Girl in the Dark Read online

  Now, each night, I go out to meet the stars, and am disappointed when, because of cloud, they do not keep our date. I track their creeping trails across the sky as they make their nightly journey from east to west, starting each time from a slightly different place. It is like standing inside a giant hollow sphere, held and slowly turned by an enormous subtle hand.

  I know one constellation. I recognise the three stars that make up the belt of Orion, in their neat diagonal line, and the four stars in a rough quadrilateral that form his limbs. Pete is much more knowledgeable, having been an enthusiastic stargazer when he was a boy. He still has his old telescope in the cupboard under the stairs—an unwieldy brute, consisting of a long white tube on extendable wooden legs, perpetually entangling itself with the ironing board, or the vacuum cleaner’s hose.

  One night he comes into the garden with me, allows me proudly to identify Orion, and then points out the different colours of its stars.

  “See the one at the top left—it’s more orange than the others. That’s Betelgeuse. It’s a red giant, relatively old and cold. And the one at the bottom right, in comparison, is—”

  “Much more blue.”

  “Which is because it’s a young star, much smaller and hotter. It’s called Rigel.”

  “Wow—they’re really different colours, when you come to look at them. Do you know, I think I’m getting astronomer’s neck. There ought to be special angled leaning posts for contemplating the night sky.”

  Pete lets me lean back against him and holds me round the shoulders so my face is to the stars.

  “What’s the fuzzy bit below his belt?”

  “That’s the Orion nebula—a nursery of stars.”

  “Nursery?”

  “An area where new stars are being formed. Basically, massive clouds of gas and dust. And if you follow his belt from right to left, and keep going in a straight line …”

  “Yes, done that …”

  “You’ll get to Sirius—quite low down towards the horizon, which is the brightest star in the northern sky.”

  “Got it! Goodness, it’s very twinkly.”

  “It is a particularly twinkly one.”

  Over the next few weeks, when the skies are clear Pete shows me how to find other stars. We buy an almanac that has a plan of the skies for each month and a list of notable astronomical events. I learn to locate Castor and Pollux, the two brightest stars in the constellation of Gemini; Taurus the bull, with its baleful red eye; Cancer, hard to see at all except on the clearest nights, when the faintest triangle sketches the face of the crab; and Leo, splendidly lion-like, with strongly outlined paws, mane and tail.

  I am transfixed. I have never believed in astrology, but it is sheer joy to see those too-familiar names leap from the back pages of magazines and come to life in my own small patch of sky. It gives me a powerful sense of connection, not so much with the stars themselves as with my human ancestors. I sense them standing behind me in a long unbroken line, snaking back through millennia, through the Enlightenment, the Middle Ages, the Arabic and the classical world, back through the civilisations of the Babylonians and the ancient Egyptians, back to the first evolving consciousness that tilted its face to the heavens, saw these same strange shifting adornments, and felt compelled to make some sense of them. We are immeasurably better equipped, yet we are trying still.

  One night Pete gets his telescope out from under the stairs. He sets it up on the lawn on its long unwieldy legs, which are secured in position by wing nuts and screws. I crouch down at a horrible back-wrenching angle, my knees sinking gently into cold damp earth, peer up the tube he has positioned, and see—

  I see the planet Jupiter, glowing like a glorious cosmic orange, and it is not alone.

  Three smaller discs are gathered round—three out of its four largest moons, the remaining one out of sight on the gas giant’s far side.

  These are the Galilean satellites—huge, diverse and strange, Callisto and Ganymede bigger than Mercury, Europa and Io only slightly smaller; what Galileo saw, when he turned his telescope on Jupiter, in 1610. Intrigued, he made a series of observations, which showed beyond doubt that the discs were moons, and that they were in orbit around the planet. This was how he refuted one of the key tenets of the Aristotelian universe: that all heavenly bodies must circle the earth.

  A tremor passes through me, from my cricked neck to my wet knees. For a moment, I feel as if I am Galileo, seeing for the first time with human eyes these specks that are mysterious new worlds.

  It is a strange and fleeting conjunction, flavoured with melancholy and awe, an apprehension of the continuity of human wonder, and the brevity of human lives.

  Remission Continued 1

  Now that I have gained the freedom of the dark garden, the next thing—the fourth—is interior and domestic. By the light of a small lamp in the corner of the kitchen, made dimmer still by being placed behind the microwave, I prepare rice, fish and vegetables, wielding my knife gently to avoid slicing a fingertip.

  I am cooking the dinner.

  “I’m delighted you feel up to it, darling,” says Pete, with enthusiasm, when he comes in from work. “We can have something edible for a change.”

  Pete, despite having had to do a lot of cooking, has neither started to enjoy it, nor become any better at it. He sits on a chair in the kitchen and watches me as I put the pan of rice on to boil, and lay the fish on a plate in the steamer, sprinkling it with thin strips of ginger and spring onion. I am making Chinese Steamed Fish.

  “Cooking is so stressful,” he says. “Take rice, for example. It ought to be impossible for rice to boil dry and be undercooked at the same time, but it isn’t.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I say. “It’s completely in accord with the laws of physics for rice to boil dry and be undercooked at the same time. Anyway, all you have to do is look at it now and then, to see how it’s doing, and it won’t.”

  “That’s exactly what I object to,” says Pete. “All this ad hoc adjustment and using your judgement. Cooking isn’t rigorous.”

  “But you like making cakes,” I point out. I mix soy sauce and sesame oil together in a little pan, and heat it gently.

  “Cakes are different,” replies Pete. “You mix up all the ingredients in a set formula and bung them in the oven at gas mark x for y minutes. None of this sloppy top-of-the-stove nonsense. Take that Nigel Slater omelette recipe. It said, ‘Cook until the underside of the omelette starts to brown.’ How was I supposed to know what the underside was doing—it was underneath.”

  “Well, it still wasn’t a bad omelette,” I say, because I aim to be encouraging, as I take the sauce off the heat.

  “Recipes don’t contain enough instructions,” says Pete. “They could do with a few more Do-while loops.”

  “What?” I ask.

  Pete explains about Do-while loops. They are programming commands in the computer language FORTRAN.

  “Look,” I say, lifting the lid of the steamer and poking inside with a knife, “could you stop talking a minute, or set the table, or something. I’m trying to exercise my judgement on this fish.”

  THE FIFTH THING is risky. Not all the variables are within my control. An unexpected encounter could send me back to the darkness to burn for several days. But I yearn to attempt it.

  So I put on my boots, hat and coat, and this time I open the front door rather than the back, and step into the night-time close.

  A person watching me would be puzzled by my trajectory. First I walk flush to one side of the driveway, pressed up against the bushes, and, when I reach the pavement, turn sharp right. Then I meander up the close, weaving across the road from side to side several times. When a car approaches, I leap behind a convenient shrub, or, if there is not one to hand, take to my heels.

  The explanation is not, in fact, obscure. My next-door neighbours have a security light over their garage door, white, intense and horrible, easily tripped by casually passing down the drive unless one shimmies
close to the furthest side. In the street I snake between street lights, not wanting to pass directly underneath their beams. Car headlights are the worst, particularly the newer bluer kind. They pierce my body like a pair of steel spears, drilling into my organs, into my bones themselves. So as I walk the night-time close I am constantly on the alert for the thrum of an approaching engine. Sometimes a waiting, idling car or the tripping of a security light mean I am trapped, and have to lurk suspiciously in some shadowy place for ages before I can make my way back to the house.

  I have never walked by night in the African bush. But I wonder whether my nocturnal navigations of the close bear certain similarities in the variety of potential hazards, the constant vigilance for large predators, the need for careful and circumspect advance.

  The sixth thing is fun. From the dark far end of our long through-lounge, Pete in an armchair between me and the TV, the screen reflected in a carefully positioned mirror, I watch The Apprentice.

  I give myself up to it with total delight. I roar with laughter, shout out rude comments, become rampantly partisan, practically expire with tension during the final Boardroom scenes. Because of the mirror, I get to know all the participants backwards, their right and left sides reversed, so when I see a photograph in the newspaper, it is always unsettling.

  The seventh thing is small, but significant. I exchange my bulky under-trousers for tight black leggings beneath my silken skirts. This is very nearly a convincing fashion statement. About the nether regions, I feel suddenly, shockingly normal.

  Between each small advance, days pass. The majority of my time is still spent in darkness, keeping company with electric voices. But there are holes appearing in the covering, like the activity of moths upon a blanket. I can come downstairs for one hour, then two hours at a stretch. Slowly, unevenly, the holes are getting larger.

  I often miscalculate my next move. I am playing a game with snakes but no ladders; frequently I slither back towards the first square on the board, and must restart the slow, laborious ascent. But at least there is change, there is movement. Stasis has been left behind.

  One thing has been found that helps me, mentioned in a scientific paper that Pete tracks down online. It does not put an end to my ups and downs, but at all stages it takes the edge off my reactions.

  The substance is beta carotene. It is a very powerful anti-oxidant, used to help various light-sensitivity conditions, because it partly mitigates the damage set off by light in the skin. To obtain any effect, according to a man who is a member of the British Porphyria Society, one has to take a lot. I have twenty pills a day. This is about one hundred times the recommended daily allowance, and I do hesitate before I begin, there being various vague hints online about liver damage. I try to get clear medical advice on whether it is appropriate to take in my case, and what precautions or monitoring would be wise, but no one is prepared to give a definitive opinion. In the end I decide I have little to lose.

  There is one side-effect—shortly after taking it, the skin becomes slightly orange. I do not mind. Often, there’s not enough light to see me properly anyway, and when there is—the orange look is favoured by WAGs and TV celebrities, even certain politicians, so why should I object? Mine, however, is only a pale mandarin-yogurt imitation of such deep-toned, fruity complexions.

  Trip

  Pete has to go away for work, for five days, unexpectedly, at the start of the following month.

  “Oh Pete,” I wail, when he tells me, “that’s just a couple of weeks before you go on holiday to Skye.”

  He is booked on a photographic trip to the Scottish island organised by a specialist company; the group will be taken by minibus to all the good locations, where they will leap out and set up their equipment. “Doesn’t that mean you all end up with the same picture?” I ask, puzzled, when he first describes this, but apparently it does not.

  Having known about the trip for some time, I have painstakingly arranged for people to come and stay while he is not here. Now—now I face having to do it all over again, with shorter notice, and everyone’s plans already in place.

  “Do you have to go?” I ask Pete.

  “Well, yes I do. I’m sorry about the lack of notice, I can’t help it. This sometimes happens, with work.”

  “But—does it always have to be you? Don’t they realise you have caring responsibilities? I don’t know—supposing you had a sick child or something …”

  He looks away. He has not, of course, said anything at work, or only in the most general terms. “Well, I could say that, I suppose, but I would rather not. Anyway, you are not as bad as you have been.”

  And this is true. Barring accidents, provided with food, and with a creative approach to when and how I do the washing up (the kitchen sink being by a window that faces south, and the blind only a partial barrier), I can function here, in the house, on my own. I do not need a carer. What I need is something more abstract and intangible: a human presence about the place, occasional company when I have to go into the black; company that understands my situation and cares enough to observe the protocols, waiting till I’m out of the room and closing the door prior to turning on overhead lights.

  The next afternoon, I pick up the phone to my mother with a heavy coldness in my stomach.

  “Mum, you know you were going to come and stay when Pete goes on holiday—”

  “Oh yes, don’t worry—it’s in my diary, I’ve moved my pupils—it’s all arranged. I’m coming for the first part of the week—I’m really looking forward to it—and then Sam’s going to do Thursday night and Friday, and I think you’ve got Celeste coming at the weekend?”

  “Yes … that’ll be great … it’s just … unfortunately—well, Pete’s just told me he’s got a five-day trip for work, two weeks before.”

  “What … you mean the sixth to the tenth?”

  “Yes.”

  “The sixth to the tenth next month?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish you’d told me sooner. I’ve got pupils doing exams, and it’s my recital on the fourteenth. I suppose Sam might be able to come, depending on his schedule. Isn’t there anyone else?”

  And there’s the rub.

  I hate this situation, this having to ask and plead. Faster than anything else, it makes me feel a total failure. Somehow, in my life before, I should have been more charismatic and popular, so that people, now, would cross counties to babysit me. I should have judged better, spread myself more thinly, not spent my time on intimate friendships that would not stand the test.

  “How did you get on with your mum?” Pete asks, when he gets home from work.

  I shrug hopelessly and my eyes fill with tears. “I think I’d prefer to cope on my own,” I say. “I’m sure I’ll manage. I just wish your holiday wasn’t so soon afterwards.”

  “You know I have to have my holiday,” says Pete. “If I didn’t, I’d probably beat you up.”

  He would not, of course, but I know what he is trying to say.

  Pete does not emote much. He very rarely shows anger or frustration at me or our situation, being more likely to get cross if the table is sticky, or I have left a mess of paper, books and mail-order packaging all over the living room. But it has to come out somewhere; he needs to go off and do stuff, and I have to let him.

  His trips are a mini-holiday for me as well—having different people to stay means I consult different tastes regarding meals; use garlic and spices, on which Pete is not keen; eat later in the evening; sometimes even leave the washing up entirely, which Pete is constitutionally unable to do; watch other people’s TV programmes; play piano duets and cards.

  In the end, Sam comes for a couple of days, instead of coming when originally planned. I book an Alexander technique lesson for one morning, with my lovely teacher who comes to the house. Two telephone friends agree to phone. In case of emergencies, I have the number of the neighbour who is good at DIY (once, one of my visitors, conscientiously drawing the curtain, ripped the entire c
urtain rail away from the wall).

  Pete phones me every day, sometimes more than once. “Can you hear that?” he says one evening. “I’m just beside the sea.” From the handset comes a regular whoosh and rasp, like a giant’s heavy breathing.

  I am transported.

  Remission Continued 2

  The next step—the eighth—crosses a boundary: I venture out at twilight, and catch my first glimpse of a non-dark world, painted in subtle shades of grey.

  Equipment is required in order to progress to the ninth thing. The human eye, because it is so instantly responsive to conditions, is very bad at judging absolute levels of light. I would like to venture forth a little earlier, to catch some colour in the world, before it drains away. But how to judge, in different seasons and under different skies, the amount of light to which I’ll be exposed?

  Once more I have reason to be grateful for Pete’s photographic bent. “What you need is a light meter,” he says, and procures me one from a technical website. It is a rectangular black palm-sized gadget, with a white half-sphere at one end to measure ambient light and a digital display on which the reading appears.

  Pete sets it up in idiot mode, so that, unless I really put my mind to it, I cannot mess things up—and a whole new world of objective measurement opens its doors. “This evening I did f2.8 at one second,” I say happily, having been in the garden a little after sunset, but before the world is monochrome. It is early June—I have looked at orange poppies and pink roses, and watered tomato plants like green and writhing snakes. The colours slam into my retinas like crossbow bolts—but it is sweet pain.

  I learn the peculiar scale that light meters employ: f1 (almost dark) is followed by f1.4, f2, f2.8 then f4 (about when street lights come on), f5.6, f8 (the sun just above the horizon, if the sky is clear). Pete explains that each step up represents a doubling of the amount of light, so I should be prudent when attempting to move from one level to the next. He also, lest I get too excited, points out that light levels at noon are f200 plus; I am taking baby steps, nibbling at the edges of the day.