Blueeyedboy (34 page)

After that, it was easy. Once I was down, her feet did the rest, her feet in those fucking sling-backed heels. By the time she was done I was snivelling, and my face was laddered with scratches and cuts.

‘
Now
look at you,’ Ma said – the violent outburst over now, but still with a trace of impatience, as if this were something I’d brought on myself, some unrelated accident. ‘You’re a mess. What on earth were you playing at?’

I knew there was no point in trying to explain. Experience has taught me that when Ma gets like this, it’s better to stay quiet and hope for the best. Later, she’ll fill in the gaps with some kind of plausible story; a fall down the stairs, an accident. Or maybe this time I was mugged, or beaten up on my way from work. I should know. It’s happened before. And those sharp little breaks in her memory are getting increasingly frequent, more so since my brother’s death.

I tested my ribs. None seemed broken. But my back hurt where she’d kicked me, and there was a deep cut across my eyebrow where the edge of the door had struck. Blood drenched the front of my shirt, and I could already feel one of my headaches coming, arpeggios of coloured light troubling my vision.

‘I suppose you’ll need stitches now,’ said Ma. ‘As if I didn’t already have enough to do today. Oh, well.’ She sighed. ‘Boys will be boys. Always up to something. Lucky I was here, eh? I’ll come with you to the hospital.’

OK, so I lied. I’m not proud of the fact. It was Ma, and not Nigel, who messed up my face. Gloria Green; five foot four in her shoes, sixty-nine and built like a bird –

You’ll be fine in no time, love
, said the pink-haired nurse as she fixed me up. Stupid bitch. As if she cared. I was just a patient to her.
Patient. Penitent.
Words that smell of citrus green and sting like a mouthful of needles. And I have been so patient, Ma, patient for so very long.

I had to quit my job after that. Too many questions; too many lies; too many snares in which to be caught. Having discovered one subterfuge, Ma could so easily have checked me out and exposed the pretence of the past twenty years –

Still, it’s a short-term setback. My long-term plan remains unchanged. Enjoy your china dogs, Ma. Enjoy them while you still can.

I suppose I ought to feel pleased with myself. I’m getting away with murder. A smile, a kiss, and –
Whoops! All gone!
– like a malignant conjuring trick. You don’t believe me? Check it out. Search me from all angles. Look for hidden mirrors, for secret compartments, for cards up my sleeve. I promise you I’m totally clean. And yet, it’s going to happen, Ma. Just you watch it blow up in your face.

These were my thoughts as I lay there on the hospital trolley, thinking about those china dogs and how I was going to stomp them into powder the minute – the
second
– Ma was dead. And as soon as I let the thought take shape without the comforting blanket of fic, it was almost as if a nuke had gone off inside my skull, tearing into me, wringing me like a wet rag and cramping my jaw in a silent scream –

‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Did that hurt?’ The pink-haired nurse, all three of her, swam briefly across my consciousness like a shoal of tropical fish.

‘He gets these headaches,’ said Ma. ‘Don’t worry. It’s only stress.’

‘I can get the doctor to prescribe something—’

‘No. Don’t bother. It’ll pass.’

That was nearly three weeks ago. Forgotten, if not quite forgiven, perhaps, the stitches removed, the bruises now veering from purple and blue to an oil-slick palette of yellows and greens. The headache took three days to subside, during which time Ma fed me home-made soup and watched by my bed as I shivered and moaned. I don’t think I said anything aloud. Even in my delirium, I think I was cleverer than that. In any case, by the end of the week, things were back to normal again, and
blueeyedboy
was, if not quite off the hook, then at least back in the net for another spell.

Meanwhile, on the bright side –

Eleanor Vine is most unwell. Taken ill last Saturday, she remains in hospital, on a respirator. Toxic shock, so Terri says, or maybe some kind of allergy. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised – with the number of pills Eleanor takes, apparently at random, something like this had to happen some day. Still, it’s an odd coincidence that a fic posted in my WeJay should have taken on such a life of its own. It’s not the first time this has happened, either; it’s almost as if, by some voodoo, I have acquired the ability to delete from the world all those who hurt or threaten me. A stroke of the keys – and
pfft! Delete
.

If only it were as easy as that. If this were simply a matter of wishful thinking, then my troubles would have been over more than twenty years ago. It began with the Blue Book – that catalogue of my hopes and dreams – and followed on into cyberspace, on to my WeJay, and
badguysrock
. But of course it’s only fiction. And although it may have been Catherine White in my fic – or Eleanor Vine, or Graham Peacock, or any of those parasites – there was only ever one face in my mind: battered and bleeding, bludgeoned to death, strangled with piano wire; electrocuted in the bath; poisoned; drowned; decapitated, dead in a hundred different ways.

One face. One name.

I know. It’s unforgivable. To wish for my mother’s death in this way – to
long
for it, as one might long for a cool drink on a hot day, to wait with racing heart for the sound of her key in the front door, to hope that today might be the one –

Accidents happen so easily. A hit-and-run; a fall down the stairs; a random act of violence. Then there are the health issues. At sixty-nine, she is already old. Her hands are thick with arthritis; her blood pressure is sky-high. Cancer runs in the family: her own mother died at fifty-five. And the house itself is filled with potential hazards: overloaded electrical sockets; loose carpet runners; plant pots balanced precariously on bedroom window-ledges. Accidents happen all the time; but never, it seems, to Gloria Green. It’s enough to drive a boy to despair.

And yet I continue to live in hope. Hope, the most spiteful of all the demons in Pandora’s little box of tricks –

3

You are viewing the webjournal of
blueeyedboy
.

Posted at
:
09.55 on Thursday, February 14

Status
:
restricted

Mood
:
romantic

Listening to
:
Boomtown Rats
: ‘I Never Loved Eva Braun’

It’s February the 14th, Valentine’s Day, and love, true love, is in the air. That’s why I’ve left that envelope on the corner of the china cabinet next to the chocolates and flowers.
Not
roses, thank God, nor even orchids, but a nice arrangement nonetheless, lavish enough to be expensive, though not enough to be vulgar.

The card itself is selected with care: no jokey cartoons, no sexual innuendo, no promises of undying affection. Ma knows me better than that. It’s the gesture that matters; the triumph that she will feel on her next outing with – for instance – Maureen, Eleanor, or Adèle, whose son lives in London and who rarely even telephones.

We do not fool ourselves, Ma and I. But still the game goes on. We’ve played the game a long, long time; this game of stealth and strategy. Each of us has had our share of victories and defeats. But now comes the chance to own the field – which is why right now I can’t afford to take unnecessary risks. She’s suspicious enough of me as it is. Unstable, too, and growing worse. It was bad enough when my brothers were here, but now I am the only one, the last, and she keeps me like one of her china dogs, on display from all angles –

She expresses surprise at the gifts and the card. This, too, is part of the game. If there had been no Valentine, she would have made no comment, but in a few days there would have been consequences. And so it pays to observe the conventions, to play along, to remember the stakes. That’s why I’ve made it this far, of course. By always giving the devil his due.

Online, my friends remember me, too. There are six virtual Valentine’s cards, innumerable pictures and banners, including one from Clair, hoping to see me soon, she says, and hoping I find love this year –

Why, how sweet of you,
ClairDeLune
. As it happens I hope so, too. But you have other concerns today – not least, the e-mail you sent from your hotmail account to Angel Blue, bearing a message of undying love, as well as the extra little surprise delivered to his New York address.

I knew that password would come in useful. And, as it happens, I’ve changed it now, from
clairlovesangel
to
clairhatesangie
, Angie being Mrs Angel Blue. It’s cruel, I know. It may cause grief. But as we enter this new phase together, I have become increasingly impatient of time spent away from my main focus. I no longer need my army of mice. Their squeaking has become tiresome. They were a pleasant diversion once. And I needed them to build up this place, to bait my virtual bottle trap, my own private pitcher plant.

But now that
Albertine
and I are entering the final phase of the game, the last thing I want is her wasting her time. Time to concentrate on what really matters; to move in for the tête-à-tête –

And so, of today, all of
badguysrock
has become our private battleground.
Site under construction
, it says, which ought to keep most of our visitors out, while I send out my personal Valentines to deal with the more persistent ones.

Clair’s you already know about. Chryssie’s takes a different form; that of a dieting challenge –
lose 10lbs in only 3 days!
– a drop in the ocean for Chryssie, of course, but it should keep her out of my hair for a while.

As for Cap, a careless word dropped in his name on a gang message board, followed up by an e-mail inviting him to meet a friend at a certain place, at a certain time, in one of Manhattan’s less pleasant districts –

Meanwhile, what of
Albertine
? I hope I haven’t upset her. She’s very sensitive, of course; recent events must have shaken her. She isn’t answering her phone, which implies that she is screening calls. And maybe she lacks the energy, today of all days, when the nation honours a festival, which, though riddled with the pox of merchandising, purports to celebrate true love –

Somehow I don’t see Nigel as the type. Then again, I wouldn’t. It’s hard to visualize one’s childhood tormentor as the kind of person who would buy a bunch of red roses, make up a playlist of love songs, or send a Valentine’s card to a girl.

Maybe he was, though. Who can say? He may have had hidden depths. He was certainly moody enough as a boy – spending hours alone in his room, looking at his maps of the sky, writing his verses, and listening to rock music that ranted and railed.

Nigel Winter, the poet. Well – you wouldn’t have thought it to look at him. But I found some of his poetry, in a book at the bottom of his wardrobe, among the clothes in charcoal and black. A Moleskine notebook – slightly worn – in my brother’s colour.

I couldn’t help it. I stole the book. Removed myself from the scene of the crime to scrutinize it at leisure. Nigel didn’t notice at first; and later, when he discovered the loss, he must have known that there could have been any number of places in which he might have mislaid a small, unobtrusive black notebook. Under his mattress; under the bed; under a fold of carpet. I played the innocent as I watched him search the house in stealth; but I’d hidden the notebook safely away in a box at the back of the garage. Nigel never mentioned to either of us what it was he was looking for, though his face was dark with suspicion as he questioned us – obliquely, and with uncommon restraint.

‘Did you go into my stuff?’ he said.

‘Why? Did you lose something?’

He gave me a look.

‘Well?’

He hesitated. ‘No.’

I shrugged, but I was grinning inside. Whatever was in that book, I thought, must be something very important. But rather than attract attention to something he clearly wanted to hide, my brother played indifference, hoping perhaps that the notebook would lie for ever undisturbed –

As if. As soon as I could, I retrieved it from its hiding-place. It looked like an astronomy notebook at first; but in between the lists of figures, of sightings of planets and shooting stars and lunar eclipses, I found something else: a journal like mine, but of poetry –

The sweet curve of your back,
Your neck – my fingers walk
A dangerous line.

Poetry? Nigel? Gleefully I read on. Nigel, the poet. What a joke. But my brother was full of contradictions, as well as being almost as cautious as I, and I learnt that behind his sullen façade there lay a few surprises.

The first was that he favoured haikus, those deceptively simple little rhymeless poems of only seventeen syllables. If anything, I would have expected Nigel to have gone for blowsy verses, thumping rhymes, sonnets with rhythms that thundered and rang, bludgeoning blocks of blank verse –

The second surprise was that he was in love – desperately, fiercely in love. It had been going on for months – ever since he’d bought the telescope, in fact, which hobby gave him the perfect excuse to come and go at night as he pleased.

That in itself was amusing enough. I hadn’t seen Nigel as the type for romance. But the third surprise was the greatest of all – the thing that killed my amusement cold and made my heart quicken with delayed fear.

I flicked back through the notebook again, my fingers suddenly cold and numb, a cottony, chemical taste in my mouth. Of course, I’d always known that to be caught in possession of Nigel’s book might have had serious consequences. But as I read further I understood the terrible risk I’d taken. Because this was something far more incriminating than just a few poems and scribblings. And if Nigel suspected that I was the thief, I’d earn myself more than a beating. If anyone ever found out what I knew –