Page 55 of Dreams Come True at the Fairytale Museu
‘What about hearing aids?’
‘I’d have to retire first because my mother would sack me for coming to work with a hearing aid in my ear.’
I don’t realise my mouth has fallen open until a moth nearly flies straight in. I bat it away, but I feel like I’ve missed a part of that sentence and it doesn’t make sense without the missing part. ‘You can’t be serious.’
He does a noncommittal shrug, and we pass a bench surrounded by piles of crispy leaves, and I reach out to grab his hand again and pull him over to it. ‘Sit. Unpack that for me.’
He raises an eyebrow.
‘Please?’
He’s trying not to smile as he lets me drag him the few steps across the grass and push him down onto the wooden bench.
‘It’s a weakness, Liss.’ His foot kicks at one of the leaf piles collected around the base of it.
Goosebumps break out across my body and I reach over and take his hand. ‘No, it’s not. Surely youmakeit into a weakness by pretending you can hear when you can’t.’
‘Icanhear, I’ve just got reduced hearing in my left ear. It’s usually fine, but it becomes noticeable if there are a lot of people, or background noise, or loud music playing or something. It’s not a big deal.’
If there’s one thing I know about someone who triessohard to keep it hidden, it’s that it’s amuchbigger deal than he’s letting on.
‘I have a disability,’ he says eventually, focusing intently on a brown leaf blowing along the path in front of us rather than looking at me. ‘Do you know how hard it is to admit that? And to wear a hearing aid would be toshowthat. Everyone I encounter, every day, wouldknow, instantly. You can’t begin to imagine what that would be like.’
‘No, admittedly, I can’t, but many people can. Many people overcome disabilities of every sort, every day, and are stronger for it.’
‘I’m not many people. In my family, a disability is a failing, a failing equals failure, and failure is weakness. Any form of weakness is unacceptable. In my world, weakness makes you the most likely to be picked off and ripped to shreds, like those wildlife programmes you see where a gang of cheetahs surround a herd of wildebeest and attack only the weakest calf. You don’t put your failings on show for all to see – you hide them.’
Despite the tangent into David Attenborough territory, ithurtsto hear the disdainful way he talks about himself. It’s the kind of attitude that makes me wonder about his mother, and how anyone can grow up feeling like a disability should be hidden and masked, rather than doing something that might improve it. ‘Weakness is human. Everyone is different. Everyone has many forms of abilities and disabilities. None of us know what people we encounter in our everyday lives are going through, but everyone is overcomingsomething. Wearing a hearing aid wouldn’t make you any less of a person.’
‘It would make me less of an opponent. It would give my opposition something to pick up on and take advantage of. A way to undermine me. A weakness they can chip away at. If anyone knew I had a problem with my hearing, they could hold it over me. They could use it to gain their own advantage. People could create issues or lie about things that have been said and blame it on me for mishearing. I have a lot of board meetings. I wine and dine a lot of investors. I have property disputes that I have to win. Imustappear sharp and on the ball, and I can’t let people think there’s something inferior about me.’
I sigh. ‘Does your life have to be about nothing but opponents and opposition? Fighting, winning, losing, failing. Can’t you just… live?’
He meets my eyes again and holds my gaze. ‘You… this place… it makes me wish I could.’
He sounds surprised by the words, like he didn’t intend them to come out quite so vehemently, and he takes another sip of his drink and looks away, his eyes distant and his mind clearly anywhere but here.
The wind and the cape have knocked his dark hair loose and it’s blown wild by the wind and looking gorgeously dishevelled for a change, rather than held down by styling product, and it’s incredibly hardnotto reach over and stroke my fingers through it.
He looks over his shoulder at me. ‘Would you have treated me differently if you’d noticed a hearing aid in my ear? On that first day, when I had to come in and take over your museum and present myself as confident and in charge and make sure you knew there was no choice? Would it have made you see me in a different light? Would you have felt the slightest bit of pity? Shown me extra kindness because of it?’
‘No. But I would have been more mindful that you couldn’t hear everything exactly the same way I could.’
‘Of my limitations, you mean.’
I go to deny it but the words stop halfway, because I can see his point, and yet… ‘But part of your limitations is not being able to hear clearly, and if a hearing aid would improve that, then you’d be in a stronger position anyway.’
‘But everyone would know I had an impairment.’
‘But it wouldbeless of an impairment.’
He huffs like he can see my point too. ‘My mother would not allow me to continue running our Midlands branch if I put my impairment on show for all to see. Hearing aids are for elderly people. It’s something I’ll look into when I retire.’
‘You’re forty-one! You’re not retiring for another twenty-something years.’ It makes my thoughts return to his mother again. Him at twenty-two, diagnosed with something that he must’ve known would have a big impact on his life. If she was the only person he opened up to, I can’t imagine how any parent could encourage him to hide it, to be embarrassed, and treat it as something shameful. Those are the kind of shackles that are hard to shrug off, even so many years later.
I try a different angle. ‘You must have meetings with serious, scary businessmen who wear glasses all the time. Glasses are an aid to an impairment, no different to a hearing aid. Do their glasses make you think any less of them?’
‘Glasses are more socially acceptable. Hearing aids in a man my age are an anomaly, something people would notice. Not the norm.’
