I broke one once, when I was a boy, and she beat me — though I denied the crime — with a piece of electrical cord. Even now, I still hate those dogs. She knows it, too — but they are her babies, she explains (with a terrible, girlish coyness), and besides, she tells me, she never complains about all my nasty stuff upstairs.
Not that she even knows what I do. I have my privacy: rooms of my own, all of them with locks on the doors, from which she is excluded. The converted loft and study room, the bathroom, the bedroom; and the darkroom in the cellar. I’ve made a home for myself here, with my books, my playlists, my online friends, while she spends her days in the parlour, smoking, doing crosswords, dusting and watching daytime TV —
Parlour. I always hated that word, with all its fake middle-class resonances, and its stink of citrus potpourri. Now I hate it even more, with her faded chintz and her china dogs and her reek of desperation. Of course, I couldn’t leave her. She knew that from the very first; knew that her decision to stay kept me here, chained to her, a prisoner, a slave. And I am a dutiful son to her. I make sure her garden is always neat. I see to her medication. I drive her to her salsa class (Ma drives, but prefers to be driven). And sometimes, when she’s not there, I dream . . .
My mother is a peculiar blend of conflicts and contradictions. Marlboros have ruined her sense of smell, but she always wears Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue. She despises novels, but loves to read dictionaries and encyclopaedias. She buys ready meals from Marks & Spencer, but fruit and veg from the market in town — and always the cheapest fruit and veg, bruised and damaged and past their prime.
Twice a week, without fail (even the week of Nigel’s death), she puts on a dress and her high-heeled shoes and I drive her to her salsa class at Malbry College, after which she meets up with her friends in town, and has a cup of fancy tea, or maybe a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and speaks to them in her half-bred voice about me and my job at the hospital, where I am indispensable (according to her) and save lives on a daily basis. Then at eight I pick her up, although it’s only a five-minute walk from the bus stop. Those hoodies from the estates, she says. They’d stab you soon as look at you.
Maybe she’s right to be cautious. The members of our family seem unusually prone to accidents. Still, I pity the hoodie who tries to mess with my mother. She knows how to look after herself. Even now, at sixty-nine, she’s sharp enough to draw blood. What’s more, she knows how to strike back at anyone who threatens us. She is a little more subtle, perhaps, than in the days of the electrical cord, but even so, it isn’t wise to antagonize Gloria Winter. I learnt that lesson very young. In that, if nothing else, I was a precocious pupil. Not as smart as Emily White, the little blind girl whose story has coloured so much of my life, but smart enough to have survived when neither of my brothers did.
Still, isn’t that all over now? Emily White is long dead; her plaintive voice silenced, her letters burnt, the blurry flashgun photographs curled away in secret drawers and on bookshelves in the Mansion. And even if she were not, somehow, the Press have almost forgotten her. There are other things to squawk about; newer scandals over which to obsess. The disappearance of one little girl, over twenty years ago, is no longer cause for public concern. Folk have moved on. Forgotten her. Time for me to do the same.
The problem is this. Nothing ends. If ever Ma taught me anything, it is that nothing is ever truly over. It just works its way slyly into the centre, like yarn in a ball. Round and round and round it goes, crossing and re-crossing, until eventually it is almost hidden beneath the tangle of years. But just to be hidden is not enough. Someone will always find you out. Someone is always lying in wait. Drop your guard for even a second and — wham! That’s when it all blows up in your face.
Take that girl in the duffel coat. The one who looks like Red Riding Hood, with her rosy cheeks and her blameless air. Would you believe that she is not what she seems? That beneath that cloak of innocence beats the heart of a predator? Looking at her, would you ever think that she could take a person’s life?
You wouldn’t, would you? Well, think again.
But nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ve thought this out too carefully. And when it does go up — as we know it must — blueeyedboy will be half a world away, sitting in the shade by a beach, listening to the sound of the surf and watching the seagulls overhead —
Still, that’s for tomorrow, isn’t it? Right now I have other things on my mind. Time for another fic, I think. I like myself better as a fictional character. The third-person voice adds distance, says Clair; gives me the power to say what I like. And it’s nice to have an audience. Even a murderer loves praise. Maybe that’s why I write these things. It certainly isn’t a need to confess. But I do admit to a leap of the heart every time someone posts a comment, even someone like Chryssie or Cap, who wouldn’t know genius if it poked them in the eye.
I sometimes feel like a king of cats, presiding over an army of mice — half-predatory, half in need of those worshipful voices. It’s all about approval, you see, and when I log on in the morning and see the list of messages waiting for me I feel absurdly comforted —
Losers, victims, parasites — and yet I can’t stop myself from collecting them, as I do my orchids; as I once collected scuttling things in my blue bucket on the beach; as I was once collected.
Yes, it’s time for another murder. A public post on my WeJay, to balance these private reflections of mine. Better still, a murderer. Because, although I say he —
You and I know this is all about me.
5
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on:
Posted at: 03:56 on Tuesday, January 29
Status: public
Mood: sick
Listening to: Nick Lowe: ‘The Beast In Me’
Most accidents occur in the home. He knows this only too well; has spent much of his childhood avoiding those things that might potentially do him harm. The playground with its swings and roundabouts, and the litter of needles along the edge. The fishpond with its muddy banks on which a small boy might so easily slip, to be dragged to his death in the weedy depths. Bikes that might spill him on to the tarmac to skin his knees and hands — or worse, under the wheels of a bus, to be skinned all over like an orange and left in segments on the road. Other children, who might not understand how special he is, how susceptible — nasty boys who might bloody his nose, nasty girls who might break his heart —
Accidents happen so easily.
That’s why, if there’s anything he should know by now, it’s how to create an accident. Maybe a car accident, he thinks, or a fall down a flight of stairs, or a simple, homely electrical fire. But how do you cause an accident — a fatal accident, of course — to happen to someone who doesn’t drive, who doesn’t indulge in dangerous sports, and whose idea of a wild night out is popping into town with her friends (they always pop, they never just go), for gossip and a glass of wine?
It isn’t that he fears the act. What he fears are the consequences. He knows the police will call him in. He knows he will be a suspect, however accidental the deed, and he will have to answer to them, to plead his innocence, to convince them that it isn’t his fault —