The Glass Eye Game
Order copies here
Chapter 1 is set approximately 25 years before the main action of the book and acts as form of prologue.
CHAPTER 1
Eddy and Gail, aged twelve
“Is it real?”
At this height you could feel the breeze, an almost imperceptible sway in the framework.
“Is what real?” Eddy replied.
The leaves ruffled slightly. The scent of apple blossom hung in the air.
“You know,” said Gail.
“I don’t know. My leg?” He smiled.
The tongue-and-groove platform stretched out around them, clinging to the trunk.
She tilted her head and paused, flicking her eyes to the left, checking on her younger sister, cross-legged beside her. Rhea couldn’t be much more than ten, but seemed older, thought Eddy, as she straightened the buttons on her brightly coloured summer dress, aware of him eyeing her.
“You do know. Do you see things differently?”
He looked out across the garden, the escape rope hanging down, ending high enough to scare you, but low enough to do you no harm, unless you were little Billy Bowler, that is. He closed one eye, stared, opened it, closed the other and stared again. Yes, he did see things differently.
“Not really. I can still see everything, still see clearly.”
“What’s different though?” said Rhea. She sounded the same as her sister, if you closed your eyes and just listened. He liked to do that sometimes, relying on sound alone.
“I can’t always tell how close or far things are. It’s more difficult when I’m somewhere new.” He looked at the façade of the Wendy house behind them on the platform. “When my dad first built this, I used to be scared, unsure of where the edges were. But now I’m used to it.”
Why was he telling them all this? He didn’t really know them. That was one reason: the unknown daughters of his dad’s friend turning up unannounced. Go show them the tree-house, Eddy, his dad had said. Cordy can stay here with Mr Gryff, she’s too little to be up there. And there she was now, noticed Eddy, looking back to the house, her small infant form concentrating on the grass at her feet, while Mr Gryff stood nearby talking with his dad. Had he been like Cordy when he was younger? Carefree but content, occupied? Probably not.
So they had left Cordy behind, crossed the lawn, the spring sun warming their heads and backs, and climbed the rusted steps to the tree-house’s platform in a journey to hidden heights.
“Do you bump into things?” asked Rhea.
“Not really. Sometimes, but not much. It’s more difficult when I get something in my eye, or rub it too hard. That’s when I really can’t see.”
“Why don’t you be a pirate?” asked Rhea “Wear an eye patch?”
As if it were that simple, thought Eddy.
“I’m more of a martial arts boy. Samurai, if you like.”
“Can I have a look?” said Gail, staring intently. “Please.”
He stared back. She held his gaze, as he raised his hand to his face, pulled gently at the soft skin immediately below his eye and eased the lifeless prosthetic out of its socket, dropping it into his palm which he then held out. She looked at the recess where his eye had been and then quickly looked away.
Picking the glass eye from his hand, she examined it closely.
“It’s warm,” she said.
“It can be cold in the winter. In the mornings,” he replied.
She turned his eye over in her hand and then held it up to her own.
“Can I have a look?” said Rhea, reaching out.
“You don’t look with your hands,” she shot back.
“It’s beautiful,” she continued. “It’s one of his, isn’t it?”
“You mean your dad’s?”
“I’ve seen lots of them before, but never where they’re meant to be, in someone’s eye.”
“It’s no different,” he said.
“But it is,” she replied quickly. “It feels like I’m holding a piece of you.”
He felt a wave of anxiety, with an undertow of excitement.
She brought the eye down, lifted her t-shirt and placed it gently in her navel.
“How does it look now?” she said, as the eye stared out from her stomach. She pressed her hands together in prayer above her head and then moved her face from side to side, like the dancers in that old Indian musical movie he’d once found his mother watching.
“Kinda weird,” he laughed.
“Close your eyes,” she said. He felt the breeze against his face, smelt the blossom and just caught the sisters’ low breathing. He missed the sound of seagulls.
With his eyes closed, Gail observed this strange boy, Eddy, whom she’d just met, and wondered how much he could really see.
She plucked the eye from her tummy and held it aloft.
“What about now? What can you see?”
“Nothing,” he said.
She closed her hand around the eye.
“And now?”
“Still nothing.”
She lowered her hand and held it out in front of her, down by his crossed legs as he sat in front of her.
“Can you see me now?”
“Maybe. A bit.”
“No you can’t.” It didn’t look like he was cheating: his eyes were still closed. “I don’t believe you.”
Staring hard to check for cheating, she undid the top button of her shorts and gently slid the eye inside the waistband of her knickers.
“Can you see anything now?”
“Only darkness.”
She looked again, and smiled. With eyes closed, he was no different to any other boy. She reached inside her knickers again and pushed the eye further down.
“Can you see me now?” she asked.
Eddy paused.
“I think I can.”
The inspiration for The Glass Eye Game
The kernel of inspiration for The Glass Eye Game came from a BBC Radio 4 programme about individual experiences of losing an eye and having it replaced with a prosthetic (or false) eye. I was fascinated by the rich psychological territory to be explored, particularly in relation to people’s perceptions of themselves when they’ve lost an eye, how they then see the world and how others perceive them. A lot of what I heard in the programme was unexpected and changed my understanding of eye loss, especially the purpose and function served by prosthetic eyes themselves. As part of exploring this topic for a book, I researched the history of glass eye-making, including stumbling upon the real-life account of the last glass eye-maker in Britain, a German named Jost Hass.
Thus was born the idea of the generational end of a family-based glass eye manufacturing business, in turn leading me to use the plot of King Lear as a starting point for the story, as it echoes some of the family elements that I was interested in. However, while The Glass Eye Game touches on some of the central themes of the play, as can be seen, the plot and characters develop in a very different direction.
Chapter 2 is set 25 years after the first chapter and a few summers ago ...
CHAPTER 2
It’s a matter of positioning, thought Gail, as she entered her father’s house. A staggered staircase looped around three sides of the hall, punctuated by a half-landing at the far end, jutting out into the dining area below, creating a snug-like quality, with the high arched windows at the first floor level letting in the early summer evening light and sharply illuminating one side of the table at the back. The weather and season changed your experience at the table. Choose wrongly and be blinded, squinting as your retinas slowly fried. She remembered many meals with Cordy wearing Ray-Bans, dazzled and dazzling, the rest of the family looking on from the shadows. Cordy’s stubbornness usually overcame their mother’s admonishments. If only you were here, Mum, she sighed.
“Dad, I’m here,” she shouted into the house, enjoying the faint echo from the curved anaglypta ceiling at the top of the stairwell. She had let herself in early, with her spare keys, on the pretext of helping with the preparations, but really wanting a snoop.
“Down in a mo,” came the muffled reply.
“OK. I’ll start setting up.”
Gail walked to the kitchen doorway at the back of the house, paused, one hand on the door handle, and looked back down the hall. Even though it was her family home, filled with childhood memories, it was tainted by loss. Gail exhaled, rubbing her right eye with the back of her hand, that moment of blurred vision revealing her mother sitting at the table, healthy and happy, that voluptuous and gorgeously round figure of hers holding up a proud head and a strong stare, eyes sparkling, looking straight at Gail. Gail blinked and her Mum was gone.
Could her father have done more, Gail asked, despairing, knowing once more she’d never know. They had all looked on, as she wasted away, her curves becoming straight lines, then angles, until there was nothing left.
Enough, thought Gail, finding herself drawn from the kitchen to the half-open door across the hall, which led into the small, tidy living room. A sofa, two armchairs and a TV screen sat around a wood-framed gas fire. A faded Canaletto print hung above the grey stone mantelpiece, a wilted fern to the left. Curtains, worn at the edges, hung limply by the tall windows. Gail walked over to a dusty set of mahogany drawers and opened a smaller one at the top right.
Sleeves of old photographs were piled haphazardly inside. Gail sifted through the drawer, opening packs to peek at the first few pictures before moving to the next, eventually settling on one from which she pulled a set of small glossy photos, the colours immediately seeming too sharp for real life.
Twenty years ago, maybe older. A party in the house, her Mum and Dad entertaining. Women in brightly coloured dresses, hair pulled off their faces in fancy fashions, or permed and styled in looks too big and flamboyant for today’s tastes. Men mooching about in plain dark trousers and comfortable jumpers. Another era, but not so different. It couldn’t have been long before her Mum died, maybe a year or two. Yet there she was, the life and soul, twinkling with an undimmable brilliance. Where had all the light gone?
Deeper in the same set, Gail found herself, all waved hair and a cow flick, rouged cheeks and green eye mascara. She laughed out loud, struck by her youthful vitality and naivety. How old was she? Sixteen? Seventeen, maybe? Either way, far too young to be on the verge of losing your mother. She ruffled through more photos. Her father again, tall and upright, even quite handsome, staring straight down the camera lens. Not how she thought of him, she realised, either then or now. Arms around Peter and Martine Foster, his right draped upwards and lazily over Peter’s shoulder, the left dropping lower for Martine’s smaller stature, pulling her waist towards him. They looked happy, thought Gail, although something wasn’t quite right in the body language. She pushed the photo back, closing the wallet and replacing it in the drawer.
Worrying about the past, when there’s more than enough to deal with now.
* * *
She returned to the hall. As a young girl with her Mum running through it, pulling along a daisy chain of daughters, the house had been limitless, full of excitement, airy and spacious, but now it had no soul. At the bottom of the stairs on a pedestal stood a jardiniere decorated with an art nouveau hyacinth, housing some rare cacti, which had kept a dry eye on the family dramas and celebrations. Her Mum loved the lines and colour of the hyacinth pattern. How often had Gail nearly crashed into it as she cascaded down those stairs towards the front door, the expectant chime of the doorbell ringing in her ears, eager to greet a friend or boyfriend? How many times had she sat on that half-landing or at the table, glancing longingly at the front door? Her Mum chastising her for either mooning about or for distracting herself at mealtimes. Rhea, on the other hand, simply teasing her, her father oblivious and Cordy watching and listening, occasionally complaining about something unfair, when usually that just meant things hadn’t gone her way. Like that time when Nick came round and Gail ran gleefully to the door only to find him avoiding her eye and mumbling guiltily. The long walk back to the table, as Gail stoically told Rhea she had a visitor. Cordy had said that was unfair too.
She wished she could walk away from these memories, as she climbed to the half-landing, and then surveyed the ground floor and table below. That table had been the centre of countless meals, drinking sessions, conversations, arguments. Homework and reading had been done here, artwork projects finished, and, ah yes, other times too, recalled Gail. Before Nick had had his head turned by Rhea, he’d paid sufficient attention to her on top of the table one Saturday afternoon when they’d unexpectedly found themselves alone. How times change. Had she been happier then? Freer, definitely, she sighed, and then caught her thoughts. Don’t take everything for granted. Yes, the darker corner of the room, a good vantage point to watch the action unfold without revealing too much of herself.
She heard movement, a door opening upstairs, and her father appeared on the first floor landing above her, buttoning up a faded, checked shirt.
“Hello, dear,” he said. “Surveying all that you see?”
“You look well,” she said, smiling in reply. “Very smart.” If shabby chic is what you’re after. “Taking a trip down memory lane. Stories everywhere I look.”
“Never mind that now,” he said. “Give me a hand setting up. That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
* * *
In the kitchen, Gail saw that everything was in order, but it had become functional. There were areas of brightness on the worktops that were exposed to regular use, but elsewhere a thin layer of grime clung to everything. Her mother would never have tolerated this.
“We need to get some drinks sorted out,” stated her father, half reflection, half instruction. “There should be some bottles in the sideboard. Well, red, at least.”
Gail walked to the sideboard, smiling at the two pictures on the walls at opposite ends of the table. A striking monochrome photographic print of half-timbered medieval buildings with snow-bedecked rooves, taken in a Westphalian town in Germany, versus an Aubrey Beardsley pen-and-ink print of a woman in a long, curving dress. Her mother had always wanted to visit the town, Freuden-something or other, loaded as it was with the history of her Dad’s early learning and training of the glass eye world, but he had always avoided a visit, as if not wanting to share that part of himself with his wife. As for the print at the other end, Gail remembered her mother’s plaintive complaint: “You put the colour back in people’s eyes, so why can’t we have more colour in our house?”
Gail took two bottles of red wine from the sideboard and placed them on the table, moving a pile of paper to give her space, which jostled with loose change, keys, and flotsam and jetsam from assorted pockets, coats and bags. Looking more closely she saw a number of ocular magazines, the distinctive front cover designs drawing her attention to similar piles stacked on some of the chairs around the table.
“Having a clear out?” she asked, returning to her father, watching him retrieve some glasses from a cupboard near the sink, while she looked for a corkscrew.
“A bit,” he said, stooping to pull a tray from a rack between two of the base units.
Perhaps he really is ready to move on, thought Gail. Maybe Tres was right last night? We’d be doing him a favour.
“We should put some snacks out,” he said.
“What’ve you got in?” asked Gail.
“Nuts,” he replied.
“Same to you,” she snapped back, smiling.
Her father’s eyes twinkled and then he frowned.
“That was what your,” he started.
“I know.” It had just come out. Without thinking.
“No joke too low,” she added, another of Mum’s favourites. “I’ll get a bowl.”
* * *
They were laying out the drinks and snacks in the hall when the doorbell rang, Rhea letting in herself and Tres. Very Rhea, thought Gail. Got a key, but still rings the bell.
“Daddy, you look wonderful,” chimed Rhea. Usual sister bullshit, thought Gail. Daddy this, Daddy that.
“Mr T, Gail,” nodded Tres, the bulk of his frame blocking some of the light from the front door. Although he was expensively dressed – all dashing sports jacket, burgundy and gold pocket square, offset with a white satin, open-necked shirt, designer chinos and Italian loafers – he still smacked of that bouncer outside the old Luna nightclub, the one that let you in or turned you away seemingly on how you dressed, or the way the stars were aligned. Gail half-expected Tres to place his hand over her face and push her to one side.
“Can I help with anything?” asked Rhea, looking at the table and raising an eyebrow.
“It was all we could find,” replied Gail.
“Hmm,” said Rhea, forcing a smile, while Tres winked at Gail, before moving to the dining table, grazing his hand casually into the bowl of nuts and putting them to his mouth.
Hearing a car engine, Gail smiled, watching her husband’s arrival through the door’s sidelight windows.
“Al’s here,” she announced to no-one in particular.
“Just Cordy then,” said her Dad. “Running late as usual. The prerogative of the young and carefree.”
Typical, not sure Rhea or I would be granted the same laxity.
“She’ll be here soon,” said Gail, opening the door for Al.
“Go and help with the drinks,” she whispered urgently into Al’s ear.
Al smiled. “Good to see you too, darling. All nice and relaxed then?” he whispered.
“Don’t,” said Gail. “Just don’t.”
Al laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it’ll be fine,” and then turned to greet everybody else, offering to pour drinks.
“How kind of you, darling Al,” she heard Rhea ring out. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Five minutes later Cordy opened the door and walked in, smiling, yet visibly sizing up the room.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Cordy. Fashionably so, on Cordy’s terms, thought Gail. Downright rude on anyone else’s.
Her father moved towards his youngest daughter.
“You made it then,” he said, and Gail detected that mixture of favouritism and exasperation he always had for Cordy.
“No Frank, darling?” asked Rhea, a caressing hand on Cordy’s upper arm. Trust Rhea to gently probe any open wound.
“Well, no. Didn’t seem quite right or fair. Not sure he signed up for this,” said Cordy, laughing slightly. “Not quite sure what I did sign him up for, to be honest.”
“Oh well, family functions aren’t for everyone,” said Rhea. “Especially if you’re not really family.”
Cordy snorted. “Good to see you too, sis. How is the nuclear family? Who’s looking after the kids tonight? Nanny or housekeeper?”
Just like something Mum might have said, thought Gail, to keep things in check, and saw Al smiling, as he picked up his drink from the table.
“OK, let’s get on with it,” intervened her father. “Why don’t we all sit down.”
Gail walked straight to her chosen seat, pulling Al alongside. Her father sat on the shaded side, while Cordy took in the full brightness of the light streaming in, leaving Rhea and Tres half-in and half-out of the light.
Let the games begin.
