Goggle

Goggle

For the first time we are going to spend Christmas with my boyfriend's
family.

"I have to warn you," he says, "my parents are a little
strange."

"Strange," I say, "in what way?"

But Torn doesn't answer that and only tells me to pack enough
underpants. "It's cold up there and usually I wear two pair. If you're
not careful, your nuts will freeze. Yours especially."

I watch silently as Torn upends his whole underwear drawer onto the
bed. He makes two neat towers, each pair of underpants folded in
three.

"So," I say as he finishes, "which pile is going?"

"Not sure yet," he says. "Do you want me to help you pack?"

"I can manage," I say.

We take the bus directly to East Midlands airport. We check in and then
as I step through this white doorframe it makes a rapid beeping sound.
A man in a black uniform pulls me to one side and moves a wand around
my body. As it passes my left leg it goes crazy.

"What you got in here?" he says.

"My leg," I say.

"Come on," he says and he makes me go over to a table.

"Have you got any medical forms?" he says.

I think of the shoebox under the bed. The elastic band on it has
snapped now. "Plenty," I say.

The man speaks into a microphone. Over his shoulder I can see Torn. I
know he is angry but also that he won't interfere. He knows me better
than that.

The flight to Reykjavik is direct. These direct flights are a new thing
and in some ways have made this whole trip easier.

I try to engage Torn in conversation but first he reads the in-flight
magazine and then he slips the supplied headphones over his ears.

"You're supposed to take them out of the cellophane," I say.

"I know," he says, "but this way I'm saving someone the job of having
to put them back in later."

Because the music is loud in his ears Torn shouts out these words and
somewhere up front a baby starts crying. An air stewardess rushing to
assist trips over someone's bag strap left carelessly in the aisle. She
screams as she falls and then again as a bolt holding one of the chairs
to the floor pierces her hand. Everything is connected.

I look out the window. It is the first time I have been on a plane and
I am surprised at how high we are. Having only seen flying in the
movies before, along with everything else presented, I always assumed
it was somewhat exaggerated.

"Aren't they coming to pick us up?" I say. Then I unzip my jacket. "I
thought it would be colder than this."

This makes Torn laugh and I am happy.

"What I say?" I say.

Torn shakes his head, squinting shut his eyes, and hefts our two bags
off the carousel and onto his shoulders.

We go through one set of sliding doors and then another. Icy air hits
me like a snowball.

"Shit," I say.

It is Christmas Eve.

The house stands alone on the side of a crater. It has two storeys and
a chimney. Smoke drifts from the chimney into the night sky. You can
only see the smoke where there are stars behind. There are a lot of
stars.

"Is this where your parents live?" I say.

"What do you think?" says Torn.

"There's no-one home." I point at the windows. "No lights are
on."

"Come on," says Torn and he strides up the garden path triggering a
light somewhere high up in a tree. Like faeries we are bathed in a glow
of sodium.

On the back of Torn's jeans I can see the ridge where his second pair
of underpants bulge. I wonder what his parents will make of all
this.

Inside is darkness.

'Hello mum, hello dad,' Torn says in Icelandic. I know the words. My
first psychologist was from Husavik and during the long hours we spent
together I made him teach me this language of ice. If we had to be
together then I wanted it to be useful.

"Hello son," say two voices together. "You're just in time."

Then one voice, the mother's, says, "Well aren't you going to
introduce us?"

"Sorry," says Torn, "this is Thumbelina."

This is what Torn calls me when we are in bed together.

"Thumbelina," says Torn's father. "Your sister would like that."

"Have you put the light on?" says Torn's mother.

"Sorry," says Torn and above a light comes on. It hangs from a cord
like a ham in a butcher's window.

Torn's parents are sitting on either side of a chessboard. The first
thing I notice about them is that neither of them has any eyes, only
holes where eyes may once have been. This seems to have a levelling
effect so that each one looks exactly like the other.

"Are we going bowling then?" says Torn's mother.

"You betcha," says Torn. When he is happy he uses this kind of
Americanism, perhaps learnt from that continent's optimistic movies.
"Have we got some shoes Thumbelina can borrow?"

For blind people Torn's parents are good at bowling.

"How do they know where to throw?" I say.

"You only really need to see the things that move," says Torn. "Come
on, it's your go. We're losing."

I grab a ball and arch it back on the pendulum of my arm and then
watch thrilled as it scarpers towards the skittles. I hit three. I turn
towards Torn smiling.

"What about books?" I say.

Torn raises his eyebrows.

"Books don't move yet you have to see them."

"You think?" says Torn and he bellows with laughter.

On the way home in the car Torn slips a CD into the player. Out of the
speakers comes a voice. It is Christopher Lee reading 'The Fall of the
House of Usher'.

"This is something of a family tradition," says Torn.

"We won," says Torn's mother and I hear her clapping her hands.

I am sitting up front with Torn. Torn is driving and his parents are
in the back. I am happy.

There is a ladder up to Torn's bedroom and he has to help me up. The
ceiling in his bedroom slopes and there is not enough room for us to
stand upright so we lean into each other.

That night Torn holds me to him in the single bed and I think that I
won't sleep but then it is four o'clock and Torn is shaking me
awake.

"Come on," he says, "I want to give you my present."

I rub my eyes.

"Get dressed," says Torn.

Torn leads me outside and round the back of the house. The cold is
like heat, the clarity like blindness. We tramp for fifteen minutes
until the house is a dot and everything else is nothing. There is only
snow.

"Here," says Torn and he pulls a small parcel out of his pocket. It is
roughly wrapped in paper with patches of bells on. The paper is red and
it looks violent against the lack of colour everywhere else.

"My present?"

"Just open it," says Torn.

I pull at the paper. Torn has wrapped Sellotape around and around the
parcel and already my fingers are numb from the cold.

"Thumbelina," says Torn and then the present drops out into my
hands.

"Goggles," I say.

"To protect your eyes," says Torn.

"From what?" I say.

"Look," says Torn.

And then I notice what I thought was the blackness of snow is the
unreflecting surface of water.

"Hot spring," says Torn.

Torn pulls off his own clothes and then helps me with mine until we
are both naked. I am too cold to be cold and I see Torn's penis has
shrivelled up to almost nothing. I take it briefly in my mouth and it
is like a boiled sweet.

Torn laughs and pushes me away and then he puts the goggles over my
eyes and pulls a pair over his own. Finally he removes my leg.

"You can swim?"

I nod and we are both in the water.

The warmth is like a shock, the darkness breathtaking. I can see
nothing down here but I feel Torn next to me, his legs kicking while
one of mine rests uselessly up above.

We swim down and down and I like it down here. I briefly wonder what
Torn meant when he said his parents were strange because for the first
time I feel right at home but we are turning now, heading back
up.

As we burst to the top, breaking the surface, we come face to face
with a seal. It has my leg in its mouth and it is clapping it's
flippers.

My laughter is helpless as I watch my naked boyfriend chase the
naughty seal across the snow.

It is Christmas morning.