James Hannah - The A to Z of You and Me

‘Anyway, you shouldn’t be asking us how we are,’ she says. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Oh, it’s much easier to worry about others,’ I say. ‘Every time I see a doctor, my first question is always How are you? I worry that they’re too overworked to see me. I worry about Sheila. Have you met Sheila?’

‘I love Sheila,’ says Amber. ‘She’s amazing. Always there. Knows exactly the right thing to say. Things seem to be a bit more cheery after you’ve seen Sheila.’

For her age, Amber seems so mature. OK, so there’s the blue hair, and her eyes, her beautiful artfully painted eyes, and her clothes hung and slung about her. Statementy. Like any teenager. But a grown woman’s mind.

I want to say to her, Listen, you’re too young to be in a place like this. But I can’t, can I? You’re too young to lose your mum. Society will decide: You are too young. Society will tut into the silence of the drawing room and say, It’s a crying shame.

I want to comfort her.

But she won’t take that from me.

Let it go.

Let her go.

Eyes

‘WHAT ARE YOU doing?’ says Dad.

‘Nothing,’ I say.

Even aged four I know not to admit I’m pretending to be car indicators with my eyes.

Embarrassing.

I’m holding the bull’s eye with the very tips of my latex-gloved fingers, but I can still feel the refrigerated coolness, the slippery deadness that might somehow come alive. I’m leaning as far away from it as I can, and I’m pressing at it with my scalpel, but it won’t go in , a scalpel , a fucking shitting crappy blunt school scalpel, and it won’t shitting fucking puncture the cold and slippery surface, and Kelvin says give it here, give it some welly, and he takes the scalpel off me and I shrink away as he stabs and it squeakily dodges, and he stabs and it bursts and flicks inky black juice at his face. He blinks and flinches and reaches for his eyes with his wrist, flashing the scalpel around near his other eye.

‘Oh, my — fucking hell! That’s — fuck! ’

But that’s — no, that’s wrong. That’s not my eyes, is it? That’s just eyes.

What should it be? Should it be things my eyes have seen , or ways in which my eyes have been seen?

‘How’s my star patient doing today?’

Sheila’s head appears at the doorway, and I look up at her, give her a smile.

‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘That smile didn’t quite reach your eyes, lovey.’ And she’s in.

‘Didn’t it?’

‘No. You’re going to have to try harder than that to keep me happy, I’m afraid.’

I give her a big sarcastic smile, all the way up to the eyes and beyond. She laughs. She seems more relaxed now. More time for me. Perhaps Old Faithful’s condition has eased.

‘Nice try. How are you keeping?’

‘Fine.’

‘You finished that A to Z yet?’

‘Heh, no hope.’

‘No hope? Well, that doesn’t sound too good. Tell me what you’re up to.’

‘E. I was just thinking about eyes, actually.’

‘Well, the eyes will tell you whether someone’s smile is genuine or not.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah. They’re a dead giveaway,’ she says, tapping her nose and winking.

‘My mum used to stare straight into my eyes to see if I was lying.’

‘Ha! Yeah! Look me in the eye and tell me honestly! I used to say that to my boys all the time.’

I feel a sudden surge of affection for this woman, now tucking my feet back among the sheets, who has tenderly and patiently and unquestioningly cared for me. She’s a natural mother. Maybe that’s what these care workers are. Natural mothers, all. And sort of innocent with it. Innocent, but having seen everything there is to see.

‘And there are cultures where you’re not supposed to look people in the eye, aren’t there?’ she adds. ‘Kings and queens — if you looked straight at them, they’d have your head chopped off.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Maybe they didn’t want you to know if they were lying or not,’ she says, simply, before disappearing out of the room for a moment. It’s a statement that chimes true in the silence.

She comes back cradling a steaming mug. ‘We used to have a rule,’ she says, with relish, ‘a rule about flirting with your eyes when we were out in the clubs. I used to be ever so good at it. You’d look at a fella for four seconds, and then you’d look away for four seconds. And then you’d look back at him for four seconds, and if he was still looking you knew he fancied you. I got ever so good at it!’

I shake my head and smile a smile that I’m sure this time reaches my eyes. There’s a sweet dimple that’s come out on her cheek, I notice. I can see her now, the mischievous young thing she must have been, still alive and well, just a little softer at the edges.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m terrible, aren’t I?’

‘Well, you’ve got to use what you’ve got.’

‘That’s right! Use it while you’ve got it. Mind you, I haven’t had it for a long time.’

She squares a look at me before realizing how this sounds, and raises her hand to cover her mouth before disappearing quickly through the doorway. Out in the corridor I hear her cluck: ‘I’m being inappropriate with the guests!’

Glance across to the stage, your vivid blue eyes are looking at me. I catch them for just long enough to see you switch them away.

Did I imagine that? Your eyes, lit sharp in the surrounding dark, looking over the top of the microphone as you sing, looking across the back room of the Queen’s Head at me.

You look up again now. I look away.

Embarrassing.

You might think I fancy you. I wasn’t looking looking.

Look again.

The swash , the calligraphy of the eyeliner. Eyeliner makes whites pure white. You draw good eyes.

You look away, look down, faint sense of shyness, as your hair drops across your brow, and you check that your fingertips are pressing the right frets as you shift your hand along the neck of your electric guitar. You check too as your trainered foot switches on the guitar pedal, and the chords now begin to throb around the room, written across us in sound shaped by those same fingertips that deftly flicked out your eyeliner.

I feel it. I can feel it like that.

I am an eyes man.

That’s it: that’s what I should have said when Becca was going on and on all those years ago about whether I was a bum man or a boobs man or whatever. I should have looked her squarely in the eye and said with all confidence and conviction: ‘I’m an eyes man.’

Was it love at first sight?

People used to ask us this, didn’t they?

You’d say, ‘Yyyeah … sort of …’

I’d feel a bit put out when you said that.

Anyway, is it a worse love, if it’s not love at first sight?

I look behind me at Becca and Laura, being bumped and shouldered by an unusually enthusiastic crowd for a Thursday night at the Queen’s. Becca’s smiling and clapping and looking at me and nodding.