 Its existence raised a number of imponderables. Was the eye my father usually wore likely to drop out
without warning? How did he swap the two? With neither in place, could you see right through into
his head? These questions, and many others, haunted
my childhood.
In Paris, where we moved when I was
seven, the spare eye became an unexpected source of financial gain, teaching me everything
I know about free enterprise. Every Tuesday, my
mother held an Anglo-French (or Franco-Anglais depending on your bias) sewing morning in
our flat.
‘Those poor children,’
sighed one seamstress, stitching a smiling mouth on to a pink rabbit. ‘Ces
pauvres petits,’ echoed her neighbour, bringing the gift of sight to a stuffed
panda. The wretched abandonnes to whom they were
devoting their sighs and labours were the inmates of a local orphanage. Their own flesh
and blood had been left to fend for itself. In fact, to be left to my tender mercies.
‘Want to see the most disgusting
thing in the world?’ I asked the sad strays gathered
around my bed. ‘Don’t mind,’ they shrugged.
‘You’ll have to pay,’ I continued, hoping to shake them out of their
torpor with the mention of a financial transaction. They perked up immediately and some
enthusiastic bartering ensued. After much
negotiation, it was agreed that a private view would cost a franc a head.
Over the following weeks, the
pilgrimages to the sock drawer became more and more frequent. After a time, however, the crowds grew restless. Bored with merely looking, they wanted to
touch, to hold, to enjoy the thrill of physical contact. A
new deal was reached and the fee put up accordingly. For
an extra franc, a hands-on experience was now
available.
 To accommodate the ever-growing demand, I was forced to run
group sessions. During these, we stood in a
circle and the eye was solemnly passed from one hot fist to the next. Sometimes, we did it
with the lights on. Sometimes, with them off. For a
while, everybody was happy. But not for long. Hubert wanted more. Out of all my customers, Hubert was
the most challenging. Constantly living on the edge, he had no sense of boundaries, only
of possibilities. While the rest of us coyly
flirted with danger, he faced it full-on.
‘I want to put it in my bouche,’ he shrieked, breaking away from the
circle and planting himself in front of me.
Behind his thick-lensed
glasses, his magnified stare had an unbearable intensity. I struggled with my conscience. Hubert produced a
five franc piece from the depths of his Bermuda shorts. The struggle was over.
In awe, we watched him throw back his
head and lower the trophy on to his extended tongue. The
applause was so loud that nobody heard the door open. ‘What
the hell’s going on?’ Debbie, the Australian au pair, loomed huge and terrible
on the horizon. Taking in, at a glance, the violated sock drawer, its
black droppings scattered all over the floor, she moved in on us with
terrifying speed. Hubert gulped.
Sensing his panic, Debbie turned on him. Hubert
swallowed.
I do not know what appalling
indignities Hubert suffered over the intervening period. All I know is that he and his
mother turned up on the doorstep two days later. Maman Hubert’s head was hung low
with shame. In a tidal wave of apologies, she
pressed a small satin pouch into my mother’s hand. Lurking
behind her ample hips, a white-faced Hubert made that funny shaking gesture French boys
make as a non-verbal ‘merde alors’.
 Heartfelt apologies gave way to mutual commiseration as the
two women cried out against the cruelty of fate. Where had
they gone wrong? What had they done to deserve such
monsters? Why had they ever given
birth? In their despair, they could find only one
consolation. For all his shortcomings, Hubert had
an excellent constitution. Throughout this
unfortunate episode, his bowels had been a model of speed and efficiency.
After they had left with one last
apology and jellyfish hand wobble, my mother gingerly opened the pouch. Holding the eye up to the window, she inspected it for
vestiges of Hubert. ‘We will not be telling your father about this
incident,’ she said, laying it back to rest in the sock drawer.
My father has been dead for a long
time now. In a sadly ironic twist, he was killed
by a bomb which this time hit its target. I had
almost completely forgotten about the spare glass eye until I went through the contents of
an old family trunk just the other day. There,
under piles of faded letters and photographs, out of which even the memories had bled, I
came across the red pillbox. But when I opened it with all the curiosity I had as a child,
it was empty.
I wonder where the glass eye is now. It always was an adventurer, an itinerant, a
freewheeler. Like Hubert, through whose digestive
system it so intrepidly travelled, it couldn’t be tied down.
You can also take a look at previous
personal views by Harriet Ewe:
Personal view 6 - The big lie
Personal view 7 - How I became a serial killer
Personal view 8 - Rebranding feminism
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