Some time ago, I wrote a story called “The Plussie Plushie” and unlike most stories, it is one that demanded a sequel. But this time, it was not going to be about Edward and Elizabeth! Their story is told in full and ends at what probably is the greatest moment of their lives; when Edward proposes to Elizabeth, who up to that point had been utterly convinced that for her life was over and that there could never be any happiness in it. If you have not read it or forgotten it, here’s a quick link:
the-plussie-plushie-t599.html
To continue their story would be little more than boring, saccharine repetition. Edward himself is all a woman might desire in a man (except me, I like these traits in a woman. J ); intelligent, successful, honest, kind, loving and considerate He is the kind of person we like to believe that we ourselves are and thus it is easy to sympathise with him. But he is too perfect to be a real person and from a writer’s point of view, not good for much more than as a first-person narrator. This time, it will be written from the third person omniscient perspective, so we shall see almost nothing of Edward.
Elizabeth is more interesting, yet she is already fully explored and from the point at which the story ends, will inevitably grow more confident in herself, blossom as Edward’s wife and companion as well as lover and she will turn out to be a wonderful mother for their children. This is where it gets interesting; children. What would it be like to grow up with a mother who has had cataract surgery when quite young and before the advent of modern replacement lens technology? Would it affect their lives and if so, how?
But before I get ahead of myself, there are several constraints imposed by the first story to consider and plenty to amend. From certain details such as a regrettable Lady Gaga costume and references to “Britain’s Got Talent” and “Gordon’s Nightmares”, it is clear that the first story is set in the present or very close to the present. This being the case, the events covered by the sequel would span a period some ten to thirty years into our future, the years 2025 to 2045, which would make my job as an author almost impossible! I am not a writer of Science Fiction! I would have to accurately predict what my readers, that means you, think society and technology will be like in 2045 or the story simply will not work. Just think about the problems of an author who thirty years ago, in 1985, was to write a believable, everyday story placed in our present! Would he or she have been able to imagine and predict the Internet, iPhones and iPads, messing, texting, twitter or (shudder) Facebook accurately, to mention some of the more obvious hallmarks of our own day?
Because of this, I have chosen to move the original story back from 2015 to 1990 and yes, I am aware of the inconsistencies this introduces such as the above mentioned, but hope these minor infringements can be forgiven. Even if Lasik was not introduced until the mid-1990s, there was a procedure called ALK – Automated Lamellar Keratoplasty – where the surgeon used a knife to do the job done now by laser, so in this respect there is no great discrepancy introduced by changing the date of the first story.
Back to the grind! Elizabeth’s and Edward’s two sons, Michael and Andrew, will of course have dreamt about marrying their mother when young just like all little boys do. Depending upon the mother, sons will fall in love with women who either strongly resemble her or who are nothing like her at all. With Elizabeth, I suspect the former would be the case, but here I run into the curse of the sequel, that you are constrained by the events and characters of the initial story. There is their grandmother Heather, a most formidable lady and character, to consider. Let us say that Michael being the firstborn is the favourite grandson and that as a result, Michael falls in love with women who resemble Heather, who, as you may recall, is a high though not extreme myope. Andrew, being a couple of years younger, imprints on his mother and desires a companion who is strongly hyperopic. Even if there is a story to be told about brotherly love here, it would require far more ink in order to be properly told and would soon become a booklet if not a full-blown novel! But what of their younger sister Penny, Heather Penelope, the lovechild of Edward and Elizabeth and, dare it be said, Heather’s favourite amongst her seven grandchildren?
By now it is obvious that we must take a closer look at Heather Woodward herself. She is the widow of one Harry Woodward, entrepreneur and local business tycoon. As the story is (now) set in the very early 1990s, Heather will have been born somewhere in the early 1930s and towards the end of the sequel, she will be in her early eighties. Since she married a very successful businessman and entertains in the grand manner, we can conclude that she herself is at the very least upper middle class and probably upper class – “She is a woman of class and impeccable taste, but those of yesteryear”. Being used to running both home and family with tightly grasped reins, something that would have been necessary given her now late husband’s occupation as well as inevitable from her own upbringing, it is not surprising to find her in sole possession of the family home and running it as if her late husband was only temporarily absent. Also, in his will Harry Woodward would have made certain that control of estate and business was left firmly in his wife’s more than capable hands, suitably advised of course!
Heather’s children would have been raised mostly in the Public School system of the 1960s and 70s and would only have been home during the holidays when young. When in their late teens and early twenties, school holidays would probably have been spent abroad or alternating between friends’ places, so it is not at all surprising that Edward, although a friend of Heather’s for “many, many years”, had only seen Elizabeth’s photograph and actually never met her before the costume ball, a party that probably would originally have been intended by Heather as Elizabeth’s Debut after finishing her education.
Being at least upper middle-class, Heather is a matriarch with a very proprietary eye out for the affairs of the Family such as the schooling of her children, their careers, whom they marry and so forth. Her son John, who has just taken over the family business, has clearly followed the path laid out by his mother which includes fending for himself and having to establish a new home for his own family as the home Harry Woodward gave Heather is destined to remain in her possession until she herself decides otherwise. From the description of the older daughter, Angela, it is clear that she rebelled and married against her mother’s wishes: “Angela, who married a successful New York City “realtor”, is 33. They have one daughter and are currently working on a second child.”
Why is this clear? Being a relict of a bygone age, Heather is firmly convinced that “a woman should always marry a man much older than herself, never the other way around” and Angela did not follow that pattern by marrying a “realtor”. It is also quite clear, if not explicitly stated, that Edward unbeknownst to himself was groomed by Heather as a prospective husband for her youngest daughter, and probably so from the very first time he was introduced to Heather. At first, he was “always invited to partner one of the equally single ladies, usually of the elderly, widowish and dowdy persuasions.” This was done to test and further develop his social skills in order to see if he was worthy of marrying such a prize as her youngest daughter.
The first challenges successfully surmounted, two years ago Heather then tested him to see if he was the kind of weak-willed man who would subjugate his own happiness in order to “win” a very beautiful but vain and foolish young woman, Elizabeth’s “friend” Shannon Weatherall. Edward passes the test with flying colours and shows himself to be a man of principle and integrity who will not flaunt social convention and to her face tell the fautuous young adder what he really thinks of her.
At this point, there only remained one test of his suitability; was he experienced enough in love to make her daughter happy? This was so important to Heather that she decided not have it done by proxy but to undertake it herself. To us moderns, this might seem very strange and possibly downright perverted, but it would have been the most natural thing in the world to Heather. After all, it was for the future of the Family and not personal. Second, it was also in the interest of her daughter’s happiness.
From the description of Elizabeth’s photograph, we know that like her mother she was (originally) a high myope and to both mother and daughter, glasses would not have been optional even when making love as contact lenses were not to be considered. In the case of the mother out of proud choice and as a statement, in the case of the daughter out of necessity – “but because of her astigmatism, she could not get adequate correction if using contact lenses, so she had to use spectacles”. But just as Heather was ready to bring her plans to fruition and introduce Elizabeth to Edward, disaster struck. In a moment of folly, Elizabeth decides to follow the lead of that vacuous and unprincipled girl Shannon Weatherall and have corrective surgery which in her case as we know went horribly wrong.
Before we continue, cataracts can be caused by a variety of factors and are definitely not limited to the elderly! Blunt or penetrating injury to the eye such as eye surgery for other conditions, ultraviolet radiation or inflammatory disease, in tropical climes caused by certain flies, can cause cataracts. Diabetes and many genetic illnesses are also associated with the development of secondary cataracts. Congenital infections such as herpes simplex, rubella, toxoplasmosis, syphilis, and cytomegalic inclusion disease may also result in cataracts. In the case of Elizabeth, eye surgery and subsequent overexposure to UV while on a tropical holiday could have been enough to cause cataracts to appear, especially if she also had an inflammatory disease, something the first story hints at – “There I must have picked up something but didn’t think much of it until I got back home and it didn’t clear up.”
In spite of this and in spite of Elizabeth’s wishes to be left alone in her misery, that great matriarch Heather Woodward was not ready to let a decade of careful plans and preparations go to waste. Thus she turns to Edward with an appeal, something that must have been humbling for such a formidable and autocratic woman. Trusting that Edward is all the she believes him to be, she asks him as “a favour” to partner a young woman who has “recently suffered a terrible misfortune”. But she dares not inform Edward of her true identity but instead states that “she is the daughter of someone I care for very much (her late husband Harry?) and that’s why I want you to take charge of her, to make her feel that she is a desirable young woman in her own right.” We can easily imagine Heather browbeating her daughter to attend the costume party and the Chatte Bottée costume may very well have been her idea as well.
This is young Penny’s adored Nanna, a most formidable woman but at the same time a most caring and compassionate lady. Just because her own son and youngest daughter are now happily married does not mean the end of her responsibilities to her family. She will continue to steer and guide them, their spouses and her grandchildren to the very last day of her life. In fact, it is not hard to imagine her doing so even beyond that date. Because of this and because of the misfortune of her favourite child in a moment of weakness and aberration – a misfortune that in time even Elizabeth herself would come to re-evaluate as a blessing, albeit one in disguise – Heather had decided that Edward and his family must share the big, sprawling house with her so that she can see to it that lightning does not strike twice.
And before you ask: Yes, I did buy a pair of cataract eyeglasses from eBay plus matching soft contact lenses and wore them for a week so that I would have an accurate perception of what being Elizabeth would be like! At first, I had to relearn everything so that I always moved my head around instead of my eyes because you really do have to look almost straight through these kind of glasses or the world becomes a verrry weird place indeed! Even walking about inside my own home was difficult with floors, stairs and furniture not being in the places my eyes and brain told me. But one does adapt even if it means that you will have to be careful constantly and on guard in case reality and the image presented by your very strong glasses do not coincide.
Also, people do stare at you! It can be very embarrassing when out shopping, especially the “charming innocence” of children and certain adults who have not had the benefit of an appropriate upbringing. Some even pluck up the courage to ask why, in this day and age, you wear such old and outdated eye correction. One particular froward individual I told off by replying that I did so out of sexual perversion and that I was looking for a presentable man very much my junior in age and experience, an innocent such as himself, who would submit to cataract surgery and wear eyeglasses such as these permanently in order to satisfy my whims and that I found him suitable to my needs. I said this loudly enough for several people to overhear and he, properly embarrassed and chastised, slid away quicker than Sir Hiss!
Anyway, it has been a lot of fun writing this story and even if to some of you, very much like that young man at Sainsbury’s, the direction it takes may not be entirely to your liking, I have no intention of apologising for or to either!
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Magic Eyes
To the little girl resting in her mothers arms for her evening nursing, the world was a wonderful and exiting, if tiring, place to be. Having now mastered language to the point where she could speak quite well for a toddler almost two years old, she was picking up names and concepts at an ever-accelerating rate, even if some of her ideas would have seemed very strange indeed to an adult had she been able to communicate them fully. As an example, she knew that the family factotum Mrs Hodges was not a proper woman because women always wore spectacles, just like her mommee and nanna did.
Also, her daddy always put on a pair of spectacles as soon as he came home and kept looking at papers for ever. But when she managed to climb onto his lap, all she could see was a host of small black ants crawling all over the pages. It had to be something interesting and magical for him to sit that long and look at whatever he saw instead of playing with her, right? She wondered what wonderful things they were seeing through their spectacles; butterflies, ice cream and rainbows perhaps as those were her favourites at present. But when Nanna or Mummy had let her look through their spectacles, she had only been able to see a blur unless she put her nose almost on whatever she was looking at through Mummy’s spectacles or as far away as she possibly could if they were Nanna’s. Just like Mommy’s eyes were very big, so everything seemed very big when you looked through her spectacles. When she looked through Nanna’s, everything seemed very small just like her eyes were. But when they took off their spectacles to clean or change them, their eyes looked exactly the same size. Magic!
As she drowsily fed, she kept looking up at her mother’s eyes and wondered about the differences. She instinctively knew that she too was to become a woman and thus have eyes just like them, but when? She had only recently mastered the concept of tomorrow. He crept in when you were sleeping but not always! It had to be dark outside or Tomorrow would not come. He must be afraid of the light just like she herself didn’t like the dark much. Poor Tomorrow! She decided to tell Titties all about it, but only if Tomorrow really had come after she had slept.
While Penny was occupied with these profound thoughts, her mother and father were having a quiet conversation of their own. But even if Penny understood enough of what was being said to realise that it had to do with Mommy’s eyes and spectacles, the words and concepts used were so strange that she eventually lost interest and returned to her own musings. Some time ago, Edward had come across an old school friend who was now a renowned ophthalmic surgeon and they had decided to have lunch together “some day soon” which had turned out to be today.
“Treasure, I know that you do not like the subject to be brought up, but George really did have some very interesting news for us. Apparently, a colleague of his who works in the States is developing a new kind of intraocular lens for Eyeonics Inc that will allow cataract patients to regain the ability to focus at different distances. Together with techniques already developed that allow lens replacements, even for prior cataract surgery patients like you where the sac of the lens was removed, it could mean that you finally could regain your full eyesight and not have to wear those heavy spectacles any more.”
“My sweet, wonderful and precious Edward, we have been over this subject before and my answer remains the same as always. Not only were these spectacles what brought you to your knees and made this wonderful life together possible. They have given you – and me as well – so much pleasure over the years. They are a vital and integral part of who I am, and yes, I do love looking at myself in the mirror every morning and see my eyes the way you see them. My love, even if I could regain perfect vision at every distance and for every conceivable situation, I would never want to do so and once little Penny here has met the Sandman, I shall prove it to you once again.”
Of course their conversation was not as condensed as this and young Penny had only grasped that Daddy was excited because his friend George could take away Mommy’s Magic Eyes but that Mommy didn’t want him to do so because she loved them. But how come Mommy was not angry with Daddy for wanting to take away her Magic Eyes but instead loved him even more for wanting to do so? She didn’t understand this, but right now she was more interested in Titties and if she would meet Tomorrow as he crept in. Perhaps, if she woke early enough, she might catch him?
******
Five-year old Penny was frustrated and very, very angry. She had been cheated! Both her Nanna Heather, who had accompanied her on this very important day, and the optician who was trying to adjust the frames of her new spectacles were trying their best to establish communication with the child in order to understand the cause of her tantrum.
It had all begun some months ago. Even though she hadn’t really noticed it herself being a girl who loved reading and playing indoors more than being out and racing around, her parents and Nanna had seen that she had developed a habit of reading with her books very close to her eyes and she didn’t seem to notice things at a distance such as birds until they were pointed out to her and then quickly lost interest in them. Unless of course they were close up like the ducks and swans on lakes, ponds and rivers! She loved going out for a walk with her Nanna as they would invariably walk to the park in order to feed them. With both Nanna and Aunt Angela, whom she had finally met at Christmas, as well as several of her cousins being highly myopic ladies, her mother also having been one before that horribly botched corrective surgery, it was highly probable that Penny too would require correction for myopia at a tender age.
For as long as she could remember, Penny herself had known that one day, she too would get spectacles just like her Mummy and Nanna wore. Although Penny loved and adored her Nanna who in turn doted on her granddaughter as much as was possible for someone of her generation and upbringing, Penny had decided long ago that when she grew up she too was going to have Magic Eyes, just like her mother. They made her so very beautiful and caused her father to adore her and how could Penny possibly hope to marry him one day if she didn’t have exactly the same kind of spectacles?
Even if she couldn’t remember when she had begun to tell everyone that when she grew up, she was going to have spectacles just like Mommy’s, she remembered the day when her mother finally did take notice and had tried to explain matters to her.
“That’s so sweet of you Penny dearest, but you really do not want to have eyes just like mine”, her mother had replied, but not absent-mindedly like she always had before. This time, she had taken care to explain that unlike Penny, who could see something when she tried her mother’s spectacles, Elizabeth herself could see nothing without them! Nothing at all, except light and dark and very blurred outlines of people. If they were close enough! Also, because she did not have something called a lens in her eyes any longer, her mother could not focus, which means change her eyes to see things sharply at different distances, but only saw clearly over a very short interval. With her blue spectacles, she could see reasonably well when she was outside between distances of about ten to fifty feet because the lenses were slightly different for each eye. But at home or in shops, she had to wear her red spectacles which allowed her to see well enough between three and eight feet. If she wanted to read, Elizabeth would wear her pink spectacles, but Penny also knew that these were the spectacles her Daddy loved the most because he would hug and kiss Mummy when she wore them. That’s why Penny had decided that her own Magic Eyes were going to be pink.
Even though she’d had it explained to her very carefully that she would definitely not have an accident like her mother had, that she would almost certainly become short-sighted or my-oh-pick as it was called, and require spectacles just like Nanna’s or Cousin Catherine’s, Penny wanted to have eyes just like her mother’s so badly that she had only heard that she was going to get spectacles and had immediately assumed that they were going to be Magic Eyes. So when she saw that they were not, she had been so bitterly disappointed that she had cried with frustration and created a much frowned-upon scene.
******
By the time she was thirteen and sent off to a boarding school, Penny was already a -4 myope. Judging by the history of the rest of the family, the family optician Mr Hutchinson predicted that over the next couple of years, Penny’s myopia would progress by about a dioptre per year after which the progression would slow down to about one dioptre every two or three years until she was about twenty when her eyesight should have stabilized and settled at about minus eight or thereabouts. With that Penny had to be content even if she still nurtured her secret dream about having Magic Eyes just like her mother.
One of the subjects she studied and enjoyed was biology and once they had covered basic optics early on in the fourth form, she found physics fascinating too. Penny now had the knowledge to understand how the human eye works and what made her mother’s eyes so beautiful and interesting to look at. Having her own iPhone and thus access to the Internet, she devoured everything even remotely connected with her optic obsession and decided that she was going to have cataract surgery as soon as she possibly could and that she would wear her cataract eyeglasses in the type of heavy, very feminine frames her Nanna had worn during the 1970s and still occasionally wore. Pink of course, even if she no longer could remember why she was so set on that particular colour.
This was when she came across a very interesting piece of information. Although they had been around for almost a decade, multifocal lens implant technology had reached the point where it was routine and cataract patients recovered so well that close to 95% could even read without the need for reading glasses! Wouldn’t that make it possible to…? Yes! There were varifocal implants correcting for hyperopia so that people who required even quite strong reading glasses could do without! Theoretically, she could now have her own lenses surgically removed and replaced with zero to plus four multifocal implants. That way she would still require Magic Eyes but would not need to have several different pairs for different distances and lenses of different power in each pair. With these implants, she would be able to see everything from the stars to the finest of print through her very own Magic Eyes!
But when she came home for the Christmas holidays and brought the subject up, her parents were aghast and absolutely forbade her to even think about it. How could she help but think about it, day and night? Even Nanna was dead set against it, although she had listened to her with not altogether closed ears. To Penny, that year’s Christmas Holiday was a dreadfully unhappy one, her life’s ambition denied. It was her life and her eyes, wasn’t it? And hadn’t her own mother come to the same conclusion when she’d had that corrective surgery all those years ago? Her mother with those beautiful, fascinating Magic Eyes… She was so unhappy that in desperation she took to the Foundation trilogy given to her by Uncle John, a life-long Asimov fan, even though she herself had no real interest in science fiction.
Back at school, she picked up the trilogy again and read it through to the very end. Second Foundation, located at the other end of the Galaxy, at Star’s End. Now that gave her an idea!
******
“Mrs Woodward? Good morning to you Mrs Woodward, this is Mr Hutchinson, the Optician.” One could hear the capitalisations as the timid and somewhat pedantic man spoke.
“Good morning, Mr Hutchinson. What can I do for you?”
“I don’t rightly know, Mrs Woodward. It’s about your granddaughter, Miss Penelope. I am verrry worried about her myopic progression and I fear there may be something wrong. Verrry wrong indeed, I fear.”
“Indeed, Mr Hutchinson?”
“Please forgive me for asking, Mrs Woodward, but isn’t there a…, a-hem…, a genetic disposition towards cataracts in the family? Your daughter…?”
“Mr Hutchinson, as you well know my daughter Elizabeth had an accident due to her own great stupidity and I trust that you do not wish imply that this is hereditary? What is it that is wrong with Penelope’s eyes that makes you this unusually bold? Not that I do not appreciate your concern, I am indeed very grateful to you Mr Hutchinson for bringing the matter to my attention, but I would be indebted to you if you would tell me in so many words please. ”
“As you know Mrs Woodward, our firm has had the great honour and pleasure of attending to the optical needs of your family for over half a century and, if I may say so, we are quite familiar with how the progression of myopia runs within the Family… Mrs Woodward, Miss Penelope’s progression is atypical. Verrry atypical, if I may say so.”
“You most certainly may say so Mr Hutchinson. As you say, your firm has indeed served us very well for a long time, always to our great satisfaction, and you are most certainly the best qualified person to form an opinion. Incidentally, what would that opinion constitute Mr Hutchinson?”
“Well, erm… Two years ago Miss Penelope had a visus of OD –4.25 with no discernible astigmatism, and an OS of –4.00 with a cylinder of –0.50 at an axis of 165…
“Yes…?
“Erm…, last year, Miss Penelope had an increase of –1.50 against the expected no more than –1.00 at the outside, but…, erm…, this year, the increase was an astonishing -2.75 which leaves her with a visus of…”
One could hear the timid and verrry pedantic optician leafing through his records as he spoke, but this time Heather remained silent and did not prompt him further.
“Ah yes, here we are. Miss Penelope today has a visus of OD –8.50 with a cylinder of –0.50 at 180 degrees and an OS of –8.00 with a cylinder of –0.75 at 160 degrees. Now I hasten to add that there is nothing unexpected about the astigmatism. The spherical correction however…”
“…the spherical correction is as unexpected as atypical. Very well. Thank you Mr Hutchinson for bringing this matter to my attention, I am deeply grateful for your consideration. I think I may have a pretty good idea about what is going on and you can leave it to me. No need to bring it to the attention of Mr and Mrs Ainsworth and especially not to Miss Penelope’s! I shall deal with this matter personally. A good day to you, sir!”
The very next day, a slightly awed but very curious fourth former knocked on the door to the Chemistry Lab of Northwood School where the Lower Sixth were trying to identify various compounds. After permission was granted, she entered and delivered her message:
“Sorry to disturb you Mr Matheson. The Headmistress sends her compliments but could Miss Ainsworth call on her at her earliest convenience?”
“Penny! Off you go. Sally! You will have to work alone but do take notes for Penny as well.”
“What have you done, Penny?”
“How should I know? I haven’t done anything. That I know of anyway.” Penny whispered back as she quickly began to organise her books and notes.
“Penny, you can come back for those later. You do not want to keep Mrs Lane waiting!”
Penny answered with a meek “yes, sir” and rushed off. What on Earth could it be? She hadn’t done anything! Well, not since last term anyway when she and Sally had placed a breeding pair of gerbils in the drawer where Miss Fields, their former Housemistress, had kept her implements of personal gratification, but alas, not as secretly as that very advanced lady had imagined as she went on a sudden two-week break mid-term for personal reasons. Because of the incident, her authority had evaporated overnight and she’d had to resign. Fortunately for Penny and her accomplice Sally, the perpetrators had not been identified. Could it be that? Surely not! It was only herself and Sally who knew and if it had been discovered now, wouldn’t Sally too have been summoned?
She was met at the door by the headmistress herself, not unkindly, but with a quizzical look. “Ah, Penelope. I have some small matters to attend to. Would you be so good as to wait in the study until my return.” With that the Headmistress left and Penny did as she was told. Because she knew the headmistress had left, she simply entered the study.
“In my day, one used to knock before entering.”
“Nanna! Am I glad to see you! But what are you doing here?”
Heather disentangled herself from the embrace and took a long look at Penelope whilst holding on to her shoulders with her aged hands. “Penny, Penny. So like me, so determined to have your own way. By the way, Mrs Lane told me to tell you and…, Sally was it? Yes, Sally. She says that the two of you should stop worrying about the gerbils. She had long considered Miss Fielding an altogether unwholesome influence and had wondered about how to induce her to resign, so actually the pair of you miscreants did her a service. Even if it was a bloody stupid thing to do.”
“So it was all about those gerbils, was it Nanna.” Penny breathed a sigh of relief. One’s worst fear, realised and banished in the same breath.
“No Penny, it is not. Yesterday, I had a verrrry interesting conversation with dear old Mr Hutchinson”, she imitated the voice and hesitant manner of the pedantic optician to perfection, “about your myopic progression. Tell me Penny, how did you do it?”
Penny sank down in a chair without a word. She simply took off her spectacles and then removed the contact lenses which she held out to her grandmother, again without speaking.
“Penny, why?” The words were softly spoken, with great love and compassion and rendered completely stillborn any ideas Penny might have harboured of obfuscation and obstinacy.
“Because I really, really do want to have Magic Eyes, Nanna. I have wanted to for as long as I can remember and I still want to more than anything else. But you have all made it absolutely clear that it won’t ever happen, so I went the other way instead. There is a myopia analogue, Nanna, where the lenses have a similar but negative bowl and I thought I’d accelerate my myopic progression and just possibly, I could get to the point where I would have to wear such spectacles.”
“Darling Penny, what is it about Magic Eyes that you find so irresistible that you are willing to do such damage to yourself? Please tell your Nanna, because I really do want to understand.” Again, there was no hint of reproach in Heather’s voice, only love and compassion, conveying nothing but a genuine wish to understand. Penny looked up and looked at her octogenarian grandmother, still as beautiful as ever but now wearing gold-rimmed multifocals, as she collected her thoughts.
“Nanna, the very first memory I have is from when I was very little and mummy was nursing me. I used to lie there and just look up into her beautiful eyes. It was as if I was looking right into her soul and all I saw there was pure love and compassion for me, for Penny. It’s difficult to explain…”
“No dear, you explain it perfectly. It’s the very same thing your father told your mother the day he proposed to her; “those spectacles enhance and magnify your inner beauty”. Penny, your mother is an exceptionally beautiful woman, inside and out, and yes, her spectacles really do force that upon one. I can certainly understand why you call them “Magic Eyes” and also, strangely enough, understand why you would desire the same for yourself.”
“You do?” Incredulity mingled with hope.
“Yes child, I do. You see, your father is the most level-headed and honest man I have ever known, honest to himself and in his dealings with those he loves and cares for. Yet even I could not imagine the effect of seeing your mother for the first time had on him although I had known him for many years before they met. And you, being nothing but an infant and exposed to that overpowering sensation of being loved, what chance did you have! Tell me Penny, do you still desire to have those Magic Eyes yourself?
“Yes! I do want it Nanna. More than anything else. Even when I had decided to become extremely myopic, I almost stopped and thought I would wait until was legally old enough to decide for myself. Just like Aunt Angela ran away to marry Uncle Carlos, I was prepared to run away to have it done. But then I would realise I simply couldn’t and I’d look at myself in the mirror and also knew that I couldn’t wait that long, so I continued.”
“You see child, with extreme myopia there a very real risk of retinal detachment which can lead to blindness. It can be brought on even when quite young by extreme exertion such as when giving birth, which is why in my day, highly myopic young ladies were strongly advised not to have children at all. As you may guess, I am not completely altruistic in this. I always consider the Family first and foremost, and this does mean children. Were you instead to undergo the procedure you outlined to us almost two years ago, this risk would be diminished and is definitely to be preferred over the extreme myopia you are trying to induce.
“Nanna, are you saying that you are willing to help me?”
“Penny, will you promise me something first?” Penny looked at her grandmother and thought for a while. Finally she pressed her lips together and nodded in emphatic acquiescence.
“Penny, you are sixteen now and in little under two years, you will be a legal adult. Do you think you could wait that long? Two more years? Without any further attempts to ruin your eyes?”
Again, after a pause, Penny nodded.
“In that case I promise you that for your eighteenth birthday, you will have your Magic Eyes. Your father still is one of the finest barristers in the country, even now that he has retired – it is a disgrace that he never was considered for the bench! He will be able to draw up the legal documents and, as dear Mr Hutchinson so obligingly informs us, there is after all a genetic disposition towards cataracts in the family and there is such a thing as preventive or precautionary surgery. And your father does know Sir George Atwood, Britain’s premier ophthalmic surgeon. In the meantime dear, I think I shall take up residence in London.” She hugged the overjoyed Penelope who had again thrown herself into the arms of her beloved Nanna.
“London Nanna? But why? I thought you hated the place?”
Heather chuckled. “Do you really think it was blind chance that brought your parents together? Furthermore, you do want a husband who is as like to your father as possible, don’t you dear?”
******
Penelope sat stock still on the stool in front of the vanity table as her mother prepared to help her with the make-up. She was dressed in a long, pink silk gown and there was a broad, sky-blue sash tied around her waist. The hairdresser had just left after finishing her coiffure ahead of the coming-out party her Nanna had insisted upon, but Penny didn’t see much of this. She knew there was a mirror just in front of her face and she was vaguely aware of the human-shaped outline and the colour pink reflected in it.
“If you could rest your left hand on the vanity and slowly turn towards me. That’s it! Good. Close your eyes!” Her mother began to apply the make-up.
Although the bandages had come off almost two weeks ago, she had not been allowed even a quick look at herself in a mirror since the surgery. She had been told by her grandmother that she would not be until her new glasses were ready and she herself was on the point of walking down the grand stairway at the coming-out party Nanna had planned for her. The temporary eyeglasses she had been given at the hospital in order to acclimatise and to tide her over had been reasonable close to the required prescription, but they had been removed before she had even begun to be dressed.
When she was released from hospital, she had been taken away by her mother and grandmother in a taxi. Together, they had gone straight to Mr Hutchinson’s for that all-important final eye test which had confirmed that the hospital had been slightly off in their post-op examination. Mr Hutchinson had also adjusted several frames to fit her face perfectly, but she had not been allowed to see any of them. Apart from them being made of plastic and being very comfortable to wear, she’d had no idea at all as to what they were like, except that they were large enough to accommodate Magic Eyes. It was going to be a surprise for her, she was told.
“There Penny, all made up and ready.” Elizabeth applied the finishing touches to her daughter’s make-up. “Now give me your right hand and place you left on the vanity as you, slowly now dear, get up. My, you really do look fantastic Penelope!”
Soon after, the door to the dressing-room had been opened and her Nanna Heather had entered.
“She really does look marvellous, does she not Elizabeth! She is a credit to you in every respect. Now run away downstairs and tell everyone to get ready, there’s my good girl.”
“Yes Mother.” Elizabeth gave her daughter a quick peck and squeezed her hand as she placed it in that of the grandmother before she left to fulfil her mother’s bidding.
“Now Penelope. There are going to be some changes, now that you no longer will be a child but a young woman. Do remember that in front of others, you must call your parents Mother and Father, that I am no longer Nanna but Heather or Grandmother and that you yourself no longer are Penny but Penelope.”
Penny nodded. She knew what this was leading up to, that soon she was going to see herself as she had always wanted to be. That soon, she would be taken down the grand staircase on the arm of her grandmother to be officially introduced, wearing her Magic Eyes. Although no-one had told her, she was also convinced that at least two of the perhaps not-so-young gentlemen who would be present; Sir George’s son Alastair and that young doctor, what was his name, David? David, who had assisted Sir George during her surgery, had been vetted and approved by her Grandmother as prospective husbands.
“Now darling Penelope, this is the moment you have been waiting for.” Heather had slowly led Penelope to stand in front of the great mirror. “These are the spectacles I have chosen for you to wear today.” She chuckled and said to herself: “I wonder if Edward will remember that I wore an identical pair on a certain night almost 30 years ago?” and smiled at the memory.
Without letting go of Penelope’s hand, Heather stood in front of her granddaughter, between her and the great mirror. She then slowly let go of the hand, opened her evening bag and took out a case bearing the legend Hutchinson & Sons in gold copperplate. She opened it and took out the pristine Cazal frame; clear with large, sky blue accents that matched the sash around Penelope’s waist perfectly.
“Stand still darling. From your Nanna, with all her love and pride in you, here are your own Magic Eyes, beloved child. I hope they will bring you as much happiness and good fortune as those of your mother have given her.”
With those words, Heather carefully put the spectacles on Penelope and while the eyes of the latter adjusted, she sternly implored Penny not to shed any tears, not even those of joy, as it would spoil the make-up. Then she took Penelope’s hand in her own, squeezed it hard and moved to stand beside her thus clearing the view of the great mirror.
Penny had always known that just like her mother, she was going to have Magic Eyes. But even she had not been prepared for how beautiful they were and how right they felt! To her, the image of the young woman wearing those very strong spectacles reflected by the grand mirror was a vision of beauty and her heart sang with the realisation of her life-long ambition.
“Now darling Penelope, it is time for us to descend and for your Grandmother to officially introduce you to those waiting below. Remember that even if this is your moment, it is also mine and that your Grandmother is extraordinarily proud of you and shares the song of joy in your heart that is so clearly visible through those beautiful Magic Eyes of yours”.
Together, Grandmother and favourite grandchild began the short journey down the stairs that left childhood behind forever.
Statistics: Posted by Zennia — Sat Aug 22, 2015 3:51 pm