John L Rosewarne
posted 29 May 2007

The eye is the mirror of the soul and, it is said, the only feature of the human frame which remains unchanged, regardless of age. As befits its title, Peripheral Vision tells us a good deal about eyes, particularly that they have components, can be taken apart and put back together. Patricia Ferguson provides a fascinating introduction to the mysteries of ‘reconstructive orbital surgery’ whilst exploring the trials of worrying mothers, confused lovers and eclipsed or absent fathers separated by the passage of fifty years.

Be prepared for an education in the cringe inducing arts of post-enucleation socket syndrome, conjunctival incisions and the revelation that if a kitten’s eyelid is sewn shut the eye will go blind. Actually, all this is absorbing and compelling in its own right but how does it connect with Ferguson’s assortment of emotionally Astigmatic characters and how are they linked to each other across time? That is the puzzle of this multi-stranded, resonant, well paced and thoroughly engaging tale. Ferguson questions how we see ourselves, how we see others and how we think others see us. This is a tale of love, loss and finding. There is first love, lost love, love conditional and love withheld. There is also blindness in the face of true love, with all of the participants linked more profoundly than they will ever know.

In 1953 a little boy has an accident. This is common enough as every parent knows, but this mishap leaves him blind in one eye and shapes the destinies of many lives, not least his own. Ahead lies a lifetime of disfigurement and pain made all the more difficult by the reaction of his mother, Ruby. George has spoiled himself as surely as if he has scratched a cherished table or spilt paint on a rug. This evident but unspoken blame aside, George’s accident is her failure. She is that worst of things, a bad mother. Ruby is convinced that the neighbours are whispering, pointing fingers and condemning her: a perception reinforced by a series of chillingly literal poison pen letters. After a lifelong struggle for inconspicuous respectability, ashamed and guilt-ridden she embarks on a path of obsessive perfectionism with debilitating and near fatal consequences.

Nurse Iris De Silva is an expert at deflecting the painful and unpleasant. She has had to be. As nurses do, she tries to make things ‘better’. She alone provides help and real comfort for the injured, frightened George. Through the stories she tells, Iris really does seem to be able to make those around her and, in the process make herself, feel ‘better’. For medical student Rob Wilding, Iris is his first love. Falling foul of his mother and Rob’s lack of common sense, she is destined to be his great lost love. Iris will leave a void in the lives of both George and Rob; a void which each in his way will spend a lifetime attempting to fill.

Status conscious and formidable, May Wilding wants the best for her son. For this would-be member of the County Set, ‘best’ means what is seemly. Determined to be more than the wife of an unassuming Scottish doctor, she has the airs and graces of a grand lady and enforces rigid propriety with a steely hand, despite Dr Wilding’s minor periodic attempts at boyish rebellion. She regards Iris with horror: this girl who has been to holiday camps and who must have terrifyingly plebian relatives is simply not good enough.

Meadows the parlour maid is devoted to Mrs Wilding. Whether or not it is actual affection that she feels is doubtful because such feelings are alien to her experience. But that she is bound to her mistress is all too apparent. What is also clear is that she is a powerful force in the sinister co-dependent dance with the lady of the house. She is indispensable. She is the acme of parlour maids who knows ‘how correctly to address the widow of a baronet in person and in writing’. She also knows how much the grand Mrs Wilding did not know. The result of this strange, abusive relationship will be an implicit pact which proves to be Iris’ undoing.

In 1995 Sylvia Henshaw is an habitual success. Despite the tendency of some to treat her as a sweet little thing, she is an admired ophthalmic surgeon of great skill: highly competent and professional, adept at dealing with her patients and wise to the world, but pregnancy comes as a shock. Labour and birth can be and are difficult and this is happening to her, not a patient from whom she can maintain a studied if caring distance. Rationally she should know that these things happen. However, attuned to success and, armoured against a world that comes too close, she is confronted by something difficult and alarmingly real. She cannot love her child as she feels she should.

Rosemary Henshaw lost her husband long ago. She brought up Sylvia alone and made a success of her business through her own efforts. She runs kennels; she talks to the dogs, often in preference to people. That this is so is, at times, a worry to her. However, this thoughtful woman has learned not to think too much. She prefers to ‘cure introspection with a nice fat tree trunk and a chain saw’. Perfectly at home ripping up concrete paths with sledgehammers or tangling with cement mixers, she is a figure of naturalness and unstudied ordinariness. Like Mrs Wilding she wants the best for her child. Full grown though she may be, Sylvia’s tendency to pursue unfeasibly older father substitutes is vexing. She still hopes that her daughter will find someone who will draw her out of her protective shell, won’t waste her time and who will make her happy. Once there was a nice young boy of whom she had hopes but just as in the play, ‘what a mess Romeo made of things’.

Fifteen years ago Will was a success. As TV cult hero Toby French he did battle week after week with the likes of Zentor the space amoeboid and was the focus of innumerable teenage crushes. Now this one-time hero of imaginary other worlds is something of a has been; a Mister Bingley standing awkwardly on the sidelines of life. In the real world of here and now he has returned to bungaloid suburbia to care for his dying mother. He is self-consciously, almost guiltily dutiful. He is ‘doing the right thing’. Everybody tells him so, as ‘if he was doing the right thing not only for this mother and himself but for everyone else’. His mother, gently slipping out of life, has almost stopped worrying about him, feeling the delighted love of parents for their grown children. He, on the other hand, career apparently failing and increasingly alone in the world, contends with the fear that there ‘will be no greater aloneness I will feel than when my mother’s rapt attention is entirely withdrawn’.

In Patricia Ferguson’s own words, Peripheral Vision is a treasure trail littered with clues, some more apparent than others. Ferguson suggests that the greatest clues of all lie with Iris. Iris lies and does so repeatedly. As children play ‘let’s pretend’ so Iris embroiders her life with harmless happy memories. Her motives are simple. ‘She liked things to be nicer than they were’. It is the shared desire in some way shape or form of every character in the book. Returning to the imagery of the eye; in 1983 Rob gives a lecture. ‘I think it’s clear what artificial eyes are for. They’re not for the wearer; they’re for the rest of us. They make us feel better and that makes the poor sods who have to wear them feel better’.

Ferguson has skillfully inter-twined the strands of the tale, setting scenes, planting clues and ideas in a rapid switch back to and fro across time and between stories. These are interspersed with longer, more languid passages of almost lyrical warmth such as Iris’ rediscovery of the sand dog, Will recalling the teenaged Sylvia or the ageing Rob hang-gliding and his night time evocation of the long lost Iris.

The cast of characters is drawn with skillful clarity, affection and genuine empathy for both male and female, something which eludes many writers. Ferguson succeeds in being simultaneously witty, genuinely funny, profoundly sad and thoroughly perplexing. Her book has many of the merits of a well constructed whodunit and draws the reader into the excitement of unraveling a mystery. It is important to say that the subject matter is all too believable and will strike many chords with her audience. There will be few readers who cannot relate to at least some of these timeless hopes, fears, joys and tragedies. Ferguson brings her remarkable insight to the difficult business of living and loving. It is then reassuring that, ultimately this is a hopeful piece which ends with a nice twist and far more sweetness than bitterness - perhaps there is hope for us all? Truly a treasure trail indeed.