Two birds with one stone
Anonymous.
At the age of twenty-six, Peter openly admitted that he was gay. In the last decade of the twentieth century, depending of course on what country or city you lived in, it was no longer such a difficult and risky thing to do. His parents were enlightened and understanding people, and there was none of the anger and incomprehension that gay men often experience, especially from their fathers. After his “coming out” he continued to live his life as soberly and quietly as he had done before, with a good job in financial journalism, a comfortable flat in Maida Vale, and with his partner of seven years, Michael.
Peter was thankful to be settled and at peace as regards his sexuality, with no more need for pretence or concealment. But there were two other things in his life that were sources of unhappiness. Not acute suffering, but a kind of constant tension and desire. Certain events or experiences could suddenly increase it to a pitch that would make him miserable for days at a time. At last he could keep these secrets no longer, and one evening, over a bottle of wine when he and Michael were feeling relaxed and mellow, he broached the subject.
“You remember how we used to be before we told people we were gay? Furtive, afraid to say what we were, afraid of what people would think of us?”
“Yes, I do. And I also remember when we overcame that fear. We were happier and more comfortable than we ever thought possible.”
“Well, I want to tell you two other things you don’t know about me, and I really need to speak about them.”
“Oh-oh! True-life confessions! Not too dire, I hope. What’ve you been up to?”
“No, it’s not like that. I mean, it’s not things I’ve done. It’s what I am, what I feel, and haven’t ever told anyone.”
“Fire away. You can trust me.”
“Yes, I know I can. Well. First of all I must admit I’ve got a thing about my height. I mean, I’m four foot eight-and-a-half! I know I come from a short family – you know my Dad and Mum. Ever since I was seventeen and I realised I wouldn’t get any taller, I’ve been unhappy about it. I’ve never mentioned it to anyone before, but -”
“Pete, you didn’t have to. It’s no secret. From the time I first knew you I realised you had a thing about your height. You give yourself away by all sorts of little remarks. But it doesn’t worry me.”
“That’s all right for you, but you’re six one. People don’t look down on you as if you’re a midget. You aren’t called ‘Shorty’, or told you must have duck’s disease. They’ve even got a politically-correct joke about us – we’re not ‘short’, we’re ‘vertically challenged’”.
“Oh, come on, you’re exaggerating! Other people aren’t as conscious of your height as you are. Any way, it makes no difference to us, does it? And it wasn’t a big secret if I knew about it all along. I just never thought it was important enough to mention. I mean, what would you have thought if I’d said to you ‘Look, Pete, I think you’ve got a hang-up about your height’?”
“OK, so I thought it was a secret, but you guessed it.”
“Subject closed, mate. But what’s the other dark mystery? You said there were two things. Don’t say you’ve got a secret collection of Dinky Toys?”
“You maybe won’t like this at all. You can’t possibly have guessed at this one.”
“Try me.”
“Almost my whole life – and I mean really from way back, since I was five or six years old – I’ve wanted to be crippled, physically disabled, on crutches, wearing orthopaedic boots and leg braces. When I see a disabled person I actually feel envious. Can you believe that?! One part of me knows that’s bizarre, wanting to be disabled, but another part longs for it so much that it hurts. OK, now you know. And maybe you feel disappointed in me, or even disgusted.”
Michael was silent for a few moments, with Peter in painful suspense, not knowing what his reaction was, trying to read his facial expression. Then he smiled, and in that fleeting second Peter knew that his confession, his revelation, had not been a horribly destructive bombshell.
“Actually,” said Michael, “this is going to surprise you. I’ve read about this, and so I know there are lots of people who have this feeling, although I don’t have it myself. I never suspected you were one of them, so you kept that secret well, not like your height hang-up. So what? It’s no big deal. Some writers say it may come from a very early experience involving a crippled person, and it affects you for the rest of your life.”
“Yes! That’s exactly it. I’m nearly thirty now, and it worries me more than it did when I was a kid or a teenager. Sometimes I feel if I don’t do something about it I could have a breakdown.”
“Hey, steady on! It can’t be as bad as that, surely? And what do mean by ‘doing something about it’?”
“I don’t know. I get crazy ideas, like wishing I could get some sort of illness that would paralyse my legs. I had polio vaccine when I was a kid, and there isn’t any polio around in Europe these days, so it would have to be something else. Then I wonder if I could have an accident that smashed up my legs so badly so they wouldn’t function properly any more. It’s crazy. Why do I wish things like that? I’ve even tried tying my legs up in splints, to see what it feels like, but it was so amateurish and pathetic. Why have I got this thing – why?”
“I don’t know, Pete. There must be an explanation, but I’m not a shrink who can psychoanalyse you. Can’t you just accept it, as part of who you are, like being gay, being English, hating parrots and tripe and onions and all those other things?”
“Yes, all right. Sometimes I can live with it for months at a time, and then something happens that makes it boil up, and I feel I almost can’t handle it. I just want to do something, so I can be accepted as a disabled person. And when I feel that, I feel so guilty it makes me feel even worse.”
“Do you really want to become disabled, or just pretend you are?”
“I don’t know, Mike. Sometimes it’s just wishing I could act out a role as a disabled person, then other times I feel the only way out is to have a real disability. Then there’d be no more wishing and pretending – it would be real. And you know, I think things would feel right at last.”
“But are you prepared to do something? Like actually getting an orthopaedic appliance and wearing it?”
“At home, in private, perhaps. Would you mind?”
“No, I wouldn’t mind. I can’t share your compulsion, but I could tolerate it. If it will make you happier, then I’d even encourage it.”
“Well, that’s a huge weight off my mind. Thanks for being so understanding.”
“That’s OK, Pete. But we’ll have to make a plan. We’ll get you some gear to wear.”
“But how? I’ve worried about that for years. I can’t just go into one of those places that make leg braces and things, and ask to be fitted with one. They’d think I was mad.” He sighed, drooped as though physically exhausted. “And maybe they’d be right.”
“You’re beginning to sound depressed and morose.”
“But there isn’t any way of getting stuff like that unless you really are crippled, and a doctor refers you to the people who make it – you know, the surgical appliance makers.”
“Yes, these days they’re called ‘orthotists and prosthetists’. One part of their job is making braces and surgical boots and things, and the other is fitting people with artificial arms and legs.”
“You seem to know all about it.”
“Well, my cousin Sarah is married to one.”
“What? I didn’t know that.”
“Yes, his name’s Colin. He’s a partner in a small firm in Reading. They make all those things. I think they have NHS contracts, and they also take people referred by private hospitals and doctors. I could have a word with Colin, and see whether he could fit you with something.”
“Oh, God, no! I don’t know if I could go through with something like that. And I don’t want anyone except you to know about this.”
“OK, if that’s how you feel. But I can assure you Colin is a very nice chap, very sympathetic and understanding, and absolutely discreet. “
“I can hardly believe what you’re suggesting. It scares me, but then I feel this is what I’ve needed to do for years. I don’t know. I’m too mixed up.”
“Pete, you know you can trust me. I’ll see if I can arrange something, and I promise I won’t let you in for anything that would make you feel unhappy or vulnerable.”
“Well, I suppose we could enquire. What would you say to Colin? That I’ve got a weird obsession?”
“I wouldn’t be so crass. Leave it to me.”
And so Peter, with a mixture of trepidation and pleasurable excitement, did leave it to Michael.
* * * * * * * * * *
A week later he went with Michael to Reading for an after-hours meeting with Colin, who immediately put him at ease with his kindly manner. He also mentioned that Peter was not the first person to come to him for psychological and not physical reasons. “I believe those people have equally valid reasons,” he said. “The need for leg bracing, for example, is as real for someone like you as for someone who has lost muscle function through disease or trauma.” Here, thought Peter, was someone who understood. Michael had been accepting and helpful, but he probably didn’t really understand the strength of the feeling – the longing, and the unhappiness when it couldn’t be satisfied. Colin, on the other hand, really seemed to know.
Michael on the quiet had told Colin a little about Peter, including the fact that he had a hang-up about being only four foot eight inches tall. Peter was taken completely by surprise when Colin asked whether, as well as having a leg brace, he would also like to be taller – about five inches, if he liked. Of course he would, but how? Soon he would know.
After taking various measurements of Peter’s legs and feet, Colin bent Peter’s right foot into a downward flexed position, as though he was standing on tiptoe – the same sort of position a woman’s foot is in when she’s wearing very high heels. This, Colin said, was the shape of a particular type of club foot – its medical name was talipes equinus – and he proposed to make a cast of Peter’s foot in that position, and then make a boot to fit it. He said that nowadays most cases of club foot were corrected surgically at a very early age, but there was still a call for special boots, mainly for adults who didn’t have the deformity corrected in childhood.
The boot would hold Peter’s foot firmly in the flexed position, and because he would be standing on the ball of his foot, he would stand between five and six inches taller. He would have a calliper on the right leg, and the left boot would be would be built up to compensate for the extra inches given to the right leg.
“It looks as if you’ll have a lift of about six inches,” Colin said, showing him some photos of the sort of thing he had in mind.
“So, what do you think?” he asked. ”Would you like that?” Peter had to try very hard to keep the excitement and eagerness out of his voice. Wearing orthopaedic boots; and not only that, but being six inches taller! This would really be killing two birds with one stone, he thought.
“Yes, I think I’d like that,” he said, attempting to sound non-committal. He wondered how good his acting was, and whether he was really fooling Colin.
There were a few questions before the consultation was over. Colin asked him whether he would prefer black or brown boots (he opted for brown), and he asked Colin for some idea of what all this would cost. Not that the price would stop him. He’d got so far now, he simply had to have those boots. Colin was reassuring. “I can’t give you an exact figure today, but don’t worry. I’ll see you right, and it won’t cost an arm and a leg.” Colin promised to contact him about coming for a fitting. It would be about ten days.
In due course the message came from Colin: a fitting at three o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, if that was convenient. Peter arranged to take the afternoon off, caught a train from Paddington to Reading, and was in Colin’s waiting room with ten minutes to spare. His first visit had been after hours, and Michael had been with him to introduce him to Colin as a friend rather than a client. Now he was greeted by a receptionist and, at about five to three the person with the previous appointment came out of Colin’s consulting room. She was a woman of about forty, with only one leg, moving rather unsteadily on crutches, as though this way of getting about was new to her. A recent amputation, Peter supposed, here to be fitted with an artificial leg. And here he was, an able-bodied fraud, sitting in the waiting room. He had decided to put on an obvious limp when he came in, but would the receptionist know the truth? Did she have access to the notes Colin had made? Did she know that there was nothing wrong with his feet and legs? Did Colin discuss his cases with her? These thoughts were cut short when Colin appeared at the consulting room door and called him in.
As he sat down he noticed various partially-completed appliances on a side table. Among them stood a pair of brown boots, and Peter knew immediately they were his. Colin asked him to take off his trousers and sit in the special high chair used for fitting and measuring, removed his slip-on shoes, and tried on the right boot. It was a strange unfootlike shape, similar to the ones Peter had seen in the photographs; it had an almost vertical “instep” and a large built-up back part, and there were sockets for the calliper. Sliding into it, Peter’s foot was firmly and comfortably held in the “tiptoe” position, and as Colin expertly laced it up, the support, combined with visual effect, gave Peter a most pleasurable feeling.
Then came the other boot, with its ordinary-looking upper, but a six-inch thick sole – also very comfortable. He thought they would both be rather heavy, but Colin explained that the platforms were mainly cork, covered with leather to match the boot. Sure enough, despite their appearance, they were quite light. “But big areas to keep shiny,” he added, “so buy your shoe polish in big tins!” Finally Colin fetched a calliper from the side table, and after fitting the ends into the holes in the boot heel, fastened the straps round Peter’s calf and thigh. Finally he adjusted the broad, soft piece across the knee, and asked Peter to stand up.
All this had been done with the right leg straight, and Peter rose from the chair somewhat uncertainly. As he stood, concentrating on relaxing his leg muscles and letting the calliper take all the weight, Colin was busy inspecting the fit, asking him to take a step, enquiring whether it was comfortable. He showed Peter how to release the knee lock so that he could walk normally when he wanted to. Finally he said “Well, it looks as though the measurements were spot on. No obvious need for any adjustments, so it’s ready to go. If you have any problems with the fit, let me know and we can fine-tune it. Will you go home like this, or do you want to take the new stuff in a parcel?” Peter’s immediate reply was “I’d like to get used to the new boots right away. Could you give me a packet to carry my shoes?”
In the first few minutes of wearing the new boots and calliper Peter had been getting used to the feel of them, and the new way of walking they required. Now, as was leaving Colin’s rooms, the other aspect struck him. He was six inches taller! He first realised it when he noticed a yellow plastic pencil torch on top of a high bookcase in the waiting-room. He had specially noticed the bookcase on his first visit, and again today, because it was a rather fine piece of furniture, with bevelled glass panes in the doors. But from his four-foot-eight perspective he couldn’t see anything small lying on top of it. Now, with his new six-inch advantage, there was the previously invisible torch.
How many places would he now be able to see into without craning his neck or standing on tiptoe? And how many places at home would he now be able to reach without needing a chair or stool to stand on? Provided, of course he was wearing his new boots. Would he be able to wear them that often? What about going out, having visitors? He’d still have to live with a secret. And he was so keen to wear the new things to go home in, but how would he walk up the street to the flat without being seen? At least ten or twelve people in nearby houses street knew him well by sight, and passed the time of day when they saw him. What would they think? What would they say to him? Would they say anything, ask anything? And if they did, what would he say? Suddenly the complications sank in, and his feeling of elation and pleasure turned to apprehension. Perhaps this whole scheme had been a mistake. Perhaps he should have been prepared to live with his secret, with his unfulfilled longing.
But it was too late to do anything, and soon he was clumping along to the station to catch the train back to London. The panic and fear abated. Here in Reading, and in most places in London, he could walk about as a disabled person without being recognized by anyone he knew. As he got used to the feel of it, his gait settled into a regular pattern, and again the delicious feeling of firm support enabled him to virtually switch off the muscles of his right leg. He swung it forward from the hip, knowing that as his “club foot” came down, the calliper and its straps would safely take all the weight. In due course, he thought, he might decide to use a stick, which in any case would give him a little more leverage for his hip movement. He’d talk to Mike about that, ask his opinion. Or perhaps leave the stick until he was obviously approaching middle age. He’s seen a few crippled people about his age, with one affected leg, managing quite well without sticks or crutches. He wasn’t even thirty yet, and could look forward to many years in his new role.
Occupied with these thoughts, he made his way along the unfamiliar Reading streets towards the station. He wasn’t, however, so absorbed with his own thoughts and sensations that he didn’t notice other people. Although some passed him without a second glance, a number obviously took a closer look. He could see them glancing down at his feet, sometimes as they approached him, sometimes turning their heads as they passed him. He caught a reflection of himself in a shop window, enough to see the large expanses of leather showing below his trouser legs. Which boot, he wondered, interested people more – the left one, quite ordinary except for its high built-up sole, or the right one, an obvious sign of deformity? For years he had looked at other people wearing orthopaedic appliances; now the boot was on the other foot – and he smiled to himself at the phrase. Now he was being looked at by other people: interested looks, surreptitious looks, guilty looks from those who had been taught from childhood that “you mustn’t stare at crippled people”. And he knew the sort of fascination and compulsion that made them look, because those were his feelings too. He wondered whether he would still have them as strongly now that he was himself “disabled”.
In the train he sat opposite a little girl who stared intently at his feet for several minutes until her mother noticed, and drew her attention elsewhere by pointing out interesting things visible through the carriage window. This worked for a while, but his unusual boots proved more fascinating than boats on the river or cows in the fields, and every now and then the child’s eyes would fix on them again. Once, as she looked, he met her eyes and with his hands slightly straightened his callipered leg, as though it was uncomfortable and needed a stretch. That seemed to embarrass her, and there were no more searching looks. When he first entered the carriage and sat down, the middle-aged man next to him had openly observed how he unlocked his knee and sat down, but for the rest of the journey he seemed to be engrossed in his newspaper. Getting out at Paddington he was aware that his disability was being allowed for by his three fellow-travellers. Even the little girl, who was eager to get out, held back until he had stood up. The two adults clearly waited for him, allowing him to limp ahead of them down the passage to the carriage door.
The short journey by Tube to Maida Vale made him realise how many stairs there were in the Underground. Lifts and escalators are fine, but there is also plenty of up and down stairs work that the average able-bodied person hardly thinks about. Peter soon got used to taking them slowly, not trying to keep up with the pace of the crowd – which would have been impossible, anyway. His best way of negotiating stairs was to keep to the right, so that he could use the handrail to help him take one step at a time with his braced right leg.
He had almost reached home when he saw the woman next door coming out of her front gate. In that instant two options flashed through his mind: either quickly release his knee lock to eliminate the stiff-leggèd walk, and hope Mrs Makins didn’t notice his extra height and his boots; or carry on regardless. In that same moment he realised that the first option would only postpone the moment of decision, would only prolong secrecy and concealment. He could feel his heart-rate increasing, but he limped up to his gate and exchanged a greeting with his neighbour. Mrs Makins had obviously noticed something, and asked “Have you hurt your leg, then?”
Peter surprised himself with his calm and instant reply: “No, not hurt it, but I’ve developed a muscular weakness, and now I’ve got to wear this brace and built-up boot. A bit of a nuisance, but we’ll see if it helps.” With a casual “Oh? Well, I hope it does,” Mrs Makins went off down the street. Peter’s uneasiness at having told such a barefaced lie was mixed with relief that the encounter had gone so easily. He suddenly felt bolder. It was his own business what he wore and how he explained it, and if people were still curious or puzzled, he couldn’t help that. For deep-seated and compelling reasons he had decided to assume a new role, and he wasn’t harming anyone by doing so. He had a club foot and a weak leg and that was that. With a new feeling of confidence and fulfilment he swung his leg up the few steps to his front door, and he was home.
Later, as Michael came in from work, he’d hardly closed the front door behind him when Peter came out of the sitting room, unable to suppress the excitement and pleasure in his voice, “Look at me, Mike! Goodbye Shorty, hello Lofty! Well, not actually lofty, but noticeably taller, don’t you think?” Then the note of anxiety crept in: ”And are you OK with me like this, with a club foot and stiff leg?”
“Pete, if it helps you, if it makes you happy, it’s OK with me,” said Michael, “Did Colin do a good job? Let’s see what he’s done.” And at his request Peter walked and turned and showed off his boots and brace like a model on the catwalk.
Despite his excitement and his strange sense of fulfilment, Peter was still worried, though. “Are you sure you can handle this?” he asked Michael, “You don’t think it’s too weird, that I’m some kind of pervert, that you’d rather not know me? You must tell me the truth!” For reply, Michael simply reached out and held on to the calliper, gently moving Peter’s leg this way and that, then he bent down and held his right foot, laced up in its clumsy-looking boot. “I’m OK with it, Pete, I’ve told you. If I was put off by it, I wouldn’t want to touch the stuff. I’ll even help you put it on and take it off if you want!” At last Peter was convinced that his new image was acceptable to the person whose opinion mattered most.
Whether to go to work in his boots and calliper was the next worrying decision. With Michael’s encouragement he devised a strategy. One part of him said it was devious and dishonest, but another part said it was necessary for his mental well-being, and it wasn’t harming anyone. The plan was this: over the next few weeks he would walk with more and more apparent difficulty, complaining about a growing weakness in his right leg and ankle. He would begin to use a walking stick. His colleagues would get used to seeing him limping about, and accept that he had a problem. Then he would tell people that although there hadn’t been any satisfactory diagnosis, he had been advised to wear a brace, and for the greatest comfort in walking, to have a boot that would hold his foot in the flexed position. The final step would be to wear his gear to work, by which time everyone would be expecting it. The plan worked, and from then on Peter was accepted as newly and slightly disabled. His boots and brace attracted some interested looks at first, and a few people were actually prepared to ask questions about them. Were they uncomfortable? Was the brace now absolutely necessary for him to walk? Where did he get them? But soon they were accepted as part of the scenery, with no further obvious interest.
With two exceptions. Peter knew, with a kind of sixth sense, that weeks after everyone else was no longer specially noticing his new appearance, two people in the office clearly remained fixated on his brace and boots. Trevor in the Commodities and Indexes section and a typist named Pauline showed the signs he himself knew so well from his own experience. Out of the corner of his eye he could see them looking compulsively at his legs as he moved about the office, or sat in the staff canteen. Of course when he looked in their direction they would look away. Once Pauline was not quick enough, and showed signs of embarrassment when she met Peter’s eyes. He wanted to say quietly to both Pauline and Trevor “I know you’re fascinated, even disturbed, by what I’m wearing on my legs. I understand your secret interest. Perhaps you long to have the same things yourself. Don’t be shy to speak to me about it. I do understand, and your secret is safe with me.” But he never dared, never plucked up the courage to say anything to them.
Peter used almost the same procedure with his family as he did at work. There was only his mother, now very old and living in a retirement home near Worcester, and his sister Sylvia, who lived with her husband and two young children in Norwich. He tried to visit his mother every two months, but saw Sylvia only once a year. In speaking to them on the phone he paved the way by mentioning increasing “problems with his leg and foot”. Then he told them he had to wear a boot and brace; and so by the time he next saw them, they were prepared for his altered appearance. His mother, becoming increasingly vague and dim-sighted, hardly remembered or noticed that there was anything different. Sylvia cross-questioned him a little, as some people had done at work, but he was now quite skilled in providing vague answers. The deception and the evasion still worried him, but he could not bare his soul and tell the truth to his mother and sister in the same way as he had done with Michael.
* * * * * * * * *
As the months passed Peter became completely used to his calliper and boots. He accepted the fact that they reduced his mobility and made certain things difficult (like climbing a stepladder or getting down to reach into the recesses of a low cupboard). But he was always aware of, and grateful for, the extra inches they had given him. He was no longer (in his own eyes) a “short bloke”. A brisk walk was something he no longer tried to do – it was too much of a strain on his foot, and also on his hip muscles. At first his foot and ankle had been painful after being kept in the same downward flexed position all day, but he accepted that pain, and eventually it subsided. In fact the situation was later reversed: when he took his boot off at the end of the day the normal range of foot movement was painful. But his reaction was “If I want to be disabled and identify with disabled people, then I must experience some of the inconvenience and pain they have.”
Putting on his calliper and boots every morning became routine. Sometimes, after a particularly hard day, he would want to take them off the moment he came home, and often Michael, true to his word, was there to do that for him. As he moved about the flat in slippers, or slip-on shoes, he felt unsupported, unprotected, and often used a stick. When wearing his calliper he swung his right leg forward from the hip, using no muscle power in the leg itself. He made himself rely entirely on the calliper, as if he had lost all muscle function, and in time this resulted in some wasting of the muscles in his right leg.
An unforeseen result of his new state was that his brown boots didn’t go with some of his grey and blue trousers. He’d always worn black shoes with them, but now he no longer wore ordinary shoes, and his boots were brown. He thought he would sooner or later go back to Colin and have a pair of black boots made, but in the meantime he resolved that colour co-ordination was not an issue. If he wore dark blue trousers with brown boots, so what!
One day as he walked into the tube station Peter saw a schoolboy of about thirteen or fourteen limping along in front of him, with a club foot encased in its characteristic boot. It seemed to be the talipes equinus type of deformity, with the other boot built up to compensate. It was exactly the same set-up as Peter himself was wearing, except that the boy didn’t seem to have a calliper on his leg. They reached the platform together, and as they did so a fairly empty train came in. They walked straight into the nearest carriage, and Peter found himself sitting opposite the boy, who for the first time noticed him, and then took in the fact that they had something in common. He glanced shyly at Peter, who gave a slight smile and a wink. He would like to have asked the lad why his foot hadn’t been corrected; whether surgery perhaps hadn’t been possible; at what age had he first been fitted with a corrective boot, how had he coped with the disability, as a child, and now as a teenager at school. But of course he didn’t get into conversation, didn’t ask those questions. He hoped the smile and the wink were properly interpreted – friendly understanding and solidarity. After three or four stations the boy got off, hopping and limping his way out of the train and along the platform.
It soon became clear to Peter, and very welcome it was, that his fascination with physical disability and its trappings was not as strong as it had been. No longer was he an outsider. Before, he had looked at disabled people and wondered what it must be like to be in their situation, to wear those appliances. Now he felt himself an insider, identifying with disabled people by actually being one. The feeling of being where he belonged made up for the occasional uneasiness he felt because he was living a sort of lie.
He saw a woman in the High Street swinging herself along on crutches, her stick-like legs in callipers, and he felt no need to give her more than a passing glance. The fascination of the one-legged newspaper seller outside the station waned. Previously, whether the man was wearing his old-fashioned peg leg, or relying on crutches and sitting with the outline of his little stump visible through his trouser leg, Peter had felt his pulse rate change, and a tension in his chest as he walked past, fighting the desire to turn and stare. He occasionally saw a schoolgirl on Saturdays in the park, on crutches, with one leg hardly reaching past the other knee. It was obviously a severe birth deformity, a small truncated limb ending in a little non-functional foot laced, for appearances sake, into a kid-glove-leather boot and dangling twelve or fourteen inches above the ground. Seeing this child had always been particularly disturbing, and the memory of her would not leave him for days after he saw her. Now it was different. The desire to know “what it felt like” – the deformed or the artificial limb, the metal brace, the surgical boot, the support of the crutches – this, after giving Peter years of agony, confusion and shame, was disappearing like a subsiding fever, and he was grateful for this.
As time went on he began to forget that he had been an able-bodied person. His lame, braced state, with all its inconveniences, seemed so natural, so right for him – it felt like coming home after years of absence and separation. It no longer worried him that he had begun with no physical need for his boots and brace. This was his chosen way, there was no going back, and no wish to go back. The feeling of being braced and supported was now so much part of his life that he couldn’t even think of walking out of the house without his “gear” on.
Michael, too, no longer thought of him as able-bodied. “I can see,” he said one day, ”your right leg is not as strong as it used to be. And it’s much thinner. You really need your calliper now.” Yes, Peter did need it, but still far more for psychological than physical reasons. And Michael understood that. “Pete, you know since you’ve had your club foot and been six inches taller, you’ve been far less tense, and, quite frankly, easier to live with. There really is something in all that stuff about some people having a deeply embedded body self-image that doesn’t fit in with the reality of their actual body. And they’re not truly happy or well-adjusted until the two are made to coincide. I think that’s what’s happened to you in just seven months. I can see it so clearly.”
“Yes,” said Peter “that’s exactly it. When I first told you about my hang-ups I was afraid you’d never understand, but you do. Like a professional psychologist, but better than that, like a true friend.” Michael’s reply was typical: ”Lay off the serious appreciation stuff! I had to go along with all this or you would have become a real misery. It was self-defence!” But of course it wasn’t.
A few weeks later Peter knew that his transformation was complete. He had been included in a picnic on Hampstead Heath with a group of friends from Michael’s work. It was to be the following Sunday, and Michael was confirming the details with the person who was organising it. Peter, in the sitting room, overheard him speaking on the phone in the passage. “Yes, OK, I’ll bring the rolls and butter, and a bottle of red wine. Oh, I meant to ask you, the place you’ve got in mind – I hope it isn’t too far from where we park the cars. Not too far to walk? No, of course I can, but my friend’s disabled. No, not in a wheelchair, but he can’t walk easily. Well, he’s got a club foot and his leg’s in a brace. Oh, good, that’s not too far. It’ll be all right, I’m sure.”
“My friend’s disabled.” As those words sank in, Peter had a feeling of a physical and emotional comfort he could not have imagined possible a year ago. It was a feeling of completeness, of fulfilment. He was the person he had always known he should be.
Two birds with one stone
