The Visitors (3 page)

She never leaves me. She is there when I open my eyes in the morning and there until I close them at night. There is no extra bed in my room, so she must sleep elsewhere, but comes in before I wake to be with me and stays until I have fallen asleep. I have woken in the night to find her absent, and have shouted for her. Nanny comes and I shove her stupid old face away and yowl and reach for the other one, the lady with the hands. Nanny slaps me across the mouth but then Father’s hands are on my hair. There is a commotion in the room. People are stamping and throwing themselves about. I reach out for Father. Instead she comes, the one I want. She helps me to lie down. She caresses my eyelids and helps me fall back to sleep. Nanny does not come again, not this night or ever. Nanny has gone.

At first I wake every night and cry out for my lady. I fear that she will tire of me and drive me from her presence. But she does not and soon I am comfortable with her leaving me when I am still awake. I know she is always there for me in the morning, so I do not fret. I am happy to sleep alone, knowing my days will be filled with her. I do not have to spend the afternoons locked in my room any more. I have her with me all day and we play and learn new shapes. She smells different now, of clean linen and Mother’s soap.

I have never been so pleased with myself and my lot. It is the most exquisite treat to have a companion who stays with me always. I hug her and kiss her often, take down her hair and brush it, but I was right, it is wild. I find if I wet it first with water from the basin on the washstand it tames and lies flatter. I brush it damp like this and plait it or tie it in rags at night, so that there will be ringlets in the morning when she comes to wake me. Every day we play new games. I copy her when she shakes my hands or pats my fingers gently, we nod towards each other and at our closest I let her breath tickle my skin. We explore more rooms, more objects and more shapes. Two weeks pass and I learn dozens of new patterns. It is still novel to me and I enjoy it. But I have no clue as to its purpose. I make no connection in my mind between the shapes I am learning, the patterns they make and the objects she gives me. I can repeat them, but they mean nothing to me. I never make the shapes when the objects are not there, only when I hold them in my hand. I do not know that these patterns mean more than themselves. I am a mynah bird. Yet something grows in me, a kernel of thought, that there is intent behind this dumb show, that it is not a plaything like our other sports. It is important. But I cannot grasp why and my lady cannot convey it. Until she takes me to the hop garden.

I know from before that once the people leave Father’s land, the bines go too. The plants do not return until the cold has come and gone and the warm days recur. My lady lets me grasp the bare poles. Most of the plants have been picked. But I find a single hop cone clinging to a forgotten spiny tendril straggling from a mound. I give her the flower as a present. She takes it, puts her right hand in my left and makes three shapes: her flat hand rests in my palm and brushes upwards across my fingers, she prods the tip of my fourth, pinches the end of my index finger. Then the hop flower is put in my hand. Again, the three shapes. Then the hop. Three shapes. The hop. Shapes, hop. Shapes, HOP. Shapes, H-O-P. I stop her hand. I stop dead still. I am thinking. I hold the hop flower, roll it around in my left hand, crush it. I reach for her hand. I make the three shapes, H-O-P. I give her the flower. H-O-P, again and again. The shapes are a word. The word is a sign. A sign that speaks. The flower I hold in my hand has a name and its name is H-O-P. I spell it.

‘H-O-P.’

I drop to the ground, scrabble around for that hard, round thing I like to throw. I place it in my lady’s hand, she gives me five shapes. S-T-O-N-E. Its name is stone. I spell it out.

‘S-T-O-N-E.’

I laugh and jump and skip and grasp my lady’s shoulders, which shake with laughter too. More, I want more. We tumble around the garden and we find G-R-A-S-S, a L-E-A-F and a T-R-E-E, even a N-E-S-T. I reach out and touch my lady’s face. Tap my palm, rest my hand on her chest. What is my lady’s word? What is she? She spells it for me. L-O-T-T-I-E. Lottie. I spell it back.

‘Lottie,’ I spell to her. ‘Lottie.’

We are talking with our fingers.

But what is the word for Me? Does Me have a name? I pat my chest, I tap my hand. What is my name? Lottie takes my hand. One finger flat in the palm, a fingertip pointed at my middle finger, the side of the hand placed at an angle across the palm, a fingertip pointed at the thumb. L-I-Z-A.

‘Liza,’ says Lottie.

‘Liza,’ I say.

My name is Liza.

I learn hundreds of words. We go into every room and Lottie shows me the names for everything I can lay my hands on. I know the word for every object in my house now, from the simple ‘copper’ in the kitchen to the poetic ‘marcella counterpane’ in my bedroom. Nouns first, then verbs and adjectives. I can explain qualities: hot, cold; young, old. I can express opinions: like, dislike. I join words together and make pidgin sentences: Liza run. Liza drink milk. Liza love Lottie and Father. I lose all interest in those who cannot finger spell. Father learns it in a day, but he is not as quick as Lottie and me. I want to tell him things, but when he speaks back I have to wait a long time for his words and sometimes I push him away mid-sentence, bored. He evidently starts practising, for soon he is better and we talk every day. He takes me on walks and names flowers and herbs for me, gives me the terms for all the parts of the hop plant and the equipment in the oast house. He shows me precious objects in his study: a conch shell, a marble egg, a rose quartz crystal. I learn the names of all the soapstone chess pieces. He makes a special chessboard from wood, with raised rules between the squares, so that I can feel to move the King one space forward, the Bishop two spaces diagonally, the Knight up two and along one. He begins to teach me the game and shakes my hand heartily when I make a good move. I know he loved me in the Time Before, but I feel he loves me more now.

Next I learn about names. I discover that Father is Father and Mother is Mother. I know Cook is Cook but has another name, Martha. This is confusing so I call her Cook Martha. There is Maid Edith and Maid Florrie. And Maid Alice who is lady’s maid to Mother. I still visit Mother every day and I am allowed to drip drops of lavender water on a handkerchief and mop her forehead. She lets me touch her hand and now I make shapes for her. She lets me do it into her outstretched palm, but never answers me.

Afterwards, I tell Lottie, ‘Mother make no shapes.’

Lottie says, ‘One day.’

I know I am Adeliza Golding, Father is Edwin Golding and Mother is Evangeline Golding. Lottie is Charlotte Crowe.

I ask, ‘Why Lottie not Golding?’

She says, ‘Different mother and father.’

‘Where sleep?’

‘Not this house.’

‘What house?’

‘By the sea.’

‘What is sea?’

‘Big water.’

‘Like pond.’

‘No. Very big. Salty.’

‘Liza go now to sea and meet Lottie mother and father.’

‘One day,’ says Lottie.

Soon I stop calling myself Liza and understand the word ‘me’. Later, I think that my two years of hearing before the fever helped to store in my mind a plethora of ideas derived from my ears which must have been locked in some piece of dusty furniture at the back of my head. Lottie has the key. She not only teaches me names for objects or feelings or ideas, but she does something else: she talks with me all the time. She sits or walks with me and finger spells long sentences into my hand. Many of the words I do not know, but others I do, and I can work out some from their context. She treats me like a hearing child, one who cannot yet understand all the vocabulary the adults use, but who learns through listening and repeating and constant exposure to language. She does not engage in baby talk. For the first time in my life, I have found a person who does not treat me like an infant, an object of pity, or an animal. She treats me like a person.

I become very clever at the finger spelling. I want to do it all day, all night too. Any time I am alone, if Lottie must be absent for a moment, I speak to myself through finger signing into my own left hand. Lottie and I do not hold our palms flat any more to converse. When we talk, I hold my hand before me, curved downwards as if holding an invisible plum, while Lottie makes the signs rapidly within the curve of my hand. I do the same. My right hand is so pliable now and the left stiff to compare, as it never speaks. Our minds and our hands think in words, not separate letters. When you listen to a person speak, you do not notice every letter, nor do you read each letter separately when you look upon writing. Our conversations are the same. Our fingers move so fast in forming our words, I challenge anyone to follow the quicksilver speed of our conversations.

I ask Lottie, ‘Why do you know finger spelling? Why only you?’

‘A man taught me a long time ago.’

‘Why?’

‘I had a sister once. She was like you. She could not see or hear.’

‘Did you talk with her?’

‘Yes. The man who taught me was a vicar, a man of the Church. He had travelled far and wide and knew many things. He had been across the sea to a big school once and learned the finger spelling. When he knew we had a baby sister who was blind and deaf, he came and taught us how to finger spell.’

‘He taught you and your mother and father?’

‘Yes, and my brother. We taught her and she learned quickly, like you. We all had such happy times together. She was a lovely girl.’

‘Where is she now? Can I meet her?’

‘No, Liza. I am afraid she died.’

‘How did she die?’

‘She had a dreadful fever when she was about your age.’

‘A fever like mine, the one that hurt my ears when I was a baby?’

‘Yes, but it was too strong for her and it killed her.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Constance.’

‘Constance Crowe.’

‘Yes.’

‘You loved her very much.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Thank you, Liza.’

I kiss Lottie’s hand. A Visitor says,
Why are you sad, Adeliza?

The Visitors speak with me now. It began the same day I spelled ‘hop’. The moment my mind opened to language, they came streaming in, desperate to communicate with me. As with Lottie’s long speeches, I did not understand them at first, yet learned to converse with them gradually, as I learned to finger spell with Lottie and Father. Yet they do not make the shapes in my hand, as they do not share the same territory as my family and the servants. But I can hear them inside my head. I know that you too can hear words in your head, yet they make no sound. Somehow, your thoughts create the voice in your mind, with no sound waves to make it real. But hear it you do. It is the same for me and the Visitors. They are equivalent to my thoughts. Yet I know they are not mine. They are other, but choose to stay with me and now speak with me, only when my eyes are open. Some have names. Others have forgotten them. They do not speak to each other. They do not seem to know each other exists or anyone beyond my head either. But they talk to me and tell me things. Sometimes, I need to organise them, say,
Hush! Wait your turn
. Otherwise, if there is more than one, they all talk over each other and the cacophony in my head drives me mad.

At night, when Lottie has retired to bed exhausted from my constant need for her, I stay awake listening to the Visitors. I talk to them in my mind. These are strange conversations with the Visitors, not like with Lottie or Father. They are quite rude. They do not really listen to me, only waiting for me to finish a sentence so that they can say what they want. And what they want most of all is to talk about themselves. Or rather, one thing over and over. They do not discuss, only harp on this one thing. It is different for each. It may be a boat trip or a dog they once had, a fall from a tree or a scratch from a rose thorn. This one thing they are obsessed with, and they speak of it again and again. I try to ask them about other matters, who they are and what they are, where they come from and why they are here, but they do not seem to understand such metaphysical enquiry and instead tell me again about their obsession. It is as if they are stuck in a groove and cannot escape this one event. One is charming, telling me of a day spent building a dry-stone wall with his son. But another is angry, twisting his rage into knots while damning another man for spooking his horse, causing him to fall and crack his head. I ask this one to calm down and mostly he does. I do not like him. They were easier to live with before I learned language, before they could talk.

I decide to tell Lottie about them. I know them and I am accustomed to them, but I fear she will find them strange. She has never mentioned them to me and neither has Father. I worry that they do not visit Father and Lottie, as they do me. And that is when I name them, the Visitors. I explain them to Lottie. At first she does not pass comment. I ask her if she hears the Visitors in her mind.

She says, ‘No. Those are my thoughts. You can call them Visitors if you like.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘The Visitors are different. They were with me before you, before I learned words.’

‘They were your thoughts then too. You always had a mind. But no language. Now they talk with you because you know words.’

I shake my head. I am sure she is wrong, but I fear she thinks I am touched, a little crazed due to my years of isolation. And I do not want there to be the least shadow between myself and Lottie. I ask her often, ‘Are you very fond of me?’ and she always answers, yes. I do not want her to think of me strangerly. So I stop talking about the Visitors. All I know is that I am different from Lottie, from Father, from everyone. Not just with my ruined ears and eyes, but in another way I cannot explain. I live in another country. With language, I bring dispatches from the abyss. I cannot say I am happy there. It has been my prison. But at least it is familiar. The area beyond my fingertips is bigger than me. It is marvellous yet frightening. I wonder if I will ever feel at home in that other world, your world.