Searching; fifty shades of sight

Chapter 3

Their world had seen two world wars and the austerity of those times where people were bound together. His beloved mum Lucy forced to face the terrifying thought of a National Assistance man suddenly on her doorstep. Yet she'd learned how to make do in her scullery with fudge bread made with mashed potato, sour milk added to cooked dishes instead of cheese, and grated vegetables to scones and cakes.

She worked at her treadle sewing machine; making coats out of blankets or unpicking outgrown clothes in order to make scarves and gloves.
Lace unpicked from pillowcases to trim her summer dresses. Gazing fondly as she sat beside her sewing machine at one of her son's creased photographs. A sad half smile crept across her face. Reflecting upon the traumas from which their family had emerged. They'd been worried about how he might cope in a world where disability was almost a swear word! It seemed an interlude, rather than a decade of memories, that flooded like pictures on a cinema screen one clip after the other flowing back….
“Wasn’t it bad enough for an adult to be robbed so cruelly of their eyes? Yet a child seemed so much more difficult to cope with. Her husband’s voice echoed through the years and the pain.
“I’ve cried as long and hard as you sweetheart, but we need to be stronger!”
She wondered where her love for the man whom she had adored since childhood. Sweet memories of school summer holidays. Tender times, such as picnics on Tunstall Hill, and so their magic had spun briefly until war had blasted it away. Leaping to catch a cramp in her calf, her mind carried back and she thought of her man and the life time of love they had shared. Yet in that moment and that distant time she couldn’t stop the storms nor quench her fears.
Her home had been a loving one; with her husband a miner until an injury had forced him onto the pit-head and them living in fear. The threads of their family held together then by her increasing her hours as a baker, out of their home early morning, returning late evening, with dramatic stories to tell in the fading firelight when their world had been happy. There were small things that made her home slightly different from the rest in the terraced street. Since there was no specialist state day school for blind and partially sighted children in their area, they'd put spare cash away in a tin. These measures allowed their bright and beloved boy to learn touch typing and Braille. His parents aware that these were the skills he would need if he was to eventually become independent; his eyes always weak.

Every Wednesday tea-time, having left a stew cold in a pot, took two bus rides to a tutor in Durham.
“I hate going to that silly man. His breath smells of tobacco rapping me all the while on my knuckles simply because I tap the wrong key. There must be something I can do on the docks or in the station!”
His grandfather had worked on the boats, but then didn’t most of the folks round there, including his fully sighted school friends!
Lucy didn’t know what to say. How might he be expected to accept the idea that, by the age of twenty he faced the possibility of losing all his sight; which was what the doctor at Sunderland hospital had warned might happen? When was the best time to break this sad news? How might he cope......these were the thoughts that worried her as the years came and went?
But she couldn't protect him forever could she?

So it was that the family moved from Sunderland to Coventry; hoping for a better life. Their belongings stashed into a borrowed van. After a long tiring day they arrived at their new home. It was thought best that James had a bed-settee downstairs; with the twisty, winding, steep stairs. As time passed life became settled and neighbors became friends.
However the passing years brought more challenges for James but at least he had found work.

After leaving school he had been employed as a rope runner on the small-gauge single-track railway; where trains carried defused bombs to be safely dumped after the war. All that had gone.
“There's nothing for it. I’m going to London. My mind is made up. I won't be stopped!”
Every evening he'd tapped his way around the streets. Expanding his routes; expecting he would have accidents He joked he was made of rubber and he bounced; not seeing the tears in his mother’s eyes as she placed his ceramic water bottle to the middle of his soft-to-sink-into mattress; where his tears had once dampened his pillow.

His mum knew what she had to do. She had to let her son go. He wasn't a child but a man over six feet tall with size-11 shoes and a liking for Player’s cigarettes.
Lucy was dressed as usual by six. She’d scrubbed the red kitchen tiles and wooden draining board, and was deep in thought.
Bang…
“Oh my God, Son, I am so sorry, and how stupid of me. I should have thought to move that bucket before now. Here let me help you up!”
“It’s alright, Ma. Please don’t fuss”.
His loving mother rushed towards him.
“But you’re bleeding, look at you and your trousers. Let me at least go and fetch you a clean pair!”
He walked sadly away from her and her old photos knowing it would take more than a clean pair of trousers to fix his sadness and loneliness.

He hoped, as he carried his brown battered suitcase out of their front door, that one day they would understand. So it was that he entered his new set of challenges, always holding onto an unwavering desire and dream that would carry him forward into a life where he would fight for his place in the world, and love as others loved. He knew he'd found that person in May. He would need all his strength and courage; his family had been his rock. …...it was now up to him!