Blueeyedboy (15 page)

And then, along came Emily.

Sounds so harmless, doesn’t it? Such a sweet, old-fashioned name, all sugared almonds and rose water. And yet she’s the start of everything: the spindle on which their life revolved, the weathervane that moves from sunshine to storm in a single turn of a cockerel’s tail. Barely more than a rumour at first, but a rumour that grew and gained in strength until at last it became a juggernaut; crushing everyone beneath the Emily White Phenomenon.

Ma told them he cried when he heard. How sorry he felt for the poor baby; how sorry, too, for Mrs White – who had wanted a child more than anything and, now that she had her wish at last, had succumbed to a case of the baby blues, refusing to come out of her house, to nurse her child, or even to wash, and all because her baby was blind –

Still, that was Ma all over; exaggerating his sensitivity. Benjamin never shed a tear.
Brendan
cried. It was more his style. But Ben didn’t even feel upset; only a little curious, wondering what Mrs White was going to do now. He’d heard Ma and her friends talking about how sometimes mothers harmed their children when under the influence of the baby blues. He wondered whether the baby was safe, whether the Social would take her away, and if so, whether Mrs White would want him back –

Not that he needed Mrs White. But he’d changed a lot since those early days. His hair had darkened from blond to brown; his baby face had grown angular. He was aware even then that he had outgrown his early appeal, and he was filled with resentment against those who had failed to warn him that what is taken for granted at four can be cruelly taken away at seven. He’d been told so often that he was adorable, that he was good – and now here he was, discarded, just like those dolls she had put away when her new, living doll had appeared on the scene –

His brothers showed little sympathy at his sudden fall from grace. Nigel was openly gleeful; Bren was his usual, impassive self. He may not even have noticed at first; he was too busy following Nigel about, copying him slavishly. Neither really understood that this wasn’t about wanting attention, either from Ma or from anyone else. The circumstances surrounding Emily’s birth had taught them that no one is irreplaceable; that even one such as Ben Winter could be stripped unexpectedly of his gilding. Only his sensory peculiarities now set him apart from the rest of the clan – and even that was about to change.

By the time they got to see her at last, Emily was nine months old. A fluffy thing in rosebud pink, furled tightly in her mother’s arms. The boys were at the market, helping Ma with the groceries, and it was
blueeyedboy
who saw them first, Mrs White wearing a long purple coat –
violetto
, her favourite colour – that was meant to look bohemian, but made her look too pale instead, with a scent of patchouli that stung at his eyes, overwhelming the smell of fruit.

There was another woman with her, he saw. A woman of his mother’s age, in stonewash jeans and a waistcoat, with long, dry, pale hair and silver bangles on her arms. Mrs White reached for some strawberries, then, seeing Benjamin waiting in line, gave a little cry of surprise.

‘Sweetheart, how you’ve grown!’ she said. ‘Has it really been so long?’ She turned to the woman at her side. ‘Feather. This is Benjamin. And this is his mother, Gloria.’ No mention of Nigel or Brendan. Still, that was to be expected.

The woman she’d addressed as Feather –
What a stupid name
, thought
blueeyedboy
– gave them a rather narrow smile. He could tell she didn’t like them. Her eyes were long and wintry-green, devoid of any sympathy. He could tell she was suspicious of them, that she thought they were common, not good enough –

‘You had a b-baby,’ said
blueeyedboy
.

‘Yes. Her name’s Emily.’

‘Em-i-ly.’ He tried it out. ‘C-can I hold her? I’ll be careful.’

Feather gave her narrow smile. ‘No, a baby isn’t a toy. You wouldn’t want to hurt Emily.’

Wouldn’t? blueeyedboy
thought to himself. He wasn’t as sure as she seemed to be. What use was a baby, anyhow? It couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk; all it could do was eat, sleep or cry. Even a cat could do more than that. He didn’t know why a baby should be so important, anyway. Surely
he
was more so.

Something stung at his eyes again. He blamed the scent of patchouli. He tore a leaf from a nearby cabbage and crushed it secretly into his hand.

‘Emily’s a –
special
baby.’ It sounded like an apology.

‘The doctor says
I’m
special,’ said Ben. He smirked at Feather’s look of surprise. ‘He’s writing a book about me, you know. He says I’m remarkable.’

Ben’s vocabulary had greatly improved thanks to Dr Peacock’s tuition, and he uttered the word with a certain flourish.

‘A book?’ said Feather.

‘For his research.’

Both of them looked surprised at that, and turned to stare at Benjamin in a way that was not entirely flattering. He bridled a little, half-sensing, perhaps, that at last he had snagged their attention. Mrs White was
really
watching him now, but in a thoughtful, suspicious way that made
blueeyedboy
uncomfortable.

‘So – he’s been – helping you out?’ she said.

Ma looked prim. ‘A little,’ she said.

‘Helping out financially?’

‘It’s part of his research,’ said Ma.

Blueeyedboy
could tell that Ma was offended by the suggestion that they needed help. That made it sound like charity, which was not at all the case. He started to tell Mrs White that they were helping Dr Peacock, not the other way around. But then Ma shot him a look, and he could see from her expression that he shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Her hands were very strong. He winced.

‘We’re very proud of Ben,’ she said. ‘The doctor says he has a gift.’

Gift. Gift
, thought
blueeyedboy
. A green and somehow ominous word, like radioactivity.
Giffft
, like the sound a snake makes when it sinks its fangs into the flesh.
Gift
, like a nicely wrapped grenade, all ready to explode in your face –

And then it hit him like a slap: the headache, and the stink of fruit that seemed to envelop everything. Suddenly he felt queasy and sick, so sick that even Ma noticed, and relaxed her grip on his shoulder.

‘What’s wrong now?’

‘I d-don’t feel so good.’

She shot him a look of warning. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she hissed. ‘I’ll give you something to whine about.’

Blueeyedboy
clenched his fists and reached for the thought of blue skies, of Feather in a body bag, dismembered and tagged for disposal, of Emily lying blue in her cot with Mrs White wailing in anguish –

The headache subsided a little. Good. The awful smell receded, too. And then he thought of his brothers and Ma lying dead in the mortuary, and the pain kicked back like a wild horse, and his vision was crazed with rainbows –

Ma gave him a look of suspicion.
Blueeyedboy
tried to steady himself against the nearest market stall. His hand caught the side of a packing case. A pyramid of Granny Smiths stood, ready to form an avalanche.

‘Anything drops on the floor,’ said Ma, ‘and I swear I’ll make you eat it.’

Blueeyedboy
withdrew his hand as if the box might be on fire. He knew that this was his fault; his fault for swallowing his twin; his fault for wishing Ma dead. He was born bad, bad to the bone, and this sickness was his punishment.

He thought he’d got away with it. The pyramid trembled, but did not fall. And then a single apple – he can still see it in his mind, with the little blue sticker on the side – nudged against its companion, and the whole of the front of the fruit stall seemed to slide, apples and peaches and oranges bouncing gleefully against each other, then off the AstroTurf apron and rolling on to the concrete floor.

She waited there until he’d retrieved every single piece of fruit. Some were almost intact; some had been trodden into the dirt. She paid for it at the market stall with an almost gracious insistence. And then, that night, she stood over him with a dripping plastic bag in one hand and the piece of electrical cord in the other, and made him eat it: piece by piece; core and peel and dirt and rot. As his brothers watched through the banisters, forgetting even to snigger as their brother sobbed and retched. To this day,
blueeyedboy
thinks, nothing very much has changed. And the vitamin drink always brings it back, and he struggles to stop himself retching; but Ma never notices. Ma thinks he is delicate. Ma knows he would never do anything to anyone –

Post comment
:

c
hrysalisbaby
:
Aw babe that makes me want 2 cry

Captainbunnykiller
:
Forget the tears, man, where’s the
blood
?

Toxic69
:
I concur. Roll out those freakin body bags – and by the way, dude, where’s the bedroom action?

ClairDeLune
:
Well done
,
blueeyedboy
!
I love the way you tie these stories in with each other. Without wanting to intrude, I’d love to know how much of this ongoing fic is autobiographical, and how much is purely fictional. The third person voice adds an intriguing sense of distance. Perhaps we could discuss it at Group some day?

8

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blueeyedboy
posting on:
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Posted at
:
19.15 on Monday, February 4

Status
:
public

Mood
:
pensive

Listening to
:
Neil Young
: ‘After The Gold Rush’

After Mrs Electric Blue, he finds it so much easier. Innocence, like virginity, is something you can only lose once, and its departure leaves him with no feeling of loss, but only a vague sense of wonder that it should have turned out to be such a small thing, after all. A small thing, but potent; and now it colours every aspect of his life, like a grain of pure cyan in a glass of water, dyeing the contents deepest blue –

He sees them all in blue now, each potential subject, quarry or mark.
Mark
. As in something to be erased.
Black mark. Laundry mark.
He is very sensitive to words; to their sounds, their colours, their music, their shapes on the page.

Mark
is a blue word, like
market
; like
murder
. He likes it much better than
victim
, which appears to him as a feeble eggy shade, or even
prey
, with its nasty undertones of ecclesiastical purple, and distant reek of frankincense. He sees them all in blue now, these people who are going to die, and despite his impatience to repeat the act, he allows some time for the high to wear off, for the colours to drain from the world again, for the knot of hatred that is permanently lodged just beneath his solar plexus to swell to the point at which he
must
act,
must
do something, or die of it –

But some things are worth the wait, he knows. And he has waited a long time for this. That little scene at the market was well over a decade ago; no one remembers Mrs White, or her friend with the stupid name.

Let’s call her Ms Stonewash Blue. She likes to smoke a joint or two. At least, she did, when she was young, when she weighed in at barely ninety-five pounds and never, ever wore a bra. Now, past fifty, she watches her weight, and grass gives her the munchies.

So she goes to the gym every day instead, and to t’ai chi and salsa class twice a week, and still believes in free love, though nowadays even that, she thinks, is getting quite expensive. A one-time radical feminist, who sees all men as aggressors, she thinks of herself as
free-spirited
; drives a yellow 2CV; likes ethnic bangles and well-cut jeans; goes on expensive Thai holidays; describes herself as
spiritual
; reads Tarot cards at her friends’ parties; and has legs that might pass for those of a thirty-year-old, though the same cannot be said of her face.

Her current squeeze is twenty-nine – almost the same age as
blueeyedboy
. A blonde and cropped-haired androgyne, who parks her motorbike by the church, just far enough away from the Stonewash house to keep the neighbours from whispering. From which our hero deduces that Ms Stonewash Blue is not quite the free spirit she pretends to be.

Well, things have changed since the sixties. She knows the value of networking, and opting out of the rat race somehow seems far less appealing now that her passion for Birkenstocks and flares has given way to stocks and shares –

Not that he is implying that this is why she deserves to die. That would be irrational. But – would the world really miss her, he thinks? Would anyone really care if she died?

The truth, is, no one really cares. Few are the deaths that diminish us. Apart from losses within our own tribe, most of us feel nothing but indifference for the death of an outsider. Teenagers stabbed over drug money; pensioners frozen to death at home; victims of famine or war or disease; so many of us
pretend
to care, because caring is what others expect, though secretly we wonder what all the fuss is really about. Some cases affect us more profoundly. The death of a photogenic child; the occasional celebrity. But the fact is that most of us are more likely to grieve over the death of a dog or a soap opera character than over our friends and neighbours.

So thinks our hero to himself, as he follows the yellow 2CV into town, keeping a safe distance between them. Tonight he is driving a white van, a commercial vehicle stolen from a DIY retailer’s forecourt at six fifteen that evening. The owner has gone home for the night, and will not notice the loss before morning, by which time it will be too late. The van will have been torched by then, and no one will link
blueeyedboy
with the serious incident that night, in which a local woman was run down on the way to her salsa class.