the dark ridge of her shoulder, and daylight filtering in through a few cracks and the dropper moving towards my eye: then blob.… “ Not to-day, Mr. Gordon. Another twenty-four hours perhaps. It depends what Mr. Coulson says. You've only been bandaged two days yet” and so on.