emma and i - Sheila Hocken Read online

  small print and various signs and symbols on the maps and

  diagrams. When it dawned on him what was happening, or

  rather what was not happening, he offered to coach me after

  school. It was thoughtful and kind of him, and the dividend

  for us both came in the exams at the end of the year when I

  came second in geography.

  So, given the chance, I was able to keep up with the rest,

  and the question never seriously arose of my having to leave

  and go to a school for the blind-even though my sight was

  becoming worse and worse. I managed to stay in the better

  streams, and most of my exam results were good, particularly

  in subjects where the teaching was to a large extent by word

  of mouth and I could rely on my memory. I did especially

  well in history and in science, where we had to do our own

  elementary experiments. I had little difficulty in remembering

  the terms of the Magna Carta, and the names of Henry's

  wives; nor, oddly enough, did I have any trouble manipulating

  a Bunsen burner. But with such subjects as geography,

  unless I had a teacher willing to give extra help, I was no

  good. At maths I was quite useless-my skill ran out on the

  threshold of long division. This was because I could not follow

  immediately the step-by-step instruction that was done with

  the aid of the board. The problems I had with decimal points

  can be imagined.

  I made friends at school, but not as readily as other children,

  mainly because I could not play the games. I used to try and

  join in, but could never keep up with the others. Although I

  was quite useless at tennis, I was always put down for it,

  and though I made the effort, standing there on the court in

  a vague sea of greenishness dotted with moving white shapes,

  waving my racket around, hoping desperately that it would

  connect with the ball when it came over the net, I cannot

  remember much, if any success. There was a striking lack of

  volunteers to be my partner, and I usually found myself with

  someone who did not like the game anyway. But I don't

  suppose any of this has proved a serious loss to Wimbledon!

  Out of school, too, life was complicated. I had friends but,

  like me, they were in their teens, and at that age few are ready

  to respond to the needs of a blind friend who has to be looked

  after, and taken around. When they were going out in the

  evening, perhaps to the Nottingham Palais in Parliament

  Street, or to jepson's, another dance-hall which used to be in

  Hockley, I would want to go with them; but if I did go, it

  would mean that I had to do everything they wanted to do,

  and go everywhere they wanted to go. The sense of restriction

  was overwhelming, but there was no choice, because I would

  not go out on my own. When I went to dances I'd sit absolutely

  petrified in case a boy asked me to dance. I was so scared I

  would make mistakes or would not be able to follow what he

  was doing. On the other hand, when nobody came and asked

  me to dance, I was still on the edge of the chair with anxiety

  because, left on my own, I could not see enough beyond a

  blurred sensation of light and colour and shapes moving to

  the music, to see where the dancers were. My constant

  thoughts were: What if they go off with their boyfriends and

  leave me here ? Alternating with: No one's asking me to dance

  because they can see I'm blind. I was very mixed~up always,

  and confused, and often felt like a wallflower with its petals

  closed. I remember one particularly terrible occasion when a

  boy called Philip left me standing in the middle of the dance

  floor after the music stopped, and I could hear everyone else

  moving away. I felt a sense of space opening up around me as

  the noise of the dancers receded to the edges of the hall. I

  pretended to tidy my hair but inside I was panicking until one

  of my girlfriends came to rescue me. After that I gave up going

  to dances because it was such a trial. I had come to hate the

  whole business, and that cut me off from the rest of my agegroup,

  and meant that I had no opportunity at all of meeting

  boys. Even when I did meet them, they tended to ignore me,

  and naturally I worried a lot that perhaps I would never

  marry.

  But if life was harsher than it need have been because of

  my stubbornness and pride and my simple refusal to be considered

  apart from sighted people, there were compensations

  in living at home with parents who themselves knew the

  difficulties of blindness, and, more important, knew that the

  best way of dealing with them was not to give in. I was very

  fortunate in this. If I could not see to do something, my mother

  would teach me how to do it, and that was that. I would then

  have to get on and do it for myself. For example, the business

  of threading a needle. My mother taught me this by such a

  simple method, and one, I am sure, that a sighted person

  wouldn't dream of showing to someone who was blind. The

  method was this: take hold of the needle (the eye end can be

  found because it is blunter than the point) and take the piece

  of thread or cotton, folded double between finger and thumb.

  Then push the eye of the needle down between finger and

  thumb, and eventually the thread will go through the eye.

  Success is not necessarily immediate, of course. It might work

  first go, or it might take twenty attempts. But finally it always

  does succeed.

  I was also taught to sew by being able to feel things. Sewing

  on a button, for instance, was easy, and all sorts of other

  mechanical actions were made possible for me by my mother

  teaching me how to use the sense of touch. 'Feel,' she would

  say. This even came down to feeling where the particles of

  dirt were when sweeping the floor, and feeling a second time,

  and a third, to make sure they had gone into the dustpan. It

  was the same with ironing clothes. The creases and folds can

  be felt. But, I suppose, had I been a blind child in a sighted

  family, I would never have been let near an iron for fear that

  I would burn myself In my family, there was no alternative

  to everyone making the best of his or her lot, and that is how

  I was brought up.

  I once asked my mother if she had had any idea before I

  was born that I would not have normal sight and I was

  appalled when she said she hadn't known one way or the

  other, but was willing to take the risk. Seeing my horror, she

  then asked me whether I'd enjoyed my life so far, and

  whether it had been really worth living in spite of the

  problems, and, of course, I had to answer that it had. She

  had taken a risk but I realized that she was right and that I

  still had the opportunity to live a full life in spite of my

  blindness-just as the rest of my family had.

  When my last term at school came up, the decision about

  my future loomed large over me. What I really wanted to do

  was to work with dogs, because I was mad about them. At
/>   weekends I used to work at a local boarding kennels, somehow

  managing to cover up the fact that I could not see properly.

  One Saturday, I was exercising a big Alsatian in the field, and

  he slipped his lead. I had no idea where he had gone and was

  immediately gripped by panic. What if he got out and was

  run over? I frantically waved his lead and collar and called

  and called. To my astonishment and utter relief he came back

  as good as gold. When I was interviewed by the careers

  mistress, however, and told her about wanting to work with

  dogs, she hardly listened. The idea was dismissed as an

  impossibility.

  Her first question amazed me. 'Sheila, can you tell me

  where the North Sea is?'

  North Sea? Apart from geography lessons I had been in

  person to Skegness, which is on the North Sea. But I could

  not answer. Moreover, I could not understand the reason

  for the question.

  Next I was asked, 'Well then, where is Birmingham?'

  That I knew. And the answer to the next one, 'Can you tell

  me where Edinburgh is?' After giving the location of Edinburgh,

  I summoned enough courage to ask why she wanted to

  know.

  'Well, if you're going to be a switchboard operator, and

  I'm going to recommend you, I must be sure you've got a

  sound knowledge of where various places are.'

  I was flabbergasted. Switchboard operator! It was the last

  job in the world I wanted. I knew that the choice for someone

  with my sight was restricted, but in my wildest moments I

  had never thought of myself condemned to plugging and

  unplugging calls for a living. Even so, when term ended, I

  found myself on the way to the Government Training Centre

  at Long Eaton to have my capabilities as a switchboard

  operator assessed. Under the eye of an extremely brusque

  and strict instructor called Ted I was taught the technique of

  working a switchboard. Then, with the Centre's aid, I got a

  job with a big dress shop in Nottingham. I could still see

  enough at this stage to distinguish the lights on the switch

  board, but I loathed every minute of it and, though it was

  quite easy to grasp where the various plugs went, how to hold

  calls, the business of taking messages, and learning extension

  numbers, the atmosphere in the place was terrible. Yet I stuck

  it for a year before moving on to a rather pleasanter firm

  where the people were more friendly.

  Coming home from work one evening I had hardly closed

  the front door when I heard my mother call, 'Is that you

  Sheila? I've got some news.'

  'What's that?' I said, feeling for the peg to Put my coat on.

  'I've heard of a job that would just suit you.' She couldn't

  wait to give me all the details, and, knowing how much she

  worried about my going out on my own in Nottingham, I

  understood why she was so pleased.

  The job was with a firm called Industrial Pumps. They

  wanted a switchboard operator. More to the point, they were

  not right in the middle of the city and the journey there was

  much easier. I rang up the following day and got through to a

  Mr Dickson. He didn't sound very encouraging at first, and

  my hopes began to fade when he said they had had so many

  applicants he did not really think he wanted to interview any

  more. But then I told him I was a registered blind person,

  and his attitude changed immediately.

  'Why didn't you tell me that before? Come along tonight

  and I'll see you. Can you make 5.30?'

  To my amazement I got the job on the spot, but only later

  did I get to know the reason why. Mr Dickson himself was

  disabled: one of his legs was shorter than the other and he

  walked with some difficulty. In fact, he turned out to be full

  of understanding, and not only on this occasion. He was a

  wonderful man, and someone who would always listen to one's

  problems.

  As the months went by, my eyes became gradually, almost

  imperceptibly worse, and by the time I was nineteen I could

  not see where I was going, either about the house or in the

  street. I was now unable to read print, and had to learn

  braille. I came to realize how much everyday vocabulary

  reflects the predominance of the sighted world. Language is

  relatively poor in terms for precise description of sensations

  other than sight, and so blind people are not able to describe

  their perceptions very accurately. The field of reference I

  had become used to was shrinking. Now not only words, but

  ideas of time and space were inexact and arbitrary and not

  always in line with the notions that a sighted person would

  form. To those accustomed to doing it, the placing of a towel

  on a rail or a cup on a shelf are automatic. A blind person has

  to think, 'Six steps to the door, five paces down the hall to the

  bathroom.' Every distance has to be worked out mentally.

  It was at this point-when my range of possibilities was

  becoming more and more limited, when my future seemed to

  be an ever darkening vacuum-that Emma came into my life

  and totally changed it. A new world opened up for me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ENTER EMMA

  I WAS, IF the truth be known, ashamed of being blind. I

  refused to use a white stick, and hated asking for help. After

  all, I was a teenage girl, and I couldn't bear people to look

  at me and think I was not like them. Looking back, I must

  have been a terrible danger on the roads. Motorists probably

  had seizures; suddenly coming across me wandering vaguely

  through the traffic, they would have to step rapidly on their

  brakes. Apart from that, there were all sorts of disasters

  that used to strike on the way to and from work.

  On the evening that made such a difference to my life, I

  gotoff the busjust about half-way home where I had to change

  buses, and as usual I was walking gingerly along to the right

  stop. Almost immediately I bumped into something. 'I'm

  awfully sorry,' I said and stepped forward only to collide

  again. When it happened a third time, I realized I had been

  apologizing to a lamp standard. This was just one of the

  idiotic things that constantly happened to me, and I had long

  since learnt to put up with them or even to find them faintly

  amusing. So I carried on and found the bus stop, which was a

  request stop. No one else was there and I had to go through the

  scary business of trying to estimate when the bus had arrived.

  Generally in this situation, because I loathed showing I was

  blind by asking for help, I tried to guess at the sound. Sometimes

  I would stop a petrol tanker or a big lorry and as it

  29

  drew away would stand there feeling stupid, and in the end

  usually managed to swallow niy pride and ask someone at

  the stop for help.

  But on this particular evening no onejoined rne at the stop;

  it was as if everyone in Nottingham had suddenly decided not

  to travel by bus. Of course I heard plenty of buses pass, or

  thought I
did, but because I had given up hailing them for

  fear of making a fool of myself I let them all go by. I stood

  there alone for half an hour without stopping one, then I gave

  up. I decided to walk on to the next stop, hoping there would

  be people there.

  I got along the pavement as best I could-and that is

  another frightening experience difficult to describe to anyone

  who has not been blind, because although you are surrounded

  by noise you have no coherent mental picture of what is

  around you, and are guided only by sounds. The sounds were

  of traffic, and people's footsteps, and sometimes I could tell

  by the particular quality of the sounds that I was near buildings

  or passing an open space. But I had absolutely no visual

  conception of what the road might be like, still less what

  might be on the other side of it-the houses, the shops, the

  people and so on: this might well have been the edge of the

  world, or another universe for all I knew. Were there children

  playing, people gossiping, wornen buying bread or potatoes;

  what did they look like, who were they? I had simply no idea.

  I walked along in an enclosed grey little world, a box of

  sounds, two foot by two foot square, around me.

  Eventually I reached the next bus stop. But once again

  there was nobody there, and no buses stopped. So I went on

  to the next, and then the one after that, and the one after that.

  By this time I was utterly lost, and simply did not know

  whether I was waiting at a bus stop or a teleg-raph post. In

  the end, I found myself walking about five miles back to the

  terminus in the city, because I knew if I got there I would be

  bound to catch the right bus. And this is what happened, but

  I was between two and three hours late getting home, and

  felt pretty miserable and out of sorts when I did get there.

  I am a great believer in Fate. It has been the greatest single

  influence on my life, and I feel certain that Fate had decreed

  that my home teacher was there when I finally reached home

  that evening. Home teachers visit the blind. They come

  regularly to help, to talk over any problems, and to supply

  various aids such as braille paper, braille clocks, egg-timers