th November. I got up this morning before Fred and was having my breakfast when she came into the kitchen in her dressing gown. She said ‘Good morning, darling,’ and then, going over to the stove, said something else which I didn’t catch because I wasn’t wearing my hearing aid; I took it out last night in the family bathroom, which is my bathroom when there are no family or other guests in the house, before going to bed, and it was still there. I said ‘What?’ and she repeated the utterance, but I still didn’t get it. She was opening and shutting drawers and cupboards as she spoke, which didn’t help. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I haven’t got my hearing aid in - it’s upstairs.’ She turned to face me and said more loudly what sounded like ‘long stick’. I said, ‘What do you want a long stick for?’ My mind was already considering the possibilities - to recover something that had rolled under the bed? Or fallen down the back of a chest of drawers? She came closer and said, ‘Saucepan. Long-stick saucepan.’ ‘What’s a long-stick saucepan?’ I said. ‘You mean a long-handled saucepan?’ She raised her eyes to the heavens in despair, and went back to the stove. I thought about it for a minute or two, and then the penny dropped. ‘Oh, you mean non-stick saucepan! It’s in the top right-hand cupboard.’ But I was too late: she was already making her porridge in a stainless steel saucepan which would be much more trouble to clean afterwards. And it was my fault for putting the non-stick one away yesterday in the wrong place.
Fred sat down at the kitchen table, propped up the Guardian tabloid section against the marmalade jar, and began to read with silent concentration. I had intended to mention casually over breakfast that I would be meeting Alex this afternoon. I had a little speech prepared: ‘Yes, d’you remember the young woman I was talking to at the ARC show last week? The blonde one? It was so noisy that I literally didn’t hear a word she said, but it seems she’s doing research of some kind, with a linguistics angle I presume, because apparently I agreed to give her some advice about it. She phoned to complain because I hadn’t turned up for our appointment, though I haven’t the faintest memory of making one. Embarrassing really. I more or less had to agree to meet her . . .’ But because of the contretemps over the non-stick saucepan it seemed an unpropitious moment to make this announcement, and I let it pass. I will have to tell Fred about the meeting after it has happened, when it will be far more difficult to explain.
‘My mother’s deafness is very trifling you see - just nothing at all. By only raising my voice, and saying anything two or three times over, she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice,’ says Miss Bates in Emma. How subtly Jane Austen hints at the politely disguised frustration and irritation of the company at having to bear the repetition of every banal remark in louder and louder tones for the benefit of old Mrs Bates. I must be in a worse state than my fictional name-sake, because I’m used to Fred’s voice, but I still can’t hear what she’s saying without a hearing aid.
Is there anything to be said in favour of deafness? Any saving grace? Any enhancement of the other senses? I don’t think so - not in my case anyway. Maybe in Goya’s. I read a book about Goya which said it was his deafness that made him into a major artist. Until he was in his mid-forties he was a competent but conventional painter of no great originality; then he contracted some mysterious paralytic illness which deprived him of sight, speech and hearing for several weeks. When he recovered he was stone deaf, and remained so for the rest of his life. All his greatest work belongs to the deaf period of his life: the Caprices, the Disasters of War, the Proverbs, the Black Paintings. All the dark, nightmarish ones. This critic said it was as if his deafness had lifted a veil: when he looked at human behaviour undistracted by the babble of speech he saw it for what it was, violent, malicious, cynical and mad, like a dumb-show in a lunatic asylum. I saw the Black Paintings some years ago,